“Tell me, or one of you will join him.”
Neumann lifted one hand. “Me.”
“Your mask.” The Bear indicated with the muzzle of the MP40, wafting it up and down as he brought it to bear on Neumann. “Remove it.”
Neumann did as he was told. The Bear nodded, then opened fire on the others with three short bursts. He emptied the magazine, dropped it, flicked the tail of his coat, inserted a fresh clip, and worked the bolt in less than three seconds.
The sights settled back on Neumann, who started scuttling backward away from him in shock.
“Stop.”
Neumann lifted one hand to stop the bullets he thought were about to come. He looked at the men on the ground around him and then back at the Bear.
“They were German!”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“They were the same as you.”
The Bear lowered the MP40. He’d seen this confusion before on the battlefield. He turned slightly at the waist so that the gun was pointing up the street.
“They weren’t the same as me.”
“They were German. They were SS.” Neumann started to cough.
“Trust me, they weren’t the same as me.” The Bear smiled, then held out a hand to help Neumann up. “Come with me.”
“They . . . they were German.” Neumann pointed at the corpses bleeding out on the wet cobbles.
“We don’t have much time for what I need to do, and they would have slowed us down.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“Get up or die.”
Two cars came around the corner at the far end of the street. They were traveling fast, and one of them fishtailed slightly on the wet road as its engine raced.
They watched the cars approaching, until the Bear lifted the MP40 again and opened fire.
He was good.
Short bursts, controlled, leaning into the recoil, feet planted, breathing steady, eye on the driver of the car on the right.
The windscreen shattered and dropped into the car. The Bear watched as the driver’s head rocked and dipped and the car lurched. The front-seat passenger was leaning across, firing a pistol wild with his left hand while trying to grab the steering wheel with his right.
The Bear looked down at where Neumann had been two seconds earlier.
He was gone.
Chapter 16
Neumann was running.
Clattering, scattering, stumbling steps along back alleys and across wide warehouse streets.
He could just about hear the sound of shooting over the thunder of his feet, the blood in his ears, and the gasp of his smoke-soaked breath. He knew he didn’t have far left in his legs. He was slower than he used to be. His lungs had taken a beating, and the chair in his office was just a little too comfy.
His throat burned cold with the morning air. He kept going, not looking back, lost in enemy territory and running out of steam. He ran flat out for what felt like an hour, but in truth was less than a minute and a half.
He tried not to think about the pain in his chest. He kept looking for the end of another alleyway, another bent lamppost. Something to reach, something to aim for, something to get him farther away.
He finally ground to a halt with his hands on his knees, at the corner of another empty street. He swallowed down some vomit and felt like he was breathing through a straw. He stood up straight, looked around, then bent double again and tried to slow down his gasping.
He failed.
He straightened up again, hands on the back of his hips now, arching his back and looking up into the blue sky as he started to walk. Slowly for the first few steps, then he lowered his head and started to move as fast as he could again.
He tilted his head and listened for the sound of gunfire over his wheezing. He heard nothing but the sound of his footsteps bouncing off the buildings around him. He tried every dark door that he passed. Checking over his shoulder and then eventually starting a slow jog, using the shallow slope of the street to keep him moving.
He needed a phone or a car. He took another turn, left this time, a wide back alley that ran behind some more warehouses.
This alleyway was worse than the others. Thick, dirty wet, scruffy brambles clung to the cracks in the cobbles like alley cats looking for a fight. They grabbed at the bottom of his trousers as he passed, thorns like claws, itching and scratching and tearing his skin.
He tested a few gates to the backyards on either side of the alley. Some of them opened, but none of them offered any hope of genuine refuge.
He stopped walking and tilted his head, turning in a slow circle as he listened.
He could hear a car somewhere.
Neumann ran. His lungs alive again, heading for the sound of the engine, his breath blowing white and cold toward the blue sky. Fifty yards later he skidded to a halt at the end of the alley where it met the street.
There was a van coming toward him, slow, creeping along, like it was looking for something, maybe fifty yards away. He peeked around the corner with one eye only, pressing his body to the wall as tight as he could.
He checked over his shoulder and saw there was a gate open, maybe twenty feet behind him. He would watch the van approach, and if he couldn’t decide whether it was safe, he’d hide in the yard until it passed. Not much of a plan, but it was all he had to hold on to.
He looked out one more time.
The van had stopped.
Neumann placed his hands flat on the wall. It was cold. Some grit fell through his fingers and then down his right sleeve. He dangled his arm to shake it free, checked over his shoulder again, then looked back at the van. The driver was out, pulling at some empty packing cases stacked against a wall.
Neumann watched as the driver was joined by the passenger. They lifted one of the cases to look behind them, and then the driver leaned out of sight for a second. The men were carrying something that looked like scrap metal back to the van.
They weren’t looking for him. He was safe.
He broke cover and shouted to them.
