The Holcroft Covenant (32 page)

“Suppose they don’t, suppose someone—”

“Try not to hit him, you ass!” broke in the Englishman. “And keep your fire to the right side of the car.
Your
right. Expose yourself as little as possible.”

“The
right
side of the car?”

“Yes, unless you want to hit the girl, which, frankly, I don’t give a piss about. But I want
him
. Of course, if I’m wrong, none of this applies, and we’ll have to think of something else.”

The agent’s face was pressed against the stone. He inched it forward, peering down the street. The unfamiliar forest belonged to such men, not to well-intentioned architects. “You weren’t wrong back in that old building,” Noel said. “You knew there was another way out.”

“A second exit. No one worth his pecker would allow himself to be trapped inside.”

Once more the professional was right. Noel could hear the screeching of tires; an automobile careened around an unseen corner and drew rapidly closer. The agent stood up, gesturing for Noel to follow. He looked around the edge of the entranceway, his forearm angled across his chest, his pistol in his hand.

There was a second screech of tires; the automobile came to a stop. The agent shouted at Holcroft as he leaped from the doorway, firing his pistol twice at the car, and raced across the street.

“Now!”

It was a brief nightmare, made intensely real by the shattering sounds and the frantic movement. Noel was actually
doing
it. He could see the automatic in front of him, at the end of
his
arm, being held in
his
hand. He could feel the vibrations that traveled through his body each time he squeezed the trigger.
The right side of the car. Your right. Unless
—He tried desperately to be accurate. Amazed, he saw the windshield shatter and crack; he heard bullets enter the door; he heard the screams of a human being … and then he saw that human being fall out of the door and onto the cobblestones beside the car. It was the driver; his arms were extended in front of him; blood poured out of his head and he did not move.

Across the street he could see the MI-Five man come out of a doorway, crouching, his pistol out in front of him. Then he heard the command:

“Release her! You can’t
get
out!”

“Nie und nimmer!”

“Then she can go with you! I don’t give a piss!… Spin to your right, miss!
Now!
”

Two explosions, one right after the other; a woman’s scream echoed throughout the street. Noel’s mind went wildly out of focus. He raced across the pavement, afraid to think, afraid to see what he might see, to find what he dared not find, for his own sanity.

Helden was on her knees, trembling, her breathing a series of uncontrollable sobs. She stared at the dead man, splayed on the pavement to her left. But she was
alive
; that was all he cared about. Noel ran to her and fell down beside her, pulling her shivering head into his chest.

“Him.…
Him,
” Helden whispered, pushing Noel away. “Quickly.”

“What?” Noel followed her look.

The MI-Five agent was trying to crawl; his mouth opened and closed; he was trying to speak and no sound emerged. And over the front of his shirt was a spreading stain of red.

A small crowd had gathered at the entrance to the square. Three or four men stepped forward tentatively.

“Get him,” said Helden. “Get him quickly.”

She was capable of thinking and he was not; she was able to make a decision and he was immobile. “What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?” was all he could say, not even sure the words were his.

“These streets, the alleys. They connect. We have to get him away.”

“Why?”

Helden’s eyes bored into his. “He saved my life. He saved yours.
Quickly!
”

He could only do as he was ordered; he could not think for himself. He got to his feet and ran to the agent, bending over him, their faces inches apart. He saw the angry blue eyes that floated in their sockets, the mouth that struggled to say something but could not.

The man was dying.

Noel lifted the agent to his feet; the Englishman could not stand, so he picked him up, astonished at his own strength, He turned and saw Helden lurching toward the automobile at the curb; the motor was still running. Noel carried the agent over to the shot-up car.

“I’ll drive,” Helden said. “Put him in the back seat.”

“The windshield! You can’t see!”

“You can’t carry him very far.”

The next minutes were as unreal to Holcroft at the sight of the gun still in his hand. Helden made a swift U-turn, careening over the sidewalk, swerving out to the middle of the street. Sitting beside her, Noel realized something in spite of the panic. He realized it calmly, almost dispassionately: He was beginning to adjust to this terrible new world. His resistance was wearing down, confirmed by the fact that he
had
acted; he had
not
run away. People had tried to kill him. They had tried to kill the girl beside him. Perhaps that was enough.

