Psychomech (2 page)

‘Frau,’ corrected Koenig. ‘Fraulein means girl. Frau is a wife.’

‘Oh?’ said the fat one. ‘Is that right, now? And that lovely young German slut’s actually married to our Mr Schroeder, is she? Not just a piece of buck-she cunt?’

Koenig looked as if he might respond but Schroeder silenced him with a glance, then turned his eyes back to the two terrorists. ‘Men of your word,’ he nodded, blinking rapidly. ‘I see. Men of… of honour. Very well, if that is so will you let me speak to my wife?’

‘Of course you can speak to her, sir, of course you can,’ the small round one said, grinning. ‘For
we
are men of our word, as you’ll see. Sure we are.” The grin slipped from his face. ‘A pity the same can’t be said of you!’

‘Herr Schroeder is completely honourable!’ snapped Koenig, his blond eyebrows lowering in a frown, sweat rivering his red bull neck.

‘Is he now?’ said the thin one, nodding his head for a long time, his eyes unwavering where they stared at Koenig. ‘Well, it appears you’re a very loyal man, Mr Koenig. But do please remember, when we asked him to come alone he brought you with him—you crew cut Kraut sod!’ Despite the invective, his tone remained dry and constant.

Willy Koenig half-rose, found his elbow locked in the grip of his employer’s hand, sat down again. The sweat dripped even faster.

Schroeder said: ‘Herr Koenig goes almost everywhere with me. I do not drive. Without him I could not come. Also, he is my secretary, occasionally my advisor. He advised me to come. That much at least you must thank him for.’

‘Oh?’ said the fat one, smiling again. ‘And can we thank him for the briefcase, too—and what’s in it?’

‘The briefcase? Ah!—’ It was Schroeder’s turn to smile, however nervously. ‘Well, you see, I thought it might be that you wanted money. In which case—’

‘Ah!’ they said together, their eyes falling on Koenig’s briefcase. After a while they looked up.

‘So it’s full of money, is it?’ said the smiling one. ‘Well, that’s very reassuring. But it’s not just money we’re after. See, it’s this way. This factory you plan would employ a couple of thousand lads—Protestant lads, that is. It would create, you know—a sort of imbalance. A lot of money in Protestant pockets. Happiness in their black farting hearts.’

The thin one took it from there: ‘We only want to restore the balance, so to speak. I mean, after all’s said and done, it is war that we’re talking about, Herr Schroeder. Perhaps that’s what you don’t understand?’

‘War?’ Schroeder repeated. ‘Oh, I understand some things about war. But still I cannot supply you with guns.’

‘So you keep saying,’ the thin one answered, his voice impatient now, the scar tissue on his cheeks and nose seeming to show that much whiter. ‘But we could work something out. You have armaments interests in Germany. You could always give a nod in the right direction, or turn a blind eye on certain losses…’

‘May I phone my wife now?’ Schroeder asked.

The small fat man sighed. ‘Oh, please do, please do.’ He casually waved his hand at an antiquated pay-telephone on the wall beside the door.

As Schroeder got up and crossed the thinly scattered sawdust floor to the telephone, Koenig gripped the handle of his briefcase but did not pick it up. He remained seated, holding the briefcase on the table before him, the four stubby legs of its bottom pointed towards the two terrorists. One of them, the smiling one, turned to watch Schroeder through droopy eyes. The eyes of the taller, thinner man remained on Koenig, had narrowed slightly and seemed drawn to the awkward position of the German’s hand where it gripped the handle of the briefcase.

Schroeder put money in the phone, dialled, waited, suddenly sighed a great sigh. His lungs might have been gathering air for an hour, which they now expelled. His immaculately cut suit seemed to crumple in on him as he uttered that great exhalation. ‘Urmgard? Ist alles in ordnung?’ he asked, and immediately sighed again.
‘Und Heinrich? Gut! Nein, alles gents gut bei uns. Jah, bis spater.’
He blew a tiny, almost silent kiss into the telephone, replaced it in its cradle and turned to face across the room.
‘Willy, hörst du?’

Koenig nodded.

‘Men of our word, you see?’ said the thin, scarred terrorist, not taking his eyes from Koenig’s face, which suddenly had stopped sweating. ‘But you—you slimy Kraut dog!—you and your bloody brief—’ His hand dipped down into his worn and creased jacket, fastening on something which bulged there.

