The British Lion (29 page)

He reached for his throat, the breath punched out of him again. He looked up into the trees above, thick bare branches wafting in the gusting wind against the pink sky. Another rattle of machine gun fire sounded behind him, this time lower, chipping the bark off the trees to his right. Rossett gasped for air and reached his other hand to his throat, arching his back for a breath that wouldn’t come, suddenly missing along with half of his senses.

Out of the darkness came Ruth.

“Come on.” She held out her hand.

Another burst of gunfire.

“Get up!” she was screaming at him.

For the briefest of moments Rossett saw her beauty again, pale, whiter than the snow, her long fingers reaching for him, beckoning him on.

He snatched a sliver of air.

He blinked, tried again, more oxygen filling his desperate lungs.

Ruth dragged at his arm and Rossett heard shouts behind him. He couldn’t speak. She pulled him, lifting him slightly off the ground, so that he started to turn in the mud under the trees where the snow hadn’t been able to settle fully.

He nodded and rose, with her help. Another breath sneaked past his battered Adam’s apple and he managed to swallow.

More shots, closer again, more bark flying and dancing in the darkness, followed by shouts that sounded ever closer.

Rossett stood, wobbled, snatched another breath, and pushed Ruth forward, waving his hand to let her know he was all right. He took a few steps before turning and working the bolt of the MP40. He dodged his head left, just able to make out the shadowy shape of the three or four men who had dropped through the window in pursuit. They were moving slowly, spaced a few feet apart in a line, not wanting to rush into the dark wood.

Rossett fired his entire magazine at the line, and the pursuers dived down for cover. Panicked shouts sounded behind him as he threw the machine gun and started to run forward again, this time slightly slower, chin down, one arm raised to protect his face.

His lungs had finally filled by the time he saw Ruth ahead. She was moving carefully and quickly, a black panther in the night. Through the half-light he could see flashes of her face as she stole glances back over her shoulder.

They broke the tree line on the other side of the small wood at almost the same time, maybe twenty feet apart. Ruth looked at Rossett and pointed to the hedgerow that ran along the left side of the field, and they ran toward it, plowing through the powdery snow that splashed up around their high-stepping legs in clouds.

In half a minute they plunged into the ditch next to the hedge, smashing through the ice and into the drainage water.

Rossett realized for the first time that it was still snowing; heavy white flakes were blowing in across the field. They ran along the ditch, smashing and cracking through the ice and mud, brambles and hedgerow catching on their clothes. Rossett looked over his shoulder and saw that the snowfall had already nearly obscured the wood behind them.

It gave them cover; it gave them a chance.

As he ran he reloaded the shotgun, mentally counting off the eight shells he had left, including the two in the gun, plus his pistol, which was fully loaded.

Minus the two rounds he would save till last.

CHAPTER 35

T
HEY RAN FOR
at least fifteen minutes.

Zigzagging across the fields, following the hedgerows and ditches, ducking and diving, keeping to the cover they provided as best as they could. Rossett had seen vehicle lights in the distance at one point, far off to his left. Ruth hadn’t waited for his instructions; she had turned sharply to put distance between them and their pursuers.

Rossett was impressed, but he was more impressed by her fitness.

The cold night air clawed at his throat and burned his lungs. It wasn’t just the injury on his stomach that was slowing him down. Rossett was quickly realizing he had spent too much of the last few months smoking and drinking. His pace had gradually slowed as the last few minutes passed, and his legs had grown heavy and uncertain in the deep snow.

He needed to stop, he had nothing left.

They dropped into another ditch under another hedgerow. Ruth splashed to the other side, ready to climb out and continue, as Rossett, gasping for air, slid down the mud-covered bank. He threw his head back, mouth wide, trying to fill his lungs as he held up a hand, beckoning Ruth back toward him.

“Stop.” Rossett gasped a breath and looked up into the falling snow. “For God’s sake . . . wait.” Breathless, rubbing at his bruised throat with his left hand. “Give me a minute.”

Ruth was eight feet in front of him, halfway up the bank of the ditch, feet out of the water. She watched Rossett struggle to breathe and then looked across the field they had just crossed. Satisfied they weren’t immediately in danger, she made her way to him, careful to keep her boots clear of the sucking mud at the bottom of the ditch.

“You’re bleeding,” she said as she reached out and touched Rossett’s forehead, tilting his head back so she could see the gash just above his hairline from where he had run into some gorse.

She touched the wound. The blood looked black in the night. Rossett flinched and pushed her hand away.

“I need a minute.”

Ruth frowned, picked up some fresh snow, and put it to her lips as she watched him.

Rossett saw her big brown eyes blink as she studied him. He touched his head wound himself and then smoothed his hair down across it.

He realized Ruth wasn’t out of breath and he suddenly felt old.

His turn to frown.

Ruth made her way along the hedgerow, eventually standing up to look into the next field. Rossett shifted position, finally taking his soaking feet out of the water, then slowly following Ruth as his breath returned to something approaching normal.

