The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  So very rude.

  The voices stopped outside the door. Anja shook Jack and turned her head to look over the back of the couch.

  The door opened.

  A woman smiled at her.

  “Hello, my love. Do you speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Ma Price.”

  Anja nodded as Jack lifted his head, blinking himself awake through squinting eyes.

  He paused, looked at Anja, then at Ma Price.

  Anja didn’t understand why Jack stood up so suddenly and backed over to the far wall. She watched him and then turned to Ma Price, who pulled the black woolen shawl she was wearing around her arms tighter. So tight it dug in to the flesh like string around a joint of fatty meat.

  “Now then, Jack, you’ve grown. I’ve not seen you for years. What have you been up to tonight?” Price’s voice was light, friendly.

  “Nothing, Ma, I was, I was just . . .”

  Jack looked at Anja and then the floor, giving up on trying to find an answer.

  “Are you taking me home?” Anja asked.

  “Sort of, my dear.” Ma Price reached out a hand to Anja, who looked at Jack and then stood up.

  “Jack has to come as well.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry. He’s most definitely coming with us.”

  Anja looked at Jack and smiled, but he ignored her.

  Something was wrong.

  Anja looked at the lady.

  “Who are you?”

  “As I said, you can call me Ma Price.”

  “Not your name. I want to know who you are, why you are here.”

  A big man, almost as wide and as tall as the doorway, appeared behind Ma Price. He lowered his head slightly to look at Anja as he pulled a tweed flat cap off his head and rolled it in his hands.

  “Get your coat, we haven’t got all night.” Ma Price smiled.

  Anja looked at the pub manager and realized he looked embarrassed by what was taking place.

  Everyone in the room knew something she didn’t.

  “Who are you?”

  “Get yer fuckin’ coat, Kraut, and stop asking questions!” Ma Price erupted and Anja flinched backward with fright.

  The big man eased Ma Price aside and entered the room like a glacier. He picked up Anja’s coat and tossed it to her without speaking. It landed high on her chest and momentarily blocked her vision as she caught it.

  “Now.” The big man’s voice seemed to rumble in his chest.

  Anja silently put the coat on, looking once again at Jack and then the young girl, who was staring into the fire as if oblivious.

  Ma Price held out a hand and clapped her fingers into her palm, beckoning Anja toward her. Anja walked around the couch and joined her at the door. The big man gripped Jack’s arm, pulled him across the room, and thrust his coat into his chest but didn’t release his arm so that he could put it on.

  Anja followed Ma Price out of the room, past the pub manager, who didn’t meet her eyes, then down the stairs toward another big man who stood at the bottom in a coat that was slightly too small for him. His hands hung at his sides. He looked like a gorilla standing on its back legs, and his high forehead wrinkled as Anja looked into his eyes.

  He smiled, and Anja saw he had a front tooth missing.

  She checked over her shoulder at Jack, who was following, still in the first big man’s grip.

  They passed a doorway that led into the bar. There were still some drinkers in there, staring into half-­empty pints, looking for their futures in the flat beer at the bottom of their dirty glasses.

  Anja looked at the back of Price’s head, then at the big man in front of her. A sudden fear gripped her, as if she was slipping away from civilization. She looked back into the bar and then grabbed the doorframe, not wanting to leave, holding on for her life.

  “Help me, please! Someone, please help?”

  Nobody reacted. It was as if they were frozen in time or she were shouting in a vacuum.

  “Call the police!” Desperate this time, her voice rising with the panic in her throat. “Please!”

  The man with the missing tooth grabbed her hand, yanking it away from the doorframe. Anja tried to resist, but he was too quick; he caught her wrist and lifted with his other arm around her waist. Anja’s legs kicked clear of the floor and she screamed, as if she were falling from a cliff and needed someone to pull her back.

  “Help me! Please, somebody!”

  One man in the bar lifted his head and looked at her with anxious eyes. He opened his mouth, then gave a slight shake of his head and looked down again.

  Finally her tears came. She was scared. She knew she was slipping away from society, into the darkness.

  She twisted and rolled, panic giving her strength, but no matter how hard she pulled against the man, she couldn’t stop him.

  Anja gasped at air, gripped his coat, and twisted again. Facing him, she pushed against his chest with a balled fist.

  It was no good.

  The fight left her.

  She hung limp.

  “Please don’t do this. Please, I just want to go home to my daddy.”

  Anja looked into his eyes for a sign that he understood how scared she was, for some warmth, a tiny flicker of hope that might make her feel better.

  There was nothing.

  She was lost.

  CHAPTER 34

  ROSSETT COULD BARELY drag himself away from checking through the curtain, looking at the courtyard as he spoke to Ruth Hartz and Horst Meyer over his shoulder.

  “ . . . Once I get you to London, I hand you over to the Americans and they get you to freedom.”

  “In America?” Hartz said.

  Rossett looked at her.

  “I doubt they will be taking you to Berlin, so yes, I’m guessing in America.”

  “When do we go?”

