The Waiting Time

Chapter Three

He dialled the number that Mrs Adie Barnes had given him.

‘Hello.’

‘Could I speak, please, to Corporal Barnes, Tracy Barnes?’

A hesitation as if, so early in the morning, her brain was grinding. ‘Who is it?’

‘A friend, a solicitor.’

He knew that block, knew where the call had been answered. He could hear the radios screaming behind her and the shouting, bawling, hollering.

Softly, and with a hand cupped over the mouthpiece, the voice said, ‘Needs friends, locked up, in the cells, ‘cos she bashed that German.’ A voice change, loud and disinterested. ‘Any calls for the corporal are to go to the main camp number, and you should ask for the Adjutant’s office.’

He rang off.

He had showered early. He lived in a small part of a large house, the roof space converted into two rooms. There was a kitchenette area in one and a wash-basin in the other. The lavatory and shower, no bath, were down the stairs. If he used them early he didn’t have to queue. He shaved carefully. It seemed important that day that he should look his best. When he had shaved, checked in the mirror that he had not cut himself, he went to his wardrobe.

There were only two suits to choose from. There was the one he wore five days a week at Greatorex, Wilkins amp; Protheroe and there was the darker one, which carried the story of Joshua Frederick Mantle’s recent life. Worn for the job interview eighteen months before – a formality because Mr Greatorex had already offered him office-boy employment. Worn for her funeral twenty months before, a bright May day with daffodils still out in the graveyard. Worn for the appointment with the specialist and for the wedding thirty-three months before, autumn leaves scrambling against the steps of the register office and only enough witnesses behind them to make it decent. Bought and worn for the leaving party in the mess a very long time before, and he had been a washed-up casualty of the ‘peace dividend’. From the wardrobe he took the dark suit and the white shirt hanging beside it. He laid them on his bed, which he had already made – it was the routine of his life, from far back, to make his bed as soon as he was out of it. Back at the wardrobe, he glanced over his ties. Two of silk, both from Libby, both for his birthday, but they remained hanging on the bar. His fingers touched two of polyester, Army Intelligence Corps and Royal Military Police, then left them. Two from the high street in Slough, neutral ties that gave away nothing of him, of his past, green and navy. He took the green one, and placed it on the shirt, beside the suit, on the bed. In a cardboard box on the floor of the wardrobe was the shoe polish, the brushes and the duster. He took the better black pair of shoes, the pair from the interview, the funeral and the wedding, the pair he didn’t wear in court or at the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins amp; Protheroe. The routine was to clean his shoes each morning, to spit on the polish and to buff the shoes to brilliance. It did not matter to him that it was raining, that the shoes would be quickly dulled. He dressed.

He had the radio on, not for music or the weather forecast or the early news bulletins of the day but for the traffic information. It was important to him to know how long a journey would take him – another of the discipline routines that governed him. He took little comfort from the radio in the evenings, seldom used it, which was peculiar for a man who lived alone and who had reached the statistical age at which he had entered the last quarter of his life. It was as if he had rejected the outside living world that the radio would have brought him. He switched it off, then the bedside light.

He stood for a moment in the gloom.

Downstairs the lavatory flushed – perhaps the seed company’s representative or the computer programmer. Both the other tenants on the floor below had offered friendship, been deflected, and the family on the ground floor. They had all tried to build a relationship, drinks at Christmas, small-talk on the stairs, and had not been rewarded. Joshua Frederick Mantle distrusted the hold of a friendship, the tie of a relationship. He had adored his mother, shot dead in Malaya. He had respected his father, Military Medal pinned on his chest by the King. He had made his commitment to the Intelligence Corps, had been transferred out compulsorily after the matter in Belize. He had buried himself in the work of Special Investigation Branch, had been made redundant in the ‘downsizing’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had loved Libby, sick, then dead and buried. He had no desire to be hurt again.

There were few books in the sitting room, none recreational. He had hardly touched the fat volume in his hand for seven years. It was The Manual of Military Law, Part 1, and he scanned the section relevant to assault. Then it was Stone’s Justices’ Manual, then Criminal Procedures and Sentencing in Magistrates’ Courts. He had a tight memory, no need for note-taking. The books went back on the shelf. He locked the door of the flat behind him.

All that he owned, all of his life, was left in the two small rooms behind the locked door. Mrs Adie Barnes, red-eyed, had told him that her Tracy was in trouble.

He went to his car, humble and old, parked on the street, and wiped the windows with a cloth. A bit of his history stirred in him.

The cell was cold. The central heating did not function. She had refused the blanket. The tray he had brought, cereal and milk, three slices of bread, jam and a mug of tea, was untouched. There was an electric fire in the cell that he used, but he had not demanded heating for her. He sat in front of her on a hard chair with his overcoat across his shoulders. The ceiling light beamed down on her, as it had all night.

