The Waiting Time

Chapter Twenty

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.

‘Will you settle up?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m going.’

‘Going where?’

‘I’m going to sort the car.’

‘What’s the matter with the car?’

The police had brought them back, taken them on through Rostock to Warnemunde. They had sat in the back seat and not spoken to the two gloomy-faced, silent men. She had held his hand, he had allowed her to and she had snuggled close to him in the darkness. They had been dropped without comment beside their car, but they had felt the hostility. The police had driven away and Tracy had given their tail-lights a finger. The hire car was now in the hotel forecourt, next to the tourist coach from Bremen, and his grip bag and her rucksack were on the back seat.

‘What needs doing to the car?’

‘Will you settle up, please? I’ll be about half an hour.’

‘What the hell, Josh? What needs doing with the car?’

He peeled banknotes from his wallet, counted them, dropped them in front of her.

‘I’ll come back for you.’

The confusion had passed, replaced by annoyance. ‘I want to dance.’

‘Then dance.’

‘Dance with you.’

‘You’ll have to dance on your own,’ Josh said.

He walked towards the restaurant’s push doors. He heard the scrape of her chair behind him. He felt old, he was so tired. He turned at the door and looked back. His banknotes were abandoned on the table beside the bucket with the upturned bottle. She stood, the urchin waif, in the centre of the dance floor, alone. Quiet conversations, from the tables, murmured around her. Her head bobbed with the rhythm of the band’s music. She used her hands, gestured, for the tempo of the music to be stepped. She danced. He saw the grace and the gentle movement of her.

Josh went out of the hotel.

It was a crisp, chilled night. There was a small moon and many stars. He went past the tourist coach and the hire car, towards the taxi rank down Lange Strasse. He walked slowly and without spirit. He felt a bleak sadness. He had no hatred. If he had hated it would have been easier. He walked to the head of the taxi queue and dropped down onto the back seat of the lead taxi.

‘Could you take me, please, to the middle of the Sudstadt? Thank you.’

The driver turned, nodded, started the taxi. Josh remembered him, had seen him on the breakwater. He rode in a yellow Mercedes taxi with a white flash down the length of it, and he remembered the vehicle coming bumping on the track from the farm at Starkow. There had been light on his face from the street lamp when the driver had turned. Ahead were the dull-lit tower blocks of the Sudstadt, The driver spoke, a faraway voice, and his head never twisted from the road ahead. ‘Did you win?’

Josh said, ‘I don’t know if anybody won.’

‘Did you take Doktor Krause?’

‘He is arrested, he is accused of murder.’

‘You found evidence?’

‘We took the statement of Willi Muller. He was the boy who sailed the trawler out onto the Salzhaff. He was an eye-witness to murder.’

‘Then you won?’

Josh said, ‘I have to believe there’s something worth winning. I don’t know if I’ve won, will win.’

‘You came from England. You turned over the ground and exposed what was buried. The past was buried, a long time ago was covered. Why was it important to turn over the ground?’

Josh said, heavy, ‘It was a matter of principle. I have to believe it is always worth winning on a matter of principle.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I don’t ask you to.’

The taxi stopped. The tower blocks climbed gaunt above them. Josh paid the driver. He walked away from the taxi and into the shadows of the buildings. He stood among the lines of cars parked under the height of the buildings.

The point was lost.

Her daughter looked up, into the stand, at the empty seat.

Eva Krause wore the old clothes that could not be taken from her. She wore no jewellery, because they could take the necklaces and bracelets and rings from her.

She felt the finger on her back. She turned. Two policemen were standing in the row of seats behind her. The one who had touched her back beckoned for her to follow. She lifted up her old coat and her old bag. Their faces were unforgiving. She edged along the row, away from the empty seats. She knew that her husband had been taken from her.

She climbed the aisle steps to where the policemen waited for her. She turned to look a last time at the floodlit court below. The opponent waited to serve. Christina was staring up at the empty seats. Her gaze raked the stand. Her eyes found her mother at the top of the aisle steps, and the policemen. Quite deliberately, she put her foot on the face of the racquet, ripped away the strings and walked towards the chair and her bag.

