Ratlines

by Stuart Neville

  Mrs. Highland watched the girl’s fingers knotting together.

  Skorzeny leaned forward. “Miss Hume, if you have neglected to tell me something, I will be most disappointed.”

  Mrs. Highland stood. She spoke with a tremor in her voice. “Mister … I’m sorry, what was your name?”

  “Skorzeny,” he said, also standing. “Colonel Otto Skorzeny.”

  “Mr. Skorzeny, I don’t think I like your tone. I don’t know what your business here really is, but Miss Hume is under my care, and I can see you have made her nervous. I don’t like it, and you are not welcome in my house. I would very much appreciate it if you would leave now.”

  Skorzeny could not keep the smile from his lips.

  “Of course, madame. Please forgive my intrusion. I will see myself out.”

  He walked to the parlour door, turned, spoke to Celia. “Miss Hume, please do call me if you should realise you know where Lieutenant Ryan is after all. I would be most grateful.”

  She stared ahead, silent and still, save for the sharp rise and fall of her chest.

  Skorzeny exited through the hall onto the street. He checked his watch and decided to head to one of the better hotels for dinner.

  Perhaps the Shelbourne or the Royal Hibernian. Their food was at least tolerable.

  His appetite roused.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  THE VAN LEFT again just before seven in the evening, this time with the three men on board, Carter at the wheel. When they returned, darkness had come, and the streetlights glowed.

  Ryan reached for his field glasses.

  The men smiled and laughed, even Carter. Wallace grinned as he talked, his hands telling stories.

  Saturday night. Ryan guessed they had gone out for dinner and a few pints. Even when stationed in a combat zone, men needed to unwind. Perhaps the excursion would ease Wallace’s itch. But Ryan also knew Carter would keep them in check, not let a relaxing drink become anything more.

  The men entered the house, and Ryan saw lights come on behind the newspaper that covered the insides of the windows. Within fifteen minutes, they had been extinguished, and the house stood in darkness.

  Ryan checked his watch.

  Eleven o’clock.

  He burrowed into his nest, confident the men he watched had settled for the night. He tightened his jacket around him, placed the backpack beneath his head for a pillow. The sounds of the streets soothed him, the dogs barking, the distant shouting of drunken men, the begrudged lovemaking of the couple in the house nearest to him.

  Ryan closed his eyes.

  THE EARLY TRAIN woke him again, the roar pulling him from his dreams like a greasy tentacle, throwing him down in the ivy, a disorienting sense of weightlessness as his consciousness reassembled.

  First Ryan looked for the van, saw it in the alley, then he crawled away from his hiding place to make his toilet. That done, he took the last of the bread and the nub of cheese from the backpack and ate his breakfast. The coffee had long since gone cold. He grimaced at the taste. Stubble abraded his fingers as he scratched his chin.

  Sunday morning stretched on, few residents venturing onto the street to break the monotony of Ryan’s vigil. He yawned, flexed his fingers and toes, made up games to pass the time. Naming the birds he saw, laying bets on the colours of any cars he heard approaching.

  No one came or went from the house.

  His small supply of food had gone, and by the time noon crawled towards one o’clock, his stomach growled. For hours he had endured the smell of frying bacon, eggs and bread drifting from the houses all around. Had the corner shop opened, he might have risked leaving his position to buy something, but it remained stubbornly closed for the day.

  Then something began to happen.

  A trickle of men and boys, walking along Fitzroy Avenue and Jones’s Road, drawing to the stadium. Some carried flags and banners, blue in colour.

  Of course, Sunday, a football match at Croke Park. Ryan did not follow sports, including those governed by the Gaelic Athletic Association, but he knew the season was under way, and the National Football League was gathering pace. Dublin must be playing at home.

  The streams of men and boys swelled, became rivers. Hundreds gathered around the stadium, filtering through the entrances, waiting shoulder to shoulder in the streets for their turn to go into the grounds.