Koenig turned the briefcase up on its end on the table, lining its bottom up vertically with the thin man’s chest. ‘
Stop!
’ he warned, and the tone of his voice froze the other rigid. The four stubby black legs on the bottom of the case had added substance to Koenig’s warning, popping open on tiny hinges to show the mouths of rifle barrels, four gaping, deadly mouths whose short throats disappeared into the body of the case. Those barrels were each at least 15mm in diameter, which might help explain Koenig’s rigid grip on the case’s handle. The recoil would be enormous.

‘Put your gun on the table,’ said Koenig.
‘Now!
It was not a command to be denied, not in any way. The thin man did as instructed. His eyes were wide now, his scars zombie white. ‘Yours also,’ said Koenig, swivelling the case just a fraction to point it at the fat man. The latter was no longer smiling as he took out his gun and put it down very slowly and deliberately.

‘Most sensible,’ said Schroeder, quietly coming back across the room. On his way he took out a handkerchief, stooped, folded the white square of linen over the rim of the spittoon and picked it up. He took up a half-pint glass of stale Guinness from the bar and poured it into the spittoon.

‘You’ll not get past the boys in the corridor, you know,’ said the thin one harshly. ‘Not this way.’

‘Oh, we will,’ said Koenig. ‘But be sure that if we don’t, you will not be .here to enjoy our predicament.’ He pocketed the thin man’s gun, tossed the other across the room. Schroeder, carrying the spittoon, caught it in his free right hand. And now the Irishmen were aware of the metamorphosis taken place in the Germans.

Where they had been timid in their actions, now they were sure. Where they had seemed nervous, they were now cool as cubes of ice. Koenig’s sweat had dried on him in a matter of moments. His eyes were small, cold and penetrating as he brushed back his short-cropped hair with a blunt hand. He had seemed to grow by at least four or five inches. ‘Be very quiet,’ he said, ‘and I may let you live. If you are noisy or try to attract attention, then—’ and he gave an indifferent shrug. ‘One missile from the case would kill an elephant outright. Two for each of you and your own mothers—if you had mothers—would not know you.’

Schroeder, smiling through his thick lenses, his lips drawn back in the wide grin of a wolf, came up behind the two and said, ‘Put your hands on the table.’ Then, when they had obeyed: ‘Now put your heads on your hands—and stay quite still.’ He swirled the contents of the spittoon until they made a slopping sound.

‘Gentlemen,’ he finally continued, ‘—and may the good God, who to my eternal damnation surely exists, at least forgive me for calling you that, if not for my greater crimes—you have made a big mistake. Did you think I would come into this country, and having come here deliver myself into hands such as yours, without taking the greatest precaution? Herr Koenig here is that precaution, or a large part of it. His talent lies in thinking bad thoughts. Never good ones. In this way he has protected me personally for many years, since 1944. He is successful because he thinks his bad thoughts before others think them.’ He poured the contents of the deep spittoon over their bowed heads.

The small fat man moaned but remained motionless. The thin one cursed and straightened up. Koenig had taken the man’s weapon back out of his pocket. Now he reached over and jammed its barrel hard against his upper lip below his scarred nose. He pressed his hand forward and up until the muzzle of the gun rested squarely in the orbit of an expanded left nostril. The Irishman, because of the bench which pressed against the back of his legs, could not move. He put up his hands before him and they were shaking.

Koenig told him, ‘Herr Schroeder ordered you not to move—Paddy.’ His accent was thicker now and full of a sort of lust. The terrorist believed he knew the sort, and his hands fluttered like trapped birds. He wished he had not called the Germans names. But then Koenig drew back the gun from his face a little and allowed him to relax. He put down his hands and started to sit, attempting a tight smile through the slop and stale spittle dripping down his face. Koenig had expected some sort of bravado, had planned and prepared for it, had thought his bad thoughts. He had decided to kill this Irishman, if only as a lesson to the other one—and it might as well be now.

He drove the gun forward again, his forearm rigid as a piston. The barrel sheared through lips, teeth and tongue, its foresight slicing along the roof of the Irishman’s mouth. He gagged, jerked, reared up again, coughed blood, the barrel still in his mouth. If it had been possible, he would have screamed with the pain.

