The British Lion (13 page)

CHAPTER 16

E
RIC COOK HAD
tried to look around as they dragged him up the two low steps, off the street, and into the house. He’d wanted to see a street name, a landmark, even a smiling face, but his ears rang and his head ached, and he’d barely had time to catch his breath and see his own feet.

He had fallen across the threshold onto the floor in the narrow hallway of the house. One of the men shoved him farther into the hall with a boot against his backside. Eric heard the door behind him slam as he scrabbled his way across the floor.

He stopped maybe ten feet from where he had come in and sat with his back pushed into the corner, drawing his knees up to his chest and lowering his head, doing his best to ignore the throb of the wound in his back.

The front door opened and he risked lifting his head to see what was going on. One of the men left, and he caught sight of the street before the man closed the door behind him.

The outside seemed a long way away.

The other two men stared at Eric.

“I’m an American.” He spoke quietly, aware that the same words had resulted in a blow on the head earlier.

The men stared at him some more, neither of them spoke, and he felt suddenly indignant.

He started to get up off the floor.

“Stay there or you’ll get another crack,” one of the men said quietly.

Eric slid back down the wall and lowered his head.

He’d attended a lecture in Washington that addressed situations such as these. He remembered the speaker had given a long list of dos and don’ts if one were kidnapped or mugged. Eric could remember only two things: “Don’t resist” was one, and the blond girl sitting opposite who had smiled at him on the way into the lecture was the other.

He’d spent an hour looking at her, trying to think of a good line to use when he asked her out.

She obviously hadn’t been listening to the lecture either, because she resisted, and he never got the date he was after.

One of the men approached Eric and lightly kicked his feet.

Eric looked up.

“Here.” The man was a lot older than Eric, with a fat mustache that was turning gray at the ends. He held out an equally gray handkerchief in his dirty hand. “For your head.”

Eric took the handkerchief, unfolded it, saw it was even dirtier than it first looked, and looked at Mustache, who was still standing over him.

“You’re bleeding.” Mustache pointed to the top of his own head.

Eric folded the handkerchief slowly, trying to find the cleanest part of it.

He pressed the rag gingerly against his head, then inspected the blood on it, a black dot in the dirt. He put the rag on his head again.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, aware that he was thanking the man who had caused the injury in the first place.

Mustache nodded and returned to standing by the door.

“This is a misunderstanding. I’m an American citizen,” Eric said, still looking at the floor, trying to not to be confrontational.

Neither Mustache nor the other man replied, so Eric tried again.

“If this is a robbery or something, you can have my wallet. I don’t have anything else.”

“Shush now,” Mustache said quietly.

“I demand to be released.”

“In good time.”

“I’m an American, I’m not German . . . I demand . . .” Eric trailed off as the other man reached into his pocket and took out a Browning pistol. The man stared at Eric, who lowered his head, hating himself for doing so.

“Get up.”

Eric looked up at the man with the gun.

“Get up,” the man said again.

Eric looked at Mustache, who stared back sadly.

“Please, I’m sorry, I don’t want any trouble . . .”

The man with the pistol charged forward and grabbed Eric by the lapel of his coat. He dragged him halfway off the floor, and Eric felt the pistol being jammed into the side of his neck. The man dragged and pushed him forward, bent double, to the foot of the stairs. With a final shove he sent Eric sprawling onto the bottom steps.

He felt a boot in the backside and stumbled forward again, eventually managing to propel himself on all fours up to the next floor.

The man pushed Eric into the back room, then down onto the floor again. Eric half lay, half crouched, shielding his head with his left hand, the one closest to the Browning that menaced him, so close he could smell the oil that had been used to clean it.

“Corner, go!” The man pointed with the Browning and Eric scuttled and crawled into the corner, eventually sitting with his back against the wall.

The room was empty of furniture and almost completely dark, except for a rectangle of light tossed in by the light on the landing. One of the walls was covered by peeling striped wallpaper, which had once been colored but now looked various depressing shades of damp. The ceiling that was lit by the landing light had the pallor of a corpse and was covered in hairline cracks that looked like black veins.

Mustache entered the room with a wooden chair, which he placed near the door. He sat down and nodded to the man with the Browning, who turned back to Eric, staring at him again with the same angry eyes.

“You aren’t going to give me any problems, are you?” Mustache spoke to Eric, and Eric replied by looking confused and then burying his head in his arms.

