Len Deighton - XPD

‘I’ve got a gun,’ said Stein. He still had not moved from the armchair. ‘And I know how to use it.’ Breslow remained very still. There was no point in getting killed if the police were already on their way. He was comforted by the fact that he could not now hear the siren. The police dispatchers only authorized one police car at a time to use the siren: that was how you could differentiate police sirens from those of the fire department, which let all vehicles use them.

‘Stand still, damn you!’

Suddenly Breslow remembered that this was a sound stage. Those vast padded doors he had passed through would not permit even the roar of low-flying aircraft on the approach to Los Angeles International airport to mar the recordings. There was no chance that he could have heard a siren of any kind. No sound could get into here, and none-not even a pistol shot-could get out. That’s why Stein had chosen this place. He could play with him like a cat with a mouse.

Breslow felt himself sweating and knew his face must be flushed and shiny. He wondered whether Stein could see from that distance. Perhaps he had even planned it carefully enough to bring night glasses. He must run; once Stein got closer to him he would have no chance. He whirled round and ran for the doors. Crack! There was a flash as Stein fired but the bullet whined over his head, chipped a piece of wood from the ‘marble’ and threw a handful of splinters at him. By now Breslow had reached the big mahogany doors and was struggling to get through them and away. His panic seemed to give him the agility and the strength of two men, but no matter how hard he tugged at the doorknobs the door didn’t budge or even rattle.

‘Oh, my God!’ These were not practical; these were dummy doors, as solid and immovable as the remainder of the wall. Breslow turned the other way and ran, as another shot flashed and whined through the darkness. Breslow was suddenly punched in the abdomen and felt a blow to the knees. He nearly cried out aloud but enough of the old discipline remained to repress his emotions to a grunt. He had blundered straight into the mahogany cabinet that was placed under the seventeenth-century Gobelin tapestry. His splayed arms encountered the ornaments on the cabinet top. There was a crash as some statuettes and a beautiful George II bracket clock hit the floor with an agonizing crash of breaking movement and jangled chimes. He heard Stein chuckle.

By now Breslow was at the next set of doors. He wrestled with them and waited all the while for the sound of the next shot and inevitable blow that would crack his spine and tear out his belly. At first he thought that these must also be dummy doors but then he felt them move under his weight. His shoulder was against the carved mahogany, and he pressed so hard that he thought he must fracture his bones. But the doors were twelve feet high, and even the version that the studio carpenters had fashioned seemed as heavy as lead. He squeezed through them as soon as they were partly open. Behind him he heard another shot. It sounded closer and the flash of the gun seemed nearer too. Stein was behind him.

Breslow looked right and left. On one side of him there were the gigantic studio doors through which large pieces of scenery were moved. That was out of the question. On his right-down the dark corridor marked only with blue safety lights-there was the door usually used by the sound technicians going into their glass-fronted room. Breslow dodged to one side and swung under a microphone boom and behind one of the big searchlights that the industry calls ‘brutes’. It was dark here and he waited a moment in the hope Stein might hurry off down the corridor and give him a chance to recross the studio and escape through the vegetation of the ‘gardens’ outside the Chancellery windows.

But Stein halted at the sign ‘recording in progress’ marked with the red warning light that was now dark. He seemed to realize that Breslow had not gone that way and he turned back and carefully surveyed the space behind the high walls of the Chancellery set. The great Nazi eagle threw a huge shadow across the complex patterns of the simulated marble floor. There was a clang and a muffled curse as Stein’s pistol struck a lamp stand and his foot caught a cable. But Stein did not stumble; he was moving slowly towards Breslow as he scanned and eliminated each part of the studio.

‘I can see you, Max. Come on out, I can see you.’

Breslow did not move. He held his breath. He could see Stein’s ungainly form as he ambled very slowly forward, crumpled and dishevelled like some disturbed gorilla.

‘I can see you, you bastard,’ Stein called loudly when he was only a few feet away, but Breslow remained motionless and felt his heart beating so loudly that he thought he was going to faint from the exertion. Just as Breslow was going to speak, Stein turned away from him and went towards the camera crane that was parked against the wall. ‘I can see you,’ he repeated.

Breslow cursed his foolishness at not having brought his little pocket pistol with him. He eased slowly backwards toward the padded wall of the studio. His foot caught in one of the electrical cables but he untangled it carefully and stepped out of the loop. Stein was inside the Führer’s study now and Breslow was able to get back to the doorway which, with clever use of some trick photography, would look like a part of the long hall of the Chancellery. He stepped over some elaborate bronze wall candelabra that were placed on the studio floor ready to be positioned after the camera dolly had moved back this way.

‘Breslow!’

Stein’s shout told him that the fat man was now on the far side of the set. Breslow grasped the foot of the fixed metal ladder and, moving quickly for a man of his age, he climbed up it towards the lighting rail, a gallery which ran all round the studio. He heard Stein call again. From up here on the gantry, Breslow could see Stein as he stepped cautiously into the potted plants and imitation branches which were suspended outside the windows. They never look up, thought Breslow-he remembered the instructor telling him that when he went on the assault course at Bad Tölz. Only children look up, adults never do.

‘Breslow!’

Stein’s voice was almost imperceptibly higher now, as he thought that Breslow must have escaped from the studio by some exit that he did not know about. Breslow crouched behind the rail. It would be difficult to see him here, for the whole gantry was crammed with photographic lights of every shape and size. He felt safe now and had the almost hysterical desire to laugh aloud, to shriek and shout at Stein and call him names. Stein moved again. He was under one of the little lights and Breslow could see him clearly. He was carrying a First World War Mauser pistol of the sort for which the wooden carrying case could be converted into a shoulder stock. It was a museum piece; only in California would such a bizarre contraption still be seen. And yet it was a superb old gun and, in the hands of a man who could use it, deadly. Perhaps it was a deliberate choice of weapon. Certainly, in any of the film studios it would be dismissed as a prop for some old film rather than a murder weapon. He watched Stein bring the weapon up to his shoulder and swing it round experimentally.

‘Breslow. I can see you, Breslow.’ He was aiming at the dark space where the ‘garden’ gave way to a corner of the studio. Spare furniture was piled there. They were going to film a corner of this set a second time, with specially ‘antiqued’ chairs to emphasize the passage of time.

‘Breslow!’ Stein’s voice was distorted by the way that his face was pressed close to the wooden stick as he squinted along the sights of the gun. He fired. Crack! Up on the gantry the sound echoed against the metal. ‘Got you!’ he shouted, but there was no cry of pain and Stein realized that there was nothing there. ‘I got all night, Breslow. You ain’t never going to get through those doors quick enough to get out alive. I said I’m going to kill you, Breslow, and I’m going to do it. You’d just better believe me.’