The Waiting Time Read online

  She had put the kettle on. With her third key, and her knowledge of the combination, she’d opened the safe. She kept the coffee in it, the tea, biscuits and apples. The rooms of G/3 were the home of the unit of the Intelligence Corps at Templer Barracks, Ashford in Kent, dealing solely with the subject matter of RUSSIAN FEDERATION/MILITARY/ANALYSIS, and they were the kingdom of Corporal Tracy Barnes. The kettle had boiled. She had crunched the biscuits and bitten at an apple. It was her place. She could put her hand on any sheet of paper, any map, any photograph in the wall of steel-plate filing cabinets, padlocked in the Major’s office, the Captain’s office and in the cubbyhole space between them where she worked. She could flit her way through the banks of information held in the G/3 computers that linked Templer Barracks with the London offices of the Chief of Defence Intelligence and the new Bedfordshire base at Chicksands. She knew every code that must be dialed in for the secure fax transmissions. They told her, Major Johnson and Captain Christie, that she was indispensable .

  A drip of water had gathered on the ceiling beside the fluorescent strip light, fallen and spattered on the linoleum floor.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ she’d said. ‘That’s the fucking limit.’

  The roof always leaked when the rain came from the east. She’d seen another drip forming and the rain hammered harder on the windows. She’d been locking the safe — the safe must always be locked when the section was unattended — she had been about to go down the corridor to the wash-house for the mop and bucket, when the telephone had rung. The start of her day.

  Outside the office, in the rain and the gloom, walking, it was so good to talk to her. Sensible, rational — just a conversation without officers’ pips and corporals’ stripes. The rain was on the gold of Tracy Barnes’s hair and the highlights made jewels there.

  ‘Slow to start, thanks to the Colonel. We had to sit through his lecture on the Russian military threat, chaos and anarchy there, massive conventional and nuclear strength but with no political leadership to control the trigger finger. Seemed a bit remote — am I supposed to tell you?’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘It’s a profile of a Russian who’s the Rasputin of the defence minister — he was chummy with a Stasi chap back in the good old Cold War days. Seems that today the minister doesn’t blow his nose or wipe his backside without the say-so of his staff officer — he’s Rykov, Pyotr Rykov, ex-para in Afghanistan and ex-CO of a missile base in former East Germany, and you could write on a postcard what we have on him. Our larder’s bare, and the Germans come over with Rykov’s chum, parade him as quality bloodstock — Rykov’s motivation, Rykov’s ambition. If the military were to take over in Russia then this Rykov would be half a pace behind his minister and whispering in his little ear. The truth — may hurt to say it — the German chum was a high grade Humlnt source, the best I’ve ever heard. . . Perry’s suffering, thinks we’re supping with Lucifer. You’d know about the Stasi — you were in Berlin, yes?’

  ‘As a kid, first posting, just clerking . . . Jolly news for you, Captain. They’ve put you on a crash Serbo-Croat course, means you’re booked for Bosnia. Mrs Christie’ll be well excited, eh? I mean, she’ll have to look after the dog.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘It’s on your desk.’

  They reached the mess block outer door. He forgot himself. He opened the heavy door for her to go through first.

  She stayed put. He flushed. Bloody officer and bloody noncommissioned junior rank. He went through and she followed. Coats dumped on a chair in the corridor. They hit the noise.

  Perry Johnson boomed, ‘Thanks, Ben. They’re dying of thirst and restless — Corporal, the order is three Glenlivets, ice and lemonade for our guests, seven gin tonics, two orange juice, one with ice, five beers. You’ll need a tray.’

  A wry smile on her face, at the edge of impertinence. ‘Whose tab, Major? On yours?’

  She was gone. Ben watched her. He thought she kicked Captain Wilson’s shin. Definite, she elbowed Captain Dawson. He saw her reach past Major Donoghue’s back and rap his right shoulder and when he turned right she’d wriggled past his left hip. She was at the front, arms on the bar and stretching.

