Vendetta
A classic World War II novel from the bestselling thriller writer Derek Lambert.For the beleaguered German and Russian armies there is no war beyond the carnage in the city’s grim skeleton, and the terrible winter at their heels. Desperate men need heroes to boost their morale: orders come from the very top for a duel between champion snipers Antonov the Russian, and Meister the German – a contest each must win. For the two marksmen there is now no war but the race to pin the other in their sights. And no other companion, either, than the stranger whose mind each must read. Dead heroes or living legends? Only time will tell.‘The book is perfect. The horror of war is captured by the spare prose; the tension mounts, and the inevitable confrontation is uplifting in its outcome’ Daily Telegraph‘Told me more than all the military historians ever could about the greatest battle of World War Two’ Daily Mail‘Tense and gripping … a most effective chiller’ British Book News‘One is reminded of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness … For those who like to be in the thick of it, this book is a must’ Surrey and South Middlesex Times‘A good war story’ Kirkus Reviews‘A unique tour de force … poignant, cogent, a strong novel, suspenseful and fascinating, a novel not easily forgotten’ Florida Sun News
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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?’
‘There’s no cover for him out there.’ Antonov jerked his thumb in the direction of the mangled rail tracks, known to the Germans as the Tennis Racquet, separating the river from the tooth-stump ruins of Stalingrad.
Katyusha mortar rockets fired from the far bank of the Volga exploded in German-held rubble. A German field gun replied. Antonov longed for the snow-silence of the steppe or its stunned summer stillness or the breathing quiet of its nights.
‘And I suppose you know what he’s doing?’ Razin, an old soldier of twenty-eight, pulled at the ragged droop of his moustache and pushed his steel helmet onto the back of his cropped hair.
‘Eating probably. It’s lunchtime. Sausage? Bread? Maybe an apple if he’s lucky.’ Antonov removed a flake of ash from Razin’s cigarette from the barrel of the Mosin-Nagant.
‘Beer? Schnapps?’
‘No liquor. He needs a steady hand.’
‘Like you?’
‘Like me,’ Antonov agreed.
‘And he knows what you’re doing?’
‘If he were asked he’d probably answer: “Cleaning his gun.” It’s a good bet.’
‘You’re like twins and yet you want to kill each other.’
‘We don’t want to. We have to.’
‘I wonder.’ Razin, a Ukrainian with a furrowed smile and wary eyes who had been ordered to protect Antonov, rolled the creased cardboard tube of his yellow cigarette between thumb and forefinger. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to kill him?’
Antonov considered the question carefully. When he hunted animals – deer, elk, lynx – yes, he wanted to kill; that was sport and it was senseless to deny its pleasures. But to want to kill a man, no. Antonov shook his head vigorously. That was duty. ‘I’m sure,’ he told the Ukrainian.
