The Waiting Time (31 page)
Authors: Gerald Seymour
Tags: #Mystery & Detective - General, #Fiction - Espionage, #Fiction, #Mystery fiction, #Thriller, #Large print books, #Large type books, #Large Print, #Intrigue, #Espionage
Promoted to
Oberstleutnant
1984, transfer to CounterEspionage. 1986, authorization for ‘friendship’ with Major Pyotr Rykov, Wustrow Base, w. of Rostock. Promoted to
Hauptman
1987. Following incursion of UK agent, Hans Becker, to Wustrow Base (run, non-authorized, by I Corps, west Berlin) shot agent dead after capture — 21.11.1988.
There had been sufficient light for him to see the way that the back of the boy’s head, against the dirt and the grass of the square, had exploded. Before they had dragged the boy away, they had all knelt on the ground and picked in the earth for the tissue of the boy’s brain and for the fragments of skull bone. Earth was kicked over the blood. . . He had had the pain in his groin, and he had not felt bad then at shooting the boy or dropping the body into the night sea . . . He had felt the pain, the next day, when he had been called to the office of the minister, Mielke. Made to wait in the outer corridor, eyed with contempt by officers who used the corridor and the secretaries at their typewriters in the outer office. Marched into the inner office, as if he were a prisoner. Standing, the ache still in his groin, blurting answers to the questions of the old man. Then the monologue of abuse from Mielke. Through the cigarette smoke, he was an incompetent cunt. He had shivered as the smoke had played at his nose, trembled, because he had thought he had lost his power...
Believed to have sanitized personal MfS file, and Becker file, Dec. 1989. Unemployed. 1992, worked in Rostock bank (four months), dismissed. Unemployed. 1995, hardware salesman (on commission). 1996, offered himself to BfV, Cologne.
He had sat for two hours in the public hallway of the BfV complex. He had himself typed the letter he had handed in at the desk, and with the letter had been the torn out photograph from the newspaper. He had sat there for two hours, a man forgotten, without status. A secretary, a plump and grey haired woman so similar to the one he had slept with in Bonn so many years before, had come to the public hallway and given him a security pass and escorted him to the elevator. The faces had been suspicious and sober. He had talked of his friendship with Pyotr Rykov as the spools of a tape recorder turned. He had given the name of a secretary in the Foreign Ministry, and many years before the woman had played her fingers in the hair of his chest and whispered love. They had changed the tape three times. . . A week later he had been called back to Cologne, escorted with deference to the room of a senior official. There had been sandwiches of Scotch smoked salmon and white wine from the Rhine. He had been welcomed, his power had returned. He remembered the sick feeling of relief as he had driven back again to Rostock. On the autobahn he had made the pledge to himself, over and over, repeated and repeated, that he would never, a second time, lose the power...
* * *
· . Thank you, Fleming, very concisely put. I feel all of us now know Dieter Krause, share his skin with him...’
It was a short meeting and would produce, as the assistant deputy director was to inform the deputy director, Olive’s finest hour.
To draw it together — Albert Perkins, in Rostock, provides us with back-up should the pair, Mantle and Barnes, fail to provide evidence of murder against Krause. The indication, as of this moment, they are not close to that evidence. The back-up, the cuckolding of Krause by Rykov, could be used to discredit Krause’s address in Washington next week. . . of course he knew, he was a ranking intelligence officer, he would have known. Vindictive, bitter, humiliated, spreading lies . . . Not much of a back-up, but perhaps enough to throw doubt on his veracity. Is the back-up, a salacious film, worth that amount of money?’ The assistant deputy director was due at the ballet and would have to join his wife after the performance had started.
‘I can push it through the books, no problem, bounce it out of any number of budgets. But, it’s more than half a year’s salary for a junior executive officer. Personally, I’d say there’s better things to spend our money on.’ The woman from Resources was anxious to be home to relieve the child minder of responsibility. It was the third successive evening that she had telephoned to beg the girl to stay the extra hour.
