‘The problem, it is still there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The woman, has she come to Rostock?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘It is about the collection of evidence.’
‘You told me that all the files were destroyed. What evidence?’
‘There were witnesses, that is the problem. The ifies were destroyed, I do not know if she can find the witnesses.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I have to finish with the problem before I go to America.’
Their voices murmured. They watched their daughter below. They applauded the point that was won. Eva heard the quiet, cold certainty of her husband’s voice.
‘If you cannot…?’
‘Cannot what?’
‘If you cannot finish with the problem before you go to America. ..?‘
‘If I cannot finish with the problem, if she finds the witnesses, if the witnesses talk to her, then I am named..
‘Then?’
‘I am arrested. I am tried, am convicted. I would go to prison.’
‘You will fight?’
The past clung to her. The past was Pyotr Rykov. And the past was also her husband coming home in the night with the wet salt smell on his clothes and the sand on his shoes and undressing in silence. The past was poverty, boredom, when she had been unemployed because the FDGB had closed down as an irrelevance, and it was four years of him struggling to find work. The past was him seeing the picture in the newspaper of a Russian general, and behind the General had been Pyotr Rykov, and driving to Cologne to offer himself, and coming back with Raub and the young Jew, and the move into the new refurbished home in the Altstadt near to the Petrikirche and the new clothes and the new furnishings. The past was ghosts… The overhead smash shot, the victory, their daughter leaping in celebration on the court with arms and racquet raised… All in the past if a young woman came to Rostock, searched for, and found, witnesses.
‘You ask me if I will fight. Yes, I will fight.’
He was gone from the seat beside her.
The train slowed. He broke the dream. They had gone through Maichin and were past Teterow. He moved his arm, edged it from behind her body. The train lurched on its brakes. Her eyes opened, blinked, stayed open. Her face was close to his. She didn’t shift her body from against his.
‘How long have I been there?’
‘A bit less than an hour.’
‘Enjoy it, did you?’
Josh said quietly, ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘Got a thrill? Grope me, did you?’
He thought trust was beautiful and precious, and that he was old and stupid. He jerked up off the seat. He pulled her rucksack and his own bag down from the overhead rack. He did not care to look at her. He did not know which of her was real. The train was slowing, crawling. He did not know which of her was the core, when she was asleep and lovely, when she sneered and was ugly. Was he trusted, was he a convenience? Out of the window, slipping by, were small homes.
‘Is this Rostock?’
‘This is Laage, about fifteen miles from Rostock.’
‘Why’d you wake me?’
He felt the anger and tossed the weight of the rucksack onto her legs.
‘Do the obvious and that’s the way to get hurt. The obvious ways to reach Rostock are by the autobahn or through the railway station. This is the last stop before Rostock, so we get off.’
‘No call to be so bloody grumpy. I just asked.’
The train stopped.
She shrugged away from him, heaved the rucksack onto her shoulders and avoided his help. They went down the corridor, past the Scouts, quiet now and sleeping.
They walked out of the empty station and waited across the road at the deserted shelter for the bus to Rostock.
He had driven to a petrol station where there was a photocopier and reproduced the file, a dozen pages given 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.