A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (24 page)

Cokeroft tried to match Barnes’s bantering tone, but his voice cracked slightly with pain. “I should think so, sir.” He had a heavy Scouse accent.

“All right to walk?”

“Ah—that one might be a bit tougher to manage, sir.”

Barnes had now found the German copy of the Columbia-Haus treaty and pulled it from the greatcoat pocket. He unfolded it and began to read. After a few moments his eyes widened slightly, and slowly he lowered his gun so that it was no longer pointing at Quinn.

He looked up at Quinn without saying anything, then back down at the page, then at Quinn again. At last he said, “This isn’t genuine.”

“It bloody better be,” Quinn said. “That’s what Richard Garner died for.”

Barnes was searching for a reason not to believe him. “This isn’t Garner’s document,” he said, and repeated, “That was destroyed this morning. At the airstrip.”

“Garner had two copies,” Quinn said. “The other was in English. I kept the one and turned the other over this morning. I told the old man that’s what I was doing.”

Barnes swallowed and returned to his perusal of the treaty, leafing slowly through the pages.

Quinn could see Gunning looking uncertainly between him and Barnes, wondering if he could break into his commanding officer’s reverie. At last he seemed to pluck up the courage. “Wh-what is it, sir?” he asked tentatively.

“It’s . . . it’s a—” Barnes, still staring at the document, broke off and shook his head, obviously unable to find the right word.

“It’s a surrender,” Quinn supplied.

Barnes nodded absently. “Yes. That’s what it amounts to.”

“Sir?” said Gunning uncertainly.

Barnes finally looked up from the treaty and turned his attention to his men. “It’s a détente, Gunning. A treaty of reconciliation between Britain and Germany. It’s—” He shook his head, once more leafing through the pages. “We capitulate, entirely. We blow off the Americans and NATO; we hand Sicily over to the Italians; we pull out of Greece. We relinquish all North Sea oil rights to the Jerries. We even have to remove all nuclear weapons from the British Isles.” He shook his head again, then looked at Quinn. “This can’t be.”

Quinn let everything hang in the air for several moments as the reality of the situation sank in for Barnes, Gunning, and Cokeroft, then he spoke. “Looks like you have a decision to make, Captain Barnes.”

Barnes frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You weren’t supposed to speak to me tonight.”

“No.”

“You were simply supposed execute me.”

“Yes.” It was a simple statement of fact, not an admission of guilt; there was no embarrassment in Barnes’s voice. Quinn had expected none.

“Just like I wasn’t supposed to speak to Richard Garner. But of course I did. And consequently I had to make the same choice he did. The same choice he died for. I had to decide what I meant when I took an oath to serve my country.” He took a breath. “The easy thing would be to kill me and let
that
—” he jabbed his finger at the treaty “—take its course. At least you’ll be removing Britain from the threat of nuclear war with Germany—at the minor cost of making us a Nazi satellite state. Or you can choose like I did, and fight it. But whichever one you do, it will be
your
choice.”

“But—” Barnes looked helplessly from the treaty to Quinn. “What can we possibly do to stop this?”

“Heydrich,” Quinn said simply.

Barnes frowned. “The Reich Commissar-General?”

Quinn nodded. “Look at the names on the last page. Hitler—and Himmler. This isn’t a Reich Foreign Ministry treaty. This is the SS. Himmler knows that Hitler has named Heydrich as his heir in his will. He’s going to use this treaty—announce it at Hitler’s funeral tomorrow before the will is read, and use it to overturn the will. We have to get that document to Heydrich. He’s the only one who can stop this.”

“What do you mean? Himmler gets prestige from this treaty, fine—but Heydrich’s still a Nazi. He still wants Britain to capitulate, even if it’s a victory for his rival. Why would he oppose it?”

“Heydrich and Himmler hate each other,” Quinn said. “You know that.
Hate
each other. Whichever one is the next Führer, the other won’t survive long in the new regime. Right now, it’s Heydrich who will win that fight. But if Himmler can get this treaty in front of Germany at the funeral tomorrow, he can cause enough commotion to have the will swept aside and get himself made Führer. Once he knows the situation, Heydrich will do whatever it takes to stop that coming to pass. He’ll have to repudiate the treaty to do that—paint it as treason, misrepresent it as favoring Britain over Germany. He won’t be able to then turn round and sign it once he does that. Even if he does try to reconstruct it, all the furor will have made the British Government back out—or made them fall.”

