by Jon Cleary
The lieutenant looked towards the house, saw the other young man at the kitchen window. Then he looked up at the sergeant in the turret of the lead tank. “What are your instructions, Sergeant?”
“We got to keep the tanks under cover in these trees, Lieutenant.” He nodded towards the trees that sheltered two sides of the yard. “I can’t see anywheres else we can put ‘em. We got to hold ‘em under cover till Blue headquarters call for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Kurt said in English, “but you will have to go further down the hill, away from the house.”
The lieutenant looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Herr Hauser.”
“What sort of army is it that can’t improvise?”
“Oh shit.” The sergeant was a ten-year veteran and he had no time for civilians; they only got in the way. “That’s just great coming from a German. When did you guys ever improvise anything?”
In the kitchen Gerd and Rosa could only catch snatches of the conversation. The tanks had switched off their engines, but the wind was plucking at the voices, tearing words away. “What do they want?” Rosa said.
“They want to stay here for the day, I think.” Gerd wished he had gone out to the yard with Kurt. He wanted to protect him, he looked so thin and vulnerable out there, the wind tearing at him and the tanks looming over him as if ready to crush him. Their venture was doomed anyway, all he wanted was to see that he and Kurt got out alive. “If we can keep them out of the house—”
“They can’t stay here! Kurt should be on his way now to collect the ransom money. Are we supposed to look after them?”
Gerd smiled, though he felt no humour at all. “I think the army can look after itself.”
Upstairs Cleo and Tom, both fully dressed now, could hear nothing of the conversation in the yard. They had heard the tanks arrive, then there was silence when the engines were switched off, but for the wind. They could hear nothing from downstairs and they wondered where the kidnappers had gone. The wind moaned down the chimney like a child’s taunt.
“Are you sure they were tanks?”
“I know the sound of a goddam tank!” Tom was tense, one eye on the door, waiting for the kidnappers to burst in and kill them before whoever it was outside could break into the house to rescue them. “There must have been three or four of them. They’re still out there—I didn’t hear them go away.”
“What do we do? Do we start yelling?”
Then, without waiting for a yes from him, Cleo began thumping on the boards across the window, shouting for help at the top of her voice.
Down in the kitchen Gerd reacted at once. He dropped the coffee pot, spun round and raced out of the kitchen. He was halfway up the narrow stairs when he remembered he had no gun; he plunged back down to the kitchen, grabbed Kurt’s Luger from the chair by the door and ran back upstairs. He could feel the panic in his fingers as he fumbled with the two locks, then he had hurled the door back and stood in the doorway. The Luger was aimed at Cleo, who had turned to face him, mouth wide open for the scream stuck in her throat.
“Come out from behind the door, Herr Border,” ordered Gerd, “or I shall shoot Fräulein Spearfield.”
Tom stepped sheepishly from behind the door. He was surprised at how heroic he had intended to be; but he was relieved the German had anticipated him. He had enough steel in him to say, “If you shoot, they’ll hear you out in the yard. You wouldn’t want that.”
“Do you want to take the risk?” Gerd said to Cleo. He had forgotten to put on his hood, but the fact didn’t worry him. Everything was finished and he knew he and the others would be dead before the day was out. All at once he felt sorry for his parents, felt their shame, and wished he could die anonymous.
“I don’t believe you’re a killer.” Cleo was surprised at her own calmness; but even before she uttered it she knew the truth of her remark. “Your girl friend, maybe. But not you.”
Gerd lowered the Luger. “Then perhaps you are fortunate that it was I who came up here—” Then he heard the Schmeisser go off in the kitchen below.
XII
At a command post three miles away Roger Brisson looked up from his map case as his new aide, Lieutenant Johns, came running across from the radio truck.
“There’s trouble at a farm further up the road, General! Some crazy dame with a machine-gun has opened up on four of our tanks and a Jeep. Three of our guys are dead!”
In less than five minutes Roger was at the Hauser farm. His driver pulled up the Jeep at the bottom of the rise and Roger and Johns jumped out and, keeping low, made their way up to the three tanks that had withdrawn to a dip in the hill just below the farmyard.
