The British Lion (6 page)

Another sheet of airmail paper: “
WH
ITECHAPEL
6168.”

Koehler put the note in his mouth as he searched through his pockets for change; he came up empty.

He pushed the call box door open and charged out into the snow, running toward the tube station through the steady fall that had started again. He skidded around the corner, then skidded again on the wet floor tiles, before tapping the muzzle of the Mauser on the glass of the ticket office.

He waited five seconds and then tapped again, harder and faster this time. Beneath his feet he felt the vibration of a passing tube train and he turned to look toward the steps that led down to the platforms.

Adolf Hitler stared back, holding a laughing child in a sunlit pasture; behind him a tractor tilled the land and some farm laborers waved toward whoever was looking at the poster they were in.

“
WORKING
FOR THE FUTURE TOGET
HER, WORKING FOR A UNITED EUROPE!
”

Koehler looked at the laughing child, then hammered on the window with the Mauser again.

The blind shot up and the ticket collector stared back, first at Koehler and then at the Mauser.

“Give me money for the telephone.”

The man nodded dumbly and then grabbed some change and notes out of his cash drawer. He tossed the money through the slot at the bottom of the window, then raised his hands.

Koehler slid the change off the counter into his palm, then looked at the ticket collector’s raised hands.

“This isn’t a robbery, you idiot.”

The man lowered his hands as Koehler ran out of the tube station, back toward the phone box.

He dialed the number, waited for it to answer, then dropped the money into the slot and pushed the call lever.

“Hello?”

“You took your time.”

“I had to be careful.”

“No, Major, not had:
have
. You have to be careful. You have to be careful that you don’t mess me around. You have to do as I say, exactly as I say, and when I say it. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

“Lotte and Anja?”

“They are well.”

“I want to speak to them.”

“In good time.”

“What do you want?”

“You to do something.”

“What?”

“We want a Jew.”

“You can have them, any of them. If I can get them you can have them.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Major.”

“I want you to know, I don’t have a problem with the Jews. I just do my job. I don’t hate them, I just do my job; do you understand?” Koehler realized he was babbling. He took a breath and looked around the street outside through the windows of the box.

“We don’t care about the Jews, Major. We care about a Jew. I want you to get me that Jew and bring her to London, and then you can have your wife and daughter back.”

“Who is it? I’ll get her. Just tell me who it is.”

“Ruth Hartz.”

Koehler searched frantically for a pencil in his coat, jammed the receiver under his chin, opened the phone book, and wrote the name in a space on the first damp page.

“The address?”

“Cambridge.”

“Do you have a street or anything? Something to help me?”

“St. Catherine’s Hall, Coton. It’s a village just outside the town. She stays there when she isn’t working at the Cavendish Labs, the physics department at the university.”

“She’s working? I thought you said she was a Jew.”

“She is a special Jew, which is why we want her, and why you will get her. Do you see the post office on the other side of the street?”

Koehler put the pencil in his mouth as he scanned the street and found the post office.

“Yes.”

“When the girl is in London, go to that post office and collect a parcel that will be waiting for you there. Further instructions will be inside. Do not deviate from these instructions or the ones in the parcel. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“You’ve been chosen carefully, Ernst. None of this is accidental. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Koehler leaned an elbow on the shelf and rested his forehead in his hand.

“Ernst, the bullet, the one you picked up outside your apartment.”

“Yes?”

“I took three out of a box this morning. I selected them myself, the first three, right next to each other, out of a fresh box.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make me use the other two.”

The phone clicked dead and Koehler lowered his own receiver into the cradle. He ran a hand across his mouth and looked up and down Queensway through the windows of the box.

The neon sign pulsed; life went on as the snow slowly fell.

The ground under his feet rumbled. Koehler looked down at his boots; it felt like the devil was coming up to take his soul.

He shivered. It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER 8

A
NJA COULDN’T S
TOP
shaking. She hugged her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes tight, but still she shook.

It was as if her clothes were made of ice and the blankets she lay under were soaked in water.

Her breath came in gulps, and though the tears had stopped, her eyes still ached as if they’d been wrung out and then dipped in vinegar.

“Be quiet,” said King, who was standing at the door.

Anja wondered if she’d made a sound.

She shook again.

“Crying isn’t going to bring her back. You must be quiet,” King said again.

“I’m not crying.”

“Well, be quiet then.”

Anja opened her eyes and turned on the mattress, away from the wall with its dirty gray damp stains, toward him.

“I’m a child. I’m allowed to cry,” she said, and King surprised her by smiling.

“I’m sorry.”

“I want my father.”

“Soon.”

“Where is my mother?”

“She is being looked after.”

“She’s dead. I’m a child, not an idiot.”

King tilted his head a fraction and nodded.

“Of course, I’m sorry.”

Anja bit her lip and felt another shudder building in her chest.

