He gripped the rail hard. He wondered if he had reached her. He looked out over the dead space and the dead grass and the dead trees and the dead Wall.
‘They did not have to stand, shout, not compromise, the people who were brought here. They had such courage. They were brought here because of what they believed. Each of them, he, she, could not go on the road of the nine hundred and ninetynine. They are worth remembering. Am I being stupid or sentimental? They were ordinary people. They were Germans in the Nazi times, they were Germans in the Stasi times. They were the same ordinary people as those in Srebrenica, in the Palestine refugee camps, Kurds. They scream to be remembered with honour. That is why we are going to Rostock, so that history is not bulldozed. Hans Becker was ordinary, and he should be remembered.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Don’t you want to talk about what I’ve said?’
‘It’s a bloody miserable place and I want to get the hell out of it.’
She seemed to shiver. He did not know whether he had reached her or whether it was just the wind across the dead space catching her.
‘Come on.’
‘Is it Rostock now?’
‘We go to Rostock late tonight.’
‘Where do we go now?’
‘I’ve a name for you. It’s a male name, but it will do for you, just right.’
He had annoyed her and her eyes blazed at him. ‘I’m cold, I’m tired, my rucksack weighs a fucking ton. I don’t need you.’
‘You need me, Tracy. You may be too stupid to realize it. You need me. I brought you here so that you could get into your dumb little brain the importance of what you are doing, and the opposition you will face.’
She was tiny beside him. He could have slipped the straps of the rucksack off her back. He could have carried it for her, but he was damned if he would offer to. They would be expecting him back that evening, and in the office in the morning, and the paper would be piling on his desk. He did not know when it would be finished, but he thought it would go hard before it was. Without history, she couldn’t realize how hard it would go.
‘What’s this fucking talk about a name?’
‘We’re going to the zoo. You’ll find your name there.’
The manager remembered him – a sweet moment for Albert Perkins – and gushed a greeting.
‘Doktor Perkins, how excellent. The usual room, of course?’
‘Mr Perkins – I’m not a doctor.’
‘Everyone in Germany, Herr Perkins, is a doctor, or they are a Turk sweeping the streets.’ The manager dropped his voice, mock conspiracy, grinning. ‘Or they are an ossi, a new brother from the East – and you have a colleague.’
‘I have brought Doktor Rogers with me. He’ll be here a few days. For me it’s just one night.’
He looked around the small reception area. Spotless with fresh paint and clean. The hotel was unpretentious, quiet, discreet. It was three years since he had last stayed there. It was in a street of Savignyplatz at the heart of the old cafe area of West Berlin. At the hotel off Savignyplatz he had been able to find, in the old days, the anonymity that was valuable to his work, and the inexpensive restaurants that did not challenge his per diem expenses allowance. He thought the boy from the kindergarten, Rogers, would have expected to stay in a Holiday Inn or a Hyatt, would have expected porterage and a modern room, stereotyped in design. He’d not get it here. Perkins tramped up the stairs to the first floor, his usual room, the view over a yard and a car park and over the back of another block. Rogers came after him.
He said, ‘What’s the plan, Mr Perkins?’
‘I unpack, I make a few phone calls, we collect the hire car. We go visiting.’
‘It’s just, Mr Perkins, that I don’t really krLow what it’s about.’
Perkins went sharply to the door, closed it. He drew the curtains at the window and turned on the bedside radio before taking the slim file from his briefcase. He tossed it casually at the young man.
Perkins rang a number from his personal directory, a number from way back. He murmured into the telephone, against the music from the radio.
‘Mr Perkins, am I being an idiot? I understand the position of Corporal Barnes. I understand why we’re targeting Krause. What I don’t understand is the reason that Mantle has involved himself.’
‘You’ve the file.’
‘Doesn’t help me, Mr Perkins, doesn’t tell me why he’s pushed his nose in.’
‘Read the file – read it to me.’
The life of Joshua Frederick Mantle, as known to Albert Perkins, was a single sheet of paper. The boy from kindergarten, Rogers, had a good voice, well-articulated, quiet against the music.
Born: 27 March 1942. Parents: Frederick Mantle and Emily Mantle (nee Wilson). FM served Royal Engineers, Military Medal in North Africa, twice promoted to Sgt and twice demoted for persistent alcohol abuse. Served post-war in Catterick, Plymouth, Coichester, Palestine and Malaya. EM shot dead by CCT (Chinese Communist Terrorist) in Penang, 1953.
Perkins said, ‘The ifie always tells the story, rare when it doesn’t. His father was a drunk with a career saved by one daft moment with a bazooka. The child had little contact with his father, his mother was everything. She was shot dead in a street market in Penang. The night she was killed, his father wasn’t in the barracks comforting his son, he was pissed and out wrecking the Chinese quarter with his mates. It would have been, aged eleven years, the end of his childhood.’
Education: Army schools, Army Apprentice College (Chepstow).
‘There were no relations to dump him on so he was carted round his father’s postings. One school after another, no permanence and no stability. A lonely and self-contained teenager. Would have thought he was unloved, would have been damn sure he was unwanted. Went to the Apprentice College as soon as he was old enough to be taken in. His father came out of the Army in nineteen sixty and headed for South Africa, his latest woman in tow. Mantle told a man I spoke to that he never heard from him again. The last time he saw his father, in a pub at Chepstow, the old bugger was in his cups and yakking on about building pontoon bridges, under fire, over the gullies, in front of the tanks in the desert. The truth is his father dug latrine pits and plumbed in the field showers, but just had the one glory moment with the bazooka. The Army, his own service, was the only horizon he had as a youngster.’
Army career: Joined I Corps as clerk, 1961. Stationed at
Templer, Ashford. Aden, 1966/1967. Osnabruck (Germany)
1972/1975. Staff Sergeant 1981. Belize 1982. Transferred out of I
Corps.
‘He started at the bottom of the heap. Not particularly sharp, but dedicated. He was pretty typical. Had made corporal by the time he went to Aden, based at the Mansoura gaol where the FLOSY and NLF guerrillas were held. Would have done a bit of native bashing in the interrogation sessions, would have been able to justify it. Then to Quebec barracks in Osnabruck. He was pushing paper with the rest of them, waste of time, analysing the Soviet order of battle. Quite a shy man, I was told, made his work everything. I don’t think there was anything in his life but his work. What he owned fitted into the suitcase under his bed. He went to Belize with an officer… A prisoner being interrogated died. A soldier reported the death to his unit padre. There was an inquiry. I was sent to minimize the fall-out. If Mantle had made a statement indicting his officer, who had tortured a prisoner to death, then the officer was gone and we were knee deep in propaganda shit. He didn’t, he was sensible, kept his mouth shut. .. Frankly, at that time I reckoned he hadn’t the bottle. He’s regretted that act of compromise ever since. We bought him off with a transfer and a commission. He left I Corps as a changed man.’
Joined SIB, Royal Military Police. Commissioned 1984, rank of