The Waiting Time (7 page)

He dialled the number that Mrs Adie Barnes had given him.

‘Hello.’

‘Could I speak, please, to Corporal Barnes, Tracy Barnes?’

A hesitation as if, so early in the morning, her brain was grinding. ‘Who is it?’

‘A friend, a solicitor.’

He knew that block, knew where the call had been answered. He could hear the radios screaming behind her and the shouting, bawling, hollering.

Softly, and with a hand cupped over the mouthpiece, the voice said, ‘Needs friends, locked up, in the cells, ‘cos she bashed that German.’ A voice change, loud and disinterested. ‘Any calls for the corporal are to go to the main camp number, and you should ask for the Adjutant’s office.’

He rang off.

He had showered early. He lived in a small part of a large house, the roof space converted into two rooms. There was a kitchenette area in one and a wash-basin in the other. The lavatory and shower, no bath, were down the stairs. If he used them early he didn’t have to queue. He shaved carefully. It seemed important that day that he should look his best. When he had shaved, checked in the mirror that he had not cut himself, he went to his wardrobe.

There were only two suits to choose from. There was the one he wore five days a week at Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe and there was the darker one, which carried the story of Joshua Frederick Mantle’s recent life. Worn for the job interview eighteen months before — a formality because Mr Greatorex had already offered him office-boy employment. Worn for her funeral twenty months before, a bright May day with daffodils still out in the graveyard. Worn for the appointment with the specialist and for the wedding thirty-three months before, autumn leaves scrambling against the steps of the register office and only enough witnesses behind them to make it decent. Bought and worn for the leaving party in the mess a very long time before, and he had been a washed-up casualty of the ‘peace dividend’. From the wardrobe he took the dark suit and the white shirt hanging beside it. He laid them on his bed, which he had already made — it was the routine of his life, from far back, to make his bed as soon as he was out of it. Back at the wardrobe, he glanced over his ties. Two of silk, both from Libby, both for his birthday, but they remained hanging on the bar. His fingers touched two of polyester, Army Intelligence Corps and Royal Military Police, then left them. Two from the high street in Slough, neutral ties that gave away nothing of him, of his past, green and navy. He took the green one, and placed it on the shirt, beside the suit, on the bed. In a cardboard box on the floor of the wardrobe was the shoe polish, the brushes and the duster. He took the better black pair of shoes, the pair from the interview, the funeral and the wedding, the pair he didn’t wear in court or at the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe. The routine was to clean his shoes each morning, to spit on the polish and to buff the shoes to brilliance. It did not matter to him that it was raining, that the shoes would be quickly dulled. He dressed.

He had the radio on, not for music or the weather forecast or the early news bulletins of the day but for the traffic information. It was important to him to know how long a journey would take him — another of the discipline routines that governed him. He took little comfort from the radio in the evenings, seldom used it, which was peculiar for a man who lived alone and who had reached the statistical age at which he had entered the last quarter of his life. It was as if he had rejected the outside living world that the radio would have brought him. He switched it off, then the bedside light.

He stood for a moment in the gloom.

Downstairs the lavatory flushed — perhaps the seed company’s representative or the computer programmer. Both the other tenants on the floor below had offered friendship, been deflected, and the family on the ground floor. They had all tried to build a relationship, drinks at Christmas, small-talk on the stairs, and had not been rewarded. Joshua Frederick Mantle distrusted the hold of a friendship, the tie of a relationship. He had adored his mother, shot dead in Malaya. He had respected his father, Military Medal pinned on his chest by the King. He had made his commitment to the Intelligence Corps, had been transferred out compulsorily after the matter in Belize. He had buried himself in the work of Special Investigation Branch, had been made redundant in the ‘downsizing’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had loved Libby, sick, then dead and buried. He had no desire to be hurt again.

There were few books in the sitting room, none recreational. He had hardly touched the fat volume in his hand for seven years. It was
The Manual of Military Law, Part 1,
and he scanned the section relevant to assault. Then it was
Stone’s Justices’ Manual,
then
Criminal Procedures and Sentencing in Magistrates’ Courts.
He had a tight memory, no need for note-taking. The books went back on the shelf. He locked the door of the flat behind him.

All that he owned, all of his life, was left in the two small rooms behind the locked door. Mrs Adie Barnes, red-eyed, had told him that her Tracy was in trouble.

He went to his car, humble and old, parked on the street, and wiped the windows with a cloth. A bit of his history stirred in him.

The cell was cold. The central heating did not function. She had refused the blanket. The tray he had brought, cereal and milk, three slices of bread, jam and a mug of tea, was untouched. There was an electric fire in the cell that he used, but he had not demanded heating for her. He sat in front of her on a hard chair with his overcoat across his shoulders. The ceiling light beamed down on her, as it had all night.

‘I think you reckon you’re being a clever little girl, Tracy. I think you reckon you can see me off. Did my arithmetic just now. It’s forty-nine hours since you last slept, it’s forty-something hours since you last ate. You’re exhausted, famished, but you’re conceited enough to believe you can see me off. Don’t you believe it. I’m here for as long as it takes. . . Only me, Tracy, nobody else. The Colonel isn’t going to chuck me out, nor the old fart, nor the limp dick with the dog, because I have control of you. Inside the wire they all hate you because they’ve had to bluster their apologies to their honoured guest, washed their hands of you. Outside the wire doesn’t count. Nobody’s in your corner, Tracy. You’re alone. Do you hear me? Alone. So shall we stop being clever and start to be sensible? I want to know if you have evidence of murder. What is the evidence of the murder in cold blood of Hans Becker at the hand of Hauptman Dieter Krause? Is there evidence?’

Goldstein watched him. For an hour they had sat in the outer room. Raub had the ranking and it was for him to make the report to the senior official.