  By two o’clock, the crowds had mostly been absorbed by the stadium, and their noise boomed within, the voices raised and expectant. A sudden hush, then an explosion of cheers, and Ryan knew the game had begun.

  He listened to the waves, a sea of voices, falling and rising with the currents of the match. Ryan imagined he lay on a beach, ivy for sand, the water lapping at the shore of his mind. His eyelids grew heavy, his head leaden with tiredness. He fought it, pushing the slumber back, but still it came, as inevitable as the tides.

  Ryan drifted, found himself on the tiny cove he had discovered on the Sicilian island of Ortigia, the smooth stones and pebbles warm beneath his body, the glassy shallows reflecting brilliant sunlight.

  The sound of the van’s doors closing shocked him awake. His eyes struggled for focus. He lifted the field glasses.

  All three of them in the van, Carter driving again.

  Ryan shrank back into the ivy as the van reached the end of the alleyway below him. Carter pulled out onto the road, turned right, heading north. The engine strained as the van gathered speed. Soon, its clatter and thrum faded, drowned in the noise from the stadium.

  Now, Ryan thought.

  He stashed his belongings into the backpack, tucked it beneath the ivy, and climbed out of his hiding place. His joints and muscles protested, affronted at being asked to move after remaining still for so long. He crossed the tracks, descended the embankment on the other side, and dropped down from the wall onto the footpath. Checking for witnesses, he walked under the bridge and into the mouth of the alley.

  Ryan kept tight to the yard walls, hidden from the rear windows of the houses as he approached the patch of oil-stained ground, the cigarette butts scattered.

  He reached the gate, tried it, found it locked as he expected. It stood only a few inches taller than him. He reached up, grabbed the top edge, jammed his foot against the wood, and hauled himself up and over.

  Dropping to the concrete on the other side, he saw an empty yard, too clean to belong to a house that civilians lived in. None of the detritus of family life cluttered the corners, no old prams left out to rot, no bicycles propped on the walls.

  Ryan crossed to the outside toilet and pushed back the door. It smelled like it had been used not long before, but it was clean, squares of newspaper hanging from a peg by the bowl, a bottle of bleach on the floor.

  He went to the back of the house. Like the upstairs windows, both the kitchen window and the glass pane in the door had been covered over by newspaper on the inside. He tried the door handle, knowing it was pointless, then attempted to squeeze his fingertips under the kitchen’s sash window. It wouldn’t shift, solid in its frame. Nailed shut, he guessed.

  Ryan stood back, studied the building, thinking through his options. There was no way to force entry into the house without leaving a trace of himself. So why bother being subtle?

  He took the Walther from its holster and slammed the butt against the pane. The fragments cut through the newspaper, fell inside. He used the pistol’s muzzle to clear the rest of the glass and newspaper away from the wood before returning it to its holster and gripping the sides of the opening.

  Ryan hauled himself up and in, climbed over the sink, and lowered his feet to the tiled floor. The small kitchen smelled of stale food, the odours of meals long past. A selection of pots stood on the cooker, mismatched plates stacked on a small table, a cardboard box packed with potatoes, onions, cabbages, and carrots.

  No pictures hung from the painted over nails on the walls. The floor had been swept, the surfaces wiped down, but dust clung to the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling.
The kind of clean that would not satisfy a woman.

  Ryan opened the cupboards and drawers in turn and found them empty, save for a handful of utensils and a supply of tinned food.

  He went to the door that led to the lounge, opened it, and stood there, taking it in.

  In the light edging around the blanket suspended across the window, Ryan’s eyes were drawn first to the corkboard mounted above the fireplace, and the photographs pinned to it. From the threshold he could make out several black and white images of Otto Skorzeny, two of them portraits, the rest taken from a distance, candid shots of the Austrian in the city or on his farm.

  Ryan stepped into the room and approached the board. He scanned the rest of the photographs, some he recognised, others he didn’t, but each image carried the name of its subject. Hakon Foss, Célestin Lainé, Catherine Beauchamp, Johan Hambro, Alex Renders.