Barnes was silent for a while, thinking it all over. “But Heydrich is in Linz right now,” he objected at last, “with the entire Nazi and European leadership. We’d never get to him.” He paused, then added, “And what can he do anyway, with the city under an ironclad SS guard?”

Quinn nodded. “I agree. We’ll probably fail. We’ll probably die. The sensible thing for you to do would be to kill me.”

Quinn could see the conflict playing across Barnes’s face. At last the captain turned to Gunning and Cokeroft. “Sergeant Gunning,” he said, “what do you think?”

Gunning looked at Quinn, uncertainty on his face, but when he spoke there was confidence in his answer. “I think you’ll choose right, sir. I trust your decision.”

“Cokeroft?”

Cokeroft had no hesitation. “You heard the sergeant, sir.”

Barnes sighed, leafing through the treaty once more. “Not going to make this any easier on me, are you, lads?”

The silence lasted several moments. At last, Barnes looked up at Quinn, and Quinn could see the resolution on his face. “You’d better get dressed.” He nodded at Ellie’s bedroom door. “And get her dressed, too.”

Quinn shook his head. “She stays here.”

“She can’t,” Barnes said firmly; his voice left no room for argument. “We can’t leave her here. The Germans will kill her.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on an odd tone. “Or the British.”

They dressed in silence and left the flat. It was slow going down the stairs, as Cokeroft had to be supported
between Quinn and Gunning. In the foyer they paused to catch their breath.

“Captain?” said Gunning. The sergeant was a large, dark-haired man with a mild Irish accent.

“Yes, Gunning?”

“What do we do about Holcombe and Massey?”

Barnes glanced reflexively toward the front door, as if trying to see out into the street, but did not answer immediately. “What’s the problem?” Quinn asked.

“There are two more men in my squad,” Barnes explained. “They have the building under surveillance from the rooftop across the street.”

“Leave them,” Quinn said.

Barnes frowned at him, then nodded reluctantly. He turned to Gunning and Cokeroft. “We make no signal,” he said. “Just head straight for the car.”

Gunning glared angrily at Quinn. “But Captain—”

“We are committing treason, Sergeant,” Barnes cut him off. “I will not ask anymore of my men to collude with us.”

Gunning clearly wanted to say more but refrained. Instead he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You have the car keys?” Barnes asked. Gunning nodded. “You go first then. I’ll help Cokeroft.”

Gunning and Barnes switched places, and at Barnes’s nod, Gunning opened the front door and headed out into the street.

“You next,” Barnes said to Quinn. “I’ll be fine.”

Quinn slipped gently out from under Cokeroft’s shoulder and made to follow Gunning. “Fraulein, you go too,” Barnes ordered.

Quinn paused to allow Ellie to fall into step just behind him, then headed through the doorway. He had taken his first step down the stone steps when the whipcrack of a rifle being fired split the night silence, and a bullet bounced off the step a few inches from his foot in a shower of stone shards.

His reaction was instinctive and immediate. He twisted at the waist and dove back toward the doorway, barreling into Ellie’s torso and wrapping his arms around her to carry her with him as a second gunshot split the night. She let out a scream, more of surprise than fright, and as he landed hard on top of her in the building’s front doorway he heard the bullet that would have hit her in the chest strike the linoleum floor of the foyer beyond them, cracking tile.

He scrambled the rest of the way to safety inside the foyer, dragging Ellie with him. Cokeroft had been left slumped against the bottom of the staircase while Barnes, pistol drawn, had pressed himself against the wall next to the doorway. Gunning came hurtling back through the doorway, and Barnes slammed the door shut behind him.

For several moments the only sound was that of heavy breathing. At last Gunning broke the silence. “What the fuck was
that?’

“It wasn’t Holcombe and Massey,” said Cokeroft.

“No,” agreed Quinn.

Barnes looked at him sharply. “Then who?”

“Your watchers.”

“What?”

