The British Lion (22 page)

“They posted some men on the door, sir.”

King ran his free hand over the top of his hair, then rested it on the shelf in the call box.

“Okay, thanks, Bob.”

“Are you coming in, sir? Shall I tell them you’re on your way?”

“I gotta go, Bob. Stay safe.” King put down the phone and stared at it. A million thoughts bottlenecked in his brain. He felt a fluttering in his chest, which lifted and then sunk to his stomach.

He breathed out, turned his head, and watched a shopkeeper shoveling snow away from the front door of his business. More snow was falling, settling quickly on the freshly exposed walk, making the shopkeeper struggle in a losing battle.

Frank King knew how he felt.

King used the last of his change to call Dulles’s private number again. It rang once.

“Hello?”

“Put the ambassador on.”

“Who is this?”

“Put him on the goddamn phone, Bryan!” King shouted and then looked up at the shopkeeper, who had paused at the sound coming from the callbox. King did a half turn, presenting his back to the shopkeeper and lowering his head.

“Who is this?” Kennedy sounded calm and in control. Frank realized it was only the second time they had spoken directly in all the time he had been at the embassy.

“Sir, this is Frank King.”

“Hello, Frank. Where are you?”

“I’m in a call box in London, sir.”

“Whereabouts?”

“In London, sir.”

There was a pause, and for some reason King imagined Kennedy smiling.

“What can I do for you, Frank?”

“Sir, I think I’m involved in something that has gotten out of hand.”

“I heard something along those lines, Frank.”

“I’ve been working on a . . . a project for Mr. Dulles, and, uh, I may have drifted out of the loop, sir.”

“You have, Frank.”

“I’m wondering what I can do about that, sir.”

Kennedy paused before answering.

“You and Mr. Dulles have broken the law, Frank. You two have been plotting with God knows who to destabilize the relationship between the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. I don’t know who put Dulles up to this, but they have left you seriously out on a limb. You understand that?”

“I was following orders, sir.”

“You were conspiring, Frank. You knew what you were doing was wrong. Some people would say you were acting against your government’s best interest, and that’s treason, so don’t take me for a fool.”

“No, sir.”

“You’re a good guy, Frank. I have some sympathy for what you were doing, son, but you were doing it the wrong way. There is a lot at stake here, do you understand?”

“I was—”

Kennedy interrupted. “You need to come in so we can sort this out.”

“I . . . I don’t know if I can do that, sir.”

“You can’t stay out there forever, Frank.”

“Sir, I need some guarantees. I don’t deserve to . . .”

“Frank, you are embarrassing me, and you are not in a position to ask for anything. You gentlemen have left us exposed here at a time when our country cannot afford it. Do you understand?”

“I do, sir.”

“You could get shot for this.”

“Sir, I was . . .”

“Where are you up to with this whole scheme?”

“The matter is still in hand, sir,” King lied.

“It is not, so don’t try to bullshit me. The British resistance have the kid you kidnapped, they’ve told me themselves. You lost her, didn’t you?”

“As I said, sir, the matter is in hand.” King clenched a fist and slowly drove it into his own forehead as he struggled to keep his voice steady.

The line popped and hissed while King waited for Kennedy’s next move. Finally the ambassador spoke.

“I am aware of the scientist and what you were doing; Mr. Dulles has explained the reasons for this clusterfuck. I am also aware of her importance to Germany. It might surprise you, but I have some . . . sympathy with what you were trying to do.” Kennedy paused again, and when he continued his voice was lower, softer. “The way I see it, you have no choices, son. Come in now, and you get shipped home with Dulles to face the music. You forget what you’ve been mixed up in, try to save your career, yours and the kid, what’s his name . . . Cook?”

King touched the back of his knuckles to his mouth and lowered his head before replying.

“Cook’s dead, sir.”

“How?” Kennedy finally asked.

“Brit resistance, sir.”

“Were you there?”

“Things got out of hand.”

“How many?”

“A few, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Come in, Frank, before you totally fuck up the whole U.S.-German relationship single-handedly.”

“What about Koehler’s daughter?”

“Forget her; she’s not your problem.”

“The British, they’ll kill her.”

“Like you killed her mother?”

“That was an accident.”

“No, Frank, that was two idiots with guns, and you were one of them. Forget the girl and come in.”

“There is the scientist, sir, she’s very important to America. She can help us . . .”

