by Len Deighton
'Perhaps you are right,' said Fabre. His face was even whiter than white, and he chewed down on one of his tablets in a rare display of emotion. He became conscious of my stare and turned to me. 'We must get the right road or we'll be lost-it's one of those short-cuts.'
'Oh, one of those short-cuts/ I said. I nodded.
He nibbed his hands together and smiled. Perhaps he'd realized that there had been undertones in that last exchange which denied any last chance that they were policemen.
Fabre spotted a wayside shrine with a few miserable wild flowers in a tin at the foot of a tormented Christ. 'You're right,' he told the driver. We turned on to the narrow side road.
'Take it easy,' Fabre said to the driver, his face tightening as the suspension thumped the rutted track. He was nervous now, as the time came closer. They were both nervous. The driver had stiffened at the wheel, and he seemed to shrink even as I watched him.
'Not the right-hand fork,' Fabre warned the driver. And then I suddenly recognized the landscape. A few stunted trees on rolling hills: I'd not seen this place since the war. We were taking the high road to the west side of the Tix quarry: Champion's quarry, as it now was. The old open-cast workings had been abandoned since the late 'fifties, and the mine had proved so expensive that it _ had closed a few years later. The quarry: it would be an ideal place.
As we came up the slope to the brink of the quarry. I saw the same dilapidated wooden huts that had been there ever since I could remember. Fabre squirmed. He thought he was a hell of a hard kid, pulses racing and eyes narrowed. I saw him as a grotesque caricature of myself when young. Well, perhaps I was the same 'yesterday's spy' that Champion was, but my heart wasn't pounding. Shakespeare got me all wrong: no stiffening of the sinews, no summoning of the blood, not even 'hard favour'd rage'. There was only a cold sad ache in the gut-no longer any need to simulate it. And-such was the monumental ego a job like mine needs -I was already consoling myself for the distress that killing them would inevitably cause me.
I was concentrating on the pros and cons of striking while the driver had his hands full of car, and Fabre had his attention distracted. But because they were watching the road ahead, they took in the scene some five seconds before I did-and five seconds in this job is a long weekend elsewhere-ten seconds is for ever!
'Merde!' said Fabre softly. 'She's escaped.' Then I saw all: the woman in the short fur coat, identical to the one that Fabre was wearing, and the man on his knees, almost hidden in the thorns and long grass. The man kicked frantically to free himself. There were two loud bangs. The man in the grass convulsed at each gunshot and fell flat and out of sight. Then there came the thump of the wooden door, as the fur-coated woman disappeared into the hut.
Fabre had the car door open by that time. The car slewed to a stop in thick mud, almost sliding into a ditch. Even before he was out of the car Fabre had his Browning Model Ten automatic in his hand. Well, that was the right pistol! I knew plenty of French cops with those: smooth finish, three safeties and only twenty ounces in your pocket. A pro gun, and this one had long since lost its blueing. It was scratched, worn shiny at the edges, and I didn't like it. Fabre stood behind the open car door, ballooning his body gently, so as never to be a static target He was squinting into the dark shadows under the trees. Only men who have been in gunfire do that instinctively as this man was doing it The clouds parted to let the sun through. I glimpsed the face at the hut window. I remember thinking that it must be Madame Baroni, the mother of Gary and Pina, but she had died in Ravens-bruck in 1944. Two more shots: one of them banged into the car body, and made the metal sing. Not Pina's mother but Pina herself, Gary's sister, her face drawn tight in fear. There was a flash of reflected light as the sun caught the nickel-finish revolver that she levelled through the broken window.
She depressed the gun and fired again at the man in the undergrowth. I remembered the German courier she'd killed, when we were together at the farmhouse. She'd shot him six times.
'You cow!' Fabre's face contorted, and he brought his Browning up in a two-hand clasp, bending his knees slightly, F.B.I, target-shooting style. He'd need only one shot at this range. His knuckles were white before I made my decision.
I pulled the trigger of my revolver. The noise inside the car was deafening. At a range of less than two yards, the first bullet lifted him under the arm like a bouncer's grip. He was four yards away, and tilted at forty-five degrees, as the second shot collapsed him like a deckchair and threw him into the ditch. My ears rang with the noise. There was a smell of scorched doth, and two holes in my coat.
Ahmed jumped out of the car at the same moment I did. With the car between us, he was able to cover a lot of ground before I was able to shoot. The bullet howled into the sky, miles away from him. I cursed, and moved back to the place where Fabre had fallen. I was cautious, but I needn't have been. He was dead. The Browning was still gripped tight in his hands. He was a real gunny. His mouth was open, teeth clenched, and his eyes askew. I knew it was another nightmare. I steeled myself to see that face again in many dreams, and I was not to be wrong about it.
Cautiously I moved up the track towards the wooden shack, keeping low and behind the scrub. I was on the very brink of the quarry before the door opened. Pina emerged, tight-lipped, dishevelled, her fur coat ripped so that its lining hung below the hem. The man she'd shot was dead: a dark-skinned youth in leather jacket and woollen hat, his tweed trousers still entangled in the thorns.
