A Traitor's Loyalty: A Novel (34 page)

There was a long pause. Then Ellie opened her mouth to say something, but all she could do was choke back a sob, so instead she just nodded. They embraced.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you. At the American consulate. I’ll find you.” She sniffled a little as they stepped back from their embrace. “Do you know where the American consulate is?” he asked again.

“No,” she said, “but I can find it.” He nodded.

He helped her through the window, then followed her out. He caught the tail end of the conversation between Barnes and Gunning.

“You’re no good to me in a fight, Sergeant,” Barnes was saying kindly. “You’ve been shot in both arms. You’re going. That’s an order.”

Gunning nodded glumly. “Yes, sir.”

They saw that Ellie and Quinn had emerged. Barnes headed for the van’s cab, while Gunning joined Ellie on the pavement.

Quinn went over to the back of the van and opened it. “Sergeant,” he called. Gunning came over. Quinn had pulled the sergeant’s civilian clothing out of the van. “You’ll need these,” he said, passing them to him. “And we should switch weapons.”

“I prefer the rifle,” Gunning said.

“I’m sure you do,” Quinn said. “But it’s going to look rather out of place on a civilian.”

Reluctantly, Gunning traded his automatic rifle for Quinn’s Luger.

“Best of luck, Sergeant,” Quinn said quietly. Gunning nodded and turned to go, but Quinn said,
“Sergeant.” Gunning turned back to him. “What’s your Christian name?”

Gunning looked at him before answering. “Michael,” he said at last.

Quinn nodded and extended his hand. “Simon.”

“Simon,” Gunning repeated. He shook the proffered hand, a little awkwardly with the clothes and pistol in his arms, then turned and headed back over to Ellie.

Quinn closed the back door and went round to the van’s front, where he climbed in next to Barnes.

“Ready?” Barnes asked, starting the engine. Quinn nodded. “All right.” He put the van in gear and pulled away from the curb.

They turned the corner and trundled toward the trucks blocking the bridge, several hundred meters away. Though the other SS vehicles had been parked haphazardly at that end of the avenue, they seemed to have left a clear path for them through the intersection to the barricade. A cloud of smoke and dust rose from the Hermann Göring Works, and though Quinn and Barnes could not see the far end of the building, the edge of the cascade of rubble to which they were reducing it came into view as they drew closer.

No one seemed to have noticed their approach yet. Quinn felt them pick up speed as Barnes depressed the accelerator. They were drawing ever closer now, less than a hundred meters away. Amongst the SS ranks under cover at the far side of the intersection, the heads nearest to them were beginning to turn in their direction, but none of them seemed to have figured out what was about to happen or, if they had, what action they could possibly take against it.

“If nothing else,” said Barnes, “this is going to be
very
satisfying.”

The barricade of trucks hurtled toward them—Barnes was aiming for the juncture where one truck’s nose met the rear bumper of the next—the intersection passed by in a blur—they slammed into the two trucks—

Quinn had the fleeting impression of at least one truck careening wildly away like a plastic bag in a breeze before everything went crazy. For an instant only sky was visible out the front windshield, but then he could see the bridge again—only it was tilted wrong, with the bridge occupying the left third of the windshield, the river running down the middle third and the sky on the right, and everything seemed to be scrolling from the top of the windshield to the bottom. And then there was a jarring crash, and they stopped moving—there was a momentary, sickening sensation of tilting, and then they were still.

For a long moment Quinn just sat there. His head throbbed, and his neck hurt. The bridge had almost completely disappeared from view at the left end of the windshield, replaced by the river and the sky, sideways.

He heard Barnes stir next to him—below him—and he turned awkwardly to look at him. “Are you all right?” he asked.

The captain nodded stiffly. Gingerly he placed a hand on his side and winced. “Think I cracked a rib.”

Quinn reached out and opened his door, pushing it wide open above him, then, bracing his feet against the cab’s floor, he unbuckled his seatbelt. He wedged his arms into the open doorway and levered himself up and out of the cab, seating himself on the doorway’s lip.