“Can you find the church?” he asked, now amazed at his own control.

She looked at him briefly. “I think so. Why?”

“We couldn’t drive this car even if you could see. We have to find ours.” He gestured through the cracked glass of the windshield; steam was billowing from the hood. “The radiator was punctured. Find the church.”

She did, mostly by instinct, driving up the narrow streets and alleys that connected the irregular spokes that spread out from the village square. The last few blocks were frightening. People were running beside the car, shouting excitedly. For several moments Noel thought it was the shattered windshield, riddled with bullet holes, that drew the villagers’ attention; it was not. Figures rushed by toward the hub of the square, the word had spread.

Des gens assassinées! La tuerie!

Helden swung into the street that passed the church rectory and fronted the entrance to the parking lot. She turned in and drove up beside the rented car. Holcroft looked in the rear seat. The MI-Five man was angled back in the corner, still breathing, his eyes on Noel. He moved his hand, as if to draw Noel closer.

“We’re switching cars,” said Holcroft. “We’ll get you to a doctor.”

“Listen … to me first, you ass,” whispered the Englishman. His eyes strayed to Helden. “Tell him.”

“Listen to him, Noel,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Payton-Jones—you have the number?”

Holcroft remembered. The name on the card given him by the middle-aged, gray-haired intelligence agent in London was Harold Payton-Jones. He nodded “Yes.”

“Call him.…” The MI-Five man coughed. “Tell him what happened … everything.”

“You can tell him yourself,” said Noel.

“You’re a piss ant. Tell Payton-Jones there’s a complication we don’t know about. The man we thought was sent by the Tinamou, Von Tiebolt’s man …”

“My brother’s
not
the Tinamou,” cried Helden.

The agent looked at her through half-closed lids. “Maybe you’re right, miss. I didn’t think so before, but you may be. I only know that the man who followed you in the Fiat works for Von Tiebolt.”

“He followed us to protect us! To find out who was after Noel.”

Holcroft spun in the seat and stared at Helden. “You know about him?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Our lunch today was Johann’s idea.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“
Please
. You don’t understand these things. My brother does. I do.”

“Helden, I tried to trap that man! He was killed!”

“What? Oh, my
God
…”

“That’s the complication,” whispered the agent, speaking to Noel. “If Von Tiebolt’s not the Tinamou, what is he? Why was his man shot? Those two men, why did they try to take
her?
Kill
you?
Who were they? This car … trace it.” The Englishman gasped; Noel reached
over the seat but the agent waved him away. “Just listen. Find out who they were, who owns this car. They’re the complication.”

The MI-Five man was barely able to keep his eyes open now; his whisper could hardly be heard. It was obvious that he would die in moments. Noel leaned over the seat.

“Would the complication have anything to do with a man named Peter Baldwin?”

It was as though an electric shock had jolted the dying man. His eyelids sprang open; the pupils beneath came briefly back from death. “
Baldwin?
…” The whisper echoed and was eerily plaintive.

“He called me in New York,” said Holcroft. “He told me not to do what I was doing, not to get involved. He said he knew things that no one else knew. He was killed an hour later.”

“He was telling the
truth!
Baldwin was telling the truth!” The agent’s lips began to tremble; a trickle of blood emerged from the corner of his mouth. “We never believed him; he was trading off
nothing!
We were sure he was
lying
.…”

“Lying about what?”

The MI-Five man stared at Noel; then, with effort, shifted his gaze to Helden. “There isn’t time.…” He struggled pathetically to look again at Holcroft. “You’re clean. You must be … you wouldn’t have said what you just said. I’m going to trust you, both of you. Reach Payton-Jones … as fast as you can. Tell him to go back to the Baldwin file. Code Wolfsschanze.… It’s Wolfsschanze.”

The agent’s head fell forward. He was dead.

They sped north on the Paris highway as the late-afternoon sun washed the countryside with rays of orange and cold yellow. The winter sun was the same everywhere: It was a constant. And Holcroft was grateful for it.

