Psychomech (3 page)

‘Eh? Oh, yes—actually, I’m really a sort of messenger boy. Of the two of us, young Michael is—er, was—the heavy…’

‘Well, I have my own “heavies”, as you see.’

‘I do indeed, sir, Colonel. I do that. But I was only doing what I was told to—’

‘Shut your fat Paddy face and be glad you are alive, Kevin Connery,’ said the Colonel, all banter gone now from his voice. His face had been growing angry, was now white and quite deadly.

Connery could no longer control his trembling. ‘I—’ he started. And again: ‘I—’ He gulped, his eyes rolling wildly.

‘Oh, I’ll let you live,’ said the Colonel, ‘though I admit I’m not such a man of my word—a man of honour—as you.’ His voice was full of scorn. ‘So you’re a messenger, are you? Very well, you can live to deliver my message. You can tell your superiors they have won. I will not build my factory here. Will that please them?’

‘Oh, that it will, sir. Be sure of it. Er, Colonel.’

‘But tell them it is not because of their threats, no. Not because of any pressures they might apply. You see, Kevin Connery, I have employed—I still occasionally employ—men who know what terrorism really means. No, you have won for one reason and one reason only. It is this: I would not employ men who breathe the same air as you, who sprang from the same soil, who have lived in the same land. Regardless of their religious or political beliefs, I would not give them work. I would not give them the time of day.’

‘Sir,’ Connery gulped as his own gun stabbed even harder through the fat covering his ribs. ‘Colonel, I—’

‘Tell your superiors everything I have said,’ Schroeder cut him short. ‘I am leaving Ireland tonight. Any of you who follow—anyone who attempts revenge on me outside Ireland—will not return to his beloved Emerald Isle. Make sure you tell them that, too.’

They were now deep into the ‘safe’ area of the city, driving slowly along a quiet street. Koenig stopped the car outside a grocery store. He got out and opened the rear door, dragging Connery out by his hair. The Irishman squealed like a pig and a few passers-by stared for a moment before hurriedly moving on. Koenig grabbed the fat man with both hands and whirled him around and around, as he had done with the monkey man. Finally he lifted and heaved in one movement, releasing the man like a stone from a sling. Connery screamed as he shot headlong through the grocery store window.

Then, before a crowd could gather—before a single voice could be raised in protest—the bulky man got back into the Mercedes and drove it away.

They were staying at the Europa Hotel and had been there through a week of negotiations. Negotiations which were now dead, finished. Urmgard had gone missing just three short hours ago. Then—the telephone call, the threats on her life, the demands. Her life would not have meant a great deal, but—there are some men you must never threaten. The Colonel had made certain demands of his own, which had been agreed; he had made one hurried telephone call to Hamburg; then he and Koenig had gone to meet the men who held his wife.

In their absence Gerda, the nanny, had cared for little Heinrich. She had been told to stay with the boy at the hotel through every moment that her master was away; and the rest of the world had not suspected anything was amiss.

Then there had been the arranged meeting on a certain, road just outside the Catholic area; the bearded men getting into the back of the Mercedes and producing their guns; the tortuous route which must surely lose anyone not born to Belfast itself; and finally the destination, a pub in the Old Park district of the city.

But all of that was over now, finished with. Except—

As Koenig turned the big car into Great Victoria Street, so the Colonel sat up straighter in his back seat. No, it was not finished with. Just as the terrorists had underestimated him, so had the Colonel underestimated them. They were not all of the same breed.

Police barriers had been set up, blocking the road and cutting off the hotel. RUC men were everywhere, uniformed, flak-jacketed, SMGs at the ready. Military Policemen and Policewomen searched people on the street, their red hats like splashes of blood in the thin drizzle which now fell from skies turned suddenly sullen.

Koenig’s window hummed down and he identified himself to an RUC constable at the barrier. Schroeder leaned forward and said: ‘Was ist passiert? What is it? What’s happened here?’

‘Two men were caught coming out of the hotel, sir. They had guns and shot it out. One’s dead and the other’s dying. We’re talking to him now.’

‘Do you know who I am?’ Schroeder asked.

‘Oh, yes, sir. That I do.’

‘I have to get through, get my wife and child out of there. They are in danger. That’s who they were after, my wife and child!’

The constable seemed undecided. Schroeder reached out his hand and gave the man a roll of paper money. ‘Now really, sir,’ the constable stuttered, ‘I can’t accept—’

‘Then give the money to someone who is not so foolish!’ Koenig snapped the words directly into the constable’s face. ‘Only let us through!’