Mustache looked at his mate and smiled. “He’s not going to give me problems.”

The second man nodded and left the room.

Eric listened as the other man jogged down the stairs, and then as the front door slammed shut behind him.

He was alone in the half-light with Mustache.

He risked looking up.

“If you look at me again, I will shoot you in the face,” Mustache said, lifting his own Browning slowly so that it was pointing straight at Eric, who, in turn, immediately lowered his head again.

Message received and understood.

TEN MINUTES PASSED
by in silence.

Eric’s back began to hurt again, a high-pitched pain that burned every time he breathed in. He was aware his clothes were wet from blood, but he took some comfort from the fact that they didn’t seem to be getting wetter.

He looked at the floorboards and chewed at his lip.

Eric knew he wasn’t a brave man.

He knew he was in big trouble, off the grid, a long way from home with people who didn’t appear to care if he lived or died.

The front door of the house slammed shut, then came the thumping of several pairs of feet on the stairs. Mustache stood up. Eric glanced at him and then back to the door.

A real dread, a painful certainty came over him: he was about to die, this was it, from small-town America to a grim room in London.

Not much of a life.

He felt like crying. Such a waste, it just wasn’t fair.

He thought about the blonde at the presentation, wished he’d thought of a better line, wished she had said yes.

The door opened and Eric looked up.

The man who had left earlier entered, followed by another, much older man. Very tall, very thin, maybe sixty or seventy, all elbows and angles. He pulled off a black homburg hat and straightened his glasses before peering at Eric with a frown.

Finally a woman entered, in her late fifties, fat. The kind of fat that was too fat for ration books. Red cheeked from the cold, with a round, friendly, fleshy face and dots for eyes. She smiled at Eric as she unfurled the purple scarf from around her neck, then wound it around her hand before passing it to Mustache.

The room fell silent as everyone looked at Eric in the corner.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t the end.

They didn’t look like a firing squad, that was for sure.

Eric felt himself blushing and his heart pounded. He could bear it no more, so he looked down at the floor again until the woman spoke.

“What’s your name, love?”

Eric looked up. “Eric Cook. I am an American citizen and I demand to be released. I refuse to be some sort of hostage.”

The words had sounded better in his head.

“Oh, Eric, I’m sorry, lover, not just yet. We have to have a talk first. I’m Ma Price, but they call me ‘Ma’ because I’m like everybody’s own dear mum herself. Do you have a mum, my love?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,
Ma
. Go on, try it.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“I expect she’ll be worrying about you, so far away from home.”

Eric nodded.

“Like I worry about my boys.” Ma Price rested a hand on Mustache’s arm, which he didn’t seem to notice.

Eric looked at Mustache and doubted Ma Price needed to worry too much about him.

“Are you injured, Eric?” she asked in her singsong way.

“Yes, Ma.”

The old man took his cue, and holding his black hat across his chest like a breastplate, he walked across the room toward Eric.

“My head and my back,” Eric said. “I’ve been shot.”

“Lean forward, please,” the old man said quietly.

Eric did as he was told and felt the old man inspecting his back. Eric watched Ma Price as the inspection took place. She smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back, politely, like an idiot. The old man eased him back against the wall again, and then gingerly touched the swelling bloody lump on his head.

“Superficial, nothing to worry about. It’ll need a good clean, but there is no serious damage to you.”

“Thank you,” Eric heard himself say.

The old man struggled arthritically to stand up, then crossed back to Ma Price and the men.

“You are safe for now, as long as you answer my questions truthfully. So, tell me, what is your name?” Ma Price spoke again.

“I told you, Eric Cook.”

“What were you and your colleague doing in the flat two streets away?”

Eric paused and looked at Price and then the old man.

“You should answer the question while you still can,” said the old man.

Eric shifted and then touched the wound on his head lightly.

“That has nothing to do with you.”

Ma Price kept on smiling, but Eric noticed Mustache frown.

“I’ll not give you many chances, lover, so you really need to take them when they come along. One last time now: what were you doing in the flat with your chum?”

“I’m an American citizen, I work at the embassy, and you have no right to hold me like this. You’re going to be in a lot of trouble . . .” Eric stopped speaking as Ma Price lifted a finger.

