The British Lion (34 page)

Time seemed to stand still.

Then he woke up.

He slammed the bonnet down on the driver’s head and shoulders, then dropped to his knees on the other side of the car, using it as cover between him and the sergeant across the road.

The Brigadeführer gripped Ruth around the throat, dragging her backward, using her as a shield as he shook his pistol out from his holster.

Rossett pulled his own pistol free of his overcoat. Once the front sight unhooked from the edge of his pocket, he reached around the front wing of the Austin and pressed it against the hip of the driver, who was lifting the bonnet off his head, dazed and trying to get out of the engine bay.

Rossett pulled the trigger and a round shattered the hip of the driver, who cried out and dropped to the ground, sliding out from under the bonnet like mail onto a doormat.

Rossett spun away and darted up the side of the Austin toward the rear of the car.

No shots came from the Brigadeführer.

Rossett caught sight of Ruth, struggling in the Brigadeführer’s arms, her feet kicking high and her hands pushing at his face.

Rossett dropped flat to the road at the back of the Austin, looking underneath it toward the front.

The driver was down on his side, fighting with the sling of his MP40, trying to get his weapon from out beneath his broken body.

“No!” Rossett shouted at the driver, who paused, realizing Rossett had a clear shot at him.

A second passed between them.

“Throw it away.” Rossett was staring down the sight of his Webley.

The driver blinked, clearly in a lot of pain, and in the darkness Rossett saw him licking his lips.

Rossett gestured with his pistol that the driver should throw his gun and he nodded, slowly easing the sling off his shoulder, flinching as he moved to free the weapon from over his head.

Up the road Rossett could hear Ruth shouting, but his eyes stayed on the driver, who eventually, with considerable difficulty, tossed the gun a few feet from himself, into the middle of the road, where it landed with a muffled crump in the snow.

The driver rolled onto his back, eyes no longer on Rossett, resigned to his fate.

Rossett, still flat on his belly in the snow, looked for the sergeant. He twisted his head, dodging quickly left and right, trying to see through the shadows and shade the cottages were scattering in the darkness.

His night vision was completely gone now, blown apart by the headlamps of the Mercedes, which still burned brightly to his left, leaving him in the spotlight. He lifted himself out of the snow, onto his haunches, crouching at the rear of the Austin. He risked a quick glance around the side of the car, toward the cottages, where he had last seen the sergeant.

He saw him.

Instincts, somewhere on the edge of his senses, caused him to duck back as the sergeant let go a short burst.

Snow kicked up and the thin metal of the car drummed as the lead hit home.

There was another burst, slightly longer, and the windscreen and the front passenger-side window shattered.

Rossett looked back down the road to Coton and saw the shadow of the Austin, cast by the Mercedes headlamps, in the white snow. It was a solid block of black, and Rossett thanked God for the driver lying in front of the car, blocking the light from shining underneath and giving away the position of his feet.

Rossett looked at the phone box, where he had been earlier, where he had made promises to Koehler. It stared at him, judging him, waiting for him to make good on what he had said.

The sergeant across the street fired again, just a couple of rounds this time, wary of exhausting his clip of ammunition.

Rossett edged closer to the corner of the car, one hand resting on the cold metal, feeling the gritty paintwork against the palm of his hand. He paused, holding the Webley cocked next to his ear, feeling the weight of the shotgun under his coat digging into his shoulder.

Rossett listened.

Silence.

Not even Ruth was making a noise.

The quiet unnerved him. It smacked of someone taking aim or lying in wait.

He poked his head out and then back in.

Nobody fired.

“Shit.”

He was being outflanked again.

It was what he would do.

He looked at the cottages on the opposite side of the road. He figured the sergeant would have pinned him down and then made his way around the cottages. His intention would be to come around to Rossett’s rear, thereby not only outflanking him but removing the risk of shooting his colleague, who was lying injured in front of the Austin.

Rossett rose up and came out from behind the car.

