Hard Knocks

by Zoe Sharp

  I wasn’t so convinced.

  ***

  Outside Stuttgart airport, I snagged one of the line of Mercedes diesel taxis, and gave the driver the address of the school. As he pulled out into traffic he radioed to his controller, in German, complaining about the distance he was having to travel outside town.

  “If it’s too much trouble, mein herr,” I said, a little tartly, “then please tell me.”

  I saw his eyes flick sharply to meet mine in the rear-view mirror. It was only then that I realised the old cupboard in my brain had fallen open. The one where I stored those years of school German lessons. I’d forgotten it was there, let alone what might be still inside.

  It took just short of an hour to reach the little village of Einsbaden where the school was located. At normal speeds it probably would have taken two, but once we were out onto one of the main twin-lane roads my driver put his foot down. He cruised with the speedo needle quivering at a hundred and sixty-five kph. I did some mental juggling from klicks back into miles per hour and found we were doing a sliver over a hundred. Even at that speed he was constantly being flashed out of the way by other drivers.

  Once we’d got away from the uniform industrial drabness of the city itself, the countryside was surprisingly pretty, even if I was holding on too hard most of the time to really appreciate the scenery.

  He flashed through Einsbaden village itself hardly lowering his speed. The little I saw of the place was picture postcard stuff. A square with a fountain, a small café, a couple of shops, a bar. Then the houses thinned and we were back into thickly wooded countryside again.

  A couple of klicks the other side of Einsbaden the driver finally slowed and swung the Merc between a pair of tall stone gateposts with poised griffins on the top of them. There was no signage, but the driver seemed confident over direction.

  The driveway was narrow, pocked with water-filled ruts. It twisted out of sight into the forest that surrounded us. The driver proceeded with caution, and I let go of the centre armrest for probably the first time in the journey, edging forwards in my seat to peer out of the windscreen.

  The afternoon was slipping away and the light level had started to drop fast. Under the thick, evergreen canopy it was downright gloomy. The driver switched on his headlights.

  Just round the next bend there was a small security checkpoint, like some throwback to the Cold War. The lowered barrier across the road gave us no choice but to stop.

  We braked to a halt alongside a hut that looked as though it had started out life as a large garden shed. A figure in camouflage gear emerged, carrying a clipboard. He and the driver spoke together too quickly for me to catch the words, and the driver grunted.

  “He says this is far as I go,” he said to me. I paid the seemingly exorbitant fare without complaint, even though it bore no relation to the amount displayed on the meter. It was Sean’s money I was spending, after all.

  I grabbed my kit bag and climbed out into a temperature that was cold to the point of hostile. The driver didn’t bother to wave goodbye as he performed a rough five-point turn, his headlights bright enough now to carve swathes and shadows through the trees.

  The wood went back much further than the reach of the lights, shrouding the sound of the Merc’s engine and tyres so there were no echoes. It hinted at a scale that was monumental, like something alive and breathing. Something implacable in its patient pursuit, and without mercy.

  “What’s your name?” the man asked. He was short and dark, with an aggressive Northern Ireland accent that made his words sound like an invitation to a fight. He had a long scar that ran from the lobe of his left ear across his cheek to his nostril, then curved down to his upper lip, so maybe someone else had felt the same. I gave him my details trying not to hold my breath.

  Madeleine was something of a master hacker and there wasn’t much she couldn’t get out of – or add into – anyone’s computer records. She had managed to slip my name to the top of a standby list of people waiting to go on courses at Einsbaden Manor. Sean had called in favours to make sure there was a suitable dropout. Some unsuspecting would-be bodyguard from another agency would be waiting for the next intake before they could undergo their training.

  The man ticked my name off without any apparent alarm bells ringing and I let my breath out slowly, like I was on false papers. He jerked his head towards the shed. “Wait in there.”

  Inside, it was bright, clean, and surprisingly businesslike. A fan heater was going full blast, provoking heat and condensation in roughly equal measures. It was sitting precariously propped up on the narrow bench which was fixed along one wall.

  There were two other people already in the shed, a man and a woman. My arrival made it cramped. The woman had taken the single folding canvas chair and she didn’t look set to relinquish her prize without a struggle.

  I didn’t have to hear her speak to know she was German. Even sitting down she was tall and solid, with dark hair cut in a ruthless bob, and wearing glasses with thin rectangular frames. The man was lounging against the bench, youngish, much more casual, with wavy mid-brown hair brushing his collar. By the looks of her stiff discomfort, and the obvious amusement dancing behind his eyes, the man had been trying to hit on her.

  “Ah,” he said as I came in, “another willing victim to the slaughter.” He was Irish too, but in contrast to the gatekeeper his voice had the soft flows and rhythms of Dublin running through it. “Will you not come in, darlin’, and make yourself at home?”

  I shut the door, and set my canvas bag down next to the other cases. If this was all their luggage, everyone was travelling light.