Eva Krause followed the policemen. She did not know of anything more that could be taken from her.

He heard her voice, singing.

He stood outside the restaurant’s curtained glass door. The band played and she sang. He heard the soft beauty of her voice.

He pushed open the door and went inside. All of them, from the coach party and the couples and the lone businessmen, were rising to their feet and pushing back their chairs, standing, applauding. It was her moment. She seemed so small and so young, and she curtsied low to her audience. A man, out of the coach party from Bremen, snatched a red carnation bloom from the vase on his table and hurried to her. The clapping boomed around Josh. She kissed the man’s cheek. She shook the hands of each of the members of the band, she had captivated them, she waved to the stamping, cheering audience. She skipped towards Josh, between the tables, the child with happiness found. He held the door for her. A last time, she waved. It closed behind her. The applause rippled, muffled, through the door. She reached for his hand but he walked ahead of her.

He walked into the night, into the cold.

She hung back. She would have gone to the coach, to where the hire car was parked. He called her. He went on and into the deep darkness at the extremity of the forecourt. She ran to him.

‘What the hell’s this?’

She would have seen the shadow outline of the Trabant, two-door, small and angled, the little car from the past.

Josh said, ‘Always wanted to drive one – won’t have the chance again.’

Astonished. ‘You nicked it?’

‘Borrowed it – let’s keep some politeness. I went down to the Sudstndt, thought I’d find one there.’

‘You actually stole it – you, Josh, honest and upright Josh! Bloody hell!’

‘Took a loan of it.’

She giggled. ‘It’ll shake your bum off.’

Josh said, ‘It’s what you drove back to Berlin that night, after you drove back Hans Becker’s parents’ Trabant, after… It seemed right. It seemed right for the end.’

He didn’t think she heard him. Her giggle tinkled close to him. She took his hand, kissed his fingers. The applause would still be in her ears. She put the stem of the carnation bloom in her mouth and dragged open the passenger door. His grip bag and her rucksack were behind her. He reached forward, fiddled the wiring and the engine coughed to life. The smell of the fuel engulfed them.

She patted his arm. Her head was back. The laughter shrieked. ‘Josh, for God’s sake, good old Josh, car thief, joyrider! Josh, where did you learn to wire up a car? Christ, where did you learn how to get into a bloody locked car?’

‘Has to be an upside from working with toe-rags, have to learn something from them…’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I work with kids who have honours degrees in borrowing cars, something has to rub off. Just sit back, enjoy the ride.’

It was the pride of the past. The seat was harder than any he had known, the engine noisier. The body of the Trabant shook. He looked at his watch, four minutes before midnight. He drove away from the hotel. It was easiest to go on August-Bebel Strasse. The great building was dark. From August-Bebel Strasse it was a straight run to the Rostock Sud intersection for the autobahn. He had filled the tank. It would be a good drive to Berlin, he told her, smooth, and she grinned and tossed her carnation bloom behind her.

He had permitted young Rogers to make the ciphered communication with Vauxhall Bridge Cross and told him his story. He had also rummaged in his case and his wallet for a mess of receipts and bills, and requested, told, the ancient history graduate, first class, to knock his expenses into shape.

Albert Perkins sat in the Savignyplatz cafe, a half-bottle of champagne in front of him. A rare pleasure gripped him. Any of the others, his rank, at Vauxhall Bridge Cross would have been fighting to get on the secure telephone to make a personalized report on the outcome of a successful mission. He thought that the report going back second hand set him on a pedestal of achievement. He sipped the champagne. Even Helen had seemed pleased – rarer than August snow – that he was awarded a new peg, no detail over the phone, and more pleased at the new annual increment. He would be home in the morning, for the weekend, to fiddle about in the garden and in time for the game at Craven Cottage and the pint with Basil. His world, he believed, was set in an aurora of success.

