The Waiting Time (9 page)

She knelt on the floor and moved among her clothes. Each of her own garments that she picked up she folded carefully before placing it in the bag. Her blouses, her skirts, her jeans, her underwear, the bra that Johnson had held up to the light went into her bag, and the photographs of the cat and the elderly lady and the broken pieces of the frames.

She zipped the bag shut.

She started on her uniform items, tunic, blouses and heavy brown shoes. Perry Johnson bent to pick up a skirt to help her, and she snatched it from him. He recoiled as if in fear of a cornered cat.

She put the uniform items back into the drawers, and the drawers back into the chest.

Perkins carried her bag out of the block.

It was midday, the start of the lunch break at Templer, and too many bastards, with not enough to do, watched Perkins carry her bag to the gate.

Perkins gestured for the sentry to raise the barrier.

Perkins called across the road, ‘You wanted access to your client. She’s all yours.’

Mantle came off the bonnet of his vehicle, pocketed his mobile. Johnson saw the rank dislike on his face and the wide smile at Perkins’s mouth.

Perkins turned to her. ‘Please listen, Tracy, carefully. Pursue this matter and you will very quickly be out of your depth. If you’re out of your depth, you will sink. Remember that the German BfV regard Hauptman Krause as a jewel, and that he would see you as a threat. A great deal is at stake for both the BfV and Krause. There is always a serious risk that a person who represents a threat, when high stakes are played for, will meet with an “accident”. Accidents, Tracy, hurt. My warning is meant kindly. You should forget the past, you should be sensible. It would all have been different if you’d had evidence. .

He kept to the speed limit, cruised in the middle lane of the motorway.

He’d thought she might have just flaked out, slept, babbled her story, or just thanked him. But she sat beside him with her eyes open and murmured a song. He could not make out the words — too much noise from the cars, vans and lorries they passed and which went by them — but the tune was vaguely familiar.

That she hadn’t spoken annoyed him like grit in a walking boot, a growing pain.

‘I make it forty-seven minutes we’ve been going, forty-one miles. A word out of you would be pleasant.’

‘What sort of word?’ she challenged.

‘Well, for a start, you could express a little bit of gratitude.’

She thought he was silly, pompous. She turned her head to him, quite slowly, a sharp light in her eyes. ‘Don’t think it was you who got me out. You were just convenient. You saved them a train fare.’

‘That’s not called
for.’

Against the tiredness there was a crack of mischief at her mouth. She reached out. He thought it was going to be her gesture of gratitude, that she was going to rest her hand on his where he gripped the wheel. The tips of her fingers, small, brushed the hair at the back of his hand. She had hold of the wheel with a grin on her face. She didn’t look into the mirror in front of her, or the mirror beside her.

She wrenched the wheel, swerving the car from the middle lane into the slow lane, from the slow lane into the slip road. There was a scream of brakes behind him, then the blast of a horn...

‘For God’s sake!’

‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

They were off the motorway. His hands shook on the wheel. ‘That was idiotic!’

‘I’m half starved,’ she said.

They found the café where lorries were parked up outside. She told him what she wanted to eat, took her bag from the car boot and carried it into the lavatories. She was so small, so slight, and the uniform she wore was crumpled, creased. He ordered at the counter.

He carried the tray to an empty table.

A bread roll, a small piece of curled cheese and a plastic beaker of thin orange juice, squeezed onto the tray, for himself. For her there was a plate of chips, double portion, a king-size hamburger with oozing dressing and a large Pepsi — which was what she’d demanded.

She came out of the lavatory. She had changed into jeans and a sweater. Her uniform blouse, skirt and battle green pullover were stuffed into the top of the bag.

She gulped at the food.

‘Are you going to tell me?’

She had the hamburger in both hands, and the ketchup ran red on her fingers. ‘Where were you in ‘eighty-eight?’