Quinn raised his eyebrows as if to signal that Barnes should already have this figured out. “You really think this is something the Gestapo are just going to trust MI6 to do and leave it at that? First I turn, then you catch me and I escape you. They’ve sent someone along to make sure the job gets done this time.”

Gunning cursed under his breath, and they lapsed back into silence. Ellie was sitting silently in a corner of the foyer with her back against the wall, and Quinn sat down next to her.

“Gunning,” Barnes said. “Did you see where the shots came from?”

“Not precisely, sir,” the sergeant answered. “Somewhere in the building right across the street.”

“Damn,” Barnes said.

“Is that the building your men are in?” Quinn asked.

Barnes nodded absently. “On the rooftop.”

The conversation had all been in English, and Ellie had not understood it. Her eyes leapt nervously between Quinn and Barnes. Now, in the several moments of silence that followed, she whispered, “What’s going on? Are the English shooting at us?”

Quinn shook his head. “The Gestapo. There are a couple of English sharpshooters out there, but they’re in the same building as the Gestapo, so they can’t help us unless they can find the room where the Gestapo are shooting at us from.”

“How far is it to the car?” Barnes asked.

“About ten yards,” Gunning said. “Maybe less.”

“Can you make it?”

Gunning hesitated, then nodded.

“All right,” Barnes said. “I’ll give you what cover I can.”

The captain resumed his position with his back to the wall beside the door and checked his weapon. When he was satisfied, he looked up at Gunning. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Gunning, who had been waiting a few feet back from the door with the car keys in hand, took a deep breath, then nodded. Barnes reached across the door, grasped the handle and pulled it wide open.

At first Gunning remained motionless, hoping the Gestapo sniper would let off a reflex shot, but none was forthcoming. Then he hurtled through the doorway and sprinted out into the street.

A rifle fired, but the shot went wide by over a yard and smacked into the pavement. Before the Germans could get off another shot, Barnes swung round into the open doorway and fired his pistol in the general direction of the snipers, one shot, then two more in quick succession, before ducking back under cover just as the German rifle fired again.

The goal, of course, had been to draw the Gestapo fire away from Gunning and toward Barnes, but that was unsuccessful. Quinn watched Gunning, midway between the front door and the car parked along the curb across the street, jerk violently to the side as he was hit and clutch at his upper arm. His momentum carried him the last several yards forward before he dropped to his knees and collapsed against the side of the car, sheltered by it now from the German sharpshooters above.

But the car keys had gone flying out of his hand when he was hit. Quinn had watched them skitter along the asphalt before coming to a rest, gleaming in the center of a pool of bright orange light cast by a streetlight. Gunning was safe for the moment behind the car, but he had no way of getting into the car, nor of starting it.

Quinn sprinted out the front door and was down the steps and into the road before Barnes had time to let out an inarticulate cry of protest. There was a rifle shot, and the bullet bounced off the asphalt between his feet but miraculously missed him. He did not slow down as he approached the car keys, maintaining a full sprint while bending to pick them up.

He scooped the keys up then, hideously off balance, spun on his heel and lunged toward the safety of the car a few yards away. Another bullet hit the road where he would have been if he had been any less agile, but he was unaware of it. He had stumbled as he lunged, staggered forward and rolled hard to a stop against the car, next to Gunning.

The sergeant was breathing shallowly and sweating, and blood welled between his fingers where they were clasped against his upper arm. “How are you?” Quinn asked.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Just winged me.” He nodded to where Quinn had picked up the keys. “Nice work.”

Quinn grunted, reached up and unlocked the car door. He got in, reached back and unlocked and opened the back door, then started the engine as Gunning climbed into the back seat. A bullet tore through the roof of the car but missed both of them, burying itself in the leather of the passenger seat. Through the doorway across the street Quinn could just see Barnes and Cokeroft arguing. He could imagine about what—Cokeroft was probably insisting that Barnes leave him behind.

He put the car into gear and pressed down on the accelerator, turning in a fast, sudden arc and pulling up
at the opposite curb at the bottom of the steps leading up to the front door. He reached across, unlocked the passenger door and pushed it open as Gunning did the same in the back.

Ellie came dashing down the steps and into the backseat, slamming her door closed behind her; the Germans had just enough time to get a shot off at her, but it went wide. Barnes and Cokeroft were still arguing in the doorway.