The MP40 in the snow was gone.

He half turned and saw the driver, lying on his side, hand on the grip, finger on the trigger, reaching for the magazine to steady his shot.

Rossett continued the turn, moving into a fast forward roll as the driver pulled the trigger before he had chance to take hold of the magazine. The MP40 bucked, kicking up snow with its muzzle blast, seven feet away from Rossett, arcing as the recoil of the gun twisted it in the driver’s hand.

Rossett fired the Webley while he was still in midair, spinning, his legs higher than his shoulders now, his gun hand coming under his body and twisting him.

He missed.

The MP40 followed him in his tumble, higher, then arcing around, silhouetted in the headlamps.

Rossett fired again, a fraction before his shoulder hit the snow, twisting then rising to a crouch with the Webley outstretched.

Rising to a silent MP40.

The driver was dead.

Rossett turned and started running, heading for the other side of the road. He hit the end cottage, some forty feet away from the Austin. Rossett crouched, squinting at the night and the shadows, looking for movement.

Nothing.

He slipped the Webley back into his pocket, brought out the shotgun, and risked a glance at the Mercedes. He couldn’t see anything beyond its headlamps, and he wondered if the car had a radio on board.

He looked back toward the cottages, opening his eyes as wide as he could, straining against the darkness as he started to edge into it.

One half step at a time.

Almost in the crouch, shotgun held low in both hands.

Rossett reached the rear of the first cottage. The darkness was almost total except for the soft glow of the snow. Off to his right he could hear a distant cluck of nervous chickens in a coop, disturbed by the shooting, fretting as they huddled for warmth. He listened to the birds, trying to read their voices, listening for sounds of sudden alarm.

They babbled among themselves like a distant brook.

The sergeant wasn’t over there; he was ahead of Rossett, hiding behind the cottages, either moving toward him or lying in wait.

Rossett glanced back over his shoulder and started to move, each crunch of the snow under his feet sounding like gravel on sheets of glass.

Six slow steps and he stopped, left shoulder to the back door of one of the cottages, using the doorframe as half cover.

He listened.

The chickens were still there, same sounds as before, just a tiny bit farther away.

He moved forward again, stopping at the edge of the cottage, eight feet from the next.

His night vision was improving now. Shapes and shadows were becoming lawn furniture, sheds, outhouses, and privies.

Everything could provide cover to someone lying in wait. Rossett considered breaking off from his slow advance and concentrating on reaching Ruth.

His priority.

He looked down the alley between cottages toward the road.

He could see the Austin and the dead driver lying in front of it.

He was no closer to the Mercedes than he’d been at the start of the shooting. He took his hand off the muzzle of the shotgun, wiping his nose, which was running because of the cold.

Then he heard a shot cracking through the frozen air.

He dipped his head, then realized the shot wasn’t aimed at him. It was off to his left, off by the Mercedes in the road at the front of the houses.

Rossett started to run, keeping low, eyes checking left and right for the missing sergeant.

Another shot, then another, then a burst from an MP40 followed by another shot.

Ruth.

Rossett ran behind the cottages until he could see the Mercedes through a gap in between them. He dodged his head trying to see through the windows of the Mercedes but couldn’t. He crossed the gap to the other side. Hiding behind the wall, he tried again.

Still no sight of anyone.

He rose and ran along the back of two more cottages, before heading for the front of them so he could see the road. He was halfway down the side when he saw Ruth standing over the sergeant, who was lying in the road, on his back, MP40 some six feet away, hands held in front of his chest in surrender.

Rossett called Ruth’s name and then jogged forward to join her. He looked down at the sergeant, who ignored him, too busy staring at Ruth and the pistol she was holding.

“The officer?” Rossett looked toward the Mercedes.

“He’s dead. I shot him and then this one here.”

Rossett looked down at the sergeant and noticed for the first time that he was hit in the chest. Rossett knelt and inspected the wound. When he touched it the German didn’t make a sound.