'Charlie! Charlie! Oh, Charlie!' Pina pushed the revolver into her pocket and then washed her dry hands, in some curious rite of abnegation. 'They were going to kill me, Charlie. They were going to kill me. They said so.'
'Are you all right, Pina?'
'We must get away from here, Charlie.' '
There was a flash of lightning and a prolonged rumble of thunder.
Pina mumbled a prayer into my shirt-front. I held her tight, but I didn't relax. From here I could see right down to the puddles in the bottom of the quarry. It was a spooky place for me, its vast space brimful of memories and fears. In the war I'd hidden here, Listening to the barking of the search dogs, and the whistles of the Feldgendarmerie as they came, shoulder to shoulder, across these very fields. Pina clutched my hand, and she felt there the anxious sweat that my memories provoked.
'But where ?' she said. 'Where can we go ?' Again, lightning lit up the underside of the dark clouds, and a perfect disc of its blue light flashed from the bracken a few yards in front of me. Violently I pushed Pina to the ground, and threw myself down into firing position. With one hand I pushed my spectacles against my face and capped one eye. With the other hand I put the pistol's foresight near the place where I'd seen the glint of reflected light. I pulled the trigger three times.
The sound of the gunfire was reflected of! the sloping ground: three loud bangs, and the echo of them came rolling back from the far side of the quarry. Pina crawled nearer. 'Keep down,' I said.
This grass! I'm soaked,' she complained.
'It's a sniperscope, a perfect disc of light. It must have been sighted on us.'
I rolled over enough to get some bullets from my pocket and push them into the chamber. Then I picked up the empty cases and wrapped them in my handkerchief. There was no point in trying to be clever about powder traces-the bullet holes in my pocket would be enough.
They will try to get to the car,' said Pina. 'If you could get to that bracken you'd shoot anyone who tried to get down to the track where the car is.'
'You're riding the wrong sideshow,' I growled. 'I'm selling tickets for the tunnel of love.'
'You're going to let them take the car?'
'I'll check their oil, and polish the windscreen for them.'
Pina gave that sort of whistle that well-bred French ladies resort to when they want to swear. It was then that the Negro driver broke cover and went racing off down the slope towards the main road. If there was more than one man, this had to be the moment to rush them. I jumped up and ran a
s fast as I could to where I'd seen the glint of light. Pina followed me.
'I don't understand,' she said.
I said nothing; I didn't understand, either. There was no sniper-scope, no high-powered rifle, no lethal weapons at all. The lightning had reflected from the front element of a zoom-lens fitted to a Beaulieu 16 mm movie camera. I fidgeted with the magazine until I got it open and then I pulled the grey film out into the daylight A considerable footage had passed through the film-gate but the bulk of it was in the top magazine. Whatever it was intended to film had not yet happened.
I unlatched the camera from its pan and tilt head, and lifted it on to my shoulder. Then, in some irrational fit of destructive anger, I pitched the valuable movie camera over the side of the quarry. It hit an outcrop and bounced high into the air. spilling lenses and sprockets and trailing a long tail of film. It bounced a second time and then fell out of sight before landing with a thud.
Pina gave me the big pistol she had used. 'It's his,' she said, indicating the body of the dark-skinned man. 'I got it away from him.' After wiping it carefully, I threw it into the wooden hut. There was a new plastic-topped table there and two kitchen chairs. Cigarette ends, pieces of loaf and the remains of hard-boiled egg littered the table top, and a length of rope was on the floor. 'I tricked him,' said Pina. They had me tied up at first.'
'Go and wait in the car, Pina,' I said.
She shuffled off like a sleepwalker. Half-heartedly, I pressed my.38 into the dead Arab's hand and threw my cotton gloves down alongside the body, to account for its powder-free hands. But I didn't fool myself that I was achieving anything more than a couple of hours at double-time for some junior assistants in the local forensic lab.
I started the Citroen. There was a full minute of wheel-spinning '
before the old brute crawled out of the mire and waddled off down the track, spewing mud in every direction. We left everything the way it was, the fur-coated gunny head-down in the ditch, the camera-operator-for so I had decided was the man Pina had killed-stiff in the long grass.
'What did it all mean?' Pina asked me, as we reached the main road.
I looked at her and then back down the road. 'You know what it means, Pina,' I said. 'And, by God, I'm going to wring it out of you, so just start getting used to the idea of telling me.'
We were both silent for a long time. I suppose we were both thinking about the Negro driver, and what he might do. Pina finally said, 'He'll not tell the police anything, unless they squeeze it out of him. They were there to kill you, Charlie. They grabbed me this morning on my way to the hairdresser's.'
'Why you, Pina?
She didn't answer. My thoughts moved on to more urgent matters.
'Is there a plane service to Paris from Grenoble?' I asked her.
'Air Alpes fly Marseille-Grenoble-Metz, and connect with an Air France Dusseldorf flight. I did that last year.'
'No good,' I said, thinking better of it 'Passports, credit cards and cheques-a trail of paper.'
'I've got a lot of cash,' she said.
'Give me a minute to think.'
