The British Lion (39 page)

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 he 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

N
EUMANN 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.

“Let me have a look at him.”

Neumann struggled to his feet as the ambulance man lifted the scarf. Koehler’s eyes found Anja again; he smiled reassuringly.

He turned back to Neumann, and they both stood over March and the medic as he worked.

“You’ll have to tell them you were just trying to save your daughter.” Neumann started to put his hands in his pockets, but stopped when he noticed the blood on them.

“You think that’ll help me?”

Neumann leaned down, picking up two handfuls of snow. He massaged it into a ball, enjoying the cold. He wiped his bloodstained fingers on the ball and then broke it, before wiping his fingers through the now bloodstained powder and then dropping it again.

“You think the Gestapo will just say ‘Oh well, you had your reasons, don’t worry about it’?” Koehler tried again, leaning in closer to Neumann, watching him try to clean his hands. “Well, do you?”

Neumann flicked the melt water off his fingers, then wiped his hands on the front of his coat and across his backside before inspecting them again.

He held them up for Koehler to see.

“I just washed my hands of this.” Neumann walked away from Koehler, wandering across to the taxi to take a look at King, who was still sitting in the doorway.

Now quite thoroughly dead.

Neumann crouched down in front of King, looking into the American’s open but unseeing eyes.

Behind him he could hear another ambulance arriving. He turned as the crowd parted once more to allow it to slowly make its way toward Ma Price. Who was lying in the road on the other side of the cab, being helped by two British bobbies.

Neumann became aware of Koehler at his shoulder.

“We need to find the scientist,” Koehler said, voice raised just enough for Neumann to hear over the siren of the ambulance.

Neumann looked at him.

“You do what you have to do, just leave me out of it.”

“You’re already in it.”

“Do you think?”

“You’re in it because I say you are in it.”

They stared at each other until finally Neumann spoke, more quietly now, the siren having fallen silent.

“I was just doing my job.”

“I’ll tell them you knew what was going on. That you were involved in springing the scientist from the start.”

“They’ll never believe it.”

“They don’t have to believe it, they just have to suspect it. These are dangerous days, Neumann. You know what suspicion can do to a man.”

“Why would you do that? I’ve helped you; I’ve done all I can to make this work for you.”

“Because I need to fix the final loose ends. If I don’t, if this isn’t put to bed, Anja will lose me just the same as she lost her mother. She’ll be alone, and I won’t let my daughter be left on her own, not for anybody.”

Neumann swallowed, then looked over his shoulder at March, who was still being treated on the pavement. Neumann rubbed his index finger across his mustache and then slipped his hand into his pocket as he turned back to Koehler.

“Why would you do this to me?”

“I can’t have any loose ends, Neumann.”

“Rossett?”

“I’ll deal with Rossett.”

“And me?” Neumann tilted his head.

“Your involvement buys your silence. I know that. And if it doesn’t . . . don’t doubt me, Neumann, I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay with my child. You need to know that. I’ll drop you, your partner, my friend, whoever it takes to make it right.”

Neumann shook his head; he turned to look at March as he wiped the back of his hand across his own mouth.

“How are we meant to find Hartz now? They’ll be miles away. We don’t know their plans.”

“We don’t know the plan . . . but she does.” Koehler pointed at Ma Price, who was being carried to the back of the ambulance on a stretcher.

She was watching Koehler, staring at his outstretched finger, and as he turned to look at her she smiled.

“GET OUT,” KOEHLER
said to the bobby, who was sitting in the back of the ambulance, getting ready to escort Ma Price to the hospital.

“But my sarge said I was . . .” The bobby broke off as Neumann flashed his police ID.

“Please.” Neumann wearily gestured with his thumb to the open door. “Just go.”

The bobby picked up his helmet, nodded to Neumann, and then climbed out of the ambulance, closing the back doors behind him.

The medic who was working on Ma Price called through the gap between the front seats to the driver.

“Get going, Charlie. St. Bart’s Hospital.”

“Get up front,” Koehler said to the medic.

“I can’t leave her, she’s my patient.”

“Go sit up front,” Koehler said again.

“But—”

“Do it,” Koehler said flatly.

“Go on, my love, I’ll be all right.” Ma Price spoke for the first time as the ambulance started to move. “Go on; let me speak to the gentlemen.”

The medic looked at Neumann and then Koehler, then reluctantly squeezed through the gap to the front passenger seat. He sat side on, keeping an eye on Ma Price. Koehler gestured that he should face front, and the man sighed and acquiesced, folding his arms like a chastened schoolboy.

The siren of the ambulance started up again.

Koehler leaned in close to Price, keeping his voice low.

“How were you getting the scientist out of the country?”

Ma Price smiled at him but didn’t reply. The ambulance juddered, stopped, and then started to push through the traffic jam again, more slowly than before.

“Tell me how she is getting out and I can help you,” Koehler tried again.

“I never took your daughter. You know that, don’t you?” Price replied, staring straight into Koehler’s eyes.

“I know.”

“I found her, and I never harmed her. I fed her and kept her warm.”

“I believe you. Tell me what was going to happen to the scientist. I can help you if you do.”

Ma Price lowered her voice to a whisper, forcing Koehler to move in closer.

“We both know it isn’t me who needs helping, it’s you.”

Koehler sat back slightly; he glanced at Neumann and then leaned in again.

“I can make you tell me,” Koehler whispered.

