Yesterday's Spy by Len Deighton Page A

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!
    â€˜
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 Caty and Pina, but she had died in Ravensbrück 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, Caty’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.
    â€˜You cow!’ Fabre’s face contorted, and he brought his Browning up in a two-hand clasp, bending his knees slightly, FBI 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 the smell of scorched cloth, 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Are you all right, Pina?’
    â€˜We must get away from here,