Rossett looked up at Ruth and then down the lane at the Austin.

“Jesus,” he said softly as he looked back over his shoulder at the cottages to his right.

All through the hamlet curtains were twitching. Rossett stood up from the German and wiped his hand across the back of his nose again. He breathed deeply, catching his breath after running in the snow.

“Wait here,” he finally said to Ruth before walking off to the nearest house, the one where he had seen the light in the bedroom window earlier.

He hammered on the front door and waited, looking back toward Ruth and the sergeant, who hadn’t moved. The sergeant still had his hands half raised as he lay flat on his back, staring at the Mauser held over him as the blood leaked silently from his chest.

Rossett stepped back from the door, looked up at the window, then stepped forward and hammered again, for longer this time.

“Open the door!” He stepped back again, looking at Ruth and then back up at the window.

A moment passed, then a bolt slid and the door opened a few inches.

Rossett took another pace backward and held up his shotgun.

The man was large, good farm stock, with a black beard, blacker in the shadows inside the cottage behind him.

“Come outside.” Rossett took another step back to allow the man room, gesturing with the shotgun.

The man stepped out into the snow and a woman took his place at the door. The man was wearing long johns, and on his feet were a pair of untied heavy boots. His arms hung at his side and he lowered his face so as not to look directly into Rossett’s eyes, or at the shotgun.

“Do you have a car?”

“We can use the Mercedes,” Ruth said behind Rossett.

He ignored her and asked the man again, this time quietly as he lowered the shotgun to his side. “We need your help. I’m sorry for bringing this to you . . . Do you have a car?”

“No, sir.”

“Who does in this village?”

“Nobody, sir. There are a couple of bicycles, but nobody has a car.” The man still didn’t look up.

“Where is the nearest vehicle?”

The man shrugged and looked over his shoulder at his wife.

“Dr. Evans has one, but he’s nearly four miles away, sir,” the wife said from behind the door, her face half in shadows, speaking for her husband.

“We can take the Mercedes!” Ruth again, this time shouting.

“Who has a phone around here?”

“Nobody, sir. There is the box.” The woman’s arm snaked out of the shadows and pointed up the lane toward the phone box.

“We can use . . .” Ruth took a few steps toward Rossett, looking at him as she kept the pistol trained on the sergeant.

“I know!” Rossett spun and looked at Ruth, a fleck of spittle on his lips. He took a deep breath, his voice straining to remain level. “I’m trying to decide what to do with him.” Rossett pointed at the sergeant on the ground.

Ruth looked at the German, then pulled the trigger on the Mauser.

She shot him in the chest and he bucked once in the snow. His two hands fluttered and then dropped to his side with soft whumps.

Rossett stared at the sergeant and then at Ruth, who in turn pointed at the Mercedes.

“We can take the Mercedes.”

“Are you mad?”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ruth lowered her hand.

Rossett crossed quickly to the sergeant and dropped down next to him.

The sergeant’s eyes were rolling as he gasped short, sharp breaths. The heel on his left boot scratched deeper into the snow, moving backward and forward rhythmically, creating a tiny drift.

Rossett touched the man’s face and then looked up to Ruth, who stared down at him, pistol now at her side.

“He wasn’t a threat.” Rossett pressed on the fresh wound of the sergeant, whose leg had stopped moving.

“We don’t have time.”

“They could have helped him!” Rossett was shouting now.

“He isn’t our problem. We cannot be stopped. We don’t have time.”

“He might have a family, children!” Rossett pulled at the sergeant’s tunic, trying to open it.

“I’m trying to keep them alive, don’t you understand? I’m trying to save millions! Not just one man, not just one daughter. I’m trying to save the whole world!” Ruth shouted at Rossett.

The only sound was the choking last breaths of a man dying a long way from home, in the snow, on a road in Cambridgeshire.

Ruth lowered the pistol to her side. She looked at the farm laborer and his wife, then down at Rossett, who was still kneeling at her feet, one hand in the blood on the sergeant’s chest.

