The Prone Gunman

by Jean-Patrick Manchette

  “Close collaboration between French and American intelligence services has led to the quick identification of the terrorist,” said the newscaster. He then went on to say that the Soviet Union was seeking to stir up tension in the Persian Gulf, even though one might wonder whether such a policy was in the best interests of the Russians.

  Terrier listened and watched.

  About eight o’clock, Cox’s surveillance team was relieved: six men arrived in two sedans; four of the men went into Lionel Perdrix’s building; the other two got into the minibus. Four men left the building and two left the minibus; the night team drove off in the two sedans.

  A little after nine o’clock, the dumpy blonde began squirming and groaning again on the floor. Terrier gave her a carefully judged kick in the side, after which she kept still. Half an hour later, Terrier heard her crying indistinctly through the gag, and he noticed that she had urinated. She stopped crying a few minutes later. As if the prisoner had given him an idea, the killer pissed in the sink, then he smoked a Winston from a packet he had found on the table. He continued to watch. Silence had returned to the hallway; between seven-thirty and nine there had been noise, slamming doors, hurrying footsteps.

  A black SM arrived in Rue de Varenne and pulled up in front of the porte cochere of Lionel Perdrix’s building. The driver got out, leaving the engine running: the exhaust pipe released vapor into the cold air. The man was the Eurasian who had driven Cox the night before and Terrier and Anne another day. Terrier’s muscles tensed. The Eurasian knocked on the rear door of the minibus. It half opened. There was talk. Terrier slipped on his jacket. He left the room and hurried to the staircase. On the floor of the cold little room, blondie was again vainly twisting and turning about; she was reflected in the round mirror, between the postcards from distant lands. Lionel Perdrix and his girlfriend appeared on the sidewalk along Rue de Varenne. Both seemed to be in a foul mood; they were flanked by two of Cox’s men. The Eurasian signaled to them. The couple got into the SM. The Eurasian took the wheel.

  “Where to?”

  “To the Maison de la Radio.”

  “Hey!” said the girl.

  “We’ll drop the young lady at the first taxi stand,” Perdrix said to the Eurasian as he was pulling out. The male passenger turned to the female passenger. “Listen, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m late, thanks to their foolishness.” He looked anxiously at his watch. “Don’t you realize that we’re on the air in twenty minutes? Do you have money for a taxi?”

  “Yes,” the girl said furiously. “That’s fine.”

  The occupants of the SM remained silent till reaching the Esplanade des Invalides, where the automobile halted and the girl got out. The Eurasian headed west, along the Seine.

  “How long is this charade going to continue?” Perdrix asked him.

  “What charade?”

  “Putting guards in my house and spending an hour arguing about whether to let me go to work and having me driven around and . . . and. . . . ” Perdrix took a deep breath as he tried to find his words. “How long is this going to continue?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know anything about anything,” said the Eurasian. “I do what I’m told. I have no idea.”

  “I’m going to be late,” said Perdrix, sounding shocked. “I work for Radio France Internationale, if you’d care to know, but that probably means nothing to you.” He sniffed with disdain.

  “Oh, yes,” said the Eurasian man with a smile. “Broadcasts for niggers and chinks.”

  “Shit, you’re the one to talk!”

  The Eurasian frowned slightly.

  “If you want to be on time, I advise you not to insult me.”

  Lionel Perdrix’s eyes bulged and his mouth moved, but he refrained from speaking and hunched himself up, looking furious. His breathing was noisy, and he sighed ostentatiously. The SM crossed the Seine, reached the Maison de la Radio, and parked.

  “I’ll wait here to take you back,” said the driver. “How long will you be at it?”

  “That’s right, wait for me,” sniggered Perdrix, jumping from the SM and running toward the curved, labyrinthine building with his briefcase clutched beneath his arm.

  The Eurasian sniggered, too, and lighted a Camel. He picked up the telephone handset that was next to him on the seat, but he didn’t put it to his ear right away. A Peugeot 504 was parking some distance away. A silhouette in a sheepskin jacket got out and walked away, with his collar turned up and his hands in his pockets.

