Faith. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ pocket he’d have cash and any other valuables that a hitchhiker might carry.

      ‘Help!’ I called in a strangled voice, and with a note of terror that was easy to simulate.

      Wim grinned widely. He was a sadist, and the prospect of a victim terrified and paralysed with fear was exactly what excited him. I put my elbows back and braced myself against the seat. My whimpering was enough to relax the tension that had racked his bloody face. I needed him nearer, and nearer he came. He whispered: ‘There’s no one here to help you, mister.’

      He didn’t complete the sentence, for at the last word I kicked out, kicking harder than I had ever kicked before, even harder than I’d kicked for the football team my father had organized for the German kids and drafted me into. The sole of my heavy East German shoe – with its metal heels – hit Wim full in his grinning face. My timing was right and so was my judgement of distance. He went hurtling back, his spine hit the steering wheel and his head hit the glass window with a bang loud enough to make the metal cab ring with the sound.

      Then I was on to him. I scrambled around to find the metal flashlight from where it had rolled under my seat, and, taking all the time I needed, I hit him across the side of the head. I suppose I went mad for a moment. The release of the fear I’d suffered made me lose all restraint. At the second blow his eyes closed as he screamed out with pain. I didn’t stop. I hit him again and again until his cries became whimpers and then silence and his body slumped down with his knees on the floor of the cab and his body skewed sideways on the seat, arms trapped in the steering wheel like a man at prayer.

      I stopped myself then and sat back on my seat to collect my thoughts. What was happening to me? Everything I’d ever learned had been abandoned in that moment of rage. The last thing I needed was a murder investigation on my heels. I took the Dutchman’s arm: his pulse was weak but steadying. He would probably come round eventually; it was hard to judge how long it would take. His face was bloody, his jaw broken, he’d lost teeth and was badly cut. I touched him carefully, avoiding getting blood marks on my clothes.

      I opened the driver’s door. Using my foot, I slowly pushed his unconscious body through the door until it overbalanced and crashed on to the ground. Then I went through his pockets to find his keys. I took them and made sure that all the doors of the cab were firmly locked, and the thief-alarm on, before tossing the whole bunch of keys into the undergrowth as far as I could throw them. They would not be easy to find unless the cops brought a metal detector into use.

      I searched his other pockets. There was a billfold at his hip. In it I found a couple of driving licences, a few Dutch, German and Italian currency notes, a handwritten letter in Dutch, four snapshots of different undressed women – Wim’s recent conquests no doubt – and some plastic credit cards. I removed everything that might reveal his identity and buried it in the mud. The money I pocketed: motive robbery. Then I pulled off Wim’s jeans and leather jacket and silk shirt, bundled them all up and hid those too. When I came back he stirred but did not recover his wits. I dragged him off the tarmac and into a cold muddy puddle.

      Having done all I could to delay Wim’s return to the real world, I put the bag over my shoulder and went out on to the road and began to signal passing cars and trucks with the flashlight.

      The rain soaked me to the skin, and passing trucks and cars sprayed me with muddy water without even slowing at the sight of me. I began to believe that I would stand there for ever. Fighting Wim off, and the narrow escape from death, had shaken me. The cold rain beat down upon my head and my resolve dwindled and was gone. I was bruised and battered; my head was still singing from the blows with the metal flashlight. Even worse was the near-mortal blow that had been delivered to my self-confidence. How could I have been so easily caught off-guard by a muscle-bound bird-brain like Wim? Only a year or so ago I would have recognized such a thug at first sight, and knocked him cold before he could raise a hand against me.

      For perhaps the first time in my life I saw Bernard Samson as so many others had always seen him. I’m not talking about any kind of symbolism: my despair was practical, not philosophical, just as my joy had always been. But I was only in this predicament because I had gone out of my way to disobey orders from London Central about contacting Werner. I’d beaten Wim more ferociously than was necessary to escape him, and no doubt left enough evidence for an energetic police inquiry to trace me back to the ride I got out of Berlin. Worse was the fact that I had no one to turn to for help. Who at London Central would risk their career covering for me? Not even Frank would go that far. The two women in my life had nothing to thank me for, and Werner seemed to have gone to a great deal of trouble to make contacting him difficult. I was totally alone, in deep trouble and friendless. But I must get to Werner nevertheless: he was the only person who would understand my predicament. The fact that he was in no position to help me was a secondary consideration.

      The nudges and winks, the hints and outright slanders I’d heard over the past few weeks, about Werner’s sudden departure from the Departmental payroll, had not fooled me. If any of those stories, about Werner embezzling money or otherwise upsetting the applecart, were true, the Department would have put out a worldwide alert, found him and punished his misdeeds. But they had not done that, they’d left him in Switzerland to wither on the vine. That suggested one thing above all others. I knew only one sin that London would temporize, compromise and negotiate about: betrayal. Werner must have let something slip when he was over there on one of his business trips. It was easy enough to do. I would hate to be called into account for all the times I had sailed close to the wind. But for the time being Werner was in no position to help my career, even if he had the inclination to do so.

      Rain washed my bruised and bloody face and squelched inside my shoes. The highway was completely silent and the sour stink of diesel fumes grew fainter as it was washed away by the rain. At this time of night even long-distance drivers are tempted to find a spot on the road to shut their eyes for an hour or so. I had no alternative but to wait, but so much time was passing that I walked back past the slip road which led to Wim’s transporter. Several times I fancied I saw him walking around under the trees there, but they were no more than shadows conjured up by my troubled imagination. All the same, not wanting to take the risk of Wim spotting me at the roadside, I walked farther along the road, back the way we’d come. I was still walking when a car caught me in its main beams and slowed to pick me up.

      It was a dented Audi with a middle-aged German in a damp raincoat sitting at the wheel. As he wound the window down cigarette smoke billowed into my face. ‘What are you doing out here at this time of night?’ he said in a quarrelsome tone.

      ‘I had a breakdown,’ I said. ‘Could you take me to the nearest town?’

      ‘Get in,’ he said.

      I didn’t get in. It was at that very moment that my mind suddenly exploded, and the events of the last hour or so assumed a new and terrifying pattern. How could I have mistaken Wim for a psychopath who killed skinny kids and foolhardy girls for kicks, or to get his hands on their meagre cash and belongings? My narrow escape had been from an assigned hit by a KGB professional. Wim had been sent to kill me. It all fitted together. He had been waiting in the right Autobahn interchange at the right time and selected me in the driver’s canteen. He had beckoned me, and when getting me aboard had stopped at the ramp, a place where he made sure that no witnesses were around to see him picking me up. It had all been carefully planned: the offer of a swig from his gin bottle, and the heater turned fully up to make me drowsy. No firearms: bullets would leave bullet holes and too much blood.

      I shuddered. It was a narrow escape. Had my luck not prevailed Wim would now have just finished burying me in a shallow grave by the roadside, where a body could lay undiscovered for years, maybe for ever. Wim was not some homicidal maniac; he was a professional killer.

      The driver of the Audi was looking at my well-worn coat and the cheap bag with the СКАЧАТЬ