Koenig withdrew the barrel with a rapid, tearing motion, ripping the man’s mouth. At the same time he released his briefcase and grabbed his victim’s jacket, then struck him with the gun. Again and again and again. The blows were so fast and deadly that they seemed physically to slice the air; their whistle and
chop
could clearly be heard. The “final blow, delivered while the man was still straining up and away, smashed his Adam’s apple out of position and killed him. Down he went on to the bench, toppling, his nose torn, his right eye hanging by a thread.

The fat man had seen it all. He had dared to lift his head an inch or two from the table. Now, fainting, he fell back again into the slops. And all of this occurring so rapidly—and in a sort of vacuum, a well of near-silence—that only the blows had made noise.

Something of it had been heard, however—heard and misunderstood—and a harsh snigger sounded from the corridor. Then the low murmurings continued.

Koenig moved from between bench and table, stooped and ripped the dead man’s jacket open. He tore off his shirt and turned to the fat man, roughly towelling his head and face dry and clean before slapping him awake. When the man’s eyes opened and his eyeballs rolled back into place Schroeder grabbed his beard and showed him his own gun.

‘You are coming with us,’ the industrialist told him. ‘Oh, and incidentally—you may call me Colonel. Herr Koenig here was the youngest Feldwebel in my rather special corps. You have seen why he was promoted so very young. If you should foolishly attempt to raise an alarm, he will kill you—or I will. I’m sure you understand that, don’t you?’

The fat man nodded. He might have been about to smile but at the last moment thought better of it. Instead his lips trembled like jelly. ‘Control yourself,’ said Schroeder. ‘And act naturally. But please do
not
smile. Your teeth offend me. If you do smile I shall have Herr Koenig remove them.’

‘
Do
you understand?’ Koenig hissed, shoving his square face close and baring his own perfect teeth.

‘Yes! Oh, yes, I surely do!’ the IRA man cringed.

Koenig nodded. He seemed to shrink down into himself, making himself smaller. The effort forced sweat to his brow. His face began to work again, an insistent tic jerking the corner of his mouth. Schroeder also altered himself, _ becoming weary in a few moments. He allowed his hands to dangle by his sides as he shuffled to the door. The Irishman followed with Koenig close behind. Schroeder turned the key, stepped into the corridor with the two following on his heels. Koenig took the key, closed the door and locked it, gave the key to the Irishman who automatically pocketed it. If anyone should look into that room before those two Krauts were away, then he, Kevin Connery, was a dead man. And he knew it.

The two men in the corridor tipped their caps respectfully as the three passed them and went out of the second door into the street. It was evening now and an autumn sun was sinking over the hills. It turned the empty street a rich wine colour.

Another man, small as a monkey, sat at the wheel of a big Mercedes where it was parked. He toyed with the controls, making the windows hum up and down, up and down…

‘Tell him to get out,’ Schroeder said as he reached to open a rear door. ‘You get in here, with me.’

Connery jerked his head, indicating that the monkey man should get out of the car. As the little man made to do so, Schroeder pushed Connery into the back seat and got in after him. He produced Connery’s gun.

Koenig waited until the little man was half out of the car, then grabbed him in one hand and dragged him free. He spun him round, his feet off the ground, once, twice… and released him at the two men from the corridor where they now stood in the open door, their curiosity turning to astonishment. The monkey man smashed into them and all three were thrown back into the shadows. Then Koenig was in the driver’s seat, gunning the motor, turning a corner on screaming tyres, accelerating down a deserted street. He spun the wheel, turned another corner. And so they were away.

‘Well,’ said the Colonel to the Irishman. ‘We made it, you see? Now you will kindly give directions back to our hotel.’ After a moment he added: ‘Tell me, Irish, what’s your name?’

‘Connery, sir—er, Colonel!’ said the other.

‘Oh?’ the Colonel smiled his thin smile. ‘Like Sean? And is that how you see yourself?
Wie null null sieben?
’

‘Pardon, sir?’ the IRA man gulped as he felt the pressure of his own gun under his heart He knew the damage it could do.

‘As 007?’ the Colonel repeated. ‘As Mr James Bond?’

‘Oh, no, sir. Not me. I just do as I’m told, so I do.’

‘But it can be bloody work, eh, James?’

‘It’s Kevin, sir—I mean, Colonel. And actually—’

‘Actually, Kevin, you’re a damned Irish idiot for telling me your name. What if I pass it on to the police?’

‘Oh, they know it well enough already, sir. And anyway, I’ll be glad enough just to step down from this car alive.’

‘Asensible attitude. But you were saying?’