Past midnight. The cafe was full. At the bar, haggard, disputing, laughing, no champagne but beer drunk from the neck, were four of the foreign press corps. They had an office block in Savignyplatz. He had used the cafe, in the old days, to be close to the foreign journalists, assuming the identity of a businessman too stupid to understand the secret life pulse of divided Berlin. He had enjoyed their amused banter when he had met them in the old days – they knew nothing. When he had finished the champagne, he would insinuate himself into the group of journalists and they would boast to the ignorant stranger of their contacts and their knowledge – they would still know nothing.

She was, in his opinion, a quite remarkable young woman. She would have achieved her objective, his opinion, without the trailing Mantle. Too good, his opinion, to disappear. When he was back in Vauxhall Bridge Cross, after the weekend, he would sing her praises. There would be a place for her, should be a place for her, in the Service. Such raw courage, such focused ability, a crime to lose it… Albert Perkins sat in the cafe and mused on the brilliance of Tracy Barnes, and was at contented peace.

‘Double whammy,’ Violet shrieked from the door.

The cassette player – and the Rolling Stones tape – was loaned from Mid-east Desk. The party gang were from German Desk and Russia Desk. The drink – gin, vodka, Scotch, wine, beer – was out of the ADD’s store cupboard. They had all stayed on, bugger the outside commitments, bugger the husbands and wives and children, bugger the last trains out of Waterloo and Victoria and the last tubes to Fuiham and Hampstead and the last buses. The party rolled on, wild.. always a party when the Service triumphed. Sweating girls and panting men, yelling and howling, dancing and cavorting, celebrating…

Violet shrieked from the door and waved the sheet of paper. ‘For Christ’s sake – it’s a double whammy!’

Fleming went to her, and Olive Harris. The ADD and the Russia Desk chief and the girl clerks, and the new men and the old men, all gazed at Violet. They had enough cause, already, to celebrate. They had Pyotr Rykov, destroyed. They had the signal from Langley, the lecture on Rykov was cancelled. Fleming read the paper Violet held, and she yelled into his ear.

Fleming clapped his hands. ‘What Violet says, it’s a double whammy. Old Albert’s come up rose-scented… Albert’s done his end. .. Rykov’s in the chokey, and Krause is in the chokey. double win bloody whammy… Poor old Hun chaps, lost their pride and glory, put back in their bloody place. Evidence against Krause that’ll go to open court, embarrassment by the wheelbarrow load for the Cologne chaps, we’re weeping for them. Whammy, whammy, whammy.’

The music thrashed on, out through the open windows of Fleming’s room, out across the deep flowing water of the Thames. In the high room in the monolith building, the dancing resumed, frantic, flailing arms and swinging hips. Fleming had the sheet of paper that Violet had brought and folded shapes with it. Mrs Olive Harris pirouetted, shoes kicked off and the upper buttons of her blouse unfastened, in front of a librarian from Archive. The ADD clutched the new girl on Russia Desk, and the chief of Russia Desk kissed, lip to lip, the new married lady from Violet’s pooi, and the Scotch was poured like it was beer, and the beer was drunk like it was water, and the older woman from Russia Desk massaged the groin, as they danced, of the new-appointed graduate on German Desk… The party rolled on, and to hell with the morning, and to hell with who woke in whose bed, and to hell with it all.

North of the Neuruppin intersection, the lights and the sirens had come past them. She had been asleep, and he had not woken her. Three cars with lights and sirens.. He had seen Krause, in the back of the middle car, flanked by two others. The lights and the sirens had swept past them.

South of the Neuruppin intersection, he had eased off the maximum speed of the Trabant, dropped down from the hundred kilometres per hour that the old car could reach, eased down on the dial. He had made the calculation on the time he could reach Berlin, how long it would take on an autobahn empty of traffic at night. With the calculation made he had no more need to push the Trabant to its limit. She slept well. Remarkable that she could sleep inside the shuddering noise of the car. He slowed, cruised in the inside lane. He reached into his pocket.

‘Tracy…’

She stirred.

‘I’ve something for you, Tracy. Don’t wake.’