‘I think you reckon you’re being a clever little girl, Tracy. I think you reckon you can see me off. Did my arithmetic just now. It’s forty-nine hours since you last slept, it’s forty-something hours since you last ate. You’re exhausted, famished, but you’re conceited enough to believe you can see me off. Don’t you believe it. I’m here for as long as it takes… Only me, Tracy, nobody else. The Colonel isn’t going to chuck me out, nor the old fart, nor the limp dick with the dog, because I have control of you. Inside the wire they all hate you because they’ve had to bluster their apologies to their honoured guest, washed their hands of you. Outside the wire doesn’t count. Nobody’s in your corner, Tracy. You’re alone. Do you hear me? Alone. So shall we stop being clever and start to be sensible? I want to know if you have evidence of murder. What is the evidence of the murder in cold blood of Hans Becker at the hand of Hauptman Dieter Krause? Is there evidence?’

Goldstein watched him. For an hour they had sat in the outer room. Raub had the ranking and it was for him to make the report to the senior official.

They waited. They were brought coffee and biscuits.

Goldstein thought he looked better, as if he had slept well in the house where the BfV always accommodated him when he came to Cologne, as if the anger at the scratch scars had slackened. They had been up since dawn and were the first appointment of the senior official’s day.

There was movement, at last, at the door. It was half opened, as if a final word was exchanged.

Goldstein marveled at the calmness of the man. He regarded Krause as predictable and boring, but the calm was incredible because his future would have been thrashed out by Raub and the senior official. If they had decided, over the last hour, that Krause was to go forward then it was Washington in two weeks and his position was confirmed. If they had decided to cut the link then he was back to Rostock, removed from the ‘safe’ house, the money dried up, the account closed and he was on the streets, grafting with the rest of the Stasi scum for his food and shelter.

Raub called them in.

The inner room was filled with the senior official’s smoke. Goldstein coughed hard. A junior man had to go through all the exit security from the building and huddle in the winter cold in the back yard where the vehicles were parked to smoke his cigarette, then return to the building through the entry security. The official flapped his hand to clear the smoke cloud in front of his face and waved Krause to a chair. Krause settled… and Goldstein wondered whether he would have found old Gestapo men merely boring.

The senior official stared down at his notes, then eased the spectacles from his face. ‘I am happy to hear, Doktor Krause, that your injuries are not severe. Notwithstanding, the attack raises important questions, and those questions must be answered.’

‘Ask me the questions and I will answer them.’

‘Is it accepted, Doktor Krause, that the BfV has invested heavily in you, money, time and resources, and in prestige?’

‘As I am often told.’

‘The basis of that investment was your guarantee to us that there were no matters in your past work that could be uncovered that would show criminal violation of human rights. Correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘I asked you at the beginning of our association for a most detailed brief on your work with the Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit. I asked whether there were acts in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Is there, in your past, an act in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered?’

Where he stood by the door Goldstein could see little of Krause’s face. He could recall what the girl had said, the accusation she had made. In the last, long hour, Raub would have given the exact words to the senior official.

‘There is nothing in my past that could be uncovered.’

‘The woman in England made an allegation of murder. Yes?’

Goldstein fancied a smile came to Krause’s face.

‘The same accusation was made by a security man when I was in the medical area. They had detained us there until he arrived. I asked him, “Where is your evidence?”’

‘If I order a further search of the archive material of the MfSZentrale at Normannen Strasse…?’

‘You would find nothing.’

‘If you lied to me, Doktor Krause, if evidence were ever produced, there could be no protection.’

Goldstein craned forward and saw the grin play on Krause’s face. Goldstein thought the man lied, and spoke the truth: the lie, that no criminal act in violation of human rights had been committed; the truth, that no evidence would be uncovered.

‘There is no evidence.’

The senior official stubbed out his cigarette and came round his desk. He shook Krause’s hand with warmth. ‘Thank you, Doktor Krause. You have now a few days at home to prepare for Washington? We place great importance on that opportunity.’

Krause said, without emotion, ‘I tell you very frankly, if people come to Rostock and make a difficulty, come to make a problem, then I do not wish to involve you. If they come to Rostock and try to make a difficulty then they will find pain, but they will not uncover evidence.’

‘Good day, Doktor Krause.’

He pulled up at the gate. The fence either side of it was higher than he remembered, embellished with more shiny wire coils on the top and where the grass grew at the base. The rain had stopped and low sunshine blistered on the razor points of the wire. He left the engine running and sauntered towards the sentry. He knew what was important, knew how to behave. Josh Mantle had come through that gate for the first time as a fledgling recruit thirty-three years before, when there had been no coils of wire, when the sentries hadn’t carried sidearms, hadn’t draped automatic rifles across their chests, and hadn’t worn bullet-proof vests. The Intelligence Corps and the Royal Military Police had been his life for twenty-seven years. He knew how sentries reacted at a gate, which was why he had worn the dark suit, the new shirt and the better shoes.

‘Yes, sir?’

The sentry drifted towards him, relaxed.

‘My name is Josh Mantle. I represent the legal firm of Greatorex, Wilkins amp; Protheroe. Corporal Tracy Barnes is being held here under close arrest, and I am instructed by her family to act on her behalf. I need..

The smile of welcome had fled the sentry’s face. ‘Who is your appointment with, sir?’

