Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

She fled down the corridor, past the watching faces.

He let himself into the room. He stepped over the bent-back vinyl. The sweat ran on Johnson’s forehead. Johnson pointed to a board, lifted it and a section came away cleanly, as if the work of loosening it had been done long before. He reached into the hole and lifted out the black and white photograph protected in Cellophane wrapping. Greyed buildings, a greyed street, greyed and broken pavings, a greyed road sign. The light was in Tracy’s face and on her cheeks and at her eyes, the love light. A boy held her, grinning as if proud to have her close to him. They were the brilliance in the greyness of a street, buildings and a pavement.

‘Sorry,’ Perry Johnson said. Seemed so damn tired. ‘Old eyes aren’t what they were, can’t read that street sign.’

Ben Christie held the photograph close to his face, squinted at it. ‘The sign is for the junction of Prenzlauer and Saarbrucker…’

‘Thought so. Give it me back, please.’

‘Where’s that?’

Up from his knees, Johnson brushed his uniform trousers. ‘Berlin. Prenzlauer Allee runs east from Alexanderplatz. A bit further up than Karl Marx Allee, on the other side, is Saarbrucker Strasse. She looks rather young – I’d say it’s ten years old. The junction of Saarbrucker Strasse and Prenzlauer Allee, ten years ago, was in East Berlin. That’s the wrong side of the Wall, that’s enemy ground… Oh, God…’

‘Do we hear skeletons rattling?’

‘Shit, man, do we need imbecile banalities?’

The room was to be sealed.

She had not moved, knees tucked against her chest and arms around her knees.

The drip of Johnson’s questions: ‘You were posted to Berlin, start of ‘eighty-six to end of ‘eighty-nine?… This photograph was taken between the start of ‘eighty-six and end of ‘eightynine?… Who are you with in the photograph?… How did you know of former Stasi official Dieter Krause?… You accused Krause of murder, the murder of whom?’

No word from her, staring back at them, no muscle moving on her face.

Christie wanted only to give her comfort. ‘Tracy, you have to see that you’re not helping yourself. If something happened in Germany, involving Krause, tell us, please.’

Away down the corridor the radio played quietly on the sergeant’s desk.

‘You’re a bloody fool, young woman, because the matter will now pass out of our hands, out of the hands of the family of the Corps.’ Johnson walked out of the cell.

Christie looked back at her. He looked for her anger, or for her bloody-minded obstinacy, or for fear, or for the cheek in her eye. She stared through him, as if he were not there.

He was in the bathroom, standing at the basin in warm flannel pyjamas with his mouth full of toothpaste when the telephone rang downstairs in the hail. It was Albert Perkins’s night as standby duty officer (home). He spat out the toothpaste, rinsed his mouth and hurried downstairs.

‘Perkins here… Good evening, Mr Fleming… No, not inconvenient… Hadn’t gone to bed… How can I help? Secure? Just hold a moment, please…’

There was a switch at the side of the base of the telephone and he nudged it forward. All section heads, like Mr Fleming, and all stand-by duty officers (home), like Albert Perkins, had the equipment at home to make and receive secure calls.

‘On secure now, Mr Fleming. How can I help?… Yes, I’ve paper and a pen..

He listened. He scrawled on a pad: ‘TEMPLER BARRACKS, ASHFORD – INTELLIGENCE CORPS. KRAUSE, DIETER, exMfS – RYKOV, PYOTR, col, DefMin staff – WUSTROW base, w. of ROSTOCK.’

The grin formed on his face. ‘She did what?’

He wrote the name, ‘BARNES, TRACY, cpl.’

‘In the officers’ mess? That’s choice.. There’s a fair few I know who wish they’d the bottle, kick the Hun where it hurts – sorry, Mr Fleming. What it’s all about? Is that it? No problem… I’ll come in and get some files and then get down there… I have authority, I take the reins, yes?… No, I haven’t been celebrating, I can drive. I’ll be there about three, I’ll call you in the morning… No problem at all, Mr Fleming, goodnight…‘ He pushed back the Secure switch.

He climbed the stairs. He dressed. Work suit, that day’s shirt and tie, clean socks. He hadn’t had a drink that evening at home, just a Coca-Cola with the take-away pizza, and a coffee. In the kitchen, on the sideboard, were the four birthday cards, from his wife, Mr Fleming, his friend in the Supporters’ Club and Violet in the typing pool. He had not been out to celebrate his fiftieth birthday because Helen was still at the art class she taught that night of the week and she usually stayed for a drink with her class, and he wouldn’t have had alcohol, anyway, if he was standby duty officer (home). He tore the note from the pad beside the telephone and pocketed it. Then he ripped out the four sheets of blank paper underneath, as was his habit, took them into the living room and tossed them on the low fire behind the guard. He wrote a brief note of explanation on the pad to his wife and offered his love. He double-locked his front door.

It was a damn awful night, and he thought the roads might have gone icy by the time he reached Ashford. His car was an eight-year-old Sierra, parked on the street so that Helen could use the drive when she returned home. Three things mattered in the life of Albert Perkins, aged fifty that day. His wife Helen, Fulham Football Club, the job. He ignored Helen’s indifference to his work. He coped with the catastrophic results of Fulham FC, as he would with a disability that must be lived with. He adored his work, dedicated himself to the Service. It had never crossed his mind that he might have told Mr Fleming that he was already undressed for bed and asked whether it could wait till the morning.

He left the 1930s mock-Tudor semi-detached house, his and Helen’s home in the Hampton Wick suburb south-west of the capital, and headed for central London. He would be at Vauxhall Bridge Cross, in Library, by midnight; an hour later he would be at Defence Intelligence and digging in their archive. He hoped to be out of London by two in the morning, and at Ashford by three.

He drove the emptied streets, and he wondered where the choice story would lead him. It would lead him somewhere, and he’d be there, at the end of that road. Mr Fleming would have called him out because he’d have known that Albert Perkins would follow a scent to the end of any road.

There wasn’t an officer at Templer who would have described Perry Johnson as imaginative. He didn’t read fiction, he didn’t listen to music and he didn’t look at pictures.

He was called to the gate. Under the arc lights, the far side of the heavy iron barrier, was a green Sierra. Ten past three in the morning. The man behind the wheel had a pinched weasel face, a small brush of a moustache, combed and slicked hair in a perfect parting, and his skin had the paleness of one who avoided sunlight and weather. He got out of the car, carrying a filled briefcase, and threw his keys to the sentry. He didn’t ask where he should park, merely assumed that the sentry would do the business for him.

Perry Johnson thought that the man came to the barracks just as a hangman would have come to a gaol at dead of night. He shivered and his imagination rioted. The briefcase could have held a rope, a hood and the pinion thongs of leather.

‘Who are you?’

The man spoke with what Johnson thought was a common voice and the accent held the grate of West London.

‘Johnson, Major Perry Johnson.’

‘What’s your involvement?’

‘I’m Corporal Barnes’s commanding officer. She does my typing.’