Ruth looked at him as he reached her. “Do you know where we are?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Didn’t you have a vehicle?”

“I did, but God knows where it is now. We came out the other side of the building. I’m lost.”

He turned and looked back, squinting against the wind and the snow that was almost blowing in sideways now.

“Great.” Ruth looked around them and then up at the sky as another gust of wind shook the hedge at their backs.

“If we can find a farm we’ll find transport.” Rossett leaned forward, lifting his head out of the ditch and into the wind, which ruffled his hair and lifted one side of the collar on his coat, slapping it against his cheek.

“And then what?”

“We head back to London.” Rossett slid back down and checked the illuminated hands of his watch. “I call Koehler there and we follow his instructions.”

“Koehler?”

“My friend, the reason I’m doing this.”

“I thought you were working for the Americans?”

“You think too much.”

“It’s my job.”

Rossett looked at Ruth, her face out of the shadows now, hair whipping across her pale skin like flames of black fire.

“Leave it to me for now, okay?” said Rossett.

“Because you’re doing such a good job?”

“We just need transport.” Rossett adjusted his feet, which were sliding down into the water. “Let’s get moving. We can’t afford to let the Germans get too organized or they will start shutting roads and box us in.”

Rossett pushed past Ruth up the bank and out into the open field. He turned, offered her his hand, and pulled her up as well.

“Did you kill the woman?” said Ruth, facing straight ahead, eyes on the other side of the field.

“I’ve killed lots of people, but not that one.”

“The others, have they deserved it?”

“I’ve done what I’ve done; this isn’t the time to question it.”

The wind almost carried Rossett’s words away before Ruth could hear them.

“I had to stab Horst.”

Rossett held out his hand to her.

“Now isn’t the time.”

“You have to understand, I can’t let anyone get in my way.”

“I’ll remember that.” Rossett beckoned with his hand again.

“No, you have to understand: nothing can be allowed to stop me getting away from here, from them, nothing . . . and no one.”

Rossett stared at her, and then nodded.

“It’s okay.”

“If Horst had stopped us, if I was forced to carry on working for the Germans . . . so many others are at risk, this is so much more than one man’s life.”

Rossett could see that the words were meant just as much for her own ears as for his. He gently touched her arm.

“Leave the killing to me.”

“You have no idea, do you?” Ruth’s hair covered her face, so she hooked some in her fingers, pulling it away so she could look into Rossett’s eyes. “If you had any sense you’d pull your pistol out of your coat and shoot me where I stand. I can kill millions; I can wipe mankind off the face of the planet. You’re talking to the most dangerous human being on earth and you have no idea . . . I am death.”

Rossett looked to where they were heading and then back at Ruth.

“I don’t care about millions, I don’t care about you, and I don’t care about the Americans. I care about a scared young girl who is relying on me to save her from danger. It’s her, that girl, her fear, her need, it is that that makes
me
the most dangerous person on the planet. So until she is safe, you stop thinking and do as I say. Okay?”

“You really just don’t understand, do you?”

Ruth dropped her eyes and then started walking.

THEY COVERED MILES,
trudging through foot-deep snow and leaning into the wind. In the silence between them Rossett drifted like the snow, thinking of Ruth’s hair and the way she had hooked it away. It reminded him of his wife.

The same wayward hair.

The same angry eyes.

Years apart, angry women talking to him about killing.

He lifted his face and looked toward the next low wall on the edge of the field, and stumbled in the snow before catching his own fall and carrying on.

His wife hadn’t wanted him to join the army.

She’d thought he was crazy to quit the police and take up arms against an as-yet-undeclared enemy.

Rossett wished he’d listened to her.

War had damaged him, mentally as well as physically; he still bore both sets of scars, although the physical ones had faded slightly.

Ruth turned her head to look at him as they walked. He realized he was holding his hand against the scar on his stomach through his coat.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

No, he thought.

“Yes,” he said.

Ruth nodded, half a pace ahead. She went back to staring at the snow as she dug out her steps and carried on.

Rossett felt empty, exhausted, but he kept going.

Same as ever.

Anja.

He thought about the girl he hardly knew. They’d met once, in Koehler’s office. She was awkward with Rossett, his usual lack of words unsettling her.

He couldn’t tell her he was jealous of her father; he couldn’t tell her that her existence made him jealous.

Koehler loved Anja. Anja loved her father.

Rossett loved his son. His son was dead.

He wouldn’t let Koehler know that pain; he wouldn’t wish it on any man.

So he’d said nothing, smiled, and left the room.

“Do you smell that?”

Rossett looked up, back in the real world.

“What?” he asked.

“Smoke. I can smell smoke.”

They both stopped.

Rossett lifted his face to the wind.

“Wood smoke,” he repeated, turning to his right, toward the wind and the driving snow. “This way.”