“I can see, my love, that you’re not a hard case. I’ve only got to look at you to see that, so don’t go puffing out your chest and spouting off.”

“Listen to her,” the old man said.

“But I . . . I’m . . .”

Mustache crossed the room and stopped in front of Eric, who slid farther back into the corner.

“Answer the question.”

“I’m . . . we . . . I’m an American.” Eric swallowed, looking up into Mustache’s sad eyes.

“All right, have it your way. Kill him,” Ma Price said behind Mustache.

Eric didn’t see the pistol until it was pressing into the center of his forehead. He watched Mustache’s finger curl around the trigger and the pink of his knuckle turn white as he squeezed.

“I was guarding a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Eric stared at the trigger finger’s knuckle, which stayed white.

“What girl?”

“She is the child of a German SS major . . .” Eric paused; his mouth was bone dry and his tongue was catching on the roof of his mouth. “We kidnapped her.”

Eric began to cry, and he felt the pressure of the muzzle lift. He sobbed and let his head fall forward, ashamed to let the others in the room see his tears and his humiliation.

“Please don’t kill me, please, I can help you . . . please . . . I don’t want to die, I’m just a clerk.”

CHAPTER 17

K
OEHLER HAD DRIVEN
in snow countless times before. He knew all the tricks, braking with the gears, no sudden movements, early anticipation, and easy on the gas.

He knew them all.

It was just that none of them were working.

The little Austin Seven barely had the weight to push down into the snow, even with the combined weight of Rossett and him in it. The car seemed to be sliding from rut to rut, back end flicking this way and that like an excited puppy.

He wondered if it was because he was tense. Koehler rolled his head and breathed deeply, trying to stretch the tension away as he waited at traffic lights on the main road out of London, heading for Cambridge.

His mood wasn’t helped by their decision to not set off too early. The reasoning had been that they were more likely to get stopped on an empty street than on a busy one. They had sat in Rossett’s favorite café, waiting out the night.

Rossett had sat quietly, barely moving, eyes closed, arms folded, as the hours had passed. Koehler had twitched and smoked, fidgeting like the second hand on his Rolex, perpetual motion, unable to relax, cigarette after cigarette counting down the night.

The morning hadn’t hurried; even now that they were moving the sun was still snoozing behind the heavy clouds that looked about to let go of another fall of fresh snow.

All around them now the city was waking up, stretching, and trying to shake off the night before. Koehler tapped the tiny fuel gauge set into the speedometer of the car.

They had a long way to go and not a lot of fuel to do it with. Koehler guessed the journey was about 120 miles, there and back, assuming they made it back.

They had to make it back.

For Anja and Lotte.

They had to.

The lights changed; Koehler lifted the clutch and the car slithered forward a few feet before the back end caught hold of the road, finally picking up what little speed it could muster. Koehler had been in an Austin like this before in dry, clear weather, and it had barely managed forty miles an hour; he guessed he’d be lucky to see twenty-five on this journey.

The car drifted, and Koehler found his mind drifting with it as his reflexes corrected the slide.

He thought about Lotte, how they’d met at a dance when he’d been at university in Munich.

So long ago now.

She had made him laugh that first night, really laugh, as if they’d been friends for years, immediately comfortable, fitting exactly, made for each other, pieces of a solved puzzle.

As they’d danced Koehler had found himself looking into her eyes and smiling like a man who couldn’t believe his luck. She taught him to waltz, leading him, laughing with him, starting to love him as he started to love her.

He called her “Farm Girl” after she told him how she had grown up in the countryside. When she finally took him to meet her mother and father, halfway across the farmyard, his shoe came off in ankle-deep mud and he stumbled and blushed.

Lotte had laughed and called him “City Boy.”

And he was.

Koehler smiled at the memory.

So long ago now.

They had made love for the first time that weekend. Softly, silently, in a loft in the barn, as beneath them animals stirred and above them rain thundered on the roof, an angry autumn downpour. Together, on winter straw, they had lain silently staring at each other, eyes inches apart.

In love forever.

Marriage, then Anja. Koehler finished university and found what he thought was his future in the classrooms of Munich, teaching history to children who didn’t understand how important it was.

Lotte never followed her dreams of pursuing a career in science. She held on to them, though, waiting for Anja to grow before she took up her studies again and became the doctor she’d always wanted to be. Koehler had been so happy with his family around him; their little apartment just off the Marienplatz had become a kingdom of heaven, filled with laughter and joy.

