The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  “I . . . I don’t . . .” Koehler trailed off, aware he was lost in a minefield of his own making.

  Hahn continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “My son died in Moscow, did you know that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “My son.” The smile slipped from Hahn’s lips and Koehler felt his cheeks flush at the intimacy of the moment. Hahn was the third most important German in the country, and one not renowned for his emotions. “Just after the communists fled the city, a sniper they’d left behind got him.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Hahn turned to look at Koehler.

  “Yes.”

  Koehler didn’t know what to say. His hand hurt like hell and he squeezed it tightly into a fist.

  “So much waste.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m tired, too, Ernst. I’ll let you into a secret: I also sometimes question our role, what we are doing. The question vexes me as much as it vexes you.” Hahn looked at Koehler, waiting for a reply that didn’t come. He stood up again, wandered around his desk, and sat back down in his chair.

  “Do you love your family, Ernst?”

  “Of course.”

  “More than the Führer?”

  Koehler blinked.

  “I love the Führer and my family.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “I—­”

  Hahn held up a hand, stopping him.

  “Let’s hope you never have to answer that question, Ernst. Thank you for speaking freely. I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.”

  Hahn picked up the pencil again and wrote something in the margin of one of the documents, then shut the file with a flourish.

  “Your request for transfer to Germany is denied. I’m going to bounce you upstairs for a few months; you can join the national planning team.”

  “Planning team, sir?”

  “Railway timetables, census work, just paperwork regarding the Jews throughout the country. Basically the sort of stuff you’ve been doing in London, on a slightly larger scale.”

  Hahn smiled as Koehler slumped a fraction in his chair.

  “It isn’t as bad as it sounds, Ernst. You’ll be deskbound, so you’ll not have to work directly with the Jews. You can just slide them across the tabletop on sheets of paper and keep your hands clean.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Koehler said unconvincingly.

  Hahn paused, then steepled his fingers and leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

  “I know this is difficult for you, Ernst, but whether you like it or not, you are good at your job. Stick with this for a while and I’ll get you some leave back in Germany with your wife and child. How does that sound?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’ll keep you away from the Jews, and give me a man I can trust working there to keep an eye on things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will report for duty in five days. That’ll give you time to get your Oak Leaves and say good-­bye to your family when they return to Germany.” Hahn slid the file to the far side of his desk and pointed at the door. “You are dismissed.”

  Koehler sat and stared at Hahn for a second, then nodded slowly. He rose, put on his cap, and saluted before making his way to the door.

  “Ernst,” Hahn called, and Koehler turned to face him.

  “Sir?”

  “You are a stunning soldier. You really are one of the best. Germany needs you and I need you. This is important work. We’re sowing the seeds for the future here, remember that. You’ve plenty of fight left in you, you just haven’t realized it yet.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Koehler said.

  For fuck all, Koehler thought, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT WAS SAID that the diplomatic quarter of London was one of the safest places on earth.

  Maps now featured a thick black line that signified the German ring of steel, an impenetrable phalanx of checkpoints within which roaming squads of German soldiers patrolled, ready to sweep up those foolish enough to be inside without good reason and the correct papers.

  A circle of safety for those on the German payroll, and a place where swastikas and portraits of the new leadership remained safe from resistance paintbrushes.

  Inside the ring security was tight; at its edge it was tighter still. Ever since the Waterloo Station bomb a few years earlier, the Germans had taken care to protect their own. Now, just a few years later, it was said that the pigeons in Trafalgar Square had to show their papers every morning before landing on Nelson’s Column.

  All this meant that Lotte Koehler felt safe as she walked with Anja along Regent Street toward Piccadilly. The snow was falling beautifully, silently sliding past the swastikas that hung from every other lamppost, virginal bright white against the bloodred flags that hung limp, barely drifting in the gathering breeze.

  A few nervous-­looking cars crept down the road, back ends slipping this way and that on the compacting snow, their occupants rushing home before the storm closed the roads. Lotte noticed that the buses were almost all empty; the city was battening down. It made her wonder how Ernst’s meeting with Hahn was going and whether he’d be home before them.

  Maybe they’d be heading back to their real home soon?

  Back to Germany, back to being a family.

  “Can we build a snowman tonight when Daddy gets home?” Anja tugged on her hand.

  “Aren’t you a little old for snowmen?”

  “You are never too old for snowmen, Mother, even you,” Anja teased, and Lotte realized how much her little girl was growing—­thirteen, nearly fourteen, not nearly a young woman but already her best friend.

  Anja beamed at her mother, red cheeked, strands of blond hair escaping from under her woolen hat.

  “Frau Koehler?” A young man in a smart suit and overcoat approached from where he was standing next to an Opel parked at the curb. “Your husband sent me to collect you.” The man pointed to the open rear door of the car.

