LITMIR.BIZ

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face with both hands, seeking a moment of darkness to gather my wits. I understood the anxiety I heard in his voice. When I was young I’d seen some of the old wartime field agents resorting to that sort of gesture, and I’d written them off as burned out and useless. ‘I’m okay,’ I said.

      Gently I revved up and pulled away. I swung my head to get a look at him in the back. The kid had stains and marks down the front of his coat. He looked at me and wiped his mouth self-consciously. He smelled strongly of sour vomit.

      ‘What a foul-up. Poor VERDI. Are we going to be all right?’ he asked.

      ‘You stay there in the back seat and watch the road behind us. They’ll probably tail us and arrest us at the Checkpoint. It’s the way they like to work. They’ll want to see what we do.’

      ‘What’s the score?’ he said. ‘Who killed him?’

      ‘How do you know VERDI lives there?’

      ‘As opposed to meeting me there? I don’t know. I just assumed it.’

      ‘Always in that same room?’

      ‘Yes, always in that room. I guess they were on to him. They let him go to the rendezvous and then killed him.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘Maybe they spotted me last time,’ said the kid. Then in a sharper voice: ‘There is a car …’

      ‘I can see it.’

      ‘A big dark Mercedes. He turned when we did at the signal.’

      ‘Keep an eye on him.’

      I didn’t want to make a mistake. It’s easy to think you’re being followed. What percentage of the cars driving through the middle of the city were heading towards the Autobahn ramp? A lot of them I would say.

      ‘Go around the block,’ suggested the kid.

      ‘That will tip them off that we’ve spotted them, and it makes it look as if we are running away.’

      ‘Slow down and stop.’

      ‘I don’t think so. Let’s see what they do.’

      ‘Slow down to walking pace.’

      ‘So that they can overtake us and block the road in front?’

      ‘You’re right,’ said the kid. ‘What are you going to do then?’

      ‘I want them to think they have the wrong car. I want to be very innocent … very law-abiding.’ Even as I said it I realized that it sounded like a plan based upon despair; and it was.

      ‘They’re still behind us. Still at about the same distance.’

      We were out of town now, driving through moonlit countryside. It was a lousy situation. It was after midnight. Out here among the turnips was not the place to be. You could lay down an artillery barrage and bring in a couple of bulldozers to bury the bodies without the danger of attracting any witnesses.

      ‘I’m going to choose a suitable stretch of road and have a showdown,’ I told the kid. ‘When I stop the car and get out, I want you to scramble over the seat and get behind the wheel in the driver’s seat. Keep the engine ticking over but don’t rev it. Keep your head well down. When I shout go: burn rubber … Would you be able to do that for me?’

      ‘You bet I would.’

      ‘I’ll stop. Then I’m going to walk back towards them, shining a flashlight into their eyes and behaving like a lost tourist. Slightly drunk. If they are the kind of people I think they might be, they will get out of their car.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘You can’t shoot accurately through windscreen glass. And leaning out of a car window and shooting a gun is something that only Humphrey Bogart learned how to do.’

      ‘You’re going to stop and go back and talk your way out of it?’

      ‘Watch me and don’t wait too long.’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘And don’t take the Autobahn route. See that hill on the skyline in front? I’ll come to a stop near the bridge at the bottom. When I shout go, you be in a low gear … and swing and swerve as you pull away – got it?’

      ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

      The road was narrow. When we reached a stone bridge over a stream, I slowed down and stopped there, positioning the car so that there was no room to pass it. They stopped too. I hid the pistol in my raincoat pocket and then with as much noise and fuss as I could manage I swung open the car door and stood up and squinted into their headlights, and waved an arm like an innocent traveller who had strayed off the Autobahn and wanted to ask the way to Helmstedt, the crossing point to the West. There was ice underfoot, but the water in the stream was still trickling: I could hear it even over the sound of the car engines.

      The driver of the other car jumped out of his seat immediately. I could see that there was someone in the back seat but the rear doors remained closed.

      Walking back towards them, illuminated in the full headlight beam, I called out: ‘How many kilometres to Helmstedt?’ in a shrill Austrian accent that would not have fooled many people sitting under the trees in the Wiener Wald but here amongst the ‘Prussians’ would probably be convincing enough.

      My question was framed to cause momentary confusion, and it obviously did, for the driver bent down to say something to the passenger in the back seat.

      Close enough now to see what I was doing, I dropped flat on my belly and fired at the nearest front tyre, aiming so that the round’s entrance and exit would rip out a big enough chunk of tread to deflate even the most fancy of puncture-resistant tyres. Like all Russian pistols, what the East Germans call the Pistole M is a crudely designed piece of machinery with a simple blowback system and a butt angle like a letter L, but its Soviet designers gave it a legendary reliability which in tight corners makes up for all other shortcomings. Bang! The noise was deafening, the ancient silencer providing no sound reduction at all. Too late to remove it now. I squeezed the trigger and there was that stiffening that precedes a jam. I cursed and pulled harder on the trigger – it must have just been lack of oil, for the gun fired, and I saw a piece chopped from the second tyre.

      The sound of escaping air seemed to go on for ever. I jumped up and ran back to my car. The kid revved the motor. The shots had brought the back-seat passenger out of the car, and now he was bending down, trying to see the tyres. The driver was still in the same position: standing, feet apart, watching me as if petrified by the sudden events. I stood up and, to make them keep their heads down, I aimed a final shot to go over the driver’s head. But my hand was not steady and what was intended to be a frightener dropped him. The poor sod spun round and fell, clutching at his chest, then he rolled around on the ground groaning and kicking and rocking face-down, pressing himself to the icy road as if that might ease the pain.

      ‘Shit!’ I said. ‘Go, go, go.’ I threw myself into the front passenger seat. The car leaped away before I’d closed the door and as I slammed it my head banged against the window glass with a sharp crack. The kid heard the sound and glanced round to see if I was still conscious. But I had a thick skull; it is one of the few qualifications needed for the work I do. ‘Floor it!’ I told him. The engine screamed in pain as he jammed his foot on the pedal and we went roaring up the hill in low gear.

      ‘The passenger is climbing into the driving seat. He’s following us,’ called the kid.

      ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ I told him.

      The second man was making a plucky attempt at chasing us, despite the sparks that came off the road surface as the tyres flapped around the wheel rims.

      As the Volvo breasted the hill the kid changed gear. I looked back to see the Mercedes slewing across the road out of control with black snakes of rubber following it as the tyres were ripped to pieces. Despite the driver’s desperate efforts the Merc slowed, hesitated

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