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‘Maybe they’re still here,’ Jean said, drawing Tayte’s attention to the motorcycles. She was holding out her phone.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking a photo of the number plates.’ She took the photograph and put her phone away again. ‘We should go.’

‘What about Tobias? He’s on his way here. We can’t just let him walk in on whatever this is. He also said someone called Amir might be working late. What if Amir’s in trouble?’

‘So let’s call the police and go and wait further down the street. We can warn Tobias when he gets here.’

‘What if Tobias is already here?’

It troubled Tayte to think that Kaufmann or his employee, Amir, might already be in trouble. What if one or both of them was in mortal danger? By the time the police arrived, he thought it could be too late. He pushed the door open and peered inside.

‘You call the police,’ he whispered, stepping over the threshold. ‘I’m just going to take a look.’

Tayte set his briefcase down inside the door and watched Jean take her phone out again. He made for the stairs, but as he started to ascend them he heard a clatter from the offices above and he froze. Fear and self-preservation rooted him to the spot for a few seconds, but he found the courage to continue. He took two more steps and then he heard voices, agitated voices speaking in German. There was another clatter and this time the din continued, as if the people he’d heard were destroying the place.

He turned back to Jean and instantly caught his breath. She was staring right back at him, a knife pressed to her throat. Behind her with his arm around her chest was a taller man in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He wore a black full-face crash helmet. The visor was up but all Tayte could see of his face was his eyes, which looked determined.

‘Move!’ the man demanded, shuffling Jean towards the stairs. ‘Go up!’

Tayte’s heart began to pound. What to do? He realised this man must have been posted on the street, out of sight, to watch for trouble after the rest of the gang broke into the building. Tayte’s hesitation caused the man to reaffirm the pressure on the knife at Jean’s throat, and Tayte knew he had little choice but to do as he was told. He continued up the stairs, taking his time. He reached the small landing area that led to the offices of
Kaufmann und Kaufmann,
and there he stopped. A few seconds later the knifeman arrived with Jean. Tayte thought she looked surprisingly calm given their predicament—at least, she appeared considerably calmer than he felt.

‘Inside!’ the man ordered, his tone full of aggression.

The sounds of breaking office equipment and splintering desks gave Tayte little desire to obey, but he could think of no alternative that wouldn’t endanger Jean’s life. He wanted to charge the man down, but that knife was already pressing into Jean’s skin. He couldn’t risk it.

‘Go!’ the man insisted again, and this time Tayte pushed the door open.

The room was a mess. Most of the desks had been tipped over and papers had been ripped and scattered. There was an assortment of office hardware from plastic paper trays to big old-fashioned computer screens, most of which had been thrown across the room and smashed. On the walls someone had spray-painted black Nazi swastikas. The clatter stopped as soon as Tayte entered. A gun was drawn and the muzzle was suddenly aiming directly at Tayte’s face. Instinctively, he thrust his hands high into the air as the knifeman followed into the room after him with Jean. He kicked the door shut behind him.

Now that there was a handgun trained on Tayte, the knifeman shoved Jean away and Tayte caught her as she stumbled into him. Tayte counted three men in crash helmets: the knifeman, the gunman and a heavily muscled man further into the room. All wore jeans and white T-shirts, although the man with the gun was the only one wearing black jeans, just as Max Fleischer had been when he’d appeared outside that coffee shop window.

‘Well, well,’ the gunman said. ‘Look who it is.’

The chin guard of his helmet rocked back as he spoke, and Tayte glimpsed the skull tattoo of the Nazi Death’s Head Unit insignia on his neck, confirming his suspicions that the gunman was Max Fleischer. Fleischer came closer. He went up to Jean, grabbed her arm and pulled her away from Tayte. Then his helmet began to roll from side to side as if he were studying her.

‘I told you what would happen to you if you didn’t go home,’ Fleischer said, and Tayte could imagine the sickly grin on his face.

‘
Wir haben keine Zeit
,’ the muscular man towards the back of the room said.

Tayte turned towards him as he spoke, and then he saw another man, bound and gagged and lying on the floor at the back of the office towards the Strobel room. He figured it had to be Amir. At least he was still alive.

Fleischer leaned closer to Jean, ‘Oh, we’ll make time,’ he said in reply to the other’s words. Suddenly he turned on Tayte and levelled the gun at his head again. ‘But first I’m going to take care of you.’

