Read The British Lion for Free Online Page B

that Lotte had done a few moments earlier.
    “Frau Koehler, really, we must insist you come with us now; your husband is waiting.” The same immaculate but not-quite-right German. He tapped his wrist and shrugged an apology.
    “I need to make a telephone call,” Lotte replied, opening her handbag while still walking through the shop.
    “Now, Frau Koehler. We need to go now.” The driver spoke for the first time, his German rougher around the edges, his hand resting on the handle of the door, the other held out, inviting Lotte to leave the shop.
    She stopped, turned, then tilted her head. “I must also insist,” she said, an edge creeping in.
    Lotte stared at the man before following a nervous Anja to the back of the shop. Light and sound from the street were virtually nonexistent as the shopkeeper finally reached the telephone. It sat on a glass display case that contained ties, handkerchiefs, and a selection of brightly colored socks.
    Lotte was fumbling in her bag, looking for the number of Ernst’s private office, when the first man reached around her and rested his hand on top of the receiver.
    “Now, if you please,” he said quietly, intimately, his lips a few inches from her ear.
    Lotte paused, looking at the hand on the receiver in front of her. A second passed before she half turned and jabbed her silver Walther PPK pistol hard into his side.
    “Get away from me and my child,” Lotte said quietly, pushing hard with the muzzle of the PPK, so hard he felt it dig right through his overcoat and separate two of his ribs a fraction.
    He looked down and then back up into Lotte’s eyes.
    “Frau Koehler, please . . .”
    Behind him, the driver, confused by the quiet conversation between Lotte and his colleague, moved closer.
    “She has a gun,” the first man said quietly in English, looking down at the pistol.
    Nobody moved.
    The tick of the clock was the only reminder that the earth still turned, until Lotte shouted.
    “Go!” She looked at Anja. “Out the back, run!”
    As Lotte shouted to Anja she remembered another time. Long ago, another life almost. She remembered opening her heavy eyes, seeing the smoldering campfire, and hearing her father screaming.
    Lotte remembered the sound of the boar, the smell of it, the sparks kicking up from the fire, and the flecks of spittle as her father shouted one word.
    One final word to save the life of his precious daughter before he was overcome.
    “Run.”
    Back then, all those years ago, Lotte hadn’t done as she was told, either.
    Anja launched herself at the man next to her mother with all the fury a thirteen-year-old girl could muster. She gripped his coat collar with one hand and pushed as hard as she could. Clawing at his face with her other hand, she gritted her teeth and felt her nails dragging across his skin.
    She was screaming, slapping, kicking, and pulling now, her words just animal sounds and fury.
    ERIC COOK’S DAY was going from bad to worse.
    He tried to ignore Anja and her fingernails ripping at his cheeks. He tried to focus on the gun as the blows rained down on him; he flicked his head, this way and that, shoving with his shoulder, but still Anja fought, and still Lotte twisted the pistol, trying to pull it free from his hands. He’d managed to grab the top slide of the pistol, jamming the webbing of his thumb under the hammer to stop it from falling.
    Anja was like a dervish as she slapped and scraped at his face. He felt a finger in his eye and then his eyelid stretching under the drag of its nail.
    He shook his head, squeezing his eyes tight as he called for help.
    “For God’s sake, King, help me here!”
    The second he shouted he knew he’d done wrong. He knew there was no going back, no escape, no denial, and no doubt that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
    Eric Cook had called for help in a broad American accent, and Eric Cook had used a name.
    Frank King winced.
    They’d blown it.
    King stepped forward and attempted