Code Wolfsschanze. It’s Wolfsschanze
.

Peter Baldwin had known about Geneva. He had tried to tell MI Five, but the doubters in British Intelligence had not believed him.

He was trading off nothing!

What was he trading
for?
What was the bargain he sought? Who
was
Peter Baldwin?

Who
had been
Peter Baldwin?

Who was Von Tiebolt … Tennyson?

If Von Tiebolt’s not the Tinamou, what is he? Why was his man shot? Why did they try to take her? Kill you?

Why?

At least one problem was put to rest: John Tennyson was
not
the Tinamou. Whatever else the son of Wilhelm von Tiebolt was—and it might well be dangerous to Geneva—he was not the assassin. But then, who was he? What had he done to become involved with killers? Why were men after him—and, by extension, his sister?

The questions kept Noel’s mind from dwelling on the last hours. He could not think about them; he would explode if he did. Three men killed—one by him. Killed by gunfire in the back street of a remote French village during a carnival. Madness.

“What do you think ‘Wolfsschanze’ stands for?” asked Helden.

“I know what it stands for,” he said.

She turned, surprised.

He told her—everything he knew about the survivors
of Wolfsschanze. There was no point in concealing facts now. When he had finished, she was silent. He wondered if he had pushed her too far. Into a conflict she wanted no part of. She had said to him only a few days ago that if he did not do as she instructed, if he was not who he said he was, she would leave Paris and he would never find her. Would she do that now? Was the threat of Wolfsschanze the final burden she could not accept?

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

“That’s a foolish question.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

“Yes.” She leaned her head back on the seat. “You want to know if I’ll run away.”

“I guess that’s it. Will you?”

She did not reply for several moments; nor did he press her. When she spoke, there was the echoing sadness in her voice—so like her sister’s and yet so different. “I can’t run away any more than you can. Morality and fear aside, it’s simply not practical, is it? They’d find us. They’d kill us.”

“That’s pretty final.”

“It’s realistic. Besides, I’m tired of running. I have no energy left for it. The Rache, the O
DESSA
, now Wolfsschanze. Three hunters who stalk each other as well as us. It’s got to end. Herr Oberst is right about that.”

“I came to the same conclusion yesterday afternoon. It occurred to me that if it weren’t for my mother, I’d be running with you.”

“Heinrich Clausen’s son,” said Helden reflectively.

“And someone else’s.” He returned her look. “Do we agree? We don’t get in touch with this Payton-Jones?”

“We agree.”

“MI Five’ll look for us. They have no choice. They had a man on us; they’ll find out he was killed. There’ll be questions.”

“Which we can’t answer. We were followed; we did not follow.”

“I wonder who they were? The two men,” he said.

“The Rache, I would think. It’s their style.”

“Or the O
DESSA.”

“Possibly. But the German spoken by the one who took me was odd. The dialect wasn’t recognizable. He was not a Münchner, and certainly not a Berliner. It was strange.”

“How do you mean?”

“It was very guttural, but still soft, if that makes sense.”

“Not too much. Then you think they were from the Rache?”

“Does it matter? We’ve got to protect ourselves from both. Nothing has changed. At least, not for me.” She reached over and touched his arm. “I’m sorry for you, though.”

“Why?”

“Because now you are running with us. You’re one of the children now—
die verwünschte Kinder
. The damned. And you’ve had no training.”

“It seems to me I’m getting it in a hurry.”

She withdrew her hand. “You should go to Berlin.”

“I know. We’ve got to move quickly. Kessler has to be reached and brought in; he’s the last of the”—Holcroft paused—“the issue.”

She smiled sadly at the word. “There’s you and my brother; you’re both knowledgeable, both ready to move, Kessler must be made ready, too.… Zurich is the issue. And the solution to so much.”

Noel glanced at her. It did not take much to perceive what she was thinking. Zurich meant resources beyond imagination; surely a part of them would be used to curb, if not eliminate, the fanatics of the O
DESSA
and the Rache. Holcroft knew that she knew he had witnessed their horrors for himself; a one-third vote was hers for the asking. Her brother would agree.