Tayte had been shot at and threatened at gunpoint before, although it wasn’t an experience he felt he’d learned anything from; he was just as scared now as he had been then. His senses were particularly heightened. He could feel the adrenaline begin to boil in his veins, preparing him for fight or flight. He knew if he didn’t do something, he and Jean were likely going to die, and the thought of what Fleischer and his gang might do to Jean before they killed her only served to fuel his determination to fight. He was thinking fast, looking for a way out. His eyes flitted around the room and settled on the muscular man again, and while Tayte had plenty of natural strength on account of his size, this man looked unstoppable. He knew he needed the gun—the gun Fleischer was pointing at him. He thought that if any of the other men had guns they would have drawn them by now. Whoever had the gun had control of the room.

‘You can’t shoot me,’ Tayte said. ‘I’m Volker Strobel’s grandson.’

He didn’t yet know if that was true, or whether Strobel would care, come to that. But right now he was happy to say anything he thought might buy him some time.

Fleischer laughed at him. ‘Is that so?’

‘You know otherwise?’

Fleischer shook his head, and Tayte thought he must have planted an element of doubt in the man’s mind. He could see it in Fleischer’s eyes—a questioning look that asked ‘What if it were true?’ Tayte helped Fleischer’s thoughts along in that direction.

‘What if I’m right?’ he said. ‘What if I’m right and you shoot me? How’s that going to reflect on you when Strobel finds out?’

‘
Wir sollten sie mitnehmen.
’ the knifeman said.

‘What was that?’ Tayte asked. ‘What did he say?’

‘He says we should take you to see him.’

‘Well, maybe you should. Maybe this isn’t your call to make.’

Tayte thought that if he and Jean were taken to see Strobel, it would at least postpone the sentences hanging over them. But while he had plenty of questions he wanted to ask Strobel, he preferred to do so on his own terms. These thugs had already said too much. They had admitted to knowing Strobel, and more importantly they had made it clear that they knew where he was. Tayte knew there would be no way back once they had seen him, if indeed there was any way back now. Getting that gun still seemed to offer the best chance of getting out of there. But how?

‘Bring them,’ Fleischer said, and the knifeman grabbed Jean as the muscleman came for Tayte.

Fleischer relaxed the gun a little then, and Tayte’s eyes fixed on the broken display monitor on the desk beside him. He didn’t think he’d be able to turn and pick it up in time to hurl it at Fleischer before he managed to squeeze a shot off, but he was all set to give it a go when an alarm bell started ringing, and suddenly the room was being showered with water from the sprinkler system. The building’s fire alarm had been triggered and Tayte could only think that Tobias Kaufmann had arrived and realised that Tayte and Jean, and his member of staff, were in trouble.

Tayte didn’t waste a second. As the alarm bells began to ring and the water came down, Fleischer momentarily turned away. At that moment, still high on adrenaline, Tayte grabbed the monitor and launched it at Fleischer, sending him crashing into one of the upturned desks. The gun went off, sending a bullet into the ceiling and Tayte leapt on top of Fleischer as he tried to get up again. He could see the muscle man still coming for him, but faster now. He had to get the gun, but where was it? Fleischer had dropped it in the fall.

A split second later, Tayte saw it resting among the strewn papers to his left. He leapt at it, aware that Fleischer had grabbed his legs in an attempt to stop him. But Tayte was tall and he had a long reach. He managed to curl a finger around the trigger-guard just before the muscleman arrived beside him. Then as Fleischer climbed on top of Tayte, he twisted around, and with both hands gripping the gun he shoved the muzzle into Fleischer’s chest.

‘Stop!’ he yelled, his eyes wide with fear, his heart now thumping at an alarmingly fast rate. He could see his hands shaking as he clenched them tighter around the gun.

The muscleman stopped in his tracks as Fleischer’s hands went up. There was no move either man dared make to disarm Tayte. With the gun pressing into Fleischer’s T-shirt, he would have known Tayte could pull that trigger and put a bullet in him as soon as he so much as twitched. Tayte didn’t know whether he could actually pull the trigger, but Fleischer seemed in no hurry to find out.

‘I didn’t have you down as the hero type,’ Fleischer said.

‘It’s called self-preservation. Now don’t try anything or I
will
shoot you.’

