A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (33 page)

Remer slammed his elbow backward, ramming it into Quinn’s neck, and Quinn was thrown against the wall behind him, gasping for breath, his vision blurring with tears. Remer had turned to him again, and Quinn felt the hot steel nose of his Luger shoved into his stomach underneath the ribs. Three shots rang out. Quinn’s hand had grasped instinctively around the hot steel of the Luger’s muzzle, and he felt a warm wash of blood run over his fingers.

QUINN AND Remer stared unblinkingly into each other’s eyes for a long time. The only noise Quinn could hear was a continuous, low-pitched ringing in his ears from the gunfire in the confined space.

Slowly—dazedly—he unwrapped his fingers from around the Luger’s barrel and raised his hand before his face. It was dripping with blood. He looked at Ellie. Her hands were clapped over her ears, but she was staring back at him, her eyes wide and moist.

He turned back to Remer, who was still staring at him, and it was only now that he noticed the bright red gash of a bullet’s exit wound in the colonel-general’s temple and the blood running freely from it down his face. Remer opened his mouth as if to say something, but instead collapsed against Quinn and crumpled to the floor. Quinn stared down at the body. A deep burgundy stain spread across the colonel-general’s uniform tunic.

Quinn looked up. Heydrich stood across the room, his pistol still leveled at where Remer had been standing. The Commissar-General focused on Quinn. “We seem to have found our traitor, Herr Quinn,” he said, the sound only dimly penetrating through the ringing in Quinn’s ears.

The door burst open, and Meier charged in followed by an infantryman, both men bringing their weapons to bear on Quinn and his companions.
“Hold your fire!”
Heydrich barked, and the two men froze, as did the other soldiers in the corridor behind them.

Meier took in the four of them, standing there apparently unarmed, Remer’s lifeless body on the floor in front of them, and Heydrich holstering his weapon. “Herr Generalkommissar?” he asked uncertainly.

Heydrich spoke calmly, even serenely. “Hauptmann, Colonel-General Remer has expired from wounds suffered fighting nobly to preserve the will of the Führer.”

“Sir?” Meier said.

“Return to your post, Hauptmann.”

Meier hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, Herr Generalkommissar.” He turned and, ushering the infantryman out ahead of him, left the room. He closed the door behind him.

The five of them stared at Remer’s body. Absently Quinn wiped his hand on his trouser leg. “But—” Gunning said hesitantly, “—but why?”

Heydrich looked up at him shrugged. “The same reasons as anyone else in my hierarchy might work for the SS. The same reasons my agents in the SS work for me. Money. Power. Treachery is a fairly simple matter in the Reich.”

“But why now?” Ellie breathed. “What did he think he could accomplish
here?’

Heydrich glanced at Quinn. “He acted when you suggested escaping using your vehicle.”

Quinn nodded. “You could escape, and he would be powerless to stop you without revealing himself. But if he could have gunned you down, and us, then he could say that one of us wrested his weapon from him and killed you before he could get it back and kill us. Then he could order the rest of your men here to surrender.”

A distant
crump
interrupted their conversation. Several long seconds of silence followed, and then the walls and floor shook with a great explosion coming from the other side of the door.

Quinn was the first through the door; the other four followed right after him. Dust and smoke filled the corridor outside, pouring from one of the doorways on the opposite side of the hall. A Wehrmacht infantryman staggered out the doorway, coughing, his face blanketed in grey concrete dust matching the color of his uniform. The bright scarlet blood spilling down his face from the cut on his forehead made a startling contrast.

Ellie went to help the staggering infantryman as the rest of them filed through the doorway. Two more
infantrymen lay lifelessly on the floor. The room’s exterior wall had blown away, and a deep crater extended out into the pavement of the street outside.

Quinn shielded his eyes, staring out across the river. He could see movement and some sort of emplacement on its far bank, but he could not tell what it was. He turned to Heydrich. “Do you have lookouts in the upper stories?”

The Commissar-General shook his head. “We couldn’t spare the men.”

“We need to see what’s going on.”

He turned and headed back into the corridor, the other three in tow. He hurried down the corridor, now filling with troops from the other rooms, and into the stairwell at its end. Heydrich and Barnes followed, but at a barked command from Barnes, Gunning remained behind. Ellie was still kneeling beside the injured soldier, tending to him.

