by Jon Cleary
“I know that street in that village. It is too wide for our purpose. The military driver would be able to swing his car round ours—”
“But we need a wide street so that we can have a clear escape route, don’t we?”
The second girl did not want to die for the cause or any other reason. She was blonde and plumply pretty and was in the movement because she was in love with Kurt. She left the table—she had no interest in maps—drifted to the window and looked out. On the other side of the street two well-dressed women came out of a konditorei, looking as sleek as the cream cakes they had just eaten, and stopped by a boutique to look in at the Missoni knits in the window. That was her world and she wondered if she had left it forever. Less than half a mile from here her mother would be sitting at a window in the apartment on Harvest Weg bemoaning the loss of her other two daughters, Trudi’s sisters, both of whom had married overseas: one in Brazil and one across the Alstersee. Her mother was like that: the wrong side of the city’s lake was overseas. So far her mother knew nothing of her devotion to Kurt: she was still on the right side of the Alstersee.
Kurt came and stood beside her, put his arm round her. “We’ll escape, darling. We’ll celebrate in bed tonight.”
Rosa, the younger girl, looked at them with contempt. “Stop that crap! Let’s get back to what we have to do . . .”
They argued for another hour, true anarchists, but in the end Kurt prevailed. Leaders are necessary, if only to be blamed for everyone else’s mistakes.
“We take him here then,” said Kurt, pointing on the map again, almost jabbing his finger through it. He had spent hours planning the kidnapping and now damned Gerd, with his damned military mentality, had created argument. “Then we demand the ransom this evening. Five million marks.”
“We’ll be rich,” said Trudi, with a bourgeois beam.
“Oh God,” said Rosa. “It’s not the money. We want it to finance other operations. But the object, the real point, is to show them that their generals are expendable. Like all leaders!”
“I was only joking,” said Trudi, but she hadn’t been.
Gerd said nothing, only wondered why Kurt should throw his life away on this dumb blonde.
IV
“We can only guess at the Russians’ intentions,” said Roger Brisson, trying not to sound like a political general. But then so many of his colleagues were sounding political these days. From West Point to White House there were no longer any log cabins as a starting point. “But we must be prepared. Does that sound too profound?”
He gave Cleo his smile, ignoring Tom Border. As soon as the two reporters had come into this sitting-room in the villa of the British commander, General Thorpe, he had sensed that the real interview, even if it never got into words, was with the Australian girl. Border could be fobbed off with the usual noncommittal platitudes. He began by trying one on Cleo, but he could see that it hadn’t gone down. So he tried his famous smile.
“It doesn’t sound very original, General,” said Cleo, “but perhaps the politicians in Washington don’t like originality in their generals?”
Come off it, Cleo! Tom looked hard at her, trying to warn her not to ruin his interview. After all, he’d set up this meeting.
But Cleo didn’t glance at him, just went blithely on as if he were not in the room with her and General Brisson: “You see, General, I suspect that politicians and generals live in two different worlds, that too often they are fighting different wars. Or is that too profound?”
Oh, what a smart-ass bitch she was! He wondered with part of his mind what she would have been like had he got her into his bed that night in Saigon. “Not too profound, Miss Spearfield. Nonetheless, it is true. If the politicians had allowed the generals to finish off World War Two in Europe as the generals wanted, there might have been no need for NATO and I should not be here on these exercises. You won’t quote me, of course?” He smiled again.
“Of course not,” said Cleo and gave him a smile in return.
God Almighty, Tom thought, all these goddam teeth! It was like looking at courting crocodiles.
“General,” he said, “if I may get a word in—”
“In a moment, Tom,” said Cleo. She was in command here. GOC: Good Old Cleo. “General Brisson, do you think the politicians or the generals are right in Vietnam?”
“No comment,” said Roger, the smile gone as if some rookie had insulted him.
“That’s the real war right now, General. Surely you have some comment on it?”
