He hissed again, into the ear of the man he held. ‘They interfere with her, they stop her, you are dead. Tell them.’
The youngest was trying to break free and his hands flailed towards the inside of his coat. The two older men hung grimly to his arms. She reached them.
‘Come on past. Then run.’
She went by them, past him and the man he held.
‘Run.’ He shouted again, at the three: ‘Stay your ground, stand where you are.’
Josh backed away, hanging on to the hair, pressing the metal end of the pen deep into the flesh, smelling the lotion on the man’s body, and the scent of sweat.
He backed, in steady movements, to prove control, twenty-five, thirty metres from them. There was only the rail beside them and then the rocks, the ice and the sea. He thought the man’s legs gave out on him and he had to hold him up by the hair. The man screamed. He manoeuvred him to the side of the pathway, and pitched him over the rail. Over the rail and onto the rock. His hand caught at a rock edge and Josh stamped hard, frozen sodden shoe, on it. The man slipped on the rock, on the ice, towards the water.
Josh ran until he caught her and grabbed her arm. He turned once. They were on the rocks, three of them, holding hands to make a chain, trying to pull the man back from the sea and the spray.
He ran with her until the breath died in him.
Krause had come.
Hoffmann was soaked, incoherent. ‘He would have shot me. Peters would have had him shoot me.’
Fischer, shaking, blurted, ‘I said that we should wait for you.’
Krause had gazed at the waves and the rocks, through the sleet, and at the small colour points of flowers in the water.
Siehl, shivering, whispering: ‘There was nothing we could do, we did the best that was possible.’
Peters, defiant, storming: ‘We had the chance. If through losing the chance it goes against us, then remember it was me who was prevented from taking the chance.’
Krause felt the cold strip his flesh and walked back up the pathway of the breakwater.
* * *
‘You were aged twenty, serving in a signals unit based in Heidelberg. It was forty years ago. You were that rare American who reckoned he had principles. You defected, took the big step and crossed the line, and you never knew how to retrace the step.’
Albert Perkins had driven into the Toitenwinkel district. The blocks of homes, with stained and weathered concrete outer walls, were sandwiched between the Autobahn and the railway line on one side, and bog marsh on the other. The damp was on the outer and inner walls of the stairway. The apartment, also wet, was a bedroom, a sitting room with a kitchen corner, a bathroom where he couldn’t have swung a cat with an outstretched arm. He had found the American. He had been told that the American would amuse him.
‘Famous for fifteen minutes, and that was forty years ago. One news conference and photocall. One debrief where you coughed out all you knew, and that was not much because a private first class, conscript, twenty years old, knew sweet damn all of anything classified that mattered. You’d have become like those Catholic Church converts, so sincere, so fervent and so boring. You embraced this awful quasi country like it was God’s gift to social engineering.’
There was no sign of a woman in the apartment on the sixth floor. The room was bare, bleak. The ashtrays were filled. There were books on the table, on shelves, on the floor.
‘It’s one thing to believe at the age of twenty in the interests of world peace being best served by the balance of military power, but at the age of twenty years plus fifteen minutes they’d squeezed out everything you knew about signals in Heidelberg. You had to start to make a new life here. Bright lad, graduate material if you’d been able to go home, but you couldn’t. Educated here, yes? Learned German, learned Russian, became more native than the natives. You were given a teaching post at the university in Rostock. What did you teach — English literature, American history? Found a little place, and convinced yourself you were a champion of peace, and that two Germanys would last forever.’
Albert Perkins had kept his coat on. The American sat in an old armchair. He had a small body. His legs seemed scrawny thin in his shapeless grey trousers. He hunched his shoulders forward and rubbed his hands incessantly as if that were the way to warm them. His head was big, the scalp shaven, and the veins ran riot patterns in his cheeks. He had thick pebble spectacles and one arm was held to the lens frame by Elastoplast. He smoked acrid cigarettes. Perkins bored on, never hurried himself to get to the point.
