The British Lion (24 page)

Their tracks.

The only tracks in the street.

She looked at the far end of the road and saw the car abandoned with its headlamps still shining, like a stranded black lighthouse.

“They can follow our footprints from the car,” she said softly. Jack followed her gaze and then looked back at her, gently pulling her hand toward him.

“We need to get going.”

Anja glanced at the houses all around as they started to move again. The houses seemed warm, safe, inviting, full of happy families and hot food.

“We can knock on a front door; someone will take us in.”

“Which one do you fancy?” Jack lifted a finger and pointed at one of the houses with welcoming lights behind thick curtains. “That one?”

Anja followed his finger and then nodded.

“Yes.”

“Problem is, that one might have a mum and dad who lost a son when the Germans invaded France. What about that one?” He pointed at another house but didn’t wait for an answer. “Then again, that one might have a dad who had his leg blown off in the Great War. What about that one? Oh, hang on, that one might have two boys who have been sent to work in Europe on one of the grain farms. What about that one, where their son has been conscripted and sent out to fight in the east? Or that one, or that one, or that one?”

Jack stopped suddenly and looked at Anja. “We can’t knock at any of these houses, or any house anywhere, because they all bleedin’ hate you. So keep moving until we can figure out where we are.”

Jack turned and stalked off. Anja realized he had let go of her hand. Her head dropped and she felt the weight of the tears she’d been holding back.

She had to hold on.

She looked back at the car, shook her head, and followed Jack.

She caught up quickly as he marched, hands buried in his pockets, silently ignoring her. Their breath misted the air between them and the streetlamps. They didn’t speak for at least five minutes as street after street of the same tiny terraced houses went by.

The air smelled of smoke, and a few restless flakes of snow started to drift down out of the blackness, causing both Anja and Jack to look up into the night sky as they walked.

“The snow would be good, it’ll cover our tracks,” Anja said, and although Jack didn’t reply, he did take her hand again.

They reached a main road with darkened shops and a set of traffic lights that changed every few seconds, even though there wasn’t a car in sight.

Jack looked up at the building behind him.

Anja followed his gaze and read the sign out loud.

“Romford Road. Do you know it?”

“I think so; my old man is from round here.”

“Your old man?”

“My dad.”

“Can we go there?”

“He’s dead . . . the war.”

“I’m sorry.”

Anja stared at the dirty streetlamps and the sooty houses. The smoke coming from their chimneys made the falling snow look dirty. She looked at Jack with his oily hands, greasy hair, and dirty neck, and realized that he could only have come from a place like this.

Jack ran his hand through his thick hair and stared off down the road.

“I think . . .” He looked left and right again, hand still on head. “We go this way.” The hand on his head suddenly shifted position and pointed.

“You think or you know?”

“Do you know?” Jack asked.

“No.”

“Well then, this way.” Jack set off, tugging Anja behind him.

They walked for fifteen minutes before Jack saw the pub he was looking for. The Rising Sun stood on the corner of a row of shops and a side street. It looked rough, tough, and decidedly uninviting.

“That’s it.”

“That?” Anja didn’t sound convinced.

“Yeah, I know people there. They’ll help us. We’re going to be all right.” Jack turned and smiled at Anja for the first time in what seemed like an age.

Anja forgot the cold, forgot the hunger, forgot the day she had suffered, and found herself smiling back. Maybe she was going home after all.

“You have to wait here by these shops. Stand in the doorway of this one and wait for me, I’ll not be long.”

Anja looked at the darkened shop and then back at Jack, the smile fading.

“Can’t I come with you?”

“No. You’ll stand out a mile. People don’t know you. You stay here. I promise, I’ll not be long.”

Anja nodded uncertainly.

“It’ll be all right, I promise. Just wait in the shadows.”

Jack was off before she could reply. He pulled open the door of the pub and Anja watched as the light from inside shone on him. He looked every inch a fifteen-year-old boy entering a man’s world. The noise of the bar leaked out with the light, then faded as the door swung back into place.

She heard the sound of a piano but couldn’t recognize the music it was playing. It sounded rough, bouncy, a little out of tune, messy, too fast for her liking.

A lot like London itself.

She leaned forward out of the doorway, looked at the pub, and then turned her head the other way to look down the main road.

In the distance she could see headlamps coming toward her slowly, very slowly. Flecked with falling snow, they bobbed and weaved, as the car slithered from rut to rut.

She looked back at the pub, a quiver of panic in her chest, then back at the car, the first she’d seen since they’d left their own crippled vehicle earlier.

She stepped back into the shadows of the doorway as far as she could go, her back against the cold wooden door. It seemed an age before she could make out the sound of the engine, coming closer, traveling slowly, taking its time.

She tried to breathe shallow breaths, in case the steam from her mouth gave her away.

