The British Lion (32 page)

CHAPTER 38

T
HEY’D BEEN DRIVI
NG
for twenty minutes and Rossett still hadn’t managed to get out of second gear.

Not that Rossett really wanted to get out of second gear.

The Austin Seven they had taken from the farmer was nearly twenty years old, smelled of pigs and piss, falling apart, prone to stalling, and bereft of brakes.

If the German army didn’t kill them, the Austin probably would.

“Does this thing go any faster?” Ruth shouted over the rattle of the engine.

Rossett dipped the clutch and revved the engine once more, a desperate attempt to coax life from another wheezing cough and stutter.

“I hope not.”

“They’ll be setting up roadblocks. We need to speed up.”

Rossett tried for third, snatching at the gear stick and dipping the clutch again. The car slithered to the edge of the road on some drifted snow. He swung the steering wheel as branches from roadside trees clattered against the windscreen and the passenger window.

Rossett changed his mind about third and returned the stick to second, wheel still slewed to the right, car still sliding to the left.

The tires gripped, the car lurched, and the center of the road came back into view as Ruth braced herself with one hand on the dashboard and the other on the roof.

“Are you sure you can drive?” she shouted, lowering her arm slowly.

“I can. I’m not sure if the car can, though.”

“The Germans will be waiting for us; the roads will be crawling with them.”

“They haven’t got communication with the outside world back at Coton. The lines are down. We should be all right for now.”

“What if they have radios?”

“They never used them earlier, hence the dispatch driver. We’re safe.”

“And when we get to London?”

“London is a big city; there are lots of ways in, too many to cover with roadblocks. We’ll get around them under cover of the weather and darkness. This snow is our best friend tonight.”

“Unless we end up a tree.”

“Unless we end up a tree,” Rossett agreed as the car bucked again.

The snow had stopped, but there was still the occasional flurry that dropped from overhanging branches along the narrow lanes they were using. The solitary windscreen wiper on the Austin didn’t work, so eventually, after about an hour, Rossett finally admitted defeat and stopped the car to clear the drift that had built up on the front window.

As soon as the car slithered to a stop the engine died.

Ruth got out of the passenger side and walked a few paces ahead of the car. She stopped, listened to the silent night, and then walked back to watch Rossett scoop the snow off the roof, bonnet, and windscreen.

“We’re going to need another car. We’ll never make it in this.”

“I know,” Rossett replied, stepping back from the car and clapping his hands together to warm them up. He looked up and down the lane. “The problem is finding one. I want to stay off the main roads and out of towns as best I can.”

“We should stop the next car we see and take it.”

“Take it?”

Ruth shrugged and then went back to the Austin and got in. Rossett watched her go and then joined her in the car. He battled for two minutes to get the little engine to fire up. Eventually, after a cough, a splutter, and an almighty backfire, they were off again along the back roads of Cambridgeshire on the way to London.

They traveled in silence for half an hour before Ruth spoke again.

“I loved him.”

“What?”

“Horst. I loved him.”

He looked at her and searched for something to say, didn’t find anything, so instead wiped the windscreen with the back of his hand, smudging the condensation of their breath.

“I had to kill him, I want you to know. I had to do it.”

“It doesn’t matter. Forget it. Now isn’t the time to think about it,” Rossett replied.

“I’m too important, too important for him to try to stop me. I wanted him to come with us, but when he went for his gun . . .”

Rossett looked at Ruth and then back at the road.

“Shush now.”

“If I stayed in Cambridge, if I did what they wanted, if I succeeded in my work . . .” Ruth drifted off and looked out of the window, chewing one of the fingers on her glove.

“What are you doing there? Is it a weapon?”

Ruth nodded.

“A bomb?”

Ruth nodded.

“Why aren’t you in Germany?”

“There are teams of us, working separately, but on the same project—some in France, some in Germany, and some in Cambridge. We are all looking for the solutions to the same problems, but we’re looking for them in different ways.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to get everyone in one place?”

“It’s politics, funding, people trying to gain influence and prestige. We’re pawns in a game. Besides, the work we are doing in Cambridge, the German scientists think we’re wrong. Their calculations and our calculations are different. We meet occasionally to discuss it, but they think that we’re second-class citizens, and they begrudge our involvement.”

“It’s just a bomb. Why can’t you make the bomb, then blow it up to see if it works?”

Ruth shook her head and didn’t answer, as Rossett finally managed to find third gear.

“Aren’t there other people there who know what you know? Why are you so important?” he tried again.

“I know they’re wrong, everyone: the French, the Germans, even my team. I’ve figured out what everyone is doing wrong. I know the secret. That’s why the Americans want me.”

“You have a high opinion of yourself.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me?”

Ruth shook her head. “What I know, what I have figured out, is the key to the bomb. I know the amounts of the atoms and the heavy water.” She tapped her left temple with a gloved finger. “I’ve got the formula in my head. I’m the fuse. I know how it goes together, I know every part, every material, every weight and every measure . . . I’m the component that they need.”