“We can use the Mercedes,” she said quietly as she turned toward the car.

CHAPTER 42

S
TERLING HAT
ED USING
public call boxes. They smelled of urine, they were always damp, and worst of all, they were used by poor people.

He wiped the handset with his handkerchief, studied it, and peered at the receiver before lifting it to his ear and dialing a number, his finger still wrapped in the handkerchief.

“Yes?” Ma Price picked up straightaway.

Sterling held the handset a fraction away from his head.

“Is the girl dead?”

“Sterling?”

“Don’t use my name.” Sterling sighed and half turned in the box, as if anyone outside might have heard Ma Price on the other end of the line. “Just answer the question, is the girl dead?”

“No.”

“Listen to me very carefully. I want you to keep her safe and secure, extremely secure.”

“The way you did?”

Sterling ignored Price and carried on.

“That child is worth her weight in gold, do you understand? Do not harm her, and don’t let anyone else harm her. No matter what, she is to be kept alive. It is critical you understand that. She is to be kept alive at all costs.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just lock her up in the tightest room you can find, keep her safe, and wait for me to call you.”

“Sterling . . .”

“Don’t use my name!”

“Sterling.” Ma Price ignored him, keeping her voice flat and low. “If you want me to look after this girl, you’d better tell me why. I’m risking my life here. If I was found with her I’d be dead by the morning. So you’d better be honest with me. What is going on?”

Sterling shook his head, and then leaned in close to the shelf in the phone box.

“We need her for leverage. Kennedy is trying to shut this down, this whole thing, as if it never happened. We need the girl to get the scientist from Koehler. If we have the scientist, we can use her to influence Washington to help us again.”

“How important is one scientist?”

Sterling paused.

“You have no idea what this woman can do for us. We can win the war.”

“The war is over.”

“The next war.”

Sterling ended the call before Ma Price had a chance to ask another question.

Across the city in a Spitalfields warehouse, Price looked at the dead phone in her hands, then dropped it back into its cradle. Ma Price stood up, the chair creaking as it was released from her weight.

She left the office, fastening the top button on her coat, her boots thumping as she walked across the deserted, freezing cold warehouse. On the far side, she pulled back a heavy wooden sliding door that led to the back of the warehouse and the steps down to the basement.

The temperature dropped even lower as she descended. Her breath mingled with the smoke in the air as she turned the final corner, deep in the bowels of the building, and walked toward the room in which Anja was being held.

Bare stone walls crowded in as the corridor seemed to narrow to where two men sat, watching Ma Price approach. One stood, producing a key and unlocking the door.

“Get some soup for the girl, and put the light on,” Price said as she stood in the doorway looking down at Anja. The light flicked on and she entered, pushing the door closed behind her.

ANJ
A BLINKED, HOLDING
a hand over her eyes, looking up from the floor where she was sitting in the corner.

“Your old man, what does he do for a living?” Ma Price asked, halfway across the room, with hands on hips.

“Pardon?” Anja replied, confused by Ma Price’s thick Cockney accent.

“Your dad, what’s his job?”

“Where is Jack?”

“Answer the question.”

“You answer the question. Where is Jack?”

Ma Price sighed. “He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

They stared at each other.

“I want to speak to him.” Anja lowered her hand and lifted her chin.

“You can’t. He’s gone, forget him.”

“I won’t. I want to speak to him.”

“You can speak to him when this is over. I’ll let him know you want to, but only if you behave.”

Anja sat up straight, leaning her back against the wall as Ma Price settled her weight onto one leg.

“What does your father do?” Price tried again.

“Did you kill Jack?”

“No.”

“I heard him screaming.”

“He had to be taught a lesson.”

“Is he hurt badly?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ma Price stared at Anja, weighing her up. She chewed her lip and shifted her weight again, this time only an inch.

“He helped you.”

Anja blinked.