  “Sammy Chen here,” said the Eurasian. “Everything’s fine. Terrier’s followed me, probably from Rue de Varenne. He’s just parked. He’s walking away on foot. I don’t see him anymore.” He smiled as he spoke softly, without taking the Camel from his delicate mouth. “He’s sure to go around the Maison de la Radio and come up behind me. Make sure nothing nasty happens to me. But don’t rush it, either, okay?” He chuckled. “I’m hanging up now,” he said.

  He hung up and waited. The rear door was still ajar; Lionel Perdrix hadn’t bothered to slam it. Terrier slipped quickly into the SM and immediately put the barrel of the .38 against Sammy Chen’s cerebellum. The Eurasian put both hands high on the steering wheel.

  “I’m not making a move.”

  Terrier thrust a piece of paper in front of Sammy Chen’s face. The Eurasian read it and seemed to be thinking.

  “I don’t know anything,” he said. “I’m just a gofer. They don’t tell me about that kind of stuff.”

  Terrier pocketed the note. Then with his left hand he seized the auricle of the chauffeur’s left ear between his thumb and two fingers and tore it off. Sammy Chen howled. Terrier brought the barrel of his revolver down on Sammy Chen’s skull, and the man collapsed onto the steering wheel. Blood spurted from the left side of his head. Pedestrians walked close by without paying attention to what was happening in the SM. Terrier threw the ripped-off ear on the floorboard and impatiently yanked his victim’s hair. Sammy Chen moaned and thrashed about. Both back doors of the car opened at the same time. From one side a bearded man with blue eyes used both hands to point a Colt .45 automatic at Terrier’s head. From the other side a black man in sunglasses hit him very hard on the biceps with a short iron bar. Terrier grunted, his arm folded, and his revolver fired in the air, making a hole the size of a large strawberry in the roof of the SM. The black man tore the .38 from Terrier and struck him on the knee with the iron bar. Terrier doubled over, grabbing his knee with both hands. The black man sat down to his left, the bearded man to his right. The bearded man jammed his big automatic in Terrier’s ribs.

  “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here!” commanded the black man because a few passersby had stopped on hearing the gunshot and were now looking around for the source of the noise.

  “Talk about luck,” said Sammy Chen, sounding irritated. He started the car. “Look on the floor and see if my ear’s there—this asshole ripped it off—there may be a way of sewing it back on.”

  As the SM was starting off, the black man searched around on the floorboard and came up with the bloody relic. His eyebrows appeared above the frames of his glasses.

  “I must be dreaming!” he exclaimed as he examined the red auricle. “Shit!” he added respectfully.

  “This guy is really violent,” said Sammy Chen with conviction.

  The black man gave him his ear, and the mixed-race man wrapped it in a Kleenex and put it in his pocket as he drove. The SM was making for Neuilly. Terrier was hunched up, grimacing with pain. The black man and the bearded man searched him. They took away his Swiss Army knife and his Opinel knife—they even took his ballpoint pen. The bearded man read the piece of paper that Terrier had shown the Eurasian.

  “Well, sure,” he said with a disagreeable smile. “You’ll see your bitch again. We’re taking you to her now.”

  In Neuilly, the car pulled into the underground garage of a small building. They got out. The bearded man kept the barrel of his Colt jammed into Terrier’s thorax. Terrier was limping. S
ammy Chen tossed the black man the keys to the SM.

  “Take the car. And tell them to fix the hole in the roof right away,” he commanded. The black man seemed about to say something unpleasant. “I can’t take it there like this,” Chen explained amiably, indicating his torn-off ear and his cheek caked with drying blood.

  The black man took the wheel of the SM and left the parking garage as Terrier and the other two men got into an elevator. On the top floor, the doors opened directly into a bright apartment. The furniture was Scandinavian, and the pictures were abstract.

  “Go tell Cox,” said Sammy Chen.