She smiled. Her eyes were closed. The heater blew foul hot air over her.

‘A present, Tracy… Just something..

She murmured, ‘Gone soft, old Josh gone sentimental?’

‘Don’t open your eyes… Your wrist, Tracy.’

Languid, half awake and half asleep, beside him, she raised her arm and her other hand pulled up the arm of her coat. Her wrist was bare. Her eyes were closed.

‘Don’t bloody crash – you’re a proper old sweetheart, Josh, you’re a soft old bugger.’

The smile was at her mouth… With a sudden, brutal movement, he snapped the handcuff ring shut on her wrist, jerked down the link chain and closed the second ring on the iron support bar of her seat.

The anger exploded. ‘What the fuck…’

Josh said, simple, sad, ‘You lied.’

‘Get the fucking thing off.’

She tried to kick him and, with her free hand, to reach him and claw at his face. He drove on. He took the kicks on his legs. He held the wheel hard. He tried to save his face from her nail slashes.

‘You lied to me, and in the lies was your mistake.’

She was convulsed. Her fingers went for his eyes, and he held her off him, and he knew that the anger storm would subside. She was twisted in the seat but her shoulder was pulled down by the handcuff on her wrist, locked tight to the metal bar under the seat.

‘You live a lie and you will always make a mistake. The mistake may come from stress, may be from conceit, but the mistake always catches out the lie.’

She aimed a last kick at him, pure venom, and she would have wrenched her shoulder, in pain.

‘Right, you clever bloody bastard, what was the lie?’

The face that had been lovely to him was ugly and twisted in anger.

‘You said, Tracy, your story, that you saw Hans Becker brought ashore and break free and run. You were too frightened to intervene but there wasn’t anything, anyway, you could have done. You said that you ran out of time, that the clock killed you, you had to break away .. I thought, believing the lie, it was the most tragic moment, for you, that I could imagine. You left him, hunted and wounded and alone, because you had to be back in Berlin to get through the checkpoint by midnight. The day visa pass ended at midnight. You went through before midnight, you say. On the trawler, Willi Muller said the clock at the Rerik church was striking ten o’clock as Hans Becker was brought onto the pier. Your lie, Tracy, you drove a Trabant to Berlin, dropped it, went through the checkpoint before midnight… Tracy, it can’t be done…’

She flopped in her seat. She stared ahead.

‘You left at ten, truth. You drove to Berlin, truth. You went through the checkpoint before midnight, lie. I think you came to the checkpoint in the Wall late. I think you pleaded with the guards to let you through. You were distraught, weeping. The guards would have called for an officer… You should not have been in Rerik, you were in direct contravention of Colonel Kirby’s orders, you stood to be drummed out of I Corps, which was your life, you were traumatized by what you had seen. Of course the officer was not going to let you through. Of course the officer would have wondered why a student was hysterical at being late for the checkpoint. A strip search, Tracy? You would have carried ID. Where was the ID? In your bra, in your pants, in a condom inside you? Doesn’t matter where. They found your ID, or you gave it them. The East Germans had a procedure. The procedure was the call to the Soviet Military Mission..

He drove slowly, spoke slowly. She sat, so still, so small, beside him.

‘You are isolated. You ar’ beyond help. In a holding cell. You are very young and very frightened. The East Germans may have roughed you, may have shouted at you, threatened you, but not the Soviet military intelligence officer. He would have been GRU, highly sophisticated, and very kind. Sophisticated enough to see that you were literally desperate to get through the checkpoint before dawn, and kind enough to let you get through the checkpoint…’

Each time he paused, Josh waited for the denial. She said nothing.

‘They would have filmed you and taped you. They had evidence of you. They would have driven, Tracy, nails through the palms of your hands and into the wood. You belonged to them, Tracy. Before dawn, the intelligence officer would have put the stamp on your visa, and he would have told you that you should not be frightened of the future, and you would have wept your gratitude to him, but the nails had been hammered through your hands, Tracy… The last best chance you had was that morning. When Colonel Kirby came to work, nine o’clock, you could have told him then, there, what had happened, made the confessional. You did not. And each day afterwards it would have been harder. Each month afterwards, it would have been worse. Each year afterwards, it would have been impossible… You opted, chose, to live the lie…’

They were past the Wittstock intersection. The signs were for Berlin Mitte. Nothing was denied. She seemed not to hear him, seemed not to care to listen to him.

