The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  King realized he wasn’t going to make the MP40, and instead stepped in and punched Rossett hard on the right temple, a solid blow that stunned the Englishman. Finally, like a fallen bull elephant, Rossett hit the snow, facedown, driving the knife halfway back into the wound again.

  King had picked the knife off the counter when Rossett was settling the bill, before they had left the café. It wasn’t much of a knife, but at the time, he didn’t have much of a plan to go with it.

  He’d never intended to leave his fate in the hands of Rossett. All along he’d doubted that Rossett could stop Koehler from killing him. Frank King was a spy and a soldier, and he was never going to leave his life in the hands of some flatfoot copper from London.

  He’d been waiting for the moment, and that moment was when he saw Ruth turn toward him, looking for him, wanting his help, unsure. He knew he had to do something, something for Ruth, something for his country, something for the world; he had to take back control and stop being a passenger.

  King picked up the MP40 and unfolded the stock of the gun. He worked the bolt, put the stock in his shoulder, and looked down the sights, first at Price, then at the big man with the leather bag just to Koehler’s right. King dropped to one knee and leaned into the weapon, ready for the recoil, then took a deep breath.

  Just to the left of the sights he could see Koehler half turning toward him, holding Anja close to his chest while flicking back his coat to reveal his own machine gun slung across his body.

  King fired two rounds, a second apart, and the big man to Koehler’s right shook and then dropped his head as he lifted his hand out of the leather bag to his chest.

  Bang.

  The big man dropped on the third shot, crumpled in the snow as the round hit home, center mass.

  King rose and moved forward and to the side at a low crouch, MP40 still pushed into his shoulder, advancing on Ma Price, who was pointing at him and dragging Ruth toward the gate. Koehler had hit the ground, throwing himself over Anja. King could see that Koehler was pulling his own weapon free, but not bringing it to bear for fear of drawing fire toward Anja.

  King stopped, leaned into the stock, took another breath, focused on the sights, and fired two shots at the back of Ma Price as she ran. She was pushing Ruth ahead of her toward the gate and the taxi that was waiting in the street beyond it. In the taxi King saw the driver pointing a pistol at him, so he moved forward again, adjusting his aim past Ma Price, and fired another shot.

  The driver reacted as the round hit his door, and King fired again.

  The driver winced and the pistol disappeared from sight as he leaned forward.

  King heard shots coming in from the sniper but ignored them; he kept moving forward. Koehler, in his peripheral vision, was still facedown, protecting Anja.

  King adjusted slightly to make Ma Price the target.

  Snow kicked up around him, but he didn’t flinch. He kept his sights on Price, who was now at the taxi door. His finger tensed but he didn’t fire. He could see Ruth, pushing back against Price, trying to get back out of the taxi, too close for him to take the shot.

  King moved forward again, feeling the air part as another sniper round fizzed past and flicked up more snow. Ma Price shoved Ruth while looking over her shoulder at him. He moved toward her like a machine, ignoring danger, remorseless death. Ma Price spun and struck Ruth high and hard on the temple with her fist. Ruth disappeared backward into the taxi, sprawling onto the floor.

  King fired.

  Bang.

  The round hit Ma Price high on the left shoulder, and he watched as she spun and dropped sideways into the taxi, which was already moving away from the curb. King fired twice more. The first shot shattered the side window, and the second punched a hole in the black metal above the fuel cap. The back wheels on the cab spun in the snow and then caught.

  King started to run.

  Snow was flicking up around him as he sprinted, high-­stepping, toward the north gate. He knew the taxi would be trapped in morning traffic and that to exit the circus it would have to pass the north gate. If he could catch it there, he could cut it off.

  He was aware of the workmen with the wheelbarrow firing Thompsons on full auto at him, useless vague noise, spewing their fire high and wide from one hundred yards away.

  King ran hard, head down, cold air rasping his throat, feet kicking up snow as he sprinted for the gate.

  He heard Rossett’s Webley boom behind him.

  He didn’t look back.

  The Webley boomed again, but King just kept running for the gate, running to catch a taxi.

  ROSSETT PULLED THE knife out of his shoulder and tossed it into the snow. The pain burned deep as he lifted the Webley and fired once more, another loose shot at the men with the Thompsons.

  He missed, and turned to look at King making for the other exit. Rossett half lifted the pistol, then let it drop again.

  He couldn’t make the shot, whether because of the pain in his shoulder or because he was tired of killing, he didn’t know.

  He’d never know.

  He looked toward the west gate and saw Koehler. His friend was lying in the snow, head up, watching King run away. It took Rossett a moment to focus until he realized Koehler was smothering Anja, who was barely visible except for a spray of blond hair fanning out from under his shoulder.

  The child was safe.

  Rossett wobbled and thought about lying down in the snow, letting it go, letting someone else do the fighting while he looked up into the heavy clouds above.

  He thought about it.

  But he knew he wasn’t going to do it.

  He had to help Ruth, make sure she was safe, be a better man.

  He breathed deep, forced himself to go again, struggled to his feet, and fired another shot at the men with the Thompsons. Who were by now lifting an injured comrade out of the snow before they started half walking, half running across the park in an unruly retreat.

