Hands of the Traitor

by Christopher Wright

  "Hindsight?" he suggested.

  "Yes, hindsight. Is that fatalism?"

  Matt kicked the stone again "Of course it's not. It means the worst never happens when you're ready for it. Fancy a Chinese takeaway in the park?"

  *

  JASON WENT DOWN to the bar and found his father sitting alone.

  He turned as Jason came through the door, his fingertips together, studying them closely. "Sophie Bernay. Yeah, that was her name all right. I've booked your trip with my American Express. You're getting an early Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel to Calais in the morning."

  "And what about you?" Jason demanded.

  "I'm going to get the old padre to call on Alec Rider."

  Jason felt angry. "I've had enough of this garbage."

  His father looked deathly pale. "Leave your staff to look after things in New York, boy. I need you on this Berlitzan business one hundred percent."

  The crisis had brought out an unexpected aggression in the old man. "I'm not interested in covering up for you," Jason snapped. "Admit what you did in the war was wrong, put DCI in the clear, and just disappear. I sometimes wish you were dead."

  "Find Sophie for me. That's all I'm asking."

  "And how do I do that? You have her address?"

  "Ask at the town halls in the area. Tell them you want to pay a surprise visit on a wartime girlfriend of your father's. Just make sure you get there ahead of Rider."

  "And pay her off?"

  "Move her somewhere safe and wait for me. I've got urgent business to attend to back here."

  He stared at his father. How was the fool going to find an old Canadian padre? Well, finding some elderly French hooker called Sophie would be just as difficult.

  A woman called across from reception. "Is there a Mr. Becker here? Telephone call for Mr. Becker."

  Jason tensed as he walked to the phone at the desk, aware that he was being watched by several guests at the bar. Only one man used his middle name. "Yes?"

  "Becker, this is your favorite arms dealer and money lender." Hammid Aziz roared with laughter.

  Jason tried to remain calm when he heard the voice. "What do you want, Hammid?"

  "Today is the day you pay me, Becker."

  The tone of voice sounded calm, almost self-amused, but Jason had known Hammid Aziz for many years. He recognized the danger the words concealed.

  Aziz had already replaced the receiver.

  As he put the phone back, Jason saw the solution in a flash. He had a chemist friend who had once dealt with arms. The phone number was in his room. The single elevator was always slow. He ran up the stairs, trying to forget the threat he had heard on the hotel phone. His breathing quickly became normal once he reached his room.

  The number for his contact had a Washington code. He took his cell phone from his pocket. All he got was an answering machine saying that the office was closed for seven days. He'd leave a message.

  "Jason Heinman here. Get back to me on my cell phone as soon as you can. There's something red hot in the wind, and it could help both of us."

  He gave the number and ended his call. If this worked out he'd not only be in a position to cancel his debt with Aziz, he could make a personal fortune. He'd not meant to say anything amusing.

  Something red hot in the wind.

  He smiled.

  A strong smell of Berlitzan oil bringing anger and death.

  And then it struck him.

  How did Aziz know he was in England? And how the hell did he know which hotel?

  Chapter 13

  "WELL, WELL, it's you, Becker. Not running away, I hope." The man stepped forward to block the hotel doorway.

  "Carlo!" Jason stopped in astonishment. "I was just going out to take a walk round the hotel grounds." He tried to sound relaxed. It was not possible for Carlo to be here in England.

  Carlo shook his head. "Mr. Aziz wants to know more about the offer you make your friend in Washington a few minutes ago. Come and meet him in the car park."

  Jason pushed the South American lackey aside. "Don't be a fool, Carlo. Aziz has just been talking to me on the phone. He's in America..."

  Across the hotel car park a large black limo sat under a tree, the interior light revealing a figure in the rear seat.

  Carlo smiled, showing a row of uneven brown teeth. "It's the age of the car phone, Becker. Mr. Aziz thought he'd check up on you." He pulled Jason by the arm. "Mr. Aziz is a little short of time."

  "How did you track me here?"

  "He knows you're here, Becker, like he knows you're going to France."

  Jason felt annoyed that he was being taken for a fool. No way could Aziz be in touch with every hotel in the world.