‘The moment the chance died, would have been buried, was two years, three, four years afterwards. The intelligence officer would have been a patient man, and the people to whom he passed the file. A new world order had come. I doubt you thought the nails were out of your hands. The GRU continued to exist, continued to probe. Did you believe, Tracy, in the new world order, that you were free of them? A phone call, a letter, a chance meeting that wasn’t chance, after two or three or four years… Of course, little Corporal Barnes doesn’t seek promotion, doesn’t seek a transfer. She stays at Templer Barracks. She is an asset, she is a talent spotter, she goes to her office each morning an hour before her officers come and for that hour she can read any file she wants to. At first she is coerced but that ends. Later she is overwhelmed by the arrogance of her superiority. The arrogance is the secret that she holds. The last instruction was for the hacking down of Dieter Krause… I, stupid and infatuated, was a used bonus. That’s what hurts, Tracy, wounds me, that I was just used. You did very well. The only mistake was the clock at Rerik church, and that, for you, was bad luck… It was a lie. The lie that I believed was that it was all for love.’

He drove on. They were coming towards Berlin from the north. The first lorries of the day were on the road. Nothing denied and nothing explained.

‘You were Knautschke. You were the hippopotamus in the mud. I thought, Tracy – I thought, Knautschke – that you came from the mud in your own time. They called you, Tracy – the keepers called for Knautschke. You came from the mud, Knautschke, when they called for you. They were, they are, your keepers…‘

The lights of the oncoming traffic sparkled indistinct in his eyes. The tears welled.

Tracy turned to him. ‘What choice, Josh, do you think I had?’

‘It starts with a small lie, but the lie has a life of its own. The small lie grows, overwhelms. They all say they had no choice, all the traitors.’

‘That’s a speech, Josh. What’ll they do to me?’

‘Hate you for embarrassing them, lock you up, throw the key away.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘About as much good as locking up Dieter Krause.’

‘We had a life.’

‘We have no life, the lie killed the life.’

‘Don’t believe you, don’t believe old Josh. Josh loved Knautschke. Josh wants to cuddle and fuck with Knautschke. Josh wants to make babies. Josh is old, wants to be cared for, Josh doesn’t want to be old alone. Old Josh wants love. The love, Josh, wasn’t a lie.’

‘The love, Tracy, is dead.’

‘You are such a daft, bloody innocent.’

She reached, difficult for her, behind him. She took the carnation bloom. She put the stem in her mouth. She picked the petals from the flower and they fell on her lap.

Dieter Krause sat on the bed in the cell. The Moabit gaol, around him, was waking. He had not slept. They had told him, before they had locked the door on him, that in the morning a lawyer would be appointed to represent him that day.

They had taken him all the way to the cell door, and Raub had grimly shaken his hand, and Goldstein had grinned and said he should claim he was merely obeying orders. Dieter Krause, as the gaol woke around him, waited for the coming of a lawyer.

He saw the face of the boy on the frozen dirt of the ground.

He stood above the boy and held the pistol loosely.

He was kicked by the boy, doubled up, in pain.

He fired the pistol, involuntary, in the shock of the pain.

He had the rank of Hauptman, he had little experience of firearms. It was several years since he had practised with a firearm. Firearms, of course, were issued to officers of that seniority but they had no call to use them.

He had not realized that the safety was off on the pistol.

He had shot the boy in a regrettable accident. If he had not kicked, made the sudden pain, the boy would not have been shot.

He agonized over the tragedy of the death of the boy. He was, himself, a parent. There were witnesses who could be approached, persuaded, to tell the truth of that night: Klaus Hoffmann, a respected dealer in property. It was an accident: Josef Siehl, a trusted security guard. He carried no guilt: Ulf Fischer, a much praised orator at funerals… It was a tragic accident of history, the past.