‘I expect you were quite a celebrity in the common room at the university — an American, gave the department a little international status, they’d have hung on your words. And you had the ideology, you believed in the rotten little neo-state. Natural step, wasn’t it, to inform on your academic colleagues? Not for money, not for privilege, not for power, but because you believed, in sincerity, in the need to protect the state from Fascist renewal. You’d have informed on anyone idiot enough to trust you, from the head of department to junior staff, from full-time students to part-time students. You had your codenames and your contact men in August-Bebel Strasse and the safe houses where you’d go, once a week or once a month, for the debriefs. Eva Krause, wife of Hauptman Dieter Krause, Stasi officer, was a part-time student.’
The big head jerked up and the stinking smoke from the cigarette billowed into Albert Perkins’s face.
‘Never bank on permanence, eh, that’s what I say, fatal to believe anything lasts for ever. The Wall came tumbling down. The wonderful little state ended in the gutter. Files were opened and identities were matched to codenames. You would have been slung out on your ear. Big job, big status, down the tube. What do you do? A bit of translation work if you can get it? You’re sixty years old, on the scrapheap because you backed the wrong horse, miserable mean little pension. Not much thanks for dishing the dirt on a part-time student — Eva Krause. What’s keeping you here? Let me list what you resent, shall I?’
Albert Perkins smiled, icily. It was not in his nature to feel pity. A man made his bed, he must lie on it. He stood in the American’s damp room and his presence emphasized the man’s failure.
‘You resent the new unemployment — two in five Rostock males, from the Rathaus statistics, out of work or being trained for work that does not exist. You resent the new poverty — the city is the poorest, as measured in per capita income statistics, in Germany. You resent the dumping of immigrants — gypsies, foreigners — in hostels in housing estates like this crap place. You resent the new crime — muggings, beatings, thievings, pick- pocketing, prostitution, protection racketeering. You resent the new drug culture — cannabis available and Ecstasy, crime syndicates bringing in the heroin and cocaine. You resent the new men in town — the Wessis come to take over the Rathaus, the police, the schools, business. Most of all, what you resent is the big message — everything you did in forty years was second rate, was rubbish, should be replaced. I think, my friend, that you should go home. Where is it? Is there an old mother there who’s never had a letter? You need me, my friend, because I can speak on your behalf to my American colleagues. I trade, life for me is a market-place. You talk to me about Eva Krause, and I talk to colleagues about forgetting the dumb stupidity of a twenty-year-old signals kid forty years ago.’
Albert Perkins believed the screw should be turned tightly, but always slowly. The maximum pain, the greatest hurt, was in the slow turning of the screw. He would come back the next day for his answer. A discussion on Eva Krause in exchange for letters being written to Immigration, Defense and the FBI. The American would brood on it overnight. He would be washed in sick sentimental memories of his mother and white bloody fences and apple bloody pies. The room was darkening. There was the glow of the single bar of an electric fire.
‘I’ll see myself out. You shouldn’t think of me as an enemy, was once but not now. You should think of me as your last best chance. There’s nothing left for you here. I’m tra
ding that chance for the dirt, what’ll make me laugh, on the wife of Hauptman Krause. Have a good evening.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He said he would drive us.’
‘Yes, he said that.’
‘Where the hell is he?’
‘You do not, Christina, have to use foul language.’
‘He said he would drive us and he isn’t here: He said he would watch every match I played and he was late last night and went early. He said he would bring me a racquet from London and there was no racquet.’
Eva said flatly, ‘Your father is very busy.’
‘What does that mean, “busy”? Why does he lie?’
‘You should not speak of your father like that. Are you ready?’
The girl, her daughter, with her ugly, snarling face, flounced up the stairs. Eva Krause stood by the front door and put on her coat. He had said there was a problem that could lose them everything. She checked in her handbag for the car keys. He had touched the sleeve of her coat and the gold bracelet on her wrist, as if they, too, could be lost. She waited and ificked her fingers in impatience.
