The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  Rossett leaned down, picked up one of the wineglasses, and took a drink, eyes still on the corridor where Meyer was getting dressed.

  “Where is the bottle?” he asked Ruth, and she leaned around the far side of the couch and produced a half-­empty bottle of red.

  He took the bottle and drank straight out of it before looking at the label.

  He turned to the doorway as Meyer finally reappeared, pulling his suspenders over his undershirt and holding his shirt in his hand.

  Meyer stopped, unsure of Rossett, who gestured to the couch with the bottle.

  “Sit.”

  Meyer did as he was told, and Rossett noted how he adopted almost the exact same posture as Ruth, both sitting close, shoulders touching.

  “What is going on here?”

  “We’re lovers.” Ruth looked up at Rossett.

  “I love her,” Meyer said, looking at Ruth.

  “He can’t come.” Rossett broke up the party.

  “I can help.” Meyer looked up, still holding the shirt in his hands.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Rossett said.

  “He’s helped me here,” Ruth interjected.

  “I don’t care if he does your washing, he’s not coming.”

  “But I love her . . .”

  Rossett ripped the dog collar from around his throat.

  “What happens when you get to London? What happens when the Americans won’t take you?”

  Ruth looked at Meyer. “But he’ll help us get there.”

  “And then what if the Yanks say no? He can’t just come back here and say it was all a big mistake. For someone who is supposed to be intelligent, you’re being rather stupid.”

  “I want to be with Ruth,” Meyer said again, quieter than before.

  Ruth looked at him and then back at Rossett.

  “He can help us get away from here.”

  “You said that,” replied Rossett. “But then what?”

  Meyer sighed and looked at the floor. “I love her. I’m sorry. I love her. I know it is against orders, but . . . what can I do?” His halting English cracked against his emotions as he took hold of Ruth’s hand and looked up at Rossett.

  Rossett took a step backward, rubbed his forehead, and then took another drink from the wine bottle. He shook his head and then passed Meyer the bottle.

  “Captain, we’ve got a serious problem.”

  CHAPTER 32

  THE BURNED-­OUT CAR had been removed by the time King got to the flat on Stuffield Street where he and Eric had originally held Anja.

  The snow that had fallen since he had been there last had covered their tracks. The world looked fresh and white, as if nothing had happened and everything was as it should be. The only evidence of troubles past was a few fresh divots in the brickwork of the building behind the phone box.

  That, plus Eric Cook was dead, Anja was lost, and Frank King was now on his own trying to save his career and his country a long way from home.

  King had driven up and down the street five or six times in the hours since he had spoken to Kennedy. His caution was as much down to his reluctance to commit to his new course of action as it was to fear of ambush.

  He’d long since decided that the resistance would have moved on from the scene as soon as the shooting had stopped. They wouldn’t want to be around when the police turned up to clear up the mess that was left behind.

  He pulled into the street for the seventh time and drifted into the curb next to the red telephone box outside the flat. He waited, feeling the gear stick vibrate in his hand as the little engine chuckled away in front of him. His eyes flicked left and right, up to the mirror, back to the windscreen, taking in every inch of the silent street and the falling snow.

  A stray dog crossed the road ten yards ahead. It stopped halfway, caught in the halfhearted glow of the streetlamp, then lifted its nose to the air, smelling the fumes from the exhaust and then looking at him.

  King and the dog shared a moment, both alone on the streets, both struggling to stay alive against the odds, both wary one might give the other away if they moved.

  The dog’s eyes shone yellow.

  Then it breathed out, turned its head, and loped away up the street and out of sight into the darkness and the falling snow.

  King switched off the engine. He eased down the window an inch and looked toward the alleyway from which he had been ambushed earlier. It was pitch black, same as before. He shifted in his seat, which creaked and squeaked as he moved. He looked at the phone box with its milky light.

  King knew he was exposed. Even though the little battered British car was less conspicuous than the Opel, he knew he stood out a mile.

  He told himself that if anyone did appear, anyone at all, he just had to start the engine and pull away.

  Not much of a plan, but the best one he had.

  He lit another cigarette, flicked the match out of the window, checked his watch, and then looked at the phone box again.

  It was his only link to Koehler, now that the operation was blown, now that Dulles was being held by Kennedy; it was all he had left as a way of making contact.

  Frank King had planned for this. He was alone, but he wasn’t stupid. His original idea had been for Anja and Ruth to be exchanged at an American safe house. King hadn’t been stupid enough to share the location with anyone but Eric Cook, but since Cook had been interrogated, King couldn’t trust that location.

  He knew that once Koehler got the envelope he’d ring the number in it.

  He knew that the phone in the safe house wouldn’t be answered.

  He knew Koehler, in his desperation to find his daughter, would phone the first number he had been given.

  The one in the phone box he was parked next to.

  Whitechapel 6168.

