his story. He had also rummaged in his case and his wallet for a mess of receipts and bills, and requested, told, the ancient history graduate, first class, to knock his expenses into shape.
Albert Perkins sat in the Savignyplatz cafe, a half-bottle of champagne in front of him. A rare pleasure gripped him. Any of the others, his rank, at Vauxhall Bridge Cross would have been fighting to get on the secure telephone to make a personalized report on the outcome of a successful mission. He thought that the report going back second hand set him on a pedestal of achievement. He sipped the champagne. Even Helen had seemed pleased – rarer than August snow – that he was awarded a new peg, no detail over the phone, and more pleased at the new annual increment. He would be home in the morning, for the weekend, to fiddle about in the garden and in time for the game at Craven Cottage and the pint with Basil. His world, he believed, was set in an aurora of success.
Past midnight. The cafe was full. At the bar, haggard, disputing, laughing, no champagne but beer drunk from the neck, were four of the foreign press corps. They had an office block in Savignyplatz. He had used the cafe, in the old days, to be close to the foreign journalists, assuming the identity of a businessman too stupid to understand the secret life pulse of divided Berlin. He had enjoyed their amused banter when he had met them in the old days – they knew nothing. When he had finished the champagne, he would insinuate himself into the group of journalists and they would boast to the ignorant stranger of their contacts and their knowledge – they would still know nothing.
She was, in his opinion, a quite remarkable young woman. She would have achieved her objective, his opinion, without the trailing Mantle. Too good, his opinion, to disappear. When he was back in Vauxhall Bridge Cross, after the weekend, he would sing her praises. There would be a place for her, should be a place for her, in the Service. Such raw courage, such focused ability, a crime to lose it… Albert Perkins sat in the cafe and mused on the brilliance of Tracy Barnes, and was at contented peace.
‘Double whammy,’ Violet shrieked from the door.
The cassette player – and the Rolling Stones tape – was loaned from Mid-east Desk. The party gang were from German Desk and Russia Desk. The drink – gin, vodka, Scotch, wine, beer – was out of the ADD’s store cupboard. They had all stayed on, bugger the outside commitments, bugger the husbands and wives and children, bugger the last trains out of Waterloo and Victoria and the last tubes to Fuiham and Hampstead and the last buses. The party rolled on, wild.. always a party when the Service triumphed. Sweating girls and panting men, yelling and howling, dancing and cavorting, celebrating…
Violet shrieked from the door and waved the sheet of paper. ‘For Christ’s sake – it’s a double whammy!’
Fleming went to her, and Olive Harris. The ADD and the Russia Desk chief and the girl clerks, and the new men and the old men, all gazed at Violet. They had enough cause, already, to celebrate. They had Pyotr Rykov, destroyed. They had the signal from Langley, the lecture on Rykov was cancelled. Fleming read the paper Violet held, and she yelled into his ear.
Fleming clapped his hands. ‘What Violet says, it’s a double whammy. Old Albert’s come up rose-scented… Albert’s done his end. .. Rykov’s in the chokey, and Krause is in the chokey. double win bloody whammy… Poor old Hun chaps, lost their pride and glory, put back in their bloody place. Evidence against Krause that’ll go to open court, embarrassment by the wheelbarrow load for the Cologne chaps, we’re weeping for them. Whammy, whammy, whammy.’
The music thrashed on, out through the open windows of Fleming’s room, out across the deep flowing water of the Thames. In the high room in the monolith building, the dancing resumed, frantic, flailing arms and swinging hips. Fleming had the sheet of paper that Violet had brought and folded shapes with it. Mrs Olive Harris pirouetted, shoes kicked off and the upper buttons of her blouse unfastened, in front of a librarian from Archive. The ADD clutched the new girl on Russia Desk, and the chief of Russia Desk kissed, lip to lip, the new married lady from Violet’s pooi, and the Scotch was poured like it was beer, and the beer was drunk like it was water, and the older woman from Russia Desk massaged the groin, as they danced, of the new-appointed graduate on German Desk… The party rolled on, and to hell with the morning, and to hell with who woke in whose bed, and to hell with it all.
North of the Neuruppin intersection, the lights and the sirens had come past them. She had been asleep, and he had not woken her. Three cars with lights and sirens.. He had seen Krause, in the back of the middle car, flanked by two others. The lights and the sirens had swept past them.
South of the Neuruppin intersection, he had eased off the maximum speed of the Trabant, dropped down from the hundred kilometres per hour that the old car could reach, eased down on the dial. He had made the calculation on the time he could reach Berlin, how long it would take on an autobahn empty of traffic at night. With the calculation made he had no more need to push the Trabant to its limit. She slept well. Remarkable that she could sleep inside the shuddering noise of the car. He slowed, cruised in the inside lane. He reached into his pocket.
‘Tracy…’
She stirred.
‘I’ve something for you, Tracy. Don’t wake.’
She smiled. Her eyes were closed. The heater blew foul hot air over her.
‘A present, Tracy… Just something..
She murmured, ‘Gone soft, old Josh gone sentimental?’
‘Don’t open your eyes… Your wrist, Tracy.’
Languid, half awake and half asleep, beside him, she raised her arm and her other hand pulled up the arm of her coat. Her wrist was bare. Her eyes were closed.
‘Don’t bloody crash – you’re a proper old sweetheart, Josh, you’re a soft old bugger.’
The smile was at her mouth… With a sudden, brutal movement, he snapped the handcuff ring shut on her wrist, jerked down the link chain and closed the second ring on the iron support bar of her seat.
The anger exploded. ‘What the fuck…’
Josh said, simple, sad, ‘You lied.’
‘Get the fucking thing off.’
She tried to kick him and, with her free hand, to reach him and claw at his face. He drove on. He took the kicks on his legs. He held the wheel hard. He tried to save his face from her nail slashes.
‘You lied to me, and in the lies was your mistake.’
She was convulsed. Her fingers went for his eyes, and he held her off him, and he knew that the anger storm would subside. She was twisted in the seat but her shoulder was pulled down by the handcuff on her wrist, locked tight to the metal bar under the seat.
‘You live a lie and you will always make a mistake. The mistake may come from stress, may be from conceit, but the mistake always catches out the lie.’
She aimed a last kick at him, pure venom, and she would have wrenched her shoulder, in pain.
‘Right, you clever bloody bastard, what was the lie?’
The face that had been lovely to him was ugly and twisted in anger.
‘You said, Tracy, your story, that you saw Hans Becker brought ashore and break free and run. You were too frightened to intervene but there wasn’t anything, anyway, you could have done. You said that you ran out of time, that the clock killed you, you had to break away .. I thought, believing the lie, it was the most tragic moment, for you, that I could imagine. You left him, hunted and wounded and alone, because you had to be back in Berlin to get through the checkpoint by midnight. The day visa pass ended at midnight. You went through before midnight, you say. On the trawler, Willi Muller said the clock at the Rerik church was striking ten o’clock as Hans Becker was brought onto the pier. Your lie, Tracy, you drove a Trabant to Berlin, dropped it, went through the checkpoint before midnight… Tracy, it can’t be done…’
She flopped in her seat. She stared ahead.
‘You left at ten, truth. You drove to Berlin, truth. You went through the checkpoint before midnight, lie. I think you came to the checkpoint in the Wall late. I think you pleaded with the guards to let you through. You were distraught, weeping. The guards would have called for an officer… You should not have been in Rerik, you were in direct contravention of Colonel Kirby’s orders, you stood to be drummed out of I Corps, which was your life, you were traumatized by what you had seen. Of course the officer was not going to let you through. Of course the