Roger looked out of the window. Joe Thorpe was in the garden, pruning the last of his roses. Was he ever plagued by questioning reporters, did he have things he wanted to forget about Palestine, Malaya, Ulster? “I prefer to leave questions like that to the men out there fighting the war.”
“Are you glad you are no longer there?”
“Are you, Miss Spearfield?” He knew it was a dangerous question as soon as he asked it.
“Very glad, General. I’m still haunted by dreams of what I saw at An Bai.”
She’s lying, he thought: she means I should be the one who’s haunted. He stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”
Tom said, “But, General—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Border. I’m afraid Miss Spearfield has taken up your time as well as mine.”
When they were outside in the Mercedes Tom said, “For crissakes, Cleo, did you have to lay it on as thick as that?”
“I couldn’t stand his bloody smugness! I came down here with a perfectly open mind—”
“Like hell you did. I should have known better . . . Where the hell are we?” He was driving blindly, had swung the car out of the villa’s gates without thinking about which road to take back to Hamburg.
“You’re going in the wrong direction. That sign back there said to Luneburg. Simmer down, Tom. I’m not going to write anything about An Bai, I told you that. But he sounded so damned superior and sure of himself, I just had to let him know that I, for one, hadn’t forgotten what happened out there in Vietnam.”
“You let him know all right. Now shut up while I find a place to turn round.”
V
As they came down the steps of the villa Roger said to his aide, “No more press interviews, Rod. Especially with that damned Miss Spearfield.”
“No, sir.” But Lieutenant Hill wondered why his boss should be so vehement about Miss Spearfield, who had looked quite a doll.
“I never talk to ‘em,” said General Thorpe, short and thin, a red-headed terrier who bared his teeth at every newspaper johnny who came within a hundred yards of him. “Damned nuisance, all of them. What’s your handicap?”
That damned woman Spearfield . . . “Eh? Oh, eight.”
“Jolly good,” said General Thorpe, whose handicap was eighteen. “I hope you don’t play for money?”
“Never.”
“Jolly good,” said Thorpe, who knew how rich his guest was.
He and Roger got into a staff car; in the front seat were a driver and an armed corporal. Hill and General Thorpe’s aide got into a second car; they also had a driver and an armed guard. The tiny convoy pulled out of the garden of the villa; everyone in the cars was relaxed, including the two guards. Picnic duty like this was part of the perks of working on the staff of a GOC.
“I was here in ‘45,” said Thorpe. “When the Jerries surrendered on Luneburg Heath. I was a young subaltern on Monty’s staff.” That had been a good war, the last decent show of any real size. He felt sympathy for the American johnnies, trying to salvage something from the Vietnam show. “We’re promised good weather for tomorrow. October is my favourite month. All the damned tourists have gone home and are back at work. One can enjoy the countryside.”
“How do the local farmers feel about the manoeuvres? I guess we’ll be tearing up a lot of their land tomorrow.”
“Farmers will always complain. It’s in their nature. I always tell ‘em their land will be cut up a damn sight worse if the Russkis eve
r come this far.”
A block ahead, on a side street, Trudi sat at the wheel of the stolen van. She had her blonde hair tucked up under a woollen cap and she was wearing dark glasses and was trembling with fear. Ahead of her, across the intersection, she could see the other stolen vehicle, the BMW, parked in the continuation of this side street. Dark glasses, or fear, blurred her vision and she could not distinguish Kurt, Gerd and Rosa in the BMW. But they were there and she wished that they weren’t. She would rather that they had been delayed on their way to this rendezvous, so that she could have got out of the van and walked away from this crazy, dangerous adventure.
Tom Border and Cleo, now on the right road back to Hamburg, came down the street. The mood between them had eased again but they were still a little wary of each other; they, too, were on manoeuvres of a sort. Night manoeuvres still lay ahead of them.
“Let me take you to dinner this evening. And no talk about An Bai or Saigon—” He still remembered the night in Saigon, his own An Bai when he had massacred his chances with her.
“I have to have dinner with the Scope crew. But afterwards?” She was stepping off a cliff, or anyway an embankment, but she could not help herself.