  “The early hours, when ­people are asleep, so we can sneak out. Your boyfriend should get us past the sentries.”

  “Where do you hand us over?” Ruth asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Rossett dropped the corner of the curtain and turned toward her.

  “I pick up the address when I get to London.”

  “From where?”

  Rossett looked at Horst Meyer and then shook his head.

  “You, and especially him, don’t need to know that yet.”

  “But what if you get killed?”

  “I won’t.”

  “But you might. This is dangerous. You might be shot.”

  “I won’t,” Rossett repeated with a certainty that made Ruth look at Meyer and then drop her hands.

  Once Rossett saw that they understood, he turned back to the window and eased back the curtain again. He rested his cheek against the cold glass so that he could see the sentry at the front of the building.

  “I’m not happy about him coming,” Rossett said without turning to them, his breath misting the window slightly.

  “He can help us,” replied Ruth.

  “I love her,” Meyer added.

  Rossett looked at them in the reflection and saw that Meyer had taken Ruth’s hand again.

  Rossett turned to face them.

  “I’ll not let you risk the operation. One wrong step, one sideways look, you’re dead.”

  Meyer didn’t flinch.

  Rossett shook his head and then looked into Ruth’s eyes. They looked watery in the low light. In them he was just able to make out the reflection of the fire dancing in the hearth on the other side of the room.

  They were beautiful, and for a moment he understood Meyer’s certainty.

  Rossett frowned.

  “He’ll kill you. He answers to Hitler. He’s young, and he�
��s committed to the cause. If you let him he’ll kill you.”

  “He’s kept me alive so far.”

  “You’re alive because they need you.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt her.” Meyer sounded defensive.

  Rossett ignored him, turning back to the window and resuming his vigil.

  “You can’t trust these ­people,” he said quietly.

  “You don’t know that,” Ruth replied.

  “I do, because I was one of them,” said Rossett, feeling the cold glass, enjoying the ache that it was causing in his cheek.

  AN HOUR HAD passed and Rossett hadn’t moved.

  The snow was still falling, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but always falling and drifting in the blustering wind that howled in the darkness.

  Meyer and Ruth had sat silently holding hands, staring into the fire as it died away down to orange and gray embers. It flickered and flared as the wind gusted under the window frame, but the new flame never quite caught, dying as the night moved on into the morning.

  Rossett looked up into the night sky and then back at the sentry before wiping the condensation from the glass with the side of his hand.

  The sentry came to attention, staring straight ahead, suddenly stiff.

  An officer appeared, shucking his coat up around his ears as he ventured outdoors from the warm hall behind him.

  The officer stopped and chatted to the sentry, who relaxed slightly. Rossett could see their lips moving.

  He looked at Ruth and Meyer, who were both staring back at him.

  “There’s an officer outside.”

  Meyer looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  “It’ll be the duty officer, doing rounds.”

  Rossett nodded and looked back out of the window as a snow-­covered Kübelwagen scout car drove into the courtyard, its tiny headlamps turning the falling snowflakes black as they cut through them.

  He watched as the driver alighted, saluted, and passed the officer a dispatch folder.

  Rossett turned away from the window and called to Hartz and Meyer.

  “Get your coats.”

  “Are we leaving now?” Meyer asked.

  Rossett ignored him and adjusted the knot on the string securing his shotgun, allowing the weapon to descend from under his arm so that he could grip the handle.

  Rossett heard Meyer and Ruth get up from the couch and leave the room.

  He rested his cheek on the glass again, watching as the officer outside started to walk across the courtyard toward the village.

  Rossett squinted at the officer through the falling snow and the condensation.

  The officer stopped.

  Rossett frowned.

  The officer turned back to the sentry.

  Rossett looked toward the bedroom and then back to the window.

  The officer looked up.

  KARL BAYER, THE sentry outside the St. Catherine’s Hall, was freezing his balls off.

  He’d been stamping his feet trying to keep warm for four hours on sentry duty but slowly, over the last thirty minutes or so, as the temperature dropped even lower, he’d given up even doing that.

  He was hungry, he was tired, he could barely feel his feet, and he wanted to piss.

  “Fucking England, fucking Coton, fucking scientists who need guarding, fucking sentry duty, and fucking snow,” Bayer muttered.

  He blew into his gloves to try and get some warmth into his hands, then heard the door to the hall open behind him.

  He half turned and saw it was an officer emerging. He faced front and snapped to attention, kicking the snow off his boots as he did so.

  “Hello, Bayer, is everything all right?”

  The officer of the watch, Captain Heitel, appeared in front of Bayer, giving him a quick inspection.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cold tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Warmer than Russia, though. We shouldn’t complain, should we?” Heitel was from an old-­school Prussian family, the sort who managed to make friendly chitchat sound like a threat.

  “No, sir, we shouldn’t,” Bayer stared straight ahead but relaxed his shoulders slightly.

  “Have you had a break?” Heitel pulled back the sleeve of his coat and looked at his watch.

