The British Lion (14 page)

On the pavement side of the bus another three soldiers appeared. Two climbed on board to check the papers of the passengers. The conductor stepped out of the way, eyes down, not looking for trouble.

“Forty Players,” Rossett said to the vendor without looking at him.

“Bleedin’ Nazis, everywhere this morning.” The vendor was watching the soldiers as they came around the back of the bus and approached the Austin.

“I’M SORRY, SIR,
I thought you were English.” The corporal approached Koehler, the others in his squad hanging back, probably wishing they’d gotten on the bus.

“I need to get going. Get this traffic out of the way.”

The wiper on the Austin juddered across the windscreen and the corporal looked at it, and then at Koehler.

“I’ll need to see your papers, sir.”

Koehler patted his chest, feeling for his wallet under his heavy woolen coat, the urge to see where Rossett was almost overpowering.

Did the soldiers know?

Was this a routine checkpoint?

Koehler patted his side pocket and felt his Mauser bumping against his body, reminding him it was there.

Two of the soldiers had stepped up onto the curb; one was staring into the bus while the other was looking back toward the checkpoint. Another was standing at the front of the Austin, and that damned corporal was waiting, hand out, blushing slightly, regretting asking to see Koehler’s papers, but still waiting for them.

Rossett kept watching as he paid the vendor for the cigarettes. He studied the soldiers, all young men, fresh faced, with bolt-action rifles, old infantry Karabiners, the sort issued to soldiers in low-risk postings, slow to maneuver. He squeezed the grip on his Webley and guessed the distance between him and the nearest soldier to be approximately fifty feet. Even with their heavy coats and gloves making them slow to react, Rossett doubted he’d be able to take down more than three before the others fired on him.

He watched as Koehler undid the top button of his overcoat, trying to read his friend’s body language.

“Your change, guv?” The vendor was holding out some coins.

Rossett ignored him, so the vendor followed his gaze, watching the group by the Austin, slowly realizing that something was wrong.

At the car the corporal shifted slightly, lowering his hand an inch or two but still adamant that he wanted to see this strange, nervous major’s papers.

Koehler flicked away the cigarette he was still holding and then reached into his coat. He gambled, breathed, readied himself. He was praying Rossett was ready for the fight; he didn’t dare look to check.

Rossett will be ready, Rossett is always ready, Koehler told himself, eyes on the corporal, hand on his Mauser.

He saw another soldier getting off the back of the bus.

A soldier with an MP40 machine pistol in his hands.

The young soldier was watching his colleague come down the steps from the top deck; he’d been covering him as he’d checked the papers of the passengers upstairs. There was probably a round in the chamber ready to go.

The young man looked at Koehler and then at the corporal, reading the standoff, drifting the gun around in a casual covering arc.

Koehler let go of the Mauser, then produced his papers, slapped them into the corporal’s hand, and waited.

Rossett felt his grip loosen on the Webley.

“Major Koehler?” The corporal looked up.

“Yes?”

“Could you come with us, please, sir?”

Koehler had failed.

Rossett was on his own.

CHAPTER 18

T
HE TEA WAS
sickly thick and dirty brown; the mug it was in was greasy and covered in fingerprints that weren’t Anja’s, but still, she sipped it again.

Enjoying the first kind thing anyone had done for her in what seemed like forever.

The boy who had brought the drink to her stood on the other side of the garage workshop, awkwardly watching her in dirty overalls and heavy boots that looked too big for his skinny legs. He worked his hand through his greasy, floppy black hair and tried unsuccessfully to coax the mess on his head into some sort of order.

As soon as he lowered his hand a thick wedge of hair collapsed and dropped down his forehead, hiding his right eye. The light was poor in the workshop, but Anja could see that there were three cars in various states of repair loitering in the gloom. Everything but the cars seemed to be wrapped in a layer of old oil, especially the floor, which was concrete dappled with slick and matte shades of old and new spills and splashes.

The chair Anja sat on was comfortable but, like everything else, covered in oil. At first she had worried about her coat and tried not to sit back too far. But time had passed—half an hour? maybe an hour?—the tea had arrived, and she had slowly relaxed, exhausted. She watched Harris the policeman and another man, the senior mechanic, talk about her behind the window of the office opposite.

The senior mechanic hadn’t been pleased when Harris had first led her into the garage, through a small door cut into the bigger closed one.

Anja wasn’t pleased to be there either. Harris had told her they were walking to a nearby police station, not a dirty, run-down, backstreet garage under a railway arch.

“Are you really a German?” The boy finally spoke, and Anja looked up from her tea. “I didn’t know they had girls here. I thought it was just soldiers and such.”

Anja lowered her face to the mug again without replying.

“Harris was saying you was hiding?” the boy tried again.

Anja looked at the tea, noticing how there appeared to be a tiny rainbow floating in the oil on its surface.

“Do you speak English? He said you was above an empty shop with a gun. Where did you get that from?”

