Winter's Bullet (6 page)

‘You came back to search yourself?' she asked.

‘Yes, like I said.' He stared at her. ‘I suppose a bit of me did want to see if you were real too, not a ghost or my imagination in the dark up that chimney.
Are
you real?'

She leant forward and hit Tygo lightly on the head with the spindle. ‘Does that feel real?'

‘Ow!' Tygo yelped. ‘All right, yes.'

The girl was clearly assessing him, trying to make up her mind.

‘Look, how about this?' he went on. ‘If you help me find whatever that Gestapo man is looking for, I can help you leave this place, get some food.'

‘What makes you think I want to leave?'

Tygo looked back at her, stumped. ‘Well, it's cold, it's lonely . . . and to be honest, for all I know, Krüger may come back here. Please untie me.'

‘Shut up, I'm thinking,' the girl replied. She half closed her eyes; Tygo could see he might be getting through to her. Whatever she might say, she was in the same boat as him: alone, hungry, scared and cold. And that was just for starters.

‘Let me help you,' he ventured.

‘I don't need your help – seems to me you need mine more.' The girl crossed her arms defensively.

‘Fine, then, go on living by yourself halfway up a chimney.'

‘I was only up there because of you! And anyway, who says I'm alone?'

Tygo shrugged. ‘Just a wild guess.'

She remained silent.

‘Look, think about it sensibly for one minute. We can help each other. And whatever you say, we both need help.' Tygo felt a sudden welling-up of loneliness and loss inside him. An aching, burning feeling that rose up his throat. ‘Just untie me, please. I'll leave you alone, all right? I made a mistake.'

His voice was hoarse, his eyes wet. The girl looked at him, then knelt forward and started to undo his bonds. ‘If you try anything funny . . .' she warned.

‘I won't, I promise.' Tygo rubbed his wrists where the cloth bindings had dug into his skin. ‘What is your name?' he asked.

‘Willa,' the girl replied.

‘Willa?'

‘Short for Wilhelmina.'

‘Wilhelmina Löwenstein, by any chance?' said Tygo.

The girl looked startled for a moment, then carefully continued untying him. Tygo eased himself up to a sitting position. He felt a lump on the side of his head where he had hit the stone stairs. Fortunately the skin was unbroken.

‘Did I . . .?' He pointed to the stairs.

‘All the way to the bottom. I was sure you were dead. What do you know about the Löwensteins?'

‘Nothing – I mean, I just know who they were, and that they used to live here, a long time ago, before the war.'

‘They never lived here. My mother lived here with me – until a few weeks ago.' Willa sounded almost bitter.

‘I don't understand. The title document said the house was owned by a bank belonging to the Löwensteins.'

Willa looked at Tygo. ‘How do you know that?'

‘I looked it up last night, in the records department. The house was passed to the German authorities when they invaded. It was raided by Krüger's department, the Sicherstellung.'

‘I know, I was there!' The girl was angry at the memory. ‘They cleared the house of everything – we hid with friends and returned when they had sealed the place up. We've lived here secretly ever since.'

‘But if you're not Willa Löwenstein, who are you?'

Willa stared at Tygo, clearly trying to decide whether to trust him. Finally she spoke.

‘My mother was Pieter Löwenstein's mistress; he kept this house for her. I am his child. When the Germans came he bought safe passage for himself and his wife and legitimate children. He left my mother and me here. My mother was a Catholic, but he is my father, so under the law of the Germans I am a Jew. And everyone knows what happens to them.'

‘Right,' said Tygo. He didn't know what else to say. All the Jews in the country had long ago been rounded up and shipped away on trains to who knew where.

‘My mother told me that my father had sworn he would arrange for us to follow him to New York, but she
never heard from him again.'

‘Perhaps he tried?'

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps we were an inconvenience.'

Outside a clock struck and Tygo counted the strokes: six. Six a.m. – the night had flown by and, like Cinderella, he would have to be getting back to Headquarters soon. Krüger hated it if he was a minute late. He realized there was something he had not asked the girl.

‘And where is your mother now?'

Willa turned away from him but he caught the sadness. Of course, how stupid of him. He didn't say the word – he didn't have to. It was obvious now.
Dead.
Just like his parents.

‘How long ago . . .?'

The girl leant in to him and gave a sob, and without thinking Tygo pulled her close to him – not just to comfort her but to hide the tears in his own eyes. Tears that had sprung from hearing her story and the pain he suddenly felt inside for the loss of his own family.

‘Christmas Eve,' sobbed Willa. ‘It'd been snowing hard all day. She went to fetch some of the dry wood we'd hidden in the back garden before the snow became too deep. It was late in the evening; she wanted us to keep the fire in for Christmas morning as a treat. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up, she wasn't there. I went outside . . . it was light, the snow was up to my waist. I found her lying underneath the bushes where we had hidden the wood. On her back, her eyes closed. So peaceful, I thought she was asleep. But she wasn't.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Tygo.

Willa pulled away from him, and wiped her eyes. ‘I think she knew she was dying – she gave me her locket on Christmas Eve. Usually she never took it off. She made me swear to keep it safe.'

Tygo looked at her. She was just like him, all alone now, with a cold hostile world outside waiting from them. ‘Come with me,' he said impulsively. ‘Let me help you now.'

