She declined the bottle, but helped herself to the bread, tearing off a piece and dunking it in the jam.
The major considered taking another swig, but decided against it. He didn’t enjoy it that much and to do so might have seemed, would have been, showing off. Christ, he’d thought himself past that stage. It was just that he couldn’t find a way through to her. Well, regressing wasn’t going to do it. How old was she? Twenty-something or nearer his own age, thirty. There was a frightening maturity about her that many of the most sophisticated women would have striven for years to perfect – and failed. But then the camps were a forcing ground, thrusting people through the spectrum of their adult lives in months rather than years.
‘I want you to stay back when we go into action. Kurt and the others will be enough. We can pick you up after.’
She went on eating.
‘You understand?’
‘Yes, I understand.’ Andrea finished a last mouthful and wiped a sticky orange-coloured blob from the side of her mouth. ‘It is you who does not understand. You will have much to explain to Kurt about what you want done. If I am not to come, then I shall not translate. I do not think your German is good enough for it, not for all that must be arranged just so.’
There was nothing he could say to that, and the girl took his silence as the answer she’d wanted and expected. Now she would be going into action with them.
‘I’m going to look at that car, come with me.’ He’d seen the look she gave their prisoner, that was why he’d added the rider.
The Russian had seen it as well and he started to shake again. A puddle grew beneath him. Although still frightened he had been adjusting to his circumstances, now that one glance reduced him to a state not unlike the one he’d been in minutes after the action in the kitchen.
In the man’s place Revell realised he might well have felt the same. He’d never known anybody with the girl’s capacity for conveying an emotion or intention with a single look. The Russian had reacted as he might have done to a knife being put at his throat. Revell had caught only a reflection, but it had made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
It occurred to him that he had witnessed a more controlled version of the same thing only recently, recalling the incident between Dooley and Clarence. Perhaps he could manage to keep the girl out of the worst of the fighting by pairing her with Clarence. They would make a frightening team.
As he followed her downstairs, the door to the room holding the women was partially open. Grunts, and what sounded like wet bodies slapping together came from it. The glimpse of the filthy bed revealed Kurt, naked from the waist down with his face buried between one woman’s jiggling breasts, both of them sitting astride a second tart who was receiving the thrusting force of the East German’s runty body, while her own fat chest was crushed by the ample stretch mark decorated rump of her fellow whore.
Andrea showed no interest, passed by without looking, but not without comment.
‘He is a fool, and so are the others who wait their turn. Every one they have will drain that much strength from them, strength they will need.’ A slight extending of the line of her mouth and a fractional deepening of the fine lines at the side of her eyes might have been an indication of humour, but the venom in her words negated it. ‘Later they will pay for those whores’ bodies with their lives when they cannot keep up. It will be the highest price they have ever paid.’
TWELVE
Nelson did not have to suffer the final indignity of being trussed and gagged. As Hyde pulled back the blood-stained sleeve for Rinehart to administer the injection, he felt the growing coolness of the flesh. He let the arm drop. ‘About ten minutes ago, I should imagine, when we were busy working out how much we could carry.’
Dooley heard but there was no reaction from him. ‘What’s up, aren’t you going to rush him away for a burial service?’ After the earlier fuss, Hyde was expecting something from the big man.
‘He’s dead, ain’t he? Stick him outside, we’re gonna need the room.’
‘You are not the most consistent person I have ever known.’
So what’s it to fucking you, you stuck-up Limey shit,’ Dooley was very fast rounding on Clarence, not letting the remark go. ‘I make my own fucking rules: first I look after number one, that’s me, then I look after any guy who I reckon is alright, so long as that don’t screw up number one, and three I push out of my mind and out of my way anyone who don’t feature in one or two because he’s either a Commie, or he’s not my buddy or he’s dead.’
‘You make life and death sound so simple.’
‘It is, except for clever arses the like of you. Life is fucking simple: I eat, I drink, I screw and I go to the John. For me happiness is a stiff cock, a full belly and efficient bowels-That covers it all; you want to make it harder than that for yourself then go ahead.’
‘That still leaves us with a corpse. Burke, Dooley, get him out.’ The order was greeted by their driver’s ritual protest. ‘Hey, Sarge. It’s bad enough you’re dragging me along on this suicide mission, without putting me on burial detail just before the off. I don’t fancy doing a spot of digging out there, it’s a bloody minefield, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘A safe lane has been taped. Take your packs and weapons with you. Dump him where we won’t trip over him and then go on to the wire and keep a look out. We’ll join you there as soon as the Iron Cow has been booby-trapped.’
Burke took Nelson’s feet and between them the two men, hampered by their slung weapons and bulky loads, manoeuvred the corpse out on to the ramp, where they paused before getting off to follow the twin pale yellow strips that marked an eighteen-inch-wide lane disappearing into the trees.
‘You tell that kid to mind what he’s bloody doing.’ Burke got in a final grouse, as he looked back and saw Collins rigging the five-pound thermite charge that would destroy the skimmer if a Russian patrol should stumble upon it before their return. ‘He may have been on all the bloody courses and thinks he knows how to handle those things, but just you tell him to be fucking careful. I don’t fancy coming back and ending up a charred crisp in a puddle of molten aluminium.’
Laden with the body in addition to their load of weaponry, they had to constantly pause to check the positioning of then-feet on the snaking ribbon of un-mined ground.
‘This’ll do.’ Dooley carefully lowered the corpse. The bandage about its head had slipped off, and a broad smear of glistening red, flecked with spongy white, decorated the front of his camouflage suit. ‘Oh shit, I had this laundered only a couple of months back. Let’s have a look at what’s around before we shove him out of the way.’
Taking out his bayonet, he gently probed at the rank grass and nettles. ‘Here, be careful.’ Backing off a couple of paces Burke watched the operation anxiously. ‘That stuff was laid nearly two years ago. It could be a bit touchy by now.’
‘Why in fuck’s name don’t they set ’em all to self-destruct after a while.’ Very gingerly Dooley parted the undergrowth, to reveal as a length of bough the object he’d encountered with the probe. ‘There’s bloody choppers buzzing about all over scattering these things. Christ knows how many have been laid by hand and machine, must run into millions. Soon as the Ruskies find them they either bomb ’em or plough ’em up and clear a way through in next to no time.’
‘Not always.’ The Russian BMP tracked personnel carrier was almost close enough for Burke to reach out and touch. Two of its road-wheels had been blown oft, and there was a gaping hole in its raked frontal armour. It sat amid the curled remains of its tracks, heavily rusted where flames and heat had peeled away its paint. ‘They still come charging on sometimes.’