poetry of satire, the target of his satire was the regime. Perhaps he was not sufficiently clever. He did not practise self-censorship with expertise. The writers met and discussed their work in the privacy of their homes. They were all friends and he did not believe he could be betrayed from inside the circle. My father complained to his friends, inside the circle, of the denial of his right to publication. You understand, not an angry complaint just grumbling. He was taken by the Stasi, brought here, interrogated, he was charged with “behaviour hostile to the state and characteristic of class warfare”. Do you understand that? He was sent to the prison at Cottbus for two years. When he came out it was impossible for him to find work other than as a road labourer, and he had been a teacher, an intellectual. My mother was dismissed from her job in a ministry. She took the work in a hospital of standing ten hours a day in an elevator and pressing the buttons for the elevator to go up or down. I had no chance of going to the university. The Wall came down. We were promised the new dawn. My father was in Lenin Allee. He told me that day it was raining. A car came past him and splashed the water over his legs, a big BMW. It was driven by the man who had interrogated him. My father is the loser, he is now in a ghetto of failure. He is too old to go back to teaching, too old to work as a labourer on the road, and the man who destroyed him is driving in the warmth of a BMW car.’
Tracy said, ‘Why are you doing this?’
The woman looked at Tracy Barnes through her thick spectacles, and her eyes were distorted by the lenses. ‘Because I loved him, because we worked together in the railyard, because he brought light and laughter to me, because his father says they killed him, because you have come to find the evidence.’
The woman gave Tracy a pair of narrow steel-rimmed spectacles, and a scarf to wear over her hair. She was handed a plastic-coated ID card, and she saw that the photograph on the card was that of a woman with dark hair and narrow steel- rimmed spectacles.
There was a policeman in the shadows, shivering and stamping his feet, and the woman called cheerfully to him. It was a modern fortress complex, great buildings around a wide central open space. They went down a ramp to a steel door, well lit and covered by a security camera, and the windows beside the door were protected by metal bars. The woman rang the bell and held up her card in front of the camera and Tracy copied her. She had memorized the name on the ID. Inside at a desk, behind plate glass, there were two guards. She did what the woman did, and showed the card, scrawled the name, the signature, the time, as the woman had. The woman had moved away from her, to the other end of the desk, and she talked animatedly with the guards, distracted them, then went fast towards the inner door of plate steel. Tracy followed. The door was opened from the desk.
In the corridor beyond, the door slid shut behind them.
‘We have six hours,’ the woman said briskly. ‘Maybe there are a hundred million sheets of paper, maybe there are ten million card indexes.’
They went down narrow concrete stairs, poorly lit.
‘Maybe there are a million photographs – I do not know how many kilometres of audio-tape. Everything was filed. They kept, believe me, in many thousands of sealed glass jars the smells of their victims, they stole their socks and their underwear and put them in jars so that later if dogs had to search for those people they would have their smells. Most of all, there is the paper. The dictatorship of today does not need to shoot people, or gas them, or hang them. They do not have blood on their hands, but ink.’
They were at the bottom floor. Ahead was a door of reinforced steel, set with additional bars, opened by a lever.
‘You must have names and dates and places. You have that? If you do not then we search for a coin on the ocean floor.’
Tracy said, ‘Hauptman Dieter Krause, counter-espionage at Rostock, killed Hans Becker at Rerik, near to the Soviet base at Wustrow, on the evening of the twenty-first of November nineteen eighty-eight.’
The woman wrenched down the lever. The cavern ran as far as Tracy could see. As far as she could see were the metal racks on which were stacked the files. Cardboard file covers neatly tied with string, bound with elastic, as far as she could see. The racks were from the floors to the ceilings, and they had come down two flights of stairs.
‘A man was here two days ago, from the Office of the Protection of the State. He had the name of Dieter Krause from Rostock. He looked for evidence of a criminal act against human rights. He did not know of Hans. He had the name of a Soviet officer. He did not have the location of Rerik. He had the officer stationed at Wustrow. He did not have the date. He walked in fog
There was a part of the Krause file that was missing, and a part of the Wustrow file that had been taken out. He did not find what he looked for. He was here a whole day, with three assistants. I have to tell you that-’
‘How long do we have?’
‘We have a few minutes less than six hours, and only the one chance.’
The last flights were leaving Heathrow. Josh Mantle hurried to the check-in. The ffight for Berlin was closing. He was in the queue when he heard the voice behind him, ‘Hello, Mantle, cuttingitfine…’
He spun.
‘… but I didn’t expect to see you here. I’d have thought – your track record – you’d have realized this was heavy going and backed off, like you did before.’
‘What do you know of me?’
‘Not much short of everything.’ Perkins was smiling.
‘I’ve never seen you before the gate at Templer.’
‘Quite a crowd of folk never looked hard enough behind them, never saw me. Bad business that, Belize, would have thought a chap like you would have showed a bit more spine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘A government servant, man and boy. I walk the streets with a shovel so that the pretty people don’t get shit on their shoes. You were a piece of shit in Belize that I cleared up. Never seemed to find the time to introduce myself… Better stir a bit, if you want to get to Berlin tonight. It is Berlin, isn’t it? Chasing after the little corporal, are we?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘As if you need to know. Cologne. Off to see our gracious friends and respected allies.’
The queue lurched forward.
‘About her? About Miss Barnes?’
‘She’s on my Action This Day agenda. You’re very sharp tonight, Mantle.’
‘Running sneaky messages, piling up the odds. That’s work for a proud man.’
The smile had become the grin. ‘You used to be bright in the old days, as I recall, when you knew how to back out.’
‘You’re starting to feel like a boil in my arse. A damn nuisance, but I can ignore it. If anything happens to her, before I get to her, through your hand, I’ll…’
The smile, which had been the grin, had become the sneer. ‘Bit old for her, aren’t you?’
The check-in girl had her hand out for Mantle’s ticket. He passed it across the counter. He spun again.
‘… I’ll put your teeth through the back of your neck.’
The smile, the grin, the sneer had gone. ‘My advice, Mantle. You shouldn’t go to Rostock with a boil in your arse. Very painful if your backside were kicked – and in Rostock it will get kicked, hard.’
‘Rostock is not a part of it, so fuck you. I’m going to Berlin to bring her home.’
‘Of course… Oh, and the name is Perkins, Albert Perkins, by the way, a shoveller of shit for Her Majesty’s government. Don’t forget the name and have a good flight.’
He was given his ticket, his boarding card. When he came away from the counter, his overnight bag slung on his shoulder, Perkins was gone.
He walked towards Departures.
They had both gone to Belize. Captain Ewart-Harries and Sergeant Mantle, the Intelligence Corps presence. Supposed to know their job, supposed to predict whether the Guatemalan military were about to invade. The officer had school Spanish and Mantle had been on a phrase book. Hustling through Jane’s Fighting books for the strength of the Guatemalan Army, its elite units, its equipment. The Brigadier with his gunners and his infantry demanding an answer, and the Group Captain with his Harrier force. Were the Guatemalans coming? Would they come in force with tanks? Would they probe with reconnaissance units? Who knew more than damn all about the goddamn Guatemalan Army? Every morning at the Brigadier’s session, the pressure was growing. Answers, where were the