The RUC man checked to ensure no one had seen, stepped out of the way, removed the barrier and waved them through.

Koenig brought the car to a halt at the hotel entrance and the Colonel jumped out. A Military Policeman stood on the hotel steps with his back to the open doors. Inside, a second Redcap was visible, his narrowed eyes scanning the crowded lobby and missing nothing. Twenty yards down the road an ambulance wailed to a halt, its blue lights flashing. A crowd of uniformed RUC men parted and a stretcher was lifted, borne to the rear of the ambulance. The pavement was red with blood. Farther down the road a blanket had been thrown over a crumpled human figure. One foot, the shoe loose, protruded. There was blood there, too. A lot of it.

Schroeder and Koenig ran up the hotel steps and were confronted by the MP. He was very young, perhaps twenty, a Corporal. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, his voice sharp but not nervous. ‘They’re checking for bombs. You can’t go in there.’

‘Bombs?’ Schroeder’s voice climbed the scale. ‘Bombs? My child is in there!’ He made no mention of his wife.

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said the Corporal. ‘They’re starting to evacuate now, and—’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Koenig, stepping forward. ‘This gentleman is Herr Thomas Schroeder. Those bombs, if there are any, are meant for him—and for his family! And his wife will stay exactly where she is until he goes to collect her. We have to—’

‘Hold it!’ the Corporal snapped. ‘And don’t try to pressure me, friend. I’m just doing my job. Wait a second.’ He looked along the street. ‘Sergeant!’ he yelled. ‘Hey, Sarge—give us a second, can you?’

A landrover with Military Police plates and Makralon panels stood parked on the kerb, its blue light soundlessly whirling. The MP Sergeant crouched at its open door,speaking rapidly into the mouthpiece of a radio-telephone. He looked up as the Corporal shouted, spotted the group of three, nodded, finished his conversation and hurried over.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, mounting the steps.

‘Sarge, this is Thomas Schroeder,’ said the Corporal. ‘He thinks all this was for him. He has family in there.’

‘Well, we can’t help that, my old son,’ the Sergeant answered. He looked nervous, his finger lay along the trigger-guard of his SMG. He turned to Schroeder. ‘You see, sir—’

‘I’ll see you demoted to Private if you don’t let me through!’ Schroeder snarled. ‘My baby—’ He grabbed at the front of the Sergeant’s flak-jacket.

‘Sarge,’ said the Corporal, staring hard at his superior. ‘This is the Thomas Schroeder. Look, his wife isn’t going to make a move until he goes in for her. I mean him, personally. Let me go with him, eh?’

The Sergeant bit his lip. He glanced at Schroeder, Koenig, back at the Corporal. There was sweat on his forehead under his cap. ‘OK, go get them out—but make it snappy. It’ll be my neck if anything goes wrong! Go on, move it—I’ll get another man on the door here.’ He put his fingers to his teeth and whistled, and a Military Policewoman came hurrying from the landrover.

‘Thank you!’ Schroeder gasped. And again: ‘Thank you!’ He turned to Koenig. ‘Willy, you wait here. We’ll send for the luggage later. It’s not important.’ He ran in through the doors with the Corporal close behind. ‘Corporal,’ he called back, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Garrison, sir.’

‘Garrison? A soldier’s name.’ He was panting, but not from any real exertion. Garrison guessed his talking was to hide his fear. Fear for his wife and child, not for himself. ‘And your first name?’

‘Richard, sir.’

‘The Lionheart, eh? Well, Richard Garrison, you’re a sharp man and I like you for it.’ He thumbed impatiently for the lift, then jammed his thumb tight down on the button until the doors hissed open and the cage ejected a crush of white-faced people. ‘I’ll see to it that your commanding officer hears about the help you gave me.’

‘Thank you, sir, but I’d rather you didn’t. He’d only charge me with endangering my own life, or some such. That’s what’s bothering the Sarge, see?’

Schroeder’s eyes grew large behind his spectacles. ‘Then they really do suspect a bomb?’

‘They’re searching the upper and lower floors now, sir. Working towards the middle.’

‘The middle? My child is on the fifth floor!’

At the fifth they hurried from the lift into a corridor filled with people. A dozen of them immediately crammed themselves into the lift and its doors slid shut. ‘My rooms are 504 through 508,’ Schroeder said, pushing past hurrying people. ‘My wife has 506. That’s where she’ll be—with Heinrich.’

