Winter's Bullet (14 page)

Willa came to Tygo's side. Suddenly the phone on Krüger's desk rang. Krüger crossed to it.

‘Krüger.' He listened for a moment. ‘General Müller, I have been meaning to report . . .' He covered the mouthpiece. ‘Outside, wait for me outside!'

Tygo and Willa closed the door and sat down on the leather couch in the corridor.

‘You came back, Willa . . .' Tygo began.

‘Shut up and listen, Tygo. We haven't got much time. I think I know where the stone is.'

‘What?'

‘After you left, I remembered something Mother did at Christmas the night before she died. Maybe she knew it was too late for her.' Willa slipped off the gold locket that hung around her neck on a piece of ribbon. ‘She gave me this.' She opened the locket. Inside there was a black-and-white photo of a baby.

‘You?'

Willa nodded. ‘She made me promise never to lose it. She said it held the two most precious things she had in the world. At the time I didn't really take any notice of that. But then tonight, when you asked about the stone, it made me think again.' She glanced up and down the corridor. ‘Look!'

She slipped her fingernail under the photo and eased it out. Beneath it was a piece of paper folded into a tight square. She quickly unfolded it for Tygo's inspection.

‘It's a ticket receipt to a shop in the city. Look, it has a number on it, and the name and address. If you can find it I believe you will find the stone.'

Tygo stared at her. If she was right, there was still a chance –more than a chance – but he had to go now. Right now. He took her hand.

‘Come on.'

Willa shook her head. ‘No, if we both just disappear he'll think we've gone on the run, send his men to find us – and when they do, they'll take the stone.'

Tygo's mind was racing. She was right – Krüger was becoming more desperate and unpredictable as the hours ticked down. Better he got the stone and then engineered the right circumstances to negotiate with him.

‘Are you sure, Willa?'

She nodded.

‘Tell Krüger I've gone to get the stone. Tell him if he touches a hair on your head he'll never see the stone, or me, again. Trust me, he needs it – his life depends on it.'

‘I'll tell him,' Willa said.

Tygo looked at her. He needed to get away, but he also needed to ask her something.

‘Why did you do this? Come back for me?'

Willa stared back at him. ‘You did a brave thing for me tonight, Tygo. You didn't have to, but you did anyway. I just felt it was the right thing to do.'

‘Thank you,' Tygo said, and this time he leant forward to kiss her softly on the cheek.

CHAPTER 18

I
t took Tygo a lot longer than he would have liked to find the shop. He had to show his Gestapo warrant disc and letter four times to get through the checkpoints that ringed the inner city, but finally he located it in a side street, its metal shutters pulled firmly down and padlocked. The front door was also locked. He banged on it with his fist and pulled the bell stop, but no one came.

Tygo set to work and quickly picked the mortice, but he still couldn't get the door open. The proprietor had lodged a metal bar into the floor and set it against the inside of the door. You would need a sledgehammer to take out the hinges if you wanted to get in that way.

Tygo stepped back and took stock. It was a two-storey
building, like his family's shop, probably with accommodation on the upper floor. It had the traditional crow-stepped gable on the front. Tygo knew he had only one option left: climb on to the roof and hope there was a skylight to get in through.

The cast-iron drainpipe was agonizingly cold on his hands as he pulled himself up the side of the building. At last he reached the stepped gable and carefully climbed up it to the top, where the roof ridge ran away to the back of the building. Sure enough, there was a skylight about a metre down each side of the roof, but both were latched closed. Tygo straddled the roof ridge and shimmied along it until he was level with the windows. What could he do? Again, his choice was limited.

He swung his leg over so that he was sitting perched on the top of the roof ridge, the window just below his outstretched legs. He would need to spring forward and hit the glass pane with his boots, falling through it and hopefully not breaking his neck. If he missed, he was down the icy roof and over the side to the street below in an instant.

Tygo rocked his upper body, his hands pressing into the ridge tiles, his heels pressed against the roof. He took a deep breath and sprang forward with all his strength. His boots hit the glass together. It shattered into fat pieces and he fell through, hitting the floor below and rolling to one side, then slamming into something hard.

Tygo glanced up. It was a heavy wardrobe, and in the gloom he could make out a single bed and a washstand with basin and jug. He got to his feet, a little unsteadily,
and brushed himself down. His bullet wound throbbed. He peered around and saw a single brass candlestick on the bedside table, with an inch of candle still in it. Tygo found his matches and lit it. It gave a weak, jaundiced pool of light, but it was enough for him to make his way downstairs.

‘Is there anyone here?' he called out softly, the stairs creaking under his feet. There came no reply. When he reached the bottom of the stairs he stepped into a narrow corridor. The inside of the shop was through a door in the middle. Tygo stepped inside and shone the candle ahead. Then he screamed and jumped back, tripping and falling on to his bottom. An enormous polar bear was standing in front of him, its massive-clawed paws outstretched and ready to strike, its mouth with long yellow fangs open and ready.