Dieter Krause, with the noise of the waking Moabit gaol with him, planned what he would say when the lawyer came.

The policeman on the pavement of the Unter den Linden gazed in astonishment.

A Trabant car parked at the kerb, driven by a man in a good suit who had the bearing of a military officer, and produced from it was a young woman in handcuffs…

Josh led her by the arm through the door, ignored the late protest shout that parking in front of the embassy was forbidden. The doors swung shut behind him, behind her.

It was dawn. The first glimpse of the sun would be up behind the television tower on Alexanderplatz, and behind the hill of Prenzlauer Allee. God alone knew where they found them, the older men, stout, comfortable, who were the night-duty security officers in the service of the embassies… No sunshine, at the beginning or the middle or the end of the day, reached the fortress cubbyhole of strengthened plate glass in which the security man sat. He had a mug of steaming tea in front of him and a plate of thin-cut toast, and he was listening to the radio music that came from Britain on the satellite.

She looked at Josh, as if to test him.

The security man, crumbs at his mouth, studied him. Then he looked past Josh and saw the young woman, the handcuffs, and the frown spread on his forehead. He drank from the mug and wiped away the crumbs.

Josh said, ‘My name is Joshua Mantle, I am a solicitor’s clerk from Slough in the United Kingdom. I have brought with me a prisoner, Miss Tracy Barnes, of the Army’s Intelligence Corps. The charge against her is espionage – Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act. There’s a man called Perkins, Albert Perkins, in Berlin. You should find him. He’ll be flying out today, but you should reach him before he leaves. From this moment, Miss Barnes is in your custody, you are responsible… Oh, please, I’d like some paper to write my arrest statement. Thank you.’

He was given the paper and a hard chair at a low table, and he started to write. He wrote the story of a killing at Rerik in the night darkness, and the chiming of a clock high on a church tower.

The security man was on the phone, and she leaned forward on the wood shelf in front of him. The security man smiled back at her grinning face and she lifted her handcuffed wrists and took a siice of his toast, as a squirrel would have stolen from a bird table.

A young man came through the inner security door, earnest- faced, shirt-sleeved, with his collar open and his tie loosened and the tiredness in his eyes, and asked why he had been called.

The security man talked in a low voice into the ear of the young man. The head was shaken in disbelief. She finished the toast on the security man’s plate and she took his mug and drank his tea, and she smiled sweetly at the young man.

He wrote the story of Hans Becker who had died alone, in courage, for nothing. He folded the paper. He put the pen back in his pocket, and felt for the knot of his tie.

He walked to the desk, uncertain, weak in the legs.

‘My name’s Rogers, I work with Mr Perkins. What in heaven’s name is all this about?’

Josh gave him the folded sheets of paper.

She had the light of the mischief in her eyes that he had seen and known and loved. She challenged.

‘You can tear it up, Josh, tear it into small pieces. If you don’t tear it up, Josh, there is no afterwards. If you don’t tear it up into small pieces you’ll live to be old and alone..

Josh rocked. old and alone, Josh. You can’t sleep with principles, can’t love with them, can’t find happiness. With your principles, you’ll be old and alone.’

Rogers, young face curled in anger, snapped, ‘What good does this do? It’s out of history, it’s cobwebbed. No one will want to know.’

Josh said, stark, ‘It is evidence. Just because it is not convenient, evidence cannot be ignored. Because it is embarrassing, evidence cannot be shelved. I promise you, and pass my promise to Mr Perkins, that if I see the signs of compromise I will bring down on his head the accusation of cover-up. The whole circus will land on his head. Someone once said to me, “They can’t buck the process of law, they can’t block evidence,” and I believed it. My regards to Mr Perkins..

He looked at her, into the small, enigmatic, masked face. He did not know her. He reached into his pocket and gave the handcuffs’ key to the young man.

He walked out of the embassy and onto the Unter den Linden.