‘You are required under the terms laid out in The Manual of Military Law, Part 1 – I can quote you the page – to give me immediate access to my client. That’s what I need.’

‘I asked, who’s your appointment with, sir?’

‘When I come to see a client, I don’t need an appointment with anyone. I’m not a dentist’s patient.’

‘You can’t just drive in here without an appointment. I am not authorized to let anyone-’

A bread-delivery van had stopped behind his car, and another car behind that. Two cars and a Land Rover were waiting to leave.

‘What you are authorized or not authorized to do, soldier, is quite irrelevant to me. Just get on with the process of providing the access to which I am entitled.’

The sentry backed away. Josh Mantle had known he would. The sentry would pass it to his sergeant in the brick fortress blockhouse beside the gate. The sergeant would see a man in a dark suit, a new shirt and good shoes, and he would pass responsibility up the chain. Five cars now waited behind the delivery van, and three more behind the Land Rover. There was a beep. Mantle walked casually back to his car and rested his buttocks on the bonnet. Through the window of the block-house he saw the sentry speaking to his sergeant, and gesturing towards him. A little symphony of horns came from two more cars and from the Land Rover. Faces jutted out of vehicle windows, annoyed, impatient. The sergeant spoke on a telephone, as Mantle had known he would. The symphony soon reached its crescendo. The sentry ran back from the block-house.

‘You’ve got to wait, and move your car, sir.’

Josh knew the game. Into his car, into reverse, swerving past the delivery van. Across the main road. Onto the grass verge opposite the camp gate. The barrier came up and the cars surged in and out.

He sat again on the bonnet in the sunshine. A hundred yards past the barrier, down the road inside the camp, was the guardhouse, graced with a clean lick of paint, which was usual for late winter, where Mrs Adie Barnes’s daughter would be. The barrier was down.

The sentry shouted across the main road, ‘You can’t park there, sir.’

‘I require immediate access to my client.’

‘That’s a restricted area. No parking there.’

‘Immediate access. If you haven’t the authority get someone who has. Move it, soldier. Oh, what’s your name? So I can report you for obstruction.’

It was not pretty, not right for a civilian to take on officer status, but he had given his promise to Mrs Adie Barnes. The sentry doubled back to the block-house, to report, to have his sergeant telephone again. It was a few minutes after nine o’clock: the Adjutant would be concentrating on his coffee, and the Colonel would be out on an inspection round. None of the fat cats would know where to find The Manual of Military Law, Part 1. They would be like disturbed ants.

‘Tell you what I’m thinking now, Tracy, I’m thinking you do not have evidence. I’m a logical man, Tracy, and I’ve given you every opportunity to provide me with that evidence. You’ve refused, so logic says to me that the evidence does not exist. My opinion, when you were in Berlin, when the agent was lost, it was discussed in front of you – you don’t make waves, do you? Nobody notices you – it was talked about, and some loudmouth used the name of Krause, counter-espionage in Rostock. You joined the circle. The agent was missing, therefore he had been caught, no word was heard of him, therefore he had been killed. Who killed him? Try counter-espionage. Who was responsible? Try the man in charge of counter-espionage at the nearest regional centre. Krause. Do you think I don’t have better things to do? For fuck’s sake, Tracy Barnes, let’s get this bloody waste of time over.’

‘Where is it, Major?’

Johnson snapped, ‘It’s in RUSSIAN MILITARY/ARMOUP/STATISTICS. It’s where it always is.’

‘Yes, Major, but where’s that?’

She stood in his doorway. He couldn’t even remember her name. He shouted past her, ‘Ben, I need RUSSIAN MILITARY/ ARMOUR/STATISTICS – show the corporal where it is.’

The call came back, through two open doors, across the cubbyhole space. ‘Sorry, Perry. Wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been looking half an hour for my Voronezh notes. Sorry.’

Johnson said, spiteful, ‘You’ll just have to look for them, Corporal. Look a bit harder.’

The telephone was ringing… Barnes could have found RUSSIAN MILITARY/ARMOUR/STATISTICS, she would have laid her hands on the Voronezh notes, and made his coffee and known how much milk she should add, and picked up the bloody telephone and not let it ring.

Johnson said, bitter, ‘If you cannot find the files we need then would you, please, Corporal, answer the telephone?’

They did not know the filing system she used. God, they were blind without her. The corporal was back at the door, the call was for him. She should transfer it to his extension. What was his extension number? But there wasn’t an extension number written on his telephone, new security measures. What was his bloody number? Too flustered to remember it. He pushed past the corporal and into the cubbyhole space. He thought, he was nearly certain, that Christie’s bloody dog snarled at him and showed its bloody teeth. The dog had its jaws close to the door of the wall safe. She should have been there, should have been handing him the telephone and rolling her eyes to the edge of impertinence.

The corporal said it was the Colonel who wanted him. She’d have pulled a damn cheeky face.

