A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (23 page)

It took years to cross the street, but somehow he made it to the other side alive. His hand shook as he closed his fingers around the handle to the building’s front door and pulled it open. Only now did he give in to his nerves, hopping quickly inside and darting out of the doorway into the safety of the main stairwell. His knees trembled and he put out his hand, supporting himself against the cinderblock walls. he was suddenly aware that he was short of breath and his forehead had broken out in a cold sweat.

“‘Newfound fatalism’ my arse,” he murmured.

When he had collected himself he started up the stairs. On his way he removed his helmet so that Ellie would recognize him more easily.

He knocked on Ellie’s front door, but there was no immediate answer. He knocked again. “Ellie,” he called, “it’s me. Simon.”

After a few moments the door inched open a crack, and Ellie’s suspicious face peered out at him over the chain. She tensed when she saw the blue Luftwaffe uniform, ready to slam the door shut again, but then she recognized his face and her eyes widened.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

Wordlessly she shut the door, then opened it again, this time wide, with the chain unfastened. She stepped
aside, and he entered. He unslung his rifle and set it against the wall as she closed the door behind him.

She had made an attempt at clearing up, but the disarray in which her flat had been left this morning had been extremely thorough. She had righted the furniture, stuffed most of the padding back into her cushions and set the cushions back on the settee, with the torn seams facing downward. One of the legs on her dining table had been broken, making the table unusable, and it lay propped on its side against the wall by the kitchen entrance.

He turned to Ellie without saying a word. She regarded him, still suspicious, for a long time, then stepped forward and embraced him, pressing her face against his chest. He wrapped his arms protectively around her.

They stood like that for a long time. He let her choose when the embrace would end. At last she released him and stepped back.

“Have you eaten?” she asked. Her tone was emotionless and businesslike: take care of what needed to be done first.

He shook his head. “No. But I’m all right.”

She nodded. “Something to drink, then?”

“Just coffee,” he said.

He took off his greatcoat and sat on the settee while she made the coffee. When it was ready, she brought it out to him and sat down next to him.

“What happened?” she asked as he sipped gingerly at the hot liquid.

“They gave me airplane tickets and told me to get out of Berlin. They said they’d be watching me till I did.” He gestured at his uniform. “I managed to disguise myself when they weren’t looking, then I gave them the slip.”

She nodded, absorbing it all expressionlessly. “They’ll be out looking for you now.”

“I know.”

“They’ll be watching my flat,” she said matter-of-factly. “They’ll know you’re here.”

He nodded. “I’ll leave if that’s what you want.”

“No. That’s not what I want at all.”

They lapsed into silence while he finished his coffee. He set the empty cup down on the carpet by the settee, then rose and walked over to the window and studied the view. He saw no one he could be certain was watching. He reached up and drew the blinds.

He heard her get up and walk softly over to stand behind him, and he turned round to her. She was staring intently up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry about this morning. I’m sorry about whatever might happen tonight. I shouldn’t have got you into this.”

She shook her head. “You’d leave if I said that’s what I wanted.”

She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. He kissed back. He felt her hands resting on his upper arms. He put his hands on her hips, then slid them up her sides, then ran them through her hair. The scent of her filled his nostrils, and he ran his tongue along hers, enjoying the taste of her. They pressed against each other. She felt wonderful, just like she had against him in the Munich hotel room last night.

Only this time, he did not have to stop. There was nothing to be afraid of.

He stepped back, breaking off their kiss. She looked at him quizzically, frowning, but he bent slightly, reached round her and lifted her easily in his arms. She gave a mild squeak of surprise as he lifted her, then giggled. She put her arms round his neck, linking her fingers, and kissed him. he smiled at her and carried her into the bedroom.

“In war, men are nothing, one man is everything.”

—Napoleon Bonaparte

AFTERWARDS THEY lay in the bed together, she sleeping soundly, her head nuzzled against his chest, he with his arm wrapped around her. Her hair tickled his chest in time with her soft, slowly rhythmic breathing. They were both slick with sweat, the sheets twisted around their legs; their clothes lay scattered around the bedroom floor. Quinn dozed fitfully, but was glad he had spent most of the afternoon asleep, as it prevented him now from falling into a deep slumber.

