The Leader And The Damned by Colin Forbes

Author:Colin Forbes [Forbes, Colin]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-07-10T14:00:00+00:00

Everything in the Sudbahnhof district was worn-out, derelict - or at best shabby if a building was occupied - when you could see anything through the sour fog which clung to the area like a plague. Gaunt wrecks of buildings like huge rotting teeth loomed in the dirt-laden mist. It reminded Lindsay of a no-man's-land abandoned long ago by battle-weary armies.

Paco and Lindsay had travelled in a taxi which sagged to one side, the Monstrous synthetic fuel attachment making the vehicle look distorted. She paid off the taxi in the middle of what appeared to be a desert of rubble and waited until it vanished in the grey pall.

'We walk the rest of the way,' she said briskly, 'then if the cab driver is picked up and questioned he can't lead them to us...'

'Lead them to where?' Lindsay wondered how she knew the direction to take. 'This isn't my idea of Strauss's Vienna at all...'

'It's one of the poor districts,' she said, striding out. 'Quite possibly Hitler knew it well in his younger days. You can see how it could drive a man on to get somewhere in the world...'

They were treading across an open area of rubble when two youths loomed out of the fog. Shabbily dressed, cap-less, they had an ugly look. One carried a length of iron pipe. The youth with the pipe hoisted it to strike Lindsay's skull a shattering blow.

The Englishman stopped Paco with his left hand. He jerked up his right foot and kicked his assailant between the legs with all his strength. The youth screamed, dropped the weapon, crouched over, moaning horribly. The other youth vanished. Raising his foot again, Lindsay placed it on the shoulder of the crouched youth and shoved hard. The youth spun over backwards and sprawled among a debris of stones and broken glass. Blood oozed from his head.

'Move!' Lindsay snapped. 'And put that thing away...'

That thing was a short-bladed knife Paco had produced — Lindsay wasn't sure where from. They hurried through the night as he went on talking.

'If you knifed one of them the police would have started swarming. That we can do without...'

'I know. This way...'

'And get rid of that knife...'

'I didn't expect...'

Paco stopped in mid-sentence. She must be ruddy well played out, Lindsay thought. He knew what she had stopped herself saying: 'I didn't expect you'd cope with those two thugs...'

'You're learning fast, Lindsay.' She linked her arm through his, and a trace of the normal Paco returned as she smiled mischievously. 'You may even survive.

Now, you mustn't be able to identify this place we're staying for the night.'

A fat chance of that, Lindsay almost retorted. The three-storey building they were approaching had plaster peeling off the drab walls. In the swirling fog he made out the word Gasthof but the name which had once followed it had peeled away.

It was a slum. Torn curtains with ragged edges hung across the windows at crazy angles. Nearby he heard the muffled thump of engines shunting freight wagons.

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