Hands of the Traitor

by Christopher Wright

  Matt felt angry. "I hope you're not two-timing anyone. It's not fair on Florian -- whoever he is -- and it's not fair on me."

  "You do not understand."

  It was the sort of response a woman would resort to. "We're not sharing a room or anything," he told her, trying to make their friendship seem far more simple than he wanted it to be. The altercation came as a surprise. These were the first heated words they'd exchanged.

  "I have my case at the hotel. I want you to take me back there now."

  "And then?"

  "Then I will catch the train home to the Auvergne."

  The demand came as even more of a shock. "No. Please." Zoé's problems were her own business, but he wasn't going to let her go easily.

  "Give me one good reason why I should stay," she demanded.

  "Because France is a very big country."

  "So?"

  "So you might get lost on the way home."

  Zoé looked at him, angrily at first, then she began to laugh when she noticed he was smiling.

  Chapter 16

  JASON HEINMAN had disappeared. Matt and Zoé decided to have a leisurely snack at a pavement table outside a bar on the road towards Calais, their orange Mini concealed in the car park round the back.

  "It is your letter to New York that has caused all this trouble," Zoé told him. "I said you were not careful enough. Jason 'Einman has killed your grandfather and now he has come here to kill you."

  Matt shook his head. "There's nothing to link Jason Heinman with my grandfather's death. The man claiming to be Fergus Hawkins was old."

  "What about the father of Jason 'Einman? He must be old. What is his name?"

  "Frank Heinman. The man at the garage said..." Matt put his glass of wine heavily on the table and red wine spilled over the side. "You're right, he's joining Jason here today."

  "Where is he coming from? England?"

  "I don't know. We need to find him, then we can see if he answers Sister Ewing's description. Where is he likely to be?"

  "The German launch site?" asked Zoé who had been studying the map. "There is a circle marked on here."

  "The man in the garage did it for me. Are you sure you want to go on with this?"

  "I am still..."

  "Tangled?"

  "You must understand it is not a time that is easy for me."

  It wasn't exactly an easy time for him, with his grandfather lying dead in an English hospital -- the grandfather he'd come over here specially to help. He started the engine and wondered if Philippe at the garage was an old boyfriend from the Auvergne, a foolish thought that probably showed how infatuated he was becoming with Zoé. "I'd like to go past the garage once more."

  "Pourquoi?"

  "Jason Heinman could still be there, changing the car."

  "Maybe you should hire a car," suggested Zoé. "A British orange Mini is, I think, a little noticeable in France."

  "I'll hire something tomorrow." He was going to add, "When you've gone home," but it would be a mistake to test Zoé like this. Perhaps it was the wrong time of the month. Or more likely she'd had enough of him already.

  They drove past the Garage de Saint Somer and found it closed for lunch, and probably for the afternoon as well by the deserted look of the place. Apart from three smashed cars in the forecourt, awaiting repair or dismantling for scrap, there were no other vehicles.

  "If you will excuse me for saying this..." Zoé paused.

  "Yes?"

  "I think you are not being professional with this investigation. You must think what you would do if Ken 'Abgood had given you the work for a client."

  "It's not work, it's family business."

  "But you must still think what you are doing."

  The criticism stung because it was true. "Let's find the launch site -- or go back to the hotel. You choose."

  Zoé opted to return to the hotel, where she stayed in her room for the rest of the afternoon. Matt wondered a couple of times whether to go onto the balcony to find out if she was using the phone, but he lay on the bed and picked his way through his car magazine. Finally he threw it onto the floor and sat up. Zoé was right: it was time to take the initiative.

  He had several options. The first was to pack it in, go home, and forget about the Heinmans and their dubious past. Let the British police sort out the murder. After all, his grandfather was dead, so he could do nothing to help him now. But his grandfather deserved a better memorial than that.

  Another option was to tell the local gendarmes that he suspected one of the Heinmans had committed a murder in England. But without evidence they were unlikely to take his accusations seriously, unless the British police were involved. From past experience he knew that the French would take time to get their act together with the British, by which time the Heinmans would be safely back in America.

  The best chance of putting the Heinmans behind bars was to get hold of a sample of their poison gas and take it to the press. The British and French papers would enjoy having a go at an American pharmaceutical company. Already he had a good wartime story to tell, even though it was second-hand from his grandfather. What he needed was something substantial to give the story credence.

  A knock on the door made him jump.

  "I thought we were going to visit the old German launch site." Zoé stood there with the map in her hand. If she'd been crying her eyes didn't show it -- they looked bright with excitement.

  "If that's what you want." He refrained from expressing surprise.