  "Half a million bucks is a lot of money, even to Mr. Aziz," responded Carlo. "A little insect has followed you all the way from the States."

  "A bug? I've been bugged?" He started feeling in his pockets.

  Carlo showed a wide grin of brown teeth. "Not you, Becker. Your luggage. Mr. Aziz is clever with electronic gizmos. Okay, you come now."

  Jason lowered his voice. "I'm using my usual name here -- Heinman. I only use Becker for personal business. My great grandfather had it as his middle name."

  Carlo shrugged his thin shoulders. "You use whatever name you want, Becker. I've come to take you to Mr. Aziz."

  A light drizzle blew across the car park, and Jason realized his baseball cap was in his room. A smell of damp earth filled the air but the ground looked dry under the shelter of the large yew tree where the car was parked. The tinted rear window was lowered just enough for conversation.

  Jason moved cautiously, his feet crunching loudly on the gravel. The occupant of the limo was now sitting in darkness. It could be some sort of stupid trick.

  "Get in, Becker," the man inside the limo said abruptly.

  He recognized the Middle Eastern voice immediately. "Hello, Hammid."

  "Get in the car."

  Jason sat on the far side of the wide rear seat to face Hammid Aziz, and opened the window slightly. "I think it's time we stopped playing games, Hammid. How about we negotiate?"

  Aziz stayed silent, probably puzzled by being spoken to so sharply. Large drops of water crashed onto the roof as a light breeze stirred the branches of the yew. Surely the man's English included the word negotiate.

  The arms broker spoke at last. "How you mean, Becker?"

  "We do a deal."

  "Ah, a deal." Aziz nodded thoughtfully. "I hear the message you leave on your friend's phone in Washington. I know your father book a trip for you to France tomorrow, so I ask myself what it is you have to offer. Me, I like to listen to phone calls. It help me with my English. See, I go out and buy all this ... what you say? ... this electronics."

  Aziz pointed to a complex instrument panel let into the walnut fascia that would normally have held the cocktail cabinet. The instrument dials and display screen glowed green. "I listen to your phone, Becker. To your father's phone. To everyone's phone." He slapped the seat. "No deals. You pay me now."

  "No, I don't pay you now, so let's get that understood."

  Aziz shrugged his padded shoulders, and the loose-fitting jacket rose with sufficient expression to make it clear that pleading would be pointless.

  This called for direct confrontation. "I think my father's done a deal with you."

  "Oh yes, he done a deal with me. Your father, he want your help to save DCI, so he ask me to get all over your back. He no tell me why."

  "And he's offered you some oil?"

  Aziz frowned. "What for this oil? For my car? My bicycle? No, Becker, your father not offer me any oil."

  Jason kept his face close to the partly open window to get some much-needed air. "Listen, Hammid, we can help each other."

  "Ah, the offer you tell your friend about on your cell phone. What you got, Becker?" Aziz sounded intrigued.

  "Something better than money." Jason struggled to get on top of the situation. "Let's forget my friend in Wash
ington. How about I sell it to you?"

  "I want half million dollars in cash, Becker," said Hammid Aziz flatly. "That why I come here to get it back from you tonight."

  "You're not listening, Hammid." He leaned towards Aziz. He needed to put this little man on the defensive. "We forget the loan and I sell you a special oil."

  Aziz shook his head. "You need to give me an oil well to get me off your back, Becker." And he roared with laughter at the joke.

  Carlo turned round from the driving seat and dutifully joined in with a broad grin of bad teeth.

  Jason ignored the insolence. "I can get something that will put you right at the top of the world's arms dealers. But I need your help."

  "Okay." Aziz stopped laughing. "What you want me to do?"

  "I need a handgun and..." Jason pointed to the electronic control panel. "And a bug to track an Englishman's car." He looked at Aziz. "Like the one you've planted on me."

  Aziz shook his head slowly. "That one use a satellite tracker. I no lend you that."

  "Then I can't help you."

  Aziz must have been interested. "Maybe I have a small radio tracker. The transmitter not work more than ten kilometers away, but it good. No one can escape from it, my friend, if you stay close."