‘Calm down, cowboy,’ Fleischer said. ‘It doesn’t have to end this way.’

Someone else spoke then. ‘Drop the gun,’ the knifeman said.

Tayte’s eyes were locked on Fleischer’s, reading the situation between them. In his peripheral vision he saw that the man with the knife had Jean again.

Jean called out. ‘Don’t you dare!’ she said, and Tayte knew she was right. If he dropped the gun now, they were both as good as dead.

‘Tell your friend to drop his knife,’ Tayte told Fleischer, his tone firm.

Fleischer scoffed. ‘He never listens to me.’

Tayte shoved the muzzle of the gun harder into Fleischer’s chest. ‘So we’ll wait here like this until the police arrive. Who do you think set the fire alarm off? There isn’t a fire, and it didn’t go off by accident.’

Fleischer’s expression soured, and Tayte saw in his eyes that he had him beat. A second later Fleischer raised his hands higher.

‘
Lass die Frau gehen
,’ Fleischer said, and the knifeman let Jean go. She took his knife from him and tossed it across the room, where it became lost in the debris that was now Tobias Kaufmann’s main office.

‘Now tell the big guy to back off,’ Tayte demanded, and once he had, Tayte snarled at Fleischer and added, ‘Now get off me!’

He kept the gun trained on Fleischer the whole time, and slowly, carefully, they disentangled themselves from one another until they were standing several feet apart, the gun locked in Tayte’s grasp between them.

‘Now I want you to empty your pockets,’ Tayte said. ‘All of you!’ He didn’t want any surprises. ‘Throw everything down onto the floor where you’re standing and walk slowly to the back of the room.’

To Tayte’s surprise there were no complaints. Fleischer and his men did exactly as they were told. Jean came and stood beside him.

‘I feel sick,’ Tayte said, quietly out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Hang in there. You’re doing great.’

Together they watched Fleischer and his gang unload their pockets: more knives, a set of brass knuckles from the muscleman, some coins and the keys to their motorcycles. Jean picked up one of the knives and went over to the man who was lying bound and gagged on the floor. She cut him loose and without saying a word he ran from the room as though it really was on fire.

‘Now move,’ Tayte said to Fleischer and his men, flicking the gun towards the back of the room. Since he did now have the gun, he didn’t plan to run or let anyone go. He hoped it was Tobias who had set off the fire alarm, and he hoped he really had called the police. In which case, all Tayte figured he had to do was to keep everyone there until help arrived. He followed the gang slowly towards the back of the room until they reached the door to the Strobel room. It was already open and Tayte could see from the mess beyond that they had already been to work in there.

‘Inside!’ Tayte said, and as Fleischer backed into the room after his men, his eyes locked on Tayte with a hateful stare.

‘I’m going to find you,’ Fleischer said. ‘And when I do, I’m—’

‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever,’ Tayte said, cutting him short. He stepped closer to reassert his command of the situation, forcing Fleischer back into the room until Tayte was standing in the doorway, ready to close it on them. ‘Just get in there. I’m tired of your threats.’

Tayte was about to shut the door when he heard the main office door open.

‘The police are on their way,’ Tobias called in, and the distraction, which had served Tayte so well before, now served Fleischer.

Tayte lost his concentration for just a second, but it was long enough for Fleischer to turn the situation to his advantage. As Tayte’s eyes fixed on him again, he saw Fleischer dodge to his left in a blur so as to avoid any bullet Tayte might have had time to fire. But Tayte did not have time because Fleischer’s next move sent Tayte’s gun hand smashing into the edge of the aluminium door frame. It sent such a shock of pain through him that he was forced to let go of the gun. It clattered to the floor somewhere inside the Strobel room and Tayte knew he wouldn’t be able to get to it first this time. As Fleischer turned to retrieve it, Tayte slammed the door shut.

‘Go!’ he called to Jean and Tobias, and in his next breath he pulled a filing cabinet over so that it was partially blocking the door. He turned to see Jean fumbling among the clutter, wondering what on earth she was looking for. Then as he ran to her he saw that she’d picked up a set of motorcycle keys. A shot was fired, and behind them now as they went, Tayte could hear the metallic thump of the door to the Strobel room being kicked against the filing cabinet. He knew it would only hold the gang back for a few seconds.