‘If you believe a little extramarital on the part of his wife with Rykov is going to faze our American friends, then you are on another planet. I see no reason, none at all, why such nonsense would diminish Krause’s standing in Washington. They’re all at it there, screwing like rabbits. Sorry, but the money would be wasted.’ From North America Desk.
‘My own view, it would be cheaper for Perkins to get his kicks down in Soho, give him a bunch of luncheon vouchers and pack him off to get an eyeful if it’s films he needs. I vote against.’ The head of Russia Desk was due to collect his serviced car from the garage, and if he were not there in 25 minutes the garage would have closed.
‘Sorry, Fleming, but that’s the verdict of colleagues. Perkins shouldn’t take it personally, it’s been good ferreting. Thank you all for your time.’
The assistant deputy director shovelled his papers into his briefcase. Fleming stood grimly. The head of Russia Desk scraped back his chair. The stenographer folded away her pad. Resources was half way to the door. The head of North America Desk smiled sheepishly at Fleming. . . and Olive Harris still sat and she rapped her pencil hard on the table.
‘I’ll take them,’ she said. ‘I’ll take those videos because they’re cheap at the price . . I find it sad and extraordinary that none of you recognize their value.’
He heard her footfall, and the knock.
‘Josh.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been having a good cry?’
‘Actually. .
‘It wasn’t true, Josh, not a word of it, but it was what you wanted to hear. Right? You wanted a bloody good sob story, and I gave it you. I am what I am, Josh, take it or leave it. What you see, Josh, is what you get. You fell for it, Josh, all gift wrapped. So, don’t try again to package me, put me in a little slot where you can get all bloody sentimental. There was no baby, Josh and no abortion. Because they killed Hans Becker, and that’s going to have to be good enough for you, I’m going after those bastards. And, I’m hungry...’
He heard her go back to her room.
He had watched Christina’s victory. He had kissed her, had congratulated her, had left Eva to take her home.
Dieter Krause was not more than five minutes late at the meeting in the café on Augusten Strasse. Siehl was there, and Fischer, and Peters. They smoked and drank beer. They had all heard on the radio that a man had fallen to his death in Lichtenhagen. He had tried, himself, a dozen times to ring the mobile telephone of the former
Leutnant.
He sat with his back to the door, and had not heard the door. He turned because of the smell. It was a moment, in the half-lit corner of the café, before he recognized Hoffmann.
Klaus Hoffmann’s hair was messed across his forehead. His eyes were reddened, those of a man who has wept without control. The vomit stains were on his jacket and across the thighs of his trousers.
‘You smell like a fucking pigsty,’ Peters said.
‘Where have you been, Klaus?’ he asked. There was, in that second of time, a hesitation in Dieter Krause.
Hoffmann said, a distant voice. ‘I walked. You see, friends, I saw him fall. It was not I that pushed him. I spoke to him, a few words, as he went into the block. I knew it was him because his name was called from the apartment, there were people to see him. He broke away from me and took the elevator. I saw him on the roof. . . I have to go home because people have come from the West and attempt to claim our house. . . The man who threw me onto the rocks from the breakwater, he tried to reach Brandt on the roof. They have come from the West and have an order from the court for the restitution of the property that their grandfather abandoned in 1945. When I spoke to him at the door of the block he had such terror. I told him that we watched him. I made the terror real for him. I did not know we could make such fear, still. . . They have come to take my house and I am going, now, home to Berlin...’
Dieter Krause said, chill, ‘You walk away from us, Klaus, and you are walking to the Moabit gaol.’
Klaus Hoffmann’s manic laugh rang through the room. ‘Still, the threats, as if you believe that nothing has changed. Too much has changed. I walked and wept and was sick because I realized what had changed.. . Then, I had an order. Then, I could hide myself behind the instruction of my
Hauptman.
Then, I could say I was doing my duty as told me by my superior. . . Now, I have no order and no instruction and no duty, and I am going to my home in Berlin.’
He turned on his heel. He took his smell into the street. He left them, stunned and silent, behind him.