“Why are you doing this?”

“We need you, just for a while.”

“Why?”

“You don’t need to know. Your father will collect you soon.”

“My father will kill you.”

“So be it,” King replied.

“You’ll be sorry,” Anja said.

“I’ve been sorry a long time. A little longer won’t make much difference. Now please, try to be quiet.”

Anja stared at him and he stared back until she rolled over again to face the wall.

The mattress squeaked, but Anja was silent.

She wasn’t going to cry anymore. She was going to do what her mother had told her.

She was going to fight.

She was going to get to her father.

“SHE’S DEAD?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure; I’m not an idiot.”

“Don’t get smart with me. Remember who you are talking to.”

“I’m sorry.” King rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips before resting his forehead on the cold window of the call box.

“How did she die?”

“She had a gun, hidden. When we tried to lift her, she became suspicious and pulled it. She was struggling with Eric and it went off; the round caught her in the leg and she bled out. There was nothing we could do.”

“Jesus,” Allen Dulles said softly.

King lifted himself off the glass and stood up, waiting for his boss, across the city in the American embassy, to collect himself.

“Did you tell Koehler when he rang?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. How is the girl?”

“She’s fine. Upset, but fine.”

“Will she give you problems?”

“She’s a kid. There’ll be no issues.”

“Are you keeping a low profile?”

“Absolutely. We’re at the flat, and we haven’t made a noise since we got here. The streets are deserted and the weather is helping keep them that way.”

“Good.”

Small mercies.

“I need to tell you, sir . . . there was a shop assistant.” King rested his head against the glass of the call box again.

“And?”

“He’s dead.”

“How?” Dulles mumbled on the other end of the line.

“I had no choice.”

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Where is her mother?”

“We put her in the trunk of the car. We couldn’t keep her in the flat; it’s too small.”

King waited, all the while staring at the darkened half-derelict shop next to the call box. “What about the shop assistant?” Dulles finally asked.

“We left him there. With all the snow nobody saw us come out, so I figured it wouldn’t matter if he was found.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I took some money from the register and messed up a few things to make it look like a robbery.” King looked at the car, which was now coated in a half an inch of fresh snow. “What should I do with the woman’s body?”

“Lose her tonight, do you understand? We don’t need some bored cop stopping you and finding a body in the trunk.”

“And the child?”

“Stick to the plan. There is no reason she shouldn’t be able to go back to her father at the end of this.”

“She knows our names, sir; she could talk.”

“We’ll have what we want, and you’ll be out of the country with the scientist by then.”

“Or dead.”

“What?”

“Or dead by then.”

“Frank, I don’t have to tell you how important it is that there are no more mistakes, do I?”

“No, sir.”

“We are out on a limb here; we’ve got no safety net if things go wrong.”

“We?” King raised an eyebrow.

“I might not be on the ground with you, but I’m just as much on the line with you. I’ve pushed for this operation, there aren’t many people in Washington on our side, and there is nobody going to stick up for us if things go to shit. Add to that there is nobody at the embassy here who knows what we are doing, and Ambassador Kennedy is further up Hitler’s ass than Goering. You have to remember that we have no room left here, none whatsoever.”

“There’s even less on the streets of London, sir.”

“I understand that, Frank, and I’m sorry.”

King accepted the apology without speaking; he listened to Dulles give out a long sigh on the other end of the phone.

“Okay, so you’ve told him to get the Jew. What next?”

“We wait, sir; either Koehler will go get her, or he won’t. I’m guessing with the snow things will take a while, but I think he’ll get it done.”

“We don’t have long.”

“Neither does he. He won’t hang around.”

“You sure he can do it?”

“Koehler’s the best they have in London, sir; I didn’t just pick him out of a hat. He works in the right office. His whole job is about shifting Jews around the country. His family were in London, which gave us leverage, and he has a history of operating outside of the rules. We are also aware that he has been having a crisis of confidence in what he is doing at the moment; he isn’t the usual rabid SS officer, sir. I chose him carefully. He’s the man, he knows the game, he knows he has one chance to get it right, and he’ll get it right.”

“All right. Just remember how important that girl in Cambridge is, Frank. Just remember what will happen if we don’t get to her soon.”

“I’ll remember, sir.”

“We need her. If we can get her back to America and show the president what she knows, what she and her team have been doing, maybe we can wake some people up.”

“I know.”

“You call me if you need me, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take care.”

King put down the receiver, pushed the door of the call box open, and stepped out. The city was silent, muffled by the snow.

He looked up and down the street. Nobody moved. It felt like he was the only person in the world, and for a moment he wondered what it would be like to just walk away, be on his own.

Start again? He had his passport in his apartment, money for a ticket; he could be out of this shithole of a country in ten hours and en route to the U.S., far away from dirty tricks and political games.