'You'd better think fast, petit, or we'll be in Valence. And that's on the autoroute. It will be thick with cops.'
'I wish I knew whether this was a stolen car.'
Don't be silly, Charlie. You saw those men. They don't work with stolen cars: they are assassins-cent-mille francs a time men- they don't use stolen cars.'
'Who are they, Pina?'
She picked at the dried mud that was plastered on her fur coat. 'It's no good shouting at me as if I was a juvenile delinquent,' she said.
'You killed that man, Pina,' I said.
She didn't answer. I found it difficult to be patient with her, and yet I knew there was no other way. I said, 'The Tix quarry... Pina, and not far away, the mine, and the house where Champion lives. What the hell are you doing there?'
A police car came speeding towards us, with siren and light going. I watched it in the mirror until it disappeared over the hill 'And the camera,' I said. 'I think you took it up there to spy on Champion. Is that it?'
She turned her head to see me more clearly.
'You and Champion are in it together,' she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her.
'In what?' I demanded.
She shook her head. Then she looked at her gold wristwatch and fidgeted with it, so that it jangled against the bracelets on her arm.
'You tell me,' she mumbled.
The rain mottled the windscreen and I switched on the wipers and the heater. She loosened her coat. 'O.K.,' I said, 'I'll tell you. You've always blamed Champion for the death of Marius. But your brother was arrested hours before Champion, and you know it because you saw it happen. And I saw it, too.' I waited for her to admit it, but she didn't.
She forced herself to smile. 'I was mad about Champion,' she protested. 'I loved him, you know I did.'
'And that's all part of the vendetta,' I said. 'You never forgave him for marrying your sister.'
She gave a little hoot of laughter. 'Jealousy!' she said. 'What a joker you are!' She took out a tiny handkerchief and wiped her nose. Only after she had taken a quick look at herself, run a fingertip over her eyebrows and clicked her handbag dosed, did she speak again. 'It's the way he's treated Caterina that I resent so much. Have you seen her lately?'
'A week or so ago.'
Tie's made her life hell, and it shows on her face.'
'No, Pina.' I said. 'She's just getting old, that's all.'
'You're pitiless, Charlie, do you know that?' It was a pleasant conversational voice she used. 'You don't have flesh and blood, you have clockwork. You don't live, you tick.' She wiped her nose again. 'Tell me, Charlie: do you ever love, or hate, or weep? Tell me!'
'No,' I said, 'I just blow a fuse.'
'And each time you do it, someone comes along and fits you with a bigger fuse, and finally you can tick-tock your life away, Charlie, without any problems of conscience, or morals, or thought of tomorrow.'
'It's a funny thing, Pina,' I said. 'Every time someone puts a bomb in a supermarket or machineguns a few airline passengers, it turns out that they are doing it on account of their conscience, or their morals, or some goddamned twisted idea of a new Jerusalem.'
I'd said it simply out of anger, but the reference to Jerusalem caused her to react.
'Me?'
Her eyes opened wide and her mouth slackened with amazement and indignation. 'You think I'm working with the Palestinian terrorists?'
Then who are you working for?'
'The autoroute will be best,' she said. 'The car's not stolen, I'm sure of it. We'd best make for Paris.'
'Who?' I said again. 'Who are you working for, then?'
Pina had said too much and she knew it, and now she hunched forward in her seat and began to worry. The moment had passed.
For a few minutes she was very still. Then she turned her head to see the road behind us.
'I'll watch the road, Pina. You try and rest for a few minutes.'
'I'm frightened, Charlie.'
'It will be all right,' I said. 'Try to get some sleep.'
'Sleep,' she said. 'It's ten years since I was able to sleep without my pills.'
'Well, don't take any of those. We might need to be wide awake.'
A helicopter came over the road and then made off towards the autoroute. Pina leaned close to the window to watch it fly over.
Traffic police,' I said.
She nodded and leaned back in her seat, her head resting against the window. I glanced at her. Her hair was knotted and her lipstick smudged. In her lap, her hands were clasped too tight, the knuckles criss-crossed with the marks of her nails. When she spoke it was in a different sort of voice, and I glanced across her to see that she had not opened her eyes. 'I must have a drink, Charlie. I must.'
'In Lyon.'
'You don't understand!' She rummaged through the rubbish and dog-eared papers in the car, as if hoping to find a bottle or a hip-flas
k.
'We'll find somewhere,' I said.
'Soon, Charlie.'
Her hands were shaking, in spite of the strength she used to clench them together. And I saw the way that her face was stiff as if with pain.
'The first place we see,' I promised.
'Oh, yes, petit.'
It was an elegant and yet a forbidding place. A pox of tourist-club badges studded the portals, and the flags of the world's richest nations flew from the battlements. The gravel was freshly raked and the grass dipped short.
'Let's go,' I said. I had already given her my lecture on being inconspicuous-don't over-tip, thank anyone or converse too long with the waiter-and we'd stopped a moment or two while she combed her hair and used tissues to clean her face. After that, we'd gone a couple of miles up the road, in order to enter the drive from the north, and so be remembered as a southbound car.
