the distant Harz. Behind the ridge, sharp as a knife edge, the world seemed to be on fire.
He raised the glasses to his eyes, slowly scanned the fields between the highway and the cottage. The rye crop stood still in the windless evening. The blips of light continued moving along the highway, nearly all in an easterly direction, towards Halle. Fewer of them now. Rush hour was fading.
`Emil,' Falken called out from the next room, using Newman's new name, 'everything quiet?'
`Not a sign of life – except cars on the highway..
`Come in here for a minute then. Something you need to know.'
Newman found the German sitting at the table, studying the new Border Police folder. He had already burnt the River Police document. Albert Thorn had ceased to exist, gone up in flames. Newman sat down. Behind him he heard Gerda unlocking the door, returning from the lavatory.
`Keep your hands on the table! Move and I'll blow your heads off…'
Newman stared at the open doorway where Gerda stood, key in her left hand, her face pale, grim. Behind her stood a man in farming clothes, peaked cap pulled down over his low forehead. For a moment he had difficulty in recognizing Karl Schneider. The German had no difficulty at all.
`Ah! Mr Albert Thorn! Of the River Police? And Mr What's-'is-Name. Lay your bloody hands flat on the table! Both of you! Lean forward! You want a bullet in the guts?'
Gerda still stood frozen, as though with fright. Schneider used his left hand to give her a violent shove in the back. She nearly fell, but recovered her balance and turned to face him. His gun still covered Newman and Falken.
`Make the wrong move and they get it,' he told her. 'A third bullet for you, my pretty one…'
He stepped back, used his left elbow to slam the door closed, then stepped forward again. Schneider was pleased with himself. It showed in the triumphant sneering grin on his pasty face. He had crawled through the rye patiently until he reached the rear of the shed which served as a lavatory. Now he knew there were only three of them. The girl didn't count. Two of them. He'd waited until she had left the shed, walked the few paces to the front door, inserted the key and opened it. Then he had rushed forward behind her. They'd be proud of him in Leipzig. He would get his promotion. He could smell treason inside this cottage.
Schneider flexed his left hand as the circulation returned. It had been cold out there in the dusk. Inside the cottage it was warm. He felt the warmth reacting on his chilled face, on both hands. They'd forgotten to provide gloves. But they'd hardly have foreseen this situation, the vigil he had kept on the hillock.
`Go and sit down at the table, you stupid cow,' he ordered Gerda. 'You've had your piss,' he added coarsely.
She released the key. It clanged on the flagstone floor. His eyes dropped, looked up quickly. 'Thought you could distract me, you fornicating bitch? I suppose they've both had some?'
He leered, then his eyes glanced at the open folder in front of Falken on the table. Newman sighed inwardly. If Schneider needed any proof of their guilt – and there had been a chance they could have talked their way out of the trap – the folder had ruined it. Gerda, still standing, spoke in a mocking tone.
`You want us to think you did all this by yourself? Where is the rest of your patrol?'
`By myself? Yes! No one else. Just me. I found you! By driving along the roads. By keeping my eyes open. You think you can fool a farmer by covering a tractor which has to be as big as a Russian tank?'
`I don't believe it,' Gerda jeered. 'A squalid little lout of a man like you? A peasant…'
Schneider levelled the gun midway between Newman and Falken with his right hand. His left hand bunched into a fist. He hit her a savage blow in the face. At the last moment she moved her head slightly, then fell back under the impact. She sprawled on the floor, sobbing.
There was a snap. Falken had closed the folder. Schneider eyed the folder. 'Open that, you bastard,' he ordered. 'I want to see it – see the photograph…'
A rattle of gunfire reverberated. From Schneider's breastbone downwards a row of bright red medallions seemed to sprout, as though stitched to his thin coarse jacket. Schneider was hurled back against the door as if pushed by a giant hand. His eyes bulged with astonishment. Newman felt himself jump with shock. The red splotches began to coalesce into one long streak as he slid down the door, sat on the floor, legs sprawled across the floor.
Newman glanced at Gerda as Falken leapt up. She lay propped on one elbow, the Uzi in her right hand, the inner lining of the windcheater showing where she had grabbed the weapon.
Falken bent down, checked Schneider's neck pulse. 'He's still alive. Amazing. Give me the gun…'
He took it from Gerda, walked back to Schneider, placed the muzzle against the side of the German's head after adjusting the Uzi's mechanism. He fired one shot. The head jerked, flopped sideways. Falken checked the pulse again. 'Now he's dead.'
`The blood!' Gerda scrambled to her feet. 'There must be no blood on the floor..
Opening a cupboard, she hauled out two grey blankets. With Falken's aid she laid out the blankets on the floor, lifted the body on to them, wrapped it up like a parcel, tucking it in at head and foot.
Falken picked up the key from the floor, opened the front door, peered into the night, then disappeared. He returned almost immediately carrying a loop of rope. 'The mooring rope for barges,' he explained to Newman. 'Go to the kitchen and check the window…'
Newman ran into the next room, which was still in darkness, felt his way round the few pieces of furniture, stared through the window. His night vision came to him quickly, helped by the headlights of two cars driving along the highway. No sign of any movement in the fields.
`Nothing I can see,' he reported, going back into the livingroom. 'I'd better check outside…'
He must have come in from the fields at the back – he found the Chaika,' Gerda said, bent down over the grisly bundle.
`You can use a Walther?' Falken asked. 'Good. Take this.'
Newman released the safety catch, opened the front door, stepped outside quickly and closed the door behind him. The cold of the night hit him after the warmth of the cottage. Holding the Walther in both hands, extended in front of him, he explored round the cottage, down the tow-path to the bank of the canal.
Then he took the more difficult route to where the canvas covered the tractor and the Chaika. At frequent intervals he paused and listened. The night was heavy with silence, the nerve-wracking silence you only experience after dark in the country. He resumed his walking, heading for the most likely hiding-place for the rest of a patrol. Behind the covered vehicles.
He was almost convinced Schneider had spoken the truth when he said he'd come alone. But it had to be checked. Assume the worst. An excellent maxim. He found no one behind the canvas hump. But, kneeling down, feeling the ground carefully, he detected flattened rye where Schneider must have waited and watched. For God knew how long. But he'd had the patience of a farmer.
Newman returned to the cottage.
The corpse lay on the flagstone floor. Wrapped in two grey Army blankets. Further wrapped in a sheet of canvas. And round two parts – the chest and the knees – the whole parcel was coiled with two heavy, rusting chains. Falken, who had opened the door, went back to the table where Gerda sat, shivering, small hands grasping a mug of steaming black coffee.
`No one out there,' Newman reported. 'He was on his own.'
`I knew that,' Gerda said in a cold voice, 'he boasted about it. But you were right to check. There is still coffee in the pot.'
Newman sagged in a chair opposite Falken. He suddenly felt unutterably weary, drained of energy. He drank some of the coffee Falken had poured, then looked again at the body.
`Where did you get the chains?'
`Snow chains. For Norbert's car in winter. We think the body must be weighted. To make it sink.'
`In the canal?'
`Out of the question.' Falken's tone was abrupt. 'It might be found. Then old Norbert would be in terrible trouble. We cannot risk that.'
`Bury it,' Newman suggested. 'During the night.' `Impossible. The ground is too hard. We have to think of something else.'
`Such as?'
`I have no idea.' Falken sounded irritable. 'For God's sake let me think.'