Quinn sprinted up the stairs two at a time, Heydrich and Barnes right behind him. He went up three flights before turning down a corridor and hurrying into its first doorway. From here they had a much better view across the river.

“Damn it,” he said, staring at the far bank.

“Field artillery,” Barnes observed.

“Herr Generalkommissar,” Quinn said, “your men aren’t going to last ten minutes against an artillery bombardment.”

As if to illustrate the point, the artillery fired again, another distant
crump
, and the building shook again. A cloud of dust and smoke rose past their window from the impact of the artillery shell at the building’s base.

“There’s still our armored van, Herr Generalkommissar,” Quinn said. “We can get you and your men out of the city.”

Heydrich, still staring out the window, did not say anything at first. Then he pointed out over the river. “Look,” he said. “There is smoking rising across the river. From around the communal hall.”

Quinn followed the Commissar-General’s finger. “Yes, sir,” he said uncertainly.

Heydrich glanced at him. “My battalion is putting up a fight,” he said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“Herr Generalkommissar, we need to leave now.”

Heydrich shook his head. “We are not retreating.”

“You intend to die here? You intend your men to die here?”

“Quite the contrary, Herr Quinn,” the Commissar-General said, a curious gleam in his eye, “I intend to die on the far side of the river.” He paused. “Remer said that the Wehrmacht would rise with us once they discovered that Himmler intended to suborn the Führer’s will, and he was right. By now word must have reached the local bases about the fighting in the city. If I can get to my battalion, we can take the communal hall and I can contact the local forces and move them into the city. The SS divisions in the city can’t storm the communal hall or obliterate it with artillery. Every minister in the Reich is there right now, heads of state from all fascist Europe, dignitaries from all over the world.” The expression on his face had set defiantly.

Quinn gestured at the intersection below them, where three armored trucks still barred the way onto the Nibelungen Bridge. Waffen-SS vehicles still littered the intersection, but the Waffen-SS soldiers had pulled back to the far side of In den Lauben to keep out of the way of the artillery.

“But how are you going to get there, Herr Generalkommissar? Your way is blocked, and the nearest other bridge is far too far away.”

“That is where your armored van comes in, Herr Quinn. Those are heavy trucks they’re using as a barricade—” Heydrich pointed at the trucks blocking the bridge, “—but they’ve left them completely unguarded. Someone at the wheel of your van could ram their roadblock and clear the way onto the bridge.”

Quinn stared at the Commissar-General for a long moment, then looked at Barnes, who seemed just as stunned as he felt himself. “But you still have to get your men past the SS troops and across the bridge, sir,” he pointed out.

Heydrich’s sly smile reminded Quinn of a predator. “That’s the beauty of it. The attack on their roadblock
will cause enough commotion amongst the SS forces down there that they’ll be completely disrupted and focused only on the barricade and your armored van. This will allow my men to commandeer one of the vehicles in the intersection while they’re not looking and escape across the bridge. It’s a tactic we’re very familiar with in the East.”

Quinn looked at him sharply. “The East, Herr Generalkommissar?”

Heydrich nodded, too caught up in the prospects he was seeing to notice the edge in Quinn’s voice. “A loud flash and bang at one end, then you attack with the bulk of your forces at the other while no one is looking. It’s how the vermin operate—the
untermenschen
who infest the forests and the hills out there.” He glanced at Quinn, a hint of pride in his voice. “It is those of us in the East who have remained strong, Herr Quinn. In the East we must continue to grind them into the dust, every day, because if we give them even a moment’s latitude, a moment’s hope, then they might believe that they can again be anything more than what they are now, what they are meant to be—which is
nothing
. It has kept us blooded, and it has kept us vigilant. But these—” he gestured again at the Waffen-SS troops down in the intersection, a brief, contemptuous flick of his fingers, “—these who have stayed here in the West, they have grown soft. That will be their undoing.”

Quinn had not heard much of what had been said, for his mind had been somewhere else, three hundred miles to the East; and he was not aware now that Heydrich was staring at him expectantly, waiting for his answer. Uncertainly, Barnes stepped forward. “All right, sir,” the captain said.