Price smiled at him.

“No, you can’t, not by the time we get to the hospital. And if you think I’m wrong, you’re not the man I heard you were.”

They stared deep into each other’s eyes. Seconds passed before Price broke the silence.

“You tell these fellas to pull over once we’re well clear of the circus. You get your mate there to fetch me a taxi, then we’ll talk.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Well, I can’t talk, then, so you figure it out.”

Koehler slumped back into the jump seat the bobby had recently vacated. He rubbed a weary hand across his face, feeling the last few days crash in on him as he struggled to make sense of things.

His Anja, his love, the only thing he had left . . . he couldn’t lose her, and she couldn’t lose him. He remembered her face as he had shoved her into the arms of a young policeman, ordering that she should be taken to SS Group Command and left there until he returned.

He’d left her again, minutes after telling her he would never leave her again.

He’d lied.

He shook his head.

It felt heavy pushing into his hand.

The ambulance rocked slightly as it threaded through the last of the jam. He felt it picking up speed, the siren still sounding, making it hard for him to think.

He opened his eyes. Price and Neumann were watching him. He blinked slowly, then nodded.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” said Neumann.

“You get what you want.” Koehler ignored Neumann.

“What does she want? What does she get?” Neumann raised his voice, this time in German.

“Thank you, Major, and you’ll get what you want,” said Ma Price, all smiles.

“What are you doing, Koehler? What the hell are you doing?” Neumann, still in German.

The ambulance was traveling at speed now, the siren switching off and on intermittently as traffic dictated. Koehler leaned forward and took position behind the front seats, resting his hands on their backs as he looked through the windscreen.

He waited half a minute, then said, “Pull over.”

“What?” The driver looked at his colleague, who in turn looked at Koehler.

“Pull over.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“But . . . but she’s been shot. We need to get her to hospital.”

“Stop the ambulance here.”

Koehler was still looking out the windscreen, but now his Mauser was in his right hand, resting on the back of the driver’s seat, inches from the driver’s head.

“Stop,” the medic said to the driver, who eased to the side of the road.

“Thank you,” Koehler said quietly.

“We need to get her to the hospital.”

“Get her some dressings and whatever else you have here to help her.” Koehler turned back to Ma Price.

“Ernst, what the hell are you doing?” Neumann was out of his seat now, still speaking in German.

“Saving our lives,” Koehler replied in English, as he helped Ma Price into a sitting position on the side of the stretcher. “Go stop a taxi.”

Ma Price’s head was bowed slightly, one hand pressing against the fresh bandage on her shoulder.

“Please, Erhard, go get her a taxi,” in German this time, softly.

Neumann swept a hand across the top of his head and then spun, almost kicking the back doors of the ambulance open.

The cold air off the street rushed in, and Ma Price visibly shivered as she gingerly lowered her feet onto the floor. She stood, one hand on his arm, head still bowed. A second passed, and then she looked up and smiled at him.

“I knew you’d see sense, Mr. Koehler.”

“You lie to me, I’ll find you and then I’ll kill you.”

“Help me out the back.”

“Don’t doubt me, woman.”

“Yes, yes, now help me out the back. We ain’t got much time.”

With the medic’s help, Koehler led Ma Price down the two steps and out onto the pavement.

He gestured to the ambulance man.

“Give her your coat.”

“I have to pay for this.”

“You’ll pay for it if you don’t.”

The ambulance man reluctantly slipped out of his overcoat, and then gently placed it across Ma Price’s shoulders.

“You’ll get it back,” she said as she took a few steps unaided away from the ambulance, toward where Neumann was standing next to a black taxi.

Passersby were watching but not stopping as Koehler followed Ma Price. His hand hovered an inch from her, ready to catch her in case she fell. She shuffled through the snow to the taxi as Neumann opened the back door.

“She’s been shot, Ernst,” Neumann said in German as Koehler helped push Ma Price up into the back of the cab. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I’ve been shot before, I’ll most likely be shot again,” Ma Price surprised them by replying in excellent German. She sank into the seat with a sigh, helped down by Koehler, who sat next to her.

Ma Price puffed out her cheeks, catching her breath, watching the driver, who was staring back in his mirror, a look of concern on his face.

“Oooh, it does sting a bit, mind,” she finally said, looking at Koehler. “Open the window and get out.”

Koehler looked at Neumann, who was still by the door, then gestured that he should move back and make space.

Once Koehler was outside, leaning his head through the open window, Ma Price spoke again.

“We could do with some privacy?”

Koehler banged on the glass partition, causing the driver to turn and look at him.

“Get out.”

“You what?”

“Get out of the taxi, we need privacy.”

The driver rolled his eyes, cursing himself and his bad luck for stopping by an ambulance. He climbed out of the cab and stood next to Neumann on the pavement.

“So?” Koehler leaned back in through the window.

“The Yanks, Kennedy especially, they don’t want the scientist anymore. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I’ll wager it’s because they don’t want to upset you lot.” Price took a deep breath and put her hand to her shoulder again, this time under the overcoat. “I was told to kill her, Ruth Hartz, but I wasn’t going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because she was worth more to me alive than she was dead.”

“You were going to sell her?”

“I wanted to. I was going to buy my way out with her, out of this shithole.”

“Who was going to buy her?”

Ma Price smiled sadly, considering her words carefully.

“Nobody must know I told you this.”