him by Hoffmann, the reports of an Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, codename Wilhelm, on the community in which he worked. In the payphone, he had called the directory for telephone numbers, and then the number of the TM, codename Wilhelm. He had pretended he was trying to reach another man with an offer for double-glazed windows, had checked the address, and apologized for the disturbance.
He drove into the small community, clear roads at that time in the night.
There was a storm out at sea, beyond the darkened peninsula, and the wind came in over the Salzhaff, the spray climbing over the piles of the piers where the trawlers were tied. The ifie would turn the mind of the man, would destroy the man who had been, many years before, an Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter of the Staatssicherheitsdienst. Where the man lived now, there would be a fine view of the shore and the sea.
He put the copied file in an envelope, gummed it tight, and the man’s name on it. There was no need to write a message. He walked from his car to the door of a small house and the box beside it for post and circulars. The man who lived, in retirement, in the small house close to the sea at Rerik had known the names of all the witnesses. The man would have friends, would be respected, would be destroyed if it were known that he had been listed as an Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, if it were known that he had informed on those who befriended him and respected him.
Dieter Krause swung his car away from the sea and away from the beat of the surf on the shingle shore.
They walked out of the bus station.
There was a whiff of the sea scent in the air. He chose the side streets and the back streets, where the lights were sparse, where they could hug the shadows. She murmured her bloody song… The bloody song, played on the forces’ radio, was hers and her boy’s. He was not a part of the bloody song. It was all for love, her love and the boy’s love. He was not included in the love..
The last train of the night reached Rostock.
The passengers spilled down onto the platform.
The two men waited at the top of the tunnel from the platform, scanned each half-asleep face, beaded their eyes on each young woman who scurried with her bags from the platform to the tunnel.
They waited for the platform to clear, threw down their cigarettes, and turned away.
It was an old house, three storeys high. The facades of the houses on either side had been pressure-cleaned, but the house with the pension sign was grimed with old dirt. He waited at the door. She had dropped back. Through the glass he saw a man at the desk, reading, oil-slicked hair, wearing an overcoat, and behind the man was the row of keys hanging in front of the letter rack. She reached him.
‘Gold medal for picking luxury.’
‘There’s a Radisson in Rostock, and a Ramada, and there’s a new hotel at the railway station, and they are where they would expect us to go.’
‘Don’t be so bloody scratchy.’ She grinned.
He pushed open the glass door. The man looked up from the magazine. The reception desk was worn, unvarnished, and there was the smell of cabbage and boiled sausagemeat. The man shivered in his overcoat. Around the letter rack, where the keys were, the wallpaper was wrinkled, faded. The man greased them a smile.
It was obvious from the keys, hung unevenly from nails, but he asked if the man had accommodation available.
The man leered. ‘One room or two rooms?’
She laughed out loud behind him.
‘Two rooms,’ Josh said.
The man’s hand, the nicotine-stained fingers, flitted over the keys. He took two keys.
The man winked. ‘Two rooms – adjoining.’
She laughed again.
The man asked for documents. Josh took his wallet from his pocket and slid a banknote for a hundred DMs onto the palm of the man’s hand, which did not move. Another banknote. The hand slid with discretion towards the man’s hip pocket. He gave Josh the keys, pointed to the staircase, picked up his magazine again.
They climbed the stairs, up the threadbare carpet. The smell of cabbage and sausage was replaced by the must of stale damp. It was colder on the stairs than at the reception desk. They stood in the corridor on the second floor in the low light and he gave her the second key.
‘Is it off and running in the morning, Mr Mantle?’
‘We don’t run anywhere, at any time. We plan. We take it slowly. Step by step, so there are no surprises. I need to think it through.’
‘Goodnight, Mr Mantle.’
He needed to sleep and, in the morning, he needed to think… and in the morning he needed to tell her that he was Josh and not Mr Mantle. So damn tired…
‘Goodnight, Tracy.’
He had been the first to reach the cafe. Krause had taken a seat in an alcove where he could view the door. They drifted in from Augusten Strasse. He stood, correctly, for each of them, for the taxi driver who came with the building-site security guard, for the criminal, the property developer. The woman who now owned the cafe had once managed the canteen in the building on August-Bebel Strasse, she would once have run to take the orders of Hauptman Krause and Leutnant Hoffmann, even Siehi, Fischer and Peters. She had closed the cafe, kicked out her customers. She had put beer on the table and gone to her kitchen area.
Hoffmann said, ‘I can be away for two days. Too much work for me to be away longer.’
‘I am building a new life.’ Fischer shrugged. ‘In three years I hope to have my own taxi, but I have to work.’
Peters had a meeting in Warsaw the day after tomorrow.
Siehl whined that if he were not back by tomorrow night then he would lose his job, and did the Hauptman know how hard it was to find work in Berlin?
Krause wondered if they had walked past the old building before coming to the cafe and looked for the darkened windows above August-Bebel Strasse that had been theirs, remembering how they had walked with pride, anonymous, through the big door. He wondered if they had glanced down at the windows flush with the pavement behind which had been the interrogation rooms.
‘Can I tell you, my friends, the reality? You stay, we all stay, until the matter is completed, until the problem is finished with. We have one week. It is necessary for it to be finished in one week. If you do not stay, you will not be doing anything from a cell in the Moabit gaol… That, my friends, is reality.’
‘Because of one girl, height a metre sixty, weight sixty kilos. Not to forget the russet hair. It is just one girl. Easy to recognize her. Ask her to hold up her hands, look at her fingernails, scrape under fingernails for the skin of Hauptman Krause.’ Peters led their laughter.
‘It is amusing? It is the big joke? It is funny? We are together, as at Rerik we were together.’
Hoffmann hesitated. ‘I didn’t kill him.’
Siehl flushed. ‘You killed him and we only obeyed your orders.’
‘So, let me tell you more of reality. The kid, the spy, was chased. Who chased him? He was caught, felled. Who caught him? On the ground, he was kicked. Who kicked him? He was kept still on the ground by a boot across his throat. Who wore the boot? He was taken back to the boat. Who dragged him? He was weighted, he was put into the water. Who lifted him over the side of the boat? More of reality, it would be a common charge. It would be an accusation of conspiracy to murder. We were together at Rerik. If we fail we will be together in the gaol at Moabit. Do you now believe?’
Fischer said, loyal, ‘We did our duty. Again we will do our duty, whatever is necessary.’
He told them where they should watch in the city, what times and at what places, and repeated his description of the young woman. He took the Makharov pistols from his attache case, each still wrapped in the plastic bags, and passed them over the table, with ammunition and magazines. He handed them the mobile telephones he had hired in the afternoon and had them each write down the numbers. He passed a file to each of
