The Waiting Time (44 page)

* * *

They were on the road between Heiligendamm and Kuhlungsborn. There was flat swamp ground between the road and the beach, few trees, the cloud had lifted and the wind had dropped. Away across the sea, the lights of the trawler were sharp, bright. The voice beside him dripped on.

‘With the ending of the discipline, with the coming of the
wessis,
so many more opportunities have arrived. I am not talking, Dieter, about running cigarettes out of the East, as the Vietnamese do, and I am not talking about shipping a few cars into the East, as the Poles do, or the trading in immigration from Romania, or keeping whores on the streets, as the Turks do. I am talking, Dieter, about the big opportunities that can be taken from our partnership. Weapons, Dieter. The East floats on weapons. Not rifles, Dieter, not pistols. Weapons that can be bought cheap and sold expensive. Missiles, air-to-air and air-to-ground and ship-to- ship. Heavy mortars. Artillery pieces. Armoured vehicles. If you have dollars they will clear out an armoury for you, you can buy anything. You can go south, to Libya, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Algeria. You can name your price. Chemical, nuclear, anything can be bought in the East and anything can be sold. But, Dieter, I do not want eyes watching me. I wish to be protected. I think we have a good partnership.’

Beside him, Peters belched.

The suitcase was at the front door of the house on the
Altmarkt,
packed. She was on the boat with the red and green navigation lights, and she had the power to tip the suitcase empty.

Across the seascape was the land, with the car’s headlights, always with them. But ahead, on the closing horizon, was the concentration of lights.

She was taking him home to his past. His body shook.

She reached for him. She caught the waterproof coat he wore and rammed his body back against the planks of the wheelhouse, and again. He gasped.

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
H
au
ptman,
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.’