Page 5 of Just Once

When Faye awoke in the morning, to the bright new dawn, the first of a new year filled with possibilities, Terry was gone.

As a rule, never fuck with the Germans. Krauts weren’t known for their sense of humour.

Then again, rules were meant to be broken.

It took a lot for Terry to think he was in trouble, but when the first of his interrogators walked into the room, he knew he was well past that point. In fact, he was so far up shit creek, the water had dried up and he was slogging up fucked up way with a very clear dead end just ahead.

A dead-end in the shape of a huge, meaty fist arcing straight towards his…

Light exploded across his eyes. Pain split his skull and the manacles, leashing him to the floor-bolted chair, were all that kept his naked body from being thrown over the armrest as the fist slammed into the side of his head like a .50 BMG bullet.

It was a decent punch, short and fast. Pretty bloody fast for a bugger that size.

Then again, Terry couldn’t say he was surprised- the guy had the look. The look of a man well-schooled in violence, with a barely restrained savagery that made his eyes burn a baleful blue. Like a savage dog.

At well over 6-foot-tall, with a broad and muscular frame that bulged beneath his tight black t-shirt and a face like an anvil topped with a brush of sharp blonde hair, Terry could imagine this was just the sort of man dear old Heinrich Himmler had been picturing when he had outlined the requirements for joining his infamous SS.

Just the sort of man the Spooks would hire for a job like this.

Across from him, his inquisitors watched from behind the safety of the Dell XPS’s 15’ screen propped up on the steel table in the centre of the room.

Once they would have been required to sit in on this personally, but times had changed. The cold war was long over, and the miracles of modern technology ensured they could now ask him all the questions they wished from the safety of their conference room on the top floor.

God forbid the bastards risk getting blood on their dry clean-only suits.

There were five of them. Four men. One woman seated at the centre.

All of them were clean cut and dressed in immaculate grey business wear. So grey, the colour seemed to have seeped into their very skin. The typical bunch of German bureaucrats.

None of them spoke. Nor had they asked a question yet. They just watched, their faces blank and expressionless, regarding him with all the contempt they would a bug.

A cockroach they were about to crush.

“Ow…Such hospitality. I take it we’re skipping the tea and biscuits?” Terry groaned, working his jaw from right to left. It hurt like hell, but there were no bones broken, not yet anyway. “Isn’t this the part where you ask me my name?”

“We know who you are, Mr Walker.” The woman didn’t waste time with niceties. “Who and what you are. We know everything there is to know about you.” Her English was perfect, but she had a slight classical German accent that was unmistakable amidst the mess of pompous verbal diarrhoea.

That was about the only thing classically German about her.

Far from the ancient Germanic portrayals of bountiful blonde German womanhood, she was thin and lean in a no-nonsense two-piece and had the sternest face of any woman Terry had ever seen. With her grey streaked black hair pulled back into a bun and tight leathery skin that only came from smoking forty Reemtsma a day, she was definitely the sort of woman more suited to riding in the back of a Luxury Mercedes Saloon than working out in the fields.

In fact, she probably couldn’t remember the last time she’d been somewhere there wasn’t a decent phone signal.

Or enjoyed a good bit of German Bratwurst.

She opened up one of the Manilla folders that had been placed on the desk for each of the five. Her eyes moved like chunks of lead rolling from side to side in their sockets as she skimmed over the contents. Then she fixed him with a look so cold, he could have sworn a shiver moved down his spine. “Terrance Andrew Christopher Walker. Dual British and American Citizen, born in Great Britain, October 1990. British father. American mother. Both were killed in the 2009 PIRA London Underground Bombing. You’d been in America at the time, studying at the New York University.

“Shortly after, you dropped out and enlisted in the British Army, just barley passing selection to join the Rifles Regiment. You remained there, seeing some service in both The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, until being discharged on a charge of conduct unbecoming in 2017. Thereafter you have been working, what is it you British say, the circuit, as a freelance mercenary.”

She closed the file and steepled her fingers. “In short, an unremarkable carrier, distinguished only by the shame of your failure. No family. No wife. No one to mourn you. A man easily overlooked and forgotten.”

The thin pale lines of her lips twisted into a cruel twist of barbed wire as she stressed the point. It reminded Terry of a crocodile’s grin.

Yeah, just keep grinning bitch, we’ll see who has the last laugh.

“What can I say, I left my heart in New York. Did your source forget to mention I also wrote songs? I gave Tony Bennet the lyrics, but the cheap bastard thought San Francisco sounded better and cut me out.”

“Your sense of humour does not impress us, Mr Walker, you are inconsequential, a nobody.”

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