“King, you have no idea what is at stake here!” Kennedy was shouting now. “We’ve got a government in America that wants to get closer to the Germans, not upset them. Dulles was wrong to lead you down this route.” Kennedy subsided slightly. “Jesus, son, trade is at stake here, not just your career; we’re talking billions of dollars, and you could blow it out of the water.”

“They could blow us out the water if we leave them the scientist.”

“Forget that, it isn’t your problem.”

“If they have a superbomb and we don’t, they’ll walk all over us, sir.”

“Get your ass in here now. That is a direct fucking order. You’re going home, do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” Kennedy took a deep breath. “All right, go to the embassy and wait for me there.” He hung up.

King slowly placed the receiver in the cradle and then pushed open the door of the call box. He stood in the falling snow a moment, then climbed back into the car he’d stolen earlier.

He thought about Eric Cook.

He closed his eyes and lifted his head slightly, breathing out through his mouth, letting his chin drop to his chest.

“Poor kid,” he said softly. “Poor kid didn’t deserve that.”

King thought of Cook’s face, eyes fluttering, his blood in the snow. King shook his head. He needed to think clearly. He couldn’t afford to dwell on the past, not now. Maybe later, maybe never, but not now.

He wanted a cigarette badly.

He looked at the shopkeeper, who was watching him back.

King started the car, checked over his shoulder, then pulled away from the curb. London was still quiet, heavy clouds pushing down with each gust of wind seeming to shake another shower of snow down from the sky.

He shivered, drifting across the city, not heading for the embassy, not just yet. He had a feeling he was experiencing his last hours of freedom, at least for some time to come. He drove on, not knowing where he was going, lost in thought.

Once Dulles’s backers in Washington knew the plot was blown they’d disappear into the shadows from where they had come, leaving him and Dulles to carry the can in the courtroom.

Kennedy was right. They were an embarrassment.

Maybe he and Dulles wouldn’t make it to a courtroom.

It would be easier for the government if they didn’t; maybe they’d end up in one of the camps he’d heard were being built in the Midwest.

He stopped at some lights and looked around. The bright white snow was losing its luster. London was slowly turning back to the same old gray, grimy shithole the occupation had turned it into a few years before.

The only color he could see was red.

A red traffic light and a sodden red swastika flag, waving on a four-story building.

King wondered what Washington would look like if the Nazis had a bomb. Would the same bloodred flag hang low over the White House?

The lights changed and he pulled away slowly, no direction in his mind. He drifted to a halt at another set of lights less than one hundred yards down the road, and looked around for a tobacconist.

Then he saw her: a young woman, stopped on the street corner by two Germans and a British HDT foot patrol. The woman was presenting papers. Her head was down; she was looking at the heavy boots on her feet. Men’s boots, too big for the spindly bare legs that sprouted from the top of them.

She was holding a shawl over her shoulders, and one of the Germans grabbed it and dragged it from her, half turning her before she let go. The German dropped the shawl into the gutter and the young woman stared at it, too scared to look up. The German jabbed at the star of David on her chest, the mark that had been covered by the shawl she had been using to shelter from the snow.

She finally said something, and the HDT hit her. A backhanded slap, hard across the mouth. She fell, down into the gutter, next to the shawl, and her papers fluttered to the ground next to her.

Frank King felt the blow that knocked her down.

He opened the car door. He heard someone beeping their horn because the lights had changed, but he ignored them. He walked toward the HDT with his hand in his pocket, his knuckles brushing his pistol.

The Germans watched him approaching. One of them unshipped the MP40 he was carrying from his shoulder, as the other held out his hand.

“Stop!” the German shouted.

Frank King leaned down to the girl in the gutter. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Get away. This is nothing to do with you,” the HDT man said to King, who ignored him.

“Papers.” The German with the MP40 held out his hand.

King looked at him.

“Papers!” the German shouted this time.

King took his hand out of his pocket, brushing the pistol again. He wanted to kill them all. He held out his ID, watching the flicker of uncertainty that often clouded the eyes of bullies who no longer were in charge.

“This is nothing to do with you.” The HDT sounded less confident now.

“Can you get up?” King asked the girl on the ground, stretching out his hand.

“Please leave me,” she said quietly. She looked away. She didn’t want his help.

A car horn sounded again, and King lowered his hand.

He figured that she was too scared to stand up in case they knocked her down again once he was gone. He couldn’t always be there for her; by helping now he was making it worse, unless he helped forever.

And he couldn’t.

He was just one man. What good could one man do?

He straightened up and looked at the men in front of him.

“You must be proud,” he said quietly.

“She was hiding what she is. It is against the law,” said the HDT man, handing back King’s ID.