“You didn’t have to do that. He hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“He helped you.”

“He didn’t deserve to be hurt.”

Ma Price put her hands in her pockets and dipped her head, looking at the floor a moment, and then back up to Anja.

“No, he probably didn’t. But he has been, and that’s all that matters.”

Anja shook her head. “You people kill and hurt others so easily, all of you . . . I hear my father talking about bombs, shootings: Why?”

“Because we want our country back.”

“What Jack did won’t change who is in charge.”

“He helped a German.”

“I’m just a girl.”

Ma Price’s eyes wandered a moment while she processed Anja’s reply, then she looked at Anja again and nodded.

“You’re right.”

“All this . . . all of it is for nothing.”

“We didn’t start it, we just want the country back.”

“You don’t care about the country or the people. You just want power.” There was no challenge in Anja’s voice, just a certain sadness.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin.

Ma Price wandered to the side of the room and leaned against the wall. Hands still in her pockets, she stared into the distance a moment and then rolled, so that her back was against the wall and she was looking at the floor in the center of the room.

“It is about power. You’re right. All of it, the whole thing . . . it’s all about power. When I was your age, I wanted power. I wasn’t pretty like you, I didn’t have schooling or none of that stuff. I had nothing, bugger all. I barely had clean knickers to see me through the month.” Ma Price chuckled to herself and Anja looked up at her. “I wanted power for myself, over myself.” She looked at Anja. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Ma Price nodded and went back to looking at the floor.

“I don’t give a toss about the country. I don’t give a toss about Americans or scientists or even you. Honestly, I don’t give a toss about any of it. I just want to keep hold of the power I worked so hard for, the power I gave meself.” Ma Price looked at Anja. “That young lad?”

“Jack?”

“What he did, helping you?”

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t let it happen. Once I know what he’s done, once I know others know I know, then that affects my power. Not the country’s, not America’s, not Germany’s . . . mine. And that is what is most important.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I hope you never have to.”

Ma Price pushed herself off the wall and then resumed her position in the center of the room.

“I don’t want to hurt you, I really don’t. All I want is enough to get away from this, away from London, away from the person I’ve made myself into, so I can start again.”

Anja nodded, so Ma Price continued.

“Do you know something? I’ve never seen the sea.”

Anja smiled.

Ma Price smiled, too.

“I’ve seen the river, every bleedin’ day I see the river. But I’ve never seen the sea. I’ve never seen if it really is blue like they say, instead of the dirty brown of the Thames.”

Anja stopped smiling.

“It is,” she said softly. “It’s beautiful.”

Ma Price smiled at her warmly, then the smile faded into sadness.

“That is what my power is going to get me—that second chance to start again, by the sea, on my own, away from here, happy.” Her voice barely carried, so light was the whisper.

Anja nodded. “I understand.”

“You have to understand, child, in this room, right here, me and you. I’ll tell you, I don’t want to harm you, and I mean it, I really don’t, same as I didn’t want to harm Jack, and all the ’undreds of others over the years. But out there”—Price flicked her head to the door without looking at it—“I’ll do what I have to do to keep that power, and to keep that dream alive as long as I can. If you help me, if you do what I need you to do, I’ll make sure you get to your old fella and you live happy ever after . . . but only if you do what I ask. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.”

Ma Price nodded, smiled, then was stern.

“What does your old dad do?”

“He is an officer in the SS.”

“What rank?”

“Major.”

“What is his job in London?”

“He works in the office of Jewish affairs.”

Ma Price processed the information.

“How long has he been in London?”

“Why?”

“Answer the question.”

“Years. I don’t know, maybe three?”

“And he’s just worked with the Jews?”

Anja shrugged. “Yes, I think, with his friend Mr. Rossett. They are clearing the Jews so Londoners don’t have to live with them.” Anja’s statement was simple, years of indoctrination having taken its toll on her sense of morality.

“Rossett?” Ma Price tilted her head.