A sergeant scrambled out of one of the tanks and saluted Roger. “Sergeant Knudsen, General. There’s some bitch in the house with a Schmeisser or something like it, sir. She opened up when Lieutenant Dorten got into an argument with the son of the owner of the farm. Lieutenant Dorten’s dead, I think, and so are his driver and Sergeant Leeds up there in the lead tank. I think the driver is wounded, too. He must be, otherwise he’d have got his tank outa there.”
“Someone in the tank is still alive.” Roger took a cautious look up into the farmyard. “They’re firing back at the house. What’s going on in the house, anyway?”
“I dunno, sir. The young guy, the owner’s son, he run back into the house soon’s the shooting started. There’s a second guy in there, too. That makes three at least. There may be more. I heard some yelling, sounded like a woman’s voice, just before that crazy dame opened up. She’s gotta be crazy, sir. Who else’d take on four tanks with a Schmeisser or whatever she’s got?”
There was a sudden light boom! and a cloud of smoke billowed up beside the tank in the farmyard and then was whipped away by the wind. “They have something else—that was a grenade! What’s that tank man using?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Could be a pistol or a carbine, I dunno. What do we do, sir? We can close up these three tanks and just bulldoze our way in.”
“Hold it a minute,” said Roger. “Do we have a loud-hailer here?”
“No, sir. We weren’t expecting anything like this.”
Inside the house Kurt, Rosa and Gerd were moving from room to room downstairs, sneaking looks out of the windows to see if they were being surrounded. Gerd, taught by his father that a good army always had reserves to fall back on, had stock-piled extra guns and several dozen grenades; they were in boxes that had been brought to the farm four days ago. They had been reserves for the future, not to be used, he had thought, for perhaps months or even years. But Rosa had already ripped the lids off the boxes, and stood like a mad child amongst a Christmas arsenal of gifts.
“If we can hold out till dark—”
Even Kurt was shocked by her stupid optimism. “For God’s sake—that won’t be for another twelve or fourteen hours!”
“Don’t listen to her.” Gerd, coming back from a rear room, paused in the kitchen doorway. The man in the tank in the farmyard was letting off the occasional shot, but they were all standing back out of the line of fire. The glass in the kitchen window was already shattered and the wind blew in with the last of the smoke from the grenade hurled by Rosa. “I think we should surrender, Kurt. It’s useless.”
“That’s all we should expect from a cowardly queer!” Rosa was more of a man than either of them; she was determined to prove it. She fired another burst at the tank as if that were some sort of proof. “Let him go out if he wants, Kurt—”
Kurt paid no attention to her. He looked at Gerd and shrugged; he no longer cared, and wished now that he had stayed out in the yard and given himself up to the tank men. He knew how Gerd felt about him, but there was nothing he could do about it: he could never love a man the way he had loved Trudi. “It’s up to you, Gerd. If you want to stay alive . . .”
Gerd stared at him, reading Kurt’s rejection of him in the dark handsome face. It had always been a useless dream: it would never have worked, anyway. “No, I’l
l stay.”
Outside the house, down in the dip behind the three tanks, Lieutenant Johns, a devotee of crime novels if not of military manuals, had an idea: “General, do you think those crazies up there could be the gang that held you up on Tuesday?”
“Could be.” The thought had already occurred to Roger. He had kept in constant touch with the police during the manoeuvres, concerned for the safety of Cleo Spearfield and Tom Border even while the dark side of his mind considered the advantages of Cleo’s not surviving. What if she and Border were held prisoner in the farmhouse? The callous thought of what could happen if the house was razed came back; again he was horrified at what the urge for self-survival could suggest. Then he saw the gun turret on the tank in the yard turning slowly towards the house. “Good God, what’s he going to do? Stop him, Sergeant, he’s going to shell the house!”
“I can’t contact him, General.” Sergeant Knudsen looked unperturbed: let the fucking crazies in the house get what was coming to them. “His radio’s out.”
