The Waiting Time

by Gerald Seymour

  Willi Muller said, ‘He was near to the cars. I remember it very clearly because the clock was striking the hour. It was the moment after the last strike of the clock on the tower of the Sankt Johanniskirche that he broke from them. It was ten o’clock and he broke from them. I do not know where he found the strength, but he broke from them and ran from them. They did not know Rerik. Perhaps, if he had not been wounded, in the darkness he might have escaped from them, perhaps . . . I followed then as they searched. He tried to get into the house of Doktor Brandt, the school-teacher, and into the home of Doktor Gerber, the refuse administrator at the Rathaus. He was going towards the church. He tried the last time at the house of Doktor Schwarz, the engineer of the railway, he threw a stone at the window, and Doktor Schwarz came to his bedroom window and looked out at him, but did not open his door to him. Could you not have found one of them, all educated men, and taken a good statement? Why did you come for me? I thought — I remember what I thought — how was it that a spy or a saboteur had come so far from our frontier without support? Did he have no colleagues with him? He reached a small square between apartments near to the church. I cannot say whether he was attempting to reach the church. I came behind, I saw him in the square. He was puffing with his fingers on the ground as if to drag himself away, but the strength had gone from him. I watched. They ran forward with their torches and their guns to where the one who had come the fastest stood over him. I saw it. .

  Josh held the wheel. The page was passed and signed. It was as if he had been there, as she had been there before she had run. The young man stood beside him and took an old piece of bread from the cupboard under the sink, and chewed on it, and stared out at the lights where his home would be, and the lights of the car that were always with them.

  A tractor passed them, pulling a trailerload of beet and turnip. He saw, in the tractor’s lights, that Peters’ head was back against his seat, that his eyes were closed, that he was at peace. The tractor went by them. They were close to the sea, and he saw the change in the course of the trawler, swinging to the south west and coming for Rerik.

  ‘You do understand — of course, you understand, Dieter — the limitations of partnership. There are partners in any commercial organization, but there is a senior partner and a junior partner. It is the same as before. There was the rank of Hauptman and there was the rank of Feidwebel. That is not difficult to understand. I reckon a seventy—thirty split, only of course when I have the need of protection, no split when I do not need the protection, but you will do well. Seventy—thirty is good for you. I think it will work satisfactorily.’

  Krause stopped the car and walked to the beach. The sand was soft under his feet and the grass fronds blew against his legs. He could see, when he squinted and strained, the shape of the man in the wheelhouse. He wondered if Eva had helped Christina pack her bag, or whether Eva was in the kitchen, ironing the short white dress that Christina would wear. He felt love for them and the sand blew from the beach onto his face, into his eyes, and the tears flowed on his cheeks. He held the Makharov in his hand. He did not try to wipe the tears and the sand from his beard and from the stubble growth. He looked out beyond the beach, beyond the fall of the waves on the tideline, towards the trawler. He turned quickly and walked back to the car.

  He opened Peters’ door.

  Peters’ eyes were closed. He smiled. ‘Did you need to piss, Dieter? Are you frightened? Myself, I killed an Armenian and a businessman from Stuttgart, and, I tell you in truth, I did not feel the need to piss.’

  He placed the barrel tip of the Makharov pistol under Peters’ chin, caught the shoulder of his coat and jerked him out of the seat. He took him, fast, across the road and onto the beach. He could not see the shock spread on Peters’ face, or the wide eyes. He heard the babble voice.

  ‘Eh, fuck, what’s the game? Eh, cunt, what you doing? Eh, doesn’t have to be seventy—thirty. Can talk. Try sixty—forty. You’re shit, Krause. Can’t wipe your arse on your own. Eh, Dieter, you misunderstood. Dieter, we can deal. Dieter, Dieter, please. We can go fifty—fifty, no problem. . . I stayed with you, no other fucker did. Dieter, please . .

  He dragged Peters across the soft loose sand and across the hard wet sand to the sea. The chill of the water was at his waist and in his groin. Peters did not fight when he tripped him. He held Peters’ head under the flow of the waves and felt his legs thrash against his own and he did not weaken his grip.

  The body floated face down. The tide had turned. Dieter Krause stood on the beach and squeezed the water from his trousers, emptied the water from his shoes. The body drifted on the tide away from the beach. He went back to the car. The last business was ahead of him. Afterwards, Dieter Krause would go to America and he would stand in front of the audiences at the Pentagon and Langley and the Rand Corporation, and hear the sweet song of their applause, and behind him, huge, would be the magnified photograph of his best friend.

  He was not believed.

  The photographs were held in front of Pyotr Rykov’s face, and the light shone, fierce, into his eyes. The small blood stream dribbled from his mouth. His tie was taken and his belt of polished leather and the laces of his shoes.