  All of them dead except for Skorzeny and Lainé.

  In the top corner, a hand-drawn map of the land surrounding Skorzeny’s home, lines of attack drawn in red, each marked with a name: Carter, Wallace, Gracey, MacAuliffe.

  Four names.

  He had only seen three men enter or leave the house. Where was the fourth?

  Ryan held his breath and listened.

  Nothing stirred. If anyone was here, they would have been alerted by the breaking glass. They would have already come to investigate.

  He let the air out of his lungs and continued exploring the items pinned to the board.

  At the bottom, to the right, a sheet of notepaper.

  Alain Borringer

  Heidegger Bank

  A/C 50664

  Beneath the account digits, a telephone number written in a thicker pencil. Ryan guessed it to be Swiss.

  The same bank Skorzeny held his funds in.

  Ryan thought of Weiss. Was he everything he said he was? Or more? Could Haughey be right? Could the Mossad have some hand in this?

  He toured the rest of the room. Bare floorboards. A couch facing the corkboard, two armchairs that did not match, and an upturned crate for a table in the centre, an old typewriter resting on it. A transistor radio sat on the floor in the corner. No telephone.

  Ryan exited into the small hallway, no more than a yard square between the front door and the bottom of the stairs. He mounted the steps and climbed. Three doors at the top. One stood open, showing a pair of cots, thin mattresses on low metal-framed beds, the kind Ryan had slept on for much of his career.

  He stepped inside onto the bare floor. The room, like downstairs, was clean, but it had the stale and bitter odour of men. Each bed’s blankets lay neatly folded at the foot, a wash bag placed on top. A photograph of a naked girl, cut from a magazine, was taped to the wall above one. Another crate served as a table between the cots. Two duffel bags sat propped in the corner.

  The place felt and smelled like a barracks. Ryan wished it were untrue, but it made him homesick for his quarters in Gormanston Camp.

  He left the room, crossed the small landing to the first closed door. It opened outward to reveal an airing cupboard containing towels and bedclothing.

  And four automatic rifles, a Smith & Wesson revolver, and two Browning HP semi-automatic pistols, both of which had been adapted for the suppressors that lay beside them, nestled in an oily cloth.

  “Jesus,” Ryan said.

  He closed the cupboard and turned to the last door. It creaked as it opened. This bedroom was much like the other, except for the man lying on the farthest cot, sweat forming a glossy sheen on his skin, his right arm tied in a splint, his fingers stained deep red with blood.

  The man stared at Ryan, his eyes struggling for focus, his mouth open.

  Ryan saw the first aid kit on the crate by the bed, the small brown bottle, the syringe.

  Morphine.

  “Hallo,” the man said, the consonant L soft like cotton.

  He lay naked from the waist up, skinny, two days stubble on his chin, no more than thirty five years old. A tiny spot of blood on the inside of his left forearm, a needle track.

  Ryan took the Walther from its holster, held it at his side.

  The man laughed, drool bubbling on his lip. “What’s that for?”

  He had a Scottish accent, maybe Glasgow, it was too blunted by the morphine to be sure.

  “Just in case,” Ryan said. “Are you Gracey or MacAullife?”

  His brow creased. “What’s going on? Who … Where’s my …”

  Ryan entered the room and sat down on the bed opposite the man. “What’s your name?”

  “Tommy,” he said. “My mam wanted to call me James, but my old man said, naw, he’s Tommy. I’m thirsty.”

  A half-full mug of water sat on the crate. Ryan lifted it, brought the rim to Tommy’s lips, let him drink until he coughed. He splattered water over his bare chest.

  Ryan returned the cup to the crate. “What happened to your arm?”

  Tommy looked down at the splint, the purple and yellow skin, the blood. His eyes widened as if he had not been aware of his injury.

  “I fell,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “In the trees. I was running. I fell. It fucking hurts.”

  “At Otto Skorzeny’s farm?”

  Tommy grinned. “We’ll scare the shite out of him.”

  Ryan returned his smile. “That’s right.”