Tygo stared at it for a moment, his heart racing, then glanced around. On all sides glass cases and cabinets were stacked, filled with all kinds of animals: birds, dogs, foxes, rabbits, eagles, even a crocodile. Tygo got to his feet. It was a taxidermist's shop, and the polar bear was the prize exhibit, standing – he could see now – on a plinth that resembled a huge block of ice. The owner had even put a swastika armband around its right arm, which – now he came to think of it – actually looked like the bear was making the Nazi salute. It made him smile, and he wondered what its name was – Peppy, maybe, like the mascot for the mint sweets?

After taking in his surroundings for a moment, Tygo set to work. He had to find the ledger book that held the
counterpart to Willa's receipt. There was a tall counter running along the end wall of the shop, and Tygo discovered a large brass lantern on it, with some oil still inside. He lit it with the last of his guttering candle; that improved things a great deal. He stepped round the counter and, for the second time in a minute, his heart missed a beat.

In front of him, slumped in a battered striped deckchair, was a old man, covered in furs top to bottom, from his racoon hat to his bearskin boots. His eyes were closed, a thin layer of frost covered his furs, and tiny icicles dropped down from his bushy, unkempt eyebrows.

Tygo edged forward and prodded him with his finger. He felt rock hard. He touched the man's cheek with the back of his hand; it was stone cold. Dead as a doornail.

Tygo blew on his hands and rubbed them together. It was truly as cold as a morgue in this shop that was filled to the brim with dead things. He shivered, set the lamp down and started to work his way through the drawers beneath the counter until he found what he was looking for: a small workbook with the original tickets on one side and a carbon copy beneath the top page. He flicked through it until he found the matching order number: 27. There was no description on the order.

Tygo looked about. He couldn't see anything with that number on, but it had to be here. He made his way back through the shop between the bell jars and glass boxes, their contents staring at him with their glass eyes. Then he saw a large shelved cabinet running the full length of the wall at the other end of the shop. It was full of brown
paper packages tied up with string, neatly stacked on its glass shelves. They were of varying sizes, but each one, Tygo could see as soon as he'd opened the cabinet, had a small label attached to it, bearing a number.

Tygo worked his way through the packages, finding every number but 27. Once he'd checked the lower shelves he had to stop and hunt around until he found a set of steps so he could reach the higher ones. He worked on, moving along the shelves and climbing back up. A feeling of panic was setting in.

‘It has to be here. It
has
to be here!'

Tygo realized he was shouting the words aloud at the top of his voice. His hands had started shaking: only three more packages remained. 102 . . . 19 . . . he tossed them aside, grasping the last one, which was small – no bigger than a box of cook's matches. He looked at the ticket: 27.

Twenty-seven.

He threw his head back and yelled out in relief. The action saved his life: at that very instant he felt a searing pain against his left ear, as if someone had stuck a red-hot needle through it. The glass in the cabinet exploded in his face, and he toppled back off the stepladder to the floor as the sound of the gunshot filled the room.

Tygo scrambled to his feet, a trickle of blood running down his neck, still clutching the packet in his hand.

Another gunshot, the bullet smacking into the wall just to his left.

He grabbed the oil lamp and just had time to glimpse to the other end of the shop before a bullet hit the lamp and ripped it out of his hand, leaving him with just the
wire handle. But that was all the time Tygo needed to realize he had to get the hell out of the shop right this second. The man he'd thought was dead was standing behind the counter with some ancient bolt-action rifle in his hand.

‘You thieving little . . .'

The frozen voice bellowed out in the gloom.

Tygo ran towards the front door, barging into glass cabinets and sending them crashing to the floor. Another bullet sang past him and blew the head off a large blue parrot perching on a tropical branch.

Tygo heard the man reloading as he reached the front door, pulled the metal bar away and slid back the bolts. His neck was wet with blood. Then he had the door open and was out into the street, running as fast as he could as the man's angry cries faded.

CHAPTER 19

14 January 1945

T
he sound of the heavy bomber woke Krüger. After Tygo had left, he had made his way out to the secret air base on the coast as per his orders, bringing the girl with him. He was to remain here until the following evening – actually that night – when the Führer and his party would arrive. But first the secret shipment was due to arrive from Peenemunde, and that was the bomber now, circling, trying to land.

Krüger hurried out from his tent, buttoning his leather greatcoat, the deep throbbing of the engines above him, almost on top of him. The canvas on the outside of the
tent was white with frost and he was chilled to the marrow. He stared up at the dawn sky, checking his watch. Just before five; he'd managed a couple of hours' sleep.

He made his way through the gloom towards the temporary airstrip which the engineers had constructed where the forest gave way to sandy dunes. He could hear the surf, and the air had a salty tang to it. Krüger nodded to the guard standing outside another tent, close to a cluster of vehicles: support trucks, a radio lorry, field kitchen and an ambulance.

‘The girl?'

‘Secure, sir.'

Krüger reached the edge of the airstrip. Sections of steel strips lay on the levelled ground, a series of drums filled with fuel were burning brightly along its perimeter, and someone had lit flares down its centre line. The bomber had dropped through the low clouds and was thundering down towards Krüger, its landing lights burning brightly. It touched down with a great thump, lifted up again for a moment, then settled, barrelling towards him.
It's never going to stop in time
, he thought, and turned to run – then, with a great whoosh, a large parachute deployed from the rear gun turret and the plane juddered violently as it slowed right down. When it finally came to a halt, the pilot swung the bomber round so that it was already lined up for a quick exit.