“Hey!”
They looked at him, then the passenger let go of his end of the load so it fell to the ground. Neumann lifted his hands.
“Hey!”
They were fifty feet away. He saw them look at each other, then the driver also let go of the metal. It landed with a whump that Neumann heard clearly.
“We found it.” The driver pointed at what Neumann could now see was a pile of folded lead sheet. “We didn’t rob it.”
“I need your help.” Neumann stopped just short of them with his hands held out, calming the men. “I need to get into the city center.”
The men looked at each other, then back at Neumann.
“You foreign?” the passenger asked.
“Dutch,” Neumann lied.
“What you doing around ’ere?”
“I’m lost.”
“What happened to your face?”
Neumann didn’t understand what the passenger meant, so he reached up and touched a finger to his cheek and then inspected it. The soot from the fire stared back at him.
Neumann gave it a moment, then tried an explanation.
“There was an accident.”
It was a bad explanation. The driver put his hands on his hips.
“We saw the smoke. Did you light the fire?”
“I was trapped but I escaped.”
“Why didn’t you wait for the fire brigade then?”
Neumann opened his mouth and then closed it without speaking.
The driver squinted.
“You scamming the insurance? Burn the place down and then claim for it?”
Neumann shook his head.
“We won’t tell anyone, mate, we know the score,” the passenger chipped in.
“I can pay you.”
“How much?” The driver.
“Whatever you want, just get me back to the city.”
The driver nodded to the lead on the ground.
There were rails on either side of the van where Neumann guessed there had once been sliding doors. The doors were long gone, so he wondered if they were under the pile of scrap in the back where the lead had been thrown. The driver had tried to make Neumann climb onto the old metal for the journey, but he had refused, and instead was squeezed onto a narrow bench seat with the passenger.
Both men stank.
Not just with the smell of a hard worker, either. There was a mix of sweat, rotten food, rotten teeth, and foul tobacco hanging over them as a reminder of how grim their lives were.
The van wouldn’t start.
It whined and whined like someone was cutting wood slowly under the hood. The driver cursed as he stabbed at the accelerator so hard, Neumann worried that his foot was going to push through the rusty floor under it.
“Bleedin’ thing!” The driver punched the steering wheel, then looked at Neumann and the passenger. “You’ll have to get out and push the fucker.”
The passenger was out before the sentence was finished. Neumann wondered if that was why they had lost the doors, for convenience at getaways. He got out and saw that the passenger was already at the back of the van, two hands high, head down low, getting ready. Neumann braced his shoulder against the doorframe and the windscreen.
“Push!” the driver shouted, and the van started to roll.
The incline helped; the van picked up speed quickly until it bucked, jolted, and then fired up. Thick black fumes belched from the back as the engine revved, stuttered, and then revved again.
Neumann looked back and saw that the passenger hadn’t been pushing.
He was laughing, walking along with his hands in his pockets, enjoying the joke he had just played on him.
There was a squeak of brakes as the van stopped and waited for them to catch up. Neumann walked quickly, almost a jog, until he reached the van, looked in at the driver, and then past him through the open doorway.
The Bear.
Emerging from the alleyway Neumann had come from two minutes earlier.
The MP40 was gone, in its place what looked like a Browning automatic pistol down low at his side. He was walking fast, a quick look left and right, and then the pistol came up and fired one shot.
The driver bucked.
Neumann flinched as a fine spray wet his face. The van started to roll as the dead driver pitched forward, his lifeless foot sliding off the brake and onto the accelerator next to it.
The engine roared.
Neumann stepped back as he heard another shot.
He looked right and saw the passenger crumpling straight down into the road. His head hit hard with a hollow crack. He turned onto his side and tried to get back up to his feet like a fallen drunk.
The Bear fired again.
Dead.
The van was still rolling down the street. The steering wheel was turned slightly to the left, so it was drifting slowly to the curb. Neumann watched it, then looked at the Bear.
He was pointing the Browning at him. The pistol flicked toward the van, which had just bumped up onto the curb and rolled to a stop against the front wall of an empty warehouse.
The Bear shouted over the sound of the racing engine.
“Get in the van or die right here, right now. Your choice.”
They stared at each other as Neumann clenched and unclenched his fists. Seconds passed, and then Neumann deflated and started walking toward the van. He looked through the passenger door at the dead driver, who had half slipped off his seat onto the floor.
The Bear appeared, grabbed the driver’s shoulder, and dragged him out.
“In.” The pistol flicked again, so Neumann did as he was told and climbed into the van.
The Bear produced about eighteen inches of looped string. “Hands.” He held up the string. “Put them through the big loop. Do it now.”
Neumann did as he was told. He flinched as the Bear yanked on the loose end of string. The loop tightened around his wrists and locked them together.
“Put your hands on the windscreen.”
Neumann had to sit on the edge of the seat and lean forward to do it.