  He tried to ward away the panic.

  ‘I have never seen her before. I have never met her before, never heard her name before. She came to me on the street, said something about the weather, something idiotic, and was gone. I have never had contact, in any form, with foreign espionage agents. I am a patriot, I am a true son of the great Mother Russia. I could not countenance the betrayal of my country. I do not know why she approached me.’

  The panic, cold sweat on his back and in the folds of his stomach, was because he knew he was not believed.

  ‘I fucked the Krause woman, yes, but that does not make me a spy. She was a good fuck, and her husband was an arsehole, and I gave her what he did not give her, but that does not make me a traitor.’

  They did not believe him.

  They took him from the interrogation room to the top of the flight of stairs that led down to the cell block. He was pushed and fell, bouncing on the cold concrete of the steps. Stunned, frightened, he did not know why the plot had been made against him. The cell door slammed shut.

  * * *

  Josh felt so old, so tired, so flattened. It was what they had come to hear, it was why he had made his commitment. He listened.

  ‘He was turned over from his stomach to his back. The one who I think had caught him turned him over with his boot. The one with the beard stood over, stood above his feet. I watched it and I cannot forget it. They shone the torches into his face and they laughed. The superior one, the others called him by the title of Hauptman, looked down on him as if he were something to be played with. I was fifteen years old. All I knew of death at that time was what we did to the fish on the deck of my father’s boat. There was no warning of it, he kicked up into the balls of the man with the beard, and the man screamed out. Not fear, but pain. I saw it. He was doubled up, swearing. He aimed his gun down at the young man. I wanted to look away and I could not. One of them put his shoe on the throat of the young man. There was one shot. A jeep came and the lights found me where I stood. A gun was aimed at me and I had lost the chance to run. There was a Soviet officer in the jeep, and there was a big argument. The Soviet officer said they should not have shot him, should have kept him for interrogation. They threw his body into the back of the jeep, and they made me hang on the tail of it. We went back to the pier. Three lobster pots, with heavy stones, were tied to the body and I took the trawler back out into the middle of the Salzhaff and the body was put over the side. When we came back to the pier they made me show them where I lived. My father and my mother and my sister were in my house. The superior one, the bearded one, the Hauptman, said that my father would lose his boat if I ever spoke of what I had seen and what I had known. My father told him that he would send me away. My father did not fight for me, nor my mother, nor my sister. I was sent away to be
with a man my father called a friend. I was sent out. I have never lost the shame.’

  It was the statement of murder. He signed the evidence statement of murder in cold blood. She had the notepad. She pulled open her coat and she hitched up her sweater and T-shirt. He saw the pale skin of her stomach as she slid the notepad under the waist of her jeans. against her skin. The triumph blazed on her face.

  Josh pointed up to the radio that was nailed above the cooking stove. He said, softly, ‘Who hears the radio, Willi?’

  The mumbled answer. ‘Rescue, they hear it, the marine police, Customs.’

  ‘Can you hook into Rostock police?’

  ‘For a year we have been able to — they ask us to radio them if we have suspicion of narcotics’ smuggling from the sea. We can reach the police at Rostock.’

  ‘Do it, please — and, Wihi, thank you.’

  The young man stood. He moved as if the life were beaten from him. He went to the radio, switched it on and turned the frequency dial. There was the howl and the crackle and the static. Just old, just tired, just flattened, Mantle took the microphone.

  ‘For Police Control at Rostock — this is Warnemunde-based trawler, identification call sign whisky alpha roger, figures zero seven nine. Are you hearing me, Police Control at Rostock? This is Warnemunde-based trawler, whisky alpha roger zero seven nine.. . Are you receiving?’

  Albert Perkins leaned far back in his chair.

  ‘You people, you won’t mind me saying it, you try too hard... All this business about getting to top table, sitting down with us and the Agency, you’re trying to run before you’ve learned to walk. Don’t take offence, nothing personal.’

  His feet were on the table and the soles of his shoes faced Ernst Raub. In short bursts he had, through the late afternoon and the early evening, maintained the mischief. A technician at the control desk, sharp movement, hunched forward and pressed the headphones closer to his skull.

  ‘Really, you’d have been better advised — and I speak in friendship to give this sort of business to the professionals. I mean, passing over all the Iranian stuff for the Saarbrucker Strasse address was ridiculous. We benefited hugely, but where did the trading get you? You’re out of your depth, and it shows.’

  The technician, hand above his head, waved for his supervisor and passed him a second pair of headphones.

  Raub broke. ‘Yesterday, for twenty years, because it was necessary, we obeyed your patronizing instructions. Today, for twenty years, because it is advantageous, we tolerate your arrogant postures. Tomorrow, the future, we will ignore your—’

  The supervisor threw a switch on the console. The voice boomed out, from the loudspeakers, across the control room.