Roger watched with sickening dismay as he saw the gun’s barrel line up on the kitchen window. Then the barrel recoiled, he heard the sound of the shot and saw the shell turn the window opening into a gaping jagged hole.
Rosa had stepped out of the kitchen, gone to the back of the house to check that they were still safe from that direction. Gerd had stepped into the kitchen, had put out a hand towards Kurt. Then Kurt seemed to grow bigger as did the room itself; there was a tremendous roar that both blinded and deafened Gerd, and then Kurt fell on him in a bloody embrace. They died locked together as they had never been in life.
Up in the bedroom Tom held Cleo to him as they heard the giant roar beneath them and felt the house shake with the explosion. When the firing had started downstairs their blond captor, as if he no longer cared about them, had run out of the bedroom, leaving the door wide open behind him. Cleo had started for it at once, but Tom had grabbed her as he heard the gunfire shattering the windows in the rooms below.
“Stay here!” he had yelled above the din. “We’ll be chopped in half if we go down there!”
He had pulled her back into the bedroom, then gone out on to the landing and looked down the stairs. He could smell the cordite and hear the shouts of the three kidnappers. Someone (it sounded to him like the blond man) was shouting abuse at Rosa: he understood none of the abuse but caught the girl’s name. She was screaming as if berserk, her yelling punctuated as she kept firing at whoever was out in the yard. He took a tentative step down the stairs, then jumped back as bullets thudded into the bottom of the stairs and splinters flew like spent yellow cartridges.
He went back into the bedroom, took Cleo in his arms and pulled her down on the floor away from the outer wall. They lay there for what seemed an hour but was no more than ten minutes, while the battle went on below them. Occasionally the firing stopped and the kidnappers’ voices drifted up the stairs. Neither of them understood what was being said, but it was obvious that the gang was divided amongst itself.
They heard the small explosion out in the yard. Then a minute later there was the tremendous explosion from below as the shell crashed into the house. Smoke and dust billowed up the stairs; then Rosa, wild-eyed and bloody, the Schmeisser held in the crook of her arm, staggered into the room. She shook her head, as if trying to clear her eyes of whatever was blinding them: smoke, dust, disillusion. She didn’t see Cleo and Tom, was unaware of them almost at her feet as they crouched behind the door. She whimpered with pain, anger, it was impossible to tell; then she let out an animal scream of rage and sprayed the bed and the far wall with bullets from the Schmeisser. The gun fell abruptly silent as the magazine ran out. In that moment Tom, letting go of Cleo, slammed the door against Rosa. She fell back on to the landing and Tom, jerking open the door again, went after her. He landed on top of her, hit her with all his strength, and she went limp beneath him. He picked up the empty Schmeisser, not knowing what he intended doing with it, crouched on one knee and aimed it down the stairs.
He heard Cleo, right behind him, say, “General Brisson—what a nice surprise!”
Part of his own shocked mind registered the coolness of Cleo’s voice; but he knew it was an act, a prop to prevent her collapsing. He was more shocked, as he stared down at Roger Brisson standing in the settling dust and smoke at the bottom of the stairs, at the look on the general’s face—the look of a man also about to collapse.
9
I
“SWEETHEART!” SYLVESTER embraced Cleo as he had not embraced her since she was a child. He was crying, and soon the tears came to her own eyes and she clung to him. They were weakened at discovering how much they loved each other. “I’ve been praying—more bloody Hail Marys than I’ve said in years!”
He held her to him, comforting her; it was the best he had felt since Brigid had been alive. “When they didn’t come to pick up the money, I thought that was—never mind. You’re safe. Thank God for the US Army, eh?” He smiled at her, trying to get her to smile. “But don’t quote me to the Labour Party back home, eh?”
Jack Cruze and Tom Border and Roger Brisson and a hundred police, soldiers and reporters stood in a circle round them, but Cleo was alone with her father. “I didn’t know you were here—I thought you’d still be back home—Oh, Dad!”
