by Wilbur Smith
Saffron was concentrating on putting distance between her and Konrad’s gun. She was counting in her head. When she got to ten, she’d stop and look around. ‘Seven . . .’
Konrad lifted his arm and, as he twisted his head to look at him, Gerhard could see the gun in his brother’s hand, like a deadly starter’s pistol. He could see his brother’s face twist into a hellish grimace. But it was one of triumph, not agony.
Gerhard sprang forward.
Konrad fired. At that range he couldn’t miss. His first shot hit his brother in the chest, spinning his body round and leaving him flat out on the ground, unmoving. He was dead, but Konrad wanted to make sure. He wanted to grind Gerhard’s head into the ground. He took aim again and . . .
Saffron heard the sound of the bullet. Only one man could have fired it. Only one man could be the target. Without thinking, without letting herself feel a thing, she spun around, raised her gun and pulled the trigger.
Konrad heard the crack of a small-calibre pistol and in the same instant the clang of a bullet hitting the crumpled bodywork of the Mercedes. The vibration of the impact was barely a centimetre away from his hand.
Konrad ducked down behind the open car door, wincing at the shocks of pain that the sudden movement sent through his shattered ribcage as another round fizzed overhead, smashing through glass where he had been standing. He took a couple of painful breaths, calming himself. The Browning’s unusually large magazine gave him the advantage. She had already used two rounds. He still had all but two of his.
Sooner or later, though, the men who had broken into his house would work out where he had gone. It was imperative to deal with the traitor and his whore as fast as possible, so he could get away before the others arrived. That meant taking a risk, leaving the shelter of the car to gain the offensive.
He ran towards the back of the Mercedes, crouched as low as he could manage, agonised by every step, but ignoring the pain. Saffron fired twice more, again coming within a whisker of hitting him. But she was having to shoot downhill, with the moonlight to provide visibility. His body would be a shadow moving alongside another. And she had spent four shots discovering how hard a target he was.
Konrad wanted to get around the back of the Mercedes, then dash for the shelter of the Jaguar, which lay side-on to the hill from which the Courtney woman was shooting. He hid behind the boot of the Mercedes, and steeled himself for the sprint. It was no more than three or four paces, but he would be out in the open. He had no choice; he had to do it.
Konrad ran. There was no sound of gunfire. He’d left himself exposed, but she did not shoot at him.
The silence unnerved Konrad almost more than the bullets that had narrowly missed him. What is she playing at? Why didn’t she open fire?
Saffron had carried her Beretta through six years of war and it had never let her down. She had fired hundreds of rounds on her training range at Cresta Lodge. She had stripped it, checked it, oiled it and reassembled it before she left for South Africa, as she had done before other potentially dangerous missions.
But now, when she needed it most, when Gerhard was lying dead on the ground and his killer was on the loose, her beloved little pistol jammed.
Saffron fought back the emotions that beat at her mind like storm waves against the shore. She couldn’t give in to the grief of losing Gerhard. She couldn’t let her concentration be distracted by the anger and frustration of being left without a weapon at the precise moment she needed it most. All that mattered was making Konrad pay for what he had done. She just had to think. Fast.
She had four rounds left in her magazine, but they were of no use to her now. And Konrad von Meerbach had a gun in his hand that he had not fired once in her direction.
Somehow she had to deal with him. And that meant getting close enough for unarmed combat. As close as she had been to Werner. With Konrad’s gun in the small of her back, if needs be. In the distance, Saffron could hear the engines of approaching cars. The Israelis were on their way.
If she could hear them, so could Konrad. She knew he was not in the business of taking prisoners. But he might at least stop and think about taking a hostage. In his eyes, she might yet be his ticket out of here. Fine then, give him that ticket . . .
Saffron put her gun back in her trouser pocket and crept down the hillside itself rather than the steps, until she found a scrap of cover behind a small bush, no more than fifteen paces away from Konrad.
She called out, ‘My gun has jammed. I can’t shoot. I surrender.’