  *

  MATT FOUND a parking space where they could look down onto an enclosed area of ground beyond the supermarket development. It could easily be the old wartime compound, because the beds of reeds in ancient drainage ditches made a natural boundary that had probably remained unchanged for several hundred years. The developers had encircled the whole area with rigid wire mesh about ten feet high, and topped it with three strands of heavy barbed wire. Floodlights looked down onto the churned earth from high gantries, and a portable cabin by the entrance gate served as a guard hut.

  Matt noticed two yellow diggers parked inside the wire. Other than that, the site was deserted. It came as an anti-climax. What had he expected to find: a doodlebug ready for takeoff on a launch ramp?

  "What is a flying bomb?" asked Zoé suddenly.

  "The V1?" He smiled. "Granddad took me to see one in the Science Museum in London when I was a kid. He knew all the technical details. It was a small jet plane, full of high explosive."

  "The Nazis had jet planes?"

  "They had Messerschmitt jets by the end of the war. Bombers and fighters. They couldn't fly them because we kept bombing their fuel dumps. But flying bombs were pulse jets. Fuel exploded in the engine and shot out of the back, forty or fifty times a second. Granddad said they made a sort of buzzing sound, so everyone called them buzz bombs. People were panic stricken when they heard the engine cut. They knew the thing was about to crash."

  "And the pilot got killed?"

  Matt smiled, but gently. "There was no pilot. You put fuel in it, launched it in the right direction, and hoped it ran out of fuel over the target."

  "Like a rocket?"

  "Not really. People call them rockets nowadays, but they were definitely jets. Crude jets. They'd quickly shake a plane to bits, but at three hundred and fifty miles an hour the whole thing only had to hold together for a few minutes."

  "And they were only used once?"

  He looked at her in surprise. "They had a two thousand pound warhead. There weren't many bits left after they hit the ground."

  "I wish I had brought my flute," said Zoé, changing the subject. "I keep thinking about your grandfather and Sophie meeting each other here as young people, and now your grandfather is dead. I feel like playing some sad music to cheer myself up."

  "Sad music cheers you up?" Matt asked in surprise. Possibly he'd been a bit blunt with his answers to Zoé's questions. After all, he'd had the benefit of his grandfather's tales over the years
.

  "But of course it cheers me up. Perhaps the Pavane by Maurice Ravel." She put her hand on his leg, but ever so gently. It was certainly not a pass and he did nothing.

  "I like French music," he said. It happened to be true, but Zoé might think he was making it up to score a few brownie points. It was no good pretending about things like this. Louise had pretended to be crazy about football, but she'd been found out when it poured with rain at their third match together.

  He hummed the opening bars of Ravel's Pavane to prove he knew it, but it failed to sound anything like funeral music for a dead princess. "I didn't realize you played the flute." Maybe he added the last bit too quickly. Maybe he was rushing into things if he had no idea of Zoé's interests. But he had to start learning some time. "Do you play with an orchestra?"

  "I help run a local one in the town. What is your favorite music, Matt?"

  "Russian mostly. Shostakovich ... and French flute."

  "When we get back to England we could go to a concert together. I would like that." Zoé said it almost absent-mindedly and probably hadn't thought what she was saying.

  He decided to check out her commitment. "Aren't you going home to Florian?"

  Zoé looked troubled. "Florian is not pleased that I have left Clermont Ferrand."

  Matt waited for Zoé to say more but she stayed silent. He turned on the radio but could find nothing classical. "Let's have another coffee somewhere," he suggested. "I can come back later. On my own. My guess is Jason Heinman will try to get through the wire when it's dark. I need to be here to see what he finds."

  "If the 'Einmans are murderers I want them both in prison," said Zoé, any thoughts of soothing music obviously forgotten. "We will come back together."

  He pointed down the track and grabbed hold of Zoé's arm. "Well now, just look who's coming."

  *

  JASON HEINMAN collected his father from the railway station in Calais and took him straight to the site. It was vital to get confirmation that this was the right place, before carrying out any digging. On the way Hammid's tracker beeped twice, three times, four times, and finally five. His father didn't seem to notice, but the English PI must be poking about already.

  He stood with his father by the Citroen, looking at the high perimeter wire. He could see the orange Mini in the supermarket car park, parked so the driver and female passenger had a good view of the construction site. There was no point in driving away. Jason shrugged. If he'd been seen, he'd been seen. He had every right to be here, and Rider could do nothing about it.

  "The fencing is new, Jason, but this sure is it. The old reed beds by the dikes, the row of pines on the top of the rise." His father pointed at the trees. "We flew in over those. I was only twenty at the time. Seeing it again is one hell of a shock."

