These policemen were idiots.
Even the Englishman, the one they all talked about, the so-called Lion. Even he had been too slow. The Bear had to give Rossett a little credit for sniffing something wasn’t right, but not much. He’d been slow to react, slow to read the situation properly.
Not like the Bear.
They should have moved the car when they had the chance. They should have mounted the curb and pushed their way through. Either forward or back would have done.
Anything to keep moving, anything to stay alive.
But the Lion had been slow. He’d been worried about the people on the pavement instead of looking after himself. That had made the Bear a little sad as he dipped his head as low as he could get it.
A second before the bomb went off.
He’d seen the barrow the girl had been pushing toward the car, and he had realized what it was long before the Lion and the dumb German he was working with had even noticed it. The Bear had recognized the girl and realized he should have killed her months earlier. She was always hanging around the garrison, always begging for scraps, always looking pathetic and pointless.
All that, and one more thing: she was always watching.
She was resistance. He knew it now.
But she hadn’t killed him.
The car had rolled a little. The Bear guessed the wheels had lifted a few inches on the passenger side as the explosives had detonated. It hadn’t been a big bomb. He guessed it was probably less than a few grams of plastic, maybe a few feet from the Jaguar when it went off. The charge definitely wasn’t underneath the car, nor was it shaped to cause maximum damage, with nearly all the explosive energy being wasted.
English amateurs.
Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to kill him?
Maybe they wanted what he knew? Maybe they wanted him alive?
Either way, as good as he was, now wasn’t the time to think about it.
His ears were still ringing as he reached over the seat toward Neumann, who was slumped against the steering wheel, and took his gun. The Bear was dazed by the shock wave, covered in glass, and a little deaf, but he had two things that Neumann didn’t.
Combat experience, and the policeman’s Walther PPK.
He dropped back into his seat, worked the slide on the Walther and released the safety, then noticed the door opening next to his head.
He fired once.
Combat experience.
Ready your weapon before you do anything else.
He hit the man who had opened the door just below the throat, around the second button of his shirt.
The man dropped.
The Bear saw a Browning pistol slip out of the man’s hand as he reached up to grab at the wound. The Bear angled his Walther and fired a shot into the leather strap his cuffs were fastened to. It split halfway across. He jerked against the strap, couldn’t rip through it, so fired another shot and finally broke free.
He slipped out of the car like smoke off a stage, his body twisting and sliding like a snake as he landed on the wet cobbles next to what was now a corpse. The Bear lay flat for a second or two, then lifted his head a few inches and saw figures running toward him through the smoke.
His mind did the calculations almost as he pulled the trigger.
Nobody runs toward a bomb blast. Not since the resistance learned that a secondary bomb was often more effective than the first.
These people were coming to either kill or capture, and the Bear didn’t want to be either of those two things.
So he shot them.
Three fast rounds. The pistol popping in his hand like a tiny barking dog. The figures ducked behind the van that had been parked behind the Jaguar. The Bear grabbed the Browning and was up and running so fast he was almost away before the echo of the shots had the chance to bounce back off the buildings around him.
Away from the Jaguar, away from the garrison, and away from the SS.
What was it the English said?
The game was afoot.
Chapter 8
Neumann was naked and scared.
It had been hours.
Wherever they had put him was freezing cold and soaking wet. Twisting and pulling against the ropes around his wrists had stripped off the skin, and now it was agony to move them at all.
They’d tied a sack that smelled of rotten vegetables over his head. As he breathed it sucked in and out of his mouth, like a lover’s lips.
He was wheezing now. Short, gaspy, raspy breaths. The bad chest that had kept him out of the army scraped against his ribs like he had swallowed barbed wire.
He stopped struggling.
He needed to slow down.
The bag worked against him and he had to concentrate, push away the panic, take his time, make every breath count.
He tried to remember what had happened.
They had come from nowhere.
One minute he had been watching Rossett, thirty feet from their car. The next minute he was being dragged out the driver’s door and onto the pavement.
He closed his eyes.
Take another breath.
Try to fill in the gaps.
He saw Rossett again, concerned, one hand just inside his coat, glancing at him through the windscreen, then looking ahead at the line of traffic. Neumann remembered Bauer saying something behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter as another wheeze threatened to distract him.
What had Bauer said?
He squeezed his eyes closed, the memory seemed so far away.
“A bear trap.”
Neumann opened his eyes, then heard his voice repeat the memory out loud.
“A bear trap.”
He rolled onto his side and tried again with the ropes. He was weak now; his efforts were pathetic. He gave up, rested his head on the floor, and felt the ache of the concrete through the sack.
He remembered a flash. There hadn’t been any noise—well, none that he could recall. He remembered glass, lots of glass, fine sprinkles and large pieces swirling like a shaken snow globe.
His head ached.
Not that it mattered. He was alive, for now.
There was shooting.