They had learned together, grown together, loved and lived together as if every day was the start of an adventure.

And then the clouds came.

Lotte hadn’t liked the idea of Koehler joining the Nazi Party. She had never enjoyed politics; she would frown at the sound of the Führer on the radio when she came home with Anja from walking or shopping.

He remembered their first real argument.

A letter had arrived, stating that old Mr. Cohen was no longer their landlord; the building had been seized as a result of the new laws.

“He is a good man, Ernst! He doesn’t deserve to have his home, his livelihood, and his dignity taken away!”

Koehler had held his finger to his lips and shushed Lotte. She had thrown the letter on the fire before storming out of the apartment, going downstairs to help Mr. Cohen and his family pack their belongings onto the handcart in the street outside.

Koehler had sat on the sofa with a sleeping Anja in his arms, watching the curtain drift in the breeze.

So long ago now.

Rossett coughed, the first noise he’d made since they had set off. Koehler looked across but Rossett ignored him, just the same stare, straight ahead, emotionless, silent, as if he were alone in an empty room.

The Austin plowed on through the snow, doggedly going where it had no place to be. Koehler wiped at the windscreen with the back of his hand as the morning finally brightened.

Another red light, another fumble for the crushed damp cigarette packet in his pocket.

Empty.

“Do you have smokes?” He looked at Rossett, who moved for the first time during the journey to check his own pockets. A quick search and a packet emerged, which he offered across.

“I’ve one left.”

“Shit, I need to smoke. My nerves.”

“Take it.” Rossett looked at him and then back out the windscreen.

“You sure?”

Rossett didn’t reply, so Koehler took the cigarette and then tossed the empty packet over his shoulder onto the backseat of the car. He managed to touch the end with a flaring match, just before the lights changed.

He hadn’t wanted to join the military. His conscription and basic training in the army had been tough, but his education and overall performance had marked him out early as a candidate for promotion.

“You could go a long way, Koehler. You are smart, charming, a good soldier. People like you inspire. Your men would follow you. I’m recommending you for officer training school.” His CO had smiled at him, signed a file, and Koehler had gone to the academy, unsure of whether he was doing the right thing.

He’d known as soon as he got there that he wasn’t.

The time wasn’t right. He wanted to be home and in the arms of Lotte and Anja, so he flunked out on purpose. A map-reading exercise gone wrong, followed by a failed initiative test, and he was back in front of the CO in no time at all.

The CO had a portrait of the Führer hanging on the wall behind him, and they’d both frowned at Ernst as he had stood to attention, trying not to look either of them in the eye.

“I’m disappointed. You’ve let us down. Go away and come back in twelve months.” The words followed him out of the door and back to Munich. He smiled all the way.

But Munich was changing; Germany was changing. His old friend Helmut from university visited with presents and a smart black uniform and boots that creaked when he walked.

“Don’t leave it too late, Ernst. Germany isn’t a place for schoolmasters and students anymore. You need to get on board with us, the SS. The Führer needs men like you to spread National Socialism across Europe. We won’t be conquerors, we will be saviors!” Helmut had spilled schnapps on the kitchen table when he slammed down his glass to make his point.

Lotte had stood up from where she was sitting silently on their old sofa, then fetched a cloth to wipe up the mess before it stained the table.

As he drove the car that morning, far out of London through the snow, Ernst Koehler wished he had heard what Lotte had been saying with that silence.

Instead he had followed Helmut into the SS. This time there was no failed map-reading exercise. This time there was no failed initiative test.

He’d tried his best for Lotte, Anja, the Führer, and Germany. He became a Waffen SS officer. His boots had creaked across the floor of their Munich apartment, and then they’d creaked across Europe and beyond.

From Dunkirk to Dover.

From west to east, through Munich on leave, then on to Moscow and beyond.

He earned his Knight’s Cross the hard way. He had led men, lost men, killed men, and been a warrior for the Reich and for the Führer he’d sworn to die for.

But now, right at that minute, driving through England, blood was on his hands, staining his soul and causing his conscience to physically ache when he thought about what he had done.

He knew Lotte had been right all those years ago. Slamming the door, loading Cohen’s cart, she’d been right.

And he’d been so terribly wrong.

