The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  “What about the person who gave you those stitches?”

  “Accidents happen. You were under a great deal of pressure in a stressful situation. You were concerned for the well-­being of your family. I can understand that. I’ve been a policeman for a long time. I’ve bumped my head before; this won’t be the last time it happens.”

  “I need to get out of here.”

  “You need to talk to me.”

  “I need to get out. You have to promise you will let me out.”

  Neumann looked at the table and then back at Koehler. “I will not make promises I can’t keep.”

  Koehler wiped his hand across his eyes, then rubbed with his finger and thumb so hard that when he looked at Neumann again he had to blink two or three times to be able to see him.

  “Do you want my wife and child to live?” Koehler said quietly.

  Neumann lifted his chin. “Of course.”

  “Then you have to let me go.”

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  “No, really, it is.” Koehler stared at Neumann, the certainty of his statement causing the policeman to open and close his mouth without speaking.

  There was a knock at the door, and it opened before either Koehler or Neumann had a chance to react. March leaned halfway into the interview room, looking at Koehler and then at Neumann.

  “Sir, I need to have a word,” he said to Neumann.

  “Not now.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  “Later.”

  “They’ve found a body.”

  Koehler and Neumann looked at him and said in unison, “Where?”

  March tilted his head toward Koehler and then looked at his boss, who gestured that he should continue.

  “On the riverbank. Someone looking for scrap metal found it . . . her . . . an hour ago.” March swallowed and looked at Koehler. “It matches the description of your wife.”

  Koehler felt the earth drop through him.

  “Identification?” said Neumann.

  “Nothing on her.”

  “Do we know how she died?”

  “Nothing confirmed yet, but . . . the suggestion is she has been shot or stabbed.” March looked at Koehler and despite himself said, “I’m sorry.”

  Koehler raised his hands to his face and rested his elbows on the table, leaning into his palms, pushing his face hard, hiding behind the pain.

  “Where is the . . . deceased now?” he heard Neumann say.

  “Still at the scene, sir. They are waiting for the doctor and Met detectives to finish up.”

  “Get the major’s belongings and bring them. We’re going down there.”

  THERE IS A stubborn silence at the scene of a death. As Koehler, Neumann, and March ducked their heads under the hole in the fence, Koehler noticed that silence, settling like the snow, all around them.

  Nobody had spoken in the car. Neumann had sat in the back with Koehler, and when they’d arrived Koehler had realized that the handle on his door didn’t work. He’d sat and watched March walk around the car, waiting as the big policeman had opened the door, and then stepped out.

  “Should I cuff him?”

  “No,” Neumann had replied, and Koehler had looked across and nodded thanks.

  The snow made the ground look even, but the frozen mud it concealed was anything but. All three picked their steps carefully as they made their way down to the mucky brown riverbank ahead of them. The sun was up but hidden behind the clouds when they first caught sight of the group of men at the water’s edge.

  Koehler slowed, putting off the moment, clinging on to hope as long as was possible. The group around the body turned to face them, as a fresh scattering of snow blew in off the river.

  The tide was coming in; the Thames looked to be flowing left to right, a brown carpet, lapping at the toes of the one naked foot that emerged from under a canvas sheet on the shore. Koehler realized that they’d been expected. Nobody challenged them, and everybody was staring at him.

  He looked at the sheet, trying to avoid the foot, glacier white against the dirty sand and the Thames.

  Lotte’s foot.

  A plainclothes English detective crouched down next to the canvas, taking hold of the corner with finger and thumb, looking up at Koehler, waiting for the nod.

  It came.

  The sheet folded back eighteen inches, and Lotte stared into the sky, lips parted, tips of teeth showing, hair wet, yellow strands across her cheeks, lifeless.

  As Koehler looked at his love, a snowflake brushed her face and then settled on her lips, unnaturally staying in place, not melting. She was cold.

  Koehler crouched, reached with a fingertip, and touched the flake. It melted, and the water trickled across her lip. He gently wiped it away, then ran his finger across her cheek, moving her hair.

  For the first time since they had met, her eyes didn’t smile at his touch.

  He lifted his head. A few of the policemen were looking out across the Thames, letting him have his moment. He blinked a flake of snow from his eyelashes and looked down again to Lotte, just as the policeman covered her face once more with the sheet.

  “Major?”

  “It’s my wife.”

  The English detective nodded to one of the uniformed bobbies. “Victim identified by husband.”

  The policeman looked at his watch and wrote something in his notebook.

  Victim, thought Koehler.

  Koehler stood up, nodded to Neumann, then walked a few paces away from the group along the riverbank. He stared to the south bank of the Thames, with its cranes and its steaming ships getting ready to run, move on to the next place. A seagull swooped low across the water, fifty feet away, its wingtips tapping on the Thames, leaving two tiny wakes.