  King drew on his cigarette again, listening to the snow landing on the roof of the car. He breathed the smoke out through his nose, enjoying it, relaxing slightly.

  He could make this work.

  He looked up at the flat and considered waiting inside, then decided against it. He didn’t want to be trapped in a building with only one way in and out.

  He put the cigarette back to his lips.

  Then the phone in the box started to ring.

  King froze a moment, mouth open, cigarette held an inch from it, as the sound of the ringing seemed to rattle the box rhythmically.

  Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.

  He fumbled with the door handle, almost falling out of the little car as he checked the street.

  Ring ring.

  It was too early; he hadn’t expected a call until daylight at the earliest. Something must have gone wrong.

  He pulled the heavy door open and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?” a voice crackled on the other end of the line.

  King paused. The voice sounded wrong, setting off an alarm bell in his head.

  “Who is this?” King asked.

  “Who are you?”

  King was confused. He looked at his car.

  “Who do you want?”

  “Tell me your name.”

  King slammed the phone down and went to step out of the box. He reached for the pistol in his pocket as he turned, pushing with his free hand against the door, hearing the heavy spring strain as he did so.

  A pistol whipped him across the left temple, knocking him to the floor of the phone box in a half-­conscious heap.

  King’s ears rang and his head reeled with the force of the blow; he raised his hands to protect himself, dimly aware that he had dropped his own weapon.

  His coat rode up against his throat as he was dragged out of the box. King felt ice-­cold snow on his face and realized he was lying facedown in it. He tried to get onto all fours, but someone
whipped away his hands with a sweeping leg. King fell forward again, this time catching a mouthful of snow for his troubles.

  He squeezed his eyes tight. His head hurt, a sharp pain that made him even more confused.

  He spat and attempted to roll sideways to look at who was attacking him.

  He stopped, senses clearing when he heard the sharp click of the hammer on the pistol that was pressing into his left cheek, just under his fluttering eye.

  “Where is my daughter?” Ernst Koehler asked quietly.

  King didn’t answer. He tried to open his eye fully, but the pressure of the pistol on his cheek made it difficult.

  “Where is my daughter?” Koehler asked again.

  King swallowed, tasting blood in his mouth and wondering where it was coming from. “Please.” King finally found his voice. “Don’t . . . please.”

  The pistol whipped across his temple again, higher this time. King felt the muzzle drive into the side of his skull behind his left ear.

  He blinked; he felt like he was going to be sick. He finally opened his eyes and saw that he was facing his car; he squeezed out another blink and tried to lift a hand to protect himself but found he couldn’t.

  “Where is my fucking daughter?” Koehler’s voice was closer now, almost next to his ear.

  King wondered if he was about to die.

  The pressure of the pistol eased, and then Koehler jabbed it back down harder than before.

  “Where is she?”

  King closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again, trying to clear his jumbled brain. He could feel pressure on his chest and he struggled to take a breath. He spat—­more blood—­twisted half an inch, and pushed with his head against the pistol, struggling to look up at Koehler.

  He took a breath and gambled.

  “Kill me, and you’ll never see her again.” King’s lips felt heavy and loose. He swallowed, felt the pressure of the pistol ease, and turned to look Koehler in the face.

  This time the blow caught him on the top of his head, hard, fast, like a hammer on a nail, driving him down back into the snow and jarring his teeth together so hard the noise echoed in his ears.

  He felt himself being lifted by the back of his coat and tried to resist but was too groggy. He looked at the phone box, confused by it; he knew he’d been in it, he knew he needed it, but he couldn’t remember why.

  He closed his eyes and tried to focus.

  It occurred to him that there were two men, one either side of him, holding an arm each. He knew he was moving fast, so fast that in his confused state he barely had time to tuck his head into his shoulders before it was used to barge open a door—­and King realized it was the front door of the same house, the house in which Koehler’s wife had died.

  Koehler kicked the door shut behind him with his heel, locking the other man outside after they had thrown King onto the bottom of the stairs inside.

  King groaned as Koehler drove a knee into his back and shoved the barrel of the pistol into the side of his head again.

  “I —­” King started to speak but was cut off by the pressure of the gun.

  “Shut up. Listen to me. You’ve seconds to live unless you listen well. I know you killed my wife, I know you took my daughter, and you cannot imagine how I want you to suffer for those crimes. Do you understand me?”

  King managed to nod under the pressure of the gun.

  “You’ve one chance to make it easy, one chance and one chance only. Where is my daughter?”

  King licked his lips and shifted his legs slightly to get more comfortable. The gun pressure increased. The barrel felt warm on his skin.

  King composed the words and then licked his lips again.

  “I need a drink.”

  Koehler gripped the hair on the top of King’s head, yanked it back, and then drove his head forward, slamming his forehead into the stairs.

  King waited for another blow, but instead he felt the pistol resting on the back of his skull again.