As if to prove her helplessness, she threw the useless gun through the air towards him.
Konrad was not in the hostage business either. He fired in the direction the gun had come from.
Saffron leaped to one side. She landed awkwardly, lost her footing and twisted her right ankle. The sudden pain made her cry out, a stifled yelp.
Konrad knew exactly where Saffron was. She was hobbled, on her knees, unable to put any weight on her injured foot.
She tried to crawl away, but Konrad came after her. His luck had suddenly changed. His brother was dead and the pride of the Courtney family was at his mercy. For years he had dreamed of this moment, imagining the insults with which he would humiliate Saffron before he killed her. But now that the moment had come, he had no breath to spare for speeches. His movements were awkward. The pain from his injuries was unceasing. He had to wipe away the blood that was streaming down his forehead into his eyes. But his purpose was merciless.
He was going to get close enough to his brother’s wife that he could not miss, and then he was going to put enough bullets in her to make sure that she was a pulverised mess.
Saffron saw the lumbering bulk coming towards her like a wounded bear. Konrad was breathing heavily and with difficulty, but he had a weapon in his hand. She suddenly realised that she was terrified, mortally petrified in a way that she had not been since she was a seven-year-old girl, watching her mother dying. Then she had been horrified by her mother’s death. Now it was the prospect of her own demise that was sending Saffron’s pulse racing and convulsing her guts.
Konrad raised the gun and aimed at her. Saffron threw dust at his face, but the dirt blew away as Konrad twisted from it.
Konrad returned his aim. The mask of blood across his face was split by a spiteful smile as he prepared for the kill.
Then, out of nowhere, there came a scuffling sound and a sudden shout that made Konrad turn to his right. He fired the gun, but not in Saffron’s direction.
A body came flying through the air and hit the side of Konrad’s legs above the knees.
Konrad crashed to the ground. Saffron caught a glimpse of Gerhard’s face as he scrabbled to his feet and dropped astride Konrad’s body, pinning him down.
Her mind was spinning. She had barely let herself feel any grief for Gerhard’s death, and now he was here, looking her in the eye for an instant, then turning his attention back to his brother.
Konrad had bullied and humiliated Gerhard when they were boys. He had done everything in his power to ruin his life as an adult. He had caused him to be imprisoned and watched with delight as he had been tortured and degraded in the filth of Sachsenhausen. And now Gerhard was letting four decades of pent-up rage loose on his tormentor, hitting him again and again.
Finally, the storm of rage blew itself out. Gerhard sat up, his chest heaving. Konrad lay beneath him, battered into submission. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose shattered, his mouth a shapeless pulp. One of his puffed-up eyelids opened a fraction. He turned his head and spat a gob of saliva and blood onto the dirt.
‘Is that the best you can do, little brother?’ he croaked.
Gerhard smiled. ‘No,’ he said, calmly. He looked at Konrad, took aim and hit him one last time. ‘That is.’
But Konrad could not hear him. He was out cold.
Gerhard rolled Konrad’s body over until he was face down.
‘Saffron, are you all right?’
‘I think
I may have broken my ankle, but what about you? I thought—’
‘Yes, me too . . . Let’s deal with Konrad and then I’ll explain.’
Gerhard helped her up.
‘Take my scarf,’ Saffron said, removing it from her head and shaking her hair free. ‘Silk is very strong, ideal for tying up a prisoner’s wrists. Your belt will do for his ankles.’
Gerhard trussed Konrad up, then went back to Saffron, draped her right arm across his shoulder and helped her down the hill.
‘So?’ she asked when they got to the bottom. ‘Why aren’t you dead?’
Gerhard smiled and reached up to the left-hand chest pocket of his blouson. Now that she looked closely, Saffron could see that there was a ragged tear in the fabric, running right across the pocket. Gerhard pulled out the metal flask he’d been given at Schloss Meerbach.
‘Say a prayer of thanks to Herr Schinkel and his boys – and to the finest von Meerbach steel.’