In front of them the corridor had almost cleared of people. Only a few remained, all looking startled and asking what was happening. As they arrived at 506 the door burst open. Two wide-eyed youths, neither one of them more than eighteen years old, rushed out and collided with the Colonel. He was sent reeling—but not before they had recognized him.

‘Who—?’ Schroeder gasped, banging into the opposite wall of the corridor.

One of the youths whipped out a gun. The SMG in the Corporal’s hands made a harsh
ch-ching
sound as Garrison slammed back the cocking piece, and in the next moment the weapon seemed to burst into a lethal life of its own. It bellowed a staccato message of death that blew the two youths away from the door of 506 and sent them spinning along a white wall which turned red where they touched it.

Then they fell, sprawling in the corridor and dying along with the SMG’s booming echoes.

Garrison, down on one knee, had fired upward at them. Those rounds which had gone astray had spent themselves harmlessly in the ceiling. Cleared as if by magic, the corridor was almost empty now; only two elderly ladies remained, clutching at each other as they stumbled along the bloodied wall.

Then Garrison and Schroeder were inside 506, their eyes taking in the scene at a glance.

A toddler in a playsuit was crying, arms reaching, staggering like a mechanical toy across the floor of the room. A woman, young and beautiful, lay on the bed. She was gagged and bound, her eyes wide and pleading. An older woman lay stretched out on the floor, obstructing the toddler’s progress. Her bun of dark hair was red with blood, as was the carpet where she lay. A parcel in the shape of a six-inch cube of brown paper sat on the dresser, emitting acrid smoke which curled upward in a deadly spiral. The paper of the upper side was turning crisp and black. A tiny flame appeared, reaching upward through the curling paper.

‘Bomb!’yelled the Corporal. He grabbed the woman off the bed like a rag doll and tossed her into Schroeder’s arms, knocking the industrialist back out into the corridor. Then he stepped over the unconscious or dead woman on the floor and snatched up the screaming child-

‘Mein Kind! Mein Sohn!’ Schroeder was back in the doorway, having dumped his wife in the corridor. He took a step inside the room.

‘Out!’ Garrison yelled. ‘For Christ’s sake, out!’ He hurled the child across the room into his father’s arms, made to dive for the door and tripped on the prone body of the nanny. Flying headlong across the room, he passed between the bomb and the doorway. And even willing himself through the air, as he stretched himself out desperately towards the corridor, his eyes were on the burning parcel.

For this one had his number on it and he knew it. He knew—somehow
knew
—that it was going to explode.

Which, at that precise moment, it did.

W
hen Schroeder regained consciousness he was in a hospital bed, held together and kept alive by an amazing array of pipes and tubes, wires and stitches, instruments and mechanisms. Koenig was at his bedside. The man was seated, gauze-masked, his head bowed. Tears fell on to his hands which were crossed in his lap. Tears were not characteristic of Willy Koenig.

‘Willy,’ said Schroeder, his voice a whisper. ‘Where am I?’ He spoke in German.

Koenig looked up, his mouth opening, a light flickering into life behind the bloodshot orbs of his eyes. ‘Colonel! Colonel, I—’

‘Wo bin ich?’
Schroeder insisted.

‘Still in Ireland,’ said Koenig. ‘You could not be moved. It has been eight days, almost nine. But now—now you will recover!’

‘Yes, I will, but—’

‘Yes, Herr Colonel?’

Schroeder tried to smile but managed only a grimace. ‘Willy, we’re alone. Call me Thomas. In fact, from now on you must always call me Thomas.’

The other nodded his blond head.

‘Willy,’ said Schroeder again, ‘I
will
recover, yes. But you should know what I know. That bomb finished me. A year, two if I’m lucky. I feel it.’

Koenig fell to his knees beside the bed. He grasped his Colonel’s hand, kneaded it. Schroeder’s grip was surprisingly strong. It tightened in a sudden spasm of memory.

‘Willy, the bomb! My child! My Heinrich!’

‘A miracle,’ Koenig quickly told him. ‘Not a scratch. Not a mark.’

‘You wouldn’t lie to me?’

‘Of course not, my Colonel—Thomas. The boy is well. His mother, too.’

‘And… Gerda?’

Koenig looked away.

Schroeder closed his eyes for a second. ‘Did she suffer?’

‘No, not at all. The bomb blew out part of the hotel’s outer wall. Gerda went with it. They found… pieces. Probably a mercy.’