They were halfway down the wide residential street, Cleo looking out and admiring the comfortable houses with their window boxes and the solid front doors with their highly polished door knockers that caught the sun like small golden explosions, when the blue van shot out from the side street, narrowly missing the army staff car that had just gone past. It braked to a skidding halt right in front of the second staff car, then swung sideways as the staff car hit it. At the same moment a white BMW came out from the opposite direction and jerked to a stop beside the crashed staff car. Two men, both hooded, one carrying a pistol and the other a submachine-gun, jumped out of the BMW.
“Jesus!” Tom slammed on the brakes of the Mercedes, throwing Cleo forward; she threw out both hands and held herself off the dashboard. “That’s Brisson in that staff car!”
Then, above the hum of the Mercedes’ engine, they heard the gunfire. The first staff car had pulled up and a uniformed soldier and two young men in sweaters and slacks were tumbling out of it. The soldier ran back towards the smash, firing his sub-machine-gun. The driver of the van jumped out and began to run blindly down the street, as if just wanting to get away from the shooting. The driver of the first staff car leaned on the car’s bonnet, took careful aim with his pistol as if he were on a firing range, and dropped the running figure. As Trudi stumbled the dark glasses fell off and she plunged face forward into the kerb, ruining her pretty face forever, though she would never know.
Cleo and Tom sat and watched the ambush; it seemed to Cleo to last for two or three minutes, but it was no more than ten or fifteen seconds. The guard in the crashed staff car, blood pouring from his face, was sitting side-on in his seat, spraying the white BMW with a narrow arc of fire. The driver of the BMW had dropped out of sight; then Tom and Cleo saw the door open on the blind side and the driver fell out on to the roadway. The guard in the staff car suddenly slumped back against the driver beside him, his submachine-gun pointing upwards. His finger was caught in the trigger-guard and bullets shot into the air above the houses opposite. A front door had opened and was abruptly slammed shut. Somewhere a woman was screaming, but Cleo couldn’t see anyone.
The two hooded men from the BMW now came back round the van, backing away from the smash. One of them turned and shot the driver of the first staff car as the latter took aim again; the other, with the sub-machine-gun, shot the two young men in sweaters and slacks and the remaining guard. Then both of them ran across the road towards the Mercedes, the driver of the BMW, now on her feet, running after them. One of the men snatched open the rear door of the Mercedes, jumped in and put his Luger pistol against Tom’s head.
“Drive!” he said in German.
The other two ambushers clambered into the Mercedes as Tom, white-faced and clumsy, gunned the motor without putting the car into gear. The pistol barrel was thumped against his head and Cleo, struggling to wake from this horrible dream, waited for the top of his skull to be blown off. At last he got the car in gear and it shot forward and raced down the street.
In the rear seat Rosa lay back and cursed obscenely, beating her fists against the upholstery of the seat. Beside her Kurt and Gerd were silent, masked dummies with live guns in their trembling hands.
VI
Tom drove the car as he was directed, at a steady seventy kilometres an hour, so that he would not be picked up for speeding. Kurt and Gerd were now in the rear seat beside Rosa and all three of them, still hooded, were hunched over so that as little as possible of them was visible to any passing motorist. But Tom and Cleo knew, without looking back, that their guns were still pointed at the back of their necks.
The Mercedes went out of the village along the main road leading north towards Hamburg. Then it turned off on to a side road and soon came to a track that led into a thick copse. Parked in the middle of the wood was a black van. Tom and Cleo were ordered out of the Mercedes and into the back of the van. Cleo stumbled in her high heels on the rough ground and Kurt, still on edge at how things had gone wrong, still shocked by Trudi’s death, hit her across the back with a clenched fist.
“Cut that out!” said Tom, but Gerd hit him on the side of the head with the barrel of his Schmeisser. Tom, dazed, fell face first into the back of the van. Gerd pushed him right in, jumped in and pulled a black cotton sack over Tom’s head. Then he turned and dragged Cleo in after him.