The car drew nearer; it seemed slower. Anja couldn’t breathe.

Not now, not when she was so close.

The car went past.

It was a tiny little saloon, with a toad of an old man franticly rubbing at his misted windscreen with the back of his hand.

Anja breathed again. She almost laughed at her own nerves until Jack suddenly appeared in front of her, causing her to jump with fright.

“You okay?”

“You scared me!” she cried, feeling an urge to throw her arms around him.

He flashed his bright smile at her and flicked his fringe.

“Come with me, we’re sorted.” He held out his hand and pointed at the pub.

Anja took Jack’s hand, feeling its warmth. She followed him to the pub where, at a side door, a girl, maybe two or three years younger than Anja, was waiting for them. She pulled open the door, having to lean back to get the leverage, and then went inside followed by Jack and Anja. As they walked down a corridor Anja could hear the piano and voices singing along to a song she couldn’t understand.

“Why are they singing?” she whispered to Jack.

“Because they’re drunk, it’s what they do,” he replied over his shoulder as the little girl opened another door that led to a flight of stairs. They thumped up the wooden staircase, which took them to a warm kitchen where a large man in an apron was waiting, hands on hips.

“This is Mr. Edwards. He’s the manager, and he’s going to help us.”

Edwards gestured that they should sit at the kitchen table.

“You hungry?”

Anja nodded, scared to speak in case her accent should embarrass them all.

“Yes,” replied Jack for her. “We’ve not eaten all day. I’m starving.”

Edwards placed two bowls in front of them, into which he ladled a thick steaming stew from a pot that was burned black up the sides.

He placed the pot back on the stove, then put some rough-cut bread onto the table, along with two spoons and two white enamel mugs full of water.

“Eat.” He pointed at Anja’s bowl.

“Thank you,” she replied softly, picking up the spoon and looking at Jack for confirmation that she was doing the right thing.

She was.

Jack was already tucking into the soup and ripping a chunk of bread with his oily hands. He paused, smiled at Anja, and offered her the bread.

She looked at his hands with their grime-filled lines, smiled back, and took the bread.

“I’ll make a call, get someone we can trust down with a car,” Edwards said as he wiped his hands on the apron.

“Could we use your telephone to call my father, sir?” said Anja.

“No offense, but I don’t want it getting out I’m helping you. I can’t risk having Germans turn up here; it wouldn’t be good for me. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Edwards nodded and then spoke to Jack. “I’ll make the call, then go back in the bar. If I don’t they’ll start wondering where I’ve gone.”

“Thanks, Mr. Edwards,” Jack replied with a full mouth.

Edwards nodded and then looked at the young girl.

“Get them anything they want and stay with them.”

The child nodded and took a seat opposite Anja, staring at her as she ate.

Anja smiled at the girl.

The girl didn’t smile back.

CHAPTER 30

R
OSSETT WAS HALF
frozen as he made his way along an old stone wall to the south of Coton. He was about two hundred yards from the village boundary when he stopped to get his bearings. Behind him, across five hundred yards of open ground, was his car, parked in a small copse of trees well out of sight of the road. To his right was the village, which lay slightly below him in a shallow valley, barely sheltered from the wind, which was gusting in hard from the cold north, making his cheeks ache and his throat dry.

The late afternoon sun had long since sunk tiredly over to his right. He had moved across the fields, occasionally lying flat, at other times at a half crouch, taking his time, careful to see all and not be seen in return. When he finally had to cross a shallow stream, then fight his way through the two feet of soft snow that had drifted up against the boundary wall, he was frozen to the bone and soaking wet.

He lifted his head and did a quick 360-degree scan of the surrounding countryside. Everything was covered in snow, shading down to a soft pink in the dusk, the only contrasts some scattered trees, the stone wall he was hiding behind, and the village itself. Where two machine gun emplacements guarded the entrances of the lane that ran through its center.

Rossett had driven past the emplacement closest to the Cambridge road earlier. He’d then spent an hour getting lost in hidden country lanes before finally finding the other way into the village, and the other forbidding emplacement.

Coton was a typical English village, larger than the one he’d visited earlier when he had picked up the shotgun, but essentially the same: a single road dotted with thatched cottages on either side. The village widened slightly in the center, with a medieval church and graveyard.

He ducked down again, cupping his hands to his mouth and blowing some warmth into them. He looked around the field to his rear. There was a bit of cover from a few squat, fat-trunked trees that looked as old as the church, their winter-scrubbed branches scratching against the pink clouds in the sky. Rossett plotted an escape route.

He’d just have to hope there was enough light to see in case he had to get out quickly.

He counted about fifteen or twenty thatched cottages, slightly set apart from a larger whitewashed, three-story building on the edge of a courtyard beyond the church.

The biggest building in the village by far, so big it was about the size of all the other cottages put together, it had to be St. Catherine’s Hall.