  The old river didn’t notice; it kept moving, in and out, time and tide; nothing else mattered, changing of the seasons, here long after all of them.

  “I’m sorry,” Koehler said softly.

  Neumann came up behind him and stood to his left.

  A horn sounded as the snow increased, casting a shroud across the far bank and making it harder to see.

  “They’ve had men and dogs up and down the bank in both directions.”

  “Anja?” Koehler didn’t look at Neumann as he spoke.

  “No sign of her.”

  “The river?”

  “They’ve boats looking, but the man who found your wife said there were a lot of tracks in the snow when he arrived, all covered now, I’m afraid, but he thought it was a few ­people. Maybe . . . maybe she was here?”

  Koehler nodded, then lowered his head, looking at the water lapping at his feet.

  “This doesn’t look like resistance,” said Neumann. “They prefer more of a . . . statement.”

  “It isn’t resistance.”

  “Who is it, then? Help me.”

  Koehler lifted his head to look toward the south bank; he licked his lips and gave a slight shake of the head.

  “Do you have family, Neumann?” Koehler finally spoke as a gust of wind caused him to rock slightly.

  “I do.”

  “What would you do for them?” Koehler turned to face Neumann as he asked the question.

  Over Koehler’s shoulder, Neumann saw March watching from where he was standing next to the body, maybe thirty feet away.

  “I’d do anything for them.”

  “Would you kill?”

  “If I had to.”

  “Would you betray your country?”

  Neumann paused. “Why are you asking?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “If I had to.” The words barely carried on the wind.

  Koehler turned back to the river before continuing. “You said before I had a window of time.”

  “I did.” />
  “I think my daughter is still alive. I need that window to save her.”

  “The window was to save you.”

  “I don’t care about myself.”

  “Same as you don’t care about your country?”

  “I care about my daughter.”

  “And in saving her you are going to damage Germany?”

  Koehler nodded.

  “If I have to.”

  Neumann stared at him and then turned to follow his gaze across the river.

  “What have you gotten yourself into, Major?”

  “Hell.”

  CHAPTER 20

  FRANK KING HAD chosen a house almost directly opposite the one where he had seen Eric being taken. He’d been pushed for time, only allowing himself one pass in the car before parking around the corner and walking down to the place he’d picked out.

  He’d chosen it for several reasons, but mostly because he had seen a little old lady struggling to pick up a milk bottle from the front step as he approached.

  One old lady.

  One milk bottle.

  No big family, at best an old man to take care of as well.

  Perfect.

  He’d strolled, collar up, head down, to the house and cheerily tapped on the door. When it opened he’d been fast. One hand had covered her mouth and the other had gripped her throat as he walked her backward into the living room. He’d asked her if anyone else was at home; she had shaken her head with scared eyes that had already begun to brim with tears.

  She’d fooled him.

  “If you are quiet, you are quite safe. Please, go sit down,” he had whispered. She had taken a step backward and then punched him squarely in the mouth.

  She wouldn’t fool him again.

  King ran his tongue across the split just inside his lip, then looked at the tough old lady sitting on the floor.

  “Are you all right?”

  She grunted something through the gag that sounded rude and angry.

  “If you behave, you can sit on the chair.”

  Frank got the same reply, so he shrugged and went back to looking out of the window and stirring the cup of tea he had made himself.

  Before he had chosen the old woman’s home he’d checked the back alleys that crisscrossed behind the houses opposite. He had counted off the tiny brown brick buildings and sneaked a look through the half-­broken back gate that led to the tiny yard. He’d seen that the windows and back door were boarded up, meaning that only the front door was available as a means of rapid entry. King needed to figure out how many ­people were in the house, which was why he was sitting at the window of the old lady’s house.

  If the situation didn’t change and his information didn’t improve . . . well, he didn’t want to consider that. He would watch for a few hours at least. He guessed Koehler would be heading to Cambridge by now, but he knew the journey would be a tough one in this weather.

  There was no panic, everything was in hand, he could give Cook a few hours of his time. He owed Eric that much, at least. Plus, King had a feeling Dulles wouldn’t be happy if a dead embassy worker turned up on the news.

  No, he would try his best to save the boy, for everyone concerned.

  King looked at his watch, sipped his tea, and waited.

  He didn’t move for two hours. The quarter inch of tea at the bottom of his cup was long cold when the van came back.

  King watched as the driver of the van got out of the cab, casually looked around, and then crossed the pavement to the already opening front door, where he went straight inside.

  “Here we go,” King said softly, and the old lady on the floor, who was by now lying on her side, grunted in agreement.

  THE VAN DRIVER stood in front of Ma Price in the back room of the house, the snow on his feet barely melting in the chill.

  “Sterling says the kid claims she was held by two Yanks. They were trying to make her dad do something.”

  “So this one upstairs is telling the truth?” Ma Price had to peer up at the driver, who was holding his cap in front of his chest.

