The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  Another red light, another fumble for the crushed damp cigarette packet in his pocket.

  Empty.

  “Do you have smokes?” He looked at Rossett, who moved for the first time during the journey to check his own pockets. A quick search and a packet emerged, which he offered across.

  “I’ve one left.”

  “Shit, I need to smoke. My nerves.”

  “Take it.” Rossett looked at him and then back out the windscreen.

  “You sure?”

  Rossett didn’t reply, so Koehler took the cigarette and then tossed the empty packet over his shoulder onto the backseat of the car. He managed to touch the end with a flaring match, just before the lights changed.

  He hadn’t wanted to join the military. His conscription and basic training in the army had been tough, but his education and overall performance had marked him out early as a candidate for promotion.

  “You could go a long way, Koehler. You are smart, charming, a good soldier. ­People like you inspire. Your men would follow you. I’m recommending you for officer training school.” His CO had smiled at him, signed a file, and Koehler had gone to the academy, unsure of whether he was doing the right thing.

  He’d known as soon as he got there that he wasn’t.

  The time wasn’t right. He wanted to be home and in the arms of Lotte and Anja, so he flunked out on purpose. A map-­reading exercise gone wrong, followed by a failed initiative test, and he was back in front of the CO in no time at all.

  The CO had a portrait of the Führer hanging on the wall behind him, and they’d both frowned at Ernst as he had stood to attention, trying not to look either of them in the eye.

  “I’m disappointed. You’ve let us down. Go away and come back in twelve months.” The words followed him out of the door and back to Munich. He smiled all the way.

  But Munich was changing; Germany was changing. His old friend Helmut from university visited with presents and a smart black uniform and boots that creaked when he walked.

  “Don’t leave it too late, Ernst. Germany isn’t a place for schoolmasters and students anymore. You need to get on board with us, the SS. The Führer needs men like you to spread National Socialism across Europe. We won’t be conquerors, we will be saviors!” Helmut had spilled schnapps on the kitchen table when he slammed down his glass to make his point.

  Lotte had stood up from where she was sitting silently on their old sofa, then fetched a cloth to wipe up the mess before it stained the table.

  As he drove the car that morning, far out of London through the snow, Ernst Koehler wished he had heard what Lotte had been saying with that silence.

  Instead he had followed Helmut into the SS. This time there was no failed map-­reading exercise. This time there was no failed initiative test.

  He’d tried his best for Lotte, Anja, the Führer, and Germany. He became a Waffen SS officer. His boots had creaked across the floor of their Munich apartment, and then they’d creaked across Europe and beyond.

  From Dunkirk to Dover.

  From west to east, through Munich on leave, then on to Moscow and beyond.

  He earned his Knight’s Cross the hard way. He had led men, lost men, killed men, and been a warrior for the Reich and for the Führer he’d sworn to die for.

  But now, right at that minute, driving through England, blood was on his hands, staining his soul and causing his conscience to physically ache when he thought about what he had done.

  He knew Lotte had been right all those years ago. Slamming the door, loading Cohen’s cart, she’d been right.

  And he’d been so terribly wrong.

  He was trapped and wrapped in a nightmare he’d helped to create.

  He was a reaper, and he hated himself.

  His boots creaked over the skulls of a million dead Jews.

  His boots had creaked without conscience.

  He wasn’t a soldier anymore, nor was he a teacher.

  He was death.

  And he knew he had done wrong.

  He had carried on with his job, rounding up the Jews, butchering the Jews. He didn’t see their bodies, but he heard their cries when he turned off the light at night.

  He knew he was worse than Rossett, because he knew where they went.

  He had seen the chimneys, smelled the stench, and seen the ash fall around him like snow from the roofs of the buses on the London streets.

  He was a butcher, with a clipboard instead of a knife, but a butcher all the same.

  He didn’t deserve Lotte and Anja, but he vowed he would get them back and change things. He would go back to Germany, maybe teach again. Build a new life, for all of them, for Germany, for the children he taught, for the future.

  He’d do it with them because without them, without the hope that they brought, there was no point.

  No point at all.

  IT WAS COMING again, fat, slow snow, flakes as big as plums, drifting down faster as the seconds passed. Koehler slipped the car into neutral. The road was too narrow to overtake the bus in front of them, even on a day when the road wasn’t deep in snow.

  Rossett opened the door of the car.

  “I’ll get cigarettes from the kiosk. Do you want anything else?”

  Koehler looked across the road and saw a tiny street kiosk with a vendor and a few commuter customers.

  “Some mints?”

  Rossett closed the door and crossed the pavement to the kiosk.

  Koehler watched him go, then went back to staring at the back of the bus. He looked in his mirror and saw a black cab, only a ­couple of feet from the back of the Austin. The driver was blowing into his hands, trying to keep them warm. Some more snow pattered against the Austin’s windscreen, so Koehler flicked the switch on the dashboard to sweep it away with the wipers.

  The bus brake lights glared at him. The driver was riding the pedal as they waited. Koehler leaned across to the passenger side of the car, straining to see if the bus was stuck at a hidden traffic light.