  Rossett shook off the punches he’d just received, watched the retreating men, and lifted the pistol. Scanned the park in a 360 spin and then started to jog after King toward the north gate. His head was throbbing, and he felt unsteady, still groggy after being half knocked out. His vision seemed focused in places and dreamlike in others. He shook his head as he ran, the pain in his shoulder slowly increasing in intensity as his feet crunched through the snow. Ahead, he could see King at the park gate, heading out onto the road.

  KING WAS NOW gasping for breath as he ran. He burst through the gates and into the street, slipped, skidded, and landed hard before scrabbling to his feet again. He looked back into the park and saw Rossett in the distance jogging, unsure in his steps, heading toward him.

  King was starting to regret using the knife.

  He turned and started to look for the taxi, taking short, sharp gulps of breath as he scanned the oncoming vehicles. Traffic parted as it approached the madman with the machine gun in the middle of the street.

  Passersby were watching now as he started to move through the slow-­moving vehicles, MP40 held high, King leaning into the shoulder stock. Cars passed him in either direction, missing him by inches as they pushed their way through the rush hour. Horns blared and ­people on the sidewalks shouted, but King ignored them all as he hunted his target.

  He found it.

  The taxi was trapped by the traffic that engulfed it like a slow-­flowing river. King could see the driver hunched forward, one hand on top of the wheel.

  The driver lifted his head and saw him.

  The cab slowed as the cars on either side bunched around, then it accelerated, scraping down the side of another car, aiming for King.

  King opened fire.

  The windscreen shattered; he watched through the sights as the driver bucked in his seat, then lifted his free hand in a futile attempt to stop the rounds from hitting
him.

  He failed.

  The cab lurched right as King stopped shooting. For a moment he thought he was about to be run down, but the taxi continued, skidding across the road, back end sliding in the compacted snow, then hitting another car at a forty-­five-­degree angle.

  Both vehicles crashed to a sudden halt.

  Silence.

  Just for a second, as the world stopped and watched.

  Then screaming.

  Bedlam broke out as ­people on the pavement ran in all directions, left, then right, away from the madman with the gun.

  King walked the twenty feet toward the taxi slowly, machine gun still at his shoulder. It appeared the back of the cab was empty, and for a moment he felt a wave of panic that he’d hit the wrong taxi. He leaned in, lowering one hand to the back door, the other still holding the MP40, and pulled open the door. Ma Price, blood leaking out the collar of her coat, was lying under Ruth, who had been thrown off the backseat and on top of her in the collision.

  Both women looked up. King stared down at them as they lay on the glass from the broken windows that seemed to fill the entire floor of the taxi.

  Ma Price tried to lift her pistol but saw the MP40 leveled at her.

  “No,” King said, and Price paused, then let the gun fall from her hand onto the floor. “Let’s go, we haven’t got long,” he said to Ruth, all the time his eyes on Ma Price, who smiled at him with bloodstained teeth.

  “Where you gonna go?” Price asked. “Your own government want you dead.”

  “Ruth, please, quickly.”

  Ruth looked at Price, then pushed herself from the floor of the cab; she picked up Price’s pistol and turned to King, who held out one hand to pull her free.

  There was a shot.

  King staggered as his coat seemed to puff with air and then deflate around him.

  There was another shot and King turned, falling sideways into the cab, ending up sitting with his feet in the road, his body filling the doorway, his back to Ruth.

  Another shot and he bucked again and the MP40 dropped into his lap.

  “Run,” he whispered, as his shoulder slowly slouched against the doorframe of the taxi.

  ROSSETT WAS HALFWAY out of the park when he saw the two German policemen, Neumann and March, advancing on the taxi. He could see King sitting in the open doorway of the cab, MP40 useless in his lap, hands lying on it, palms up, as the American struggled to lift his head.

  Rossett scanned the pavement for Ruth, but she was nowhere to be seen among the ­people who were either running or diving for cover. He saw movement in the taxi, a bobbing head in the shadows behind King, pushing at the door on the other side of the cab, trying to escape.

  March and Neumann were still moving forward, in half crouches, pistols raised ready to fire again.

  “No!” Rossett shouted. “There are ­people in the taxi, you’ll hit them!”

  Neumann kept his aim on the taxi, but March swiveled his pistol toward Rossett.

  Rossett raised his hands; he was only forty feet away at the park gate, well within striking range of the Mauser. He realized he was holding his Webley and let it fall to the snow at his feet, half lowering one hand due to the pain from the wound in his shoulder.

  “I’m a British policeman!” Rossett shouted at March.

  “Erlegen!” He heard the single word shouted in German.

  Rossett knew what it meant; he’d heard it many times before.

  “Shoot!”

  Rossett turned and saw the one man he could still call his friend, the one man he had risked everything for. That man was screaming at March to shoot him.

  Rossett’s hands lowered another inch.

  “Ihn zu toten!” Koehler shouted, pointing at Rossett while looking at March. “Kill him!”

  Rossett looked at March, saw him lick a thin tongue across his lips and adjust a shoulder.

  Rossett dropped to his knees, one hand taking hold of the Webley in the snow, so fast that March fired into the air where he’d been a quarter second before.