  “Looks like it.”

  Ma Price turned and stared at the empty fireplace as everyone else in the room remained silent, waiting for her decision, watching her back as she paced a few steps.

  Not many men interrupted Ma Price when she was thinking. Not many men interrupted Ma Price ever. She was a woman to be reckoned with, respected, listened to, and most definitely not interrupted. She had once run a crime family that covered most of the East End of London, but then along came a war that had taken half of her boys away.

  And then along came the occupation, which took nearly the other half.

  Hitler had interrupted Ma Price, and she hadn’t liked it.

  She had never made a concrete decision to join the resistance; she couldn’t put her finger on when it had happened. If pushed, she would guess, it would have been around the time she bought a job lot of stolen dynamite from a quarry in Cornwall. One thing had led to another, and then it had suddenly seemed obvious to her to blow up a railway line to stop a goods train.

  At first she’d wanted to steal what was on board.

  When the bomb went off, it turned out the cargo was humans in the wagons, humans who had hugged her and held her hand in thanks, calling her a hero as they had stumbled out into the night. Ma Price became a freedom fighter, whether she meant to or not.

  She hadn’t totally given up crime, of course; a woman had to make a living.

  She’d made some money and opened up channels with ­people who “knew ­people.” The resistance liked doing business with her, and she liked doing business with them. They paid well and didn’t mess her around. When they gave her a wireless and a code book, it had seemed a natural extension of their dealings together.

  Over time, crime had increasingly given way to resistance warfare, and she had found the two lives weren’t that far apart in their nature. They were both about power, power built on money and violence. Price had often thought that politicians were just criminals who knew what fork to use in a restaurant, and being a freedom fighter had only deepened that conviction.

  She wasn’t happy, though, because she had realized one important thing: her time was running out.

  Back when she was a kid with no shoes except on Sunday, she had known she was different. Her life had been no more or no less miserable than everyone else’s had, in the shithole tenement she lived in. She used the same outside toilet, wore the same rags, slept with the same bedbugs, coughed the same rattling cough, with the same damp half-­dead lungs everyone else had.

  But she was different.

  ­People in that tenement dreamed of a better life, but Ma Price was the only one with the balls to go and get it.

  She had nothing to lose. She didn’t care if she died trying because if she failed, she didn’t want to carry on living.

  So she started grifting and grafting, ducking and diving, buying and selling, and then lifting and loaning. She got some cash, a little; she fought men; she fought women; and she was their worst enemy because she didn’t care.

  They had it all to lose.

  She had nothing.

  She earned her place; she earned respect, and she got it wherever she went.

  Ma Price wasn’t scared of anything and anyone then, but that was then and this was now. Ma Price was clever enough to know things never lasted forever. She’d seen ­people come and go over the years, some dead, some in prison, some just wiped off the face of the earth.

  She’d watched the changes carefully, seen how they came and went, learned from them, and second-­guessed them. She’d done that because she was different, because she had always been different.

  And now, after all this time, Ma Price knew the clock was ticking down for her. All good things must come to an end, and she knew they were
coming to an end sooner rather than later. She knew because she was tired; she knew because she was scared for the first time in her life, and she knew she couldn’t afford to be scared.

  Not now she had something to lose.

  Back in the day, if the law caught you up, you’d go to prison, do your “bird,” ride the ride and come out the other side. You’d maybe have a bit of money salted away, you’d maybe start again or maybe take a backseat, let someone else come up, take your place so you could walk away.

  Those were the rules. Prison didn’t scare her.

  Rivals didn’t scare her. They knew better than to attract her attention, let alone cause her concern.

  The one thing that scared her, the one thing that made her think twice, the one thing that caused her to furrow her brow and bury her head?

  The Nazis, because just like her, the Nazis didn’t care about anything.

  They didn’t have rules, they didn’t play by the book, they didn’t worry about consequences, they had nobody to answer to and nobody to worry about.

  And that scared Ma Price, because an enemy with a million men and nothing to lose can’t be beaten.

  Ma Price had started thinking about a future, something else, and that was when she realized all her hard work had given her something to lose, which meant it was time to get out.

  Deep down, deep, deep down, when she dared to dream, Ma Price wondered if there might be a way out of England. A passage to somewhere where she could spend some of her money and finally relax, kick off her boots, stare at the sunset, breathe out.

  Live.

  One day, but not yet, because now, right at that minute, she was stuck in London, in a dreary house with a confused American who was presenting her with a situation she needed to figure out.

  “We could just let him go.” The old man in the black suit bobbed his head as he spoke, as if expecting a slap around the ear.

  Somewhere nearby a train whistled and the sound of clattering tracks carried across the snow-­covered rooftops. It died away as the train traveled on, leaving the room seemingly quieter than before.

  Ma Price stared at the empty hearth, not moving, chin in her hand, deep in thought, until she finally looked up at the van driver.