Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

He had the radio on, not for music or the weather forecast or the early news bulletins of the day but for the traffic information. It was important to him to know how long a journey would take him – another of the discipline routines that governed him. He took little comfort from the radio in the evenings, seldom used it, which was peculiar for a man who lived alone and who had reached the statistical age at which he had entered the last quarter of his life. It was as if he had rejected the outside living world that the radio would have brought him. He switched it off, then the bedside light.

He stood for a moment in the gloom.

Downstairs the lavatory flushed – perhaps the seed company’s representative or the computer programmer. Both the other tenants on the floor below had offered friendship, been deflected, and the family on the ground floor. They had all tried to build a relationship, drinks at Christmas, small-talk on the stairs, and had not been rewarded. Joshua Frederick Mantle distrusted the hold of a friendship, the tie of a relationship. He had adored his mother, shot dead in Malaya. He had respected his father, Military Medal pinned on his chest by the King. He had made his commitment to the Intelligence Corps, had been transferred out compulsorily after the matter in Belize. He had buried himself in the work of Special Investigation Branch, had been made redundant in the ‘downsizing’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had loved Libby, sick, then dead and buried. He had no desire to be hurt again.

There were few books in the sitting room, none recreational. He had hardly touched the fat volume in his hand for seven years. It was The Manual of Military Law, Part 1, and he scanned the section relevant to assault. Then it was Stone’s Justices’ Manual, then Criminal Procedures and Sentencing in Magistrates’ Courts. He had a tight memory, no need for note-taking. The books went back on the shelf. He locked the door of the flat behind him.

All that he owned, all of his life, was left in the two small rooms behind the locked door. Mrs Adie Barnes, red-eyed, had told him that her Tracy was in trouble.

He went to his car, humble and old, parked on the street, and wiped the windows with a cloth. A bit of his history stirred in him.

The cell was cold. The central heating did not function. She had refused the blanket. The tray he had brought, cereal and milk, three slices of bread, jam and a mug of tea, was untouched. There was an electric fire in the cell that he used, but he had not demanded heating for her. He sat in front of her on a hard chair with his overcoat across his shoulders. The ceiling light beamed down on her, as it had all night.

‘I think you reckon you’re being a clever little girl, Tracy. I think you reckon you can see me off. Did my arithmetic just now. It’s forty-nine hours since you last slept, it’s forty-something hours since you last ate. You’re exhausted, famished, but you’re conceited enough to believe you can see me off. Don’t you believe it. I’m here for as long as it takes… Only me, Tracy, nobody else. The Colonel isn’t going to chuck me out, nor the old fart, nor the limp dick with the dog, because I have control of you. Inside the wire they all hate you because they’ve had to bluster their apologies to their honoured guest, washed their hands of you. Outside the wire doesn’t count. Nobody’s in your corner, Tracy. You’re alone. Do you hear me? Alone. So shall we stop being clever and start to be sensible? I want to know if you have evidence of murder. What is the evidence of the murder in cold blood of Hans Becker at the hand of Hauptman Dieter Krause? Is there evidence?’

Goldstein watched him. For an hour they had sat in the outer room. Raub had the ranking and it was for him to make the report to the senior official.

They waited. They were brought coffee and biscuits.

Goldstein thought he looked better, as if he had slept well in the house where the BfV always accommodated him when he came to Cologne, as if the anger at the scratch scars had slackened. They had been up since dawn and were the first appointment of the senior official’s day.

There was movement, at last, at the door. It was half opened, as if a final word was exchanged.

Goldstein marveled at the calmness of the man. He regarded Krause as predictable and boring, but the calm was incredible because his future would have been thrashed out by Raub and the senior official. If they had decided, over the last hour, that Krause was to go forward then it was Washington in two weeks and his position was confirmed. If they had decided to cut the link then he was back to Rostock, removed from the ‘safe’ house, the money dried up, the account closed and he was on the streets, grafting with the rest of the Stasi scum for his food and shelter.

Raub called them in.

The inner room was filled with the senior official’s smoke. Goldstein coughed hard. A junior man had to go through all the exit security from the building and huddle in the winter cold in the back yard where the vehicles were parked to smoke his cigarette, then return to the building through the entry security. The official flapped his hand to clear the smoke cloud in front of his face and waved Krause to a chair. Krause settled… and Goldstein wondered whether he would have found old Gestapo men merely boring.

The senior official stared down at his notes, then eased the spectacles from his face. ‘I am happy to hear, Doktor Krause, that your injuries are not severe. Notwithstanding, the attack raises important questions, and those questions must be answered.’

‘Ask me the questions and I will answer them.’

‘Is it accepted, Doktor Krause, that the BfV has invested heavily in you, money, time and resources, and in prestige?’

‘As I am often told.’

‘The basis of that investment was your guarantee to us that there were no matters in your past work that could be uncovered that would show criminal violation of human rights. Correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘I asked you at the beginning of our association for a most detailed brief on your work with the Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit. I asked whether there were acts in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Is there, in your past, an act in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered?’

Where he stood by the door Goldstein could see little of Krause’s face. He could recall what the girl had said, the accusation she had made. In the last, long hour, Raub would have given the exact words to the senior official.

‘There is nothing in my past that could be uncovered.’

‘The woman in England made an allegation of murder. Yes?’

Goldstein fancied a smile came to Krause’s face.

‘The same accusation was made by a security man when I was in the medical area. They had detained us there until he arrived. I asked him, “Where is your evidence?”’

‘If I order a further search of the archive material of the MfSZentrale at Normannen Strasse…?’

‘You would find nothing.’

‘If you lied to me, Doktor Krause, if evidence were ever produced, there could be no protection.’

Goldstein craned forward and saw the grin play on Krause’s face. Goldstein thought the man lied, and spoke the truth: the lie, that no criminal act in violation of human rights had been committed; the truth, that no evidence would be uncovered.

‘There is no evidence.’

The senior official stubbed out his cigarette and came round his desk. He shook Krause’s hand with warmth. ‘Thank you, Doktor Krause. You have now a few days at home to prepare for Washington? We place great importance on that opportunity.’