Читать книгу Game of Spies: The Secret Agent, the Traitor and the Nazi, Bordeaux 1942-1944 - Paddy Ashdown, Paddy Ashdown - Страница 10

PROLOGUE

THE EXECUTION

The man’s index finger slid forward along the cool metal surface of the Colt in his overcoat pocket and curled gingerly around the trigger. The signal would come soon now.

The young woman walked half a pace ahead of him and a little to his right: she was lithe and pretty with auburn hair. Her wooden-soled sandals clacked on the dry path, and her wedding ring glinted in the last rays of the evening sun. She had dressed for London carefully, before leaving the house: slingback sandals with raised heels, a deep V-neckline green dress, which swung on her hips as she strode lightly along the forest track. She was happy: by the morning she and the husband she adored would be far away from this snake pit of betrayal and treachery.

In a few moments he would have to kill her. He had agreed to this when they had decided on the executions an hour previously. He had not killed before – though he had ordered others to be killed. But he was calm. It had to be done and he was ready for it.

On the woman’s right walked a second man, his hands too plunged deep into the pockets of a heavy coat, though it was a warm summer’s evening.

They strolled along the track, between the fir trees, chatting amiably.

‘When will the aircraft arrive?’

‘After dark I suppose. We’ll hear when we get to the landing site.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘To London? About three or four hours I should think.’

‘Oh! As long as …’

The sentence died in a cacophony of shots and screams coming from the other side of a small copse to their left.

With a flick of the wrist, the Colt was out of his pocket, its muzzle pressed against the back of the woman’s skull. He pulled the trigger. But it wouldn’t yield. In the millisecond it took him to push the safety catch down, the woman, feeling the cold of the muzzle, turned her head. He could already see the flared white of her left eye and the terrified gape of her mouth when the gun fired. She dropped silently to the ground, a crumple of green and red lying incongruously on the forest path, as his shot echoed through the woods, startling a small cloud of evening birds.

They half-carried, half-rolled the woman’s body into a stream, which ran quietly in a nearby ditch. Her fresh blood billowed in the clear water.

They were joined by two men half dragging another corpse, which trailed a wide smear of blood on the woodland path.

‘Both dead?’ the man with the Colt asked.

‘Yeah, but Christian botched the young man. I had to finish him off. He shouted for mercy.’

‘Put him in the ditch and we’ll collect the other. The guys will clear up in the morning.’

Ten minutes later the two men’s bodies lay heaped in an awkward jumble on top of the woman’s. Their blood mingled with hers, turning the little rivulet into a meandering of crimson among the grasses and ferns.

They covered them with branches, walked back to their vehicles in the gathering dusk and drove to Bordeaux, arriving just before the start of curfew.