The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  “Please,” she mouthed, and King saw her teeth were the same color as her eyes.

  He felt useless, and turned away without looking at the men. His car seemed much farther away than it had been a moment before; the sound of the snow crunching under his feet seemed louder.

  He slammed the car door and stared at the red light. It changed, and so did Frank King.

  He’d get the scientist.

  Kennedy was wrong. America did need her.

  One man might not be able to make a difference, but one man had to try.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE BREEZE WAS picking up. Rossett’s cheeks burned as the cold air brushed his face above the raised collar of his greatcoat. In his immediate vicinity were a pub, a boarded-­up post office, eight or nine small cottages, a telephone box, and four roads heading off in different directions.

  He was at a crossroads.

  The problem was, he didn’t know which way to go. Back in the run-­up to the invasion the government, desperately clutching at straws, had called on the public to remove signposts to confuse any German invader who had forgotten to bring his map.

  Rossett wasn’t a German invader, but he had forgotten to bring a map.

  He looked back down the road he had driven up. The thin tire tracks his Austin had plowed were the only sign anyone was still on the face of the earth. In the distance were beautifully white snow-­covered fields dotted with lifeless trees and low black hedgerows.

  Movement caught his eye in the hamlet. Rossett turned his head and watched a farm laborer, with a long double-­barreled shotgun broken over his arm, emerge from the pub, pulling an old British army overcoat across his stomach and chest. He kept his head down, doing his best to avoid looking at the stranger watching him from across the road. Rossett lifted his hand in greeting. The other man ducked his head in a miserable attempt to ignore him, pulling the coat tighter still over his bulky frame and adjusting the shotgun.

  Rossett watched as the man, staying close to the building line, walked along the row of cottages before opening the door of the final one and going inside. The door slammed so hard, Rossett heard it from fifty yards away.

  He looked around the village, checked that the roads around were still empty, and then walked slowly to the same cottage.

  The door shook in its frame as he knocked on it with his fist. He turned and checked the Austin.

  A strong gust of wind caused him to lower his face and shield his eyes as it whipped snow across the road toward him. He turned back to the door as he heard the handle turning.

  A tiny sparrow of an old lady stood before him. The skin hung off her face as if it had been stretched and left there to dry. She was wearing a blue woolen cardigan with a two-­inch frayed hole on its left breast. As soon as she saw who had knocked, she instinctively reached up to cover the hole before taking a step backward deferentially.

  Rossett twitched a smile; aware that he was crowding the old woman, he dipped his head slightly and looked into the tiny sitting room behind her.

  “Hello.”

  She didn’t speak.

  “The gentleman who has just arrived, I’d like to speak to him?”

  The old lady fiddled with her cardigan.

  Rossett showed her his police warrant card.

  She stepped off to the side.

  Rossett ducked his head and entered the cottage, seeming to fill the tiny space as he waited for the old lady to close the door and join him.

  He took off his hat as she shuffled past him, taking up station at the crackling log fire. There was another door in the wall opposite him, made of rough wood, with inch-­wide gaps at the bottom and top.

  Rossett pointed to it.

  “There?”

  The old lady nodded, still clutching the hole in her cardigan.

  Rossett crossed the room in two steps and lifted the simple latch on the door. He found himself entering a kitchen barely bigger than the living room. The man was standing at the sink, back to him, washing a dead bald bird under the solitary banging cold water tap that hung over the middle of the white enamel sink.

  “Who was it?” the man asked without looking around.

  “Me,” Rossett replied.

  The man spun quickly for his size. He was still wearing his coat, but now it hung open over high-­waisted woolen trousers belted with string. His purple jumper, too short to cover his belly, was full of holes. Through it Rossett could see some gray material that he guessed was a pair of long johns.

  Times were most definitely hard.

  The man dropped the bird in his hand onto the floor, where it landed with a sad thud. He looked down at it, then back up at Rossett, with a jaw as slack as that of the bird below him.

  “Hello.”

  “Hullo, sir,” the man replied dumbly, with a thick country accent.

  “What is your name?” Rossett held up his warrant card, then dropped it back into his pocket.

  “Reg.”

  “Reg?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you been poaching, Reg?”

  Reg looked at the two rabbits and the three unplucked birds on the counter next to the sink, then nodded.

  Rossett heard the sniff of a worried mother behind him.

  “Where did you get the birds and the rabbits?”

  “Out on Hargreaves Farm. He breeds them for the game season, sir.” Rossett realized that the man was a simpleton.

  “He don’t mean nothing, sir. We needs them for food,” the old lady said behind Rossett, who half turned and nodded.

  “Where is the shotgun?”

  Reg lifted a fat finger and pointed to the wall over Rossett’s left shoulder. Rossett followed the finger and saw the long-­barreled shotgun resting on two hooks above a wooden chest of drawers.

  “The shells?”

  “In the drawer, sir.”

