Free The British Lion by Tony Schumacher Page A

rang?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Good. How is the girl?”
    “She’s fine. Upset, but fine.”
    “Will she give you problems?”
    “She’s a kid. There’ll be no issues.”
    “Are you keeping a low profile?”
    “Absolutely. We’re at the flat, and we haven’t made a noise since we got here. The streets are deserted and the weather is helping keep them that way.”
    “Good.”
    Small mercies.
    “I need to tell you, sir . . . there was a shop assistant.” King rested his head against the glass of the call box again.
    “And?”
    “He’s dead.”
    “How?” Dulles mumbled on the other end of the line.
    “I had no choice.”
    “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
    “No.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where is her mother?”
    “We put her in the trunk of the car. We couldn’t keep her in the flat; it’s too small.”
    King waited, all the while staring at the darkened half-derelict shop next to the call box. “What about the shop assistant?” Dulles finally asked.
    “We left him there. With all the snow nobody saw us come out, so I figured it wouldn’t matter if he was found.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Yes. I took some money from the register and messed up a few things to make it look like a robbery.” King looked at the car, which was now coated in a half an inch of fresh snow. “What should I do with the woman’s body?”
    “Lose her tonight, do you understand? We don’t need some bored cop stopping you and finding a body in the trunk.”
    “And the child?”
    “Stick to the plan. There is no reason she shouldn’t be able to go back to her father at the end of this.”
    “She knows our names, sir; she could talk.”
    “We’ll have what we want, and you’ll be out of the country with the scientist by then.”
    “Or dead.”
    “What?”
    “Or dead by then.”
    “Frank, I don’t have to tell you how important it is that there are no more mistakes, do I?”
    “No, sir.”
    “We are out on a limb here; we’ve got no safety net if things go wrong.”
    “We?” King raised an eyebrow.
    “I might not be on the ground with you, but I’m just as much on the line with you. I’ve pushed for this operation, there aren’t many people in Washington on our side, and there is nobody going to stick up for us if things go to shit. Add to that there is nobody at the embassy here who knows what we are doing, and Ambassador Kennedy is further up Hitler’s ass than Goering. You have to remember that we have no room left here, none whatsoever.”
    “There’s even less on the streets of London, sir.”
    “I understand that, Frank, and I’m sorry.”
    King accepted the apology without speaking; he listened to Dulles give out a long sigh on the other end of the phone.
    “Okay, so you’ve told him to get the Jew. What next?”
    “We wait, sir; either Koehler will go get her, or he won’t. I’m guessing with the snow things will take a while, but I think he’ll get it done.”
    “We don’t have long.”
    “Neither does he. He won’t hang around.”
    “You sure he can do it?”
    “Koehler’s the best they have in London, sir; I didn’t just pick him out of a hat. He works in the right office. His whole job is about shifting Jews around the country. His family were in London, which gave us leverage, and he has a history of operating outside of the rules. We are also aware that he has been having a crisis of confidence in what he is doing at the moment; he isn’t the usual rabid SS officer, sir. I chose him carefully. He’s the man, he knows the game, he knows he has one chance to get it right, and he’ll get it right.”
    “All right. Just remember how important that girl in Cambridge is, Frank. Just remember what will happen if we don’t get to her soon.”
    “I’ll remember, sir.”
    “We need her. If we can get her back to America and show the president what she knows, what she and her team have been doing, maybe we can wake some people up.”
    “I