‘Yes, sir, good morning, sir… At the gate?… A solicitor? Christ… Quoting what?… Manual of Military Law? I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where there’s one. Yes, liaise with Mr Perkins… Straight away, sir…’

There had been 97,000 full-time officers working for the Staatssicherheitsdienst at the Zentrale on Normannen Strasse in Berlin and at the fifteen Bezirksverwaltungen across the former German Democratic Republic. What they learned from their informers, their surveillance, their telephone taps, the confessions made in their special cells, they wrote down. What they wrote down, they filed. What they filed was sent to the Archive at the Zentrale.

He had flown from Cologne. Julius Goldstein had been driven east through Berlin to Normannen Strasse. He was met at the heavy barred doors of the Archive, his visit cleared ahead by telephone from the senior official of the Bf\7. He had priority status.

It was said that, over the forty-five-year life-span of the old regime, the files collected, if put spine to spine, would stretch over a distance of 180 kilometres. The betrayal of family, friend and work colleague by the 175,000 informers listed the names, habits, thoughts and actions of six million of the GDR’s population. There were card-index cross-references by the million, photographs by the million, recordings from microphones and telephone intercepts on magnetic tape measured in metres by the million. The several levels of the Archive floors in the subterranean chambers were shored up with coal-pit timbers to take the weight of the files. The Minister for State Security had not trusted the modern invention of the computer, had believed it possible for power cuts to wipe an electronic archive. Yellowed low-quality paper filled the files, tired and thin, and on the paper were the reports, typed through tired, thin, low-quality ribbons.

He gave the name of Hauptman Dieter Krause, the service number, and date of entry into the MfS. He was offered the help of three assistants. When Krause had first come to them, had first arrived in Cologne, the files had been searched. He thought his answer, when he telephoned Raub that evening, would be the same answer as it had been then.

The Chancellor of reunified Germany had said the files gave off a ‘nauseous smell from which nothing good can be gained’. There were, more often now, cries for them to be closed and destroyed. More frequently now, they were accused of ‘destroying reputations, wrecking marriages, breaking friendships, ruining careers’. Former President von Weizsacker accused the German media of ‘smearing’ politicians with the rumour that they figured in the files. The files were about guilt. Guilt was history. Guilt ran with the history of the state. Guilt could not co-exist with the rebuilding of ‘greater’ Germany. The little people who figured in the files, the betrayers and the deceivers, who had sold out to the regime’s police, shouted, more raucously now, for the files to be closed. Only the little people were named on the tired, thin, low-quality sheets of paper. The files on the big people were long gone or destroyed. The big people’s files had been crated and shipped by air to Moscow in the last days, or they had been burned, shredded and pulped in the last hours.

‘The loss of the agent is the past, Tracy. The attack on Hauptman Krause is the present, Tracy. Marry the past and the present, and the offspring of the union will be the future, Tracy. I am only concerned with the future. But, to make a future that interests me, I must have evidence…’

He heard the light knock. The cell door opened.

‘What do you want?’

‘We need to speak,’ Johnson said.

Perkins stood, rocking with exhaustion, and left her hunched on the bed, her knees against her chest, her arms around her knees.

‘What I’m telling you, you shift that motor.’ The sergeant had come from the block-house and shouted across the road.

‘What I am telling you, Sergeant, I can be an impatient man.’

‘It’s a secure area. Shift that motor – and now.’

‘I am happy for you to inspect my driving license, which will show you that I am not from the Falls Road, and for you to inspect my car, which will show you it is not loaded with mortar tubes or explosives. You weren’t listening, Sergeant, I was speaking about my impatience.’

‘I’ll have you done for trespass.’

Josh Mantle gave him a sweet smile. ‘Know the law, Sergeant? You establish legal ownership of this road verge, have a meeting with the council’s highways committee, get a judge in chambers, win an eviction order, employ bailiffs… How long will that take, Sergeant? Ten minutes or two months? Get back on the phone.’

The sergeant hesitated. The sentry watched his sergeant. Face was at stake, and dignity.

Josh sat on the bonnet, took his mobile from his pocket and held it up. ‘When you telephone tell them I’m an impatient man. Tell them that in twenty minutes from now, unless I am granted access to my client as the law demands, I will start to ring the yellowest of the tabloids, some real shit-stirring MPs and the civil-liberties crowd. Tell them it’ll be a proper old circus down here.’

He held up the mobile and pointed to his watch.

He watched the sergeant trudge back to the block-house.

Perkins yawned.

He walked out of the guardhouse and into the sunshine. He blinked. He stepped over the sign that forbade walking on the grass, and went to the middle of the road leading to the gate. Cars went by him both ways. He gazed through the gate at the man who sat easily on the bonnet of a car.

‘That’s him,’ Johnson said. ‘That’s the cause of the headache. The Colonel wants to know what you -,

‘He’s worn quite well, considering everything.’

– what you suggest should be done. The popular press, to the Colonel, is a definition of a nightmare. Throw in maverick MPs and the civil liberties rent-a-mob and he could have a coronary… Do you know him?’

He stood beside Johnson and held his hand over his eyes as if to shade them from the sun.

