Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

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?’

He took the cup and saucer, and the plate with the cake. He wanted to be gentle. ‘She’ll need your patience and a long rest. Most of all she’s going to need love.’

He drank the tea and ate the cake. He heard the footsteps fast on the stairs, the opening and closing of the door and the clatter of the little front gate. The photographs were of Tracy Barnes as a recruit, sitting with the team at Brigade in Berlin, at Templer, in uniform, smiling, and crouched with a black dog. Josh hadn’t the courage for honesty.

He let himself out.

He drove away. He felt no achievement, no pleasure.

It was only a few minutes’ drive from the street to the car park close to the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins amp; Protheroe.

She was in a telephone box. There was a car down the road, two men in the car, one smoking and one talking into a mobile telephone. He saw the lustre of her hair, caught by a street lamp. He didn’t stop and shout at her, ‘Go home, stay there, he’s an asset and protected. Go home or you can be hurt. Forget it ever happened.’ He was used to marching into people’s lives and then walking away from them.

A bad taste of failure in his mouth, Julius Goldstein telephoned Raub. The file of Hauptman Dieter Krause showed no evidence of criminal activity in human rights. He reported, also, that pages of the file concerned with Hauptman Krause’s relationship with the Soviet officer, Major Pyotr Rykov, were not present, and a part of the separate file dealing with the military base at Wustrow. He told Raub that it was not possible from the files to find evidence of murder. He was authorized to return to Cologne on the late flight.