One of the trucks they had hit had been pushed aside and overturned; the other had gone spinning wildly across the tarmac of the bridge until, like their van, it had collided with the bridge’s railing and now lay half over the water. They had made a gaping hole in the roadblock onto the bridge.

The intersection, eighty meters behind them, was still mostly empty, but a few Waffen-SS men had started to appear in it, surveying the damage. It would only be a few moments more, Quinn knew, before the rest of them shook off their inertia and swarmed into the intersection like ants. He suddenly felt very exposed up here.

He looked back down at Barnes. “We have to get out of here.”

Barnes looked up at him and nodded. He had already unfastened his seatbelt. He passed their two automatic rifles up to Quinn. Quinn took them and dropped them down the side of the van to the pavement below, then scrambled out of the doorway so he could reach down and give Barnes a helping hand up. The captain winced as he clambered out of the cab.

They dropped down the side of the van onto the tarmac and scooped up their rifles. The chatter of automatic gunfire had begun at the intersection. Quinn motioned for Barnes to take cover at the far end of the truck, then hurried forward and dropped to one knee behind a two-meter shard of the bridge’s concrete railing that the van’s impact had knocked loose.

Most of the Waffen-SS men seemed to be engaged once more in combat in the intersection, exchanging fire with someone in the rubble at the end of the Hermann Göring Works. A few dozen meters further down In den Lauben, though, Wehrmacht soldiers were streaming out of the building toward an unattended armored personnel carrier parked in the street, unnoticed by the Waffen-SS. It looked as though one or two men had volunteered to stay behind and distract the Waffen-SS while the rest made their getaway.

There were also about twenty storm troopers hurrying through the gap onto the bridge toward Quinn and Barnes. Quinn raised his rifle to his shoulder and gave them a short burst of fire, scattering them and forcing them under cover.

Heydrich was one of the last to cross from the building to the personnel carrier, unmistakable even at this distance in his black uniform. All told, not more than a dozen Wehrmacht men could have left the building. The gunfire from the Wehrmacht position had stopped now, and the Waffen-SS were advancing cautiously on where they had been. A few moments later, two last Wehrmacht infantrymen crossed from the Hermann Göring Works to the personnel carrier. Some of the Waffen-SS had seen what was going on now, but it was too late for them to do anything about it. The personnel carrier had started to move, picking up speed as it made its way toward the bridge.

Quinn and Barnes were under fire now from the Waffen-SS on the bridge. Quinn returned fire, and over his shoulder he heard Barnes doing the same.

Heydrich’s personnel carrier rolled through the intersection and through the gap they had made, its armored hull impervious to the bullets bouncing off it. It trundled up the bridge towards them, eventually rolling to a stop just beyond Barnes’s position at the rear of their overturned van. Its backdoor popped open and Captain Meier was there, beckoning to them.

Barnes waved to Quinn to go first, then began laying down covering fire for him. Quinn backed cautiously away from his cover, then turned and hurried along the edge of the bridge toward the van, crouching low as he ran.

Suddenly he felt the blinding, searing pain as the bullet slashed through his left upper arm, spinning him around and sending him staggering. He felt his left foot slip off the jagged edge of the bridge where their van had knocked the railing away—

He felt the bullet punch through his shoulder, a freight train slamming into him from behind. A fraction of an instant later, barely long enough for his brain to register that it had hit him in the first place, it exploded through the front of his jacket in a small shower of bone and blood. His pistol dropped to the ground
.

Instinctively he reached out with his left hand and grasped onto a bent, twisted spike of iron railing, his right foot sliding to purchase on the bridge’s edge and preventing his fall. His left arm screamed at him that it could not do this, could not support the whole weight of his body like this, it had just been
shot
, but he refused to let go, refused to grab on with his right hand instead because that would mean letting go of his rifle. Bright spots of white and orange exploded in his vision.

He looked back toward Heydrich’s personnel carrier. At least fifteen meters to get back to Barnes, then another ten past that to get to where Meier waited anxiously at the carrier’s open door. He turned and looked back at the SS. They were advancing slowly up the bridge. They were still under fire from Barnes and from the Wehrmacht soldiers at the mouth of the personnel carrier, but they were simply moving too rapidly for Quinn to reach Meier before they reached him first.

