The senior official’s cigarette smoke wafted between them. They were alone, two easy chairs used. There was whisky in a decanter on the low table between them, untouched. Neither man, when trading, would risk alcohol, would give advantage.
‘That we are prepared to offer you that information, where you could find her, should be taken by you as a mark of respect on our side for a friend and ally. Friendships, alliances, thrive on mutual respect, and we would be grateful for reciprocity – sorry, we barter. .
His voice was sweet, silky reasonableness. The senior official drew hard on the cigarette. The night air came through the window, opened on Perkins’s insistence.
‘The little matter we request in return… Iranian material, your dossier on Mi Fallahian. You have, last figures I saw, earnings of two point four billion American dollars from equipment supplied to Iran. I want the names of those German companies involved and their British collaborators… I want details on all commercial transactions by German companies for equipment sent to Iran that could be utilized in the production of atomic, chemical and biological weapons. I want the surveillance files on all members of the Iranian diplomatic mission in Bonn who have travelled to Britain in the last two years.’
The senior official stiffened. He stubbed out the cigarette and in the same movement was reaching for another, lighting it.
‘Did you actually entertain Ali Fallahian in this office? Did you feel the need to wash your hands afterwards, lot of blood on his fists? Must have been a jolly little occasion, entertaining the minister for information and security. Did you discuss the Lockerbie atrocity? I expect you did. I expect he thanked you, as a friend and ally, for refusing us access to those hoods on the Iranian payroll who organized the Frankfurt transfer of the bomb on to Pan-Am 103. Let them go now, haven’t you, slipped them beyond reach? I’ve told you what I want, I know what you want. Do we trade?’
The senior official paused. He held his hands together, over his mouth and his nose as if in prayer. Perkins assumed that he would be travelling to Washington on the back of Hauptman Krause, would take the opportunity to drive to Langley, to meet with the principals of the National Security Council, would be ushered to the big offices of the Pentagon. Another cigarette, half smoked, was discarded. Cancellation would be a bitter pill, would take more than prayer to flush it down.
The senior official went to his desk, telephoned, spoke in a low voice. Perkins heard the murmur of Mi Fallahian’s name. He returned to his chair and reached forward to pour the whisky. They both drank, equal measures. The trading had been agreed.
They muttered pleasantries for fifteen minutes.
A young woman brought in the papers, fresh from the computer onto the printer. The senior official passed them to Perkins. He scanned them. He was satisfied and dropped them into his briefcase. The senior official, at the door, gestured for Krause to join them.
To Perkins, the scratches seemed, in those few days, to have healed well. The minders stood back against the wall. The Jewish minder interested him. He would be the token, the symbol of political correctness. He smiled up at Krause and for the first time spoke in German. ‘So pleased to note your fast recovery, Hauptman. You were attacked by Corporal Tracy Barnes. You won’t need a photograph of her, I’m sure you remember her well. She alleged that you murdered in cold blood, Hauptman, a British agent named Hans Becker at Wustrow on the twenty-first of November nineteen eighty-eight. Corporal Barnes was a girlfriend of Becker. I interrogated her, several sessions. I emphasized to her that should she provide me with evidence of your criminal act then I would use the full influence, not inconsiderable, of the Secret Intelligence Service to see you brought to justice. She has come to Germany, my assessment, to hunt for that evidence. I have no idea whether she knows where to hunt or not, but I assure you that she is a quite remarkable and stubborn young woman. I wouldn’t want her hurt, Hauptman, I would take that badly. My opinion, she will begin her hunt for evidence against you from the home of Hans Becker’s parents. If you wish to look for her then you should start in Berlin at apartment nine, third floor, number twelve, Saarbrucker Strasse…’
They found no files for Krause, or the Wustrow base, or Rerik for 21, 22 and 23 November. The files for those dates in 1988 were missing. The paper bounced before her eyes, seemed to trick, deceive her.
‘We have searched, we have to accept it. They are not here.’
Tracy could have screamed in frustration. They had worked in the bottom basement, then the middle basement, then the top basement.
The woman droned, ‘If you had not involved him, not recruited him, if you had not trapped him, then he would be alive. You came…’
Tracy sat on the floor of the top basement, the Wustrow files around her, the cold mischief in her eyes. ‘You should know that he never mentioned you, he never used your name. When he was with me I doubt that he remembered your name. He made his statement, many did not. Did you?’
The woman sagged. Tracy said they should look two weeks further ahead in the files, into the middle of the month of December 1988. The woman quietly passed new files to be untied and unfastened. The night drifted.
The taxi had dropped him off at an hotel on the Unter den Linden. He had walked straight across the foyer and found a fire door, pushed the bar and gone out.
Past midnight, long past, and Josh walked slowly up the big street. He checked his map. On the empty road, it would have been easy for him to spot a dawdling car or foot surveillance. He stood at the end of Saarbrucker Strasse. He saw the building. The front, caught by dimmed lights, was scarred from bombs or artillery. That registered with him. The past should be known about: it was right to learn from the past. The third-floor windows were darkened.
He thought it wrong to wake them.
He settled down on the pavement beside the step of the building. Light snow was falling. He was back tight against the wall to keep the wind from him. After Libby had died, after he had gone derelict and dossed and boozed, he had learned to sleep on pavements. He huddled in the shadow beside the step, and waited for the morning.
Her throat was dry from the air-conditioning, her eyes ached and watered. The typed lines on the paper were blurred, merged. The woman stood beside her and bent to pick up the last of the files to place them back on the racks.
‘What can we do?’
Tracy squatted on the cold concrete of the basement’s bottom floor. Her head was down.
A small voice: ‘How long do we have?’
‘The early shift comes at five. Before that we have to be gone. We have forty-one minutes. What is the point of having forty-one minutes if we do not know where to look?’
She tried to call him back, the wide smile on his face as he had made love to her, and the pain on his face as they had dragged him off the trawler boat. She sat very still. She gazed at the rough floor of concrete and at the files stretching on their racks as far as she could see. Nobody had cared, as nobody cared now.
‘In Rerik, if he had run, if they had hunted him, if people had seen him..
‘If people had seen him they would have held their silence.’
Dogged. Clinging to the wide smile, so tired, and the pain. ‘If the Stasi had known that people had seen him…’
‘Their silence would have been gained by intimidation.’
‘What would have been done to eye-witnesses?’
‘Threats, then moved out of their community.’
Tracy hissed, ‘How long afterwards?’
‘Three weeks, there was bureaucracy, four weeks, after they had been destroyed, five weeks… If there had been eyewitnesses they would have sent them out of Rerik.’