He was trapped and wrapped in a nightmare he’d helped to create.

He was a reaper, and he hated himself.

His boots creaked over the skulls of a million dead Jews.

His boots had creaked without conscience.

He wasn’t a soldier anymore, nor was he a teacher.

He was death.

And he knew he had done wrong.

He had carried on with his job, rounding up the Jews, butchering the Jews. He didn’t see their bodies, but he heard their cries when he turned off the light at night.

He knew he was worse than Rossett, because he knew where they went.

He had seen the chimneys, smelled the stench, and seen the ash fall around him like snow from the roofs of the buses on the London streets.

He was a butcher, with a clipboard instead of a knife, but a butcher all the same.

He didn’t deserve Lotte and Anja, but he vowed he would get them back and change things. He would go back to Germany, maybe teach again. Build a new life, for all of them, for Germany, for the children he taught, for the future.

He’d do it with them because without them, without the hope that they brought, there was no point.

No point at all.

IT WAS COMING
again, fat, slow snow, flakes as big as plums, drifting down faster as the seconds passed. Koehler slipped the car into neutral. The road was too narrow to overtake the bus in front of them, even on a day when the road wasn’t deep in snow.

Rossett opened the door of the car.

“I’ll get cigarettes from the kiosk. Do you want anything else?”

Koehler looked across the road and saw a tiny street kiosk with a vendor and a few commuter customers.

“Some mints?”

Rossett closed the door and crossed the pavement to the kiosk.

Koehler watched him go, then went back to staring at the back of the bus. He looked in his mirror and saw a black cab, only a couple of feet from the back of the Austin. The driver was blowing into his hands, trying to keep them warm. Some more snow pattered against the Austin’s windscreen, so Koehler flicked the switch on the dashboard to sweep it away with the wipers.

The bus brake lights glared at him. The driver was riding the pedal as they waited. Koehler leaned across to the passenger side of the car, straining to see if the bus was stuck at a hidden traffic light.

He couldn’t see.

He wondered if Rossett would make it back to the car before he had to move off, and gave a tiny blip of the throttle before checking the fuel gauge again.

Quarter full. He watched it drift to empty and then back up to full.

He decided they would stop and dip the tank to check how much it actually held. They couldn’t afford to get halfway and then run out.

He looked up; the conductor was leaning out of the open platform at the back of the bus, holding the shiny chrome pole with one hand, staring toward the front of the vehicle.

Maybe there had been an accident?

The snow was coming more heavily; he could hear it pattering on the tin roof of the car.

Koehler opened the door, stepped out into the road, and looked at Rossett, still waiting to be served. Then he took a step to his right so he could look beyond the bus to see what was holding them up.

Four German soldiers, in long greatcoats, rifles slung over shoulders, gingerly making their way through the snow toward him.

Checkpoint.

“Shit.”

One of the soldiers, a ruddy-faced, middle-aged corporal, waved an arm at Koehler and shouted.

“In there!” Bad English, but clear enough.

Koehler nodded, hoping the sensation in his stomach wasn’t showing on his face. He looked at Rossett, still waiting, unable to see the soldiers on the other side of the bus.

Koehler took hold of the still-open door of the Austin and turned to look back at the queue that was forming at the checkpoint. Ten or so taxis and cars, followed by another bus, sat in the falling snow that was gusting on a freshening wind.

Nobody was beeping their horns; nobody was out of their cars.

Koehler realized he was standing out from the crowd.

The troops were ten feet away, and the corporal was staring at him, unhappy that he’d been ignored.

“I said—”

“I’m an SS major. Be careful who you are talking to,” Koehler replied in German.

RO
SSETT HEARD KOEHLER’
S
voice and looked up, then looked at the bus, and then the road ahead.

“Yes, guv?” the vendor asked him.

Rossett ignored the vendor; he was too busy wondering how he had missed the truck half blocking the road in front of the bus.

“Guv?”

Rossett looked at the vendor and then back to the checkpoint, automatically slipping his hand into the coat pocket where his Webley was waiting, cursing himself for switching off.

“What’ll it be?” the vendor tried again.

The checkpoint corporal looked at the Austin and frowned as Koehler approached; it was a strange car for a major to be traveling in—battered, old, barely roadworthy.

Koehler fought the urge to look toward Rossett, not wanting to give away Rossett’s position to the checkpoint crew.