The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  Rossett had driven past the emplacement closest to the Cambridge road earlier. He’d then spent an hour getting lost in hidden country lanes before finally finding the other way into the village, and the other forbidding emplacement.

  Coton was a typical English village, larger than the one he’d visited earlier when he had picked up the shotgun, but essentially the same: a single road dotted with thatched cottages on either side. The village widened slightly in the center, with a medieval church and graveyard.

  He ducked down again, cupping his hands to his mouth and blowing some warmth into them. He looked around the field to his rear. There was a bit of cover from a few squat, fat-­trunked trees that looked as old as the church, their winter-­scrubbed branches scratching against the pink clouds in the sky. Rossett plotted an escape route.

  He’d just have to hope there was enough light to see in case he had to get out quickly.

  He counted about fifteen or twenty thatched cottages, slightly set apart from a larger whitewashed, three-­story building on the edge of a courtyard beyond the church.

  The biggest building in the village by far, so big it was about the size of all the other cottages put together, it had to be St. Catherine’s Hall.

  Rossett made his way along the wall to where it intersected an untidy hedgerow, behind which was a drainage ditch of muddy water sheltered from the snow.

  It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d visited the English countryside in years. He paused a moment and looked at the view around him. It was beautiful, edges softened, pink with the reflecting light off the heavy clouds. A gust of wind scratched Rossett’s face and he took a moment to savor the air, emptying his lungs of the smog of dark and damp London.

  He thought of Great Britain before the war, the freedom to travel to places like this, no checkpoints, no papers, nobody watching and monitoring your movements.

  He wished he’d treasured it more, especially now it was gone.

  The wind whipped again.

  He shivered, looked up, and focused on the now.

  He was a soldier again, on a mission.

  He carefully scanned his surroundings again, then hopped over the wall.

  He stared at each house in turn, checking windows, checking if smoke was coming from chimneys. Looking for back doors, seeing which had curtains, which had light, who had transport, who had animals.

  The place looked deserted.

  It all came easy—­hunting, fighting, killing. All the old instincts, all the old senses, lit up, ready for action.

  He felt alive.

  He slid back into the hedgerow, ducked down into the ditch, then started to slowly make his way toward the village. He was sheltered from the wind by the bushes; free of its buffeting, he could hear it raging above his head. He stopped again, listened, then crept to the edge of the bushes, finding that he was now less than twenty yards from the nearest house.

  From his new position he could see that in the courtyard of the hall there were a ­couple of Opel staff cars and one larger, statelier Mercedes, the sort normally reserved for senior officers or VIPs.

  Rossett could hear the flapping and slapping of the canvas of the Opel Blitz truck that was parked a short way down the lane. He couldn’t see any foot patrols but didn’t for a minute assume they weren’t there.

  He couldn’t afford to.

  The Mercedes meant there were officers about, and he’d spent enough time in the army to know that where there were officers, there were always privates trying to look busy. He slipped back into the bushes and flicked the powdery snow off his coat, then adjusted the shotgun, which was still hanging from his shoulder, out of sight. Even with his coat unbuttoned, the gun would be unseen until it was needed.

  Rossett hoped it wouldn’t be needed.

  He puffed out his cheeks before taking another look behind him. Then he made his way out of the hedgerow toward the back of the nearest house.

  Each footstep through the snow made Rossett wince as though he had stepped on a mine. He’d forgotten the treachery of snow to the creeping soldier. It seemed that no matter how softly he placed his feet, driving in with his toes, balancing midstep, the snow seemed to crunch like dry celery.

  He kept moving toward the house, now ten yards away. He had no plan, no tactics, and not much hope.

  He thought about his friend Koehler, and about Koehler’s love for Anja and Lotte. Rossett remembered his wife and son, the love lost, never found again.

  The memories flooded through his consciousness. Now wasn’t the time, he needed to focus. He reached the back wall of the cottage and realized his breathing was labored. He dug deep for oxygen and shook his head.

  He swallowed, puffed out his cheeks silently, and rested his head against the cold stone wall of the cottage.

  He wouldn’t let Koehler down. Rossett had nothing to lose, while his friend had everything. He’d do his best so that Koehler would keep the love that he himself had lost.

  Rossett would right the wrong.

  It was what he did.

  He swallowed again, the moment passing, as he listened to the wind, which was howling now, blowing fast flurries of snow across the fields behind him.

  Rossett moved so that he was at the edge of the building line, right next to the narrow lane. He dropped to one knee and checked the lane, then dodged back again.

  It was empty; the whole village seemed empty.

  He considered the situation.

  He knew the scientists were here.

  He knew they would be under guard and that the soldiers guarding them would also be living in the village.

