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 and the Star of David as his own personal small gesture towards the past. It made them squirm in the offices in Cologne.
Raub had stood beside him and whistled his annoyance through his teeth, so Goldstein had smiled as if there was no problem with the bastard being late. Raub wore an overcoat of mahogany brown, a silk scarf, a striped suit and a white shirt, and Goldstein had known what Raub would wear so he had dressed in casual outdoor shoes, designer jeans, an anorak and an open shirt. Raub had worn a tie, Goldstein had worn the Star of David. Raub had carried a polished leather attache case, Goldstein had a canvas bag hooked over his shoulder. They were calling the flight, the last call. Raub had the tickets and the boarding passes.
The taxi had come to a halt in front of the glass doors, where it was forbidden to stop, the driver reaching back for his fare, his face lit with pleasure. It would be a good tip because it wouldn’t be the bastard’s own money, because it would go down on the expenses and for this bastard, high priority, expenses were a deep black hole. The bastard was out of the car, striding the few paces to the glass doors, which had swept open for him, and Goldstein had shuddered again as the cold caught him and the snow flurry settled on his face and his arms.
Goldstein and Raub were the minders from the BfV: they were the escort from the counter-espionage organization.
He was a big man, as tall as Raub and taller than Goldstein, with broad shoulders. He kept his back straight, as if he had stood on a parade-ground and commanded lesser men, and held his head high. His fair hair was neatly combed, his beard carefully trimmed. He had moved between his minders with the effortless step of arrogance, and Goldstein thought it a class act. They had gone straight to the head of the queue, paused long enough at the desk for Raub and Goldstein to flash their passports and identification cards at the girl. Hadn’t waited for her permission, had gone on through. He never hurried. They had followed the lights and the indicator boards. They had taken the first flight of the day from Berlin Tempelhof to London Heathrow…
Ernst Raub would have liked to say, ‘It’s not Interfiug, Doktor Krause. It’s not Aeroflot. There are two knives…‘ He had said, ‘For an airline breakfast, the egg is very good.’
It was the nature of his job to be polite to the man, but he despised him. He thought the man ate like a pig.
He would have liked to say, ‘With two knives you can use one for the scrambled egg and one for the roll and the marmalade..
He had said, ‘Personally, I would prefer jam, summer fruits, to marmalade, but the marmalade is acceptable.’
They sat in business class. Goldstein, appallingly dressed, was by the window, then Krause. Ernst Raub was across the aisle, but after the stewardess had passed, he leaned towards the man.
He would have liked to say, ‘There are always two knives on Lufthansa, standard or business. Were they short of knives on Interfiug and Aeroflot?’ He had said, ‘Always so much better when you have breakfast inside you. Then you can face the world.’
They were so ignorant, these people, so lacking in sophistica tion. Ernst Raub had a friend in Cologne, Army but on attachment to BfV, who told him that when people like Krause had been inducted to the Bundeswehr Inner Leadership Academy they were so naive that they did not know how to use a bank, how to buy insurance, did not know how to choose a bottle of wine for dinner. In Cologne, over a beer and a barbecue with his family and his friend’s family, he used to shake with laughter when he was told how pathetic were these people.
He had leaned back in his seat, the aircraft was steady and cruising above the storm turbulence, closed his eyes. He had scratched at the sunburn on his face, but the peeling skin on his shoulders was worse, aggravated by the new shirt he wore. Two good weeks with his wife, the boys looked after by her parents, in the Seychelles… but fewer Germans there than when they had holidayed on the islands six years before, because too much money was leaking out of western Germany and into the swamp pit of eastern Germany, too much money going to these people who did not know how to work, and did not know how to use a different knife for their egg and for their roll and marmalade
· · · Ernst Raub could not criticize the man, must only sweeten him. Ernst Raub, sixteen years with the Office for the Protection of the State, had gone too many times into the buildings of the Bonn ministries to seal offices and desks, filing cabinets, computers and bank accounts, to lead away junior officials to the interrogation rooms, to recite the charge of espionage to a grey- faced, trembling wretch. He had heard, too many times, the sobbed and stuttered confessions and the names, too many times, of those who had compromised and ruined those junior officials, the wretches. It demeaned him to escort and mind Doktor Krause, but the man must be sweet-talked, the man was a nugget of gold.
There were no formalities at London Heathrow. They were taken off the flight before the other passengers and down an open staircase onto the apron area where two unmarked cars had waited for them..
In abject misery, Major Perry Johnson walked in the rain, desolate, to the guardhouse.
Each image, sharp in his mind, was worse than the one gone before.
The Colonel had been on his knees beside Doktor Dieter Krause. ‘I really cannot apologize sufficiently. I’m quite devastated by what has happened to a guest of the Corps. I can only say how sincerely sorry I am, and all my colleagues, for this quite shameful and unwarranted assault. I promise, you have my word, Doktor Krause, that I will get to the bottom of this matter and that the culprit will be severely punished.’
The Colonel had attempted to touch the German’s shoulder, but the younger minder, the sallow Jewish boy, the one who had kicked the corporal, had blocked his hand.
The Colonel had stood and the minders had stayed close to their man, a snarl of contempt on the face of the older one. ‘Immediately, Captain Dawson, get Doktor Krause and his people down to Sick Bay. I want him treated, looked after. I want the best for him. Well, come on, stir yourself, man.’ And Captain Dawson had drifted, dream-like, forward, had offered a hand to get the German to his feet and had been pushed aside. There was blood on the German’s face and he walked bent because of the blows into his privates.