  “My husband sent you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He said I was to pick you up and take you home.” A smile, and almost impeccable German.

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The man took a shopping bag from Anja. “The weather, he was worried.” The man pointed a finger up at the snow falling around them, just in case Lotte hadn’t noticed it.

  Lotte looked into the Opel. Another man was sitting in the driver’s seat, also smiling.

  “My husband Ernst sent you here to collect me?” Lotte turned to the first man.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The smile now didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Lotte stepped back from the car, taking hold of Anja’s hand once more.

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re attached to your husband’s office; we provide low-­key security, ma’am.”

  “I’ve never seen or heard of you.”

  “That shows we’re doing our job.” The smile again.

  Lotte looked at Anja and then back at him.

  “Do you have identification?”

  “Of course.” An ID card swept into sight from where it had been waiting in his right hand. “We do need to get moving . . .”

  “I have one more thing to buy.”

  “Allow us to take you to the shop. This is awful weather to be walking in.”

  Lotte lowered her head to take another look at the driver, who was now staring straight ahead, hands on the wheel, waiting.

  “The shop is just across the road; we can walk.”

  “I must insist, Frau Koehler.”

  Lotte took another half step and Anja, sensing tension, looked first at her mother and then cautiously over her shoulder at the half-­empty street behind them.

  “There
really is no need, the shop is just across the road.” Lotte pointed to a nearby tailor’s shop, barely visible through the plummeting snow that was getting heavier by the minute.

  From out of the shop two uniformed army officers appeared. They paused to light cigarettes in the doorway.

  Lotte stepped off the curb and started walking toward them; behind her the man took a step forward and then stopped. He rested a hand on the roof of the car, glancing toward the shop and then smiling.

  “We’ll wait for you here.”

  Lotte was already halfway across the road, Anja a few steps behind. Anja glanced back over her shoulder at the young man and smiled. He was handsome, tall, well built, and well dressed.

  His smile was gone; he was now watching the German officers on the other side of the street, tugging at their collars and heading off toward the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus.

  LOTTE KOEHLER WASN’T a normal officer’s wife.

  Lotte Koehler had shot her first wolf when she was nine years old.

  When she was eleven she and her father had tracked a wounded boar for two days. She had finally killed that same boar after it thundered out of the blackness of the forest and into their camp at midnight before goring her sleeping father as he lay next to their dwindling campfire.

  Lotte Koehler knew how to fight, she knew how to look after herself, and she knew how to look after those whom she loved.

  But most of all she knew when something felt wrong.

  As she walked toward the tailor’s shop with Anja, watching the men in the Opel in the reflection of the shop window as she approached it, Lotte Koehler knew something was seriously wrong.

  She knew that Ernst would have told her about a plainclothes security ser­vice. She also knew that while the young man spoke excellent German, really excellent German, it wasn’t his first language. It sounded like someone from the movies: perfect, too perfect, clipped and polished so that it was cut like glass.

  Cut glass with a tiny trace of an American twang.

  The other thing that wasn’t right was that they had said Ernst had sent them; it wasn’t right because Ernst didn’t know where they were.

  She hadn’t told him she was shopping. It was her and Anja’s little secret, time to buy a present for their dearest Ernst before they left him to go back to Berlin.

  Something was wrong, and she knew she had to do something about it, because if she and Anja were in danger, Ernst was in danger, and this lioness protected her pride.

  THERE WAS A deep mahogany gloom inside the tailor’s shop. What light struggled through the windows seemed to be sucked up by the dark red carpet and the solemn tick-­tock of the old grandfather clock that was standing sentry by the door.

  Only one member of staff was visible as Lotte pushed Anja ahead of her. Anja turned to look at her mother.

  “What is it?” she asked, but Lotte looked back out through the door and didn’t reply.

  Across the street she could see that both men were now standing on the pavement, talking and ignoring the snow that was bucketing down around them. They were staring at the shop, and neither seemed pleased with the way events were unfolding.

  “May I help you, madam?” the shop assistant said slowly in English, speaking clearly, as if addressing a child.

  “Sie verfügen über ein Telefon?” Lotte replied, still looking through the glass at the men outside.

  The shopkeeper smiled, holding out his hands apologetically.

  “I’m terribly sorry, madam. One doesn’t speak German; I normally have an assistant who does, but with the weather . . .” The tailor’s statement trailed off redundantly with a shrug.

  “Do you have a telephone, please?” Anja translated for her mother into perfect English. Lotte breathed a sigh of relief that she and Ernst had chosen to employ a British nanny back in Germany.

  “If you would like to step this way.”

  Lotte and Anja followed the tailor to the back of the shop. They’d barely made it halfway when the door behind them opened and the two men from the car entered.

  The first smiled at Lotte as he brushed some snow off his shoulders and then looked past her to the tailor. Behind him, the driver stared out through the door toward Regent Street, in the manner that Lotte had done a few moments earlier.