“She was trying to keep warm.”

“She was breaking the law.”

Another horn. The lights had changed again. Frank looked at the girl, who slowly turned to face him. The whites of her eyes were yellowish and looked too big for her face.

“Please,” she mouthed, and King saw her teeth were the same color as her eyes.

He felt useless, and turned away without looking at the men. His car seemed much farther away than it had been a moment before; the sound of the snow crunching under his feet seemed louder.

He slammed the car door and stared at the red light. It changed, and so did Frank King.

He’d get the scientist.

Kennedy was wrong. America did need her.

One man might not be able to make a difference, but one man had to try.

CHAPTER 28

T
HE BREEZE WAS
picking up. Rossett’s cheeks burned as the cold air brushed his face above the raised collar of his greatcoat. In his immediate vicinity were a pub, a boarded-up post office, eight or nine small cottages, a telephone box, and four roads heading off in different directions.

He was at a crossroads.

The problem was, he didn’t know which way to go. Back in the run-up to the invasion the government, desperately clutching at straws, had called on the public to remove signposts to confuse any German invader who had forgotten to bring his map.

Rossett wasn’t a German invader, but he had forgotten to bring a map.

He looked back down the road he had driven up. The thin tire tracks his Austin had plowed were the only sign anyone was still on the face of the earth. In the distance were beautifully white snow-covered fields dotted with lifeless trees and low black hedgerows.

Movement caught his eye in the hamlet. Rossett turned his head and watched a farm laborer, with a long double-barreled shotgun broken over his arm, emerge from the pub, pulling an old British army overcoat across his stomach and chest. He kept his head down, doing his best to avoid looking at the stranger watching him from across the road. Rossett lifted his hand in greeting. The other man ducked his head in a miserable attempt to ignore him, pulling the coat tighter still over his bulky frame and adjusting the shotgun.

Rossett watched as the man, staying close to the building line, walked along the row of cottages before opening the door of the final one and going inside. The door slammed so hard, Rossett heard it from fifty yards away.

He looked around the village, checked that the roads around were still empty, and then walked slowly to the same cottage.

The door shook in its frame as he knocked on it with his fist. He turned and checked the Austin.

A strong gust of wind caused him to lower his face and shield his eyes as it whipped snow across the road toward him. He turned back to the door as he heard the handle turning.

A tiny sparrow of an old lady stood before him. The skin hung off her face as if it had been stretched and left there to dry. She was wearing a blue woolen cardigan with a two-inch frayed hole on its left breast. As soon as she saw who had knocked, she instinctively reached up to cover the hole before taking a step backward deferentially.

Rossett twitched a smile; aware that he was crowding the old woman, he dipped his head slightly and looked into the tiny sitting room behind her.

“Hello.”

She didn’t speak.

“The gentleman who has just arrived, I’d like to speak to him?”

The old lady fiddled with her cardigan.

Rossett showed her his police warrant card.

She stepped off to the side.

Rossett ducked his head and entered the cottage, seeming to fill the tiny space as he waited for the old lady to close the door and join him.

He took off his hat as she shuffled past him, taking up station at the crackling log fire. There was another door in the wall opposite him, made of rough wood, with inch-wide gaps at the bottom and top.

Rossett pointed to it.

“There?”

The old lady nodded, still clutching the hole in her cardigan.

Rossett crossed the room in two steps and lifted the simple latch on the door. He found himself entering a kitchen barely bigger than the living room. The man was standing at the sink, back to him, washing a dead bald bird under the solitary banging cold water tap that hung over the middle of the white enamel sink.

“Who was it?” the man asked without looking around.

“Me,” Rossett replied.

The man spun quickly for his size. He was still wearing his coat, but now it hung open over high-waisted woolen trousers belted with string. His purple jumper, too short to cover his belly, was full of holes. Through it Rossett could see some gray material that he guessed was a pair of long johns.

Times were most definitely hard.

The man dropped the bird in his hand onto the floor, where it landed with a sad thud. He looked down at it, then back up at Rossett, with a jaw as slack as that of the bird below him.

“Hello.”

“Hullo, sir,” the man replied dumbly, with a thick country accent.

“What is your name?” Rossett held up his warrant card, then dropped it back into his pocket.

“Reg.”

“Reg?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you been poaching, Reg?”

Reg looked at the two rabbits and the three unplucked birds on the counter next to the sink, then nodded.

Rossett heard the sniff of a worried mother behind him.

“Where did you get the birds and the rabbits?”

