The Waiting Time

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘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 Bf7. 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 café 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 ca
me 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.’