‘That’s Mantle, Joshua Frederick. Yes, I once took a look at him. Started here as a clerk, as I remember – I’ve a good recall on files – went to Aden in the “gollie”-bashing days, then here again, then Osnabruck. Keen, his file said, anxious to please. He was a staff sergeant in ‘eighty-two, when it all went wrong for him. Were the Guatemalans going to invade Belize? was the burning question of the hour. I Corps sent a captain and Mantle. It was a pressure situation. There was a difficulty, people were squeamish… Did they want the Guat Army turning up unannounced for breakfast in Belize City, or did they want advance notice, the artillery sited and the Harriers armed up? The squeamish people won the day and shouted for a court-martial. If Mantle had testified against his superior then the officer was for the high jump, but he was leaned on, held his tongue. The deal was that the officer retired, doing rather well now and running a charity, and Mantle was transferred, well balanced with an equally weighted chip on each shoulder, to the Military Police. The Service was involved because of the political implications, but I was in the shadows, knowing him when he didn’t know me, the way I like it. I saw him again, a few years later, Tidworth Camp. He’d been given a commission. He was a cuckoo in the mess, twenty years older than the others of his rank. There’d been a dirty little business in the camp, some missing funds but a minimal sum, and the consensus opinion was that it should have been papered over, but he went after a rather popular officer, and the officer had to resign. He was ostracized after that, just ignored. When the cuts started I fancy half of the mess would have written in suggesting he was top target for the heave. I meet that sort of man from time to time, obsessed with legality, a hatred of anything that smacks of privilege, looking to champion the disadvantaged, bleeding the creed of principle on his sleeve. A couple of years back I was talking with a chap from the police who knew of him, said he’d been married and was working with delinquents, that his wife had died, that he’d dropped out, gone derelict. Obviously someone’s given him another chance, a last chance. I’d say he’s obstinate, awkward, bloody-minded…’

‘What are you going to do about him?’

Perkins turned away and began to walk back to the guardhouse. ‘I’m going to send him home, and when he goes he can give little Tracy a lift.’

Perry Johnson did not understand. He hurried to catch Perkins. ‘Are you quite sure, Mr Perkins, you have the authority?’

‘Try me.’

Perkins had the barred door unlocked, then the cell door. He told her to come with him, even asked her if she needed his arm to lean on. He took from the table the plastic bag with her watch, belt, tie and shoelaces. He instructed the sergeant to lace her shoes.

She walked shakily beside him along the path towards the block for junior ranks (female), but she never took his arm.

It was Perkins who stopped half-way up the stairs, a wry little smile on his face, and leaned against the wall, drew breath. She gave him her glance, the roll of her eyebrows, as she would have done, Johnson thought, to himself or Christie in her cubbyhole.

The door of her room was sealed with adhesive tape. Perkins ripped it off.

The room was as they had left it, wrecked. In the panic moments after the attack, in the heat of an investigation, it had seemed quite acceptable for Perry Johnson and Ben Christie to do this. She glanced at Johnson, who died under her eyes. Perkins had reached up to lift down her bag from the top of the wardrobe.

She knelt on the floor and moved among her clothes. Each of her own garments that she picked up she folded carefully before placing it in the bag. Her blouses, her skirts, her jeans, her underwear, the bra that Johnson had held up to the light went into her bag, and the photographs of the cat and the elderly lady and the broken pieces of the frames.

She zipped the bag shut.

She started on her uniform items, tunic, blouses and heavy brown shoes. Perry Johnson bent to pick up a skirt to help her, and she snatched it from him. He recoiled as if in fear of a cornered cat.

She put the uniform items back into the drawers, and the drawers back into the chest.

Perkins carried her bag out of the block.

It was midday, the start of the lunch break at Templer, and too many bastards, with not enough to do, watched Perkins carry her bag to the gate.

Perkins gestured for the sentry to raise the barrier.

Perkins called across the road, ‘You wanted access to your client. She’s all yours.’

Mantle came off the bonnet of his vehicle, pocketed his mobile. Johnson saw the rank dislike on his face and the wide smile at Perkins’s mouth.

Perkins turned to her. ‘Please listen, Tracy, carefully. Pursue this matter and you will very quickly be out of your depth. If you’re out of your depth, you will sink. Remember that the German BfV regard Hauptman Krause as a jewel, and that he would see you as a threat. A great deal is at stake for both the BfV and Krause. There is always a serious risk that a person who represents a threat, when high stakes are played for, will meet with an “accident”. Accidents, Tracy, hurt. My warning is meant kindly. You should forget the past, you should be sensible. It would all have been different if you’d had evidence..

He kept to the speed limit, cruised in the middle lane of the motorway.

He’d thought she might have just flaked out, slept, babbled her story, or just thanked him. But she sat beside him with her eyes open and murmured a song. He could not make out the words – too much noise from the cars, vans and lorries they passed and which went by them – but the tune was vaguely familiar.

That she hadn’t spoken annoyed him like grit in a walking boot, a growing pain.

‘I make it forty-seven minutes we’ve been going, forty-one miles. A word out of you would be pleasant.’

‘What sort of word?’ she challenged.

‘Well, for a start, you could express a little bit of gratitude.’