Christina stamped down the stairs, her bag scraping against the paintwork of the wall, and she carried an armful of racquets. When Eva Krause had been a girl of fourteen years old, her sports kit would have gone into a big paper bag and she would have been proud to own one racquet.
‘You have everything? You have checked?’
‘I have everything except my father, who has lied to me.’ Eva Krause locked the door behind her.
Through the late afternoon, through the evening, the five men searched the city and watched the roads out of Rostock. Two at any one time on the exit roads to the south and west that could lead to Bad Doberan and Kropelin and on to Rerik, three at any one time cruising the central city streets. Easier for them to watch and search now because all of them knew the face of the young woman. For Krause, the time for the tennis match, second round, came and went. They watched the exit roads, they idled in their cars in the old city and the new city of Rostock. Each yearned to see her, recognize her, to have the second chance to finish with the problem.
* * *
He knocked. He gave his name quietly.
There was loud music and shouting and laughter from the floor above and the floor below. Seamen filled all the rooms of the pension except those on their floor. He thought the crew big enough to have brought a bulk carrier or a container ship to Rostock but he did not know whether their language was Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian.
Josh knocked, gave his name, unlocked the door.
He had, in the Army vernacular, torn a strip off her. He had put her in the car, swerved off down the road, come close to crashing a lorry because the tension was still eating into him, driven back to the pension, and marched her up the stairs as if she were a foul little brat spoiling a family outing. He had taken her to her room, given her his tongue, and locked her in. He had sat in his own room, cold and damp, on the bed, gripped his hands to contain the trembling, and failed.
He turned the key and carried in the food boxes and the beer cans, his bedding, the mattress and a pifiow.
He dropped the bedding and the mattress, used his heel to close the door behind him. He groped for the light switch. She was in bed, where he had told her to be. She had found more blankets from the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. Her clothes were scattered on the floor, her underwear, jeans, sweater and walking shoes. Only the shoulders of the pyjamas showed above the sheet and the blankets. He had made, again, a child of her. She hadn’t spoken to him in the car, hadn’t bloody thanked him, or apologized to him for rubbishing his advice. He had gone out only when the night closed on the city. She looked up from the pillows.
‘Have to eat — have to eat something, damned if you deserve anything.’
He was stern because he had been frightened fit to crap and angry because he had been frightened fit to piss. The big eyes gazed at him from the pale face, from the pillows.
He put the food boxes on the bed. She sat up for him and he rearranged the pillows behind her back, as he would have done for a sick child. The burgers would have cooled and the sauces would have congealed. He opened the boxes. She wore thin cotton pyjamas and he could see the shape of her beneath the material. He gave her the coat from the floor and she hooked it round her shoulders. Her face was filled with the burger and chips. He pulled the ring on a beer can, passed it to her, and she lifted her knees, gripped the can between them, against the blankets. He sat on the end of the bed.
Her mouth was full. She pointed with a chip at the bedclothes behind him, and the mattress.
‘What’s that for?’
He flushed. ‘I am sleeping in here.’
Her eyebrows arched, as if the life returned to her, the mischief. ‘Please yourself.’
He said, as if it was another speech, ‘You are not alone again, you are not out of my sight again.’
She ate, she thawed, she drank.
Through a full mouth, swallowing, ‘What do you do with yourself, when you’re not working?’
‘Don’t seem to have much time.’
‘I was only asking.’
‘I read a bit, in the evening, if I’ve the time.’
‘What do you read?’
‘Military history, and my law books — work for the morning.’
‘Is your work good?’
‘It’s dismal, but it’s what I have.’
‘What’s important to you?’
‘Important to me, Tracy, is to be my own man.’
She grinned, first time. ‘That matters?’
‘Some people, not many, say it does.’
‘Is that why you came here, to be “my own man”?’
‘Have you finished?’