‘No, I can't. If I go out, I'll be arrested, I don't have papers or anything.'

‘I'm going to help you,' said Tygo fiercely. And he really meant it.

'How can you possibly help me?' she said.

Tygo looked at her, thinking. ‘Well, I can come back later with some food and drink. Bread, soup, maybe even a little sausage . . .' Even to Tygo's ears it sounded incredible, a fantasy, but Willa just shrugged. ‘After that – well, I'll think of something, a way to get you out of here. If you stay here you're going to die, just like your mother.'

‘Why do you care?'

For a moment Tygo was flummoxed. Why
did
he care about this strange girl? Why didn't he just leave her? He wasn't entirely sure, but there was one very good practical reason.

‘Because I need you.'

‘For what?'

‘To help me find what Krüger's looking for. It could help us both.'

Willa frowned. ‘We'll see,' was all she said.

CHAPTER 8

T
he first orange streaks of dawn flashed across the top of the flat grey North Sea and met the tiger-striped S-boat racing towards the rising sun. The German attack boat was at full speed – over forty knots – anxious to be in position now it was light.

General Müller was inside the small bridge, holding on to the rail by the wheel, trying to stop the seasickness building up to a point of no return. He hated boats.

‘Not long now, Herr General!' the captain called out to him from the other side of the wheel. He was scanning ahead with a pair of powerful binoculars. ‘There, about a kilometre to port, the marker buoy.'

The boat slewed to the right and raced towards the
target, the hull banging down on the swell. Shortly thereafter, the big Mercedes engines throttled back and the S-boat started to slow. The captain spoke into the ship's intercom.

‘This is your captain speaking, now hear this. We are in position. All engines stop. Action stations.'

‘Excellent work, Captain,' Müller said quietly. ‘May I remind you that what you are about to witness is the greatest secret of the Reich. If you or your men breathe so much as a word about it . . .'

‘I assure you, Herr General,' the captain interrupted the threat that was coming, ‘I can vouch for every man on my ship.'

The sun was above the horizon now. Müller and the captain made their way out of the bridge and on to the foredeck, next to the small anti-aircraft turret. Müller's nausea was now replaced with the flutter of anticipation.

‘The moment of truth,' he said to the captain. The rest of the crew were on deck, watching expectantly, even the engineers in their greasy overalls.

Fifty kilometres out from the Dutch coast the S-boat rocked on the calm sea, nothing to be seen in any direction. They could have been on the surface of the moon. They waited.

There was no warning, no rumble, no sound, just a sudden plume of water exploding two hundred metres in front of them. A plume that instantly became a squat black missile with a tongue of flame, white and blue at its base, blasting it skywards.

The two men watched it streak up into the dark-blue
morning sky, the waning moon still visible above it. As it leapt higher it left a long white chalk line of vapour.

‘Mein Gott,'
the captain finally mustered.

‘God had nothing to do with it,' Müller replied.

What they had just witnessed changed everything, he thought. The war
could
be won, even now, even this late in the day. This was the evidence. The Führer had said if the sea trial was successful, then they would go. Operation Black Sun would be authorized.

The bow of the Type XXI U-boat burst through the surface from where the rocket had appeared, and the S-boat blasted its siren –
whoop whoop whoop
– in congratulation. Müller and the captain took off their hats and waved them in salute as the submarine settled on the surface.

Within less than a minute the conning tower was manned by the U-boat captain and his signaller, their Aldis lamp flashing Morse messages.

Müller and the captain returned to the bridge, where Müller took the transcript of the U-boat's message from the S-boat's signaller. It read :‘
Test fire complete. All systems are green. Awaiting further orders
.'

‘Signal to the U-boat commander as follows.' Müller thought for a moment. ‘
The Führer will be notified of your superb achievement. You may now unseal your destination orders and proceed immediately to the rendezvous point. Heil Hitler
.'

The signaller hurried back to his lamp.

‘And once he has done that, Captain,' Müller added, ‘get us out of here before the RAF have us for breakfast!'

CHAPTER 9

T
ygo cycled back to Gestapo Headquarters through the frozen streets. It was bitterly cold; his nose ran and his cheeks burned. Ursula and her gang were nowhere to be seen; perhaps they were sitting in that alleyway from the day before, hoping to snare Tygo again.

About half a mile from Headquarters he discovered the cause of the explosion that had woken him back in the villa: a British Lancaster bomber had crashed. It must have been on its way to a raid, carrying its payload of a single twelve-ton Blockbuster bomb, by the look of things.

It had certainly lived up to its name: an entire city block of houses had been demolished, leaving the ones opposite barely touched. There must have been twenty
houses gone. The street was cordoned off and flames still danced up from a few of the buildings; there wasn't a fire brigade any more. A few civilian defence workers were gingerly trying to pick through the rubble, looking for any possible signs of life.

Tygo stopped to stare for a few minutes. It was staggering to him that they could make weapons now of such incredible power. Imagine a whole street destroyed by a single bomb – it was just amazing. Goebbels, the Minister of Information, had spoken in a radio broadcast of a ‘
Wunderwaffe
', a wonder weapon, which was a thousand times more powerful than these monster bombs and could destroy whole cities, but everyone knew that was just a propaganda lie. Such a weapon was impossible, unthinkable; all the explosives in the world couldn't do something like that.