The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
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a leisurely fashion. And Squire regained his ability to move.
Someone was firing at the Zastava from the lower floor, taking pot-shots through the boarded windows with a revolver. Squire left the shelter of the car at a run, throwing himself down against the front of the building. One of the boards blocking the window by the front door was broken. He crawled to a position beneath it. Rising, he lobbed a grenade through the hole. Pressing himself against the stonework, he waited in fierce anticipation, teeth clenched. As the explosion came, he moved to the door. He kicked it in and burst forward, firing his sten, all strictly according to the training manual. It came like second nature.
Smoke, dirt, whirling particles of straw, billowed in his face. Through the filth, he saw that the meagre room contained six men. All were in a demoralized state. The two nearest Squire had suffered directly from his grenade. Their uniforms were torn and bloody. They sprawled on the floor groaning, surrounded by blood and guns. Squire kicked the guns out of the way. At the other end of the room were four men who had been sitting round a table, drinking coffee from a metal flask; one was hurt and clutched his face, moaning; the other three offered no resistance and climbed nervously to their feet at the ferocious sight of Squire, raising their hands above their heads.
Pointing the sten at them, he went forward, satisfied to see them cower back. They were dressed in rough civilian clothes. All were young and pallid of face. They had no guns. It occurred to him that they might be drivers. He made them undo their belts and throw them out of the nearest window, through a broken board. They stood facing him, holding up their trousers and shaking visibly, faces ghastly. They plainly expected to be murdered. He felt no compassion.
He whistled through the board to Slobodan, who whistled back and pointed upstairs. The important people would be up there. Squire blazed away experimentally through the boards above his head. Oaths sounded. Through the loose boards in one of the rear windows, he saw a body go by – someone had jumped for it. Slobodan’s sten chattered. He wouldn’t let them get away.
There was nothing for it but to rush the stairs, hoping the enemy there were also temporarily demoralized. He ran up the steps in a crouch, yelling, firing from the hip. He flung himself flat as he entered the room. Bits of tile went flying as Slobodan fired from below.
A narrow-faced man with a mole on one cheek, his eyes narrowed, fired point blank at Squire and missed. He was crouching behind a wooden crate. His uniformed sleeve had snagged on a bent nail. As he jerked his arm to free himself, Squire half-rose and swung his sten. He caught the narrow-faced man hard across the eyes with the barrel.
He staggered to his feet. Another uniformed man, who had been taking cover behind an upturned wooden bed, rose and jumped from the window. A shot and a shout sounded. Slobodan was in control out there.
‘Okay, Squire?’ he yelled. ‘Want help?’
Slobodan’s first grenade had effectively wrecked the room. Maps and a leather briefcase lay on the floor, against a shattered vodka bottle. In one corner, the walls were splattered with blood; a man lay there, his head hidden. He twitched faintly. Squire went over and kicked him, but he was completely out of action. That left only the narrow-faced man, who had fallen face-down over the packing case.
Squire prodded him in the ribs with his gun.
‘Up!’
Despite the blow with the sten, which should have cracked the front of his skull, the man still had fight in him. He had concealed a broad-bladed military knife in his right hand. As he came up from the crate, he struck at Squire with a practised underarm stroke. Squire swerved to save his ribs and kicked the man on the shin. The man fell back onto his other leg, his face suffused with blood, his pupils dilated with the determination to kill. He charged in again, knife first. The bullets from Squire’s gun caught him full in the chest. He staggered backwards over the crate and fell to the floor among shards of roofing tiles. His left leg kicked for a moment.
Squire went and leaned against the nearest wall, panting and trembling. He slung the sten over one shoulder and wiped repeatedly at his face with his hand. Sweat poured from him. ‘Father, father, I’m sorry …’ When he realized he was repeating the phrase over and over, like a mantra, he tried to take control of himself. A fit of sneezing overcame him.
He went to the rear window and spat out into the bushes beneath, cleansing his mouth.
‘You finito up there?’
Slobodan stood below, covering three men with his gun. They leaned, faces inwards, against the farmhouse, hands above their heads, trousers round their knees. Slobodan gave the Thumbs Up sign.
Squire could not speak.
‘I’ve got Zvonko Nedéc here. That’s worth something. Who’ve you got up there?’
Nedéc was a well-known pro-Soviet Croat, high on the Belgrade wanted list.
Squire went into an empty corner of the room and was violently sick. Sweat poured from him. He found himself weeping. The vomit splashed his boots and slacks.
Confused, he realized after a moment that Slobodan was in the room, driving Nedéc before him, the latter with hands tied and face ashen; stains down the front of his trousers showed where he had pissed himself in fright. Only Slobodan was enjoying himself. He clapped Squire on the shoulder.
‘Take it easy.’
Squire sat shaking on the rear window sill, mopping his mouth and face. Chill overcame him. He had shot a man down like a dog. Almost without comprehension, he took in the view from his vantage point.
Behind the house ran a ruinous stone wall with a steep drop on its far side. Parked under the drop were three old German army lorries with camouflage canopies lashed into place. No doubt that they contained the stolen arms from the arms train. Beyond the lorries, the broken Istran landscape fell away, giving place to a magnificent panorama of the Kvarner Bay. The sun shone dazzling on the blue water. Resting on the breast of the sea were the islands of Cres and Losinj. Squire stared at the sea with longing, until a movement nearer at hand caught his eye.
Parked under a tree at a distance from the lorries was a white Zastava. A thick-set young man in civilian clothes had broken cover and was running towards it. He climbed in and started up the engine.
At the sound, Slobodan rushed to the window. He pointed at the car.
‘Why don’t you shoot? That’s one of the rats we saw first, maybe!’
Squire shook his head. Slobodan produced his last grenade, pulled its pin, and hurled it at the car, already moving downhill. The grenade exploded behind it. The car kept on going, bumping across the field, and disappeared behind a fold of hill.
Losing interest, Slobodan gave Squire a cigarette. Both men lit up. Squire was ashamed of how much his hand shook.
‘Come and look see this. It’ll cheer you up. Here’s Milo Strugar’s killer, okay.’
Slobodan turned and set his foot against the shoulder of the man Squire had shot, so that head and narrow face rolled over in Squire’s direction. A further nudge from Slobodan’s boot brought the head into a beam of sunlight, which blazed in through a gap in the roof. The features of the dead man were unpleasantly illuminated, so that Squire’s stomach lurched again. The features were heavy and sagged in death. On the left cheek was a large mole, its long dark hairs glinting in the sun. It made the man look harmless in death.
There was no doubting his identity.
‘You killed Slatko, my clever young friend!’
Squire had studied the dead man’s photograph a number of times in Belgrade. Codename Slatko had been active ever since Stalin ceased to be Tito’s patron and master; he was the Russian colonel in charge of softening-up operations in Yugoslavia prior to a Soviet take-over. As head of Department XIII of Soviet Counter-Espionage, he was answerable only to the Soviet Central Committee. Slatko’s presence here in Istra showed how confident the Russians had become of defeating Tito. Perhaps the stolen arms were to reinforce an intended strike presided over by Slatko, and timed to take place while the West had