“Just you?”

“My brain, everything in it . . .” Ruth shook her head. “What I know, it’s the most terrible war machine you could ever imagine.”

Rossett looked at her.

“You’re right about one thing.”

“What?”

“I don’t understand.”

Ruth smiled as she cupped her hands to her mouth.

“So you build a bomb for the Americans instead of the Germans?” Rossett said, seesawing the steering wheel with tiny movements, trying to keep the car straight.

Ruth shrugged. “The Germans won’t take long to learn what I know. They have my notes and most of my calculations; they’ll have their bomb soon enough, don’t worry about that.”

“So why bother?”

“The Americans want me to build them a bomb quickly, to balance the scales. It’s a race, and the world needs the right team to win, or both teams to draw.”

“How do you know what the Americans want?”

“They’ve got messages to me. There is someone at Cambridge, I don’t know who, but they have left messages for me. They told me you, or someone like you, was coming for me one day.”

“But why you?”

“I’m the best, the brightest. Whoever left the notes must have told the Americans. One day I found a note under my door when I returned from the lab. They told me to leave a reply, in the ladies’ toilets at the hall. I managed to copy some of my papers and pass them on by leaving them hidden in prearranged places. I told them we were getting close, that I couldn’t hold off any longer with my calculations; making mistakes on purpose was getting too dangerous. Then one day, last week, I was told you were coming to get me.”

“And here I am.”

“Who are you?” Ruth looked at Rossett, her face half in shadow and half lit by the reflected headlamps bouncing off the snow.

“Me?” Rossett looked at her and then back at the road.

“Yes.”

“I’m nobody.”

“I don’t want to know your name . . . I just want to know who you are.”

Rossett turned again, and this time the glance lingered longer.

“Please?” Ruth tried again.

“I’m just somebody helping a friend.”

“You’d do all this to help somebody out?”

“A friend.”

“That makes you a good friend to have.”

“You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a good man to know.”

“Why?”

“Because people die—too many people die.”

“We live in wicked times.”

“Yeah.”

“People dying isn’t your fault.”

“You haven’t known me very long, have you?”

Ruth smiled at Rossett, and he surprised himself by twitching his own smile as he looked at the road.

They drove a while longer in silence before Ruth spoke quietly again.

“You aren’t a bad man.”

“Thank you.”

“When you knocked on my door tonight I wondered if you were coming to kill me.”

Rossett looked at her and then back at the road, jerking the steering wheel again to straighten the car.

“The only way I’ll kill you tonight is by crashing this car.”

CHAPTER 39

I
’M TELLING YOU,
guv, the kid was definitely German.”

Neumann looked at the little man in front of him and then at the desk sergeant, who was standing in the corner of the interview room in Bethnal Green Police Station.

“You can vouch for this man?”

“I know him, sir. Arthur Trellis. He’s been a rat, a common criminal and informer, for as long as I’ve been on the manor.”

“The manor?”

“This area, sir, Bethnal Green.”

Trellis shrugged at the description. He twisted his cap, looking up at Neumann from his seat at the wooden interview room table.

“Honest, guv; she was German, I swear,” Trellis tried again.

“You say she was dragged out of the pub?” Neumann finally spoke to him.

“Yes, guv, shouting for help she was.”

“And you didn’t help her?” March asked from behind his boss.

Trellis shifted in his chair so that he could address March directly.

“They’d have bleedin’ killed me! What am I to them? They’d swat me like a fly.” Trellis waved his hand in front of his face.

“What have you done since you called us?” Neumann asked the sergeant.

“I sent a car round to get the pub manager, sir. They’ll not be long.”

Neumann nodded, glanced at March, and turned back to Trellis.

“Who took her?”

Trellis lowered his head.

“I don’t know them, guv. I ain’t never seen them before. All I know is someone took a German girl out the pub and I thought you fellas should know. I’m doing my duty, that’s all.”

Neumann nodded to March and stepped out of his way. March took a pace forward then kicked the chair out from under Trellis and into the corner of the room. Trellis landed heavily on his backside and looked up at March just as the German policeman hit him hard above the right eye with a small leather sap.

The English sergeant in the corner rubbed his hands together nervously.

“He isn’t a suspect, sir, he’s a witness,” the sergeant said quietly.

March held a finger to his lips, all the while watching Trellis, who was moving on the floor as if he were underwater. March stepped in again, this time grabbing Trellis’s shoulder and pushing him onto his back.

Neumann saw that Trellis’s eye was split open. He was blinking and grimacing, trying to shake off the concussion the blow had blown through his brain. March dropped and straddled Trellis so that he was sitting on his stomach; he slapped Trellis lightly once or twice and then shook him by his lapels.

Finally Trellis managed to speak.

“Stop, please, I—”

March rested a finger on Trellis’s lips and looked up at Neumann.

“Who took her?” Neumann asked, civility to March’s ferocity.

