48

I placed my empty brandy glass on the table and dropped the butt of my cigar into it. My hands remained on the tabletop, about a foot apart, fingers clenched. 'Oh yeah, we understand, Vilhelm. After all, you were a good German, weren't you? A good, fighting Nazi.'

He regarded me warily, trusting me not one little bit. 'All Germans are - were - not Nazis.'

'Hoke.. .' Muriel warned.

'Of course not.' I leaned forward. 'And you, personally, never really had the chance to fight us, did you?

You got yourself shot down right at the beginning of the war, so we can't hate you, can we? You hardly had time to cause much damage, and besides, you were only a navigator anyway, so didn't personally pull any triggers or push any buttons.'

'That is certainly the case. I told you -'

'Yeah, you told us you were captured and interned in April 1940, isn't that right? So why should we bear you any grudge? Hell, you practically played no part at all in the war.'

I felt Cagney stirring under the table, his weight shifting against my foot I thought he must have sensed the rising tension in the room.

'But you were lying, weren't you, Vilhelm? You didn't want us to think bad of you, not while you could use us. At least, while you could use the girls here.'

The colour - what scant colour she had - was draining from Muriel's face. She was beginning to realize the party wasn't going to turn out the way she'd planned.

'What' - vot- 'are you suggesting, Hoke?' Stern had placed his own brandy glass before him, although his cigar remained between his fingers. Was there a sneer on those thin, humourless lips, was there hatred behind those passionless eyes of his?

Keeping my hands on the table, I rested back in my chair. My tight grin lacked any pleasure.

'I'm suggesting you're a lying son-of-a-bitch,' I informed him quietly.

'Stop this now!' Muriel was on her feet 'It's time you grew up, Hoke. This bitterness against Wilhelm -

and yes, against us - is utterly pointless. Even though we saved your life you still resent us, you still look on us as some kind of burden, a nuisance you could well do without. Do you honestly think -'

'Let him have his say, Mu.' Cissie's anger was suppressed, her interest centred on me. A low, rumbling growl came from beneath the table.

Stern's smile was like my own: no warmth to it 'Why do you bait me like this, Hoke? Is it because you are a rather absurd and intolerant man who will not accept the idea that Germany did not lose the war after all? That in the jaws of defeat the German Reich snatched victory with a weapon so brilliantly lethal it irrevocably altered mankind's destiny? That the Americans, with all their sophisticated weaponry and manpower, and the British who, if we are to be honest, were merely a spent force hanging on the coattails of their overseas masters, could suddenly lose to an army they thought defeated? Is that why you hate me so and imply that I am a liar? And isn't this what you expect me to say, Hoke? Isn't this the kind of Fascist language you want to hear from me? Isn't this just your own idea of how a German thinks, talks?'

Muriel and Cissie were staring at Wilhelm Stern, shocked by his words. Potter, bleary-eyed and heavy-lidded, opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

My smile had frosted and my thumbs were twitching against my fingers. 'No, Stern,' I said finally, 'that isn't why I'm calling you a liar. Y'see, you made a slip while we were down there in the tram tunnel. You told us you'd witnessed starving dogs roaming the bomb-blitzed ruins of Berlin.'

His expression changed when he understood his mistake - his very stupid mistake.

'Because, Vilhelm,' I went on, enjoying his discomfort, 'the RAF didn't begin their raids on Berlin until August 1940, four months after you told us you were captured and interned over here.'

I leaned forward on the table again, a fury inside me that was intense but as cold as his pale eyes stiffening every muscle. 'What did you do in the war, Vilhelm? I'm betting it was something pretty nasty if you had to keep it from us three years after the event. Yeah, there were plenty of your kind over here in England, pretending to be Polish, Dutch, Czech, Belgian, all kinds of runaways and asylum seekers, but in reality spies and saboteurs. Which were you, Vilhelm? Did you get to blow up any munitions factories?

Maybe that's how you got those scars on your neck, not escaping fast enough once you'd set the explosives. How about that, Vilhelm? Saboteur or spy - which was it?'

I don't know where it came from, but the gun was in his hand in the blink of an eye, and it was pointed at me. I realized he'd deliberately kept one hand - the one holding the cigar - in view on the table while I'd been talking, the other one sneaking into a pocket for the weapon he must have picked up - from a police station, from the corpse of a serviceman, or even from somewhere in the hotel itself -during his hunt around earlier in the day, because I hadn't returned the one I'd taken from him yesterday. There was more movement by my feet, Cagney rousing himself. We all heard his bad-tempered growl.

'The gun is merely for self-protection,' Stern informed me. 'I have no wish to fight with you, Hoke, but neither do I intend to be harmed by you.'

More commotion under the table, the mutt pushing his way through legs and chairs. Cagney suddenly appeared about halfway down, his teeth bared, a deep snarling-growl coming from his throat. He wasn't watching the German though; he was facing the door at the end of the room.

While Stern was distracted, I leapt from my chair, twisting so that I was at the back of it, and reached into my jacket pocket. My fingers were curling around the pistol butt as the door Cagney was facing burst open.

14

MY FIRST THOUGHT was to shoot the German; my second -and it was only a split second after the first - was to duck the gunfire that came my way.

Fortunately, the Blackshirts weren't aiming to kill, only to frighten us all into immobility, but it didn't work that way with me, because I took a dive as the mirror behind me shattered and the room erupted with the sounds of machine-gun fire and the girls' screams. I kept rolling 'til I was behind the thick central column as candles split in two, a lamp in one corner exploded as if hit by a cannon, and splinters from the wood panelling spat across the table. I came up on one knee in time to see Cagney scooting into the room next door. Good move, I thought as I peeked around the column, hoping to get a clear shot at the Blackshirt who was causing most of the damage. But he was waiting for me to show myself again and he peppered the column and the space next to it with a hail of bullets so that I had to fall back to avoid a faceful of lead. The drapes over the windows were shredded, the glass behind them smashed, as I cowered out of sight, biding my time. The gunfire abruptly ceased - out of ammo, I assumed - and then so did the shouts and screams. I acted fast, whipping round the square-shaped pillar, gun hand extended, searching out my target. Smoke wafted across the room, with it the smell of cordite and candlewax. And something more.

The familiar stink of the intruders themselves, a kind of cankerous odour that they carried with them like some unclean aura.

Cissie was huddled over the dining table, Potter on his knees beside her, while Muriel had backed up against the wall, shocked rigid. Stern held his hands high in surrender, his pistol lying on the tabletop.

Blackshirts crowded the doorway, their ragged midnight garb and the array of weapons aimed around the room a dispiriting sight. The only person still moving was the goon who'd done the most damage -he was clumsily trying to fit a new magazine into a Sterling submachine gun. Again I acted fast, realising there was no point in trying to take them all on with one small sidearm; there was one chance for us and a slim one at that I was over the table, scattering glasses and coffee cups, before they could make their next move, their disease-induced slowness my only advantage. I came up behind Stern and locked an arm around his neck, my .45 pressed hard against his temple.

'Hold it right there!' I yelled at them, trying to keep the shakes from my voice as well as my gun hand. I pulled the German against me, using him as a human shield.

Five or six Blackshirts had managed to squeeze through that doorway and now every one of their guns was focused on me. The goon with the Sterling finished reloading and lifted the weapon chest-high, his hands as unsteady as mine.

'The German's dead if any one of you so much as scratches an itch,' I warned.

Stern could hardly breathe, let alone speak, but damned if he wasn't gonna make the effort