Frankfurt Südbahnhof was so small compared to Frankfurt Main that it would be easy, expecting something much bigger, to ask for directions to the station and discover you were already in it. The station opened onto Diesterwegplatz, where tram tracks cut crescents across the cobbles. Plane trees harbored few leaves. A café, a chemist, and a post office all lined up neatly like in a picture book. No one waited on the benches for a night bus. Nobody was borrowing a city bicycle from the gaggle beneath the twin teardrop lampposts. The rasp of the Alpine’s engine chased birds from the trees, stretching membraned shadows under the branches. When the engine fell silent, Harwood was left with the clicks and tings of the overheated car contracting in the cold, and the ragged pound of her own exhilaration, which turned to a sharp tang as the exhilaration flipped inside out. She heaved a breath, and pressed her forehead to the wheel for a moment. The snow hit the windscreen in a patter. She’d parked in a fan of cars, most of them crystalline with ice.
She could have chosen anywhere in Frankfurt to make her last stand, if that’s what it was going to be—but in truth, she’d been here just the once in her life, and the night had ended at the café. The owners—who lived above, she imagined—had opened their doors, though it was past midnight then too. A woman in a bright nightgown gave her a hot chocolate to stop her howling under a policeman’s apprehensive gaze. Now, the announcement of a sleeper train drifted over the wind. She didn’t catch the destination. Harwood imagined posting the car keys through the letter box of the café and boarding the train. She’d find an empty berth and just close her eyes. Wake up in a place that she did not know, and did not know her.
Or not. The discontent of an engine pushed too hard screeched toward her. It had been a three-minute grace. So that’s how long it took Mora’s man to change a tire. Harwood grabbed her own boots from the back seat as the Mercedes burst to life in her rearview mirror, taking the road into the Platz at a sharp angle, churning snow. She reloaded her weapon, restarted the engine, and slipped out of the car through the passenger door, keeping it from clicking shut. Harwood hunkered in the snow behind the mid-engine. Q Branch had suggested cladding the car in armor, but that would have compromised the Alpine’s speed. The door of a car gives little to no protection against active shooters. The only part of a car that provides cover against steel-core penetrator rounds is the engine block. She wormed onto her stomach now, shuffling into the prone sniper position. She was pinned between the Alpine and a VW Golf that had been parked for so long its wheels were sunk in snow.
The slam of a door—just one. She’d seen two figures in the car on the road. Either Mora had ditched his tire changer, or the other way around. The snow-covered cobbles gave an inch worth of space beneath the low carriage of the car, and in the dark it wasn’t enough to get a shot off from the ground. The Rattenfänger operative was most likely hovering behind his engine, reading the terrain. She wondered if he’d seen the movement of the door, or was he now trying to pick out her silhouette in the driver’s seat?
A crunch in the snow. Then another. Harwood saw his shadow swell in the amber puddle of the lamppost.
“You are there, 003?”
A soft voice, not Mora’s. Harwood prayed that didn’t mean he’d somehow got hold of Zofia’s real location.
Another crunch.
“You will take me to the scientist now. No hard feelings. We are professionals doing a job.”
Harwood smiled. Snow seeped into her clothes, and she was grateful to it for shocking her awake.
Another crunch.
“Just tell me the location and we can forget everything.”
He was approaching the boot of the car. His shadow was elongated by the gun in his hand. It would be a test of skill and speed. Stand up and shoot faster than he could, then get back behind the engine in case they both missed and he went for the second shot, following her motion. An old-fashioned shoot-out. The kind of thing they practiced in training all the time.
The kind of thing Rattenfänger would practice in training all the time too.
“Come out now, and we will find the scientist together.” The thick, almost polystyrene sound of boots sinking into snow, as the operative took up his stance.
Harwood measured the gap between herself and the fifth silver switch. In the time it took her to dive for it, the mercenary could have a shot off. The bulletproof glass ought to withstand gunfire. Ought to. Harwood glanced behind her at the Golf. It looked like it had been parked here days ago, perhaps left by someone who’d taken the train somewhere for the weekend. It was a nice car, a new model and well cared for. Let’s hope they keep their alarm in good working order.
She extended one leg, finding the rear wheel of the Golf, and kicked with all her strength. A small bounce, and then a wail.
The shadow flinched. Harwood rose, fired once. She was ducking as a bullet thumped into the boot of the car—the shooter had imagined she was taking cover behind a front engine, tried to find the angle, and failed.
A hush, and then the windows looking down on her turned yellow as the inhabitants switched on their lights.
Harwood’s nostrils flared, breathing in the gun smoke, the snow, the panic, remembering window shutters opening like great blinks that night after her father left the man lying on the cobbles and the police arrived.
Sirens spooled through the air.
Harwood stood up, walking into the clear, gun raised. Harwood remained for just a moment, threatening the street, the building, the sky, the peace, threatening nobody at all. She returned to the side of the Rattenfänger operative. She’d found center mass. Four fatalities in a night. Five, if Choudhury didn’t make it. Six, if Sid’s heart gave out.
The doors of the station were clanging shut. The screech of tires approaching. Harwood then crossed to the Mercedes. There was a radio on the passenger seat. Harwood scooped it up, and returned to the Alpine for a systems check. The shot had been a through-and-through, and missed the Alpine’s vital organs.
Harwood made it out just minutes before the police established a cordon. Degrees of grace.