Pope smiled at her and looked at his watch. His room was across the hall, overlooking the alley at the back.
“I’ll see if he’s there,” he said, his tone telling her that, if he wasn’t, they were staying put.
Unlocking the door, he crossed the hall, went through the open door of his own room and looked down into the alley. There, turning in at the other end, was Quayle.
He turned back in time to see Holly stepping, bag in hand, into the hall. At the same split second he heard the heavy footsteps on the landing – and he knew.
He took the distance between them in two strides, the adrenaline rising, pulling his gun clear of its holster. Holly felt his shoulder hit her. In her peripheral vision she saw the gun rising, his body turning, the beginnings of a shouted warning, his broad back obscuring her vision as the first deafening shots blasted down the corridor. She slid down the end wall, Pope’s bulk a barrier between her and whoever was at the other end, as he began to shoot back.
There were four of them, two armed with Heckler and Koch automatic assault weapons. They were on the landing and moving fast, and a third man behind them had already fired his shotgun.
Pope shot the man on the right first. Two bullets in the face and he swung the gun left for the second man, squeezing his trigger.
The bullets slammed into Pope’s chest in an almost perfect grouping, punching him back against the wall. Holly fell beneath him as he fired again, the man stumbling and falling, the stubby barrelled gun tight in his fingers. The shotgun roared again and Pope felt his legs go like a sledge hammer had taken him – but, firing again, he watched the man fall. He knew he had been hit, but somehow he staggered to his knees, one hand on the wall for support, his breath coarse and foamy, blood running from his mouth, his hard grey eyes looking for the fourth assailant. They always had four, the Krauts, the bastards…
There was movement on the landing below. The figure snatched a look, but he couldn’t react quickly enough; in the next instant, the landing was splattered in blood and a twitching corpse plunged to the ground.
The girl was screaming beneath his shattered legs. He fired twice, the gun kicking back in his weakening grip and the dead man’s face fell away in pieces. Then, as he fell back again, he heard the pounding on the stairs – and Quayle’s voice, through the misty cold pain, screaming her name.
“She’s OK,” he tried to say. “Quayle, she’s OK…”
“Oh Jesus!” And suddenly Quayle was pulling her out from under him and holding his head in his hands.
“They’re all down,” he said, “all four of them. Quayle, she’s OK.”
The blood tasted salty and metallic on his tongue.
“Hang on,” Quayle was saying. “I’ll get you to a doctor…”
Pope raised his head and looked down his body. The blood was everywhere now. He felt the warmth between his legs and he knew he was evacuating his bowels. The shotgun. His chest hurt. They had Teflon rounds. Right through his armour. Jesus it hurt. He didn’t want to shit himself, not in front of a woman.
“No Titus, I’m done for. Femoral artery…” He looked across at Holly who sat huddled and in shock against the wall, her face spotted in his blood “Sorry about the mess,” he said. God it’s cold, he thought. So this is what it’s like to die.
“Hold on, Jerry. Hold on!” Quayle pleaded.
Pope looked up at Quayle and smiled weakly. He was shivering now, his body going into deep shock. “No-one ever called me that before. Tell Mr Black... that I wasn’t ready... for the trains. Go now... Take my gun! Even you will need it...” He tried to smile, but it was too late; he’d already lapsed into unconsciousness.
Quayle stuffed his handkerchief into the leg wound and, pulling Pope’s belt from his waist, he bound it quickly and expertly.
There was no time left to lose. Quayle pulled Holly to her feet, roughly wiping the blood from her face and hands, snatched up her bag and pulled her along into Pope’s room. From here they scrambled down the rusting iron fire escape. Dropped the last ten feet alone, he held up his hands for her and she let go of the railing, a picture of silent hysteria, her pupils dilated, thick wet clotting blood in her hair and eyebrows and bright smears down her neck
Quayle returned the car and collected his deposit as normally as he could, knowing that anything out of the ordinary would show them up to a city about to conduct a massive manhunt. The evidence was there that Pope had been the gunman, but the hotel would give them their details. Together, they took a taxi back into town. Holly – now in clean clothes and washed, after a stop at a public toilet – sat beside him silently while he chatted with the driver, careful now to emphasise a northern accent, a pair of thick spectacles on his nose and his cheeks padded with tissue that both disguised his voice and made him look fuller in the face. Once in town, they headed for the airport where Quayle took a single room on a day use basis, presenting an Icelandic passport at the desk. Holly wandered up past security and, once in, he locked her there and disappeared, arriving back an hour later with a pair of loaded shopping bags. He produced wash-in hair dyes, a blonde wig, various items from a haberdashery and other bits and pieces.
Four hours later, a heavy overly made-up French blonde in her mid-thirties paid cash for two tickets to Frankfurt, asking about any senior citizen discount for her father who stood at the edge of the queue, tired and looking slightly bewildered by the bustle of the airport, leaning heavily on two
