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 alarm 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
