Free A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar

wondered how he fared under communism.
Germany was lost to me. I put on my tie and my hat. Touched my face. My eye was swollen. I was angry. Not at Keech. He was a mindless thug, and mindless thugs I understood. Not even at Morhaim, the Jew. He only did what was his nature, as the personification of the devil, the symbol of all evil, assumes the living shape of the Jew . No – I was angry at being obliged to Mosley. I refused to be in anyone’s debt, and least of all an inferior man’s.
I took a last look in the mirror. An old, broken man stared back at me. I took a deep breath and felt the hatred fill me, animating me. I would not be broken that easily. I raised my hand, fingers outstretched, in the old salute. I straightened my shoulders. Then I went downstairs to the waiting car.
     
    It was a black Rolls-Royce and it fair glided through the London streets, heading for Belgravia.
    Wolf sat at the back and schemed, thinking furiously. He had not given the girl’s murder enough consideration. The location of the attack, the swastika carved into flesh, and the final insult: that damned wind-up toy.
    The little tin drummer.
    How
dare
he!
    Somewhere out there, beyond the car’s window, out there in the dark city, there was a man not unlike himself. Wolf did not want to admit it but it was true. And Wolf was a man who seldom deluded himself. He knew who he was; he was always true to himself.
    He felt hatred, yes. But it was hatred in service of a greater power: of destiny. Wolf had been shaped into a weapon by the circumstances of life. But a weapon did not kill indiscriminately. It was used, for a purpose.
    What, then, was the killer’s
purpose
?
    He was talking, Wolf realised. He was
communicating
, but his communication was not meant for the police.
    No. It was meant directly for Wolf himself.
    They were driving through St James’s Park. Wolf rested his head on the glass and looked out of the window at the dark trees as they passed. He had made little progress with the missing Jewish girl, though it was early days yet. Did his former associates hold her? And which of them owned the club he had visited? He determined to have another little chat with Rudolf Hess. He tried not to think of that woman, Ilse, and her cellar. He winced and shifted in his seat and his thoughts were as dark as the night.
    The drive went smoothly. The driver spoke little; Wolf appreciated that. At last the chauffeur indicated and pulled onto Ebury Street. Wolf had been there once before, shortly after his arrival, a landless, penniless refugee on this cold and foreign island. Then, Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley had owned a flat in the building. Now, Wolf saw as they approached, they must have owned the entire bloody thing.
    Torches were burning outside. Wolf wound down the window. The air smelled warm and scented as though he had crossed some invisible meridian line by coming here and was now in another country entirely, some tropical land divorced from both space and time. The flames of the torches reflected in the neighbours’ windows across the road. In their light Wolf saw Blackshirt foot soldiers standing to attention like an honour guard, and the flags of the lightning bolt that was the symbol of the British Union of Fascists waved in the breeze to either side of the grand entrance with its faux-Doric columns. The driver stilled the engine. Spilling from the house Wolf heard music, laughter, the tinkling of glass and the hum of conversation. The Mosleys’s party, it seemed, had been going on for a while.
    The chauffeur came round and opened the door for Wolf and Wolf stepped out. He straightened his tie, brushed his hair to one side of his forehead.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    ‘You’re welcome, sir.’
    Wolf nodded. Then he took the invitation out of his breast pocket and marched to the entrance of the house.
    ‘Help you, sir?’
    They were fresh-faced boys, really. They wore the Union’s futuristic uniform – high-waisted black