How important could this Jew be?

He let the door swing shut behind him and looked up at the falling snow.

No time for dreaming; Dulles would have him killed.

He knew it; he knew it because he’d done the killing for Dulles before.

He trudged across the pavement to the narrow door at the side of the shop, shouldered it open, then kicked it closed behind him. He clumped up the wooden stairs and noticed some fat dried drops of blood on the timber.

He pushed open the bedroom door and nodded his head at Cook, who was sitting on a low chair opposite the mattress where Anja lay under a thin brown blanket. King looked at Anja, face to the wall, trying to ignore them, and then at the floor. He noticed that his breath was misting in the chill of the room.

“What do we do?” Cook leaned forward like a nervous schoolboy desperate for information.

“We get rid of the body.” King looked at Anja again.

“Now?” Cook said.

“Later. We’ll take her to the river. The snow is due to keep coming and going all night. We can use the storm to cover us.”

“Was he upset?”

“About what?”

“The woman and the tailor?”

“What do you think?” King turned to look at Cook, who stared back, face pasty white, worry draining it of color.

Cook shook his head.

“How was I to know she had a gun? Did you blame me?”

King tilted his head. “It doesn’t matter who is to blame, Eric, okay? None of that matters. What matters is that there are no more mistakes. We’re already out on a limb here; if anything else goes wrong we will get dropped and left to get out of this ourselves. You need to remember that: there will be nobody coming to help us. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, try to get some sleep. This is going to be a long night.”

CHAPTER 9

D
EATH HAD A
habit of being dramatic.

Police Generalmajor Erhard Neumann had seen enough murders in his career to know this.

He was on speaking terms with death; he knew its tricks, its sleights of hand, its clever way of pulling you one way and then spinning you the other.

He knew that death favored a flourish of wide strokes. A strong palette of reds, blacks, and ghostly whites splashed and dashed onto the canvas. Death favored shadows. It skulked in corners surrounded by gloom, bodies scattered around like leaves on the ground after a strong wind had dislodged them from the tree of life.

Like an art critic he looked at the background and the foreground, he looked at scenery, he looked at the frame, he looked where fingers pointed and heads were turned.

He looked at the past, the present, and the future.

And then, when he knew it inside out, he decided who’d painted it.

He lived murder, he lived death.

He looked up and down a darkened Regent Street and then back at the tailor’s shop to which he’d been called.

The telephone call had said “robbery gone wrong,” but Erhard Neumann wasn’t ready to agree until he’d seen the body himself.

He felt Lieutenant March shift in the snow next to him. The younger man was rocking backward and forward, impatient to get into the shop to show his boss what he had found. Neumann looked left and right again. He could see German soldiers and English policemen fanned out, blocking the road in either direction.

“Maintaining the scene,” March had said when Neumann had arrived, causing to him frown and feel old.

“The getaway car was parked here.” March pointed to the curb and Neumann inwardly shuddered at the use of the word
getaway
.

He thinks he’s in a movie, Neumann said to himself.

“How do you know?” he said to March.

“When the first patrol attended, he said there were still marks in the snow, as if a car had bumped onto the curb as it turned around.”

“We’re on one of the busiest streets in London and it’s been snowing all day. Why wouldn’t there be marks in the snow?”

“There were drops of blood by the marks. The snow was still coming down, but it had stained red from below.” March pointed at the pavement. “Here there was a larger pool, as if someone had waited with an injury.” He looked at Neumann. “Dripping in one spot.”

Neumann nodded. It was a good answer.

The snow started to fall again as they went into the tailor’s shop. Neumann made a mental note of the
CLOSED
sign. He pointed to the little gray fingerprint guy, who was hovering by the door, and then at the sign.

The man nodded and started to work on the sign as the detectives moved through the shop.

“It looks like the shooter surprised the tailor at the back, a long way from the entrance. There doesn’t seem to be anything touched at the front. There is a cash register at the back which has been emptied.” March kept up a commentary as they walked.

“How much?”

“We don’t know yet. I’ve an English bobby going through the sales ledger. Not much, though, not with this weather, plus a place like this does a lot of work on account.”

“Is there a safe?”

“In the back storeroom. Untouched.”

“Key or combination?”

“Key.”

“You find the key?”

“In the cash register.”

“Did you check it?”

“Yes, after the fingerprint guy took a look. Eight pounds, a checkbook, and some papers.”

Neumann nodded again; March was doing well, learning his trade.

They arrived at the back of the shop. It was darker, the lamps suspended from the ceiling barely lighting the floor. The five or six policemen standing around seemed to dull it further still, sucking the light into their grimy raincoats, dark suits, police tunics, and cigarette smoke.

Nearly everyone turned to see who was arriving; Neumann gestured that they should all get behind him so he could see the scene inhabited by only the important person in the building.

