The Waiting Time (46 page)

‘I’ll come back for you.’

The confusion had passed, replaced by annoyance. ‘I want to dance.’

‘Then dance.’

‘Dance with you.’

‘You’ll have to dance on your own,’ Josh said.

He walked towards the restaurant’s push doors. He heard the scrape of her chair behind him. He felt old, he was so tired. He turned at the door and looked back. His banknotes were abandoned on the table beside the bucket with the upturned bottle. She stood, the urchin waif, in the centre of the dance floor, alone. Quiet conversations, from the tables, murmured around her. Her head bobbed with the rhythm of the band’s music. She used her hands, gestured, for the tempo of the music to be stepped. She danced. He saw the grace and the gentle movement of her.

Josh went out of the hotel.

It was a crisp, chilled night. There was a small moon and many stars. He went past the tourist coach and the hire car, towards the taxi rank down Lange Strasse. He walked slowly and without spirit. He felt a bleak sadness. He had no hatred. If he had hated it would have been easier. He walked to the head of the taxi queue and dropped down onto the back seat of the lead taxi.

‘Could you take me, please, to the middle of the
Sudstadt?
Thank you.’

The driver turned, nodded, started the taxi. Josh remembered him, had seen him on the breakwater. He rode in a yellow Mercedes taxi with a white flash down the length of it, and he remembered the vehicle coming bumping on the track from the farm at Starkow. There had been light on his face from the street lamp when the driver had turned. Ahead were the dull-lit tower blocks of the
Sudstadt,
The driver spoke, a faraway voice, and his head never twisted from the road ahead. ‘Did you win?’

Josh said, ‘I don’t know if anybody won.’

‘Did you take Doktor Krause?’

‘He is arrested, he is accused of murder.’

‘You found evidence?’

‘We took the statement of Willi Muller. He was the boy who sailed the trawler out onto the Salzhaff. He was an eye-witness to murder.’

‘Then you won?’

Josh said, ‘I have to believe there’s something worth winning. I don’t know if I’ve won, will win.’

‘You came from England. You turned over the ground and exposed what was buried. The past was buried, a long time ago was covered. Why was it important to turn over the ground?’

Josh said, heavy, ‘It was a matter of principle. I have to believe it is always worth winning on a matter of principle.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I don’t ask you to.’

The taxi stopped. The tower blocks climbed gaunt above them. Josh paid the driver. He walked away from the taxi and into the shadows of the buildings. He stood among the lines of cars parked under the height of the buildings.

The point was lost.

Her daughter looked up, into the stand, at the empty seat.

Eva Krause wore the old clothes that could not be taken from her. She wore no jewellery, because they could take the necklaces and bracelets and rings from her.

She felt the finger on her back. She turned. Two policemen were standing in the row of seats behind her. The one who had touched her back beckoned for her to follow. She lifted up her old coat and her old bag. Their faces were unforgiving. She edged along the row, away from the empty seats. She knew that her husband had been taken from her.

She climbed the aisle steps to where the policemen waited for her. She turned to look a last time at the floodlit court below. The opponent waited to serve. Christina was staring up at the empty seats. Her gaze raked the stand. Her eyes found her mother at the top of the aisle steps, and the policemen. Quite deliberately, she put her foot on the face of the racquet, ripped away the strings and walked towards the chair and her bag.

Eva Krause followed the policemen. She did not know of anything more that could be taken from her.

He heard her voice, singing.

He stood outside the restaurant’s curtained glass door. The band played and she sang. He heard the soft beauty of her voice.

He pushed open the door and went inside. All of them, from the coach party and the couples and the lone businessmen, were rising to their feet and pushing back their chairs, standing, applauding. It was her moment. She seemed so small and so young, and she curtsied low to her audience. A man, out of the coach party from Bremen, snatched a red carnation bloom from the vase on his table and hurried to her. The clapping boomed around Josh. She kissed the man’s cheek. She shook the hands of each of the members of the band, she had captivated them, she waved to the stamping, cheering audience. She skipped towards Josh, between the tables, the child with happiness found. He held the door for her. A last time, she waved. It closed behind her. The applause rippled, muffled, through the door. She reached for his hand but he walked ahead of her.

