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PARTISANS
Alistair MacLean
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This eBook edition 2009
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1982 then in paperback by Fontana 1983
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1982
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Cover photograph © Stephen Mulcahey
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006167631
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007289363
Version: 2020-12-14
To Avdo and Inge
Contents
The chill night wind off the Tiber was from the north and carried with it the smell of snow from the distant Apennines. The sky was clear and full of stars and there was light enough to see the swirling of the dust-devils in the darkened streets and the paper, cardboard and assorted detritus that blew about every which way. The darkened, filthy streets were not the result of the electrical and sanitation departments of the Eternal City, as was their peacetime wont, staging one of their interminable strikes, for this was not peacetime: events in the Mediterranean theatre had reached a delicate stage where Rome no longer cared to advertise its whereabouts by switching on the street lights: the sanitation department, for the most part, was some way off to the south fighting a war it didn’t particularly care about.
Petersen stopped outside a shop doorway—the nature of its business was impossible to tell for the windows were neatly masked in regulation blackout paper—and glanced up and down the Via Bergola. It appeared to be deserted as were most streets in the city at that time of night. He produced a hooded torch and a large bunch of peculiarly shaped keys and let himself in with a speed, ease and dexterity which spoke well for whoever had trained him in such matters. He took up position behind the opened door, removed the hood from the torch, pocketed the keys, replaced them with a silenced Mauser and waited.
He had to wait for almost two minutes, which, in the circumstances, can be a very long time, but Petersen didn’t seem to mind. Two stealthy footsteps, then there appeared beyond the edge of the door the dimly seen silhouette of a man whose only identifiable features were a peaked cap and a hand clasping a gun in so purposeful a grip that even in the half-light the faint sheen of the knuckles could be seen.
The figure