They both looked at the flask. There was a long dent, exactly comparable to the tear in the fabric.
‘The round must have hit me at an angle and deflected off the metal,’ Gerhard said.
‘It wouldn’t have deflected off your ribs,’ Saffron said quietly. ‘It would have gone straight through your chest.’
‘I thought it had, to be honest. The impact sent me flying. Then I realised I was alive, and I heard you calling out to Konrad.’ He gave Saffron a light kiss on the cheek. ‘Sorry I took so long.’
‘No need to apologise. Your timing was perfect. But where’s Francesca?’ She remembered the sound of the single shot. ‘Oh Jesus, what has he done to her?’
They made their way to the crashed cars. They found Francesca inside the Mercedes.
‘That filthy bastard shot his own wife,’ Gerhard said.
Saffron looked at the gruesome ruins of Francesca’s face and thought of the sweet, rather nervous girl she had met on the first train journey to boarding school. ‘Oh, Chessi, I’m sorry . . .’ She turned her despairing eyes towards Gerhard. ‘It’s our fault, you know, all of this. None of it would have happened without us.’
Gerhard took her in his arms. He didn’t say anything. He knew how Saffron was feeling. Chessi von Schöndorf had been his fiancée and Saffron’s friend. Saffron should have been maid of honour at their wedding. He thought of the Francesca he had loved, and the way her now unseeing eyes had lit up with joy at the sight of him. And then he and Saffron had met, neither knowing the other’s connection to Francesca. They had fallen in love and, with true love’s unblinking ruthlessness, had put their need for one another ahead of their duty to her.
The consequences of that decision had played out over the years since, and now they had reached their conclusion.
‘It’s not all our fault, my darling,’ Gerhard murmured. ‘She chose to be with Konrad. He was the devil who took her to hell . . . But yes, we started it, and we have to live with that.’
Joshua Solomons and his men arrived less than two minutes later. Joshua dealt with the situation with a calm authority that belied his youth.
‘We’ll take your brother with us to the ship, as we planned. We anticipated that he might be wounded. There’s a military doctor on board, he’s used to dealing with badly injured men.’
He looked at Saffron. ‘He can check out your leg, too.’
‘Aren’t we going back to Cape Town?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s an unnecessary risk. We’ll go up the coast and put you ashore in Mombasa. Don’t worry about the chaos here. We’ve got a few hours before anyone arrives in the morning, and our friends in Cape Town can tidy everything away.’
‘Can your friends see to it that the countess’s body is well treated and returned to her family in Germany, please?’ Gerhard asked. ‘I can give them the necessary details. They can send me the bill.’
‘Of course. But your brother can pay for his wife’s funeral. My men found this in the car.’
Joshua handed Gerhard the briefcase. There was a spattering of blood across its black leather surface: Francesca’s blood, Gerhard realised.
‘My father told me that your brother had stolen a great deal from your family firm,’ Joshua said. ‘I think we may have recovered some of that money. Several hundred thousand US dollars, by my rough estimate.’
‘I don’t want it – it’s not right.’ Gerhard managed a weak smile. ‘You can spend some of it to buy your friend a new Jaguar. I made a mess of that one. As for the rest, I would like it to go to any organisation that helps Jewish victims of the Nazis, and their families. I will leave it to your government to select them.’
‘You don’t have to do this, Gerhard.’
‘Yes, I do. My family has a debt to honour. But can you do one thing for me in return?’
‘It would be my honour.’
‘Make sure that when my brother is tried, there is one more charge added to the list. He murdered his wife and he should pay for it.’
Gerhard and Saffron were home within the week. A few days later, the Israelis formally announced the capture of the former SS general Count Konrad von Meerbach, who was accused of crimes against humanity and the murder of his wife. The minister who provided this information to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, revealed that the prosecution would be presenting detailed documentary evidence that would establish the prominent role the accused had played in the planning, construction and management of the Nazi death camps, and the personal delight he had taken in torturing individual victims. Nevertheless, he added, the accused would receive the kind of scrupulous, unbiased trial that he had denied his own victims and would, of course, be allowed to mount his own defence.