“There’s no sack for you,” he barked in English. “Pull your sweater up over your head. Do it!”
Cleo had hesitated, but at the tension in his voice she hastily slipped off her jacket and pulled her sweater up from the bottom, slipping her arms out and rolling it up over her shoulders so that it turned inside out and became an inverted hood. Gerd looked at her breasts in the flimsy lace brassiere, but women had never interested him sexually. Part, if only a small part, of his rejection of his parents’ society was their convention of who should love and live with whom. He loved Kurt, but so far had managed to hide it, even from Kurt.
Kurt and Rosa took off their hoods, got into the front seat of the van and two minutes later they were back on the main road, heading north again. Then they headed west along a side road and a little later turned off on to a track that led up to a farmhouse hidden amongst some trees on the crest of a slight rise.
The farm belonged to Kurt’s parents. They did not work the farm themselves but rented out the fields to a neighbouring farmer; the farmhouse was no more than a summer or weekend retreat from Kurt’s father’s crowded life as a Hamburg lawyer. His parents at present were in London; they were to be away a week, plenty of time in which to hold General Brisson here and collect the ransom money. But everything had gone wrong and Kurt had driven here almost automatically, as if he could not start thinking again until he was back in familiar surroundings. He had spent his boyhood vacations here when his life had been happy and uncomplicated, and the only anarchy he had subscribed to was that of a child’s temper.
He ran the van into the barn beside the house; then Cleo and Tom, still unable to see where they were, were taken into the house, led up some steep stairs and pushed into a room. Then the sack was removed from Tom’s head and Cleo was told to pull her sweater down.
Kurt, Gerd and Rosa were still hooded, all dressed alike in dark sweaters and jeans. Cleo had seen countless pictures of terrorists, bank robbers, kidnappers: there was a uniform now for criminals. Even the guns looked familiar: the Schmeisser and the Luger had become standard issue, at least for European terrorists.
“Do not attempt to escape, it will be useless.” Kurt stood under the single light in the bedroom and pointed with his Luger at the boarded-up window. “The shutters are also bolted on the outside. If you give no trouble, you will be all right.”
“Who are you?” said Rosa. They all spoke English, Cleo noted. Continental educa
tion was preparing its youth for all contingencies: the Common Market, international terrorism . . . “Are you tourists?”
Tom realized that the girl had recovered, though the men still seemed tense and nervous. She might be the leader of the gang before the day was out, if she was not already.
“No, we’re not tourists—” But his tongue had got away from him. It would have been better to have claimed to be no more than tourists.
“Who are you, then?”
Tom looked at Cleo and shrugged. “My name is Border, I’m with the New York Courier. Miss Spearfield is with the London Daily Examiner.”
Rosa ignored Tom then, looked at Cleo with interest. “Lord Cruze’s newspaper?”
Cleo, still very conscious of the guns trained on them, was having difficulty in holding herself together. She had been afraid but never cowardly in Vietnam; this was different, the threat here was more personal than the random mine in a roadway. The odds were shorter; these guns could not miss if they were fired.
“Yes.” Her voice was as dry as a crow’s.
Rosa lifted her hood above her mouth and spat. She was given to theatrical expressions, but this time she just looked comical. Cleo wanted to smile, but her mouth wouldn’t work itself into the right shape.
“The capitalist pig, one of the worst!”
Oh Christ, thought Tom, here we go with the jargon. “Miss Spearfield only works for him, she doesn’t necessarily believe in everything Lord Cruze does.”
“What about your paper, the—Courier? Is it a capitalist rag?”
“No,” said Tom, taking a risk, “it’s a liberal, left-wing rag.”
“What are you doing here? Were you going to cover the NATO manoeuvres?”
“Yes. But so is Tass, I’m sure.”
“Tass! You’re all the same, none of you ever tells the truth.” Some day there would be a newspaper telling the real truth, an anarchist daily with no editor, every journalist free to write what he believed in. She dreamed of what she would create, but shut the word leadership out of her mind. “You both must be important journalists, if your newspapers sent you all this way.”