She thought he was silly, pompous. She turned her head to him, quite slowly, a sharp light in her eyes. ‘Don’t think it was you who got me out. You were just convenient. You saved them a train fare.’

‘That’s not called for.’

Against the tiredness there was a crack of mischief at her mouth. She reached out. He thought it was going to be her gesture of gratitude, that she was going to rest her hand on his where he gripped the wheel. The tips of her fingers, small, brushed the hair at the back of his hand. She had hold of the wheel with a grin on her face. She didn’t look into the mirror in front of her, or the mirror beside her.

She wrenched the wheel, swerving the car from the middle lane into the slow lane, from the slow lane into the slip road. There was a scream of brakes behind him, then the blast of a horn…

‘For God’s sake!’

‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

They were off the motorway. His hands shook on the wheel. ‘That was idiotic!’

‘I’m half starved,’ she said.

They found the cafe where lorries were parked up outside. She told him what she wanted to eat, took her bag from the car boot and carried it into the lavatories. She was so small, so slight, and the uniform she wore was crumpled, creased. He ordered at the counter.

He carried the tray to an empty table.

A bread roll, a small piece of curled cheese and a plastic beaker of thin orange juice, squeezed onto the tray, for himself. For her there was a plate of chips, double portion, a king-size hamburger with oozing dressing and a large Pepsi – which was what she’d demanded.

She came out of the lavatory. She had changed into jeans and a sweater. Her uniform blouse, skirt and battle green pullover were stuffed into the top of the bag.

She gulped at the food.

‘Are you going to tell me?’

She had the hamburger in both hands, and the ketchup ran red on her fingers. ‘Where were you in ‘eighty-eight?’

He thought she ate quite disgustingly. ‘That year I was a captain in the Special Investigation Branch of the RMP – I’d transferred, six years before, out of I Corps.’

‘Thought you were a solicitor.’

He said, ‘I’m a solicitor’s clerk, qualifying to be a legal executive. While your mouth’s full, I might just tell you that your mother asked me to come. She’s had her home turned over by Special Branch… because of you.’

He felt old, boring, and he hoped he had wounded her. She snatched again at the hamburger.

‘Then you know about I Corps?’

‘I was in I Corps for nearly twenty years, before the transfer.’

She seemed to ponder for a moment, mouth moving and throat heaving as she swallowed, as if she needed to decide whether he was worth talking to. Then…

‘In ‘eighty-eight, I was the junior stenographer, tea-maker, errand-runner in the I Corps section in Berlin. They were all analysts and debriefers, not couriers. They weren’t supposed to run agents. They all looked like soldiers, like police look like police. One of the staff sergeants was over the other side of the Wall, had lost his tail for once, and there was a contact, approached on the street, no warning. He had time to fix the next meeting, then he had to bug out because the tail had found him again. It was kicked round all day. Then some genius came up with the idea of me going over and doing the meeting. Said that I wouldn’t be noticed, didn’t look like a soldier. They were all crapping themselves the first time, but it went fine. It got to be normal, me going over and taking stuff and bringing stuff back. Our “Sunray” couldn’t believe his luck – he’d got the best agent going that any commanding officer of I Corps in Berlin had had in years, used to get his head patted. He was supposed to have handed the running of any agent over to the spooks. Sunray said we were keeping him for us, not for any other bugger to get the credit… Come on.’

She smeared up the last of the sauce with the last of the chips, hitched up her bag and he followed her back to the car.

He drove.

‘He was in East Berlin – I went over once a month with cameras, equipment, whatever the agent needed for what he was tasked at. I brought back the films, the reports, in my knickers, in my bra. The risks were worse each time because Sunray pushed him harder each time. Each job was jammier than the last, and that was the way Sunray kept getting his head patted. They’d set me up with a cover as a student and got me permission to use the Library at the university over there, the Humboldt… Seemed to go like clockwork… I just did the easy bit. I went over and dumped the stuff and picked up the stuff and came back through the checkpoint. He was the one that took the risks, and he just used to laugh about it, more worried about me than himself. He was super, he was really brilliant..

Mantle drove steadily. There were times when she stopped, when she stared ahead and held her arms tight around her chest, and when she stopped he did not prompt her. It had been a bit of his history, a long time back, seeing the grey concrete of the prefabricated Wall, and the watch-towers and the dogs and the guards who carried the automatic rifles. He had been to West Berlin but never across to the old East. He had stood on the viewing platforms and looked over the Wall and across the death strip. Talking quietly, she summoned up for him that part of his history.

‘Hans Becker… twenty-one years old, I was a year older. He didn’t do it for money, or out of politics. He did it because it was a buzz, and he used to laugh about it… Christ, and he used to make me laugh. He was just wonderful to be with… We would be over there in that dump country, full of bloody police and bloody Soviets – I’m not good with words – and we used to laugh. He knew what would happen to him if he was caught, and each time Sunray stacked the odds a bit higher against him and he never backed off. I used to see the sort of guys that the other girls in Brigade went with, fat guts and ignorant and boozy, and I thought I was so bloody lucky to be with Hansie… I loved him.’

