Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

They bent, all together. They lifted up their trophy catch. They gripped a young man by his clothes and by his hair. His body was slight, and he seemed to shudder as if a great pain ran in him. They dragged him over the pier towards the shoreline where the beach was piled with dried-out seaweed left behind by the last storm. The clock on the church tower struck the hour. There were two cars on the road at the end of the pier. Their interior lights were on and their doors sagged open. The clock on the church tower chimed shrill in the night. The four men pulled the young man towards the cars, and a fifth, who was tall and walked with authority, came behind and gestured instructions. The young man seemed hurt, or maybe it was exhaustion from the time he had spent in the water, but his feet flapped on the planks, and if they had not held him it seemed that he would have fallen. The clock on the church tower was silent, past ten. They were at the end of the pier, they were near to the cars.

The pastor saw it clearly… So much better if he had seen nothing, known nothing…

They trailed behind.

The Colonel led, and congratulated and complimented the star attraction. The minders walked alongside their man, smug with satisfaction.

Perry Johnson let them go ahead, Ben Christie stayed with his major. The evening rain blustered against them. He knew the old boy was about to launch, felt sort of sorry for him, stayed with him to offer a shoulder and an ear. It had gone well, standing ovation. Only a taster, though, and the Americans were bigger players – they’d get more when the man went to Washington. But, for all that, it was a taster, Ben could recognize quality material, the like of which seldom came their way, and it was German. The three warrant officers and the two sergeants, who had attended the briefing, held umbrellas over the guest and the Colonel, the Brigadier and the civil servants who were down from London. It was ritual to take an honoured visitor to the officers’ mess at the end of the day.

They weren’t twenty-five paces from B block, not even within two hundred yards of the mess, before poor old Perry, the dinosaur, began to flush it out of his system.

‘Look at him, so damn full of himself. Forget the past, all cuddle up together… I’d trust him as far as I could kick him They were insidious, they were revolting. I used to lie awake at night when I was in Berlin, couldn’t damn sleep because of them. Pushing, probing, testing us, every day, every week, every month. Had their creatures down at the gate at Brigade to photograph us going in and out, take our number-plates. Used to pay the refuse people to drop off camp rubbish then cart it to Left Luggage at the S-Bahn, and they’d take it back through the Wall, sift every last scrap of paper we threw out, notepaper headings, telephone numbers, signatures and rank. Had to employ West Berliners, German nationals, some very decent people, but imperative that we regarded them all as potential corrupted traitors, good women in Library or just cleaning your quarters, had to treat each of them as filth. Throwing “defectors” at us, dropping “refugees” into our laps, hoping to twist us up, bugger us about. Met some fine and courageous people but had to treat them like lying shit. Used to go across, guaranteed access under the Four Power Agreement, they’d watch you. You were alone, out of your car, dark, four thugs on you and a beating you’d remember a month… Cold bastards. I tell you, I like moral people, I can cope with immoral people if I have to. What I find evil is “amorality”, no standards and no principles, that was them. You work up against the Stasi and you get to suspect the man, German or British, who sits next to you in the mess, in the canteen. Perpetually on guard… but it doesn’t matter now because we’re all bloody chums… You didn’t get to Germany in the good old days – Belfast, wasn’t it? Nothing wrong with Belfast, but the heartbeat of the Corps was Germany. ‘Straightforward enough life, whether in the Zone or Berlin – us confronting an enemy. The threat, of course, was the Soviet military, but the real enemy was the Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, shorthand was Stasi. Stasi were the secret police of the former DDR. They came out of the heritage of the Gestapo and out of the training camps of the KGB. In intelligence-gathering, in counter-espionage, they were brilliant and ruthless. They ran the Bonn government ragged, they gave us a hell of a headache. They were the cream… Don’t think I’m sentimental. They didn’t play by our rules, nothing Queensberry. Their rules were intimidation, corruption, fear, the manipulation of the individual, the destruction of the human personality. Turn a man against his friend, a woman against her husband, a child against parents, no scruples. They bred psychological terror, their speciality, and if that failed they fell back on the familiar thuggery of basement torture, isolation cells and killings. That the clapped-out, no-hope East Germany survived for more than two summers was because of the Stasi. They kept that regime of geriatrics on its feet for forty-five years..

‘Led you a bit of a dance, did they, Perry?’

‘Don’t short-change me, young man… It sticks in my throat, a bone in the gullet, socializing with “new” friends. There’s a generation in Germany that’s been scarred by the Stasi. There’s blood on their hands. What do I sound like? An emotional old fart? Probably am… So, the Wall came tumbling down and a hundred thousand full-time Stasi just disappeared off the face of the earth, bar a very few. A few had something to offer the arisen greater German empire. Counter-espionage in Rostock, in bed with the Soviet military. Of course this bastard has something to offer.’

They followed the group into the mess. The warrant officers and sergeants peeled away from forbidden territory. From the end of the wide corridor, came the baying of laughter and voices spilling from the bar. They shook their coats. Not like the mess of the cavalry or artillery or the engineers, no battle paintings, no hanging portraits of men decorated for bravery, nothing to identify past success. The Colonel, the guest and the guest’s minders had gone towards the window, with the Brigadier from London and the civil servants.

A big voice: ‘Perry, be a good chap, tunnel through that lot. I know what we want.’

Perry Johnson, poor bugger, pleased that ridiculous name was used, went to his colonel, took the drinks order, looked helplessly at the crowd competing for the single bar steward. He copped out, came to Ben Christie. ‘It’s like a bloody bingo night. Why’s there only one chap on? Get Barnes down here.’

Christie turned and hurried for the door. He heard Perry call out that reinforcements were on the way, stupid bugger.

He ran in the rain past F and H blocks, past the dreary little Portakabins. He ran down the corridor to G/3/29.

She was at her desk. It was cleared. There was a neat pile of letters to be signed, there was a note of telephone calls incoming and outgoing. His dog was sitting beside her knee with the wrapping paper of a biscuit packet under its paws.

‘All right, Corporal? No crises? Went on a bit…’

She shrugged, not her business if it went on all night. Why should there be crises?

‘Please, they’re short of bodies in the mess. Major Johnson would be very grateful…’

She was expressionless. ‘Been waiting for you, thought you might.’

‘Nelson been good? Sorry…’

She was standing, gathering her coat off the hook, then smoothing her hair. ‘Stay there, big boy. Course he’s been good.’

She locked the outer door, went after him.

‘Sorry… How did you know that we’d want you?’