Then she eased herself away from him, wiped her eyes and saw Jack for the first time. She looked at her father and realized at once that he knew about her and Jack. Suddenly she was glad of the crowd around them: she could not have gone straight from her father’s arms into Jack’s, not in front of him. She turned to Jack and put out her hand.
“Thanks for coming, Lord Cruze.”
Cameras were aimed, lights flared; but in tomorrow’s papers they would look only like close friends, or employer and employee enjoying the best of labour relations. Jack winked at her, glad for his own sake that she hadn’t made public their real relationship. “It’s good to have you back with us, Cleo. You’re all right?”
She nodded. “Both of us. Me and Tom Border.”
“Good,” he said, but she noticed he didn’t glance at Tom.
Then Roger Brisson came forward. In helmet and combat dress he looked dashing and formidable, a general who had just won a major battle. But Tom Border, standing to one side, still remembered the look on Brisson’s face an hour earlier, when he had looked like a general who had surrendered rather than won.
“I must be going, Miss Spearfield. The police are going to escort you and Mr. Border back to Hamburg. It’s their business, after all.”
“I’m glad you and your men were on hand, General. Thank your men, please. Especially that man in the tank who blew up the kitchen without hurting me or Mr. Border.” She had a woman’s faith in the accuracy of weapons and that of the men who fired them.
“Yes,” said Roger and kept his face straight and sober. “I’m sorry you were subjected to all this. It was meant for General Thorpe and me, but you were the unfortunate substitutes. I don’t know how we can compensate, but if there is any way . . .”
A year of your pay will do, plus your dividends, thought Tom. But no one was asking him. He was a Courier man, part of the family. But before he left, Roger did come across to him and shake his hand.
“You have a story now, Mr. Border. A big one.”
“May I say that you directed the rescue operation, General?”
“No,” said Roger, face straight again. “That would take credit away from the men responsible. Talk to Sergeant Knudsen.”
“I’ll do that, sir. You’d still rather I didn’t mention you?”
“Only if you have to, Mr. Border. Good luck. I hope the Courier gives you a bonus for what you’ve been through. It’s quite a story.”
“I didn’t do it for the story,” said Tom.
Roger knew when he’d said the wrong thing. “No. Well, good luck,” he said again, lost for words.
And he went off once more to the manoeuvres, turning his mind back to fighting the
Russians. They were a diversion for generals as well as politicians.
A policeman came up and handed Cleo her handbag. “We found this in the rubble of the kitchen, Fräulein.”
It was a crocodile-skin bag that Jack had given her. She brushed it free of grit and dust, opened it and took out the purse, compact and crocodile-skin wallet containing her passport and other papers: Jack had given her the compact and wallet. She found the St. Martin sisters’ gift, the gold pen, at the bottom of the bag.
“Everything’s here,” she said with some surprise.
“They weren’t purse pinchers,” said Jack. “They were asking a quarter of a million pounds for you.”
“They undervalued you, sweetheart,” said Sylvester and put his arm round her again.
Going back to Hamburg in the Mercedes 600 that Jack had rented Sylvester and Cleo sat in the rear seat and Jack and Tom in the jump seats. Tom had hung back as everyone had got into the big car, but Cleo turned back and insisted that he ride with them. He sat beside Jack Cruze and could feel the Englishman’s antagonism and suspicion as plainly as he had felt the kidnapper’s pistol against his head in the other rented Mercedes three days ago. It was Sylvester, the politician, who knew how to melt the ice in an atmosphere.
“You both must be absolutely buggered.”
Cleo pressed his hand, smiled at Jack and Tom. “That’s the standard of language in Canberra. They don’t allow for any ambiguity.”
Tom said, “Buggered has several meanings where I come from.”
Like performers in a television sketch they all looked at Jack for his line, but he was contributing nothing. He was not dense to the situation, he knew the chatter was nothing more than a life-raft for their emotions. Soon a reaction would set in with Cleo and the American beside him, but he couldn’t help them put it off. His own reaction had already occurred.
“Well—” said Sylvester, and for once was lost for further words. But the silence in the car was too stiff and after a while he said, “So the two fellers who kidnapped you are dead. What will they do about the girl?”