“Hey!” Anja and the boy looked up at the mechanic, who had stuck his head out of the office. “Don’t you bleedin’ talk to her, just watch her and keep your trap shut.”

The door slammed as the mechanic ducked back into the office. Anja looked at the boy, who stared back. She saw that behind the oily cheeks he was blushing.

“He’s not the boss of me. I can do what I want,” the boy said quietly, head tilted forward but looking at Anja from under his fringe.

“How old are you?” Anja asked in her excellent English.

“Fifteen.” The boy eased back against the bench he was leaning on and folded his arms, trying to look the man he nearly was.

Anja smiled behind the mug, her mouth hidden but her eyes giving it away.

“What is your name?”

“Jack.”

“I thought you were younger.”

Jack flicked his hair again, picked up a wrench, and scratched himself behind the ear with it.

“We’re not supposed to be talking,” he finally said, flushing brighter with irritation.

The mechanic banged on the glass, pointed at Anja, and gestured for Jack to bring her to the office. She was out of the chair and on her way before the he made it to her. She opened the door and stepped into the harsh light of the small office as Jack struggled to keep up.

It was warm. A small heater sat in the corner popping and bubbling and making the room smell even oilier.

“Sit.” The mechanic pointed to a leather revolving chair similar to the one she had sat on outside. Anja did as she was told, putting the mug down on the worn wooden desk.

She looked up at the mechanic expectantly.

He was wearing blue overalls that opened at the neck to show a gray collarless shirt underneath. His throat looked wrinkled, red, angry, and sore. His face seemed to be potted with a million tiny pits of oil; he looked old and tired, but Anja guessed him to be the same age as her father.

He took a rag out of his pocket, wiped his hands with it, and sat down on the edge of the desk, looking down at her as he seemed to search for words.

Anja beat him to it by turning to Harris, who was standing in the corner of the office, drinking tea from a mug that was even dirtier than hers.

“You said you were taking me to a police station.”

“All in good time,” Harris replied.

“I want to go now.”

“In a minute,” Harris said again.

She turned to the mechanic.

“Are you in charge here?”

“Yes.”

“My father will pay you if you take me to him now. He will be very worried about me.”

“I bet he is.”

“You will be rewarded for your trouble, I promise.”

“Who is your father?” the mechanic asked.

Anja shifted in her seat.

“Who he is doesn’t matter. Take me to the German sector and I will be sure to have you rewarded.”

“Who is your father?”

Anja ignored the question and looked at Harris.

“You have a duty to protect me. You are a police officer and you have a duty.”

“I have no duty to you,” said Harris, the smile gone.

Anja looked at the boy, then back at the mechanic.

“I want to go home.” Her voice sounded weaker than she had expected, and she folded her hands in her lap and lowered her eyes.

The mechanic sighed deeply and ran the rag around the back of his neck before stuffing it into his pocket and looking at Harris.

“What time you off duty?”

“Eight. I’ve been on nights.”

The mechanic looked at the clock on the wall; it was twenty to eight.

“You’d better go, come back later. I’ll have to have a think about what we should do.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“She’s only a child.”

“Yeah, but”—Harris lifted a finger and almost pointed at Anja before dropping it again—“she’s a German.”

“I’ll have to have a think.”

“If the boss finds out we had her and we didn’t let him know—”

“Harris, go away and then come back, like I told you.”

“I’m only saying.”

“Go.”

Harris swigged back his tea and picked up his helmet from beside the heater. He stepped past Anja and opened the door, pushing the boy into the gap between it and the wall as he did so. He turned back to the mechanic before leaving.

“Don’t do anything without me, all right?”

“Give me her identity papers.”

Harris frowned, then took out the papers and handed them across to the mechanic, who tossed them onto the desk.

“I mean it—wait for me, yeah?” Harris tried again.

The mechanic nodded and Harris looked at Anja, and then closed the door behind him. Anja watched him through the window as he went, putting on his helmet and exiting the garage.

“Go lock the door,” the mechanic said to Jack.

“Mr. Adams is coming for the Alvis at eight. We’ve been working on it all night. What was the point of that now? He’ll think we’ve gone home.”

“Go lock the door,” the mechanic replied.

Jack sulked out of the office, giving Anja the same look through the window as she gave him.

The mechanic closed the door, then pulled a small wooden milking stool out from under the desk. He sat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He stared at Anja and then took out the rag again, holding it in both hands, as if waging a tiny tug of war between them.

“You are in a lot of trouble, girl; I’ll be honest with you. You are in a lot of trouble. Do you understand?”

Anja nodded.

“I’m under a lot of pressure here. You’ve put me in a dangerous place. I need you to be honest with me, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Harris told me you were in a house with a machine gun, is that right?”

Anja nodded.

“How did you get there?”

Anja didn’t reply. She looked down at the floor and then back at the mechanic.

“What is your name?” she asked him.