They were off the motorway. He had caught the first sign for Slough. She had not had to tell him that she had loved Hansie Becker. When she had used the word, she had looked into his face and grinned, as if she reckoned he was too old to know about love. Love was the part of Josh’s history that hurt the worst.

‘It was a rubbish little thing they sent him on the last time.. You know what? Twenty months later, when the Wall had come down, they’d have had it for bloody free. But, they didn’t know, did they? Didn’t know the Wall was coming down… All those brains at work, all the clever little bastards, didn’t know. There was a Soviet missile base at Wustrow, west of Rostock. Hansie had always been given jobs before that were close to Berlin, where he knew. He hadn’t been to Rostock, didn’t even know where this place was. It was the first time he was anxious and he tried to hide it, but I could see that it worried him. The MiG-29s used to fly from Ribnitz-Damgarten at night for exercises with the missile, radar, crews at Wustrow. Sunray said that if Hansie could get close into the base he could monitor the telemetry of their radar systems. I took him the gear to do it with. It was rubbish and Hansie was caught for nothing. He was killed for nothing…’

She waved and he took a left. He saw the Asian shops and businesses that lined the streets and the small homes of old brick. He remembered the photographs he had pored over, with the magnifying glass, of Soviet bases, missiles, aircraft, radar dishes. Because of his history, because he understood, he could imagine the pressure exercised on the agent, the youngster, driving him towards hazard.

‘The Wustrow base was almost an island – a sort of causeway linked it with the mainland. North was the Baltic, south was a big bit of sea separating it from the land. For the equipment to register the detail he had to be on the peninsula where the base was. I don’t know, I suppose a sentry saw him. There was all hell, flares, shooting. He’d got this dinghy, sort of thing kids use on our beaches, but he was cut off from it. He must have crossed the peninsula, right through the base. He tried to swim for it, to the mainland. He was shot in the water, wounded. He was brought to this village on the mainland, Rerik, where they killed him.’

He wondered if she had told anyone before. They turned again, and she pointed up the street.

‘The man who killed my Hansie was the counter-espionage officer from the Stasi in Rostock, Dieter Krause.’

He stopped the car. A panel of plyboard was nailed to the front door.

‘Two days ago they brought Dieter Krause to Templer, paraded him. Our lot were on their bloody knees to him, treated him like he was a friend. He was all swank and arrogant and laughing until I thumped him. I kicked him in the balls for Hansie.’

Josh said, ‘You should let it go, let time bury it.’

The scorn played across her face. ‘It was murder. Murder is murder. Or do you compromise?’

Josh dropped his head. ‘I try to be sensible. You were there, weren’t you? Of course you were there. Your boy was stressed up and you’d gone along for the ride to hold his hand. Not authorized, was it? Certainly a disciplinary offence, maybe court-martial, but you were there.’

She had reached into the back of his car and lifted the bag onto her lap.

‘Did you see actually see the killing?’

‘No.’

‘You saw a part of it, not the end of it?’

‘Yes.’

Josh said, ‘You didn’t see the killing. What you know is second hand, conjecture. Christ, I admire your guts. Without eyewitnesses, affidavits, evidence you can’t touch him. Forget it.’

She spat, ‘You’re pitiful.’

‘Understand power? Power runs like a big river. Go into that river and you drown. My best advice, let the dead sleep. If he was brought to Templer then he’s an asset. If he’s an asset then he’s protected. God, don’t you understand?’

The scorn on her face was like a blow. She was out of the car.

She unlocked the front door. He heard her call for her mother. He was drawn after her.

He stood in the doorway. She hugged her mother and the cat was against her legs. She had humiliated him. Compromise was another part of Josh Mantle’s history.

She went up the stairs and he saw where the carpet had been prised up and tacked back badly onto the steps. Adie Barnes shook his hand, grasping it in her small calloused fist. She let go to take a purse from her handbag.

‘There’s no charge,’ Josh said. ‘Let’s say I enjoyed a ride out in the country. She’s a lovely girl, Mrs Barnes.’

Adie Barnes busied herself in the kitchen.

He stood, awkward, and feeling like an intruder in the small front room. He thought she must have skipped work that day and laboured to remake her home. Someone must have been in to help her refit the units and shelves to the walls. The room was a shrine in photographs of her daughter.

‘It’s everything to her. They’ll take her back? It’ll be all right?’

He took the cup and saucer, and the plate with the cake. He wanted to be gentle. ‘She’ll need your patience and a long rest. Most of all she’s going to need love.’

He drank the tea and ate the cake. He heard the footsteps fast on the stairs, the opening and closing of the door and the clatter of the little front gate. The photographs were of Tracy Barnes as a recruit, sitting with the team at Brigade in Berlin, at Templer, in uniform, smiling, and crouched with a black dog. Josh hadn’t the courage for honesty.

He let himself out.

He drove away. He felt no achievement, no pleasure.

It was only a few minutes’ drive from the street to the car park close to the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins amp; Protheroe.

