Without a plan, guided only by bottomless hatred and a need for vengeance, Heck was moving now, gun in hand . . .

Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Wilde was already scrambling down through the trees when he heard a muffled shot. He couldn’t see what was happening, but he could hear the shouts and screams. A few seconds later, he heard more shots.

He fought his way down, past trees, through thick beds of pine needles and light clouds of snow drifting down from the shaken branches. He stopped momentarily on the lip of a ten-foot drop of sheer rock face, then slid over, cutting his hands and wrists and tearing his clothes as he grasped at sharp outcrops.

Now he was at the woods at the edge of the village. A hundred metres of meadow separated him from the mayhem, all lit by the raging fires and the guttering torches. The formation of troops had collapsed. Men and boys were running or crouching, some firing and shouting as they identified the fleeing man as the enemy, others cowering like a frightened rabble.

On the dais, Wilde saw that Boden had fallen and was curled up clutching his abdomen. The two women were kneeling at his side, the mother holding his face in her hands, Lilly pressing an article of clothing to his stomach, staunching a wound.

In the distance, he was certain he saw Mozes Heck, running from a dozen uniformed men with guns. He heard more shots. There were dogs, too, large Alsatians. They were to the north of the village, near the lake. Within seconds, they vanished into the woods.

Wilde had to get there, to find Heck before anyone else did.

*

Heck was injured. He had fired his shot – just the one, into Boden’s belly – before he was attacked by a woman with a knife. He hadn’t seen her or recognised her until the very last moment when she emerged from the small crowd, screaming, lunging at him. He tried to parry her blow with his pistol, but the blade sliced deep into his right arm, just above the elbow.

It was the woman from the stall on the road. The woman who had given him the box camera and claimed to know nothing about the murders of Randy Collingham and Denis Harper. The thin, one-eyed woman in the torn and tattered dress with a stall full of war souvenirs and a hidden stash of cigarettes. Birgit Zimmer, that was it; that was what she had said her name was.

Goddamn it, they should have taken her in and locked her up. She must have been involved in the murders of Randy and Denis.

At least he had shot the fucking SS guy, Boden. Shot him in the stomach. It could be a nasty, slow way to die. Hopefully he would leave this earth in the same pain that he and his kind had inflicted on so many innocents.