  He couldn’t see.

  He wondered if Rossett would make it back to the car before he had to move off, and gave a tiny blip of the throttle before checking the fuel gauge again.

  Quarter full. He watched it drift to empty and then back up to full.

  He decided they would stop and dip the tank to check how much it actually held. They couldn’t afford to get halfway and then run out.

  He looked up; the conductor was leaning out of the open platform at the back of the bus, holding the shiny chrome pole with one hand, staring toward the front of the vehicle.

  Maybe there had been an accident?

  The snow was coming more heavily; he could hear it pattering on the tin roof of the car.

  Koehler opened the door, stepped out into the road, and looked at Rossett, still waiting to be served. Then he took a step to his right so he could look beyond the bus to see what was holding them up.

  Four German soldiers, in long greatcoats, rifles slung over shoulders, gingerly making their way through the snow toward him.

  Checkpoint.

  “Shit.”

  One of the soldiers, a ruddy-­faced, middle-­aged corporal, waved an arm at Koehler and shouted.

  “In there!” Bad English, but clear enough.

  Koehler nodded, hoping the sensation in his stomach wasn’t showing on his face. He looked at Rossett, still waiting, unable to see the soldiers on the other side of the bus.

  Koehler took hold of the still-­open door of the Austin and turned to look back at the queue that was forming at the checkpoint. Ten or so taxis and cars, followed by another bus, sat in the falling snow that was gusting on a freshening wind.

  Nobody was beeping their horns; nobody was out of their cars.

  Koehler realized he was standing out from the crowd.

  The troops
were ten feet away, and the corporal was staring at him, unhappy that he’d been ignored.

  “I said—­”

  “I’m an SS major. Be careful who you are talking to,” Koehler replied in German.

  ROSSETT HEARD KOEHLER’S voice and looked up, then looked at the bus, and then the road ahead.

  “Yes, guv?” the vendor asked him.

  Rossett ignored the vendor; he was too busy wondering how he had missed the truck half blocking the road in front of the bus.

  “Guv?”

  Rossett looked at the vendor and then back to the checkpoint, automatically slipping his hand into the coat pocket where his Webley was waiting, cursing himself for switching off.

  “What’ll it be?” the vendor tried again.

  The checkpoint corporal looked at the Austin and frowned as Koehler approached; it was a strange car for a major to be traveling in—­battered, old, barely roadworthy.

  Koehler fought the urge to look toward Rossett, not wanting to give away Rossett’s position to the checkpoint crew.

  On the pavement side of the bus another three soldiers appeared. Two climbed on board to check the papers of the passengers. The conductor stepped out of the way, eyes down, not looking for trouble.

  “Forty Players,” Rossett said to the vendor without looking at him.

  “Bleedin’ Nazis, everywhere this morning.” The vendor was watching the soldiers as they came around the back of the bus and approached the Austin.

  “I’M SORRY, SIR, I thought you were English.” The corporal approached Koehler, the others in his squad hanging back, probably wishing they’d gotten on the bus.

  “I need to get going. Get this traffic out of the way.”

  The wiper on the Austin juddered across the windscreen and the corporal looked at it, and then at Koehler.

  “I’ll need to see your papers, sir.”

  Koehler patted his chest, feeling for his wallet under his heavy woolen coat, the urge to see where Rossett was almost overpowering.

  Did the soldiers know?

  Was this a routine checkpoint?

  Koehler patted his side pocket and felt his Mauser bumping against his body, reminding him it was there.

  Two of the soldiers had stepped up onto the curb; one was staring into the bus while the other was looking back toward the checkpoint. Another was standing at the front of the Austin, and that damned corporal was waiting, hand out, blushing slightly, regretting asking to see Koehler’s papers, but still waiting for them.

  Rossett kept watching as he paid the vendor for the cigarettes. He studied the soldiers, all young men, fresh faced, with bolt-­action rifles, old infantry Karabiners, the sort issued to soldiers in low-­risk postings, slow to maneuver. He squeezed the grip on his Webley and guessed the distance between him and the nearest soldier to be approximately fifty feet. Even with their heavy coats and gloves making them slow to react, Rossett doubted he’d be able to take down more than three before the others fired on him.

  He watched as Koehler undid the top button of his overcoat, trying to read his friend’s body language.

  “Your change, guv?” The vendor was holding out some coins.

  Rossett ignored him, so the vendor followed his gaze, watching the group by the Austin, slowly realizing that something was wrong.

  At the car the corporal shifted slightly, lowering his hand an inch or two but still adamant that he wanted to see this strange, nervous major’s papers.

  Koehler flicked away the cigarette he was still holding and then reached into his coat. He gambled, breathed, readied himself. He was praying Rossett was ready for the fight; he didn’t dare look to check.

  Rossett will be ready, Rossett is always ready, Koehler told himself, eyes on the corporal, hand on his Mauser.

  He saw another soldier getting off the back of the bus.

  A soldier with an MP40 machine pistol in his hands.

