The Second World War: PART 11 - Roger Farrier (1944) #2

FARRIER

11.

1944

UNKNOWN

For the most part, the sky was without clouds and made a most fitting setting for the end. 

The scene had become a watercolour with yellow smudges on the tops of puffy clouds.  The midsection of the sky was a turquoise hue.  The horizon line blended in with the dark distant sea.  The waves were choppy for the time of year and rose some eight-feet high, foaming at the mouth, almost rolling, almost barrelling over into another, bulldozing the boot prints in the sand.  Tufts of green hair could be made out at the sides of the balding head, the sandy hill, where the black Mercedes-Benz 500K had pulled up.  The engine idled.

Two men watched him from the verge, he was looking out to sea.  He wore no uniform, just a pastel grey raincoat and a suit and tie.  It had been tied in a four-in-hand knot.  The man looked to be in his late thirties, but there was something about him, some air of authority, that was more mature.  He was of medium height, had messy auburn hair, boyish in charm, a tanned forehead and eyes the colour – according to Adelise – of solid wood.  His face was handsome and serious from experience.  A smirk was drawn across the lips, however.  He stood relaxed but faintly military. 

He was waiting for the tide and the war to go away.  In his hand was a typewritten letter. He held it to his face for a moment and kissed it.  Extending a muscular arm, he let the letter be swept away, tumbling into the mouth of the water and hopefully, out to sea.

Krause reached into his jacket and extracted the squat silencer from it, stilling his own breath.  Roger Farrier turned and looked him in the eye.  There was a moment.  With the pinch of a cough in the wind, the eyes rolled, and he pitched over backwards.  He saw two seagulls squawk, fly from a fencepost and soar over the water.  He thought he could make out what looked to be a squad of RAF bombers overhead, and then lay still. 

The burly man in the sand was dragged out to sea.