For a moment, Helen was frozen, aware only of a terrible fear as the Mauser tapped again against her face. Kleist reached and got Sarah by the hair.
“And you are expecting others, I gather. I wonder who?” He walked backward, pulling Sarah by the hair, the gun still probing into Helen’s flesh. “No stupidities or I pull the trigger.” He released Sarah suddenly. “Go and draw the curtains.” She did as she was told. “Good, now turn up the lamp. L^t’s have everything as it should be.” She could see the sweat on his face, now, the terror and pain on Helen’s. “Now come back here.”
His fingers tightened in her hair again. The pain was dreadful. She wanted to cry a warning, but was aware of Helen’s head back, the Mauser under her chin. Kleist stank of drink, was shaking with excitement as they waited, listening to the voices approaching across the yard. Only at the very last moment, as the door swung open and Gallagher and Guido backed in, Kelso between them, did he push the women away.
“Harry, look out!” Sarah cried as Martineau slipped in after them, but by then, her anguished cry was too late to help anyone.
Kelso lay on the floor and Helen, Sarah and the three men leaned against the wall in a row, arms outstretched. Kleist relieved Martineau of his PPK and slipped it into his pocket. “The SS must be doing its recruiting in some strange places these days.”
Martineau said nothing, waiting, coldly, for his chance and Kleist moved on to Guido Orsini, running his hands over him expertly. “I never liked you, pretty boy,” he said contemptuously. “All you sodding Italians have ever done is give us trouble. The Fuhrer should have sorted you lot out first.”
“Amazing.” Guido turned his head and said amiably to Gallagher, “It can actually talk.”
Kleist kicked his feet from under him and put a boot in his side, then he turned to Gallagher, running a hand over him quickly, feeling for a gun. He found nothing and stood back. “Now then, you bastard, I’ve been waiting for this.”
He smashed his right fist into the base of the Irishman’s spine. Gallagher cried out and went down. Kleist booted him in the side and Helen screamed. “Stop it!”
Kleist smiled at her. “I haven’t even started.” He stirred Gallagher with his boot. “Get up and put your hands on your head.” Gallagher stayed on his hands and knees for a moment and Kleist prodded him with a toe. “Come on, move it, you thick piece of Irish dung.”
Gallagher got to his feet and stood there, a half-smile on his face, arms at his sides. “Half-Irish,” he said, “and half-Jersey. As I told you before, a bad combination.”
Heist struck him backhanded across the face. “I told you to get your hands on your head.”
“Anything you say.”
The gutting knife was ready in Gallagher’s left hand, had been for several minutes, skillfully palmed. His arm swung, there was a click as he pressed the button, the blade flickered in the lamplight, catching Kleist in the soft flesh under the chin. Kleist discharged the Mauser once into the wall, then dropped it and fell back against the table, wrenching the knife from Gallagher’s grasp. He tried to get up, one hand tearing at the handle protruding from beneath his chin, then fell sideways to the floor, kicked convulsively and was still.
“Oh, my God!” Helen said and turned and stumbled into the kitchen, where she was immediately violently sick.
Martineau said to Sarah, “Go and help her.”
The girl went out and he crouched down and took his Walther from the dead man’s pocket. He looked up at Gallagher. “They teach that trick in the SOE silent killing course. Where did you learn it?”
“Another legacy from my old grandfather,” Gallagher said.
“He must have been a remarkable man.”
He and Guido got Kelso onto the couch while Gallagher retrieved his knife. It took all his strength to pull it free. He wiped it on the dead man’s coat. “Do you think this was an official visit?”
“I shouldn’t imagine so.” Martineau picked up the empty bottle of schnapps. “He’d been drinking and he had blood in his eye. He wanted revenge, came up here looking for you, and when you weren’t here, he waited.” He shook his head. “Poor sod, he almost got lucky for once. It would have been the coup of his career.”