  If he were in charge, he’d keep everyone in the big hall. The best way to look after prisoners is to keep them where you can see them, and the hall looked big enough for a ­couple of platoons of men plus whomever they chose to guard.

  He’d head for the hall and check it out.

  Rossett crouched and looked around the corner of the house toward the western end of the lane. In the distance, at least 150 yards away, he saw one of the gun emplacements.

  The soldiers there had lit a fire in a brazier; one of them was standing warming his hands facing toward Rossett, who pulled back quickly out of sight, not trusting the whipping snow to hide him.

  He looked toward the church, fifty yards to his right on the same side of the road, surrounded by a low stone wall topped with snow.

  He’d use the graveyard as cover.

  Rossett ducked back to the field and then ran, bent at the waist, as quickly and as quietly as he could toward the church. It was an almost straight dash except for one low hedgerow, which he jumped over without breaking stride before he reached the graveyard boundary wall.

  Once he had caught his breath, Rossett rolled over the top of the wall, landing with a soft crunch onto the snow on the other side. He lay still, the wind howling as he scanned for movement.

  There was nothing, just pink, gray, and black, all sharp shapes and shadows, confusing his eyes as the snow flicked this way and that. Rossett squinted, taking time to let his heart rate drop after the run.

  He rose to his haunches and checked the shotgun was still secure under his coat. He picked up a few handfuls of snow to smooth the gap he had disturbed on the top of the wall, then drew his Webley, his thumb on the hammer.

  He moved through the headstones slowly, eyes flitting from the church to the road and then to the small vestry that lay a short distance to his right, just on the edge of the graveyard. Off on the other side of the village a dog started to bark at the night, its voice carrying on the wind. Rossett kept moving, listening, looking, living on his nerves.

  He skirted the church around the back and found himself facing a small copse of trees. Somewhere behind him he heard music that sounded like it was coming from a radio. He turned his head, blinking against another flurry of
snow, and saw a sliver of light angle to nothing as the front door closed at the vestry.

  Rossett checked behind him, then dodged to a larger headstone, one that provided enough cover to allow him to stand upright.

  He tried to see if whoever had opened the door had been coming or going. He tilted his head to listen.

  All he could hear was the wind and the damn dog in the distance.

  He dodged back behind the headstone, checking the lane and the village behind him, considering his next move.

  He could see lights in the hall, but he could also see a sentry, wrapped up against the cold, standing at the front door under a solitary outside lamp that was swinging in the wind.

  And then . . . there . . . on the edge of his senses, a smell. He lifted his nose like an animal. Pipe tobacco: it hadn’t been there before.

  Rossett dropped down to a crouch, shoulder to the stone. He leaned out slightly to try to see the person who was smoking the pipe, but nothing moved, no shadows. There was nothing but the smell of tobacco.

  Rossett shifted again to look to the other side of the stone, this time toward the church. All he could see were the black outlines of grave markers standing to attention like frozen stone soldiers in the snow.

  He could just make out the dark wooden doors of the church chancellery against the stone blocks of the walls.

  He squinted.

  A shadow, almost lost in the shade of the door.

  Did it move?

  Rossett opened his eyes wide, and there, in front of him, someone was looking back, dressed in black, difficult to see against the doors but there, watching.

  Rossett didn’t move. His heart pounded. The urge to advance flooded every part of his body, but he didn’t move.

  Maybe the figure hadn’t seen him. Maybe it was just someone enjoying an evening smoke in the fresh air. Maybe it was someone checking the church was locked.

  Maybe.

  “Hey.” The figure spoke in English, hushed, but loud enough to carry across the forty feet to Rossett. “Hey, I’m here.”

  Rossett thumbed the hammer on the Webley and set off across the graveyard at a sprint. Like a snow leopard, head down, Webley held low, he moved in for the kill.

  He stopped.

  An old man, at least seventy years old, stood with his back against the church doors, hands open in front of his chest, gesturing for Rossett to slow down.

  The man gripped an old briar pipe in his teeth and watched as Rossett dropped to his knee, some six feet short of him, staring down the barrel of his pistol.

  “You’ll wake up the entire village.”

  Rossett lowered the gun an inch or two, but remained staring at the old man, who smiled in the half-­light and lowered his hands a little.

  “What are you doing out here creeping around?” the old man whispered. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Rossett didn’t reply,

  “I didn’t get a call, so I’ve been sitting by the window watching.” The old man’s voice was weakening in the face of Rossett’s silence and his Webley.

  “I’m a friend . . .” the man finally said, lowering his hands.

  Rossett lifted the Webley and released the hammer with his thumb. A flurry of snow passed between them and the old man blinked, turning his head so that his lank, surprisingly long gray hair whipped around his face like long grass on a rocky outcrop.

  The wind passed and the old man looked at Rossett again.

  “I’m a friend.”

