Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

They were out into the evening rain.

She said flatly, ‘Administration’s got the audit team in, they’re mob-handed. There’s Major Walsh’s leaving bash – free drinks bring them out of their holes. The mess corporal, the spotty one, he’s got flu. Penny’s on holiday…’

He grinned. ‘Be a black day, the darkest, Corporal, if promotion ever claimed you.’

‘Just try to do my job. How did it go?’

The beginning of her day had followed the same precise routine as every working morning. It was sixteen minutes past seven when Corporal Tracy Barnes had unlocked the outer door to building G/3, gone down the empty corridor and used a second key to let herself into Room 29. She was always in G/3/29 before twenty past seven. The rest of them, Major Johnson, Captain Christie, the warrant officers, sergeants and clerks, would drift into G/3 before nine. She valued that time to herself: she always said it gave her the chance to get on top of each day.

She had put the kettle on. With her third key, and her knowledge of the combination, she’d opened the safe. She kept the coffee in it, the tea, biscuits and apples. The rooms of G/3 were the home of the unit of the Intelligence Corps at Templer Barracks, Ashford in Kent, dealing solely with the subject matter of RUSSIAN FEDERATION/MILITARY/ANALYSIS, and they were the kingdom of Corporal Tracy Barnes. The kettle had boiled. She had crunched the biscuits and bitten at an apple. It was her place. She could put her hand on any sheet of paper, any map, any photograph in the wall of steel-plate filing cabinets, padlocked in the Major’s office, the Captain’s office and in the cubbyhole space between them where she worked. She could flit her way through the banks of information held in the G/3 computers that linked Templer Barracks with the London offices of the Chief of Defence Intelligence and the new Bedfordshire base at Chicksands. She knew every code that must be dialed in for the secure fax transmissions. They told her, Major Johnson and Captain Christie, that she was indispensable.

A drip of water had gathered on the ceiling beside the fluorescent strip light, fallen and spattered on the linoleum floor.

‘Fucking hell,’ she’d said. ‘That’s the fucking limit.’

The roof always leaked when the rain came from the east. She’d seen another drip forming and the rain hammered harder on the windows. She’d been locking the safe – the safe must always be locked when the section was unattended – she had been about to go down the corridor to the wash-house for the mop and bucket, when the telephone had rung. The start of her day.

Outside the office, in the rain and the gloom, walking, it was so good to talk to her. Sensible, rational – just a conversation without officers’ pips and corporals’ stripes. The rain was on the gold of Tracy Barnes’s hair and the highlights made jewels there.

‘Slow to start, thanks to the Colonel. We had to sit through his lecture on the Russian military threat, chaos and anarchy there, massive conventional and nuclear strength but with no political leadership to control the trigger finger. Seemed a bit remote – am I supposed to tell you?’

‘Please yourself.’

‘It’s a profile of a Russian who’s the Rasputin of the defence minister – he was chummy with a Stasi chap back in the good old Cold War days. Seems that today the minister doesn’t blow his nose or wipe his backside without the say-so of his staff officer – he’s Rykov, Pyotr Rykov, ex-para in Afghanistan and ex-CO of a missile base in former East Germany, and you could write on a postcard what we have on him. Our larder’s bare, and the Germans come over with Rykov’s chum, parade him as quality bloodstock – Rykov’s motivation, Rykov’s ambition. If the military were to take over in Russia then this Rykov would be half a pace behind his minister and whispering in his little ear. The truth – may hurt to say it – the German chum was a high grade Humlnt source, the best I’ve ever heard… Perry’s suffering, thinks we’re supping with Lucifer. You’d know about the Stasi – you were in Berlin, yes?’

‘As a kid, first posting, just clerking… Jolly news for you, Captain. They’ve put you on a crash Serbo-Croat course, means you’re booked for Bosnia. Mrs Christie’ll be well excited, eh? I mean, she’ll have to look after the dog.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘It’s on your desk.’

They reached the mess block outer door. He forgot himself. He opened the heavy door for her to go through first.

She stayed put. He flushed. Bloody officer and bloody noncommissioned junior rank. He went through and she followed. Coats dumped on a chair in the corridor. They hit the noise.

Perry Johnson boomed, ‘Thanks, Ben. They’re dying of thirst and restless – Corporal, the order is three Glenlivets, ice and lemonade for our guests, seven gin tonics, two orange juice, one with ice, five beers. You’ll need a tray.’

A wry smile on her face, at the edge of impertinence. ‘Whose tab, Major? On yours?’

She was gone. Ben watched her. He thought she kicked Captain Wilson’s shin. Definite, she elbowed Captain Dawson. He saw her reach past Major Donoghue’s back and rap his right shoulder and when he turned right she’d wriggled past his left hip. She was at the front, arms on the bar and stretching.

She caught the steward’s arm, held it. Ben could have clapped her. No mucking, she was brilliant. He blinked. An officer and a corporal, a married officer and a single corporal, it would ruin him and ruin her… Yugoslavia. The guys who went there said it was seriously awful, said Belfast was a cake-run compared to a year in Sarajevo, Vitez, Tuzia… Shit. He’d ring Trish that night

Shit… She was tiny behind the bulk of the tray. He thought that if he tried to help her he’d just get in the way… There’d be all the usual tears with Trish… Must have been her shoe, but Major Donoghue was backing off, and the shoe again because Captain Wilson was giving her space… and Irish would be screaming when he started up about her having to look after the bloody dog… She headed for Perry.

The Colonel and a civil servant flanked the German. The German had his back to them. Hands groped to snatch the glasses off her tray. She was only a corporal so she wasn’t thanked, and they wouldn’t need her again. Major Walsh’s ‘happy hour’ would be finished in ten minutes, and his bar tab closed, be space then. He saw the two minders take their drinks, and then the Colonel. Only one drink on the tray, the last Glenlivet, ice and lemon. The Colonel touched the German’s arm. Tracy was dwarfed behind the German’s back. He turned, mid-conversation, smiling.

Ben saw them both, the German and Corporal Tracy Barnes.

Her face frozen, her eyes narrowed.

The German reached for the glass, smiling with graciousness.

And the ice of her face cracked, hatred. Her eyes blazed, loathing.

The glass came up into his face and the tray with it.

The German reeled.

The Colonel, the minders and the civil servants were statue still.

Corporal Tracy Barnes launched herself at the German, and he went down onto the mess-bar carpet.

Her body, on top of his, was a blur of kicking and kneeing, elbowing, punching and scratching.

Hissed, a she-cat’s venom, ‘You bloody bastard murderer!’

Ben Christie watched. Her skirt had ridden up as she swung her knee, again and again, into his privates. She had the hair of his beard in her fingers and smashed his head, again and again, down onto the carpet floor.

Shrieked, a woman’s cry for retribution, ‘Bloody killed him, you bastard!’

Blood on her hands, blood in her nails, and the German screamed and was defenceless. Her thumb and forefinger stabbed at his closed eyes.