“O.K.,” said Leiser. Haldane looked at his watch.
“Our first appointment is at ten o’clock. A car will collect us from the corner of the road. The driver is not one of us: no conversation on the journey, please. Have you no other clothes?” he asked. “Those are scarcely suitable for the range.”
“I’ve got a sports coat and a pair of flannels.”
“I could wish you less conspicuous.”
As they went upstairs to change, Leiser smiled wryly at Avery. “He’s a real boy, isn’t he? The old school.”
“But good,” Avery said.
Leiser stopped. “Of course. Here, tell me something. Was this place always here? Have you used it for many people?”
“You’re not the first,” Avery said.
“Look, I know you can’t tell me much. Is the outfit still like it was . . . people everywhere . .. the same setup?”
“I don’t think you’d find much difference. I suppose we’ve expanded a bit.”
“Are there many young ones like you?”
“Sorry, Fred.”
Leiser put his open hand on Avery’s back. He used his hands a lot.
“You’re good, too,” he said. “Don’t bother about me. Not to worry, eh, John?”
* * *
They went to Abingdon: the Ministry had made arrangements with the parachute base. The instructor was expecting them.
“Used to any particular gun, are you?”
“Browning three eight automatic, please,” Leiser said, like a child ordering groceries.
“We call it the nine millimeter now. You’ll have had the Mark One.”
Haldane stood in the gallery at the back while Avery helped wind in the man-sized target to a distance of ten yards and pasted squares of gum-strip over the old holes.
“You call me ‘Staff,'” the instructor said and turned to Avery. “Like to have a go as well, sir?”
Haldane put in quickly, “Yes, they are both shooting, please, Staff.”
Leiser took first turn. Avery stood beside Haldane while Leiser, his long back toward them, waited in the empty range, facing the plywood figure of a German soldier. The target was black, framed against the crumbling whitewash of the walls; over its belly and groin a heart had been crudely described in chalk, its interior extensively repaired with fragments of paper. As they watched, he began testing the weight of the gun, raising it quickly to the level of his eye, then lowering it slowly; pushing home the empty magazine, taking it out and thrusting it in again. He glanced over his shoulder at Avery, with his left hand brushing from his forehead a strand of brown hair which threatened to impede his view. Avery smiled encouragement, then said quickly to Haldane, talking business, “I still can’t make him out.”
“Why not? He’s a perfectly ordinary Pole.”
“Where does he come from? What part of Poland?”
“You’ve read the file. Danzig.”
“Of course.”
The instructor began. “We’ll just try it with the empty gun first, both eyes open, and look along the line of sight, feet nicely apart now thank you, that’s lovely. Relax now, be nice and comfy, it’s not a drill movement, it’s a firing position, oh yes, we’ve done this before! Now traverse the gun, point it but never aim. Right!” The instructor drew breath, opened a wooden box and took out four magazines. “One in the gun and one in the left hand,” he said and handed the other two up to Avery, who watched with fascination as Leiser deftly slipped a full magazine into the butt of the automatic and advanced the safety catch with his thumb.
“Now cock the gun, pointing it at the ground three yards ahead of you. Now take up a firing position, keeping the arm straight. Pointing the gun but not aiming it, fire off one magazine, two shots at a time, remembering that we don’t regard the automatic as a weapon of science but more in the order of a stopping weapon for close combat. Now slowly, very slowly …”
Before he could finish, the range was vibrating with the sound of Leiser’s shooting—he shot fast, standing very stiff, his left hand holding the spare magazine precisely at his side like a grenade. He shot angrily, a mute man finding expression. Avery could feel with rising excitement the fury and purpose of his shooting; now two shots, and another two, then three, then a long volley, while the haze gathered around him and the plywood soldier shook and Avery’s nostrils filled with the sweet smell of cordite.