“This is hurting my back.” Neumann tried to bargain a better position for himself.
“It won’t be for long.” The Bear climbed into the van, crunched a gear, and got the van rolling again.
“I’m no threat to you.”
“I know,” the Bear replied without looking at him.
“Please, if I could—”
“Be quiet, or I’ll kill you.”
The glass was cold against Neumann’s palms as he considered his options, and then he lowered his head as the van bounced off the curb and accelerated away down the road.
The Bear drove well. The van moved quickly and smoothly along the main road toward the city center from the docks. The closer they got to the city, the heavier the flow of traffic, until finally the Bear was having to flick the steering wheel left and right as he searched out fleeting gaps between the cars all around them.
Not once did they stop at a set of traffic lights, and not once did their speed drop below twenty miles an hour. Neumann stared past his hands out of the windscreen, desperately searching for a safe place to bail out of the van, but the Bear gave him no time to find one.
Occasionally Neumann glanced down at the pistol, which was now jammed between the Bear’s legs, as he used both hands for driving. The fourth time he did it the Bear looked at him and shook his head.
“I’ll kill you if you go for it, so don’t.”
“Where are you taking me?”
The Bear dropped another gear, then dived into a too-small space between two cars that blared their horns. He switched back up a gear and smiled at Neumann.
“I need you to help me.”
“I’m not going to help you.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to do much. You just need to sit and wait.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Bear glanced across. “You know how they catch birds by putting seed under a basket and then pulling away the stick?”
Neumann shook his head. “No.”
“It’s simple. They leave a trail of seed, and the dumb chicken follows it until it is under the basket. And then they pull away the stick and trap the chicken. I want you to be the seed under the basket.”
“Why?” The van rocked and Neumann’s head rolled a little.
“So the chicken can come and peck you up.” The Bear dropped another gear as they approached an intersection.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The Bear floored the accelerator. The van bucked, belched some black smoke, and blasted through the intersection. Neumann dipped his head as a car skidded to their right and missed the van by less than a few feet.
The Bear looked across at Neumann as they picked up speed.
“It isn’t difficult. You are bait to catch Rossett with.”
“Bait for Rossett?” Neumann chuckled despite himself. “He already had his chance to rescue me and he didn’t bother.”
The Bear looked across at Neumann.
“What?”
“He came to the cell last night. We spoke, but he refused to help me. As far as I can guess, he’s with the resistance, but either way, he seemed happy to leave me there.”
The van dipped and swerved again. The Bear glanced a few times from the windscreen to Neumann and back again before he spoke.
“Rossett was happy for them to kill you?”
“He told me they wouldn’t hurt me, that he wouldn’t let them. But he was happy for me to stay there, like some sort of hostage or something.”
“So he won’t try to rescue you from me?”
“I think it is more that you just rescued me from him.”
The van slowed a little. Neumann glanced across at the Bear, then went back to searching for a likely escape point in the distance.
“But he wou
ld have been angry if they had hurt you?”
“He said they wouldn’t hurt me. He said he would kill them if they did.”
With no warning at all, the van braked suddenly and slewed into the car park of what looked like a low office block. Neumann looked out the windscreen at the building in front of them.
Big white letters on the brownstone walls spelled out the company name: chestnut supply
Through the windows he could see people working, some on telephones, another typing, another drinking tea from a mug.
Neumann looked at the Bear.
“What are we—?”
“Come.” The Bear grabbed Neumann’s jacket collar and jerked him over the seat and out the driver’s door.
Neumann fell onto the ground, stood, and scrambled, still with his hands tied, across the asphalt as the Bear dragged him around the front of the van by his jacket collar. He could feel the heat of the engine behind him as the Bear forced him down onto his knees facing the building.
Neumann looked up at the offices. A fat man was standing at a first-floor window looking out. He was lowering a mug from his lips slowly as he watched Neumann and the Bear below.
The Bear lifted the pistol and fired one shot into the air. It cracked and echoed, and drew the attention of anyone in the office block who was near a window.
Neumann counted maybe eleven faces, then looked at the Bear again.
“What are you doing?”
The Bear ignored him.
“This is Generalmajor Erhard Neumann of the German police!” he shouted like some sort of town crier as he pointed at Neumann. He paused, and then shouted again. “Erhard Neumann, did you hear that?”
Two or three people in the building nodded, despite the confused look on their faces.
“I am Captain Karl Bauer of the Waffen SS. They call me the Bear!” He raised the pistol and fired another shot into the sky. “Remember this, tell everyone what happened, word for word, or I will come back and kill you all.”
A few people backed away from their windows, and Neumann saw one woman talking frantically into a telephone.
Neumann looked up at the Bear.
“Are you ready?” the Bear asked quietly.
“For what?” Neumann asked back.
The Bear placed the pistol against the right side of Neumann’s head and shot him dead.
An Army of One: A John Rossett Novel Page 23