Only when the black shadows came to the streets had Josh left his room to get fast food for the two of them.
He had taken the food and his bedding to her room.
They had not spoken as they had eaten, nor as he had made his bed up.
He lay on his back in the darkness and stared towards the ceiling he could not see.
‘For God’s sake, Josh . . .‘ The night sounds of the city murmured through the window, through the curtains. He lay on his back with his head in his locked hands.
‘For Christ’s sake, Josh — so, the man fell. .
He watched the man go over the edge of the roof.
‘So, you wouldn’t talk to me and walk with me, and I made you by stripping...’
He watched her body hit by the wind on the beach.
‘So, tomorrow is another day, maybe tomorrow we get lucky.’ Josh said, quietly, ‘You have to earn luck.’
‘Have we? Have we earned it?’
‘Not yet,’ Josh said.
Chapter Thirteen
Josh drove.
They had come over the heavy wood bridge at Wolgast, crossed the wide Peene-Strom. He had driven for an hour and a half east from Rostock. She checked the map. She told him where to turn off the big highway that headed for the Polish border.
Until then the talk had been desultory, as if both were too bruised from the day and the night before. But when the forest closed around the road, high, dense pines, straight, towering trees that hid the light, Mantle told her the history of the place.
‘On the night of the seventeenth of August nineteen forty- three, five hundred and ninety-six aircraft were sent here, everything that could fly from the bomber bases in the east of England. The target was Peenemunde where there was the programme for the development of the V2 rocket. There was a clear moon, a rotten night to come. If the target of Peenemunde had not been so critical, they wouldn’t have been asked to fly on a night like that. They were told that if they didn’t crack the target then they’d have to come back and do it all again, face the air defence again, and keep coming back till they’d cracked it. There were three target areas at Peenemunde, pushed up close to each other. The strike had to be really exact.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I read about it. The pilots of the bombers, of course, had never heard of Peenemunde. They weren’t told what was on the ground, just that it was important. There was a firestorm, the casualties were horrendous. But the bomber crews took bad casualties as well, because of the moon, lost forty-nine aircraft over the target and on the way back.’
‘Is that how you spend your evenings, reading about what’s gone?’
‘I read history because it’s important to me. The target area was comprehensively hit. The best of the German rocket scientists were here, and they were creating what was to be the best weapon of the war. Even though the target was pulped, the science survived. The scientists, after nineteen forty-five, were snatched by the Russians and the Americans. Neal Armstrong’s walk came from here, and Apollo and Challenger and the shuttle, and Gagarin and the space stations. It’s all about Peenemunde.’
Tracy said, distantly, ‘Did your wife leave you because you lectured her on what’s gone?’
He said, quietly, ‘I can’t help what drives me. Out of history comes everything. Codes, morals, ethics, they’re all learned from history. Why we’re here today, why we have to be here, is because of the need to learn the lessons of history.’
‘You were better quiet, better when you didn’t lecture.’
‘Please, Tracy, listen. History breeds principles. The history of Peenemunde is about fantastic scientific achievement, but it’s also about slave-labour compounds and about starvation and about men working until they died of exhaustion. That was wrong. The people who were here then, they closed their eyes to what was wrong, believed the wrong — slave labour — did not matter. They wanted to ignore principles, but principles are the core of life.’
‘Did she have to listen to your lectures before she left?’
‘You come to Peenemunde, Tracy, and you learn what was wrong, you learn about when principles were ignored. To get the rockets to London, to develop the science to put a man on the moon, slave labourers died of starvation and exhaustion. It’s the same story. It’s why I’m here. It was wrong to shoot Hans Becker. That is a principle and I try to live by it.’
‘Me, I only want to see the bastard hammered.’
‘You have to know why. You have to hold the principle as faith.’
She closed her eyes and turned away. They went through Trassenheide and Karlshagen, and he saw the cemetery with the exact lines of the stones, and he came to Peenemunde where the bombers had flown. Without principles his life would have been emptied.