Rossett made his way along the wall to where it intersected an untidy hedgerow, behind which was a drainage ditch of muddy water sheltered from the snow.

It occurred to him that this was the first time he’d visited the English countryside in years. He paused a moment and looked at the view around him. It was beautiful, edges softened, pink with the reflecting light off the heavy clouds. A gust of wind scratched Rossett’s face and he took a moment to savor the air, emptying his lungs of the smog of dark and damp London.

He thought of Great Britain before the war, the freedom to travel to places like this, no checkpoints, no papers, nobody watching and monitoring your movements.

He wished he’d treasured it more, especially now it was gone.

The wind whipped again.

He shivered, looked up, and focused on the now.

He was a soldier again, on a mission.

He carefully scanned his surroundings again, then hopped over the wall.

He stared at each house in turn, checking windows, checking if smoke was coming from chimneys. Looking for back doors, seeing which had curtains, which had light, who had transport, who had animals.

The place looked deserted.

It all came easy—hunting, fighting, killing. All the old instincts, all the old senses, lit up, ready for action.

He felt alive.

He slid back into the hedgerow, ducked down into the ditch, then started to slowly make his way toward the village. He was sheltered from the wind by the bushes; free of its buffeting, he could hear it raging above his head. He stopped again, listened, then crept to the edge of the bushes, finding that he was now less than twenty yards from the nearest house.

From his new position he could see that in the courtyard of the hall there were a couple of Opel staff cars and one larger, statelier Mercedes, the sort normally reserved for senior officers or VIPs.

Rossett could hear the flapping and slapping of the canvas of the Opel Blitz truck that was parked a short way down the lane. He couldn’t see any foot patrols but didn’t for a minute assume they weren’t there.

He couldn’t afford to.

The Mercedes meant there were officers about, and he’d spent enough time in the army to know that where there were officers, there were always privates trying to look busy. He slipped back into the bushes and flicked the powdery snow off his coat, then adjusted the shotgun, which was still hanging from his shoulder, out of sight. Even with his coat unbuttoned, the gun would be unseen until it was needed.

Rossett hoped it wouldn’t be needed.

He puffed out his cheeks before taking another look behind him. Then he made his way out of the hedgerow toward the back of the nearest house.

Each footstep through the snow made Rossett wince as though he had stepped on a mine. He’d forgotten the treachery of snow to the creeping soldier. It seemed that no matter how softly he placed his feet, driving in with his toes, balancing midstep, the snow seemed to crunch like dry celery.

He kept moving toward the house, now ten yards away. He had no plan, no tactics, and not much hope.

He thought about his friend Koehler, and about Koehler’s love for Anja and Lotte. Rossett remembered his wife and son, the love lost, never found again.

The memories flooded through his consciousness. Now wasn’t the time, he needed to focus. He reached the back wall of the cottage and realized his breathing was labored. He dug deep for oxygen and shook his head.

He swallowed, puffed out his cheeks silently, and rested his head against the cold stone wall of the cottage.

He wouldn’t let Koehler down. Rossett had nothing to lose, while his friend had everything. He’d do his best so that Koehler would keep the love that he himself had lost.

Rossett would right the wrong.

It was what he did.

He swallowed again, the moment passing, as he listened to the wind, which was howling now, blowing fast flurries of snow across the fields behind him.

Rossett moved so that he was at the edge of the building line, right next to the narrow lane. He dropped to one knee and checked the lane, then dodged back again.

It was empty; the whole village seemed empty.

He considered the situation.

He knew the scientists were here.

He knew they would be under guard and that the soldiers guarding them would also be living in the village.

If he were in charge, he’d keep everyone in the big hall. The best way to look after prisoners is to keep them where you can see them, and the hall looked big enough for a couple of platoons of men plus whomever they chose to guard.

He’d head for the hall and check it out.

Rossett crouched and looked around the corner of the house toward the western end of the lane. In the distance, at least 150 yards away, he saw one of the gun emplacements.

The soldiers there had lit a fire in a brazier; one of them was standing warming his hands facing toward Rossett, who pulled back quickly out of sight, not trusting the whipping snow to hide him.

He looked toward the church, fifty yards to his right on the same side of the road, surrounded by a low stone wall topped with snow.

He’d use the graveyard as cover.

Rossett ducked back to the field and then ran, bent at the waist, as quickly and as quietly as he could toward the church. It was an almost straight dash except for one low hedgerow, which he jumped over without breaking stride before he reached the graveyard boundary wall.

Once he had caught his breath, Rossett rolled over the top of the wall, landing with a soft crunch onto the snow on the other side. He lay still, the wind howling as he scanned for movement.

There was nothing, just pink, gray, and black, all sharp shapes and shadows, confusing his eyes as the snow flicked this way and that. Rossett squinted, taking time to let his heart rate drop after the run.

