A Necessary Hell

by Nigel Price

  Gutman’s house in Bavaria was the fruit of his labours. It was the place he had dreamed of when a boy. Somewhere that was his. A retreat from the world. His private castle. And indeed it was a castle. Incredible as that sometimes still seemed to him, he had bought his own fucking castle. Schloss Winterberg.

  It sat on the top of a forested hill in the mountains down in the south, a short way from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Insecure and frightened as a boy, he had fought his way out of the fear. Now he had people to guard him and ease his passage through the world. He rarely had to get his hands dirty these days. Just now and then. That was what you had guards for. Hard men. Both here in the grounds of his estate and out there in the field. Everywhere that his business interests operated. And it was a very broad field.

  He was outside. The evening air was fresh in the mountains. He loved it. The sharpness and cleanness of it washed off all the shit that accumulated during the course of the day’s activities. He loved to suck it deep into his lungs and feel it scour his insides.

  Christian Schuler had been on the phone again. The Englishman had been round asking questions. Which gave Gutman a question of his own. What to do about it?

  Of all the stupid things to happen. A fucking hand. In a fucking wheelbarrow. And a fucking nosey English bastard. Each on its own was a freak occurrence. But coming together – what was the chance of that? He didn’t doubt there was some probability attached to it, but that was all by the by.

  He had been inclined to leave it alone. Let the man ask around. Gutman’s men had done a good job so far keeping it nice and low key. Stringing the Brit along. Except that idiot Lipman. What the hell had he been thinking? Gutman knew he was dangerous. Unbalanced even. In due course that might be needed.

  The phone rang. Gutman sighed and looked at it. The call had come to his mobile. It spun and twitched on the garden table, skittering about like a giant fly with the wings and legs pulled off. Reluctantly he put it to his ear.

  He listened, expressionless. It was a long message, full of excuses.

  His inclination was to let rip. Instead he took a deep breath and asked, “So what do you both recommend?”

  He listened again. Another long spiel. This time options and ideas. Nearly all of them stupid. “Okay,” Gutman said at last, cutting it short. “Enough. Give me a moment.”

  He held the phone in his lap and took another breath of the clean mountain air. The blasted fox was being slaughtered again. He’d get his gun out tomorrow and kill the bastard. He looked up. There were stars through the breaks in the cloud. He wished it was a wholly clear night, but you couldn’t have everything.

  He returned to the phone. “Okay. Tell him to go with his option. But it has to be clean. No more fuck-ups.”

  More excuses and reasons. Nothing was ever the caller’s fucking fault. Again Gutman cut him short. “Just tell him to do it. And tell me when it’s done. If it fails then try your option. If that fails, jump off a fucking cliff. Both of you.” He heard nervous laughter. “That wasn’t a fucking joke by the way.”

  He killed the call and put the phone back on the table. Actually he wanted to hurl it out into space and let the darkness take it. It would land somewhere deep down below where the forest would swallow it. What good would that do? Problems needed solutions. It never worked just to bury your head in the sand and hope it would go away. Never.

  The Englishman wouldn’t go away. Gutman felt it in his bones. Hence the call.

  He went back towards the door leading inside. The old thirst was back, the scratch that need itching. He would go down to the cellar. That was where he kept his finest wine. A beautiful new one only recently laid down.

  As he plodded down the worn steps into the deepening cool of the subterranean stone, he pondered on the instructions he had just issued. It would either work or it wouldn’t. If it did, then all well and good. It would be over.

  And if it didn’t? Well, then it might be time to unleash some of the boys. Let them do what they did best. And God help anyone who got in their way.

  ****

  Harry arrived at Haus Fischer full of pizza and fizzy drinks, one of which had been a beer that Thomas had brought him from the kitchen with great ceremony. Ingrid had watched, taking it all in, liking what she saw. Harry knew because she had said so when she had gone out to the car with him. It had been late, the ring in his pocket forgotten as the evening had become ever more fun. For the first time in ages, Harry had felt himself relaxing. Really relaxing. Properly. And without the effort of a meditation cushion or Zen procedures. This had been easy and fun.