  Rossett backed toward the shotgun and took it down; he opened the breech and saw that it was empty, and looked at Reg before pointing at the cupboard.

  Reg read the signal.

  “Top drawer there, sir.”

  Rossett opened the drawer and saw two boxes of shells, one of bird shot, the other of buckshot, for larger game.

  He slipped the lid off the buckshot and loaded two cartridges, clicking the shotgun shut with a solid crack.

  Reg looked like large game.

  The gun was agricultural but well maintained. It was the side-­by-­side configuration, with the barrels next to each other. Rossett held it with one hand for a moment, testing its balance.

  “How much do you want for this gun?”

  Reg tilted his head and looked at his mother before looking back at Rossett.

  “Wha’?”

  “How much do you want for the gun?”

  “I needs it.”

  Rossett frowned and looked at the old lady, ending negotiations with Reg.

  “How much?”

  The old lady’s eyes narrowed. She looked at the battered shotgun.

  “Forty pounds.”

  “Remember, I have hold of it, and it is loaded,” Rossett said quietly.

  “Thirty,” she said.

  “Try again.”

  “Twenty-­five?”

  The old lady ran a thin pink tongue across her bottom lip as Rossett frowned.

  “Twenty.”

  “Done.” Rossett knew the money would buy enough food for both her and Reg for the winter.

  “Do you have a toolshed, Reg?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Show me.”

  Reg wiped his hands on his stomach and licked his lips, looking at his mother, who had taken Rossett’s place in the doorway. She nodded vigorously that he should do as he was told, so the big man lolloped across the kitchen to the back door of the cottage an
d went outside.

  Rossett picked up the two boxes of ammunition and followed. At the door he turned back to look at Reg’s mother.

  “We keep this quiet?”

  “As long as you give me the money we do.” Her eyes shone.

  Outside Rossett found Reg standing next to a battered wooden shed that seemed about to collapse under the weight of the snow on its roof. The big man didn’t appear to be able to look up to meet Rossett’s eyes.

  “Open it.”

  Reg did as he was told and held out a wavering hand as if inviting Rossett to enter. Rossett stepped into the shed, smelling the wood that was stacked against the far wall.

  “Do you have a hacksaw?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rossett blinked.

  “Where is it?”

  Reg got the message. He dragged out a heavy toolbox from beneath the narrow workbench, opened the lid, and rummaged among the rusted tools before pulling out an old hacksaw and handing it to Rossett.

  Rossett stroked the blade with his thumb and was relieved to feel the teeth were sharp. He unlocked the shotgun, removed the two cartridges, locked it, and laid it on the bench. He measured the barrel with the blade and then made to start cutting.

  Reg coughed behind him and Rossett turned to look at him.

  “You don’t own it yet, sir,” the big man mumbled, still looking at the floor.

  Rossett sighed, laid down the hacksaw, and took out his wallet, from which he produced two ten-­pound notes; he waved Reg away with the money before starting to cut the barrel. It took a solid ten minutes of work, and he could feel the sweat under his clothes when the end of the barrel finally detached and clattered onto the floor.

  Rossett stepped back from the bench, balancing the shotgun in his hand, feeling how the weight had changed. He took down an old wood saw from a nail and scythed through the stock of the gun, removing so much that he was barely left with a pistol grip. He looked in the toolbox and found an old wood drill, with which he bored a hole in the stock.

  He cut through a length of twine and tied the string through the hole. He removed his coat and jacket and then hung the shotgun over his shoulder so that it sat under his arm against his body. He adjusted the string so that the end of the barrel slipped into his trouser pocket an inch, holding it in place and stopping it from swinging free.

  Rossett put on his jacket and coat then and then practiced drawing the shotgun a ­couple of times.

  Once he was satisfied with the action, he emptied the box of shells into various pockets.

  He tried the draw one final time and then turned to the door.

  Reg was watching him, hands in pockets, head tilted, taking in what he had just seen.

  “You ain’t going poachin’,” Reg said.

  “You don’t need to worry about where I’m going.”

  Reg smiled, nodded, and held out a hand, which Rossett shook.

  “Good luck,” said Reg, still smiling.

  CHAPTER 29

  ANJA HAD BEEN doing a lot of thinking for the last few hours. Time had ticked slowly in the little room where she had been stowed. She’d sat, hands tucked into her armpits for warmth, on an old office chair, trying to ignore the stare of the man sitting opposite her, breathing heavily through his nose even though his mouth was open.

  All day she had tried not to think about her mother.

  All day she had failed.

  She had fought to push the sound of her mother’s voice, the sound of the shot, and the sound of the sordid splash of the river to the back of her mind as far as it would go.

  But the memories wouldn’t stay there.

  A minute later, or in the blink of an eye, she felt her mother’s fingers on her face, heard the shot, saw the light going out, and felt alone all over again.

  She shook her head.