She was in a telephone box. There was a car down the road, two men in the car, one smoking and one talking into a mobile telephone. He saw the lustre of her hair, caught by a street lamp. He didn’t stop and shout at her, ‘Go home, stay there, he’s an asset and protected. Go home or you can be hurt. Forget it ever happened.’ He was used to marching into people’s lives and then walking away from them.

A bad taste of failure in his mouth, Julius Goldstein telephoned Raub. The file of Hauptman Dieter Krause showed no evidence of criminal activity in human rights. He reported, also, that pages of the file concerned with Hauptman Krause’s relationship with the Soviet officer, Major Pyotr Rykov, were not present, and a part of the separate file dealing with the military base at Wustrow. He told Raub that it was not possible from the files to find evidence of murder. He was authorized to return to Cologne on the late flight.

The most senior of the researchers escorted him from the basements. ‘You should not take it personally. If you wanted to know which teacher in a school in Saxony-Anhalt informed on his colleagues, then I could find you the answer. Which environment activist was beaten up because his wife betrayed him, which student reported on his colleagues, which poet infiltrated an arts group. I can tell you, names and dates and contact officers. Here, there is only the chaff of human misery, and that does not reach to the level of murder. They were busy in those last days, sanitizing the files, sterilizing the past. That is why, today, they swagger on the streets, certain of their safety. From what you looked for, from what is missing, I can tell you that the link between Hauptman Krause and Major Pyotr Rykov was sensitive in this matter of murder. If there was not guilt then the files would not have been cleansed. Is it important to you, this question of guilt?’

He stepped into the chilly floodlit yard. Julius Goldstein said, ‘The possibility of guilt is important because it can obstruct an advantage that we seek. My thanks to you, goodnight. The advantage is in the man, Rykov.’

‘Is that him?’

‘That’s our boy.’

The Briton and the American stood against the wall, a little apart from the guests in the salon where the Americans always entertained.

‘In the shadow of his man.’

‘I get the impression that the big shot doesn’t go to the toilet without the say-so of Rykov.’ The eyes of the Briton watered from the foul-smelling cigarettes around them. His diplomatic accreditation was for a second secretary (consular).

‘Use the soft tissue, imported, or the local ass scratcher – need a man with a sharp clear mind for the big decisions.’ The American, on the list submitted to the foreign ministry, was a cultural attache.

From where they stood, with soft drinks, they could see the line of guests filtering into the salon, past the handshakes of the ambassador and the deputy chief of mission. The minister, whose chest flashed ribbons, was in conversation with the deputy chief. The ambassador welcomed the short stocky Russian with the colonel’s insignia on his shoulders and the chest free of decoration colours. A heavy-built woman stepped forward hesitantly to meet the ambassador.

‘And brought his lovely wife with him.’

‘Our Irma – not what you’d call an ocean racer.’

‘More of a bulk carrier, Brad.’

‘Heh, look at that, David. Enjoy that.’

The minister had moved on to the centre of the salon, couldn’t have seen where he was headed. The Colonel had left his wife and was powering to him. The minister had blundered, stormy night and no navigation, into what Brad called the ‘recons’. They’d had eight different names in seven years, so Brad always won a laugh out of David with his name for the reconstructed KGB people. Eyes sparking, a stand-off, mutual hostility – military facing up to the ‘recons’. The Colonel had seen the opportunity of confrontation and come fast to his man.

‘You think they might actually fight, bare fist?’

‘I’m out of Montana, they used to have a betting game there. Put colours, for identification, on the back of a couple of rats which hadn’t been fed in several days, drop the rats in a sack and knot the top, tight. Bet on the winner.’

‘The loser’s dead?’

‘One rat lives. Where’d you put your money?’

Without finesse, Rykov had taken the arm of his minister and propelled him round like it was a parade-ground.

‘My paint’s going on Rykov’s back.’

‘Be a hard fight in the sack, he has to be clever and lucky. You rate him lucky enough – clever enough?’

‘I’m told he is. He wears a good face, a strong face.’

‘But you can’t see into the face. The way of this damn place, you never see behind the face of the man who matters…’

In the crowded room, the Briton and the American had eyes only for Colonel Pyotr Rykov. For the last four months, each, in his own way, through his own unshared channels, had sought to explain the man, unmask the character and analyse the influence. Both had failed. They were two veterans, middle-aged, heavy with experience; both had exploited the resources available to them to satisfy the hunger at Langley and Vauxhall Bridge Cross for hard information on the mind of Colonel Pyotr Rykov; both acknowledged that failure.

‘This guy the Germans are hawking…’

Droll. ‘Don’t, Brad, intrude on private grief.’

Chuckling. ‘Heh, is it right that a feisty little cat scratched his face? That’s pretty un-British manners.’

‘When’s he going across to your lot?’

‘A couple of weeks. The guest list’s the best and the brightest. They’re screaming for a profile on Rykov. He has undivided attention.’

They watched the Colonel. He was always a pace behind his minister, and they saw his lips move as if murmuring guidance. He was there for thirty-five minutes, the barest decency, before he was gone, slipping away with his minister and his wife, back into the frozen darkness of Moscow’s night.