He walked into the night, into the cold.

She hung back. She would have gone to the coach, to where the hire car was parked. He called her. He went on and into the deep darkness at the extremity of the forecourt. She ran to him.

‘What the hell’s this?’

She would have seen the shadow outline of the Trabant, two
-
door, small and angled, the little car from the past.

Josh said, ‘Always wanted to drive one — won’t have the chance again.’

Astonished. ‘You nicked it?’

‘Borrowed it — let’s keep some politeness. I went down to the
Sudstndt,
thought I’d find one there.’

‘You actually stole it — you, Josh, honest and upright Josh! Bloody hell!’

‘Took a loan of it.’

She giggled. ‘It’ll shake your bum off.’

Josh said, ‘It’s what you drove back to Berlin that night, after you drove back Hans Becker’s parents’ Trabant, after . . . It seemed right. It seemed right for the end.’

He didn’t think she heard him. Her giggle tinkled close to him. She took his hand, kissed his fingers. The applause would still be in her ears. She put the stem of the carnation bloom in her mouth and dragged open the passenger door. His grip bag and her rucksack were behind her. He reached forward, fiddled the wiring and the engine coughed to life. The smell of the fuel engulfed them.

She patted his arm. Her head was back. The laughter shrieked. ‘Josh, for God’s sake, good old Josh, car thief, joyrider! Josh, where did you learn to wire up a car? Christ, where
did
you learn how to get into a bloody locked car?’

‘Has to be an upside from working with toe-rags, have to learn something from them...’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I work with kids who have honours degrees in borrowing cars, something has to rub off. Just sit back, enjoy the ride.’

It was the pride of the past. The seat was harder than any he had known, the engine noisier. The body of the Trabant shook. He looked at his watch, four minutes before midnight. He drove away from the hotel. It was easiest to go on August-Bebel Strasse. The great building was dark. From August-Bebel Strasse it was a straight run to the
Rostock Sud
intersection for the autobahn. He had filled the tank. It would be a good drive to Berlin, he told her, smooth, and she grinned and tossed her carnation bloom behind her.

* * *

He had permitted young Rogers to make the ciphered communication with Vauxhall Bridge Cross and told him his story. He had also rummaged in his case and his wallet for a mess of receipts and bills, and requested, told, the ancient history graduate, first class, to knock his expenses into shape.

Albert Perkins sat in the Savignyplatz café, a half-bottle of champagne in front of him. A rare pleasure gripped him. Any of the others, his rank, at Vauxhall Bridge Cross would have been fighting to get on the secure telephone to make a personalized report on the outcome of a successful mission. He thought that the report going back second hand set him on a pedestal of achievement. He sipped the champagne. Even Helen had seemed pleased — rarer than August snow — that he was awarded a new peg, no detail over the phone, and more pleased at the new annual increment. He would be home in the morning, for the weekend, to fiddle about in the garden and in time for the game at Craven Cottage and the pint with Basil. His world, he believed, was set in an aurora of success.

Past midnight. The café was full. At the bar, haggard, disputing, laughing, no champagne but beer drunk from the neck, were four of the foreign press corps. They had an office block in Savignyplatz. He had used the café, in the old days, to be close to the foreign journalists, assuming the identity of a businessman too stupid to understand the secret life pulse of divided Berlin. He had enjoyed their amused banter when he had met them in the old days - they knew nothing. When he had finished the champagne, he would insinuate himself into the group of journalists and they would boast to the ignorant stranger of their contacts and their knowledge — they would still know nothing.

