A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (25 page)

“Barnes!” Quinn yelled. “He’ll be all right. Come on!”

Barnes looked at Quinn, then back to Cokeroft, who nodded at him. Reluctantly, he turned and sprinted out the doorway and down the steps, diving into the car and just escaping the bullet that smacked against the steps behind him.

“Go go go!” he screamed, but Quinn had already put the car in gear and slammed down the accelerator, and they sped off into the night.

AT FIRST no one said anything. It took several minutes for the adrenaline to stop pumping, for their bodies and brains to register that the immediate crisis had passed and that they were, momentarily at least, out of danger. The only sound was that of the engine’s growl shifting constantly as Quinn changed in and out of gear, taking random turns without any specific destination, merely trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Ellie’s building, while he and Barnes kept a careful watch to make sure they were not being followed.

At last, after several minutes of peering intently over his shoulder out the rear windshield, Barnes shifted his gaze to Gunning sitting in the back seat. “How are you, Sergeant?”

The sergeant had his good hand clasped over his wounded bicep and was sitting with his head resting against the car window and his eyes closed. At Barnes’s inquiry, he opened them.

“I’ll live, sir,” he said. “Bastard just winged me. Amateur, he was.”

Barnes smiled slightly. “You’d have done better if you’d been up there in his place, Sergeant, I’m sure. A proper professional, you are.”

Gunning made a wan attempt at returning the smile. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Barnes reached under his seat and pulled out a first aid kit, turned and passed it to Ellie, sitting next to Gunning. “Fraulein,” he said, “please see to him.”

Ellie, wide eyed, had taken the kit automatically when Barnes proffered it to her and at first simply stared blankly at it. Then, visibly recomposing herself, she looked up at Barnes and nodded. Without saying a word, she turned to Gunning and gently began prying his hand away from his wound so she could take a look at it.

By now Quinn was heading generally south. He was satisfied they had not been followed, but he was still keeping an eye out for any
Orpo
patrol cars. Barnes, once he had satisfied himself that Ellie knew what she was doing and that Gunning’s wound was indeed fairly light, turned back to face forward in his seat and lapsed into brooding silence.

“He’ll be all right,” Quinn said. When this elicited only a disinterested glance from Barnes, he elaborated, “Your man back there. Cokeroft. He’ll be all right. The Gestapo were there for me. Now that I’ve gone, they won’t go hunting for him. Your men across the street will be able to go in and get him out.”

Barnes offered at first no response, then only a nod. After a few more moments he said, “You can’t take the autobahn.”

Quinn nodded. “I know. I’m going to take the back roads out of the city. We’ll have to figure something out, though. Without the autobahn it’ll be at least twenty hours to Linz.”

After some time they passed from the city into the extensive maze of suburbs that ringed it. When after half an hour they had covered only about twenty kilometers, Quinn said, “Do you have a screwdriver?”

Barnes had been continuing to keep a lookout for the Gestapo; it took him a moment to process the unexpected question. “Yes,” he said.

Quinn nodded and pulled into a side street of residential houses. He crawled along the dark, silent street, looking carefully about to make sure there were no signs of activity, and pulled up before a darkened house with a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia sitting in the driveway and turned off the ignition.

“What are you doing?” Barnes asked.

Quinn nodded in the direction of the Karmann Ghia and said, “The number plate.” Barnes followed his gaze, then turned back to him, understanding on his face. Wordlessly, the captain got out of the car and walked round to its rear, opened the boot and removed something, then headed toward the Volkswagen.

Quinn glanced at the backseat. Gunning, his upper arm now bandaged, was sleeping lightly. Ellie had been asleep, too, but she had woken when he had cut off the engine. Quietly, Quinn opened his door and got out of the car, scanning up and down the street for any movement.

After a minute or two he heard Ellie’s door open, followed by the sound of her footsteps as she walked around to join him. He felt her settle herself against the side of the car next to him, her upper arm touching his. He glanced down at her and smiled reassuringly.

With her eyes she indicated Barnes, kneeling behind the Karmann Ghia and unscrewing its number plate. “What’s he doing?” she asked.

