‘I’m going out.’
‘That’s not clever.’ Trying to be reasonable and patient.
‘Then I’m not clever, but I’m going out.’
‘Where? Where are you going?’
‘Where I’m not suffocated by you. Where you’re not breathing down my bloody neck.’
‘You want to be stupid and unprofessional, see if I care.’
The sneers had gone, the taunts were wiped away. She said, ‘We were in Rostock a few hours before we went to Rerik, before it was dark and he took the boat, before Hans went… We went from here up the river to Warnemunde, and we walked on the beach there and on the breakwater. Do you know about being in love, Mr Mantle?’
‘Not a lot.’ His temper had melted. She was the child, the innocent.
‘I want to go on the beach, on the breakwater, where we were. I want to be alone, just with him. I want to be with him, alone with him… I had to drive, after we’d been on the beach and the breakwater, to Rerik because he was too screwed down tight, clawed up, to drive himself. He was dead a few hours after we’d walked on the beach and the breakwater.’
She told him where she would be, and he would get a map after she’d gone and find the place. She had sledgehammered at him, the emotions rioted in him. He wished he could take her in his arms, comfort her, hold her, but he was fifty-four years old and knew so little about love.
‘Just give me two or three hours… It’s where we were.
Come and get me. We’ll talk it through, your plan. We’ll have a bloody great meal, and double chips, and a bloody great big bottle. I have to be with him.’
He said gruffly, choked on it, ‘Fine, that’ll be fine. And go carefully.’
She smiled, sadness and youth, a love that he was not a part of. He heard her go away down the corridor and listened for her singing until he could hear her no longer. He stripped and washed in ice-cold water. The sunlight had gone from the window, the clouds massed low above the roof tops. The room was greyer without the sunlight, without her.
He had made good time. He had left Savignyplatz too early to disturb Rogers: he had paid his bill and slipped away.
He rather enjoyed the quiet of the car, the radio turned low.
As he drove towards the outskirts of the city, ignoring the Dummerstorf-Waldeck turning, he considered the priorities of his day. First priority, a good hotel, if that were possible in Rostock. Second priority, to telephone Helen. Couldn’t remember, not to save his life, whether this was a day on which she had morning, afternoon or evening classes. He tried to call most days when he was abroad. Third priority, to telephone Basil. He called Basil his best friend, and Helen called him his only friend. He sat next to Basil in the Riverside Stand, season-ticket holders. He would not be back for Fullham against Bristol City, division two. He disliked the thought of Basil sitting next to an empty place and, if he was away over a home game, always rang him at the car-repair yard to suggest that Basil should call by at Hampton Wick and collect his ticket and take someone else. The fourth priority, to telephone Mr Fleming, just a progress report. Fifth priority, to search out the man who could tell a story, guaranteed to amuse, about the wife
It was important to Albert Perkins to have a day ahead of him filled with priorities. He braked hard, swerved for the slow lane at the sign for Rostock Sud. He saw the parked car. With a slight gesture, insufficient to arouse attention, he raised his hand so that it would block a view of his face. He noted the man with the trimmed beard and the scars.
He had heard, walking on empty streets away from Savignyplatz, in his imagination, the night before, the howl of a wolf. He smiled, satisfied, because his prediction had been proved correct. The pack had gathered. He drove towards the towering spires of the old churches, and the old walls of the city. The car at the slip-road, watching the traffic off the Autobahn from Berlin, told him that they had slipped through in the late evening. The young woman, if she listened to Mantle, stood a chance of achieving the policy objective, if she listened.
He headed past the Rathaus, onto Lange Strasse, towards the heart of Rostock.
He was not certain.
The former Feldwebel, the taxi driver, eased the vehicle into gear. The hair was correct, but there were many with hair that colour in the city. He thought the height was near to correct, but it was an average height for a young woman. He had been told that the target woman was of slight build, but she wore a heavy sweater, he could see the neck of it and a quilted anorak, and he did not know whether she was slight or heavy.
He passed her, idling in the road, drove by her and then stopped so that he could see her in his mirror. In former times, when Ulf Fischer had served as a Feidwebel at the headquarters on August-Bebel Strasse he had not been required to make a decision, to act on initiative. As a taxi driver he did not make decisions, went where he was told to go. The Hauptman would be on the far side of the city, on the slip-road. He was nervous of alerting the Hauptmnn and being wrong. He rang Hoffmann on the mobile phone.
She came past him, but her head was turned away. He thought she walked towards the Hauptbahnhof.
The second secretary (consular), each week and alternating between their Moscow embassy offices, met the cultural attache for lunch. It was a source of some small annoyance to the London man from the Service that the Washington man from the Agency had the resources to serve up the better meal.
‘This Krause guy, the one your lady soldier rolled over, they’ve gotten into heavy excitement about him back home.’
‘Soon be there, the warrior wearing his wounds.’
‘They’ve moved the auditorium for him, at the Pentagon. He’s going where they can fit another fifty seats.’
The annoyance, to the Briton, was that the American was provided with quality equipment for his kitchenette – gas rings, a microwave and a fridge-freezer large enough to store half an ox, a coffee-bean grinder and a percolator. The room at the American embassy where they lunched was metal-walled, sheet steel plate on the windows, secure against electronic audio surveillance.
‘The man of the moment, the good Colonel Rykov… I can tell you, Brad, there’s a monumental inquest back home. Heads will roll for what happened to Krause. Is it right that the Germans are going over the pond mob-handed? It’s what I heard.’
‘Chipping away at the cement of the special relationship, David. What I hear, at Langley there’s a powerful number enrolling for German classes – hey, David, that’s intended as a joke. These days, for all the kids, the clerks, who go jogging in the lunch hour, Elgar is strictly dated, they’ve all put Beethoven tapes in their Walkpersons. OK, so that’s not funny, but can I hint to you, prickly Brit, that the special relationship still lives?’
‘I feed from the floor under your table.’
It was usual for them to share at their weekly lunches. Half an hour later, the Briton was on his way back to his embassy and formulating in his mind the text of the message that would go in cypher to Vauxhall Bridge Cross. Colonel Rykov, through his minister, had kicked with accuracy the testicles of the ‘reconstructed’ KGB, which was a dangerous old game, a game where the kicker might incur a serious hurt. It would go as a priority signal.
‘I think you did well, Fischer.’
‘I was not certain. I didn’t wish to waste the time of the Han ptrnan.’
They stood beside a cafe, closed for the winter. The sun had gone. The sleet came in the wind from the low cloud merged with the sea and whipped the beach. Hoffmann held his hand flat above his eyes to keep it from his face, to see better. She was a small grey figure holding bright flowers and she sat on the dull sand near the water line.
‘I think the Han ptman will be pleased with you, Fischer.’
‘Thank you.’ Ulf Fischer flushed with pride. She sat alone on the beach. Hoffmann made the call to Krause on the slip-road. Hoffmann had met him at the Hauptbahnhof, they had tried to track the train on the S-Bahn line north from the city to Warnemunde, had been held at red traffic lights behind a police van. They had seen her, for a few seconds, at a distance, near to the Hotel Neptun, had lost her because they could not park the car, found her again. The flowers moved, bobbed, carried by the faint figure as she pushed herself up from the dull sand. She was against the sea and the cloud and the sleet. She walked slowly on the beach, meandered, towards them, towards the breakwater over which the waves burst.