Befehl

William Ashley

Description

A lost pawn ticket. An old charm bracelet. A secret key. In the hands of Alex Lomax, a wide-boy London market trader transplanted to Berlin, they lead to the greatest secret of WW2 - the order for the extermination of the Jews. Lomax wants money. But other, darker, forces are at play that plunge him into a vortex of intrigue and murder as he races to secure the secret for himself.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 28 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528947688
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Befehl
William Ashley
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-02-28
Befehl About the Author Dedication Copyright Information Prologue Chapter 1 Friday, October 7, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 2 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 3 Friday, June 13, 1941 – Wewelsburg, Germany Chapter 4 Friday, October 7, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 5 Tuesday, January 13, 1942 – Riga, Latvia Chapter 6 Saturday, October 8, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 7 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 8 One Week Previously Saturday, October 1, 2016 – Poznań, Poland Chapter 9 Tuesday, January 20, 1942 – Berlin Chapter 10 One Week Before Ali’s Murder Sunday, October 3, 2016 – Berlin Chapter 11 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 12 Saturday, January 24, 1942 – Wewelsburg, Germany Chapter 13 Before Ali’s Murder Monday, October 3, 2016 – Poznań, Poland Chapter 14 Tuesday, Oct 4, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 15 Tuesday, October 4, 2016 – Zalasowa, Poland Chapter 16 Wednesday, October 5, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 17 The Day of Ali’s Murder Friday, October 7, 2016 – Berlin Chapter 18 Sunday, October 9, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 19 Saturday, January 24, 1942 – Wewelsburg, Germany Chapter 20 Monday, October 10, 2016 – Zalasowa, Poland Chapter 21 Tuesday, October 11, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 22 Saturday, May 30, 1942 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 23 Wednesday, October 12, 2016 – Berlin/London Chapter 24 Sunday, June 2, 1943 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 25 Wednesday, October 12, 2016 – Poznań, Poland Chapter 26 Monday, July 26, 1943 – Rastenburg, East Prussia Chapter 27 Wednesday, October 12, 2016 – Berlin Chapter 28 Thursday, October 13, 2016 – Berlin/Poznań Chapter 29 Earlier the Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 30 Same Day – Berlin/Poznań Chapter 31 Same Day – Poznan Chapter 32 Friday, December 3, 1943 – Elstal, Near Berlin Chapter 33 Thursday, October 14 – Poznań, Poland Chapter 34 Tuesday, January 11, 1944 – Riga, Latvia Chapter 35 Thursday, October 13, 2016 – Near Poznań, Poland Chapter 36 Same Day – October 16, England Chapter 37 Same Day – Munich, Germany Chapter 38 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 39 Friday, October 14, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 40 Saturday, October 15, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 41 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 42 Friday, February 23, 1945 – Poznań, Poland Chapter 43 Saturday, October 15, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 44 Earlier Same Night – Berlin, Germany Chapter 45 Sunday, October 16, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 46 May 21–23, 1945 – Lüneburg, Germany Chapter 47 Sunday, October 16, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 48 Monday, October 17, 2016 – Berlin, Germany Chapter 49 Two Weeks Later Sunday, October 30, 2016 – London, England Chapter 50 Monday, October 31, 2016 – London, England Chapter 51 Same Day – Berlin, Germany Chapter 52 Wednesday, November 2, 2016 – Berlin, Germany
About the Author
William Ashley is the pen name of brothers Allan and Ronald Hall. Allan is a journalist with 42 years’ experience and author of 20 books on crime and the paranormal. Ronald is a retired engineer with wide experience of technical writing.
Dedication
For Mary Imrie Hall.
Copyright Information
Copyright © William Ashley (2019)
The right of William Ashley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788789172 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788789189 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528947688 (E-Book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Prologue
“Where is it?”
Just three words. But the man didn’t hear them this time; the pain was too great. He could no longer see his torturer speak them—his left eyeball prised from his head with a screwdriver, hung by ligaments from its socket. The other eye, although still in place, was hermetically sealed by the bruising which cocooned it.
“Where is it?”
Freight trains of pain roared through his skull. There was mercy in the blindness. He could no longer see his wife secured, like him, in plastic cuff-ties in the chair opposite. Moments before, he had watched as their torturer plugged in his own electric drill (€19.95 from the Bauhaus DIY store—on special offer) taken from his garage workshop to bore out both her elbows. Then he had done the same to her kneecaps.