  She caught the steward’s arm, held it. Ben could have clapped her. No mucking, she was brilliant. He blinked. An officer and a corporal, a married officer and a single corporal, it would ruin him and ruin her. . . Yugoslavia. The guys who went there said it was seriously awful, said Belfast was a cake-run compared to a year in Sarajevo, Vitez, Tuzia . . . Shit. He’d ring Trish that night

  Shit. . . She was tiny behind the bulk of the tray. He thought that if he tried to help her he’d just get in the way . . . There’d be all the usual tears with Trish . . . Must have been her shoe, but Major Donoghue was backing off, and the shoe again because Captain Wilson was giving her space . . . and Irish would be screaming when he started up about her having to look after the bloody dog.. . She headed for Perry.

  The Colonel and a civil servant flanked the German. The German had his back to them. Hands groped to snatch the glasses off her tray. She was only a corporal so she wasn’t thanked, and they wouldn’t need her again. Major Walsh’s ‘happy hour’ would be finished in ten minutes, and his bar tab closed, be space then. He saw the two minders take their drinks, and then the Colonel. Only one drink on the tray, the last Glenlivet, ice and lemon. The Colonel touched the German’s arm. Tracy was dwarfed behind the German’s back. He turned, mid-conversation, smiling.

  Ben saw them both, the German and Corporal Tracy Barnes.

  Her face frozen, her eyes narrowed.

  The German reached for the glass, smiling with graciousness.

  And the ice of her face cracked, hatred. Her eyes blazed, loathing.

  The glass came up into his face and the tray with it.

  The German reeled.

  The Colonel, the minders and the civil servants were statue still.

  Corporal Tracy Barnes launched herself at the German, and he went down onto the mess-bar carpet.

  Her body, on top of his, was a blur of kicking and kneeing, elbowing, punching and scratching.

  Hissed, a she-cat’s venom, ‘You bloody bastard murderer!’

  Ben Christie watched. Her skirt had ridden up as she swung her knee, again and again, into his privates. She had the hair of his beard in her fingers and smashed his head, again and again, down onto the carpet floor.

  Shrieked, a woman’s cry for retribution, ‘Bloody killed him, you bastard!’

  Blood on her hands, blood in her nails, and the German screamed and was defenceless. Her thumb and forefinger stabbed at his closed eyes.

  Howled, the triumph of revenge, ‘How’d you like it? Bloody bastard murderer! What’s it like?’

  Only her voice, her voice alone in the silence. The minders reacted first.

  A chopping blow to the back of her neck, a kick in her ribs. The minders dragged her clear, threw her aside.

  The German was bleeding, gasping, cringing in shock.

  · He heard Johnson’s shout, hoarse: ‘Get her out, Christie. Get the bitch under lock and key.’

  Their fists clenched, standing over their man, coiled, were the minders.

  · . He had started his day shitty cold and shitty tired.

  ****

  Julius Goldstein knew of nowhere more miserable than a commercial airport in winter as the passengers arrived for the first flights of the day. They had flowed past him, business people and civil servants, either half asleep or half dressed, either with shaving cuts on their throats or with their lipstick smeared, and they brought with them the shitty cold and shook the snow patterns off their legs and shoulders.

  He had gazed out into the orange-illuminated darkness, and each car and taxi showed up the fierceness of the cavorting snow shower. Of course the bastard was late. It was the style of the bastard always to be late. He had managed to be punctual, and Raub had reached Tempelhof on time, but the bastard was late. He was tired because the alar
m had gone in the small room at the back of his parents’ home at four. No need for his mother — and him aged twenty-nine — to have risen and put on a thick housecoat and made him hot coffee, but she had. And his father had come downstairs into the cold of the kitchen and sat slumped at the table without conversation, but had been there. His mother had made the coffee arid his father had sat close to him because they continually needed to demonstrate, he believed, their pride in their son’s achievement. The source of their pride, acknowledged with coffee and with a silent presence at the kitchen table, was that their son was a junior official in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Not bad for a little Jew boy — maybe just a token to beef up the statistics of government employment for Jews, but he had made it there and they oozed pride. One night only in Helmstedt with his parents, giving them pleasure, and the cost to Julius Goldstein was that he had been on the autobahn at four thirty, hammering on the gritted roadway to Berlin and Tempeihof, driving at stupid speed to be certain that he was not late. His mother had said that he would be cold, and had fussed around him, had tried to press on him his father’s scarf from the hook on the kitchen door. He did not wear a scarf, or a tie, and his shirt of midnight blue was unbuttoned at the neck so that the gold Star of David hanging from a slight gold chain was clearly visible. He did not go to the synagogue. He had been only once to Israel, seven years before, and had loathed it. He wore the chain and the Star of David as his own personal small gesture towards the past. It made them squirm in the offices in Cologne.

