VENDETTA
Derek Lambert
Collins Crime Club
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1986
Copyright © Derek Lambert 1986
Design and illustration by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Derek Lambert asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008268497
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008268497
Version: 2018-04-18
For Jack and Nora, good neighbours
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine … War is hell.
Attributed to General Sherman in an address at Michigan University on June 19, 1879.
In 1942 while savage fighting was at its height in Stalingrad two snipers, one Russian and one German, stalked each other among the ruins. In this prolonged duel within a battle each marksman became the embodiment of his country’s desperate designs. That much is fact; in the rest of the book, historical detail apart, the only truth is hope.
CONTENTS
The young man cleaning his gun smelled cold, the true cold that is a prelude to snow, and was comforted. Snow was the white crib of security before the Army took him.
He peered over the rim of the shell-crater. To the east, across the Volga, beyond the smoke and dust of battle, the grey October sky was metallic-bright, but the breath of winter was unmistakable.
To a Siberian, that is.
Razin pulled him down to the planks laid in a square around the stove. ‘Have you gone crazy? Why don’t you do the job properly, stick a wreath on your helmet?’
‘He couldn’t see me.’ Antonov picked up his rifle and with a rag massaged yellow oil into the stock beneath the telescopic sight.
‘Couldn’t see you?’ Razin took a crumpled pack of papirosy from his faded brown tunic, squatted beside the stove and lit one from its flanks; specks of tobacco sparked and died on the glowing metal. ‘You have his eyes?’