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THE OFFICER’S PREY
ARMAND CABASSON
Translated from the French by Michael Glencross
For Emmanuelle
with whom I have the joy of sharing my life
and for Françoise
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 1 1
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
APPENDIX 1
APPENDIX 2
APPENDIX 3
About the Author
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
STRANGELY, his hands were not trembling. The man was gazing at the body of the servant to whom he had been talking just a few moments earlier. His victim, now a pitifully bloodied and mutilated corpse, was real enough. But he was staring at her with as little feeling as if she were a broken doll. What made him uneasy was not that he had killed her, but that he felt no guilt. In sharp contrast to his i
He stood up so suddenly that his chair almost toppled over. Time was against him. The i
The bedroom was on the third floor, under the eaves. It had rained the whole evening and heavy cloud still hid the moon. The pitch-dark gave him a reasonable chance of being u
Like a hussar committed to the charge, the man decided to go for it. With his bloodstained shirt concealed by an ordinary soldier’s grey greatcoat, he climbed on to the windowsill and hauled himself up on to the overhang of the tiles. From there he reached the top of the roof without difficulty, crawled carefully along to the large stone chimney and hid behind it. Now what? There was nothing he could hold on to in order to climb down. In any case, that was out of the question for the time being. For the moment he stayed hidden in the darkness.
The street seemed to belong to another world; it was bathed in light and full of activity. The i
The man looked at the next roof. There was a narrow street between but he should be able to leap across it. He stood up, negotiated his way round the chimney and flung himself into space. Stumbling against the other chimney, he fell forward, but managed to cling on to the ridge of the roof. A few tiles, dislodged around him, slid halfway down. He recovered himself and began moving again. He was in a hurry, trying not to think about the abyss that had opened up inside him in that bedroom, the chasm he was only just discovering. The roof of the adjoining house was rather less steeply pitched. The minutes were ticking by and he had still managed to advance only a few yards. Taking a risk, he stood up and moved forward, arms spread out, treading hesitantly like a tightrope walker. Fortunately, the ridge of the roof was a tile wide and, quickly learning dexterity, he speeded up. In this way he went past two houses, scrambled on to a raised roof and leapt across a second narrow street to land three feet below on the chimney of an i
By now he was almost ru
‘Stop! Who goes there?’
‘Private Mirambeau, what are you playing at?’ roared a sergeant.
‘A tile nearly hit me on the head, Sergeant. Someone’s walking on the rooftops.’
The sergeant looked up. ‘There’s nobody up there, Mirambeau, just crumbling tiles that—’
The sound of firing cut short the NCO’s words. The soldier’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he had just made out the outline of a rapidly disappearing figure.
‘To arms! There’s someone on the rooftops.’
Immediately a crowd gathered around the two men. A corporal, completely drunk, pointed his musket skywards.
‘It’s a Russian spy! Fire away like at Eylau, lads.’