The dead tailor.

Everyone silently filed past and took up station behind Neumann and March.

March made to speak, but Neumann shook his head.

Neumann looked at the tailor on the floor. He then turned and looked at the assembled officers, but he didn’t seem to see them.

His mind moved back in time, where he heard the report of the gun, smelled the cordite, and felt the thud of a falling man.

He looked at the register.

He lifted the curtain at the back of the shop, peered into the gloom of the sewing room, and then back at the man on the floor.

Neumann walked around the counter and took his position next to March, who finally spoke.

“Okay. I reckon the robber or robbers came in, found the tailor at the back of the shop or maybe closing up because of the weather. He’s pulled a gun. I’m guessing an accomplice was waiting in the car outside. There was a struggle and the shooter copped a round himself, hence the blood on the ground outside and the two shell casings we found.” March pointed to the blood on the floor, a small distance from the tailor’s body. “He shot the tailor, did a bit of first aid on himself, rifled the register, and fled the shop.”

“Who found the body?”

“The tailor obviously never went home. His wife waited a while and eventually called a friend who lived nearby to come take a look. She tried the door, found it was open, came in, and . . .” March held out his hands toward the body.

“Do we know how long he’s been here?”

“He’s pretty cold, and the blood is almost dry, even the pools.”

“A few hours,” Neumann said and March nodded.

“There was a case up in Coventry last year, do you remember?” March slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “A couple of Ukrainian SS privates robbing local businesses and selling whatever they got on the black market. That might explain how a robbery has happened in the German quarter of London.”

“I don’t think this was a robbery.”

“Why?”

“There is a jeweler’s shop next door. Why would you rob a tailor when a jeweler is next door?”

March nodded, disappointed he hadn’t thought of it first.

“Maybe the snow, sir? Maybe the jeweler closed early?” someone said behind Neumann, who half turned and responded, “Go find out.”

The policeman who had spoken dropped his shoulders and left the shop. Neumann crossed to the body of the tailor and looked at him.

The man had fallen straight down, crumpling on his legs. His eyes seemed to stare back at Neumann. Neumann looked at the wound. It was a good shot, center of the chest.

“Sudden death, probably gone before he hit the ground.” Neumann looked at March. “He dropped straight down. He wasn’t turning away—no momentum except the one that gravity gave him. If he’d been pleading, fighting, or running I’d expect a defensive wound at least, possibly a raised hand.”

March looked at the corpse and then back at his boss.

“But the blood, on the carpet there.” March pointed to a spot to their left, next to the display cases. “I don’t think it’s his. There must have been a struggle.”

Neumann knelt down by the blood.

“Torch.” He raised his hand and clicked a finger.

Someone obliged and Neumann pointed it at the carpet, found the edge of the bloodstain, then traced it with the beam of the torch all the way around until he came to a stop, back at where he’d started.

He leaned forward, shone the beam into the middle of the stain, and then with his other hand placed his fingertip onto the carpet into the middle of the spotlight.

He pushed down and for a moment his finger cast a shadow like an actor on an empty stage. Around the tip, fresh wet blood was forced through and up to the surface; Neumann lifted his finger and looked at it, then held it up for March to see before wiping it next to his foot.

He stood up.

“Somebody else was hit. They might have even died here—there is enough blood.”

“Someone else?”

“They bled out, or they were bleeding out. I’ll wager an artery. There’s no way they walked to a car.”

“But if there was no struggle?”

“I didn’t say there wasn’t a struggle; I said the tailor didn’t struggle.”

“But if you leave the tailor, why would you take the other person?”

Neumann looked at March and then back at the blood.

“I don’t know.” He stared at the stain and then called over his shoulder. “We need to check the hospitals, see if anyone has been brought in with a gunshot wound or bleeding heavily.”

Two of the detectives behind him, one English and one German, nodded and left the shop to make the inquiries.

Neumann knelt down again and then looked at the display case in front of the assistant.

“Why is that case open?”

All eyes turned to the case. Sure enough, the glass door hung open with keys still in its lock.

March looked into it.

“Handkerchiefs and ties.” He looked back at his boss.

Neumann stood up.

“They used a tie to stop the blood, a tourniquet.”

March looked back down, and then back at the blood before nodding.

“They used it to keep him alive.”

Neumann knelt, looking at the blood from the back of the shop, a new angle. Fresh perspective.

It was then that he saw it.

Slipped under the cabinet next to the blood: a sliver of white beneath the dark wood.

He stepped around the blood and tried to pull whatever it was out of the tiny gap. He cursed himself for biting his nails, then dug in his pocket for his penknife.

He used the blade to flick at the card, easing it forward until he could finally pull it free from under the cabinet.

“No,” he finally said, turning to look at March and holding up a German citizen’s identity card. “They used it to keep
her
alive.”