  “We’re going to be rich, boys.”

  Ryan felt the smile crumble on his lips. “Yes, we are.”

  He thought of the account number scrawled on the notepaper downstairs.

  Tommy tried to sit up. “Did you send the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Ryan wondered if he should push the limits of Tommy’s delusions any further. “He hasn’t answered yet. What was in the letter?”

  Tommy smiled, waved the forefinger of his left hand at Ryan. “Ah, you know.” He tapped the side of his nose with the same finger. “You know, boy.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me.”

  “The gold.” Tommy scowled as if talking to a wilfully stupid child. “The fucking gold.”

  “How much gold?”

  “Fucking millions, boy. We’ll all be rich.”

  Ryan stood, his mind churning. Outside, the roar of the stadium rolling through the street.

  When the other three men returned, they would see the broken window, know their lair had been discovered. They would surely clear out. What few belongings they had would fit into their van. They would simply load it up and leave. Ryan guessed they could clear the house within five minutes, probably less.

  And go where?

  They would not abandon their mission and flee the country, Ryan was positive of that. Too much blood had been shed to quit now.

  Think, think, think.

  If Ryan had been running this mission, he’d have had a backup place, another house in another part of the city. He would get there as fast as he could.

  A wave of nauseous fear washed over him. He was out of his depth. He should have told Weiss what he knew, allowed the Mossad agent to take over.

  Ryan knew full well what the Isreali would have done if he were here. He would have executed the injured man, lain in wait for the others, and killed them when they returned. That would have been the end of it. Ryan could tell Skorzeny and Haughey the threat has disappeared.

  All over, just like that.

  Could Ryan do such a thing? He had killed men before. More than he could count. But that had been war. Could he kill men for their greed?

  No, he could not.

  Yes, he could.

  Ryan grabbed the Walther’s slide assembly and chambered a round. He aimed at the centre of Tommy’s forehead.

  Tommy stared up at him, his eyes suddenly clear.

  “No,” he said, his voice dry and thin like paper.

  Ryan put pressure on the trigger, felt its resistance.

  “No. Please.”

  Dizziness swept over Ryan’s forehea
d. He blinked it away. Breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. Another rush of noise from the stadium.

  “God, please, don’t.”

  Ryan thought of Celia and the warmth of her body against his. “Christ,” he said.

  He lowered the pistol, his hand shaking.

  Tommy’s chest rose and fell, his gaze locked on Ryan’s. “Thank you,” he said.

  Ryan went to reply, though he did not know what words he had for this man, but the sound of a key in a lock trapped the breath in his lungs.

  The opening of a door below, its banging against a wall.

  A harsh whisper, a demand for silence.

  Ryan looked back down at Tommy, put his fingers to his lips, shush.

  He moved towards the bedroom door, mindful of creaks from the bare floorboards. Stepping out onto the landing, he peered over the banister and listened. He could hear nothing but the noise of the crowds echoing down the street outside.

  Then he saw a shadow move on the patch of floor visible inside the lounge.

  Ryan stepped back into the bedroom.

  Tommy called, “Here! He’s up here!”

  Ryan closed the door, slid the small bolt across.

  Quick footsteps on the stairs.

  Ryan smashed the window pane with the butt of the pistol, swept the muzzle around the frame to clear the fragments, and holstered the Walther as he slipped one leg through.

  The door rattled in its frame, once, twice.

  Ryan forced his other leg through, let his body follow. He saw the door burst inward, Carter barrelling through, as he let go of the ledge and dropped to the ground.

  The pavement slammed into him hard, jarring first his ankles, then his shoulder as he landed on his side. Ryan cried out, rolled onto his belly, clambered to his feet as he heard a key working the lock of the front door.

  He ran.

  Behind him, the door opened, and footsteps thudded on the road. Ryan ducked left and right, keeping his head low.

  “There!” he heard. “Get him!”

  The footsteps hammered the road surface. Ryan skidded right and dived towards the shadow under the railway bridge.