“The Germans will have our registration number,” Quinn explained. “If they didn’t get it back at your building, they’ll have got it from the British Embassy. That’s why we’ve stayed off the autobahn, because they’ll be watching it.”

“So he’s switching out the number plates?”

Quinn nodded.

She was silent for several moments. Abruptly, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“Linz,” said Quinn.

“Why?”

“To try to contact Heydrich. Himmler negotiated the treaty with Britain, but the Führer’s will names Heydrich as his successor. Himmler is going to use the treaty to have the will overturned.”

She paused before responding, absorbing it all. “That’s why they were so desperate to have Garner killed? So he couldn’t get to Heydrich?”

“Yes.”

Another pause. Then, “Are we going to die?”

He turned to her and stared levelly into her eyes. “Yes. I think so.”

She nodded and looked away. He was unsure what he might have expected her to say now, but nevertheless he was surprised at her next question. “Do you know their names?”

“Who?”

She nodded behind them, at the car and in the direction of Barnes beyond it. “Them.”

He gestured to Barnes. “That’s Captain Barnes. And,” a gesture towards the backseat of the car, “Sergeant Gunning. I don’t know their given names.”

“They’re the men who—the men who took me. This morning.”

He nodded. “Yes. They’re also the ones who rescued us at Denlinger’s flat.” He hesitated, but did not add that they were the men who had killed Richard Garner.

All told it took Barnes about fifteen minutes to remove the two sets of license plates from the Karmann Ghia and their own car, and to replace the Karmann Ghia’s plates on their car. He was about to toss their own plates on the backseat, but Quinn stopped him.

“We should put them on the Karmann Ghia,” he said. “It might take him longer to notice that way.”

Barnes let out a sigh of annoyance and looked pointedly at his watch, but then said, “All right, then.” He tossed Quinn the screwdriver and held out the plates. Without a word Quinn took the plates and headed for the Volkswagen.

The captain stood over him as he changed the plates. When he had finished, the two men headed back to the car. He made to get back in the driver’s seat, but Barnes shook his head and said, softly but authoritatively, “No.” Quinn looked askance at him, and the Royal Marine gestured toward the passenger door. He thought about arguing, then shrugged and got in on the indicated side.

Barnes started the car and pulled away from the curb, but did not head in the direction Quinn had expected. “You’re going west?”

Barnes nodded. “We’re already so far off the southbound autobahn as it is. We’ll head toward Magdeburg, then turn south. They’ll be looking for us to be coming from Dresden, but we’ll actually be coming from Erfurt.”

“That’s a good idea.”

They lapsed into silence after that, Barnes concentrating on the road signs as he made their way through the unfamiliar suburbs towards the westbound autobahn. Quinn, no longer in the driver’s seat, had nothing to do but sit and stare out the window. Soon he found himself suspecting that Barnes hadn’t taken the wheel just to emphasize that he remained in charge, but to avoid the same tension that Quinn himself now felt starting to build in the silence as Germany rolled by.

After they got on the autobahn and were heading in the direction of Magdeburg and Hannover, however, Quinn felt his frustration subside, but just a little. At least now they were traveling at high speed, in a straight line; as the countryside streamed past them, he could at least feel as if they were making some sort of progress. After a while, he dozed.

Their faces floated before him once more: broken, hopeless, their bodies so gaunt it was impossible to tell man from woman. Had one of those faces been a cousin? A family friend? His parents’ rabbi? If not for a simple twist of fate, one of them would have been him
.

He came awake with a start, blinking and rubbing at his eyes in an effort to wipe away the sallow faces. Barnes looked at him curiously, but said nothing. The emaciated images continued to tug insistently at the back of his mind; there was a thought there, something that wanted his attention, but he brushed it aside. Now was not the time.

It was after three a.m. when they swung south at Magdeburg; by the time they passed through Halle, the sky in the east had begun to lighten.

Quinn checked his watch. “What time is the funeral?” he asked no one in particular.

“Noon,” Ellie said when Barnes offered no answer.

“Bugger,” Quinn said.

A little after seven o’clock they stopped outside Regensburg for gas. By now, as they drew nearer both to Linz and to the middle of the morning, they were encountering other traffic on the autobahn.