“Out on Hargreaves Farm. He breeds them for the game season,
sir
.” Rossett realized that the man was a simpleton.

“He don’t mean nothing, sir. We needs them for food,” the old lady said behind Rossett, who half turned and nodded.

“Where is the shotgun?”

Reg lifted a fat finger and pointed to the wall over Rossett’s left shoulder. Rossett followed the finger and saw the long-barreled shotgun resting on two hooks above a wooden chest of drawers.

“The shells?”

“In the drawer,
sir
.”

Rossett backed toward the shotgun and took it down; he opened the breech and saw that it was empty, and looked at Reg before pointing at the cupboard.

Reg read the signal.

“Top drawer there, sir.”

Rossett opened the drawer and saw two boxes of shells, one of bird shot, the other of buckshot, for larger game.

He slipped the lid off the buckshot and loaded two cartridges, clicking the shotgun shut with a solid crack.

Reg looked like large game.

The gun was agricultural but well maintained. It was the side-by-side configuration, with the barrels next to each other. Rossett held it with one hand for a moment, testing its balance.

“How much do you want for this gun?”

Reg tilted his head and looked at his mother before looking back at Rossett.

“Wha’?”

“How much do you want for the gun?”

“I needs it.”

Rossett frowned and looked at the old lady, ending negotiations with Reg.

“How much?”

The old lady’s eyes narrowed. She looked at the battered shotgun.

“Forty pounds.”

“Remember, I have hold of it, and it is loaded,” Rossett said quietly.

“Thirty,” she said.

“Try again.”

“Twenty-five?”

The old lady ran a thin pink tongue across her bottom lip as Rossett frowned.

“Twenty.”

“Done.” Rossett knew the money would buy enough food for both her and Reg for the winter.

“Do you have a toolshed, Reg?”

“Yes,
sir
.”

“Show me.”

Reg wiped his hands on his stomach and licked his lips, looking at his mother, who had taken Rossett’s place in the doorway. She nodded vigorously that he should do as he was told, so the big man lolloped across the kitchen to the back door of the cottage and went outside.

Rossett picked up the two boxes of ammunition and followed. At the door he turned back to look at Reg’s mother.

“We keep this quiet?”

“As long as you give me the money we do.” Her eyes shone.

Outside Rossett found Reg standing next to a battered wooden shed that seemed about to collapse under the weight of the snow on its roof. The big man didn’t appear to be able to look up to meet Rossett’s eyes.

“Open it.”

Reg did as he was told and held out a wavering hand as if inviting Rossett to enter. Rossett stepped into the shed, smelling the wood that was stacked against the far wall.

“Do you have a hacksaw?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rossett blinked.

“Where is it?”

Reg got the message. He dragged out a heavy toolbox from beneath the narrow workbench, opened the lid, and rummaged among the rusted tools before pulling out an old hacksaw and handing it to Rossett.

Rossett stroked the blade with his thumb and was relieved to feel the teeth were sharp. He unlocked the shotgun, removed the two cartridges, locked it, and laid it on the bench. He measured the barrel with the blade and then made to start cutting.

Reg coughed behind him and Rossett turned to look at him.

“You don’t own it yet, sir,” the big man mumbled, still looking at the floor.

Rossett sighed, laid down the hacksaw, and took out his wallet, from which he produced two ten-pound notes; he waved Reg away with the money before starting to cut the barrel. It took a solid ten minutes of work, and he could feel the sweat under his clothes when the end of the barrel finally detached and clattered onto the floor.

Rossett stepped back from the bench, balancing the shotgun in his hand, feeling how the weight had changed. He took down an old wood saw from a nail and scythed through the stock of the gun, removing so much that he was barely left with a pistol grip. He looked in the toolbox and found an old wood drill, with which he bored a hole in the stock.

He cut through a length of twine and tied the string through the hole. He removed his coat and jacket and then hung the shotgun over his shoulder so that it sat under his arm against his body. He adjusted the string so that the end of the barrel slipped into his trouser pocket an inch, holding it in place and stopping it from swinging free.

Rossett put on his jacket and coat then and then practiced drawing the shotgun a couple of times.

Once he was satisfied with the action, he emptied the box of shells into various pockets.

He tried the draw one final time and then turned to the door.

Reg was watching him, hands in pockets, head tilted, taking in what he had just seen.

“You ain’t going poachin’,” Reg said.

“You don’t need to worry about where I’m going.”

Reg smiled, nodded, and held out a hand, which Rossett shook.

“Good luck,” said Reg, still smiling.