turned to watch Schroeder through droopy eyes. The eyes of the taller, thinner man remained on Koenig, had narrowed slightly and seemed drawn to the awkward position of the German’s hand where it gripped the handle of the briefcase.
Schroeder put money in the phone, dialled, waited, suddenly sighed a great sigh. His lungs might have been gathering air for an hour, which they now expelled. His immaculately cut suit seemed to crumple in on him as he uttered that great exhalation. ‘Urmgard? Ist alles in ordnung?’ he asked, and immediately sighed again. ‘Und Heinrich? Gut! Nein, alles gents gut bei uns. Jah, bis spater.’ He blew a tiny, almost silent kiss into the telephone, replaced it in its cradle and turned to face across the room. ‘Willy, hörst du?’
Koenig nodded.
‘Men of our word, you see?’ said the thin, scarred terrorist, not taking his eyes from Koenig’s face, which suddenly had stopped sweating. ‘But you—you slimy Kraut dog!—you and your bloody brief—’ His hand dipped down into his worn and creased jacket, fastening on something which bulged there.
Koenig turned the briefcase up on its end on the table, lining its bottom up vertically with the thin man’s chest. ‘ Stop! ’ he warned, and the tone of his voice froze the other rigid. The four stubby black legs on the bottom of the case had added substance to Koenig’s warning, popping open on tiny hinges to show the mouths of rifle barrels, four gaping, deadly mouths whose short throats disappeared into the body of the case. Those barrels were each at least 15mm in diameter, which might help explain Koenig’s rigid grip on the case’s handle. The recoil would be enormous.
‘Put your gun on the table,’ said Koenig. ‘Now! It was not a command to be denied, not in any way. The thin man did as instructed. His eyes were wide now, his scars zombie white. ‘Yours also,’ said Koenig, swivelling the case just a fraction to point it at the fat man. The latter was no longer smiling as he took out his gun and put it down very slowly and deliberately.
‘Most sensible,’ said Schroeder, quietly coming back across the room. On his way he took out a handkerchief, stooped, folded the white square of linen over the rim of the spittoon and picked it up. He took up a half-pint glass of stale Guinness from the bar and poured it into the spittoon.
‘You’ll not get past the boys in the corridor, you know,’ said the thin one harshly. ‘Not this way.’
‘Oh, we will,’ said Koenig. ‘But be sure that if we don’t, you will not be .here to enjoy our predicament.’ He pocketed the thin man’s gun, tossed the other across the room. Schroeder, carrying the spittoon, caught it in his free right hand. And now the Irishmen were aware of the metamorphosis taken place in the Germans.
Where they had been timid in their actions, now they were sure. Where they had seemed nervous, they were now cool as cubes of ice. Koenig’s sweat had dried on him in a matter of moments. His eyes were small, cold and penetrating as he brushed back his short-cropped hair with a blunt hand. He had seemed to grow by at least four or five inches. ‘Be very quiet,’ he said, ‘and I may let you live. If you are noisy or try to attract attention, then—’ and he gave an indifferent shrug. ‘One missile from the case would kill an elephant outright. Two for each of you and your own mothers—if you had mothers—would not know you.’
Schroeder, smiling through his thick lenses, his lips drawn back in the wide grin of a wolf, came up behind the two and said, ‘Put your hands on the table.’ Then, when they had obeyed: ‘Now put your heads on your hands—and stay quite still.’ He swirled the contents of the spittoon until they made a slopping sound.
‘Gentlemen,’ he finally continued, ‘—and may the good God, who to my eternal damnation surely exists, at least forgive me for calling you that, if not for my greater crimes—you have made a big
Christopher Knight, Alan Butler