  Jason knew where Matt Rider was going. Ten kilometers; about seven miles. That should be enough range to make sure the English PI wasn't following him around the Calais area. "I need it tonight."

  Aziz nodded slowly. "Carlo?"

  Carlo turned with his usual grin. "It's in the trunk, Mr. Aziz."

  "You've got it all here?" asked Jason. "A handgun as well?"

  "Perhaps, Becker, perhaps. First you tell me more about this oil."

  "Sure." He made a mental note to go through every item in his bags for a transmitter, so Aziz wouldn't turn up in France. Then he slid across the seat until he was close to the arms dealer. "Let me tell you about the crazed gunman running through the shopping precinct, about the mad axe man in the schoolyard. Tell me, Hammid my old friend, do you understand the meaning of the word 'frenzy'?"

  *

  JASON thought that finding where Matt rider went in France would be easy, as long as the PI took his car. At least Milton Miller had done something useful by getting Rider's home address from the electoral role -- before ending up in the local hospital. Miller even knew what car Rider drove. Jason took a taxi to a street a couple of blocks away. He'd be less conspicuous walking from there. An orange Mini was parked right outside Rider's place under a streetlight.

  The magnetic bug from Aziz was small enough to slip under a rear wheel arch. The Englishman would be a pushover. He switched on the unit and reached under the car. The tracker grabbed onto the metal with a reassuring snap.

  He recalled the words of Aziz. No one can escape from it, my friend.

  Tomorrow he'd be in France. All he had to do was check that Matt Rider's car was nowhere near, and find Sophie Bernay. He could let his father know where to contact her, then fly back to New York and get on with the serious business of running DCI.

  *

  THE NEXT morning, Matt drove onto the ferry at Dover. He was conscious that this trip might come up with an unwelcome result. If he'd got things back to front and DCI was innocent, and Sophie decided to accuse his grandfather of a wartime murder, no one in his family was going to thank him.

  Even Miller's visit to Ken Habgood might be innocent. Miller had been in shock on the stretcher after the accident, and would probably have nodded his head to anything. But why had Miller come all the way from America to call on Ken?

  The attendant waved Matt into a narrow parking slot in the bowels of the ferry, just wide enough for a Mini. He left the car in gear and pulled the handbrake on hard. Miller was out of harm's way now, and the Heinmans wouldn't know where to find him in the Pas-de-Calais.

  He went up to the passenger lounge with Zoé, still feeling uneasy.

  France -- Pas-de-Calais

  JASON YAWNED. Last night had been a late one, slipping the tracker under Rider's car, followed by an early rise to catch the Eurostar this morning.

  He took a taxi from the railway station at Calais, dropped his cases off at the hotel, and asked to be taken for a drive in the countryside. After half an hour he saw a small garage with a car rental sign, paid the driver, and went inside. He quickly discovered that his rudimentary French, learnt in Canada, was hopeless when it came to fixing things like renting a motor vehicle.

  He eventually came away with a white Citroen, a manual shift model, and drove to the local town hall. His trip to France was perfectly legal, but something told him to be wary of advertising his presence. Even renting the car out of town was not without a certain risk. Maybe his baseball cap would provide anonymity.

  He decided to phone Aziz. This time he'd use a public call booth. Last night Aziz had proved that his cell phone wasn't secure. The bug had been easy to find, a small device stitched into the back pocket of his case. Carlo had a damn cheek, opening the case somewhere between DCI headquarters and JFK, but he'd turned the tables on Aziz last night by dropping the bug into the carry-on case of a Swedish tourist at the hotel who was flying home in the early hours. It should have given Aziz and Carlo a worrying start to the morning.

  He pressed the handset against his left ear, trying to blot out the sound of traffic racing along the busy highway. He'd taken one hell of a chance in offering Hammid Aziz goods he didn't have -- goods he might not even be able to get.

  "Where are you. Becker? Are you in Sweden?" Aziz demanded.

  "France." He had no intention of explaining. "Is there a problem?"

  "No problem, Becker. You a very smart man, I think."

  "So do we have a deal?" It was hard not to laugh.