  Raub had stood beside him and whistled his annoyance through his teeth, so Goldstein had smiled as if there was no problem with the bastard being late. Raub wore an overcoat of mahogany brown, a silk scarf, a striped suit and a white shirt, and Goldstein had known what Raub would wear so he had dressed in casual outdoor shoes, designer jeans, an anorak and an open shirt. Raub had worn a tie, Goldstein had worn the Star of David. Raub had carried a polished leather attaché case, Goldstein had a canvas bag hooked over his shoulder. They were calling the flight, the last call. Raub had the tickets and the boarding passes.

  The taxi had come to a halt in front of the glass doors, where it was forbidden to stop, the driver reaching back for his fare, his face lit with pleasure. It would be a good tip because it wouldn’t be the bastard’s own money, because it would go down on the expenses and for this bastard, high priority, expenses were a deep black hole. The bastard was out of the car, striding the few paces to the glass doors, which had swept open for him, and Goldstein had shuddered again as the cold caught him and the snow flurry settled on his face and his arms.

  Goldstein and Raub were the minders from the BfV: they were the escort from the counter-espionage organization.

  He was a big man, as tall as Raub and taller than Goldstein, with broad shoulders. He kept his back straight, as if he had stood on a parade-ground and commanded lesser men, and held his head high. His fair hair was neatly combed, his beard carefully trimmed. He had moved between his minders with the effortless step of arrogance, and Goldstein thought it a class act. They had gone straight to the head of the queue, paused long enough at the desk for Raub and Goldstein to flash their passports and identification cards at the girl. Hadn’t waited for her permission, had gone on through. He never hurried. They had followed the lights and the indicator boards. They had taken the first flight of the day from Berlin Tempelhof to London Heathrow...

  Ernst Raub would have liked to say, ‘It’s not Interfiug, Doktor Krause. It’s not Aeroflot. There are two knives. . .‘ He had said, ‘For an airline breakfast, the egg is very good.’

  It was the nature of his job to be polite to the man, but he despised him. He thought the man ate like a pig.

  He would have liked to say, ‘With two knives you can use one for the scrambled egg and one for the roll and the marmalade . .

  He had said, ‘Personally, I would prefer jam, summer fruits, to marmalade, but the marmalade is acceptable.’

  They sat in business class. Goldstein, appallingly dressed, was by the window, then Krause. Ernst Raub was across the aisle, but after the stewardess had passed, he leaned towards the man.

  He would have liked to say, ‘There are always two knives on Lufthansa, standard or business. Were they short of knives on Interfiug and Aeroflot?’ He had said, ‘Always so much better when you have breakfast inside you. Then you can face the world.’

  They were so ignorant, these people, so lacking in sophistica tion. Ernst Raub had a friend in Cologne, Army but on attachment to BfV, who told him that when people like Krause had been inducted to the Bundeswehr Inner Leadership Academy they were so naïve that they did not know how to use a bank, how to buy insurance, did not know how to choose a bottle of wine for dinner. In Cologne, over a beer and a barbecue with his family and his friend’s family, he used to shake with laughter when he was told how pathetic were these people.