“I don’t matter to you. You’ve got bigger problems than me to worry about if you don’t answer me. Unless you are quick and honest, you’ll not be staying here for long, you’ll be moving on somewhere you don’t want to go. So, how did you get there?”

Anja looked at the floor again.

“Listen to me, child. I don’t wage war on kids. I don’t want to hurt you, but you need to speak to me so I can decide what to do.”

Anja looked up at the mechanic; she watched the rag turn again in his hands and felt a wave building inside, pressure forming so hard her forehead suddenly seemed tight.

“They killed my mother,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“The men who took us, they killed her and then shoved her in the boot of the car.” A tear leaked from her left eye and ran down her cheek; she let it fall, not feeling it through her pain.

“Who were they?”

“Americans.”

“How do you know they were Americans?” The mechanic sat back.

“I used to watch films, with my nanny, back in Berlin, American films.” There was another tear.

“Why did they . . . why did they do what they did?”

“They want my daddy; they were using me, using us, to make him—”

“Make him?”

“Do something important.”

The mechanic stared at her. A second or two passed between them and Anja sniffed, then wiped her cheek.

“Who is your father?”

“He is a major in the SS. His name is Ernst.”

“Koehler?” The mechanic looked at her papers and then back at her.

Anja nodded and another tear trickled free, then fell to the floor silently.

“What did they want him to do?”

“He was fetching someone important, I don’t know who, from Cambridge. I heard them talking but that is all they said.”

“Where are the Americans who took you?”

“I don’t know. I snatched a gun and they ran away.”

“From you?”

Anja shrugged.

“I had a gun, although—”

“Although?”

“There was shooting before, outside. That’s why they left the gun.”

“Harris told me there was a dead man outside the flat. Was that one of them?”

“No, sir. I don’t know who that was.”

The mechanic looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck again, this time with his bare hand. Anja watched him and wondered if he ever managed to get all the oil off his skin or if it was there all the time, like a scar.

He looked at her again.

“You don’t know who your dad is getting or why the Americans want them?”

“No.”

The heater popped in the corner.

“My father will reward you,” she tried again, but the mechanic just sighed by way of reply.

“The front gate is locked,” Jack said as the office door clicked shut behind him.

The mechanic nodded slowly, barely lifting his head. He finally stood up, then picked up a battered blue hardback notebook off the desk.

He opened the cover and flipped through a few pages before lifting the heavy receiver of the phone that was sitting on a shelf next to the window, all the while looking at Anja. He dialed a number out of the book.

He stopped dialing and went back to looking at Anja, who, in turn, stared blankly back.

“What you doing?” Jack asked.

The mechanic ignored him.

Anja heard the click and the voice at the other end of the line, faint and female.

“Hello?”

“It’s the garage. I need to speak to Sir James, about the service for the car.”

“Hold on, please.”

The mechanic looked at Anja. She thought he was sad, but it was hard to tell.

Anja heard a male voice from the phone, louder but still a long way away. “Hello?”

“Hello, sir, I need to discuss your car, that service we do for you, the special one, it is very important.”

“How important?”

“Very, very important, sir. Something has come up that you really need to know about.”

There was a pause, then the voice on the phone again.

“Can you call me back on the other number?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Five minutes, exactly.”

“Five minutes, sir.” The mechanic put the phone down and Anja looked at him.

“Who was that?”

“The man who will know what to do.” The mechanic searched in his pocket for loose change and pulled out a few coins. He looked at Jack. “I’m going to ring him from across the road. You watch her. Don’t let her out of this office, do you hear me?”

Jack nodded and the mechanic took a heavy coat from a hook on the far wall. He nodded at Anja and then opened the door as Jack moved out of the way.

“Is he going to take her?” Jack asked quietly.

“That’s not your problem.”

Jack lowered his head and the mechanic stared at him a moment before nodding to Anja and leaving the office.

Anja waited until the mechanic had walked past the window before finally speaking to Jack.

“Who is ‘he’?”

Jack raised his head.

“You don’t want to know.”

THE SUN WAS
well hidden behind clouds when the mechanic exited the building onto the street outside. The garage was half buried under railway arches just off a main road, so he had to walk for two minutes until he made it to the public telephone box on the corner of Christian Street.

In another call box, five miles away, there was barely half a ring before the receiver was picked up.

“Hello?”

Pips sounded, then the mechanic pressed the connect button.

“Hello?”

“Chestnut,” said the voice on the other end, and waited for the correct response.

“Crimson,” the mechanic replied, slightly embarrassed to be using code words and playing spies.

“What do you want?”

“H, from Whitechapel, do you know who I mean?”

“Yes.”

“He brought a girl to my place this morning.”

“Lucky him.”

“She is a German girl. Just a kid, SS officer’s daughter. I think you need to speak to her, sir.”

“Name?”

“Is it all right to say on the phone?”

“What is her name, man?”

“Koehler, Anja Koehler.”

“Is it, by God?”