by Len Deighton
‘It’s too late now,’ said Breslow. ‘The papers are destroyed. The Jaguar burnt.’
‘I know,’ said Stein. ‘I lost every last penny I had in that auto … Bearer bonds: two million dollars’ worth of them.’
Breslow inched along the edge of the Führer’s desk. He had always thought that desk absurdly out of proportion to the human scale and now, as he moved along it, it seemed as long as a football field.
‘Just stay exactly where you are,’ Stein called. Now that Breslow’s eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness he could see that Stein was not sprawled back in the armchair; he was crouching forward. Breslow continued to move sideways only a fraction at a time. He knew that the left side of the desk was in line with the double doors behind it. He had remembered that from the real thing, and from the photographs he had given the set dresser. Now he prayed to God that the technicians had placed everything exactly the way the research indicated that it had been. At last he could get his left hand to the chamfered corner that surmounted the massive leg.
‘You’re moving,’ called Stein loudly. It was a good-natured complaint of the sort that children might use when playing the game of ‘statues’. Breslow strained his ears and fancied he heard the distant sound of a police-car siren. It was no more than a stifled whine but then sometimes they only used the siren just before crossing the intersections, and cut it off until they got to the next one.
‘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 door knobs 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 distorted 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 towards 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 see
n. 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.’
Breslow leant over the rail to watch as Stein moved under him. To his horror, he saw the glint of gold as his pen fell from his pocket. It glinted as it fell and clattered to the floor at Stein’s feet.
‘Ahhh!’ roared Stein. ‘You cunning little creep. You’re up there on that gantry, are you?’ He pumped three shots into the air. They came uncomfortably close and Breslow shrank away and fell against the wall as the bullets hit the metal racks and ricocheted back across the studio.
Breslow ran along the lighting balcony while Stein reloaded his gun. The gantry swayed and groaned with the violent movement. Breslow wondered if he would be able to climb over the rail and jump down into the camera crane. It was a distance of about six feet. In the old days it would have been nothing to him but now it was daunting. He looked over the rail. There was only one metal ladder up to the gantry and now, to Breslow’s horror, Stein began to climb it. Breslow was on the far side of the set, over the Führer’s desk. There in the leather inlay he could see the pattern of the famous half-sheathed sword that the Führer himself thought so appropriate for his desk top.
‘I’m coming, Breslow.’
Stein was halfway up the ladder now and already the exertion was making him puff. Once Stein was up here he would have a clear view all round the balcony. There would be nowhere to hide then. If Stein truly intended to murder him, then there would be no escape.
‘Stein,’ shouted Breslow. ‘Let me talk to you. It’s madness for us to fight.’
‘You killed the colonel, my best friend! You cheated my buddies!’ It was as much as he could do to get the words out and still have breath enough for climbing. It was slow work.
‘I killed no one.’
‘You goddamn Nazi! You killed my brother.’
Stein was at the top of the ladder now. He struggled to get over the top of it and on to the lighting gallery. He was holding the huge Mauser in one hand and supporting himself with the other.
‘Look out, Stein!’ Perhaps it was madness to shout a warning of danger to a man who was trying to kill you, but Breslow’s cry was spontaneous. Stein had put all his weight on the spotlight bracket, a clamp that was not designed to hold such weight. Normally only the electricians ever came up here on the balcony, and they knew every frailty of the metalwork and every uncertainty of the guard rail. Stein did not. Perhaps if Stein had released his hold on the Mauser, he might still have regained his balance and steadied himself against the rail, but he would not relinquish his gun.
‘Awww!’ Stein felt himself beginning to topple as the lighting bracket bent outwards and down. He was arched backwards now, his broad-brimmed white hat fell and drifted down into the studio. His mouth was open and his gun flailing the air as he made a frantic effort to swim upwards into the darkness. ‘Help!’ But he was already falling. The huge, untidy bundle of white clothes somersaulted very slowly off the ladder top, his arms spreadeagled and the gun outstretched. Head downwards, he gathered speed as he dropped past the expanses of red marble and the eagles and insignia and, with a terrible crash, hit the studio floor.
‘Stein!’
Breslow ran back along the gallery and clambered down the metal steps as fast as he could. ‘Stein,’ he said again as he bent low over the crumpled shape. He had fallen head-first, his skull was cracked and his face bloody. There was little chance of mistake. Breslow had seen enough dead men to recognize one.
‘Why?’ Breslow asked him leaning close. ‘Why did you want to kill me? It’s too late for that.’