The moonlight came in through the cracks between the window blinds, casting bright white pinstripes across the bed and their bodies in the darkness. The angle of the light was changing almost imperceptibly as the moon made its slow pilgrimage across the night sky, and Quinn watched one stripe make its creeping way across Ellie’s lower back and the curve of her backside over the course of most of an hour.

A creak from the other room brought him awake with a start and he listened tensely for several moments, but he heard no more. It must have just been the building settling. He glanced at the stripe he had watched cross down Ellie’s back and saw that it had reached all the way down the back of her thighs and was approaching the back of her knees. He glanced at the clock on her bedside table: a quarter past one. He must have dozed off after all. He needed to find something to keep his mind alert.

Another sound
. Instantly he was wide awake, all worries about sleep banished from his thoughts. He was sure that this time the sound had come from a human being—a rattling, the sound of a lock being tried.

There it was again.
Skeleton keys
, he thought.
Trying to get in quietly, without breaking down the door
.

Absently he kissed the top of Ellie’s forehead, then gently slid himself out from under her and stood up. She murmured faintly in protest, then wrapped her arms around his empty pillow and resettled herself with it held against her breast. He was slipping his trousers on and buttoning them up, cursing himself for leaving his Luftwaffe rifle next to the door where he had propped it when he first came in. His heart was pounding inside his chest. Hurriedly he pulled his boots on. It always paid to be wearing footwear in a fight.

He was in the bedroom doorway, heading into the main room to make a grab for the rifle, when he heard the click from the lock on the front door. He froze. The door creaked loudly and eased open a crack. Quinn spun back into the bedroom and flattened himself against the wall. He held his breath and made a conscious effort to calm his pounding heart so that he could hear any sounds coming from the next room.

Luckily Ellie had fastened the catch chain after she let him in earlier, and whoever had unlocked the door could open it only a few centimeters. After a moment or two Quinn heard a dull thud, then a snap, as the door was smashed in, breaking the chain. Still, much quieter than having to break the door down without a key would have been.

Ellie stirred and let out a groan at the sound of the thud, reaching out a hand to where Quinn should have been lying next to her. When she did not find him she tried reaching out further, then, still not finding him, she raised her head and squinted groggily at his side of the bed. She frowned when she saw it was empty, propped herself up on one elbow and looked around for him.

When she saw him, tense and pressed against the wall, she froze. She opened her mouth as if about to ask what he was doing, but no sound emerged. Quinn raised his finger to his lips to indicate silence, then motioned that she should pull the bed sheets up and cover herself. Wide-eyed and awake now, she nodded and obeyed.

He could hear the quiet padding of feet in the main room. There were at least two of them, probably three. A man’s shadow fell across the half-open bedroom door, then another man’s as well. He could sense them now, just on the other side of the doorway. One took a step through—

Quinn pivoted round on one foot and neatly punched the intruder in the face. The man grunted, dropped the pistol he was carrying and staggered back, into a second man right behind him; both men were dressed all in black. Quinn grabbed the first man by the shirt while he was still stunned, hauled him through the bedroom door and shoved him aside, so that he could step forward and aim a blow at the second man.

The second intruder was ready for him, though, despite having been knocked momentarily off balance by his companion staggering into him, and he blocked Quinn’s punch and countered with one of his own aimed at Quinn’s jaw. Quinn blocked it reflexively, pivoted on his heel and kicked out at the man’s leg. He felt the heel of his jackboot strike the man’s kneecap and heard the satisfying pop of cartilage. The man crumpled silently to the ground, clutching his knee.

Quinn turned round, ready to face the first attacker whom he had left stunned just inside the bedroom.

“That’s enough,” a familiar voice said. “Hands on your head. Slowly now.”