The same announcement expressed the government’s profound gratitude for the help provided by the accused’s brother, Gerhard Meerbach, who would be giving his own testimony for the prosecution. Herr Meerbach, the minister said, had risked his life to help a Jewish family escape Nazi Germany. He was to be given the formal title of ‘Righteous among the nations’ and placed on the roll of honour at Israel’s newly opened Yad Vashem memorial to the murdered six million.
The story of the evil brother and the good, a tale as old as Cain and Abel, sparked the imagination of the world’s news media. That Gerhard should be praised for his humanity, even as Konrad languished in a prison cell, was seen as a symbol of the possibility of redemption and goodness, even in the midst of unspeakable evil.
Gerhard regarded the attention as entirely undeserved and retreated to Lusima, happy to hide away in the Courtney kingdom, without a telephone to connect Cresta Lodge with the outside world.
He, Saffron and the children were living in a private paradise. But even there, the war intruded in the deep rumble that echoed across the savannah and against the hillsides as the RAF’s four-engined Lincoln bombers flew overhead, and the distant sound of man-made thunder as their bombs rained down on the Mau Mau’s positions in the forested hills of the Aberdare range.
‘I hate it!’ said Saffron to Gerhard one day, as they stood side by side, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist, watching half a dozen bombers fly over Lusima, their silhouettes black against the sun like grotesque birds of prey. ‘Just think of the money those raids cost. Father was telling me the other day that the government is currently spending ten thousand pounds for every terrorist killed.’
‘Why don’t they just spend the money on the Kikuyu?’ Gerhard asked. ‘It would be a cheaper way of winning them over, and more effective too.’
‘Instead we’re sticking tens of thousands of Kikuyu in detention camps. I mean, really, what the hell are we doing, locking people up because they belong to a particular tribe?’
‘Ah, yes . . . I do know about that.’
‘Exactly! And that’s what drives me mad. We fought a war to rid the world of tyranny and now look at us. And did you see the story in the Standard this morning? Apparently, Government House is about to announce a new anti-crime initiative. From now on there doesn’t
have to be a proper signed, written record of an accused man’s confession. If a police officer testifies that he has confessed, that’s good enough. But it’s not just that. We’re censoring the African newspapers, banning the native population from driving at night, punishing whole villages because one man has been accused of a crime. What does that remind you of?’
There was no need for Gerhard to answer the question.
‘I can’t bear to see this being done by my country, in my name,’ Saffron said, sounding almost more sorrowful than angry. ‘It’s the camps I can’t stand. The idea that we might be creating more Dachaus, more Sachsenhausens . . .’
‘It’s unspeakable. But what do you want to do about it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because you know what the answer will be if you go to Government House and start arguing with the governor and his staff . . .’
‘Apart from, “Calm down, you silly, hysterical woman”?’
‘They’ll point out that they didn’t start it. They’ll say, “The Mau Mau have created an emergency and we’re trying to deal with it.” If you want to make an effective protest, you need facts – and an ally inside the governor’s staff would help.’
‘A friend at court . . .’
‘Exactly.’
‘I think my pa may know someone . . . He mentioned a young man he met at some cricket match he and Harriet went to. I’ll look him up. And in the meantime, I promised Wangari I’d go and see her at the clinic. She wants to show me proof of what our people have been up to in the screening centres. It’s about time I made good on that promise.’
‘Good idea. Make sure to tell her that I’m thinking of her, and her loss. I know we both wrote, but it still needs to be said.’
‘Of course.’
‘Will you want a lift in the plane?’
Saffron smiled and squeezed him tight. ‘Any excuse to fly will do, won’t it? But I’m sorry, darling, I think I’m going to drive. I can stay overnight in town and do a little shopping in the morning. Zander’s grown out of half his clothes and Kika needs a dress for her birthday party.’