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Anja watched as Ma Price scratched her head, then took a couple of paces back and forth across the room, before finally stopping again by the door.

“Does your old man have money?” Ma Price looked at Anja.

“I don’t know . . . a little. We have a house in Berlin, and—”

Ma Price waved her hand and turned away, pacing again until she stopped by the door, facing it.

“If he can’t buy you back, I’m going to need the scientist.”

“My father loves me.”

“Shush.”

Anja fell silent as Ma Price held up a fat finger.

“I’m going to need you to get the scientist off him.”

“My father won’t harm Germany.”

Ma Price turned to her and smiled sadly.

“He’s lost his wife; he isn’t going to lose his daughter.”

Anja dropped her chin to her knees and frowned at the mention of her mother. She felt her mother’s dying fingers again and touched her cheek. She fought with the memory, consciously trying to push it back into the box, in the depths of her mind where she had been keeping it.

“He’ll have to give me the scientist to get you back,” Ma Price said to the floor before pulling the door open and nodding to the man standing outside.

“Bring her and don’t hurt her. I swear, if you so much as harm a hair on that girl’s head I’ll kill you, understand?”

He nodded.

“And if you lose her, I’ll kill you even more.”

The man looked at Anja, then at Ma Price, and shrugged.

Ma Price nodded and left the room. The man gestured for Anja to stand up, then took her firmly by the arm. They followed Ma Price up to the office.

Once they were in Price’s office, Anja was seated in the corner and given a bowl of soup. She ate quickly, in quick mouth-singeing gulps, conscious it might be taken from her at any moment, watching the others watching her, over the top of the bowl.

“We need more men. Get on the blower and get me six of the lads down here sharpish. Then break out the Thompsons and whatever else you might need. I want everyone armed, understand?”

“Who we expecting, Rommel?”

“Rossett.”

“Rossett?” The heavy looked at his companion and then back at Price. “Jesus.”

“Yes, so spread the word and warn people, all right?”

“Yes, Ma.” He left the office.

The second guard took the empty bowl from Anja.

“Wait outside the door; don’t move unless I tell you.” Ma Price spoke without looking at him and he left, closing the door behind him.

Ma Price flicked through an address book she had taken out of her desk as Anja watched from her chair. Through a window Anja saw the first guard pulling open the floor-to-ceiling wooden sliding door on the far side of the warehouse. She caught a glimpse of the street outside before he closed it again behind him.

Anja knew that if more men were coming to the warehouse her chances of escape would diminish on their arrival. If she was going to escape, she was going to have to do it soon.

Ma Price was still thumbing through the book, pausing occasionally, apparently lost in thought. The shadow of the man at the door was rippled by the frosted glass on which was painted
OFF CE
.

Anja wondered what had happened to the
i
, and then looked at Ma Price again.

She noticed a fountain pen on the desk.

An inky, old, sharp pen.

The kind of pen you could use to stab.

Anja looked at the door once more, and then back at the pen.

Six feet away, too far to reach without moving from her chair, but close, maybe close enough to give her a chance.

Ma Price picked up the receiver of the phone, placed it on the table, and then started to dial with the same hand as she held the address book up to read the number, squinting her eyes and pursing her lips.

The book was blocking Anja.

Anja took her chance.

Out of her seat like a cat, fast, silent, crossing the ground like a shot, she reached for the pen.

Ma Price grabbed her wrist, so tightly that as she twisted her arm Anja thought her skin might rip. The big woman barely moved in her seat as she pinioned Anja so that her right shoulder hit the desk and her head landed next to the pen.

Anja looked at the pen, her face contorted with the pain in her arm and back.

She tried to reach with her other hand, but stopped and screamed as Price twisted again, then flicked the pen out of reach with the book she was holding in her other hand. The door opened behind Anja, but Price shook her head at whoever was coming in. She put down the book and picked up the phone receiver, holding it to her ear with one hand while holding Anja with the other.