  "What you tell me about poison gas last night, it interest me. Listen, Becker, I no tell your father what we do, but I ask questions. I find out about DCI in the war. You right, I think your father and grandfather help the Germans."

  "I already know that." He must hold back from outright rudeness.

  "One thing it bother me, Becker."

  Aziz's voice sounded faint. Jason shifted his position in the noisy phone booth, trying to find the place that gave the best sound deadening. "You'll have to speak louder, Hammid."

  "Why the Nazis wait so long for Domestic Chemicals to make the oil?" Aziz shouted. "Why they no copy it and make their own?"

  Jason moved the phone away from his ear. "I don't know." He turned to see a young woman with a phone card in her hand approaching the booth. She stood impatiently outside.

  "Why the Nazis no make their own oil?" Aziz repeated.

  "They probably didn't know how to make it, Hammid." He pulled his baseball cap lower and turned to face away from the woman. "It was a DCI secret."

  Damn the woman. She might speak good English -- which was more than Aziz could.

  "The Nazis, they had their own chemists, Becker. If they had samples, why they no animalize them?"

  "Analyze."

  "What you say?"

  "Analyze. Why didn't they analyze them?"

  "Yes, that what I ask, too, Becker."

  "I have to go, Hammid." He was quickly losing patience. "I'm supposed to find a geriatric French whore and a young PI -- all at the same time. And they're not going to be together, unless the young Englishman is totally degenerate."

  "What that? Degenerate?"

  "Okay, we have a deal. Goodbye, Hammid. I'll keep in touch." He shook his head and replaced the phone.

  He gave the waiting woman no more than a nod and walked to his rented Citroen. One gold cylinder was all he needed to persuade Aziz to take his fingers from his throat. He let the clutch in clumsily. The rental car lurched forward and the engine stalled. Why the hell did European cars have manual transmissions?

  Aziz had asked a reasonable question. Okay, so his father reckoned the formula was difficult to copy, but surely the Nazis would have given the early samples to AG Farben to develop.

  He
got the engine restarted and turned towards Calais. The tracker on loan from Aziz beeped loudly, making him jump. He waited. Three minutes later it beeped twice. He rotated the receiver to give an indication of the direction, then put his foot down and drove towards it. He needed to be sure that it was Rider's car.

  For some reason the Germans had stayed in touch with DCI by the back door until 1944, almost through the whole war. The answer probably lay in the complexity of the formula. Perhaps Berlitzan oil was some mix of hormones that no one knew how to replicate. Were hormones properly understood in those days? He shrugged. Anyway it might not have been hormones; it didn't really matter. Chemical analysis was in the dark ages in the war.

  The highway narrowed and he had to shift down a gear. The car juddered as he pushed the stick into fifth by mistake.

  Three beeps from the tracker now. The signal was coming from the south east.

  Four beeps indicated he was closing on it fast.

  He drove warily through the rain, past the typically French houses lining the highway, their green shutters wide today like eyes watching his every move.

  Five clear beeps meant he should be near enough for a visual.

  As he slowed for a cyclist he saw the shabby orange Mini parked outside a small hotel and bar. He stopped to check the license plate.

  Aziz was right; no one could escape from one of these bugs. And now he knew where the English PI was staying. Maybe the man would lead him to Sophie.

  Pas-de-Calais, that afternoon

  ZOÉ SAID she felt exhausted, pointing out that the Mini wasn't exactly designed for trans-continental travel. Clearly she intended to stick to her original agreement about separate rooms, and was very firm as she closed the door when she decided to take a shower.

  Matt went to his own room, the adjoining one but without an interconnecting door. He settled back to listen to a tape on his headphones. It was all Florian's fault. Something French by Berlioz would fit his mood. The March to the Scaffold perhaps.

  He switched the player off after ten minutes and went out onto the small balcony. It was impossible to imagine the appalling fighting that had taken place on these undulating fields and woods: twice, in the last century. Tanks. Trench warfare. Shelling. He sat on a white plastic chair and opened the book he was halfway through. It was a whodunit, but whoever did it didn't really interest him this afternoon.