The Munich Dilemma
by Sinbad

Chapter 10

There was a little awkwardness between Ricky and Chris as they made their way up to bed; they'd each been reminded that they were to share a double bed and were each a little uncomfortable about the idea. It was a large bed with plenty of room for both of them, and it was in a good cause and exceptional circumstances. But Ricky was wondering if Chris would be spooked by it, and if only he had known it, Chris was thinking exactly the same about Ricky. Nevertheless they both plodded through the routine of undressing for bed, cleaning teeth and getting into bed. They climbed into the bed together, but from opposite sides, and their toes touched as they slid their first leg under the bedclothes. It produced an immediate reaction and each boy retracted his leg up into a squat. Once in the bed, Ricky pulled the bedclothes up under his nose and lay there, on his back, hardly daring to breathe, and painfully aware of Chris lying next to him, a longer shape in the bed than himself but otherwise similarly still and rigid. He couldn't help it, the situation made him giggle. He suppressed it, but it burst out, and suddenly they were both laughing out loud. Chris punched him on the shoulder playfully and he prodded Chris in the ribs, and the tension dispersed and they talked for a few minutes before falling comfortably asleep.

The next morning Ricky woke on his side, facing the window and the floral curtains drawn across it, around which light was now streaming. He regained consciousness slowly, and enjoyed the feeling of luxurious comfort that comes from waking in a comfortable bed in a cocoon of warmth and with no necessity to leave it immediately. He shrank down further under the covers, pulling the bedclothes around his ears, and the arm that was draped around his waist from behind tighter against him. It felt good, a feeling of great security. And then he woke a little more, and reflexively jerked his body out of the bed, only to stand beside the bed, the cold air pinching at his skin, feeling very sheepish and realising that he had hopelessly over-reacted. Fortunately for him it seemed Chris was still asleep.

He went and did his morning bathroom routine and came back into the room to dress, and found Chris still in bed but this time sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Sleep well?” Ricky ventured, wondering what sort of reply he might get.

“Mmm, yes. Lovely. What a comfortable bed! I love these quilts they have here. Aren't they wonderful – so warm and soft. I could burrow underneath and stay there for weeks!!

Ricky smiled, and concluded that Chris had remained blissfully ignorant of the embarrassing moment he had unconsciously taken part in.

Chris took his turn in the bathroom while Ricky dressed, and then Ricky waited for him until they were both presentable and they went downstairs looking for breakfast. They found Prince Hassan and Harris in the kitchen, and Mr Farquharson and Ricky's father deep in conversation in the living room below. There was no sign of Sophie.

They said Hello to the men in the kitchen, wisely leaving their father and Lord Beaulieu undisturbed. They got a cup of coffee for their trouble, and the useful intelligence that they were booked on the mid-morning flight from Munich back to London. So after breakfast they were sent back upstairs to pack. And in no time, hardly time to pack properly, they were called back down again by Roger because the chauffeur who had taken them to the restaurant the night before was again at the door to take them to the airport. Sophie came to the door, looking elegant in white silk, and said goodbye, accepting an awkward kiss on the cheek from Ricky. Roger went with them in the car and they waved goodbye to the three men from the Foreign Office, who were standing together on the front steps of the house and waving at them.

The airport was tedious. They checked in, handing their luggage over the counter and having it weighed. Then they had two hours to kill until the plane would take off. In the lounge they checked and double-checked their tickets and passports, and the sheet of paper with emergency telephone numbers both in Germany and England, that they could use if anything were to go wrong with the planned journey. And then they played cards with Mr Taylor until it seemed best that they go through to the departure lounge. So they said another round of goodbyes; Ricky took his father's proffered hand to shake but gripped it and with his other arm pulled his father into a bear-hug. His father, a very undemonstrative man when it came to powerful emotions, smiled broadly and appreciatively. And he stood at the barrier and waved to them so that they could turn and give him a wave in return. Until they turned a corner out of sight of the retaining barrier and disappeared from view.

As they entered the departure lounge, Chris noticed the sign for the toilets and went to pay a final visit before getting on the plane. Ricky found a row of cushioned chairs to sit in and wait for their flight to be called, and waited there for Chris to re-appear.

Chris came out of the gents restroom and looked around for his friend. He saw Ricky sitting across the big room, but he also saw a slightly built man, longish fair hair, perhaps in his early thirties, sitting at a cafe table and peering intently through the foliage of a pot plant at Ricky. He had his back to Chris and wouldn't know Chris was watching him, and his gaze never left Ricky for a moment. Chris found he could see this man reflected in the decorative mirror glass that lined the back of the serving bar of the cafe. And with a shock he realised who he was looking at. Kamille.

Kamille, right there in the airport, and watching Ricky like a hawk. What to do? Warn Ricky, and get him out of there, that's what!

Chris marched straight across the room and sat down next to Ricky.

“Don't react. You hear? Don't react!”

“I'm not reacting. Reacting to what?”

“To what I'm about to tell you, dummy! Listen. Kamille's here. And he's watching you. And me, probably, now, too.”

“Go on with you! He'll be on the run and in a different country by now! Whatever makes you think he'd be here?”

“Remember what Mr Farquharson said? He wants us dead? And where better for him than an airport? Transport, quick transport, to another country!”

“Okay, but what makes you think he's here?”

“I watched him watching you! He's in the cafe area over there, behind the big pot plant. No, don't look! Just trust me on this – it's him!”

“Okay. Okay. What are we going to do?”

“Well, for one thing, we're not going to get on that plane. If he follows us on, he's going to do something awful like hijack it, or blow it up or something and everyone's going to die, including us. So we have to sneak away, I think, hope to give him the slip, and find another way back home.”