Heydrich’s smile widened, and he clapped Barnes on the shoulder, apparently oblivious to Quinn’s turmoil. “Excellent, Herr Hauptmann. Come then.”

He led them back out into the stairwell and down the stairs. Shaking himself out of his reverie, Quinn followed. As they descended, the building shook with another explosion. Plaster and concrete fragments rained down around them.

“They’re not firing very often,” Barnes observed.

“They’re trying to force us to surrender, or soften us up for an assault,” Quinn explained in English. “They don’t want to obliterate the building and risk not being able to recover a body that’s identifiably the Commissar-General’s. The last thing Himmler wants to do is create a legend. Do you know if there’s a NATO consulate in the city?”

Barnes blinked at the unexpected question. “There’s a British one, definitely.”

“Other than the British.”

The captain pursed his lips in thought. “There’s an American consulate, too. I’m sure of it, but I’ve no idea where it might be. Why?”

But Quinn only nodded in acknowledgement of the information.

They reached the ground floor to find Heydrich’s men falling back through the stairwell to the next corridor. Dust billowed through the doorway from the corridor behind them, and several men seemed to be nursing slight wounds. Captain Meier was standing in the doorway, hurrying his men through. He looked up as Heydrich, Quinn, and Barnes approached.

“The corridor collapsed, sir,” Meier reported. “We’ve had a couple of men seriously wounded under falling debris, but we pulled them to safety.”

“Ellie,” said Quinn. “Where’s Ellie?”

“The woman?” Meier jerked his head back in the direction he was sending his men. “Through there, with your other man.”

Quinn hurried through the doorway, followed by Barnes. Ellie and Gunning were standing against the wall a few meters down the corridor. Gunning had found the weapons that had been taken from them earlier and was holding the two automatic rifles while Ellie held Quinn’s pistol awkwardly.

Quinn strode over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked, taking the pistol from her. She nodded.

Heydrich and Meier entered from the stairwell, the last to come through. Two Wehrmacht soldiers had taken up positions on either side of the door, covering the stairwell.

“Herr Hauptmann,” Heydrich called to Barnes. “Are you volunteering to drive your van?”

Quinn looked at him and nodded before Barnes could answer. “Yes, Herr Generalkommissar.”

“Then I wish you luck.”

Heydrich turned to Meier and began issuing orders. “Come on,” Quinn said, leading them down the corridor. Gunning handed Barnes his rifle, then shouldered his own; Quinn saw him flinch at the action.

“What’s going on?” Ellie asked.

“You’ll see,” said Quinn. “Just keep moving.”

They abandoned caution, hurrying as fast as they could back down the corridor and through the stairwells. Barnes and Quinn went first, with Ellie and Gunning behind. As they went, Quinn hurriedly told Barnes what he planned; the captain agreed.

They came to the office where they had first entered the building. Barnes stuck his head through the window to make sure the coast was clear, then climbed through into the street outside. Gunning went next, but before Ellie could follow, Quinn caught her by the upper arm.

“There’s an American consulate in the city,” he said. “Do you know where it is?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Because you’re going there. Do you know where it is?”

“I am not,” she said. “I’m staying with you.”

Quinn shook his head. “No. You’re going to the American consulate with Sergeant Gunning and requesting asylum.”

“I’ve told you before,” she said firmly. There were tears in her eyes. “I follow this to the end. I follow
you.”

He smiled sadly. “Ellie, this
is
the end.” He gestured in the direction of the armored van out in the street. “Barnes and I are about to charge that van into a company of Waffen-SS and hope we can distract them long enough for Heydrich to escape. God, Ellie, this is hopeless.” He brushed away the first tear as it rolled down her cheek. “We’ll meet later—I’ll meet you at the American consulate. But for me to do this, I need to know that you’re safe.”

“I’m not going if you won’t come with me,” she said, her voice choking. The tears ran freely down her face now.

He smiled sadly and kissed her forehead. “No, Ellie, this is my fight. This is what I have to do. But it’s not yours. You’ve been amazing—you’ve been more than I could ever have dreamed. But now I need you to go.”