She was, in his opinion, a quite remarkable young woman. She would have achieved her objective, his opinion, without the trailing Mantle. Too good, his opinion, to disappear. When he was back in Vauxhall Bridge Cross, after the weekend, he would sing her praises. There would be a place for her, should be a place for her, in the Service. Such raw courage, such focused ability, a crime to lose it . . . Albert Perkins sat in the café and mused on the brilliance of Tracy Barnes, and was at contented peace.

* * *

‘Double whammy,’ Violet shrieked from the door.

The cassette player — and the Rolling Stones tape — was loaned from Mid-east Desk. The party gang were from German Desk and Russia Desk. The drink — gin, vodka, Scotch, wine, beer — was out of the ADD’s store cupboard. They had all stayed on, bugger the outside commitments, bugger the husbands and wives and children, bugger the last trains out of Waterloo and Victoria and the last tubes to Fuiham and Hampstead and the last buses. The party rolled on, wild . . always a party when the Service triumphed. Sweating girls and panting men, yelling and howling, dancing and cavorting, celebrating...

Violet shrieked from the door and waved the sheet of paper. ‘For Christ’s sake — it’s a double whammy!’

Fleming went to her, and Olive Harris. The ADD and the Russia Desk chief and the girl clerks, and the new men and the old men, all gazed at Violet. They had enough cause, already, to celebrate. They had Pyotr Rykov, destroyed. They had the signal from Langley, the lecture on Rykov was cancelled. Fleming read the paper Violet held, and she yelled into his ear.

Fleming clapped his hands. ‘What Violet says, it’s a double whammy. Old Albert’s come up rose-scented. . . Albert’s done his end . . . Rykov’s in the chokey, and Krause is in the chokey.

double win bloody whammy. . . Poor old Hun chaps, lost their pride and glory, put back in their bloody place. Evidence against Krause that’ll go to open court, embarrassment by the wheelbarrow load for the Cologne chaps, we’re weeping for them. Whammy, whammy, whammy.’

The music thrashed on, out through the open windows of Fleming’s room, out across the deep flowing water of the Thames. In the high room in the monolith building, the dancing resumed, frantic, flailing arms and swinging hips. Fleming had the sheet of paper that Violet had brought and folded shapes with it. Mrs Olive Harris pirouetted, shoes kicked off and the upper buttons of her blouse unfastened, in front of a librarian from Archive. The ADD clutched the new girl on Russia Desk, and the chief of Russia Desk kissed, lip to lip, the new married lady from Violet’s pooi, and the Scotch was poured like it was beer, and the beer was drunk like it was water, and the older woman from Russia Desk massaged the groin, as they danced, of the new-appointed graduate on German Desk . . . The party rolled on, and to hell with the morning, and to hell with who woke in whose bed, and to hell with it all.

North of the Neuruppin intersection, the lights and the sirens had come past them. She had been asleep, and he had not woken her. Three cars with lights and sirens . . He had seen Krause, in the back of the middle car, flanked by two others. The lights and the sirens had swept past them.

South of the Neuruppin intersection, he had eased off the maximum speed of the Trabant, dropped down from the hundred kilometres per hour that the old car could reach, eased down on the dial. He had made the calculation on the time he could reach Berlin, how long it would take on an autobahn empty of traffic at night. With the calculation made he had no more need to push the Trabant to its limit. She slept well. Remarkable that she could sleep inside the shuddering noise of the car. He slowed, cruised in the inside lane. He reached into his pocket.

‘Tracy...’

She stirred.

‘I’ve something for you, Tracy. Don’t wake.’

She smiled. Her eyes were closed. The heater blew foul hot air over her.

‘A present, Tracy. . . Just something. .

She murmured, ‘Gone soft, old Josh gone sentimental?’

‘Don’t open your eyes. . . Your wrist, Tracy.’

Languid, half awake and half asleep, beside him, she raised her arm and her other hand pulled up the arm of her coat. Her wrist was bare. Her eyes were closed.

‘Don’t bloody crash — you’re a proper old sweetheart, Josh, you’re a soft old bugger.’