He could remember it.
Or was his mind playing tricks?
He could definitely recall the sound of shooting. There wasn’t much, but what there had been had seemed very close.
Neumann wondered if it had been Rossett. Was he shooting at the men who had dragged him out of the car? He considered it, then dismissed it. Rossett would have been too close to the bomb. He wouldn’t have had the protection of the car to save him.
Rossett was probably dead.
Neumann was on his own.
He started to pull at the ropes again.
Chapter 9
The pillow felt soft, and its case was clean and smelled of carbolic soap. Rossett inhaled the freshness, enjoyed it, then opened his eyes and remembered where he was.
He sat up.
His head ached and he felt a little sick.
The room was small, maybe ten feet square, as white as the pillow his head had been on and just as clean. He was in bed, but he already knew that much. He was wearing a green gown, the type that fastened at the back and showed your arse to anyone behind you.
He lay back and remembered waking up in the ambulance. A bell had been ringing, and he had been confused, unsure if the sound had been in his head or not. The medic had pushed him back down onto the stretcher. Rossett had noticed an SS private sitting on the other side of the ambulance as he had drifted off back into unconsciousness.
He’d come around again when he was in the hospital. He’d been confused, then surprised to find himself sitting up on the edge of a trolley. He’d been talking to the nurse, who was running her fingers through his hair looking for signs of obvious damage.
She was answering a question he couldn’t remember asking, and his head had hung low as he enjoyed her gentle touch.
He’d known he was concussed,
and he had fought back halfheartedly when they told him he needed to stay the night in the hospital. He was tired, half deaf, in pain, and certain that Neumann had been killed in the attack.
He’d asked about Neumann. They had just told him not to worry, everything was all right, just lie back down on the trolley, rest, it’ll be okay.
It didn’t feel okay.
Rossett didn’t have his watch, but the sky he could see through the window was lightening, so it was morning.
Or maybe it was darkening?
Maybe it was evening?
He rubbed his eyes.
It must be morning.
He listened for clues and heard a far-off crash of a trolley in a corridor.
It sounded like china and cutlery.
Breakfast?
It must be morning.
He’d been asleep all night. He swung his legs out from under the covers and felt the chill of the tiles on his bare feet. There wasn’t a mirror on the low bedside cabinet, so he checked his face and head for injuries with gentle prods of his fingers.
Aside from a lump behind his right ear and an inch-wide dressing on his forehead, he came back clean. He stood up, slow, one hand on the bed just in case his legs hadn’t got the message. He straightened, feeling the ache from some bruises picked up in the explosion, but otherwise okay.
He moved toward the door. It was half frosted glass with dazzling white, smooth paint and a silver handle.
Rossett rested an ear against it and listened.
Silence.
He took hold of the back of the gown with one hand and turned the handle slowly with the other.
The corridor was empty. He looked both ways and saw the same white paint that looked so clean, it made him feel dirty. It was way too clean to be an English hospital. Those places were barely surviving on the meager dregs of what a hostile government handed down to them. They didn’t have money for paint—they barely had money for bandages. This place was too good to be wasted on normal people; it was either military or private.
His head ached. He blinked off the pain and focused on what he could see. Eight doors, including his own, running down either side of the long corridor. The corridor finished at a pair of double doors, the kind that swung back and forth a few times after you had passed through them. He guessed they were the exit and looked back into his room again, in case he’d missed his clothes the first time he had looked around.
He hadn’t.
With his bare feet slapping, he moved fast toward the exit. He stopped at the double doors. He could hear a phone ringing, far off, like it was at the edge of his dream. A woman’s heels, brisk, rat-a-tat, in a hurry but not running, maybe heading away.
He pictured a nurse, then pressed against one of the doors lightly. It moved easily, so he pushed it forward an inch or two until he could see through the gap.
He was at a T junction with another corridor which was longer, and slightly darker. Doors led off on either side, and an empty patient trolley was sitting against one wall about forty feet away. At the end of the corridor was a lime-green wrought-iron staircase, and next to the staircase someone had painted a perfect number 5 in gloss black on white paint.
Rossett made a mental note not to jump out of any windows if he had to try to escape.
He let the door fall back and leaned against the other one so he could check the corridor in the other direction.
A nurse at a dark wooden desk looked up from the paperwork she was reading, then smiled at him. Rossett felt like a child caught by his parents after getting out of bed.
“Good morning, sir. I didn’t know you were awake.”
English, well spoken but with the upward intonation of the Liverpool accent chasing each word. She was pretty in a smooth, starched way that reminded Rossett of the pillowcase back in his room. The nurse rose from the desk as Rossett made note of the “sir” and felt foolish for peeking through the gaps in the door. He pushed it open a few more inches, then realized his mouth was dry when his first attempt at speaking ended in a croak.