She nodded. The last of the sauce from the last of the burger dripped onto her blankets. She reached for another can and he passed it her. He took the boxes, squashed them small and shoved them into the room rubbish bin. She watched him. He laid his mattress across the doorway. He came close to her, her eyes following him, and he bent and switched off the light. It took him moments to accustom himself to the light in the room, faint through the curtains. He sat on the end of her bed and pulled off his shoes and socks, his shirt and trousers. He folded each item and placed them next to his pillow, with his shoes. He stripped to his vest and underpants. He crawled into the cold of the bed, hugged himself for warmth. Her arm hung from below her blankets, near h head.
‘Josh. . .‘ A whisper.
‘Yes?’
‘You didn’t tell me. Is it why you came here, to be your own man?’
‘I’m pretty tired. Keep it till the morning.’
He heard the rhythm of her breathing.
‘Josh . .
‘Yes?’
‘What sort of team do we make?’
‘Pretty bloody awful.’
‘Josh . .
‘For God’s sake.’
‘A good enough team to break the bastards?’
‘Maybe.’
He rolled over from his back to his side, away from her and her hanging hand. He shivered.
‘Josh . .
‘I’m trying to get to sleep.’
‘Josh . . . If anyone ever called you a chatty old bugger, they lied.’
‘Goodnight, Tracy.’
He heard her finish the second can. She threw it away over the floor of the room. It clattered against the wall by the window. He pulled the blankets tighter on his shoulders.
Chapter Ten
‘I can’t help you. You have travelled from England? A great journey. I have been here for three years only. I was a church youth leader in Schwerin.’
He was a pleasant-faced young man. He shrugged. He stood at the gate across the road from the church. By the side of the house his wife hung washing on a line. There was a good wind off the sea and sunshine. Small children played at the woman’s feet.
‘I can’t h
elp you because I have never heard such a business spoken of in Rerik. I know the names of those who come to my church and they are the few in this town, the majority do not care to come. Those who worship with me have not talked of it.’
Josh sensed that, beside him, she sagged.
She had needed the help so that she would not have to bang on doors and traipse from road to road. They had talked about it in the car, the long drive on the small roads to the south, past the lone farms and the cranes pecking in the fields, the need to find the pastor because he would be able to unlock the doors.
‘I have to tell you, the past here, and everywhere through the East, is a closed book. You will not find people who wish to talk of the past. They were dark times and there are few who want light thrown on those times.’
He looked at her.
She was turning away. Her chin jutted in determination. It was a small community in a half-moon around the inner sea, bordered to the north by the peninsula. They had laid too great a weight on the pastor, at the heart of the community, opening doors that would otherwise be locked to them. She was walking away. He nodded to the young man, thanked him, for nothing, and there was pain on the young face that recognized the failure to help. Josh grimaced. He followed Tracy.
The voice called from behind him.
‘I came here three years ago when my predecessor died. There is somebody else who could perhaps be of assistance to you. There was a pastor who came to Rerik when my predecessor was away, he lives here now. He came every year to Rerik for twenty years. I cannot say that he would wish to talk of this matter.’
She was rooted still. Her head turned. She demanded and was given the name, the address, the direction.
‘People do not talk of the past, there is nothing of pride in the past.’
They left him frowning and walked by the old red-brick church with the steep tower where there was a nest box for kestrels. An elderly woman in a formal coat sat on a bench in the sunshine in the graveyard past the church. They walked on the small main street and a shop-keeper was sweeping hard at the snow on the pavement. A woman was pushing up the shutters from the front window of a craft shop. A workman from the council shovelled rubbish from the gutter into his wheeled bin. Josh could not sense the past here. Neat small homes and precious tidy shops. He could not sense that this was a place of murder in cold blood. They walked by the fenced gardens and the little wired compounds for chickens, and the sheds where a single pig was kept or a ewe or geese. It seemed to him to be a place of peace, but when he looked across the water, to the peninsula, he saw the faint shape of buildings among the trees.
The Waiting Time Page 20