They waited. They were brought coffee and biscuits.

Goldstein thought he looked better, as if he had slept well in the house where the BfV always accommodated him when he came to Cologne, as if the anger at the scratch scars had slackened. They had been up since dawn and were the first appointment of the senior official’s day.

There was movement, at last, at the door. It was half opened, as if a final word was exchanged.

Goldstein
marveled
at the calmness of the man. He regarded Krause as predictable and boring, but the calm was incredible because his future would have been thrashed out by Raub and the senior official. If they had decided, over the last hour, that Krause was to go forward then it was Washington in two weeks
and his position was confirmed. If they had decided to cut the link then he was back to Rostock, removed from the
‘safe’
house, the money dried up, the account closed and he was on the streets, grafting with the rest of the Stasi scum for his food and shelter.

Raub called them in.

The inner room was filled with the senior official’s smoke. Goldstein coughed hard. A junior man had to go through all the exit security from the building and huddle in the winter cold in the back yard where the vehicles were parked to smoke his cigarette, then return to the building through the entry security. The official flapped his hand to clear the smoke cloud in front of his face and waved Krause to a chair. Krause settled . . . and Goldstein wondered whether he would have found old Gestapo men merely boring.

The senior official stared down at his notes, then eased the spectacles from his face. ‘I am happy to hear, Doktor Krause, that your injuries are not severe. Notwithstanding, the attack raises important questions, and those questions must be answered.’

‘Ask me the questions and I will answer them.’

‘Is it accepted, Doktor Krause, that the BfV has invested heavily in you, money, time and resources, and in prestige?’

‘As I am often told.’

‘The basis of that investment was your guarantee to us that there were no matters in your past work that could be uncovered that would show criminal violation of human rights. Correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘I asked you at the beginning of our association for a most detailed brief on your work with the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. I asked whether there were acts in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered. You understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘Is there, in your past, an act in criminal violation of human rights that might in the future be uncovered?’

Where he stood by the door Goldstein could see little of Krause’s face. He could recall what the girl had said, the accusation she had made. In the last, long hour, Raub would have given the exact words to the senior official.

‘There is nothing in my past that could be uncovered.’

‘The woman in England made an allegation of murder. Yes?’

Goldstein fancied a smile came to Krause’s face.

‘The same accusation was made by a security man when I was in the medical area. They had detained us there until he arrived. I asked him, “Where is your evidence?”’

‘If I order a further search of the archive material of the MfSZentrale at Normannen Strasse...?’

‘You would find nothing.’

‘If you lied to me, Doktor Krause, if evidence were ever produced, there could be no protection.’

Goldstein craned forward and saw the grin play on Krause’s face. Goldstein thought the man lied, and spoke the truth: the lie, that no criminal act in violation of human rights had been committed; the truth, that no evidence would be uncovered.

‘There is no evidence.’

The senior official stubbed out his cigarette and came round his desk. He shook Krause’s hand with warmth. ‘Thank you, Doktor Krause. You have now a few days at home to prepare for Washington? We place great importance on that opportunity.’

Krause said, without emotion, ‘I tell you very frankly, if people come to Rostock and make a difficulty, come to make a problem, then I do not wish to involve you. If they come to Rostock and try to make a difficulty then they will find pain, but they will not uncover evidence.’

‘Good day, Doktor Krause.’

He pulled up at the gate. The fence either side of it was higher than he remembered, embellished with more shiny wire coils on the top and where the grass grew at the base. The rain had stopped and low sunshine blistered on the razor points of the wire. He left the engine running and sauntered towards the sentry. He knew what was important, knew how to behave. Josh Mantle had come through that gate for the first time as a fledgling recruit thirty-three years before, when there had been no coils of wire, when the sentries hadn’t carried sidearms, hadn’t draped automatic rifles across their chests, and hadn’t worn bullet-proof vests. The Intelligence Corps and the Royal Military Police had been his life for twenty-seven years. He knew how sentries reacted at a gate, which was why he had worn the dark suit, the new shirt and the better shoes.

‘Yes, sir?’

The sentry drifted towards him, relaxed.

‘My name is Josh Mantle. I represent the legal firm of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe. Corporal Tracy Barnes is being held here under close arrest, and I am instructed by her family to act on her behalf. I need. .

The smile of welcome had fled the sentry’s face. ‘Who is your appointment with, sir?’

‘You are required under the terms laid out in
The Manual of Military Law, Part 1
— I can quote you the page — to give me immediate access to my client. That’s what I need.’

‘I asked, who’s your appointment with, sir?’

‘When I come to see a client, I don’t need an appointment with anyone. I’m not a dentist’s patient.’

‘You can’t just drive in here without an appointment. I am not authorized to let anyone—’

A bread-delivery van had stopped behind his car, and another car behind that. Two cars and a Land Rover were waiting to leave.

‘What you are authorized or not authorized to do, soldier, is quite irrelevant to me. Just get on with the process of providing the access to which I am entitled.’

The sentry backed away. Josh Mantle had known he would. The sentry would pass it to his sergeant in the brick fortress blockhouse beside the gate. The sergeant would see a man in a dark suit, a new shirt and good shoes, and he would pass responsibility up the chain. Five cars now waited behind the delivery van, and three more behind the Land Rover. There was a beep. Mantle walked casually back to his car and rested his buttocks on the bonnet. Through the window of the block-house he saw the sentry speaking to his sergeant, and gesturing towards him. A little symphony of horns came from two more cars and from the Land Rover. Faces jutted out of vehicle windows, annoyed, impatient. The sergeant spoke on a telephone, as Mantle had known he would. The symphony soon reached its crescendo. The sentry ran back from the block-house.