  “Frau Koehler, really, we must insist you come with us now; your husband is waiting.” The same immaculate but not-­quite-­right German. He tapped his wrist and shrugged an apology.

  “I need to make a telephone call,” Lotte replied, opening her handbag while still walking through the shop.

  “Now, Frau Koehler. We need to go now.” The driver spoke for the first time, his German rougher around the edges, his hand resting on the handle of the door, the other held out, inviting Lotte to leave the shop.

  She stopped, turned, then tilted her head. “I must also insist,” she said, an edge creeping in.

  Lotte stared at the man before following a nervous Anja to the back of the shop. Light and sound from the street were virtually nonexistent as the shopkeeper finally reached the telephone. It sat on a glass display case that contained ties, handkerchiefs, and a selection of brightly colored socks.

  Lotte was fumbling in her bag, looking for the number of Ernst’s private office, when the first man reached around her and rested his hand on top of the receiver.

  “Now, if you please,” he said quietly, intimately, his lips a few inches from her ear.

  Lotte paused, looking at the hand on the receiver in front of her. A second passed before she half turned and jabbed her silver Walther PPK pistol hard into his side.

  “Get away from me and my child,” Lotte said quietly, pushing hard with the muzzle of the PPK, so hard he felt it dig right through his overcoat and separate two of his ribs a fraction.

  He looked down and then back up into Lotte’s eyes.

  “Frau Koehler, please . . .”

  Behind him, the driver, confused by the quiet conversation between Lotte and his colleague, moved closer.

  “She has a gun,” the first man said quietly in English, looking down at the pistol.

  Nobody moved.

  The tick of the clock was the only reminder that the earth still turned, until Lotte shouted.

  “Go!” She looked at Anja. “Out the back, run!”

  As Lotte shouted to Anja she remembered another time. Long ago, another life almost. She remembered opening her heavy eyes, seeing the smoldering campfire, and hearing her father screaming.

  Lotte remembered the sound of the boar, the smell of it, the sparks kicking up from the fire, and the flecks of spittle as her father shouted one word.

  One final word to save the life of his precious daughter before he was overcome.

  “Run.”

  Back then, all those years ago, Lotte hadn’t done as she was told, either.

  Anja launched herself at the man next to her mother with all the fury a thirteen-­year-­old girl could muster. She gripped his coat collar with one hand and pushed as hard as she could. Clawing at his face with her other hand, she gritted her teeth and felt her nails dragging across his skin.

  She was screaming, slapping, kicking, and pulling now, her words just animal sounds and fury.

  ERIC COOK’S DAY was going from bad to worse.

  He tried to ignore Anja and her fingernails ripping at his cheeks. He tried to focus on the gun as the blows rained down on him; he flicked his head, this way and that, shoving with his shoulder, but still Anja fought, and still Lotte twisted the pistol, trying to pull it free from his hands. He’d managed to grab the top slide of the pistol, jamming the webbing of his thumb under the hammer to stop it from falling.

  Anja was like a dervish as she slapped and scraped at his face. He felt a finger in his eye and then his eyelid stretching under the drag of its nail.

  He shoo
k his head, squeezing his eyes tight as he called for help.

  “For God’s sake, King, help me here!”

  The second he shouted he knew he’d done wrong. He knew there was no going back, no escape, no denial, and no doubt that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

  Eric Cook had called for help in a broad American accent, and Eric Cook had used a name.

  Frank King winced.

  They’d blown it.

  King stepped forward and attempted to drag Anja away from his partner. He grabbed one of her arms, pulling it up, but the maelstrom twisted and turned, and then the girl started to scream as she felt herself being dragged from her mother.

  Cook felt the girl finally slide off him. His eye was watering and his nose was sore from where she had smacked him hard in the face. He gasped a breath and felt Lotte jerk the pistol again, trying to pull it free from his grip.

  The battle wasn’t over yet.

  Lotte tried to twist the pistol as Cook worked the muzzle out of his ribs, both hands still clamped around the slide and hammer, clinging on for dear life, desperately squinting down to see where the gun was going as they wrestled it between them.

  Lotte dropped a shoulder and Cook thought he would overbalance; she ducked in low at his hip and then twisted. He felt the pistol slipping in his hands as he looked toward King for help again.

  Help wasn’t forthcoming.

  FRANK KING WAS suffering his own private nightmare with Anja. Punches, shin kicks, scratches, and shrieks rattled around him as he dropped his chin into his chest and tried to grab at her free arm.

  Anja was still screaming, higher now, painful to the ears, setting King’s teeth on edge. He couldn’t take any more; he gave up trying to grab her arm and pulled back his hand to slap her face.

  He stopped when he heard the shot.

  Time stood still.

  Everyone froze for the briefest of moments as their ears rang and they waited for sense to return.