The Waiting Time by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online

at Templer who would have described Perry Johnson as imaginative. He didn’t read fiction, he didn’t listen to music and he didn’t look at pictures.
    He was called to the gate. Under the arc lights, the far side of the heavy iron barrier, was a green Sierra. Ten past three in the morning. The man behind the wheel had a pinched weasel face, a small brush of a moustache, combed and slicked hair in a perfect parting, and his skin had the paleness of one who avoided sunlight and weather. He got out of the car, carrying a filled briefcase, and threw his keys to the sentry. He didn’t ask where he should park, merely assumed that the sentry would do the business for him.
    Perry Johnson thought that the man came to the barracks just as a hangman would have come to a gaol at dead of night. He shivered and his imagination rioted. The briefcase could have held a rope, a hood and the pinion thongs of leather.
    ‘Who are you?’
    The man spoke with what Johnson thought was a common voice and the accent held the grate of West London.
    ‘Johnson, Major Perry Johnson.’
    ‘What’s your involvement?’
    ‘I’m Corporal Barnes’s commanding officer. She does my typing.’
    ‘Thought you people did your own typing, these days, or are some too idle to learn how to use a keyboard?’
    ‘There’s no call. .
    The man smiled, without humour. ‘There were a few old contemptibles in my place who tried to hang on to their typists so they wouldn’t have to learn the new skills. They were booted out. Where’s Krause?’
    ‘I didn’t catch your name.’
    ‘Hadn’t given it you. Take me to Krause. I gather you found a photograph, please. I’ll have it. I’m Albert Perkins.’
    Johnson took the picture from his tunic pocket, offered it. They were under a light. It was examined. Perkins took a buff file from his briefcase and opened it. He read from the file and looked again at the photograph, put both back into the briefcase, and walked on. Johnson felt the fear a prison governor would have experienced when meeting for the first time a hangman coming in the emptiness of the night. He led. The rainclouds had gone.
    He babbled, ‘I’m wondering if our tracks haven’t crossed. Face seems to register from way back. There was a Perkins, a Six man, working out of the Naafihaus, Helmstedt, would have been mid- seventies. Up and down to Berlin on our military train, debriefing autobahn people. Was it...?’
    ‘I find that really boring — “Weren’t you? By Jove, so was I. God, small world. Remember?” Tedious.’
    They reached Sick Bay and went into the dim light of the waiting area.
    Perkins said, ‘My advice, Major, don’t go playing all uptight because I’ve been sent here, because your people are whining that they’re out of their depth, don’t. I’ll tell you why I’m here, words of one syllable. They’re the power and the glory. We bend the knee to them. We grovel rather than offend “greater” Germany. We slobber at the ankles of their Chancellor, their Central Bank, their foreign ministry, their industrialists. They are premier and we are division three. They deign, kind of them, to throw us crumbs, to send us a prime intelligence asset, who gets the warmest of welcomes. She called him a murderer, correct? They’re hardly going to enthuse when we name that prime asset as a killer who should be before their judges. Not on a junket, not bathing in the limelight, but in handcuffs and in court. They won’t be happy people. So, we’re all smiles and apologies. Got me?’
    There was a sentry on the inner door. Perkins went past him, didn’t acknowledge him. The bright light of the room lit the paleness of his face.
    Krause sat on a hard chair. The wounds were cleaner than when Johnson had last seen him, but the scratches were deep. As if drilled, the minders each took a step forward from the wall to stand either side of their man.
    The smile beamed on Perkins’s face. ‘The name is Perkins, I’ve come from