Quinn watched Barnes fill up the car, then head inside to pay. As the Royal Marine disappeared through the shop’s front door, however, a sudden thought occurred to him, and he got out of the car.

“Where do you think you’re going?” demanded Gunning, who had woken up a few hours before, but was looking pale. Quinn ignored him, swinging his door shut and hurrying across the plaza in pursuit of Barnes.

A small bell chimed as Quinn swung the front door open, causing Barnes, standing at the cash register with money in his hand, to look up. The captain’s eyebrows raised in enquiry when he saw who it was. Quinn glanced around, picked up a morning newspaper from the stack just inside the door and held it up for Barnes to see. Barnes gave him a slightly perplexed frown but turned back to the cashier.

“Another twenty pfennigs,” said the bored-looking young man, and Barnes counted out another two coins from his palm, then turned and headed out with Quinn.

“I can tell you already what the day’s big story is going to be,” the captain commented dryly as the two men headed back toward the car.

“It’ll have an itinerary for the day,” Quinn explained.

As they got underway once more, he leafed through the paper, looking for any public events that morning. The situation looked unpromising.

“Well?” Barnes asked after a few minutes. “What have you got?”

“It doesn’t look good,” he said. “Though I suppose I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Before the funeral starts, there’s nothing going on in Linz except for the ceremony at ten when the will is removed from the Führer’s palace and transported to the great hall for the funeral. He’ll be sure to be there for that, but . . .”

“But,” Barnes finished, “the security will be impossible to get through. And it’ll be mainly Gestapo.”

“Exactly.”

Quinn gave up and deposited the paper on the front dash. Deggendorf went by, then Passau; all the while, the traffic was becoming thicker, and their progress was becoming slower. At last, shortly after Eferding a few kilometers west of Linz, they reached a jam and were forced to come to a halt.

“Damn,” said Quinn as they rolled forward three meters for the fourth time in ten minutes, then stopped again. “Damn. Damn.” He raised himself up in his seat, trying to see an end to the twin lines of inching Volkswagens stretching out along both lanes ahead of them, but he could not. “They can’t all be bloody arriving for the bloody funeral this morning.”

There was nothing for it. They sat meekly in their place and inched along toward Linz as precious minutes ticked by.

Quinn saw the cause of the holdup first. “Hell,” he breathed.

“What?” Barnes and Gunning asked in unison.

Quinn nodded ahead of them. “Up ahead there,” he said. “About seventy meters.”

Both men strained to follow his gaze. “Christ,” Barnes said when he saw it; a few moments later, Gunning let out a considerably stronger oath.

There were eight Waffen-SS troopers: four by the side of the road, checking the cars in the outer lane; and four in the median, checking the inner lane. They were stopping each car, talking to the driver and examining his papers.

“Do you have papers?” Quinn asked.

“In the glove compartment,” Gunning said. “But they’re a bit rudimentary.”

“It wouldn’t do us any good, anyway,” Barnes said. “They’ll have descriptions of all of us. A woman and three men, one of them,” he nodded at Quinn’s legs, “in German uniform trousers and jackboots, and another with a bloody bullet wound. We’ll never make it past them.”

Ellie had dozed off, but the sudden tenseness of their conversation had awoken her. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“There’s a checkpoint up ahead,” Quinn said. “SS.” He paused, then said to Barnes, “Turn around.”

“Pardon?”

“You have to. We can’t get through. Turn around.”

“And just what are we going to accomplish by driving
away
from the city?”

“You’ll have to get off the motorway at Eferding. Take the smaller roads into Linz.”

“But that could take an hour.”

Quinn nodded in the direction of the storm troopers. “Better than being shot.”

Barnes gave a dissatisfied sigh, then nodded. He turned the steering wheel, pulling out across the median and turning into the opposite lane. Quinn turned and looked back over his shoulder at the four storm troopers in the median. One of them had seen them turn and walked forward slightly, staring after them, hand poised to unsling the automatic rifle at his shoulder. He said something over his shoulder to his fellows, one of whom came up beside him to stare after them as well. The newcomer said something, shrugged, then went back to checking drivers’ papers. The first trooper continued to stare after them uncertainly as he receded out of Quinn’s view, but by then, there was nothing he could do.