  “I’m Declan, by the way, Declan Lloyd,” the Irishman said, holding out his hand for me to shake.

  “Elsa Schmitt.” The woman’s grip was firmer than his. Behind lenses which had a faint pink tint to them, her eyes had that watchful quality. It set up a warning jangle somewhere in my subconscious.

  “I’m Charlie Fox,” I said, perching on the edge of the bench and hoping it was up to the weight of two of us. “How long have you been waiting?”

  Declan shrugged. “Not so long. They don’t seem to know quite what to do with us.”

  I was about to ask more, but the door opened and the scarred man with the clipboard stuck his head inside.

  “OK,” he said. “They want the three of you to head on up to the house now.”

  We picked up our bags and stepped back out into the rapidly encroaching darkness. After the stuffily overheated shed, the cold was dazzling.

  Declan shivered, looking round. “So where’s the transport?”

  “There isn’t any,” the man said, with a certain amount of relish. He waved a hand along the barely discernible track towards some hidden point in the distance. “It’s only a kilometre or so. You walk.”

  The three of us looked in the direction he’d pointed. The sky had darkened through indigo towards an inky darkness, but above the jagged black outline of the treetops, a waxing moon had risen.

  “Oh you have to be feckin’ kidding me,” Declan muttered.

  Elsa squared her jaw. “If you want to stay, stay,” she told him, dismissive, “but I am going. Charlie?”

  I hoisted my bag higher onto my shoulder. “I’m with you,” I said with a smile.

  Declan groaned. “Ah well, I suppose I can’t let you two ladies venture out alone on a night like this.”

  Elsa threw him a withering glance and set off at a determined pace. I fell into step alongside her. Within a couple of strides, Declan had caught us up.

  He immediately started up the conversation, as though he was using the sound of voices to keep at bay whatever might be lurking in the trees. He asked where we were from, and I learned that Elsa was born in Bochum, and had lived most of her life there. Declan’s family owned land outside Wicklow.

  “Before you arrived we were swapping our life stories,” he said to me then, grinning suddenly in the silvery light. “So, Charlie, what do you do in t
he outside world that bores you so much you want to be a bullet catcher?”

  I returned his grin. It was difficult not to. “I work in a gym,” I said. Supervising weight training programmes was something I’d only begun in the last year. It kept me occupied and fit, although lately I’d found the monotony suffocating. Sean had warned me against telling anyone about my army background, or the women’s self-defence teaching I’d done after that.

  “Keep it simple, but keep it light,” Sean had said. “Invent as little as possible, just leave a lot out. They’ll be watching the best and the worst more closely than the middle ground. You’re just going to have to hold back a little, and keep to the centre of the pack.”

  “What if they check up on me?” I’d fretted.

  “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “Madeleine will make sure they only find out what we want them to.”

  “So what’s your story, Declan?” I asked now.

  “Oh, my old man is in this business – works out in the States wet-nursing rock stars. He wanted me to join up first. You know, see the world, meet lots of interesting people, and kill them.” He laughed. “I thought I’d miss out the rough-arsed bit where you have to spend four years cleaning out lavatories with your toothbrush, and go straight to baby-sitting the Hollywood babes.”

  “What about you, Elsa?”

  She inclined her head slightly. “I was a policeman here in Germany,” she said, and although I caught the dim flash of Declan’s smile, we neither of us corrected her. “I left to get married, hoping to have many babies but, my marriage did not work out.” She shrugged. “And so, here am I.”

  The simple words belied a good deal of pain, I considered. Even the Irishman didn’t come back with a smart remark to that one, and for a few minutes we trudged on in silence. Until Declan put his foot into a particularly deep pothole, and picked up a bootful of cold dirty water for his pains.

  “Oh Jesus, will you look at that?” he complained. “What the feck do they think they’re doing leaving us to wade through this shit? And to think I’ve paid out good money for this.”

  “Don’t whine, Declan,” Elsa said calmly, “it will probably be the same for everyone.”

  “So, Charlie,” he went on, ignoring her, “what’s your story? I’m escaping from dead boredom, Elsa here is escaping from a dead marriage – what’s your little dark secret?”

  I didn’t get the chance to think up a believable lie.

  “Ssh!” Beside me, I almost felt Elsa tense and come to an abrupt halt. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Declan said, although I, too, could have sworn I caught the quiet crackling of dried branches, somewhere off to our left in the trees. “Oh don’t start getting paranoid on us now, Elsa,” he said, but there was a nervous tickle to his voice, “you’ll be giving the lot of us the jitters.”

  He went on a few strides, moving close to the edge of the track. “Hello, hello,” he called, out into the forest. The trees took his voice and sucked the power out of it, handing it back to him somehow small and lonely. “Are there any ogres, wolves or bogeymen out there?” He turned back towards us. “You see, fair ladies, noth—”

  Out of the blackness a dark shape flowed up. In less than a second it seemed to utterly engulf the Irishman, taking him down like an animal kill. He fell as a dead weight. The only sound made was the breath exploding from his body as he hit the ground.