He thought she ate quite disgustingly. ‘That year I was a captain in the Special Investigation Branch of the RMP — I’d transferred, six years before, out of I Corps.’

‘Thought you were a solicitor.’

He said, ‘I’m a solicitor’s clerk, qualifying to be a legal executive. While your mouth’s full, I might just tell you that your mother asked me to come. She’s had her home turned over by Special Branch.. . because of you.’

He felt old, boring, and he hoped he had wounded her. She snatched again at the hamburger.

‘Then you know about I Corps?’

‘I was in I Corps for nearly twenty years, before the transfer.’

She seemed to ponder for a moment, mouth moving and throat heaving as she swallowed, as if she needed to decide whether he was worth talking to. Then...

‘In ‘eighty-eight, I was the junior stenographer, tea-maker, errand-runner in the I Corps section in Berlin. They were all analysts and debriefers, not couriers. They weren’t supposed to run agents. They all looked like soldiers, like police look like police. One of the staff sergeants was over the other side of the Wall, had lost his tail for once, and there was a contact, approached on the street, no warning. He had time to fix the next meeting, then he had to bug out because the tail had found him again. It was kicked round all day. Then some genius came up with the idea of me going over and doing the meeting. Said that I wouldn’t be noticed, didn’t look like a soldier. They were all crapping themselves the first time, but it went fine. It got to be normal, me going over and taking stuff and bringing stuff back. Our “Sunray” couldn’t believe his luck — he’d got the best agent going that any commanding officer of I Corps in Berlin had had in years, used to get his head patted. He was supposed to have handed the running of any agent over to the spooks. Sunray said we were keeping him for us, not for any other bugger to get the credit.. . Come on.’

She smeared up the last of the sauce with the last of the chips, hitched up her bag and he followed her back to the car.

He drove.

‘He was in East Berlin — I went over once a month with cameras, equipment, whatever the agent needed for what he was tasked at. I brought back the films, the reports, in my knickers, in my bra. The risks were worse each time because Sunray pushed him harder each time. Each job was jammier than the last, and that was the way Sunray kept getting his head patted. They’d set me up with a cover as a student and got me permission to use the Library at the university over there, the Humboldt. . . Seemed to go like clockwork . . . I just did the easy bit. I went over and dumped the stuff and picked up the stuff and came back through the checkpoint. He was the one that took the risks, and he just used to laugh about it, more worried about me than himself. He was super, he was really brilliant. .

Mantle drove steadily. There were times when she stopped, when she stared ahead and held her arms tight around her chest, and when she stopped he did not prompt her. It had been a bit of his history, a long time back, seeing the grey concrete of the prefabricated Wall, and the watch-towers and the dogs and the guards who carried the automatic rifles. He had been to West Berlin but never across to the old East. He had stood on the viewing platforms and looked over the Wall and across the death strip. Talking quietly, she summoned up for him that part of his history.

‘Hans Becker . . . twenty-one years old, I was a year older. He didn’t do it for money, or out of politics. He did it because it was a buzz, and he used to laugh about it. . . Christ, and he used to make me laugh. He was just wonderful to be with. . . We would be over there in that dump country, full of bloody police and bloody Soviets — I’m not good with words — and we used to laugh. He knew what would happen to him if he was caught, and each time Sunray stacked the odds a bit higher against him and he never backed off. I used to see the sort of guys that the other girls in Brigade went with, fat guts and ignorant and boozy, and I thought I was so bloody lucky to be with Hansie. . . I loved him.’

They were off the motorway. He had caught the first sign for Slough. She had not had to tell him that she had loved Hansie Becker. When she had used the word, she had looked into his face and grinned, as if she reckoned he was too old to know about love. Love was the part of Josh’s history that hurt the worst.