  The bearded man gave him a doubtful glance, then went through a communicating door. Sammy Chen, his hands empty, remained alone with Terrier. Terrier eyed him.

  “If you even try to sneak in a punch,” said the mixed-race man, “I’ll give you a fumitsuki, a mae-tobi-geri, a hittsui-geri in the balls, and then I’ll really bust your chops and tear off both your ears. And plus . . .” (he suddenly began speaking very softly, between his teeth) “. . . and plus the situation is not what you think. I beg you to be patient.” Terrier looked at him and knit his brow. “Sit down, you stupid jerk,” Sammy Chen concluded in a loud voice.

  Terrier sat down in an armchair. He clenched his fists when Anne came into the room. She was wearing a suit and a blouse that were not quite the right size; her face was drawn, and she had circles under her eyes. But otherwise she seemed in good shape. The bearded man held her by the right elbow, still holding the Colt automatic in his other hand. Then Cox, dressed in cotton trousers and a turtleneck sweater, came in, along with a stranger. The stranger was fortyish and well preserved; he was wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit. He had a strong face with a square jaw under rather short and wavy brown hair. He looked like a young senior executive.

  “Well, so this is your Monsieur Christian,” he said, contemplating Terrier. “How’s it going?” he asked unexpectedly.

  Terrier shrugged.

  “He’s mute,” Cox observed glumly.

  “Oh, yes, I’d forgotten.”

  “He’s unusable.”

  “Let’s sit, let’s sit.” The tone of voice of the man in the suit was benign but authoritative. Everyone sat down except for Sammy Chen, who moved away slightly and leaned against a wall. “You really can’t speak?” Terrier shook his head. His gaze fixed on each of his interlocutors in turn, but kept returning to Cox.

  “If he’s mute, he’s unusable,” Cox repeated. “In any case, I don’t like your idea at all.”

  “Do you understand what’s happened to you these past weeks?” asked the man in the suit. “Or even in recent years, as one might say, in a sense?” Terrier nodded calmly. “That would surprise me,” said Blue Suit. “It hardly matters, anyway. You are aware of the accusations against you. You know that, according to a consistent body of evidence, you are in the pay of the Russians—as much out of conviction as well as for love of money. The list of your victims indicates clearly enough on whose account you employed your talents as an assassin. Would you be willing to confirm this? Would you be willing to admit it in a court of law?”

  Terrier’s brow was furrowed. Cox gave an exasperated sigh, leaned over the low table of light-colored wood, and removed the cover of a round, stainless-steel container as big as a salad bowl. The container was full of salted almonds, peanuts, cashews, and raisins; Cox took a small handful and conveyed it to his mouth, breathing heavily, angrily.

  “Well?” insisted Blue Suit.

  “You can’t have a mute testify,” said Cox with his mouth full. Food particles sailed past his teeth. “Everyone will say that he’s drugged or that he’s been brainwashed. We have to do as I said at the start.”

  “Monsieur Cox’s words don’t carry any weight,” the man in the powder-blue suit said to Terrier. “He set up the whole operation without authorization. He personally selected all your targets. The company approved all the contracts, but Cox never informed anyone that he was reserving you exclusively and systematically for the elimination of double agents. Cox played a kriegspiel to his own advantage.” The man leaned forward. He looked Terrier in the eye. His gaze and his facial expression bespoke candor and trust. “Monsieur Cox created you. He created an assassin whose list of targets comprised only dubious characters who had shown us a few kindnesses or, at least, displayed a few weaknesses. Cox set up the operation against Sheikh Hakim entirely by himself. Do you understand? If you had been killed yesterday evening, as he had planned, you would have made the perfect corpse. Everything that you did before can be laid at the Russians’ door or at the door of elements manipulated by the Russians. So the attack on Sheik Hakim can be as well. Do you understand that?”

  Terrier nodded.

  “It’s certainly a nuisance that you’re mute,” said Blue Suit. “You can never know whether a man who doesn’t speak is intelligent or stupid.” He shook his head musingly, as if he had discovered a profound truth and was now contemplating it.

