Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

There was no fear, no elation.

Josh, by the wheelhouse door, said, ‘Bring her in gently, With. Bring her home like you would have brought in your father’s boat.’

Josh went forward and took the rope from the deck. They were close to the pier. Smaller fishing boats groaned and swayed in the dropping wind at the shorter, narrower piers.

Perkins saw him. He was the idiot who had gone into man-trap country. Perkins felt, a short moment, the sense of wonderment that was always there – every field officer said it – when an agent, an idiot, came through, stepped out from the man-trap country. Always that stark short moment of almost disbelief when an idiot came out of the darkness of danger, emerged from behind the fences and walls and minefields and wire.

The trawler boat nudged the pier.

Josh jumped and lashed the rope to a post. Krause stood so still and Josh saw that he held the pistol at the seam of his trouser- leg. The engine cut. There was a silence, then the clatter on the planks of the pier as Tracy came behind him and then the young man. They faced each other. Josh looked down the length of the pier.

‘You should know, Doktor Krause, that we came to find evidence and we have found it. We came for an eye-witness to murder and we have found him. You may have thought, Doktor Krause, that time washes away guilt. It does not.’

He started down the pier, towards the beach, the road and the lights in the windows of the houses, towards Dieter Krause. He went steadily, his own pace, slow steps. Krause clasped the pistol in his fist and slowly raised it. Josh walked forward.

The aim of the pistol locked.

‘Don’t, Doktor Krause, because it is over. For you, it is finished.’ Josh was a dozen paces from Krause. It was the moment he realized that Krause would shoot. Krause would have seen the slow, sad smile pass on Josh’s face, as if he didn’t care, as if he was too wearied and beaten to care. The finger, Josh saw it, moved on the trigger, tightened.

The light burst from behind Dieter Krause.

The big spotlamp beam trapped Krause, threw his shadow forward to Josh’s feet, blinded Josh. The brilliant white light was in Josh’s face. He could see nothing. He heard the clatter as the Makharov pistol landed on the planks of the pier.

The shadow forms moved warily forward, huge and grotesque, and Dieter Krause raised his hands high above his head.

Raub hissed, ‘Run, Krause, run for the darkness.’

He heard, ahead of them, his head half turned.

Goldstein said, ‘If he runs, Raub, he runs over my dead body.’

Raub spat, ‘It was history. Too long ago. The past, the past is gone.’

Goldstein said, ‘There is no honoured history without justice. Tell a Jew that the past is gone, tell a German Jew that the past can be forgotten. He will go over my dead body.’

Krause held his hands above his head.

Perkins chuckled, ‘Well said, Julius, sensibly spoken.’

Josh stumbled, so tired and drained. He asked Tracy for the statement, and she took the notepad from under her coat, her sweater and her T-shirt. It was warm from her skin. The senior policeman held Krause’s arm and the handcuffs twisted his wrists into the small of his back. Josh led Willi Muller to the senior policeman and he identified the witness, and he gave him the notepad and showed him the written pages and the signature on each page.

‘You will go to your home, Willi?’

The young man shrugged.

‘You should g our home.’

‘For the night, taps. My boat is my home.’

‘Because you did not run from the principle of justice, Willi, I am proud to have known you.’

The voice blared, nasal, behind him. ‘Mantle, come here, Mantle.’

At the edge of the light Perkins was with Tracy, holding her hand as an uncle would have done. Perkins grinned. ‘I was just telling Miss Barnes… Hey, come on, Mantle, don’t look so damned miserable.. . Just telling Miss Barnes what a quite fantastic young woman she was. If a quarter of the snot-nosed pillock recruits coming into Vauxhall Bridge Cross had her resourcefulness our Service would be the envy of all. With a bit of help from you, you old hack, and I’m being generous, she has achieved our policy aims, bagged, packaged, wrapped .

An asset is destroyed, a public trial beckons, recriminations commence. Poor old Dr Raub, my German colleague, still walks in the time warp, thought they could slide the guilt out of sight, the modern equivalent of putting him on a boat to Paraguay. No chance. Mantle, she is fantastic. All for love. Marvellous thing, love, so they tell me. My suggestion, get back to Rostock and buy our Tracy an impressively expensive dinner. Hey, Mantle, your old pencil hold any lead still?’

Tracy took his arm. Perkins walked away and his laughter rang in the night. The cars were revving. Josh saw Krause pushed down, awkward, into the back of a car. He loosed her hand. He walked back down the pier.

The trawler rolled gently beside him. He took the Walther pistol from his waist and threw it high, far, into the water of the Salzhaff. The cars pulled away, made a convoy. He stared at the distant treeline on the shore of the base, the home of ghosts. He stood on the pier along which the boy, wounded, had been dragged. She called again. There was one car left in the road and she ran to it. It was all history, it was all gone. It was the past, it was finished. It was all for love.

He fed the message.

Status: SECRET.

Information flash – ex Moscow staffer to Russia Room. Status of info, unconfirmed, but from ‘reliable source’.

RYKOV, Pyotr Nikolai, army rank Col., current position P/A to Mm. of Def., arrested 18.00 local by Fed. Tnt. Service, and held on espionage/treason charge. Believed SIS involvement – requested we onpass to VBX, London. It’s dirty, I have a bad smell on this one.

Understand RYKOV subject of German junket at Pentagon, Langley, Rand Corp. – suggest you cancel and leave bottles corked and keep sauerkraut in the refrigerator.

My assessment: If RYKOV arrested by FIS, then he is dead in the water, irrelevant.

Bestest, Brad.

End.

The message was sent.

She had taken her bag and rummaged in it. She had changed in the lavatories. While she had changed, Josh had picked from his suit trouser legs, meticulously, the last of the fish scales.

She came through the swinging door into the hotel’s lobby. She wore her cleanest T-shirt, from the Peenemunde day, and the least crumpled of her old jeans. There was dark lipstick at her mouth and shadow colouring at her eyes, and the copper-gold of her hair was spiked up. She took his hand. She was the woman a man could love for the rest of his life, all of his life. She squeezed his hand, laughed. ‘Come on, Josh, a bloody great meal and a bloody great bottle, it’s what we’re owed.’

She led him towards the restaurant door, behind which the band played.

Josh took out his wallet. She looked at him and a vague, confused frown came to her forehead.

He put the wallet on the table, picked up the menu card. He checked what she had had, what he had had, and what the wine cost. He made the calculations.

There was nothing chic, nothing smart about the restaurant. There were a few couples and a few lone men, and tables had been put together by the far windows for a bus party of affluent pensioners. He had toyed with his food and barely touched the plate of vegetables. She had eaten everything put before her. He had sipped at the wine, she had drunk most of the bottle. A three-piece band played, tired and without enthusiasm, and in front of them was a deserted polished-wood dance floor square.

Josh stood. He was looking for the head waiter.