  ‘I am Joshua Mantle, British national. I am with Tracy Barnes, British national, and Willi Muller, German national. I am bringing the trawler, call sign whisky alpha roger zero seven nine, to Rerik harbour. Arrival at Rerik is estimated at twenty-one thirty hours. I require police assistance at that location for the arrest of Dieter Krause — kilo roger alpha uniform sugar echo — former Hciuptman in the Rostock offices of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, for the murder on the twenty-first of November nineteen eighty- eight of Hans Becker, formerly resident at Saarbrucker Strasse, Berlin.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Albert Perkins swung his feet off the table. ‘A shame, seems tomorrow may be too late.’

  The voice, distorted, had faded but came again.

  ‘The charge against Dieter Krause will be supported by the written and signed statement of Willi Muller, trawler deck-hand, a witness to the murder. Over. Out.’

  The voice died, was gone. The static screamed through the control room until the supervisor flicked the switch and killed it.

  ‘Bad luck, an open transmission, so many people would have heard that. How embarrassing. Can’t shove that under the carpet, can’t ignore evidence . . .‘ Albert Perkins stood. He smiled abject sympathy. ‘I’d much appreciate accompanying you, hitching a ride down there.’

  He drove on the road between Kagsdorf and Rerik. He could no longer see the trawler. There were high trees beside the road. It did not seem important to Dieter Krause that he could not see the lights of the trawler. He knew its destination.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘If he were able to be here, he would be.’

  ‘Stupid selfish bastard. He knows I never play at my best when he doesn’t watch me — where is he?’

  Eva Krause hit her daughter across the face. She picked up the bag and the tennis racquets and threw them out onto the pavement. She dragged her daughter into the street and locked the door behind her. She wore the old clothes, taken from the one suitcase she had kept. The skirt was long and plain. The shoes were imitation leather and would let in water if it rained. The blouse was a size too small and buttoned modestly to the neck, the coat was thin and dull. She was the FDGB organizer, the woman who sat in the meetings at the Neptun shipyard and dreamed of the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district, the wife of the Hauptman who worked from the second floor of the building on August-Bebel Strasse. She tossed the bag and the racquets onto the back seat of her car, and pushed her daughter down into the front seat. The skirt, the shoes, the blouse, the coat had been the best clothes she had owned. She had seen them that day. She always wore her best clothes when she went to the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district. She had seen them on the video, scattered on the floor, that day, beside the bed.

  She drove. Her daughter was sullen quiet beside her.

  Josh gave the wheel to Willi Muller. He felt faint. The wind had gone and the sea had calmed. He thought he might be sick and went out onto the deck. They were coming past the peninsula that masked the lights of Rerik. The stink of the fish carcasses was around him. He reached for the spotlight, aimed it at the peninsula shore, and called to Willi to give him the power. The beam burst out across the water and onto the shoreline of the peninsula. The light found the beach where the boy would have landed, and came to the squat concrete bunker where the radar had been housed, which had been his target. The trawler edged along the coast. Near to the end, where it was little more than a spit of sand and dune grass, the beam of the spotlight settled on a low tree, broken and dead, and a big bird flapped mutely away beyond the range of the cone of light. Tracy was beside him, and put her hand on his arm.

  Josh said bleakly, You’re never free of ghosts, Tracy, they cling to you and they suck you dry. You should never walk with ghosts.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s right bullshit, Josh.’

  They rounded the headland. The lights of Rerik were ahead of them, across the Salzhaff. He called out to Willi Muller that he should switch off the lights on the trawler, all the lights, and the night darkness fell on them. . . He thought the boy had died for nothing.

  ‘We did it, Josh, we did it together. God, I’ve been a proper little bitch to you, don’t think I deserved you. You’ve been fantastic, wonderful.’ She lifted her head, she kissed his cheek. He stared out towards the lights and the piers of Rerik. ‘You all right, Josh?’

  He pushed her hand off his arm.

  He took the Walther pistol from his pocket, checked it, armed it.

  He called through the wheelhouse door: ‘Willi — the officer, the Hauptman, will be on the pier. He will kill to preserve your silence. I am in the front. She is behind me, you are behind her. We stand in front of you, Willi.’

  They came in fast towards the piers.

  He stood where the longest one rose from the shingle and weed of the beach. Josh saw him. There was a light close to the road, behind him, that outlined Dieter Krause. Josh saw that he stood motionless at the far end of the longest pier.

  There was no fear, no elation.

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

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

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

  * * *

  The trawler boat nudged the pier.

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

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

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

  The aim of the pistol locked.

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

  The light burst from behind Dieter Krause.

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

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