  “He’s an idiot,” said Cox.

  Terrier grew excited and gestured eloquently.

  “Oh,” said Blue Suit. “You want to express yourself. You want to write.”

  From his jacket he produced a very thin notebook and a tiny golden mechanical pencil and passed them over to Terrier, who began to scribble busily.

  “Listen,’ said Cox, ”why do people create problems for themselves? That’s exactly what you’re doing.“ He looked spitefully at the man in the powder-blue suit. ”When you say that I set up the operation against Sheikh Hakim by myself, you know you’re flying blind.”

  “Oh, yes, I know, you have connections,” said Blue Suit with disdain. “Foreign connections—precisely what we don’t want.”

  Terrier returned his notebook. Blue Suit read it, raising his eyebrows. He chuckled and looked at Cox, then at Terrier, then once more at Cox.

  “He hates you,” he said. “And, well, he’s not an idiot. He’s ready to confirm everything, including the fact that he never did anything except obey his station chief.”

  “But,” said Cox, “that’s me.” He seemed surprised.

  “Yes,” said Blue Suit. “Martin Terrier’s claim is that he was manipulated by his station chief, who worked for the Russians. He’s ready to confirm everything.”

  “Very funny,” said Cox without smiling. From under his sweater he produced a Colt Commander, and Sammy Chen took two steps forward and tore the weapon from his hand.

  “Thank you, Sammy,” said Blue Suit. He smiled at Cox. “You’ve lost your reflexes, I see.”

  Cox looked stupefied. He stuffed his mouth with almonds and other junk from the steel container. Peanut fragments stuck to his lower lip. He shook his head. He stared into space.

  “You know very well that I never. . . . ”

  “Well, yes, of course,” said Blue Suit. “But someone has to carry the can. Martin Terrier will carry the can. But there’ll be a little can for you, too. It will irritate your foreign connections, of course. But we don’t want anything to do with your foreign connections. The company has had enough of your faction.”

  “It would be simpler for everyone to do as I said,” muttered Cox as he dug in the container for more peanuts and almonds.

  “Yes,” said Blue Suit, “but we have Terrier alive. We’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Cox, sounding assertive. From under the almonds and raisins and peanuts and salted hazelnuts he pulled out a tiny Lenz Lilliput automatic pistol and extended his arm and put the barrel of the weapon against Martin Terrier’s temple and shot him in the head. Terrier opened his mouth wide, half raised his arms in the air, and slid to the bottom of his seat.

  “The situation has just changed,” observed Cox.

  “Not so much, not so much,” Terrier declared in a thick and obstinate voice as he got back up, with blood flowing from the hole in his head. It was only then that Anne began to scream.

  21

  Anne’s scr
eam was brief. It stopped short when Cox fired again, producing a sound like a hard slap. The second 4.25mm projectile penetrated Martin Terrier’s left lung and lodged there. Martin Terrier’s outstretched right arm swept through the air, and the palm of his hand struck the little pistol and knocked it from Cox’s fingers and sent it flying to the far end of the room. The weapon landed at the foot of the wall and fetched up against the baseboard. Cox gave a sharp groan. He stumbled as he tried to jump over the low table. The hazelnuts and the rest were overturned. Cox fell to his hands and knees in the middle of the carpet. Continuing to groan with terror, he set off on all fours at an astonishing speed toward the tiny automatic. Terrier took four even quicker strides and picked up the weapon. He aimed it with both hands at Cox’s sweat-covered forehead.

  “What should I do? What should I do?” asked Sammy Chen with a distinct nervousness as he brandished the Colt Commander. He seemed uncertain whether or on whom he should open fire.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” commanded Blue Suit in an even more nervous tone. When Cox had fired the second time at Terrier, Blue Suit had put his weight on his heels and forced the little sofa on which he sat to tip over backward; now he was down on his belly behind the overturned sofa. “No one do anything! Please!”