‘It was a rubbish little thing they sent him on the last time . . You know what? Twenty months later, when the Wall had come down, they’d have had it for bloody free. But, they didn’t know, did they? Didn’t know the Wall was coming down. . . All those brains at work, all the clever little bastards, didn’t know. There was a Soviet missile base at Wustrow, west of Rostock. Hansie had always been given jobs before that were close to Berlin, where he knew. He hadn’t been to Rostock, didn’t even know where this place was. It was the first time he was anxious and he tried to hide it, but I could see that it worried him. The MiG-29s used to fly from Ribnitz-Damgarten at night for exercises with the missile, radar, crews at Wustrow. Sunray said that if Hansie could get close into the base he could monitor the telemetry of their radar systems. I took him the gear to do it with. It was rubbish and Hansie was caught for nothing. He was killed for nothing...’

She waved and he took a left. He saw the Asian shops and businesses that lined the streets and the small homes of old brick. He remembered the photographs he had pored over, with the magnifying glass, of Soviet bases, missiles, aircraft, radar dishes. Because of his history, because he understood, he could imagine the pressure exercised on the agent, the youngster, driving him towards hazard.

‘The Wustrow base was almost an island — a sort of causeway linked it with the mainland. North was the Baltic, south was a big bit of sea separating it from the land. For the equipment to register the detail he had to be on the peninsula where the base was. I don’t know, I suppose a sentry saw him. There was all hell, flares, shooting. He’d got this dinghy, sort of thing kids use on our beaches, but he was cut off from it. He must have crossed the peninsula, right through the base. He tried to swim for it, to the mainland. He was shot in the water, wounded. He was brought to this village on the mainland, Rerik, where they killed him.’

He wondered if she had told anyone before. They turned again, and she pointed up the street.

‘The man who killed my Hansie was the counter-espionage officer from the Stasi in Rostock, Dieter Krause.’

He stopped the car. A panel of plyboard was nailed to the front door.

‘Two days ago they brought Dieter Krause to Templer, paraded him. Our lot were on their bloody knees to him, treated him like he was a friend. He was all swank and arrogant and laughing until I thumped him. I kicked him in the balls for Hansie.’

Josh said, ‘You should let it go, let time bury it.’

The scorn played across her face. ‘It was murder. Murder is murder. Or do you compromise?’

Josh dropped his head. ‘I try to be sensible. You were there, weren’t you? Of course you were there. Your boy was stressed up and you’d gone along for the ride to hold his hand. Not authorized, was it? Certainly a disciplinary offence, maybe court-martial, but you were there.’

She had reached into the back of his car and lifted the bag onto her lap.

‘Did you see actually see the killing?’

‘No.’

‘You saw a part of it, not the end of it?’

‘Yes.’

Josh said, ‘You didn’t see the killing. What you know is second hand, conjecture. Christ, I admire your guts. Without eyewitnesses, affidavits, evidence you can’t touch him. Forget it.’

She spat, ‘You’re pitiful.’

‘Understand power? Power runs like a big river. Go into that river and you drown. My best advice, let the dead sleep. If he was brought to Templer then he’s an asset. If he’s an asset then he’s protected. God, don’t you understand?’

The scorn on her face was like a blow. She was out of the car.

She unlocked the front door. He heard her call for her mother. He was drawn after her.

He stood in the doorway. She hugged her mother and the cat was against her legs. She had humiliated him. Compromise was another part of Josh Mantle’s history.

She went up the stairs and he saw where the carpet had been prised up and tacked back badly onto the steps. Adie Barnes shook his hand, grasping it in her small calloused fist. She let go to take a purse from her handbag.

‘There’s no charge,’ Josh said. ‘Let’s say I enjoyed a ride out in the country. She’s a lovely girl, Mrs Barnes.’

Adie Barnes busied herself in the kitchen.

He stood, awkward, and feeling like an intruder in the small front room. He thought she must have skipped work that day and laboured to remake her home. Someone must have been in to help her refit the units and shelves to the walls. The room was a shrine in photographs of her daughter.

‘It’s everything to her. They’ll take her back? It’ll be all right?’