He rose to his haunches and checked the shotgun was still secure under his coat. He picked up a few handfuls of snow to smooth the gap he had disturbed on the top of the wall, then drew his Webley, his thumb on the hammer.

He moved through the headstones slowly, eyes flitting from the church to the road and then to the small vestry that lay a short distance to his right, just on the edge of the graveyard. Off on the other side of the village a dog started to bark at the night, its voice carrying on the wind. Rossett kept moving, listening, looking, living on his nerves.

He skirted the church around the back and found himself facing a small copse of trees. Somewhere behind him he heard music that sounded like it was coming from a radio. He turned his head, blinking against another flurry of snow, and saw a sliver of light angle to nothing as the front door closed at the vestry.

Rossett checked behind him, then dodged to a larger headstone, one that provided enough cover to allow him to stand upright.

He tried to see if whoever had opened the door had been coming or going. He tilted his head to listen.

All he could hear was the wind and the damn dog in the distance.

He dodged back behind the headstone, checking the lane and the village behind him, considering his next move.

He could see lights in the hall, but he could also see a sentry, wrapped up against the cold, standing at the front door under a solitary outside lamp that was swinging in the wind.

And then . . . there . . . on the edge of his senses, a smell. He lifted his nose like an animal. Pipe tobacco: it hadn’t been there before.

Rossett dropped down to a crouch, shoulder to the stone. He leaned out slightly to try to see the person who was smoking the pipe, but nothing moved, no shadows. There was nothing but the smell of tobacco.

Rossett shifted again to look to the other side of the stone, this time toward the church. All he could see were the black outlines of grave markers standing to attention like frozen stone soldiers in the snow.

He could just make out the dark wooden doors of the church chancellery against the stone blocks of the walls.

He squinted.

A shadow, almost lost in the shade of the door.

Did it move?

Rossett opened his eyes wide, and there, in front of him, someone was looking back, dressed in black, difficult to see against the doors but there, watching.

Rossett didn’t move. His heart pounded. The urge to advance flooded every part of his body, but he didn’t move.

Maybe the figure hadn’t seen him. Maybe it was just someone enjoying an evening smoke in the fresh air. Maybe it was someone checking the church was locked.

Maybe.

“Hey.” The figure spoke in English, hushed, but loud enough to carry across the forty feet to Rossett. “Hey, I’m here.”

Rossett thumbed the hammer on the Webley and set off across the graveyard at a sprint. Like a snow leopard, head down, Webley held low, he moved in for the kill.

He stopped.

An old man, at least seventy years old, stood with his back against the church doors, hands open in front of his chest, gesturing for Rossett to slow down.

The man gripped an old briar pipe in his teeth and watched as Rossett dropped to his knee, some six feet short of him, staring down the barrel of his pistol.

“You’ll wake up the entire village.”

Rossett lowered the gun an inch or two, but remained staring at the old man, who smiled in the half-light and lowered his hands a little.

“What are you doing out here creeping around?” the old man whispered. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Rossett didn’t reply,

“I didn’t get a call, so I’ve been sitting by the window watching.” The old man’s voice was weakening in the face of Rossett’s silence and his Webley.

“I’m a friend . . .” the man finally said, lowering his hands.

Rossett lifted the Webley and released the hammer with his thumb. A flurry of snow passed between them and the old man blinked, turning his head so that his lank, surprisingly long gray hair whipped around his face like long grass on a rocky outcrop.

The wind passed and the old man looked at Rossett again.

“I’m a friend.”

Rossett nodded.

The old man smiled.

“Come in here, quickly.” He turned and pushed at the church doors, opening one just wide enough to slip through. He was halfway inside when he looked at Rossett, gesturing that he should follow. “We haven’t got all night.”

Rossett looked around, rose up off his knee, then followed the old man into the church.

It was pitch black inside once the heavy wooden door closed behind him. The sound of the wind was still there, but now it seemed distant, up in the roof, away in the darkness. Rossett felt momentarily confused by the blackness and he rested one hand against the wooden door at his back. He thumbed the hammer on the pistol again and raised it next to his head, searching for a target.

A second passed, and a match flared and lit a candle to Rossett’s left, causing him to spin and face the light. The old man had moved quickly and quietly, always a dangerous combination.

The candle barely illuminated the inside of the building, and Rossett watched as the man smiled at him, then dipped a finger in a stone bowl containing holy water and fleetingly blessed himself.

Rossett lowered the Webley again. This time the sound of the hammer subsiding echoed around the empty church. The wind moaned in the rafters; Rossett looked up to where the shadows cast by the candlelight were dancing, and then back at the old man.

“I’m Frank James; I wasn’t sure with the weather if you’d be coming.” James tugged at the collar of his overcoat and undid the top button, revealing an Anglican dog collar under the coat.