  Rossett nodded.

  The old man smiled.

  “Come in here, quickly.” He turned and pushed at the church doors, opening one just wide enough to slip through. He was halfway inside when he looked at Rossett, gesturing that he should follow. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Rossett looked around, rose up off his knee, then followed the old man into the church.

  It was pitch black inside once the heavy wooden door closed behind him. The sound of the wind was still there, but now it seemed distant, up in the roof, away in the darkness. Rossett felt momentarily confused by the blackness and he rested one hand against the wooden door at his back. He thumbed the hammer on the pistol again and raised it next to his head, searching for a target.

  A second passed, and a match flared and lit a candle to Rossett’s left, causing him to spin and face the light. The old man had moved quickly and quietly, always a dangerous combination.

  The candle barely illuminated the inside of the building, and Rossett watched as the man smiled at him, then dipped a finger in a stone bowl containing holy water and fleetingly blessed himself.

  Rossett lowered the Webley again. This time the sound of the hammer subsiding echoed around the empty church. The wind moaned in the rafters; Rossett looked up to where the shadows cast by the candlelight were dancing, and then back at the old man.

  “I’m Frank James; I wasn’t sure with the weather if you’d be coming.” James tugged at the collar of his overcoat and undid the top button, revealing an Anglican dog collar under the coat.

  Rossett raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ve been wandering round the house all night, looking through every window trying to spot you. I was about to give up, to be honest.” James was still whispering, even though there was now two inches of old English oak between them and the outside world.

  “You’re the vicar?” Rossett finally said.

  The candlelight played shadows across James’s face, and he tilted his head forward an inch so that Rossett couldn’t see his eyes.

  “I’m your contact.”

  “How did you know I was coming?”

  “I got a call a ­couple of days ago.”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know his name; you know how these things work.”

  “I don’t. Tell me.”

  James shifted a few inches.

  “We never know the names of ­people along the chain, in case we get captured.”

  “We?” Rossett stepped forward and took the candle out of the vicar’s hand. His steps echoed around the church as he walked down the center aisle. He held the candle high, so that it could throw its meager light into the darkened corners.

  Another gust of wind moaned through the old building as Rossett turned to face James once more, candle still held high, its flame flickering and dancing in the draft.

  “The resistance,” James said quietly, staring at the flame as if hypnotized by it.

  Rossett walked back down the aisle toward him.

  “I’m not the resistance,” he said quietly. “The resistance killed my wife and son. I’m not the resistance.”

  “I thought . . . I thought you were here for Ruth Hartz?”

  “I am, but don’t call me resistance.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Rossett pointed to a pew.

  “Sit.”

  James took a seat, shuffling down so that there was room for Rossett next to him. Rossett ignored the space and sat one pew in front, balancing the candle on the prayer book shelf before looking at James.

  “Tell me what you know about Hartz.” Rossett rested the hand holding the Webley on the back of the pew, in plain sight.

  “She is in the hall, or, as we call it, the big house.”

  “Where in the house?”

  “Second floor. There’s a long corridor that runs the length of the building on each level except the first. She is at the very far end, to the right of the entrance. She has an apartment there.”

  “Can I reach the window from outside?”

  “Not without being seen. It’s too far to climb. You’d need a ladder, and there is always a sentry outside.”

  Rossett nodded.

  “Other entrances?”

  “All locked from inside.”

  “How do you know this?
”

  “I’m a regular guest there; most of the village has been evacuated except for the few who work at the hall for the Germans. They allowed me to stay because I provide pastoral care to some of the scientists.”

  “Pastoral care?”

  “Some of them . . . struggle with the work they do.”

  “Why?”

  James frowned slightly. “They are giving the future to Hitler. If they give him what he wants, they will give him the world. That power and the understanding of it . . . can weigh heavy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The bomb . . . it’ll end all bombs, the ­people working on it know that. They appreciate that more than anyone does. Some of them struggle with that knowledge.”

  “But they keep on working?”

  “They want to stay alive; you’d be surprised what ­people will do to stay alive.”

  Rossett lifted his face to look up as another gust of wind called out in the darkness above. He thought about what he had done to stay alive in recent years, as the moaning faded away.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he finally said, looking back at James.

  “I can see that,” James said softly.

  “Why haven’t resistance raided the village?”

  “There’s never been enough around here to pull off something like that. You have to understand, there was never much of a population here before the war. And since then most of the young ­people have been sent either to Europe or up north to work in factories or mines. There is also the consideration that any action against the Germans carries terrible repercussions for the local population. The Germans can be truly brutal at times.”

  Rossett nodded, remembering the dead men at the checkpoint, then wondering what further blood would be spilled as a result.

  “What about explosives?”

  “Anyone coming in or out of the village is searched thoroughly, even those known to them.”