  The drive back to Haus Fischer had zipped by, Harry driving on auto-pilot. He also found that every mile further he went from Haus Weber, so to speak, he felt as if he was attached to it by an invisible elastic band. It wanted to snap him back. It was becoming ever tauter the closer he got to his big empty room and his cold hard bed. The image of Ingrid that stuck in his mind was the one he had glimpsed in the mirror as he had pulled away. Standing at the roadside in front of her house, arms folded across her chest, watching him go. One hand had popped out to give the tiniest wave, and then arms had been folded again.

  Instead of going straight to his room, Harry found Herr Fischer behind his bar cleaning up. He ordered a double Scotch. Single malt.

  “How about Glenlivet for a change?” he said, and was impressed that Herr Fischer got the irony, wagging his finger at his guest’s world class humour.

  Harry’s usual brand duly arrived, two large chunks of ice starting to work on it.

  He selected a chair out on the terrace. Then, on second thoughts got up and walked down the steps and along the path to the waterside. He sat down in the same wicker chair he had been in the previous morning before his life had switched course away from the plan. Unexpected changes like that could be fun. They could also be utterly shit. Which Harry reckoned pretty much covered the options.

  He sat down and stretched out his legs, putting his feet back on the low stone wall. He stared out across the vast blackness of the lake-cum-reservoir. He preferred to think of it as a lake. Reservoir didn’t do it justice, and the thought of the dam holding back all that water seemed unnatural. Which of course it was. As a handful of bouncing bombs had once demonstrated.

  He took the first sip of his nicely chilled Scotch, reached into his pocket and took out the ring.

  His instinct had been right. Again. The creature had de-gloved the finger to get at the ring. There was a dark stain the colour of old blood around it, and a shred of something on the inside that might have been the tiniest remnant of dried skin. Harry wiped it away, pushing from his mind the thought that it had been part of the man who had lived and breathed and hurt. Certainly hurt. The glimpse of frostbite confirmed that. Harry had been out at night on dark mountains fighting to survive until dawn and the return of the sun. He knew about frostbite. The man had hurt all right.

  The body of the ring was silver, but dirty and old so it looked more like pewter. Harry was no expert on jewellery. The interesting bit was the item that was set into it. Was it called the ‘head’? He thought so. His whole attention drilled into it, eyes grilling the trinket in his hand. He set aside his Scotch to study it better.

  It was a gold coin. He angled it towards the light coming from the hotel behind him. A gold coin set in a ring of silver.

  A smile spread across his face. He knew this. He recognised the image. He had known it since an eager teenager with a love of history. Above all, military history. The image on the coin was of Alexander the Great.

  “Wow.”

  The word popped into the fresh night air like a firefly. It so perfectly caught his excitement that he repeated it. “Wow.”

  He rubbed a finger across the golden image. Perhaps a genie would appear, swearing fealty to him and granting three wishes. What would they be?

  Another Scotch. A cigar. Ingrid or ownership of the Jag? No contest.

  “Fucking wow.”

  Although he coul
dn’t be certain, something deep in his bones told him it was genuine. An original. What would it be worth? Not millions. Thousands perhaps. So not a fortune, but not insignificant either.

  Gold. Alexander the Great. One of Harry’s heroes. How many times had he read Xenophon’s The Campaigns of Alexander? One of history’s greatest generals and commanders. One of history’s greatest humans. Unless you were a Persian. A man who had flown too close to the sun and who had died young as a consequence. And here he was in Harry’s palm. His helm pushed back on his head to reveal his face. The aquiline nose, the firm chin, the eyes that had looked upon Persepolis burning, the Granicus, the mighty Indus. A man who had travelled to the very edge of the known world, and wanted even more.