Four policemen were gathered round the Trabant and they were laughing at it and poking with their shoes at the bodywork. Josh took his grip bag from the back seat. He was told he could not leave the car parked there.

He said, ‘It belongs to the young lady. She always drives a Trabant. That was her mistake. Better ask her to move it.’

He carried his grip bag away and the spring sunshine was warm on his back.

‘Yes, of course you were right to call me immediately. I’ll be with you in half an hour, a call to make and a shower and a shit and a shave. Thank you, Rogers… What time is it? Must have been tired, don’t usually sleep in. I’ll see you…’

Albert Perkins put down the telephone.

He rubbed the deep sleep from his eyes. He shook, stretched.

He crawled from his bed and pulled back the curtains. Sunshine spilled into the room. He sat among the confusion of the sheets, pillows and blankets. Her face was in his mind. He saw every line on it, and the thrust of her chin, the brightness of her eyes and the colour of her hair. He sat, long moments, with his head in his hands.

He snapped upright. No requirement to go secure and unravel the bloody wires. He dialled.

It was more than the cleaning lady’s life was worth, to pick up a ringing telephone.

She should have been out of there thirty-five minutes before the telephone started to ring in Mr Fleming’s room. She had most of the drink stains off the carpet, but the red-wine spatter on the wall behind Mr Fleming’s desk was her headache. The phone rang insistently. It did not surprise the cleaning lady that Mr Fleming was not yet at his desk, an erratic gentleman, but it astonished her that Violet was late. Her plastic bin bag, on the marked carpet beside the desk, was half filled with the plastic cups and the emptied bottles. She had scrubbed the wall with kitchen tissue, might have to be repainted, and the carpet might have to be replaced. She gathered up her mop, her bucket and dragged her vacuum cleaner to the door.

She left the telephone ringing, and locked the door after her.

It was a great city in the heartbeat centre of Europe.

With his grip bag, Josh Mantle was a snail in the path of a caterpillar track.

The cranes and the bulldozers and the earth movers were fitted with the caterpillar tracks that broke the shell of the snail and buried the past and destroyed the history.

He was alone on the street. He was the pygmy figure among the racing, hurrying thousands, who made the pace of the new city. He walked with the ghosts, the few, who were rejected by the thousands. The ghosts held him tight below the towering cranes, beside the bulldozers and the earth movers that wiped out the faces of the ghosts. The short length of the Wall, preserved for tourists, so fragile where there had been permanence and death, mocked him. If he had stood, if he had put down his grip bag, if he had held out his arms, if he had snatched at the thousands who hurried past him and went about their business and lived their new lives, if he had shouted his truth, would any have cared for the forgotten past and the forgotten history? It was the conceit of Josh Mantle that he, alone, knew the debt value of the past and the history.

He was at the checkpoint.

The new buildings and the new cranes obscured the warmth of the sun from the street. The block where the holding cell had been, where the interrogating officer had come, where she had begged and wept for her freedom, was eradicated. A watchtower was still standing. They would have followed her, with their binoculars, when the bar had been raised, when she had crossed the no man’s killing zone, would have focused on her from the squat little watch-tower when she had gone into the shadow dawn with the lie and the deal. The dust of the building site choked in his throat. A freedom belonged to him…

The car came from behind him, blasted its horn.

Perkins’s face poked through the open window.

‘If I’d known you’d be here, I’d have bloody wiped you off the road. Never could keep out of business that wasn’t yours, could you, Mantle? Always had to interfere, hadn’t you? You think we wanted her – wanted her paraded in open court? But the little man, little shit-faced man, has to bleed his bloody principles over us. I hope you’re proud. I hope you rot.’

He shouted, ‘I was, I am, it’s precious to me, my own man.’

The window surged up.

She was alone in the back of the car. Afterwards, for ever, he would swear to himself that she smiled at him.

The car pulled away, went fast through the old checkpoint where there was no barrier, no guns, no past that survived, and he watched the car until he could see no longer the copper-gold of her hair above the seat, until she was gone from the mud pool and the rippled water was still.