  “Last chance,” Koehler said softly, not even bothering to ask the question this time.

  King swallowed again, stretched his jaw, and then rolled his head an inch to the side.

  “You know so much . . .” He barely managed to speak, such was the force pressing down on him. “But you don’t know what I know. You aren’t going to pull that trigger, you idiot, so let me up so we can talk.”

  Koehler lifted his knee and then roughly searched King’s coat pockets and around his waistband. King felt Koehler grab his shoulder and spin him around so that he was lying on his back looking up.

  “Where is she?”

  King reached up and dabbed at the wound on his scalp.

  “I’m sorry about your wife.” King lowered his hand. “That was an accident.”

  Koehler reared, spinning the pistol and holding it like a hammer, ready to strike down into King’s face. King closed his eyes instinctively as he listened to the sharp, hard breaths coming from Koehler’s nose.

  King opened his eyes.

  Koehler gritted his teeth, pistol still held high. Seconds passed, and then Koehler lifted his face to look up the stairs before lowering the gun.

  King started to speak and then thought better of it.

  Koehler looked at him, the anger still there but sinking an inch beneath the surface, like a face looking back at him through ice in a frozen lake.

  “Please,” Koehler spoke again, his voice suddenly sounding weak. “I want my daughter.”

  “I don’t have her,” replied King.

  “Where is she?”

  “Resistance took her.”

  Koehler’s brow furrowed as he looked down at King, who spoke again quickly.

  “But I can help you get her back.”

  Koehler tilted his head, his knees still either side of King, his weight still holding the other man down.

  “You need me,” King said quietly.

  Koehler blinked three times, thumbed the hammer on the pistol, and placed it on King’s forehead.

  “I don’t,” he whispered as his finger squeezed the trigger.

  “I know where she’ll be.”

  The finger stopped.

  “I know where they have to take her. I’ll take you there. You need me . . .”

  The finger tightened.

  Frank King looked into the eyes of death.

  Death blinked, and the pistol lifted off his brow.

  “We can all come out of this with what we want. You don’t know me, but I am a good guy, trying to do something good.”

  “You killed my wife.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You took my daughter.”

  “If there’d been another way . . .”

  “I’m going to kill you eventually.”

  “Let me finish this. Let me get your daughter back to you and finish this.”

  Koehler pushed himself up and leaned back against the door, the pistol held at his side where King could see it.

  King adjusted himself on the stairs and touched his head again. “The scientist, do you have her?”

  “No.”

  “We need her.”

  “We’ll have her soon.”

  “How?”

  “Rossett will get her.”

  “You sent Rossett? We chose you because you were the best in the country and you sent him?”

  “I’m the best German in the country.”

  “So you sent Rossett?”

  “He is the best anyone in the country.”

  King nodded, not quite understanding the answer but accepting it anyway.

  “My partner and I were ambushed by the resistance here, in the flat. It isn’t safe to stay.” King gestured with his hands to the front door behind Koehler. “We can talk in the car?”


  Koehler lowered his eyes a fraction as he considered what King had said, then nodded. He leaned off the door and reached behind his back to pull it open with his damaged hand.

  “Try anything, anything at all, and I’ll kill you, understand?”

  “We both want the same thing.”

  “I doubt that,” replied Koehler.

  CHAPTER 33

  ANJA WAS TIRED.

  She couldn’t remember being this tired ever before in her life.

  Try as she might, though, sleep wouldn’t come to rescue her heavy eyes and her aching head.

  The fire danced in the hearth as Jack snored next to her on the couch. Classical music, the type her father liked, drifted in and out from a radio behind them.

  The fire popped on some damp coal.

  Anja looked at Jack’s hair; it smelled of oil and was so black it made her think of little Schwarz the cat. She hoped her father had fed him. She missed the kitten, and she missed her father.

  She missed her mother the most, though.

  Anja looked up to the ceiling, blinking hard, holding the tears back, just for now. She’d cry as soon as she was safe in her father’s arms.

  Her shoulder ached, so she shifted slightly, and Jack murmured. She smiled, and didn’t know why.

  She looked at the clock: five past midnight.

  The pub downstairs had been quiet for over an hour, yet Jack’s friend, the man who ran it, hadn’t come up to check if they were all right.

  Maybe he didn’t want to disturb them?

  Anja looked at the young girl asleep in the chair opposite and wondered why she hadn’t spoken since Anja and Jack had arrived.

  It was rude to stare, and yet that was all the girl had done.

  English ­people are rude, she thought, looking at the fire. Except Jack, her Jack. He was nice.

  The fire crackled again and then Anja heard voices on the stairs, getting louder as they came closer.

  The girl opposite snapped awake and lifted her head, looking at the door behind Anja.

  She rubbed a pink knuckle at her left eye and unfolded her legs from under her, then looked at Anja.

  Anja smiled, but the girl didn’t smile back.