  She couldn’t afford this, not now; there would be a time to grieve, but now wasn’t it.

  Anja had studied the cast-­iron-­framed window and its dirty glass. The glass had a fine wire mesh running through it, and she doubted she could smash it and break through quickly enough to get away. Even if she did, she had no idea of what lay beyond. For all she knew she would be trapped in another room, or even find herself dropping into Sterling’s lap.

  Whoever he was.

  She thought about Sterling.

  She knew that hearing his name had been a bad thing; she had read it in the faces of those around her when the policeman had blurted it out.

  She knew what they were going to do with her.

  They were going to kill her; they couldn’t afford to do anything else.

  Unless she did something about it first.

  Anja looked at the big man at the door, who stared back at her with slow blinks and a dull expression.

  She smiled at him.

  He blinked again.

  She went back to looking at the window, trying to decide if the man at the door would be harder to get through than the glass in the frame.

  There was a knock, the door opened, and Jack entered. He looked at Anja and then at the heavy.

  “Sterling wants to see you in the yard at the back,” Jack said.

  “Me?” said the mouth-­breather.

  “Yeah.”

  “What about her?”

  “I’m to wait with her.”

  The mouth-­breather looked at Jack, then at Anja, and then at Jack again before slowly unfolding his arms, uncertain.

  “What does he want?”

  “You.”

  “In the yard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where he is.”

  The mouth-­breather frowned and stood up; he clenched one fist as he considered what Jack had said.

  “He wants me now?” he finally said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake . . . yes, he wants to see you now,” Jack said impatiently.

  The mouth-­breather looked at Anja again.

  “Will she be all right?”

  “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “With you I mean. Will she be all right with you?”

  “Yeah, she’s just a girl,” Jack replied, stepping back from the door and holding it open wider.

  The mouth-­breather scratched his top lip and then nodded.

  “I won’t be long. Shout if you need me, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The mouth-­breather left the room, and Jack shut the door behind him.

  He quickly turned and rested his ear against it.

  “Just a girl?” Anja said. Jack waved his hand at her to be quiet.

  A second passed and it suddenly struck Anja what was going on. She leaned forward and the chair wobbled under her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jack waved his hand once more, then opened the door an inch or two and looked out before turning back to Anja.

  “I think they are going to kill you. We need—­”

  Anja was already out of her seat and crossing the room. She reached the door and dragged Jack to one side before sticking her head out into the corridor.

  “Are you coming?” She turned to look at Jack, and he bit his lip and flicked his head to shift the hair out of his eyes.

  “I don’t know.”

  Anja was already off down the corridor on tiptoes, moving quickly on the scuffed and dusty concrete floor through the succession of glass doors that she had come through earlier.

  She reached the final door and pulled it open an inch as Jack appeared next to her. Anja looked at him and he nodded.

  He was coming.

  She was about to step through when Jack placed a hand on her arm and pointed to his chest that he should go first. Anja frowned, shook free her arm, and set off quickly out of the office block an
d into the high-­roofed warehouse, where the cars still sat some fifty feet away.

  Jack followed her.

  Anja looked over her shoulder at Jack and then pointed at the doors to the warehouse. He nodded and then indicated he was heading toward the cars. Anja ran across and pulled one of the doors open wide enough for a car to get through, then ran back to Jack, who was leaning through the driver’s window of one of the two cars. He emerged with some keys, held them up, and waved her over to the second car.

  Anja heard the engine start and the passenger door opened just before she reached it. She leaned forward to look in; Jack smiled at her and revved the engine. His white teeth shone from his oily face, and he flicked his head again to shake off his fringe.

  “You can drive this?”

  “If I can fix ’em I can bleedin’ well drive ’em! Come on, let’s get out of here!”

  Anja smiled and jumped in as Jack enthusiastically revved the engine.

  The car stalled with a sudden jolt, and silence filled the warehouse.

  They looked at each other and Jack’s smile disappeared. He started the car again and Anja looked over her shoulder through the back window.

  Jack revved, the car jolted forward, the car stalled.

  “Jack, please,” Anja said turning to look at him.

  Jack flicked his hair again and looked down at his feet as he fired the engine, revved it fiercely, and then stalled again.

  The door of the office block behind them opened and the mouth-­breather emerged. He stared at the cars, unsure, before shouting back over his shoulder to the offices. Anja heard him call for help before he started to run toward them.

  “Please, Jack,” Anja said, looking at the door of the car, trying to figure out how to lock it.

  The car started once more and Jack looked at his feet again, revving the engine hard as the mouth-­breather sped up to a sprint.

  “Please!”

  The car revved, seemed to dip, half stall and then revved again.

  “Handbrake!” Anja shouted, realizing the problem.

  His hands lifted off the wheel as he looked around for the lever; he fumbled down the side of his seat.

  The mouth-­breather made it to the rear door of the car on Anja’s side.