The Boy from Berlin Page 24

  ‘Holly! Holly!’

  The little girl struggled, gripping the dress with her tiny hands to gain some relief from its deathly grip. She tried to look down towards the sound of her name being called, but she couldn’t bend her head enough. She struggled but the dress rode up and was now virtually closing her windpipe. Her screams were choked off until she could no longer breathe.

  Amos immediately took in the dreadful struggle his daughter was under. He tried to reach her feet by standing on tip toe, but was still woefully short. He jumped, but slid back. He knew that if he managed to reach her he would only add to her body weight and she would surely die.

  He ran back round to the front of the stables and called to the two men, waving his arms frantically.

  ‘My little girl,’ he kept shouting, and pointed beyond the end of the building. The two men responded and ran towards Amos as he went back to where his daughter was fighting for her life.

  When the two men reached him, Amos shouted at them and pointed. ‘Lift me up!’

  As he leaned up against the side of the stables, the two men grabbed Amos’s legs and lifted him bodily. This brought him face to face with Holly. He put his arms around her and lifted her gently, taking the pressure off the strangulating dress. Then he released it from the spigot. Holly started drawing in deep draughts of air as Amos held her tightly. Slowly the two men lowered Amos and his daughter to the ground.

  The next few minutes were a blur to Amos. He ran away from the burning building carrying Holly in his arms and stopped about a hundred yards away. He then sank to his knees and held on to his little girl and simply didn’t want to let her go.

  He was still kneeling in that way, holding on to Holly, when the emergency services arrived. He heard a voice and looked up. It turned out to be one of the fire fighters who had been despatched after Amos’s 911 call.

  ‘Are you OK, sir?’

  Amos looked up and nodded. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘Sir, we’ve got a paramedic with us. I think you’d better let them take a look, eh?’

  Amos stood up. His knees were stiff and sore, but he didn’t care; he was happy. He followed the fire fighter across to an ambulance where a paramedic attended to Holly.

  ‘How did you get your little girl out of the building?’ the medic asked.

  Amos pointed somewhere out into the night. ‘There are two guys here. They helped me,’ he told him.

  The paramedic looked up from attending Holly’s superficial wounds. ‘What two men?’

  ‘Two guys out there,’ Amos told him. ‘They were here when I got here.’

  The medic shook his head. ‘Well, they ain’t here now,’ he said, applying a plaster to another small wound on Holly’s leg. ‘Just you and your brave little girl here.’ He looked at Holly as he said it, and was rewarded with a self-conscious shrug and a big smile.

  Amos didn’t care where the two men were. He would probably never find out anyway. He didn’t want to. All he wanted to do now was get Holly to her mother and begin another rescue.

  It was to be another twenty-four hours or so before Amos could take his daughter to see her mother. He had to give statements while Holly was attended to by a child psychologist to help her get over the trauma of the kidnap and the fire. Amos refused to leave Holly’s side, so he gave his statement to a police officer in a side room close to where Holly was being treated.

  Over at the hotel it was bedlam. Captain Dubrovski had conceded defeat to the FBI and the secret service, allowing them to assume control of the investigation into Mason’s shooting. None of the television units had packed up, so there was plenty of coverage for them to gorge on. Damage limitation was being dished out in spades by the spokesman for the security service. The hotel had been cordoned off and no one was going in or out.

  Except Babs Mason; she had been escorted through a rear entrance and been driven away in a police car. Dubrovski understood that she had named Tyler and Lawrence as culpable in the kidnap of Holly Amos, which had been enough for the captain to place both men under arrest.

  There was no way anybody was able to keep even a smidgeon of the developments out of the news, and within minutes of the shooting, the wires were singing all the way to the other side of the world and back again. It was all media frenzy, with weirdoes coming out of the woodwork and claiming they had seen all along that Mason was a Nazi but nobody would listen to their spurious claims.

  But none of the genuine reporters, or the proclaimers were aware that Gus Mason had been conceived in Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, and had always nursed an ambition to continue the philosophical bloodline into another thousand year Reich.

  Amos stood holding Holly’s hand. They were in the room where his wife lay in a coma. Amos felt a mixture of relief and fear. Relief that he had done as he had promised, and brought their daughter home safely; and fear that his wife would never recover.

  They approached the bed. Amos leaned towards his wife and whispered softly in her ear. ‘Hallo sweetheart, I’ve got a little present for you.’

  He pulled Holly gently towards the bed and took his wife’s hand. He then placed Holly’s there and closed his hand around them. Holly kissed her mother on the cheek and then gave her a big hug.

  ‘I love you Mom.’

  Amos watched, and waited. Suddenly the heart monitor changed its note and his wife turned her face towards him. There was a hint of a smile as her eyes fluttered open. Then she closed them and sighed gently.

  Amos saw his tears drop on to the pillow and he shook his head, thanking God for giving his wife back to them. He pulled Holly gently away from her mother.

  ‘She’s OK now, honey. Now she knows you’re here, your Mom is going to get better. A whole lot better.’

  EPILOGUE

  THE YOUNG WRITER stopped writing and switched the small recorder off. She put her notepad and pens into her bag, then picked up the digital recorder and slipped that in too.

  ‘Quite a story,’ she admitted, snapping her bag shut.

  ‘And all true,’ Babs replied. ‘Every last, damn word.’

  The young writer stood up. ‘I feel privileged to have been asked to do this.’

  Babs gave a weak smile. ‘I think you deserve it, Holly. After all, you’re part of the story. It will make a bestseller; get you started in life.’

  ‘It seems so long ago now,’ Holly said wistfully.

  Babs agreed. ‘Must be what, almost ten years or so?’

  Holly came over to her and gave Babs a little hug and kiss. ‘My mom and dad will be thrilled. Thank you so much.’

  Babs shook her head. ‘No, Holly, thank you.’ She breathed in a deep sigh that seemed to settle on her shoulders in a profound way. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I am tired.’

  Holly smiled. ‘Of course.’ She tapped the side of her bag. ‘I’ll get on to this right away. I’ll bring you a copy when it’s published.’

  A sadness fell over Babs’s face. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said. ‘Now go, enjoy the rest of your life.’

  Babs watched Amos’s daughter walk out of the cell. She looked fabulous and was blessed in that she had never had a reaction over the terror she had been through. And Babs was thankful that she herself had been able to do something right for once.

  She stood up and pulled her skirt off. There were thin gaps in the material where she had been pulling the threads out. She gathered up the threads from where she had been hiding them and held them out across her body. They were now long enough to twist into a thin, but strong cord. She finished making the cord and tied the ends off. Then she ripped her skirt apart, using the weak areas from where she had removed the thread. A few minutes later she had successfully made a noose, which she placed over her head. Then she pulled out a chair and stepped up on to it. The light above her was now within reach. She passed the cord through the small protective grille round the lamp and knotted it carefully, making sure it would not open. Then she offered up a prayer and kicked the chair away.

&n
bsp; Babs had come a long, but tortuous way in life. She had loved and lost, and made bad choices. Her last thought was that she hoped she had made amends. She would never know, but perhaps the world would.

  By the same author

  NORTH SLOPE

  SHADOW OF THE WOLF

  HELL’S GATE

  THE EAGLE’S COVENANT

  THE DEVIL’S TRINITY

  THE THIRD SECRET

  A COVERT WAR

  Copyright

  © Michael Parker 2012

  First published in Great Britain 2011

  This edition 2012

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0812 8 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0813 5 (mobi)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0814 2 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7090 9353 4 (print)

  Robert Hale Limited

  Clerkenwell House

  Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.halebooks.com

  The right of Michael Parker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988