“Where is it?”
The torturer asked the same of her, but she could not know. The woman had shared his life, his bed, vacations, bridge games, beach walks, summer barbecues and winter ski-resorts. Yet she knew nothing of his secrets. Where the money to buy her terrible shoes and shitty painted ornaments came from.
The man felt little in the way of what other, more conventionally wired people would term love for her. They’d rubbed along well enough, she’d made him his dinner and kept the house clean; his narrow bourgeois parameters of affection for him. But if some cosmic tour guide was waiting on the other side to reunite him with her—the man had known within seconds of the earthquake beginning that neither would live beyond this day—he would have to confess that a couple of decades by her side had been enough.
Eternity, he would prefer to spend in solitude.
Yet the splash of her blood and fine filaments of bone upon his face and hands triggered pity. So, when he lost his sight and the pitch of the locomotives escalated to the scream of banshees, he was grateful he no longer had to witness her death throes. Before everything went black the last image he would have of her was the arterial blood hosing on to her beloved English Axminster carpet. He knew she would expire wondering how the stains would ever come out.
“Where is it?”
Up close now, whispered in his left ear. He heard this time and as before, as from the first, he told him, and told him again. The truth. He told him the truth. But the truth wasn’t good enough. Because it wasn’t here. Because his wife had fucked it all up and had cost them their lives.
His reply bought him seconds, perhaps minutes, of relief. He heard, just, the perceptible glide of the living room door opening into the hallway followed by the metallic clink on clink of tools; the rummaging of a savage child looking for a new toy of pain. The torturer had left a black leather grip there.
The noise of the freight trains subsided. The dangling eyeball pulsed jolts of agony up into his skull, but at least they telegraphed life. For how much longer?
The whooshing of the door once more.
Footfalls on the blood-soaked carpet. The return of the nightmare. Hot breath, soured by cigarette smoke, in his ear.
“Where is it?”
Spoken in his tongue, but not that of the speaker. A foreigner. Maybe English or an Ami. What did it matter? The man gave the same answer, the only one he could.
An audible sigh, the exasperation of the schoolteacher with a truculent pupil. Blindness allowed for the man not to witness his tormentor extract a device called the Jennings Dental Mouth Gag purchased on the Internet—a stainless steel device used by dental practitioners the world over to prise open the mouths of patients, and keep them open, during oral work.
The freight trains returned, accelerating at a colossal rate. Deep inside the man’s throat, a muted scream for the mercy he knew would never be shown rose to a wail. The plastic ties cut deep into his wrists. More blood seeped on to the ruined Axminster.
Gasping for air he felt the grind of the pliers on his maxillary first molar. The torturer whispered one more time, ‘Where is it?’ The man answered only with a gurgle of tears and sputum and blood from where his jaws worked against the Jennings Dental Mouth Gag.
In an instant, it was over. In the infinitesimal amount of time before the man pulled back on the pliers, he thought of that film, the one with Laurence Olivier, playing a mad Nazi dentist, seeking information the way their attacker did. ‘Is it safe?’ the celluloid villain had asked, before drilling a hole in the tooth of Dustin Hoffmann.
But the movie was forgotten with the volcanic eruption of pain exploding in his brain. He tasted the metallic tang of blood, felt the tendrils of gum-flesh, as the locomotives continued their journey in his skull.
He lost three teeth before the Jennings Dental Mouth Gag was removed and the acrid breath was once more in his ear.
“Where is it?”
And again, the man told him the truth. And this time the torturer believed him.
He sealed his mouth with masking tape retrieved from his grip before plunging the Wüsthof Dreizack 26 cm German chef’s knife deep into his throat. It was from his victims’ kitchen.
The locomotives finally came to a halt.
Such fine workmanship, mused the killer, before opening his mobile telephone to inform his employer about his next step. Then he left himself out of the house and was gone.
It was two hours well spent , he thought.
Chapter 1

Friday, October 7, 2016 – Berlin, Germany
The Turk Brown Coat Shop—officially called TBCS Trading GmbH—was located on the Oranienstraße and anyone who’s been there can tell you about the ready clientele moving up and down the pavements, worried-looking Muslim ladies, weighed down by cares, aubergines and yoghurt pots, looking for replacement coats in between doing the daily shopping. Their beliefs meant nothing to Alex Lomax, he would easily have sold them bacon sandwiches or yarmulkes if they were in the market for them. But his shop mainly sold coats. Sometimes the coats were grey, sometim