World Will Fall

4. Dry Land

4

Dry Land

Philippe tossed the rifle in the water and steered the boat down river, but a couple of hundred metres on, it began to chug and splutter, slowing until it stalled. Blue smoke poured out of the engine and I realised water was flooding in through a bullet hole in the deck, swilling around our feet. The boat drifted over to where bright-orange kayaks bobbed in a line stretching out from the water’s edge. Each one had a young kid inside wearing a life jacket; an instructor sat in a kayak opposite, showing them how to hold the paddle. Unfortunately, we were too far from the river bank to hop off. On top of that, the boat was steadily sinking.

“Can you swim?” Philippe asked.

“I do a mean doggy paddle.”

“That’ll do,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the boat. “Let’s go.”

“I’m not going in there. Uh-uh. I don’t do freezing-cold water.”

“One way or another, you’re going in.”

I heard patrol-car sirens in the distance. A convoy of them not too far away.

“We haven’t got long,” Philippe said, hurling his rucksack to the safety of the shore. He slipped into the water. Not even a gasp. Jesus, how could he just get in there like it was no big deal? He swam the few feet to dry land and hauled himself out. I looked along the river from where we’d just come, the police cars flashing over a distant bridge. I turned my attention to the freezing-cold river … the freezing-cold water flooding the boat.

I went for it.

No, not freezing my n*****s off in the Spree. Of course not.

I lowered myself down off the front of the police boat, where the kayak line ended. I stepped on the first, skipped onto the second and then the next six after that. Treading light and fast off the back of each kayak, the kids laughing and the instructor doing his nut. I hopped off onto the river bank and got a round of applause from the kids. I took a bow, then spun off and joined a soaking-wet Philippe, running across a stretch of grass towards a large glass office building set back off the river.

“In here,” Philippe said, putting a size ten through an anonymous side door. We broke into a concrete stairwell, which took us into an underground carpark. Clean. Shiny. Full of new executive saloons. Philippe led us along the walls, dripping a trail of river water behind us. He said we had to stick to the walls to stay out of the range of the CCTV.

I knew what he was looking for. A beaten-up old car with no satnav, air con or basic comforts of any kind, like suspension or windows that didn’t let the wind in. All the cars down here were pretty much new, bar one. A white Fiat Punto. Philippe told me to keep an eye out while he did his break-in trick. Within a few seconds, we were in and, seconds after that, the engine coughed into life. Philippe tossed me two smartphones from his rucksack.

“Hold these,” he said. “One’s mine. The other I got off Clarence. See if there’s anything on there we can use.”

We spun out of the space in a squeal of tyres and up a couple of ramps. I found a fob left in a tray on the dash and dibbed us out through a metal shutter. Now we were out of the heart of Berlin, the roads were clear of police, but Philippe stayed within the speed limits just to be safe. He pulled his T-shirt off over his head and put the heater on full volcano.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Philippe said. “Inge.”

“Sure,” I said.

“She’s not,” he said again.

“Okay, it was a joke. God, so touchy.”

I pretended to tap into his phone. “Ooh, maybe there are some raunchy texts between the two of you.”

“Give me that,” he said, swiping it off me.

I laughed until my cheeks hurt, all the tension and anxiety coming out. As we hit the motorway network beyond the city limits, I began to relax, undoing the slashed school tie from around my neck and arranging my hair the best I could in the vanity mirror. I took a look at Clarence’s smartphone. No dice. It was asking me for a PIN.

“Hey, this is code-locked,” I said.

“No problem. I can unlock it when we get to Austria. It’s easily done.”

“Remind me, what’s in Austria again?”

Philippe just smiled.

I didn’t like it when he smiled.