  He had leaned back in his seat, the aircraft was steady and cruising above the storm turbulence, closed his eyes. He had scratched at the sunburn on his face, but the peeling skin on his shoulders was worse, aggravated by the new shirt he wore. Two good weeks with his wife, the boys looked after by her parents, in the Seychelles . . . but fewer Germans there than when they had holidayed on the islands six years before, because too much money was leaking out of western Germany and into the swamp pit of eastern Germany, too much money going to these people who did not know how to work, and did not know how to use a different knife for their egg and for their roll and marmalade

  · · · Ernst Raub could not criticize the man, must only sweeten him. Ernst Raub, sixteen years with the Office for the Protection of the State, had gone too many times into the buildings of the Bonn ministries to seal offices and desks, filing cabinets, computers and bank accounts, to lead away junior officials to the interrogation rooms, to recite the charge of espionage to a grey- faced, trembling wretch. He had heard, too many times, the sobbed and stuttered confessions and the names, too many times, of those who had compromised and ruined those junior officials, the wretches. It demeaned him to escort and mind Doktor Krause, but the man must be sweet-talked, the man was a nugget of gold.

  There were no formalities at London Heathrow. They were taken off the flight before the other passengers and down an open staircase onto the apron area where two unmarked cars had waited for them. .

  In abject misery, Major Perry Johnson walked in the rain, desolate, to the guardhouse.

  Each image, sharp in his mind, was worse than the one gone before.

  ****

  The Colonel had been on his knees beside Doktor Dieter Krause. ‘I really cannot apologize sufficiently. I’m quite devastated by what has happened to a guest of the Corps. I can only say how sincerely sorry I am, and all my colleagues, for this quite shameful and unwarranted assault. I promise, you have my word, Doktor Krause, that I will get to the bottom of this matter and that the culprit will be severely punished.’

  The Colonel had attempted to touch the German’s shoulder, but the younger minder, the sallow Jewish boy, the one who had kicked the corporal, had blocked his hand.

  The Colonel had stood and the minders had stayed close to their man, a snarl of contempt on the face of the older one. ‘Immediately, Captain Dawson, get Doktor Krause and his people down to Sick Bay. I want him treated, looked after. I want the best for him. Well, come on, stir yourself, man.’ And Captain Dawson had drifted, dream-like, forward, had offered a hand to get the German to his feet and had been pushed aside. There was blood on the German’s face and he walked bent because of the blows into his privates.

  The Colonel had turned to the men and women in the mess. They stood, sat, in the silence of shock. ‘I don’t have to tell you how shamed I am that such an incident should happen in our mess, to our guest. If anyone should think this a suitable subject for gossip inside or outside our barracks, then that person should know I will flay the living skin off their back.’ He had challenged them all, the Brigadier from London, the civ
il servants, the officers holding the last free drinks of Major Walsh’s ‘happy hour’, and the bar steward.

  The Colonel, deliberately, had picked the tray, the broken glass, the cubes of ice, the two garish slices of lemon from the carpet, and carried them towards Johnson. There was only a small stain left behind on the burgundy and white patterns of the carpet, like the aftermath of a street stabbing, so little to say what had happened. He gave the tray to Johnson, who held it, hands shaking. ‘Your responsibility, I fancy, Perry, to clear up this shambles. I want your report to me within two hours. Your corporal, your responsibility. You’ll not spare the rod, Perry. An honoured guest has been grievously abused while taking the hospitality of the Corps, so you should consider the need to provide a goddamn good answer. What the hell was that about?’

  The Colonel had allowed him to carry the tray to the bar, then boomed behind him, ‘You might feel it necessary, Perry, after you have reported to me, to seek out Major Walsh and offer him your personal apology — because she is your corporal and your responsibility — for having ruined what should have been a memorable evening to mark the completion of twenty-nine years’ service in the Corps. You should do that before he leaves Templer in the morning. Beneath your damn dignity, was it, to queue and carry a tray of drinks?’

  He’d never liked Harry Walsh — Harry Walsh was brimful of Ireland, claimed Ireland was the core work of Intelligence, and that Germany, Russia, was merely academic self-gratification, called it a bloody wank from his corner at the bar. Perry Johnson had put only a fifty-pence piece in the collection bucket for the purchase of the crystal sherry decanter and glasses set.