Ricky gave it all some thought. He needed to make a decision, to go with Chris's theory or reject it. And he had to act as though he hadn't a care in the world, in case Kamille really was watching them and he didn't want her, or rather him, getting spooked. He decided.

“Okay. Let's visit the duty free shop, and see if we can find a staff exit in the back.”

They got up, conspicuously leaving their hand luggage behind them on the chair so that Kamille would expect them to return. They walked into the duty free shop on the edge of the departure lounge and made a show of browsing the shelves for a little while, hoping Kamille would get bored of watching them. Under cover of looking through the paperback books they scanned the back wall of the shop, and found a door through which they saw staff members appear twice. They couldn't see what was beyond it, but it had a sophisticated combination lock. The boys positioned themselves a little along the shelves from this door, ostensibly interested in a new best-seller until they saw the door open again. They sprinted to the door, caught it before it closed and cannoned through it, closing it firmly behind them. They hoped that Kamille hadn't seem them depart, and that even when he did work it out, it would be sometime before he could get through the security door.

They were in a dark corridor, lit only by light coming through glass panels in doors off the corridor at various point. Artificial light. At the far end of the corridor was a double door with no glass panel, with push bars across at waist height, so it was an emergency door, and they ran to it in the hope that it would lead outside. They pushed at the bar and the door opened, but as they slipped through it an alarm began to sound. So much for stealth. They pushed the door closed as best they could, it had no catch on the outside, and looked around them. They were on the edge of the vast tarmac surface that was the aircraft taxiing area from which the various runways radiated. The building behind them stretched all along one edge of this surface but they were at the corner of the building and instinctively they ran around the corner, down the side of the building and around the next corner. They were now in the front of the terminal building, the runways behind it, and they were in a small staff car park. The area was fenced, but the fencing was broken at the entrance to the car park, where there was an automatic barrier. Beyond the car park ran a public road and to their delight the boys spotted a bus stop and a bus, standing at the stop. They ran, as fast as they could, across the car park, climbed under the barrier, shot across the road and came to a halt at the open door of the bus, before controlling their panting and walking onto the bus. The driver asked where they were going. Ricky looked at Chris, panicking for a moment. Chris turned to the driver. “Zentrum?” he ventured.

Apparently that was an acceptable answer and Chris thought himself lucky. It had been the first thing that came into his head, but he realised that the bus was sure to go in to the centre of the city, and the express railway station was in the centre, so they would be able to catch a train to the coast. How they got across the water to England would be a problem that they'd face when they came to it.

Now the bus driver was holding out his hand, and the boys looked at him blankly for a moment before realising he was asking for payment. Ricky brought his U-Bahn ticket out of his pocket, with several foldable sections still not cancelled, and handed it to the driver, who took it and cancelled four more sections before handing it back. Pleased, the boys sat down in the front row of seats. Ricky hadn't been sure that the ticket he'd bought for underground rail travel could also be used on buses, but it was just as well that it did because neither of them had any German money on them, having left their hand luggage in the airport departure lounge.

The bus didn't move off immediately, waiting, perhaps, for a scheduled time of departure. The boys sat nervously, aware that Kamille would eventually realise they had run. Maybe he would hear the alarm that went off when they opened the outer door. How long would it be before he followed them, or found some other way out? And what would they do if he caught up with them? Would he have a weapon? Surely not, he couldn't have brought a weapon into the airport, could he?

They were much relieved when the driver started his engine and moved sedately off. They looked back at the airport, glad to be escaping, and Ricky suddenly gripped Chris's arm and pointed. There, running towards them on the runway tarmac, was a small fair haired man, running up to the perimeter fence and gripping it in frustration as he caught sight of the two boys at the front of the bus, picking up speed away from him and away from his grasp.

They looked at each other and smiled, shook hands in victory and sat back to enjoy the journey. The discussed what to do when they got off the bus and decided on a plan of action. They each had a supply of British money but no German currency. So they would look in the railway station for a Bureau de Change and change some Sterling for Deutschmarkes, enough to buy their rail ticket back to Bremerhaven. Then they'd catch the first train out of Munich. At Bremerhaven they would look for a ship that would take them across the channel to England. They had their passports so they didn't think they would have too much trouble managing that.

They realised that they might have difficulty recognising their stop, and Ricky turned to the middle-aged woman in the seat behind him and gave her what he hoped would come across as a re-assuring smile.

“Bitte, wo ist das Bahnhof?”

She smiled back at him, he thought condescendingly.

“Der Bahnhof? Am Zentrum, an der Ende der Reise. Es ist einfach, Du kannst es sehen aus der Fenster!”

“Danke sehr!”

“Bitte!” - and she settled herself back into her seat with a prim little smile on her face.

Ricky had noted that she'd pulled him up on his German – Bahnhof is masculine not neuter so he should have said 'der Bahnhof' not 'das Bahnhof'. It was so difficult remembering gender when in English you didn't have to worry about that stuff.

The bus stopped beside a shopping mall and the woman struggled up and out of the bus. Chris helped her with one of her shopping bags, handing it down to her.

The bus worked its way through increasing levels of traffic until it finally pulled up beside a big shelter and behind three more buses. The end of the line, München Zentrum. Along with all the remaining passengers, Ricky and Chris climbed down to the ground and looked around them. A large open square, the road built of cobbles in a decorative pattern. The woman on the bus had been right – the enormous canopy with the imposing frontage just across the square couldn't be anything but a railway station. They headed across to it to put the next stage of their plan into operation.