“I don’t know!”

The sound of Trellis’s nose breaking made everyone but March pull a face. March pulled back his right fist and made to punch the little man again.

“Who took her?” Neumann asked.

Trellis moaned, eyes closed. He gurgled, then twisted his head and spat a gob of blood onto the wooden floor of the interview room. The desk sergeant frowned and looked at the door as March inspected his knuckles, then wiped them on Trellis’s jacket before gripping the lapels again. He lifted him slightly and then dropped him so that his head banged against the floor.

“Please, sir, please, I can’t, sir, I don’t—”

Trellis stopped speaking as March put his pistol into his mouth and cocked it. The little man looked up at the gun and then into March’s eyes.

March stared back, waiting for the word from Neumann.

“Who took her?” Neumann said quietly.

“Mumph.” Trellis struggled to speak, so March withdrew the blood-spattered pistol from his mouth, resting the barrel on the tip of Trellis’s damaged nose.

“Ma Price, sir.” Trellis gabbled the words with a newly nasal voice. “Her and her geezers, she took ’em, sir. Please, sir, I don’t know where she took ’em, I’d tell you if I did. I swear, I thought I was doing the right thing coming ’ere. Please, guv, please!”

March looked up at Neumann, who in turn looked at the sergeant.

“Do you know this person?” Neumann asked.

“Ma Price, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yes, sir. She’s a proper villain, a nasty piece of work.”

There was a knock at the door. A young constable looked in, and then down at March and Trellis. He visibly swallowed and turned to the sergeant.

“We’ve got the pub landlord.”

“Bring him in,” said Neumann.

The young bobby nodded nervously and then beckoned the landlord with his head.

Edwards the landlord edged into the room as the young bobby stepped aside. He looked down at Trellis on the floor, then up at Neumann, who smiled as the bobby closed the door behind him.

“Where did Ma Price take the girl?” said Neumann to Edwards.

“Ma who?” Edwards replied.

March looked up at Neumann, who nodded.

March whipped his pistol across Trellis’s face in a sharp sudden strike.

A spatter of blood flicked across the floor and the landlord looked at the semiconscious Trellis, then at Neumann.

“Here, you can’t—”

“Where is this Ma Price?”

“Who? I don’t know who you’re talking about?”

Neumann nodded to March.

March got up and stood in front of Edwards, close, far too close for comfort.

The landlord moved backward, and March moved with him, ending up inches from his face when the landlord finally came to a stop, his back against the wall.

“I . . . you can’t . . . get him away . . .” Edwards looked at Neumann.

“What can’t I do?” Neumann shrugged and gestured to March.

March wiped his bloody right hand down the front of the Edwards’s shirt. He then casually placed the pistol against his right temple, all the while staring straight into his eyes.

“Answer the question of the Generalmajor. A young German girl’s life is at risk and we don’t have much time,” March said calmly.

“Where did Ma Price take the girl?” Neumann tried again.

Edwards felt the pistol dig a fraction deeper into his temple. He looked into March’s eyes and his lips started to tremble as his bladder let go and piss ran down his leg onto the wooden floor.

Neumann looked at Edwards’s stained trousers and shook his head.

“Last time, and then I tell him to pull the trigger: where did Ma Price take the girl?”

The landlord could barely speak; his teeth were clenched so tightly together it looked like they might break behind his drawn-back lips. He shivered and then managed to turn his eyes toward Neumann without moving his head.

“Please . . .”

“Think hard now.”

“I have a family . . .”

The pistol pressed harder, and Edwards felt his neck strain under the pressure.

“I only have a telephone number, sir. I only have a number to speak to her. I pay protection to her. She is a crook, she’ll kill me. Please don’t shoot, sir, it’s all I know. I’ll tell you everything I know, I’ll give you the number, sir, please . . .” Tears ran down Edwards’s face as he babbled to Neumann.

March looked at Neumann, frowned, and nodded.

“Okay.”

March stepped back, lifting the pistol up and away from Edwards, who dropped to his knees, almost as if the gun had been holding him up.

He knelt, sobbing, as March put the gun back in his holster and then inspected his hands for blood before leaning down to him casually.

“What is the number?” March took hold of Edwards’s hair and pulled it back so he could look into his eyes.

“Spitalfields 2127, sir. All I know is that the German girl was called Anja. A local lad brought her to us; I didn’t have a choice, sir.” Edwards sobbed. “I didn’t have a choice, she took them both away. I didn’t have a choice, sir . . . you’ve got to believe me.”

At the mention of Anja’s name March and Neumann looked at each other.

“Get me your reverse telephone directory,” Neumann said to the desk sergeant, who nodded and stepped over Trellis in his hurry to get out of the room as quickly as he could.

“Please don’t tell her I told you, sir.” Edwards was still sobbing on his knees as he looked up at Neumann, hands held together in supplication.

Neumann smiled and nodded once.

“Thank you for helping with our inquiries.”