  Harry felt the breath go out of him. He slumped back in his chair and let the ice cold Scotch work on his imagination.

  Which was when another, wholly unrelated thought popped into his head. His brow creased with the effort. It was no good. The long day and the fine single malt had satnav’d his memory into a cul-de-sac.

  He slipped the ring carefully into his pocket, retrieved his feet from the wall and made his way back up to the hotel, draining his glass on the way.

  Passing the bar he looked for Herr Fischer. Nowhere to be seen. So he helped himself to another double – well, a quadruple, seeing as he was unobserved – and made his way up to his room. He would settle with Herr Fischer in the morning.

  He threw his jacket onto the bed and went across to the desk. He took out his file with the original brief that he had been given before starting his work on the project. He leafed through the sheets of paper until he found what he was looking for. He ran a finger down the relevant page. A list of names. He stopped at one. Another smile. Bit more sardonic than the one that had greeted Alexander the Great.

  His finger lay beside one name in the short list of names who, between them, owned the Soest-Erwitte Airport. The name was Heinz Gutman.

  Heinz Gutman, who owned Portland Aviation that sold second-hand aircraft that fell out of the sky, was the largest shareholder of Soest-Erwitte airport. The airport where Harry had been engaged to run an Emergency Response Exercise that had gone swimmingly.

  Like clockwork in fact. Until Alexander the Great had also fallen from the sky.

  Now where the hell did that lead?

  Fifteen

  Harry slept like a log. He suspected the quadruple Glenlivet might have had something to do with it, coming on top of the double served to him by Herr Fischer. Then the bottle he kept in his room. The tom-tom drums banging in his head were the clue.

  Light was pushing through the tightly drawn curtains when he dared to open one eye. Instantly it was inside his brain, dancing to the music. His skull was hosting a rave.

  He groaned. He closed his eye again, reuniting it with its twin in the comfortable solace of darkness.

  It was not to be. At that moment a refuse truck was making a meal of emptying the hotel bins right outside his window.

  He groaned louder and threw off his duvet. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and with superhuman effort pushed himself upright. His head sank into his hands which stopped it from falling between his knees and onto the floor. For a moment he wondered where he was. Then he remembered. Haus Fischer and everything else followed in due course.

  Coffee. He badly needed coffee. It would have to wait.

  He zombie-walked into the shower where needles of scalding water punctured his skin, then downed three glasses of the cold version to rehydrate while dripping in front of the shaving mirror that he didn’t dare look at.

  A run. That was it. Old habits and all that. For years that was how he had started each day in the army. Rolling out of bed into press-ups – which he had forgotten this morning – then a run.

  Frau Fischer was vacuuming the carpet in Reception when he went past. She looked up and smiled at him. He winced at the noise of the vacuum cleaner, went quickly out onto the terrace and down to the water’s edge.

  First he did some stretches. Hamstrings, calf muscles, quads and so on. He wasn’t particularly methodical and didn’t know much about the science of it. He just knew what he’d been taught. The methodology had probably been out-of-date even then. Harry didn’t care. It worked for him and would do until he finally went belly-up and died.

  Thus cheered, he turned in the direction of the footbridge and set off, walking the first fifty metres before breaking into a shambling motion that bore some resemblance to running. He shook out his arms, hands loose, fingers flexing.

  There was a fresh breeze brushing through the upper boughs of the trees on his left. On his right the water ruffled into small waves. He reached the footbridge and swung onto it. The narrow concrete pathway extended before him right across to the far side of the reservoir, straight as an arrow, waist-high railings bordering either side. The water lapped against the concrete legs ten feet below.

  Harry looked about. He steadied into his stride, his particular style taking command of his limbs. Loose and easy. Mr Easy. That was him.