They walked a quarter of a mile before they saw the farmhouse in a shallow dip. They couldn’t see any lights through the driving blizzard. Rossett reached forward to stop Ruth once they drew to within one hundred yards. He crouched down and beckoned her closer so he could whisper.

“There might be dogs, so we need to be careful. They’ll pick up our scents. We need the wind in our face. Farmers have shotguns and short tempers.”

“They aren’t the only ones with shotguns and short tempers.” Ruth smiled, for the first time since he’d met her.

He saw his wife again, there, a glimpse, just at the edges of Ruth’s face in the darkness.

Rossett started moving forward again.

They reached the stone wall that surrounded the farm and looked over at the farmyard beyond. A small flatbed van was parked close to the farmhouse, snow a third of the way up its wheels, and covering its roof and bonnet.

The smell of the smoke was being carried away on the wind, and no light shone from any of the windows. Rossett dropped back down behind the wall and Ruth joined him, shoulder to shoulder.

“We steal the van?”

Rossett shook his head.

“We’d have to dig it out, and as soon as we started it they’d be out after us. In this snow we’d never get away.”

“We could push it clear of the house?”

“Too much snow, we’ll never move it.”

“What, then?”

“We need to get in the house, incapacitate whoever is in there.” Rossett turned and looked over the wall again.

“Incapacitate?”

Rossett looked at Ruth and frowned. He didn’t want to say “kill” out loud.

“Most young people are off working on the Continent. At best there is a farmer and his wife on their own. At worst there’ll be a farmer, a wife, maybe one or two young people kept back for essential labor. If we can get in quickly, get them secured, that’ll give us time to get away.”

“We could sit out the storm there?”

“We keep moving.”

Rossett produced the Mauser he had taken from the checkpoint guard earlier that day. He held it up for Ruth to see.

“Have you used one of these?”

She shook her head, so Rossett worked the slide on the pistol, then pointed at the safety catch.

“Slide that forward and pull the trigger, that’s all you have to do.”

Ruth nodded and held out her hand. Rossett placed the pistol on her palm and closed her hand around it.

“We don’t want to hurt these people,” he said, still holding her hand. “Do you understand? They aren’t soldiers, they are just normal people. I don’t want any more deaths. There’s been enough bloodshed. Keep the pistol out of sight and let me do the talking. Okay?”

“Yes.”

Rossett nodded, then released the gun into Ruth’s possession. He stood and hopped over the wall to land in the drifted snow on the other side. He turned to help her across, and as he held out his hand she paused.

“You said you had to make a call when we got to London?”

“Or on the way, but yes, I have to make a call,” Rossett replied, still holding his hand out to her.

“Maybe you should give me the number, just in case.”

Rossett gestured that she should take his hand and climb over. Ruth did as he wanted and Rossett reached up to her. Holding her arm, he helped her down. When she was standing next to him, calf deep in the drifted snow, Rossett leaned in close.

“You’ll just have to hope nothing happens to me like what happened to your boyfriend. Now put that pistol into your pocket, you’re making me nervous.”

Ruth did as he asked and followed Rossett across the farmyard. Behind the house, dark, brooding outbuildings loomed through the falling snow.

A whiff of decay hung over the farm.

Ruth squeezed the grip of the pistol in her pocket.

A dog started to bark in the farmhouse, some sixth sense alerting it to the presence of strangers, sounding the alarm for those inside. Rossett paused. There was still no light shining from any of the windows, and other than the dog the only sound was the crunch of the snow under their feet.

He headed for the front door and banged heavily on it with the side of his fist. He stepped back and unbuttoned his coat, letting it hang open so that he could access the shotgun if he needed it.

The sound of the dog’s barking grew louder until the scrabbling of paws on the inside of the door indicated that someone was coming. Rossett took another step back, unwilling to get this far and then be taken down by an angry dog. He looked over his shoulder and realized for the first time that there were no other animals to be seen or heard—no chickens, no sheep, no pigs, nothing.

It was as if the farm was dead.

“What the bloody hell do you want?”

The farm wasn’t dead.

A head was poking out of a darkened upstairs window; Rossett instinctively grabbed hold of Ruth and dragged her with him as he stepped into the doorframe for cover.

“Oi! I asked you what you want?”

The dog was now barking louder, scrabbling furiously on the other side of the door as Rossett leaned forward, looking cautiously up toward the window.

“We’re lost, we need help.”

“Why you wandering round this time of night?”

“Because we are fucking lost and we need help!” Rossett shouted, then felt Ruth’s hand on his arm.

She stepped forward. “Our car has broken down. We really are in trouble.”

The farmer above thought for a moment and then the window slammed shut.

THE CANDLE WA
S
barely brighter than the dying fire in the hearth. They’d had to wait two minutes at the door before the old man had finally managed to make it downstairs and pull back the heavy bolt that was barring it.

A grizzled old sheepdog, with a gray muzzle and a bald right paw, sat squinting at them through cataracts. The farmer inched his way round the room lighting more candles that seemed to waver nervously in the constant draft that blew through the house.