  Rossett managed a fast, fluid draw off the ground, the Webley cold in his hand as he whipped it up, flinging a flurry of snow as it came to bear and fired.

  March staggered right and then dropped, a bullet in his hip.

  THE ECHO OF the Webley filled the street. Neumann half turned, looking at his subordinate and then at Rossett.

  King, still slumped in the doorway of the taxi, managed to find the strength to half turn the MP40 and press the trigger.

  Neumann hit the ground as the MP40 kicked drunkenly in King’s lap, aimlessly scattering bullets high into the walls of the buildings on the far side of the circus and sending the few remaining bystanders running for cover.

  Neumann heard the click of the MP40’s bolt as the magazine came up empty, then rolled onto his side and looked at King as the machine gun slid from his hands into the snow.

  Neumann rolled again, now looking for Rossett.

  He was gone.

  RUTH WAS KICKING at the door, trying to burst her way out of the back of the taxi. The crash had twisted the chassis half an inch, and no matter how hard she pulled the handle or kicked at the door, she couldn’t get it to open.

  She had lain flat as King emptied his magazine. The stink of cordite in the cab clung to her throat as she pulled another deep breath, and braced to kick the door again.

  “Go on girl, you can do it,” Ma Price muttered behind her, one hand on her shoulder, blood leaking through her fingers. “Give it a good old boot.”

  Ruth gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes tight, and, lying flat on the floor, her back pressed into the broken glass, slammed both feet at the buckled door.

  It moved an inch. She could see daylight around its edge.

  She kicked again. Another inch.

  Then a hand from outside pulled at the top of the door, yanking with each of her quickening kicks.

  Rossett appeared in the gap. He looked at her, then at Ma Price.

  He didn’t speak, he just held out a hand for Ruth to take.

  She took it.

  She didn’t look back as she followed Rossett, both ducking and running through the parked, mostly abandoned traffic that had backed up behind the crash.

  As they ran toward the west end of the circus, they passed a few ­people standing with frozen faces, staring. She became aware of police cars and whistles approaching, echoing off the walls of the buildings.

  After fifty yards of flat-­out running, she slowed, aware that Rossett was struggling to keep up. She held out her hand, pulling him closer. The crowd thickened around them, ­people moving and pushing to a point where they were reduced to a walking pace, with just occasional glances back over their shoulders.

  Nobody seemed to be following them in the mass of spectators.

  They turned off Finsbury Circus, away from the scene of the shooting, heading toward Moorgate tube station, just a minute’s walk from the west side of the park.

  The street was jammed with traffic unable to move in either direction. A bus had been caught in the middle of turning off the main road, and it blocked both lanes. Car horns were blasting, unaware of what had just taken place a few hundred yards away.

  It was bedlam.

  Rossett wanted to descend into the maze of the London Underground, away from the mayhem. He looked at Ruth; her hair had tumbled across her face in the crash. She looked back at him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her now that they were out of the crowds of pedestrians on the edge of the circus and able to move more freely.

  “Are you?”

  Rossett didn’t reply.

  “I heard Koehler shouting,” Ruth said, fixing her hair as they stopped at the entrance of the tube station, just inside the doorway, pausing to check that they weren’t being followed. “I thought h
e was your friend?”

  Rossett frowned and felt her arm slipping through his. He turned to her and she nodded, scooping some hair away. Rossett tried to smile reassuringly but failed, so he looked back as a police car blared its way through the snarled traffic, trying to get to the scene of the shooting.

  “We should go.” Ruth tugged on Rossett’s arm.

  He nodded, looked at her, started to speak, and then nodded again. They turned, heading toward the Underground in more ways than one.

  CHAPTER 47

  NEUMANN WAS PUSHING down on March’s hip with a woolen scarf that an old lady on the pavement had handed him.

  Koehler dropped to his knees alongside them.

  “I said shoot.” Koehler hissed out the words, looking first at March on the ground and then at Neumann.

  “I tried.” March was shaking and speaking through gritted teeth as Neumann applied pressure to his wound.

  “Where were you?” Koehler looked at Neumann.

  “I was trying to shoot the girl, like you told me to.”

  “We’re fucked now, absolutely fucked. If she tells anyone what we’ve been doing . . .” Koehler leaned back on his haunches and looked at the crowd that had gathered around them, watching Neumann’s first aid efforts.

  Koehler stared at their faces and wondered how many could understand what he was saying in German.

  “Where were you?” Neumann asked, now having to use two hands to push on March’s wound.

  “I was with my daughter.” Koehler pointed to Anja, who was standing with an English bobby, hands held to her mouth, watery eyes on her father, thirty feet away.

  “You got her back. You should be happy.” Neumann adjusted his hands, checking to see how much blood was soaking through the scarf.

  “I would be, except that because of you two messing things up, I’ll probably be in a cell in half an hour.”

  The sound of an ambulance siren pushing its way through the crowd drowned out the last part of Koehler’s sentence. He looked across as it nudged its way to a stop. A medic jumped out of the passenger seat, running toward them with a small leather doctor’s bag before dropping into the snow next to March.