  “No, sir. I don’t know what has happened to Keller; he was supposed to be here half an hour ago so I could get a coffee.”

  “Really?” Heitel looked at his watch again and then across the courtyard to the village. “Have you seen him on foot patrol?”

  “I’ve not seen him since I came out on duty tonight, sir.” Bayer wondered if he should drop his colleague further in the shit. A second passed, and he did. “He’s never on time, sir, especially in this weather.”

  Heitel shook his head, walked across to the first window on the ground floor, and started to bang on the glass impatiently. He stepped back as a side window swung open and an off-­duty private’s head popped out.

  “Go get me Staff Sergeant Munsch.”

  The head disappeared, and Heitel turned to Bayer.

  “I’ll sort you out a relief. Stand by.”

  Staff Sergeant Munsch’s big, bald, heavily scarred head popped out of the window.

  “Sir?”

  “Why has this man been left out here without relief?”

  Munsch looked at the back of Bayer; who in turn rolled his eyes to look up at the sky, glad that the staff sergeant couldn’t look into his face.

  Keller wasn’t the only one in the shit.

  Munsch wouldn’t be happy, and Bayer had a feeling it was his arse that would be getting kicked after the officer walked away.

  “Keller is relieving him, sir.”

  “And where is he?”

  Munsch looked toward the village and then back at Heitel.

  “I thought . . .”

  “Get this man some relief and then get Keller in front of my desk first thing tomorrow. This isn’t good enough, Staff Sergeant. We might be in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t mean things can fall apart at the sight of the first drop of snow.”

  “No, sir. Of course, sir.”

  “While you are here, is the telephone working in your office?”

  “I don’t know, sir; it hasn’t rung tonight, but—­”

  “Get someone to check it. The lines upstairs are dead. It’ll be this bloody snow.” Heitel looked up into the sky and then back at Munsch, who was still standing, head half out the window. “Well, go on, man!”

  Heitel’s shout caused Munsch to flinch.

  “You heard the officer!” Munsch shouted at someone in the room behind him.

  Bayer realized he would have been better off just keeping his mouth shut and freezing to death.

  It was going to be a long night.

  The sound of a car engine carried on the night air, and all three looked across the courtyard. Twenty seconds later a snow-­covered Kübelwagen slithered into sight and drove toward them, eventually coming to a halt next to the other parked vehicles.

  Bayer prayed it was Keller.

  It wasn’t.

  An army corporal climbed out of the Kübelwagen and saluted smartly, holding a brown leather folder in his other hand.

  Heitel returned the salute.

  “Message from Cambridge command, sir.” The driver held out the folder. “Phone lines are down because of the snow. We’ve been trying to raise you on the radio, but nobody is answering.”

  Heitel turned to look at Munsch, who frowned and dodged slightly back from the window.

  “And?”

  The driver offered the folder again. Heitel sighed and took it from him. It opened like a book and he took out a single flimsy sheet of typed paper that folded across his hand in the wind.

  He turned sligh
tly, so that he could read it under the light above the main door. He skimmed over the opening ­couple of lines about who had issued the order, then read the rest out loud for the benefit of Munsch:

  “Detective Inspector John Henry Rossett is believed to be in Cambridge. He is wanted on suspicion of the murder of two men at a checkpoint. Rossett is suspected of being a resistance operative and is highly dangerous. There is reason to connect him to the death of an SS officer’s wife in London.” Heitel looked up at the dispatch driver and then back at the sheet. “Arrest or shoot on sight. He is six feet tall, well built, thirty-­eight years of age, extremely dangerous with extensive military training. Notify London, et cetera.” Heitel folded the order and passed the folder back to the driver.

  He passed Munsch the sheet of paper through the window before speaking to the driver.

  “Is there any reason to believe this man has any interest in Coton?”

  “Not that I am aware of, sir. It was just that with you being cut off tonight and having the ­people from the university here, the duty officer in Cambridge thought it best that you know.”

  “Give him my thanks, and go and get yourself a warm drink before you head back.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The driver saluted before nodding to Bayer and going into the hall.

  Even the fucking driver gets a drink, thought Bayer, his morale falling faster than the snow, which was coming down heavily again.

  Heitel turned to Munsch. “Make sure Bayer here is relieved before I get back.”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  Heitel nodded, tapped Bayer on the arm, and then set off across the courtyard on his way to inspect the gun emplacements.

  He’d gotten thirty feet from the door before Bayer shouted his name.

  “Captain Heitel, sir?”

  Heitel turned.

  “There was a man here before, with Reverend James. I didn’t recognize him and, well, it’s probably nothing, but . . . well, the reverend let him into the building and never came back, and he sort of matched that description. You don’t think it could be . . .” Bayer trailed off.

  “Where did he go?”

  Bayer hesitated and then falteringly pointed with his thumb at the hall behind him.

  Heitel looked at the hall as if seeing it for the first time.

  He paused, looked over his shoulder toward the gun emplacement in the distance, and then back at Bayer.