  On the far side of the lake, the tree-covered slopes rose out of the water to no great height, just gentle undulations which rolled away into the Arnsberger Wald with its deer and wild boar. It was virgin forest, descendent of the vast swathes which had been there since Germanic tribes tore apart the Roman legions that ventured into it. Once, the Teutoburg Forest had covered the whole north of the country. Harry thought of the Roman legionnaires, cut off, formations broken, fighting for their lives. If lucky they died fighting. If not, taken prisoner and subjected to all kinds of hell.

  That said, the forest didn’t belong to them. It was always a bad day when the Romans turned up. They made the Nazis look like kindergarten kids on a field trip.

  He was well across the footbridge, legs and lungs working as expected. His head had cleared, the tom-toms muffled by the tide of fresh air washing through him. He increased his pace, stride lengthening. Then out of nowhere came a sprint. He powered down the bridge, knees coming up higher as if stepping on hot coals. He realised he must have looked ridiculous, but there was no one about to witness it. And it felt good, all his limbs working hard.

  He reached the far side. The bridge came to an end in a small open paved area with a sign board. On it was a map – You are here – and pictures of the wildlife and flora to be found in the surrounding woods.

  Harry stopped and sucked in air at the end of his long sprint. He dropped down and did thirty press-ups. Stood and shook out his arms and shoulders, then dropped into a second set of thirty. Shook those out too.

  He stood, hands on hips, heart and lungs recovering. Where to now? A short way along the road circling the lake, he knew of a forest track penetrating deep into the woodland. That was what he needed.

  He started along the road. The track split off to the left about five hundred yards further on. There was no pavement here, trees coming down to a grass verge at the road’s edge on one side, the ground dropping sheer down to the water on the other.

  With the initial cobwebs swept from his head, there was room for other stuff. Nothing came apart from butchered Romans. So he left his mind empty.

  It was because it was empty that he caught the sound of the car earlier than he would otherwise have done. It was the first he had heard so far that day. A glance over his shoulder showed a big 4x4. Something black and chunky. Probably driven by a dick with a small dick.

  He realised he should have been running with face to the oncoming traffic. Back home, he would have been. Cars on the left and all that. It wasn’t important. He just pulled over to the edge of the drop where the road became gravel, then rocks down to the water lapping at the bottom. The car was coming up behind him. Harry’s left arm waved it past. Plenty of room. All nice and friendly.

  He glanced once more, mind still in neutral.

  The car was hugging the edge, coming right at him. It put on a spurt of power. The fat right hand tyre was half over the drop. Harry was road-kill.
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  For a second he snatched a look at the far, tree-bordered side of the road. There was no time to switch sides. And if the driver woke up, saw him and swerved, he’d catch Harry dead centre of the road with nowhere to jump. The bastard was probably on his mobile, not looking. With any luck he’d go clean over the edge and into the water.

  The incline of the rock face put the water out of reach for a dive into the lake. Harry would end up smashing into the jagged boulders.

  A spindly sapling had taken root amongst the rocks. The same height as Harry, it leaned precariously out from the side at a forty-five degree angle. Harry measured the distance, put on a spurt of his own and flung himself at it. The car shot past. The wing mirror clipped his upper arm. The wash of air and noise of the motor blasted past him. Intent on the sapling, Harry didn’t have time to get a look at the driver. He grabbed the sapling with both hands and swung clear of the road, feet flying out over the water.

  “Arschloch!” he shouted. He watched the car shoot on down the road, willing it to go over the edge. It didn’t. It recovered and carried on.

  “Fucking arsehole,” Harry muttered. He just hoped the driver had had as big a shock as he had. It would have been nice if the guy had stopped to check he was all right and apologise, but Harry wasn’t surprised. The driver probably had a shrewd idea that Harry would punch his lights out.

  He stretched his legs back towards the road’s edge, his feet made contact and he scrabbled and lurched until able to swing himself back onto firm ground. The sapling had held his weight but didn’t look as if it had enjoyed the experience. Harry examined his left upper arm. There was a red welt across the triceps muscle which would sting for a bit, but nothing more serious than that.