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 amp; 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.
‘You’ve got to wait, and move your car, sir.’
Josh knew the game. Into his car, into reverse, swerving past the delivery van. Across the main road. Onto the grass verge opposite the camp gate. The barrier came up and the cars surged in and out.
He sat again on the bonnet in the sunshine. A hundred yards past the barrier, down the road inside the camp, was the guardhouse, graced with a clean lick of paint, which was usual for late winter, where Mrs Adie Barnes’s daughter would be. The barrier was down.
The sentry shouted across the main road, ‘You can’t park there, sir.’
‘I require immediate access to my client.’
‘That’s a restricted area. No parking there.’
‘Immediate access. If you haven’t the authority get someone who has. Move it, soldier. Oh, what’s your name? So I can report you for obstruction.’
It was not pretty, not right for a civilian to take on officer status, but he had given his promise to Mrs Adie Barnes. The sentry doubled back to the block-house, to report, to have his sergeant telephone again. It was a few minutes after nine o’clock: the Adjutant would be concentrating on his coffee, and the Colonel would be out on an inspection round. None of the fat cats would know where to find The Manual of Military Law, Part 1. They would be like disturbed ants.
‘Tell you what I’m thinking now, Tracy, I’m thinking you do not have evidence. I’m a logical man, Tracy, and I’ve given you every opportunity to provide me with that evidence. You’ve refused, so logic says to me that the evidence does not exist. My opinion, when you were in Berlin, when the agent was lost, it was discussed in front of you – you don’t make waves, do you? Nobody notices you – it was talked about, and some loudmouth used the name of Krause, counter-espionage in Rostock. You joined the circle. The agent was missing, therefore he had been caught, no word was heard of him, therefore he had been killed. Who killed him? Try counter-espionage. Who was responsible? Try the man in charge of counter-espionage at the nearest regional centre. Krause. Do you think I don’t have better things to do? For fuck’s sake, Tracy Barnes, let’s get this bloody waste of time over.’
‘Where is it, Major?’
Johnson snapped, ‘It’s in RUSSIAN MILITARY/ARMOUP/STATISTICS. It’s where it always is.’
‘Yes, Major, but where’s that?’
She stood in his doorway. He couldn’t even remember her name. He shouted past her, ‘Ben, I need RUSSIAN MILITARY/ ARMOUR/STATISTICS – show the corporal where it is.’
The call came back, through two open doors, across the cubbyhole space. ‘Sorry, Perry. Wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve been looking half an hour for my Voronezh notes. Sorry.’
Johnson said, spiteful, ‘You’ll just have to look for them, Corporal. Look a bit harder.’
The telephone was ringing… Barnes could have found RUSSIAN MILITARY/ARMOUR/STATISTICS, she would have laid her hands on the Voronezh notes, and made his coffee and known how much milk she should add, and picked up the bloody telephone and not let it ring.
Johnson said, bitter, ‘If you cannot find the files we need then would you, please, Corporal, answer the telephone?’
They did not know the filing system she used. God, they were blind without her. The corporal was back at the door, the call was for him. She should transfer it to his extension. What was his extension number? But there wasn’t an extension number written on his telephone, new security measures. What was his bloody number? Too flustered to remember it. He pushed past the corporal and into the cubbyhole space. He thought, he was nearly certain, that Christie’s bloody dog snarled at him and showed its bloody teeth. The dog had its jaws close to the door of the wall safe. She should have been there, should have been handing him the telephone and rolling her eyes to the edge of impertinence.
The corporal said it was the Colonel who wanted him. She’d have pulled a damn cheeky face.
‘Yes, sir, good morning, sir… At the gate?… A solicitor? Christ… Quoting what?… Manual of Military Law? I wouldn’t have the faintest idea where there’s one. Yes, liaise with Mr Perkins… Straight away, sir…’
There had been 97,000 full-time officers working for the Staatssicherheitsdienst at the Zentrale on Normannen Strasse in Berlin and at the fifteen Bezirksverwaltungen across the former German Democratic Republic. What they learned from their informers, their surveillance, their telephone taps, the confessions made in their special cells, they wrote down. What they wrote down, they filed. What they filed was sent to the Archive at the Zentrale.
He had flown from Cologne. Julius Goldstein had been driven east through Berlin to Normannen Strasse. He was met at the heavy barred doors of the Archive, his visit cleared ahead by telephone from the senior official of the