Quinn froze. The voice had come from over his shoulder, in the living room. Slowly he raised his hands and put them behind his head. The intruder he had left in the bedroom got shakily to his feet. Quinn recognized him as Barnes’s companion who had trailed him to the airport earlier that day. Ellie, the bed sheets pulled up to her neck, was staring wide-eyed and silent at the scene unfolding before her.

The intruder let his eyes sweep down the length of Ellie’s body, outlined under the sheets, then turned to Quinn and surveyed him with a look of distaste. His nose was bleeding. He took a step forward and belted him in the stomach. Quinn doubled over, expelling his breath in a grunt of pain, but kept his hands behind his head. “Dirty little Nazi traitor,” the intruder grunted in English.

“All right, Gunning, that’s enough,” the voice said, and Quinn heard its owner approaching him from behind as he straightened up. A hand grasped his shoulder and spun him round. He found himself confronted with the barrel of a gun leveled an inch from his left eye, and beyond that, the unblinking, furious hazel eyes of Captain Barnes.

He returned Barnes’s stare unflinchingly for several seconds before the captain’s gaze flicked over his shoulder toward Gunning. Barnes jerked his head toward where the third man still writhed on the floor behind him. “See to Cokeroft,” he said.

He shifted his gaze back to Quinn. He wore the same nondescript, black clothing as his companions. Still holding the gun on him with one hand, he grabbed him by the neck with the other and stepped backward, pulling Quinn out of the doorway. Next he pivoted slightly, changing direction, then took a step forward. Quinn stumbled backward and was slammed against the wall. He felt the muzzle of Barnes’s gun jamming painfully into his jaw just below his ear.

“I want to know what the
fuck
is going on,” Barnes hissed.

Quinn, Barnes’s hand still clutched tightly round his throat, was gasping slightly for breath, but he blinked in surprise all the same. “Wh-what?” he said.

“First Garner,” Barnes said. “Now you. I worked with Richard Garner for years. He was no Nazi. I never saw a finer agent.” His voice was rising shrilly. “Then all of a sudden he bloody
defects
and I get the order to eliminate him. And now you—they send you in to hunt him down, but, as soon as you do that, you take his information and decide to run for the Nazis yourself.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned closer in on Quinn and repeated in a deathly quiet snarl, “What the
fuck
is going on?”

His grip on Quinn’s throat had tightened as he spoke, and now Quinn was making quiet choking noises. Reluctantly Barnes relaxed his fingers a touch. The chokes turned into rasping, constricted laughter.

Anger flared in Barnes’s eyes. “What the bleeding hell is so funny, you Nazi bastard?”

“You—” Quinn broke off, gulping air, trying to breathe around the twin impediments of Barnes’s grip on his throat and his own, slightly hysterical, laughter at the situation. “You mean,” he tried again after a few moments, “you mean you—you don’t even know?”

“Know what?”

“Oh, you stupid, stupid bastard,” Quinn said. Barnes’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing. “I’m not the one working with the Nazis, Barnes.
You
are.”

This caught the captain off guard. He stepped back, releasing his hold on Quinn’s neck but keeping his gun trained on him. Quinn slid down the wall to a crouch, massaging his neck, and coughed slightly.

“What are you talking about?” Barnes demanded.

Quinn glanced up at him. “Garner wasn’t defecting. At least, not to the Nazis.” He paused. This was it—the one element in his nascent plan over which he had no control. Even if he could persuade Barnes to believe him, that still did not mean that the captain would come over to Quinn’s side.

He started to get his feet. He saw Barnes’s finger tense on the trigger of his gun, and he stopped, holding out his hands placatingly.

“You stay right where you are,” the captain said.

“Fine,” Quinn acquiesced. He nodded to where his greatcoat had been left over the back of the settee. “It’s in there. Right inside pocket.”

“What is?”

“Garner’s document.”

“That’s been destroyed. I was there, remember?”

Quinn said nothing, just stared up at him. At last Barnes stepped over to the settee, keeping his eyes and gun on Quinn. With his free hand he flipped the greatcoat open and began fishing in the pocket. As he did so he glanced over his shoulder at where Gunning was kneeling beside Cokeroft. “Will you live, Cokeroft?” he asked.