“Whe—” He paused, swallowed, drummed up some saliva, and tried again. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Liverpool Royal Military Hospital, sir, and you should be in bed.”
It was the voice.
Rossett thought of his wife.
He’d forgotten her voice, and yet here it was, all these years later, coming at him from a stranger.
“Are you feeling all right, sir?”
Rossett hadn’t realized he’d forgotten his wife’s voice. All those years of thinking about her, dreaming about her, and it had taken someone he didn’t know to remind him of how she sounded.
She didn’t speak in his dreams anymore, she was fading away.
“Sir?” The nurse tilted her head.
Rossett felt a lump in his throat and had to croak his way past it. “How long have I been here?”
He eased the door slightly wider and noticed a young army private sitting behind another desk at the very end of the corridor. The private looked up at the sound of voices, checked who was speaking, and closed the book he was reading. He nodded a greeting to Rossett, politeness personified, then picked up the heavy black receiver of the telephone on the desk. Rossett couldn’t hear what he said because the nurse started speaking again.
“The explosion—do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
She was walking toward him now, so Rossett took a step back and held the door open for her. He couldn’t help himself from staring into her eyes as she approached. Even her eyes reminded him of his wife. He touched the side of his head.
“I’ve a bump on my head, but other than that . . . I . . . my clothes?” He ran out of things to say.
She stopped in front of him and placed a hand lightly on the door.
“Are you sure you are okay?”
“You remind me of someone.”
She smiled, like she already knew. Rossett felt confused and wondered if he was still concussed.
“You should be in bed.” She said it so gently, Rossett thought he might cry and didn’t know why.
“My clothes.”
“We sent them to be laundered.” The nurse gestured that Rossett should lead the way back to his room.
“Am I under arrest?”
Another smile, like a mother fending off a silly question.
“Concussion can be dangerous, so we decided it was best that you stayed here for twenty-four hours so we—”
“I’ve been hit on the head before.”
She gestured that he should start walking again. “Then you’ll understand the best place for you is in bed.”
“My colleague, the German policeman, do you know what happened to him?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Now please.” She gestured again. “Bed.”
Rossett started to walk, then remembered his arse and gripped the back of the gown again. He glanced at the nurse, who ignored it, like she had seen it all before.
“Generalmajor Neumann, can you check if he was admitted?” Rossett tried again.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake.”
“I need to know what happened to him.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Can you get me a phone?”
“After the doctor has spoken to you.” The nurse reached around and opened the door to Rossett’s room for him.
“Your voice.” Rossett paused at the threshold of the room. “You reminded me of my wife.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” she joked, then seemed to regret it.
“It is,” Rossett said softly.
The double doors at the end of the corridor swung open. Rossett felt a buzz of nausea as he turned his head a little too quickly to see who was coming through them.
Dannecker and Becker. All boots and black leather, striding along, dirtying up the corridor.
“You’re up,” Dannecker said in German, a statement, not a questi
on.
“Where’s Neumann?” Rossett didn’t have to look to know that the nurse had taken a couple of steps away from him.
“Gone.”
“Dead?”
Dannecker shrugged and then looked at the nurse. “Does he have clothes?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered in perfect German. “In the laundry.”
Rossett looked at her. German had swept away the Liverpool accent, and with it the scent of his wife. He felt a strange sadness as he watched the warmth sucked out of her by the darkness of the SS.
“Get them.” Staff Sergeant Becker didn’t even bother to look at her.
“The doctor will be—”
“Go get his clothes.”
Rossett felt the draft as the nurse hurried past him toward the doors. She almost hugged the wall as she squeezed past Becker, who had his arm hooked through the sling of an MP40 machine gun. The shoulder stock was folded, and the weapon looked tiny as he rested his hand across the top of it. His coat was open, and Rossett could see a holster on his hip and an additional pistol hanging in a shoulder rig. Dannecker also had an MP40. He was holding it casually down at his side by the grip next to the trigger.
They stared at Rossett, as Dannecker’s MP40’s muzzle tapped lightly against his boot.
“Are you injured?” asked Dannecker.
“Concussion.”
“You were lucky.”
“What happened?”
“Bomb.” Dannecker sounded bored as he looked casually around the corridor. “It was only a small thing, just enough to cause confusion and kill a few pedestrians. You were blown off your feet and you banged your head.”
“They took Neumann?”
“Must have. We didn’t find a body.” Dannecker shifted his weight so that the MP40 stopped tapping against his boot. Instead it hung lazily, the strap like a vine hanging low and brushing the floor.
“Are you looking for him?” Rossett tried again.
Becker answered for his boss. “We’re making enquiries.”
“Who with?” Rossett felt the conversation sticking like mud on his boots. Short answer following short answer. He reached up and touched the dressing on his forehead.
“You.” Dannecker this time.
“Me?”
“It was lucky that you climbed out of the car just before the bomb went off,” said Becker.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 11