  Memories and images I’d thought were buried deep reared up, vivid as a nightmare. Shock and fear clutched at me, and it was the fear that held on hardest. It gripped my heart, my throat, my gut, with steel-tipped talons. Just for a second it stopped my breath, and froze my limbs.

  Then, almost in unison, Elsa and I dropped our bags and started to turn. Instinct made me keep low as I spun round and I felt the slither of something sweep across my back. An arm. It gave me a bearing and I lashed out, chopping the side of my fist into a leg at the knee. I was rewarded by a grunt of pain.

  I dived sideways, hearing the German woman’s wrenched-off cry as she was overwhelmed by the shadows. They seemed to swallow her up whole.

  And then there was just me.

  I rolled to my feet, tensed into a crouch, eyes raking the darkness. My blood was thundering through my veins, scrambling oxygen to my muscles. Every nerve and instinct told me to flee while I still had the chance.

  Then, in the back of my head a tiny thought flared. “They like to play mind games with you,” Sean had told me. “Like seeing how you react . . .”

  Another heartbeat. The shapes surrounding me converged another step. The edge of the tree-line was less than two metres to my right. I could still make it . . .

  I straightened up, stood still, and let them come and get me.

  ***

  They were rough, I reflected a short while later, but they were efficient, I had to give them that. Declan, Elsa and I were rolled onto our stomachs in the mud. I could feel the dampness of the ground leaching insidiously through each layer of my clothing. Our hands were fastened tight behind our backs with thin cord. Thick cloying hoods were dragged over our heads so that hearing became my only available sense.

  Beside me, Declan was swearing under his breath, running through a list of saints and curses. Over the top of our heads someone else was muttering through clenched teeth. Probably the man I’d hit.

  Well, good.

  Up ahead, an engine vibrated resentfully into life, a big commercial diesel. Somebody grated the gears badly as they engaged the clutch. It was difficult to judge distance because of the muffling effect of the trees and the hood, but it seemed close by, and getting closer, rumbling the ground under us. So, they were waiting for us. This was always going to be an ambush. Somehow, the thought made me feel better.

  Hands grabbed and hoisted us quickly into the back of the truck. It seemed a long way off the ground, with an iced bare floor that shivered as the lumbering engine was revved. I heard a flapping noise like a slack sail, and realised the truck had a canvas tilt. An army truck. I’d been in plenty of those.

  “Where the feck are we going?” Declan demanded.

  “No questions!” A boot scraped across the steel, connecting with the vulnerable softness of a body. Declan groaned and went back to cursing under his breath again.

  I lay on my side with my head resting on somebody’s shin and concentrated on finding a position that lessened the pain in my chest. Two months previously I’d cracked my sternum. The injury had been without undue complications and had largely healed, but having my arms forced back like this made my ribcage feel as though it was being slowly torn apart up the middle. I closed my mind to the possibilities of what might happen if they were planning on manhandling us at the other end.

  After only a few minutes the truck swung round in a half-circle, the engine cut before we’d stopped. Doors opened, people jumped down, doors slammed. The latches of the tailgate were shot back and we were hauled out.

  I managed to roll so that I landed mostly on my feet, going down onto one knee. I was dragged upright and hurried over gravel, concrete, and up a short rake of steps at such a rate that I tripped blindly over my own feet. Then I was being forced to my knees. Someone jostled into me and I heard a hiss of indrawn breath that sounded like Elsa.

  The change in temperature was enough to tell me we were indoors, never mind the squashy layer of carpet under me. Even through the hood I could tell the light level had gone up dramatically. I tried to prepare my eyes for the change I knew was coming, but it couldn’t be done.

  When the hood came off, the brightness stung like when slicing strong onions. I screwed my eyes shut for a moment or so, then opened them cautiously. In front of me were probably twenty-five people, including another two women. They were all watching the three of us as we knelt there coated in filth and anxiety. There were some smiles, but it was mostly sympathy I saw spread among them.

  A man was standing in front of us, wearing immaculately-pressed khaki trousers and a green army jumper with
a regimental belt over the top of it. He had smartly brushed back fair hair, a long aristocratic neck, and the kind of crinkled up eyes that he would like you to believe are more suited to staring out over a battlefield, or an ocean.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentleman,” he said, smiling a wolf’s smile, revealing teeth too white and too even to still be his own. “I’m Major Gilby. Welcome to Einsbaden Manor.”

  “Oh for feck’s sake,” I heard Declan breathe, “can the man not just shake hands?”

  The Major nodded to the men who’d brought us in. Two of them moved forward to release us. The rest fell in neatly to one side, as though this was a show they put on often enough for everybody to know their places by heart.

  Now I had a chance to look at them in full light, I saw they were all big men, dressed in black assault gear, with cammed up faces and woollen hats.