  The young soldier was watching his colleague come down the steps from the top deck; he’d been covering him as he’d checked the papers of the passengers upstairs. There was probably a round in the chamber ready to go.

  The young man looked at Koehler and then at the corporal, reading the standoff, drifting the gun around in a casual covering arc.

  Koehler let go of the Mauser, then produced his papers, slapped them into the corporal’s hand, and waited.

  Rossett felt his grip loosen on the Webley.

  “Major Koehler?” The corporal looked up.

  “Yes?”

  “Could you come with us, please, sir?”

  Koehler had failed.

  Rossett was on his own.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE TEA WAS sickly thick and dirty brown; the mug it was in was greasy and covered in fingerprints that weren’t Anja’s, but still, she sipped it again.

  Enjoying the first kind thing anyone had done for her in what seemed like forever.

  The boy who had brought the drink to her stood on the other side of the garage workshop, awkwardly watching her in dirty overalls and heavy boots that looked too big for his skinny legs. He worked his hand through his greasy, floppy black hair and tried unsuccessfully to coax the mess on his head into some sort of order.

  As soon as he lowered his hand a thick wedge of hair collapsed and dropped down his forehead, hiding his right eye. The light was poor in the workshop, but Anja could see that there were three cars in various states of repair loitering in the gloom. Everything but the cars seemed to be wrapped in a layer of old oil, especially the floor, which was concrete dappled with slick and matte shades of old and new spills and splashes.

  The chair Anja sat on was comfortable but, like everything else, covered in oil. At first she had worried about her coat and tried not to sit back too far. But time had passed—­half an hour? maybe an hour?—­the tea had arrived, and she had slowly relaxed, exhausted. She watched Harris the policeman and another man, the senior mechanic, talk about her behind the window of the office opposite.

  The senior mechanic hadn’t been pleased when Harris had first led her into the garage, through a small door cut into the bigger closed one.

  Anja wasn’t pleased to be there either. Harris had told her they were walking to a nearby police station, not a dirty, run-­down, backstreet garage under a railway arch.

  “Are you really a German?” The boy finally spoke, and Anja looked up from her tea. “I didn’t know they had girls here. I thought it was just soldiers and such.”

  Anja lowered her face to the mug again without replying.

  “Harris was saying you was hiding?” the boy tried again.

  Anja looked at the tea, noticing how there appeared to be a tiny rainbow floating in the oil on its surface.

  “Do you speak English? He said you was above an empty shop with a gun. Where did you get that from?”

  “Hey!” Anja and the boy looked up at the mechanic, who had stuck his head out of the office. “Don’t you bleedin’ talk to her, just watch her and keep your trap shut.”

  The door slammed as the mechanic ducked back into the office. Anja looked at the boy, who stared back. She saw that behind the oily cheeks he was blushing.

  “He’s not the boss of me. I can do what I want,” the boy said quietly, head tilted forward but looking at Anja from under his fringe.

  “How old are you?” Anja asked in her excellent English.

  “Fifteen.” The boy eased back against the bench he was leaning on and folded his arms, trying to look the man he nearly was.

  Anja smiled behind the mug, her mouth hidden but her eyes giving it away.

  “What is your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “I thought you were younger.”

  Jack flicked his hair again, picked up a wrench, and scratched himself behind the ear with it.

  “We’re not
supposed to be talking,” he finally said, flushing brighter with irritation.

  The mechanic banged on the glass, pointed at Anja, and gestured for Jack to bring her to the office. She was out of the chair and on her way before the he made it to her. She opened the door and stepped into the harsh light of the small office as Jack struggled to keep up.

  It was warm. A small heater sat in the corner popping and bubbling and making the room smell even oilier.

  “Sit.” The mechanic pointed to a leather revolving chair similar to the one she had sat on outside. Anja did as she was told, putting the mug down on the worn wooden desk.

  She looked up at the mechanic expectantly.

  He was wearing blue overalls that opened at the neck to show a gray collarless shirt underneath. His throat looked wrinkled, red, angry, and sore. His face seemed to be potted with a million tiny pits of oil; he looked old and tired, but Anja guessed him to be the same age as her father.

  He took a rag out of his pocket, wiped his hands with it, and sat down on the edge of the desk, looking down at her as he seemed to search for words.

  Anja beat him to it by turning to Harris, who was standing in the corner of the office, drinking tea from a mug that was even dirtier than hers.

  “You said you were taking me to a police station.”

  “All in good time,” Harris replied.

  “I want to go now.”

  “In a minute,” Harris said again.

  She turned to the mechanic.

  “Are you in charge here?”

  “Yes.”

  “My father will pay you if you take me to him now. He will be very worried about me.”

  “I bet he is.”

  “You will be rewarded for your trouble, I promise.”

  “Who is your father?” the mechanic asked.

  Anja shifted in her seat.

  “Who he is doesn’t matter. Take me to the German sector and I will be sure to have you rewarded.”

  “Who is your father?”

  Anja ignored the question and looked at Harris.

  “You have a duty to protect me. You are a police officer and you have a duty.”