His pistol dropped to the ground. The bullet’s impact knocked him to the side and carried him forward, one step, two steps, three, and he fell over the railing and plunged into the open air beyond
.

Barnes had come out from his position and was hurrying toward Quinn, but Quinn shook his head and yelled “No!” All Barnes could succeed in doing was trapping them both on the bridge instead of just Quinn.

The Royal Marines captain ignored him and kept on coming, so Quinn braced the butt of his rifle against his hip and fired a wild burst in his direction, far too high over his head to have any possibility of hitting him. Barnes stopped and looked at him uncertainly.

“Get going!” Quinn yelled.

“Not without you,” Barnes called back.

“Don’t be daft!” Quinn looked pointedly down the bridge, and Barnes followed his gaze. The Waffen-SS were approaching. The captain turned uncertainly back to the personnel carrier, where Meier’s gaze was flitting anxiously between the oncoming SS and the two of them, trying to judge how long he could wait for them.

But Barnes was too good an officer to decide that easily to leave a man behind. He turned hesitantly back in Quinn’s direction.

“Don’t worry about me,” Quinn called. “Just go!”

They locked eyes, and Quinn nodded reassuringly. Barnes lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell that was at the same time a salute of respect.

“Barnes,” Quinn called, and the captain paused. “Thank you.”

Barnes nodded, then turned and, crouching low, hurried back along the van’s length. Quinn turned back towards the Waffen-SS and opened fire on them, covering him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Barnes reach the personnel carrier and clamber inside, Meier slam the door shut and the carrier start moving away across the bridge. He turned and gazed back down the bridge at the Hermann Göring Works, the Strength through Joy Hotel, and the city beyond them.

Ellie was out there somewhere, and she would be safe. He had made sure of that. He did not know if he had managed to overturn the Columbia-Haus treaty, but he thought the British Government would probably have to repudiate it now after all this bloodshed—all this public bloodshed in a city full of the world’s media—even if Heydrich lost his fight.

The Waffen-SS were nearing him now, screaming at him to drop his weapon, but he did not hear them. Ellie would be safe. That was the most important thing.

Thinking of another bullet and another river, in another time, he let go of the railing and plummeted into the open air beyond.

In my end is my beginning.

—Mary, Queen of Scots

AT FIRST, he was aware only of bobbing—of mild, repetitive motion up and down, up and down, as the empty, sunken, envious eyes set into gaunt faces with shaven heads floated away into the recesses of his mind. Then he realized, distantly, that he was wet; that he was immersed in water. But not all of him—the water came up only to his chest. He was lying on his back, on some sort of angled concrete surface. It felt jagged. Steps, maybe? They pressed painfully into his back.

That led him to the realization that he felt pain. Pain in his back, but also pain in his neck, which was stiff. And his left arm hurt. It stung, but not as long as he did not move it.

Voices. He heard voices. A voice calling, and then others, further away, answering. They were all male. Then the voices were just above him, and he felt hands, strong hands grasping him under the shoulders and lifting him from the water. His arm hurt more. His arm hurt
a lot
.

Hands grasped him by the ankles now, as well. They carried him up the steps and laid him out on the ground. One of the voices was speaking to him.

“Can you understand me? Can you tell me your name?”

His eyes were open now, but his vision was blurry. It was night, and he could see shapes above him in the eerie glow of streetlights or headlights, but he could not differentiate them into individual figures standing or kneeling over him.

He shook his head and closed his eyes again. “No,” he murmured. “Wrong. Not—supposed to be. Supposed to be dead . . .”

“Sir,” the voice said again, “are you English? Are you an Englishman?”

Reluctantly he opened his eyes. The fuzzy images were coming into sharper focus: three or four Wehrmacht infantrymen in field-grey coalscuttle helmets. One of them knelt over him and stared at him intently.

“Is your name Simon Quinn, sir?”

He frowned. “What?” It came out as a croak, and he cleared his throat.

The infantryman smiled patiently and helped him sit up. “I said, are you Simon Quinn, sir?”