Boyd Stuart swung into the forecourt of the Big O Donut Shop where the Santa Monica Freeway passes over La Brea. The tyres of the car squealed loudly enough to make the police officers drinking coffee there crane forward to look out of the window.
Billy Stein and Mary Breslow were in the car with him. He had contacted them as soon as news came that Stein had been seen. Boyd watched while Billy Stein ran into the coffee shop to talk to the policemen. It was better that there was a relative present. The policemen would be more understanding about a relative. Whatever it was that Billy said to the two policemen, it was enough to make them abandon their coffee, pick up their doughnuts and hurry out to their car. It swung round and up the ramp to the freeway with Boyd Stuart in hot pursuit.
‘They won’t be in time,’ said Mary – more because she wanted to hear Stuart contradict her than because she was calculating her father’s peril. She did not dare do that. If Billy’s father really wanted to carry out his threat, he had surely had time enough to do it now.
‘It will be all right, Miss Breslow,’ said Stuart. He put his foot down. It was not easy to keep up with the police car. The black and white swung over to the number one lane and had its lights flashing. An old Buick accelerated past and cut steeply into the space between them. Stuart cursed. People did that sometimes, following police cars for no other reason than to join in the excitement.
By the time the police got to the studio entrance their radio had sent the news ahead. A studio guard in a smart black-leather zipper jacket was standing at the open gates.
‘Studio number four,’ he shouted. ‘The chief will meet you at the main door,’ he told the driver.
The car moved off again, grunting and groaning in the dips and potholes of the badly maintained studio road. Stuart’s car pulled through the gate behind the police car. The gatemen decided they must be some sort of undercover detail and let them go.
They parked alongside the black and white and scrambled out. The officer, name-tagged Cooper, reached for his pistol.
‘It’s my father,’ Billy added hurriedly.
The cop turned round to look at them both. ‘Take it easy, folks,’ he said. ‘And stay outside.’ The passenger officer had unlocked the shotgun from its rack under the front seats. Now he pumped it to put a shell in the chamber.
The chief security guard for the studio led them inside through the massive soundproof doors. There was an oppressive silence. Silently, Officer Cooper put his hand on the chest of the security man to indicate that he should remain here at the door. The passenger officer, still holding the shotgun in the high-port position prescribed by regulations, moved silently over to the vegetation, keeping away from the windows. From this side of the set, he could see what a fake the whole thing was: the heavy window openings and marble surrounds were plasterboard and laths, with the rumpled ends of patterned paper poking out of the clamps.
‘This is the police.’ The voice sounded unnaturally loud. There was no reply. The policeman stepped into the set, keeping well behind the half-open door. ‘Jesus!’ he said softly as he caught sight of the opulent room and the huge Nazi eagle over the door.
Breslow released his hold on Stein’s pulse. It had been nothing more than a formality: Stein was dead. From somewhere a long way away, Breslow could hear voices but his mind was too absorbed to hear them properly. He picked up the ridiculous Mauser that Stein had been carrying
and stood up. Poor old Stein.
Officer Cooper saw the sudden movement, shouted ‘Freeze!’, brought his pistol up high and double-gripped it to shoot.
‘Papa!’ It was a scream rather than a call. Mary Breslow came running into the line of fire and grabbed her father. ‘Papa, Papa, Papa!’ She kissed him and held him tight, seeing nothing and caring for nothing, even when her foot accidentally touched Stein’s body.
Breslow seemed to see the policemen and Billy Stein for the first time. He blinked.
‘He fell, Billy. He fell from the gantry up there.’
Billy Stein looked down at the body and twisted his hands. He did not want to touch this bloody figure which bore such slight resemblance to his father. He looked round at the others. They expected something from him, so Billy knelt and, suppressing a shudder, put one hand upon his dead father’s shoulder. Perhaps they expected him to cry or to wail, but all that would come later. It would be something only between him and his father; Billy Stein was not given to public display of emotion.
‘My father couldn’t climb up there, Mr Breslow.’
‘He could and he did, Billy. He had this gun; he was trying to kill me. He said I’d killed his brother.’
Officer Cooper turned to the chief security guard. ‘Where’s the phone?’ And to his partner he said, ‘We’ll tell them he’s badly hurt, OK?’
The detective nodded. It was always better to say the body might still be showing signs of life. That way they would not have to wait for the coroner’s office to send someone down here. Better that he went to the receiving hospital and was pronounced ‘dead on arrival’ – that way they could get back on the job.