  "You never came here in a plane." He decided his father was making that bit up.

  "I'm telling you, your grandfather Albert and I came right in over those pines in a Fieseler Storch. That damn German plane could fly like a chopper. The pilot told us he'd once landed in a back yard." His father laughed. "I could goddamn believe him too!"

  Jason shook his head. "This place is a damn sight too well protected for my liking."

  "It doesn't matter. We're not going in. Watch out for that guard; we don't want him wondering what we're up to. Are you carrying anything?"

  "A Glock 17." He wasn't going to mention the deal he'd done with Hammid Aziz to get the Austrian handgun. "Picked it up in England."

  His father leaned against the car. "Your grandfather's buried here, Jason. There weren't many survivors when the bunker blew. Your grandfather would have been all right if it hadn't been for that crazy Englishman. Once he found the Berlitzan oil there was no stopping him. He took a knife and hacked your grandfather to death."

  "And you couldn't stop him?"

  His father scuffed his shoe in the grass to clean a splash of mud from the toe, and turned angrily. "Are you suggesting something, boy?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like I didn't do my duty?"

  "Hell no. I imagine..." Jason stopped and looked closely, making his father turn away. "Oh come on, you didn't...?"

  "Berlitzan oil is evil." His father wiped his hands with his handkerchief. "No one can be blamed for how it affects them."

  "Then ... Hey, I thought you said it was the English soldier."

  "Get back in the car, boy. I don't like talking out here with those guards watching. Yes, sure it was the English soldier. First he hacked my father's hands off, and then put a grenade in his mouth as he screamed in agony."

  Jason sat in the driving seat and raised his eyebrows. "And you watched?"

  His father lay back against the headrest and closed his eyes. "I can see it all now. My father was screaming so much I ... I pulled the pin on the grenade, God help me. I've never told anyone before. It's one hell of a memory to be stuck with for the rest of your life."

  "And it was the Berlitzan stuff?"

  His father nodded, twisting in the passenger seat for a better view of the compound. "That, and the fact I hated my father. Berlitzan oil could finish DCI."

  Jason smashed his hand against the dash. "DCI stinks. You've left me too many skeletons in the cupboard. All you've ever talked about since I was a kid is DCI this and DCI that. It's been one hell of a struggle living with DCI, and even now I'm the president I can't run the company without your interference."

  "I'm protecting your future."

  "Is that why you paid Aziz to put pressure on me?"

  "I need you, Jason."

  "That's more like it," he said bitterly. "But I don't need you." He switched the wipers on briefly as a light drizzle blew swirling clouds across the fields. The supermarket higher up the slope was busy with shoppers.

  His father laughed awkwardly. "You know the agreement. Help me save the company and do yourself a favor at the same time."

  Jason flicked the wipers again to have another look at the PI's car in the supermarket parking lot. The two occupants were still looking down onto the roadway running around the site. "You're a devious bastard. You've been screwing me as only you know how. Okay, so what do I do? Take out the old soldier?"

  "If you mean Captain Rider, he's gone," his father said unsteadily.

  "Gone?"

  His father began to shake. "Hell, Jason, I just wish to God I'd used a grenade to do the job properly."

  Jason felt sick. "You stupid old fool, you can't go around killing people. Not with your own hands."

  "I'm not killing people. Just one." His father took out his handkerchief.

  "What about my CEO? Miller's seriously injured. Was that you?"

  "I sent Miller to England to sort things out for us."

  "You should have consulted with me." Jason tried to control his anger. "Miller's absence has caused me a hell of a lot of problems. We have a company lawyer to handle this sort of thing. Simon Urquet could have flown up from our Geneva office in a couple of hours to pay Matt Rider off."

  "Urquet knows nothing about the Berlitzan Project. This is family business."

  Jason gripped the steering wheel tightly. "I'm in deep because of you. I've rented this car in my name. I didn't know you were planning to do anything like this."

  "What the hell did you think I was going to do?"

  "I thought you were going to start throwing money around, not embark on a massacre. I've not bothered to cover my tracks completely. We'll be picked up for sure."

  His father wiped his hands in the handkerchief. "As far the police are concerned we're on holiday in the U.S. of A. Just like everyone thought your father and I were in forty-four when he got killed. The cops let that one go, Jason. They won't be asking questions at French car rentals."

  He tried to laugh at his father's naivety, but he felt too angry for laughter. "And who's next," he demanded. "That blonde you met out here? The one I have to track down? Oh my God, it is isn't it?"

  "Just find her for me." His father gripped his
arm.

  "You're obscene." He pulled himself free. "All you can think about is killing people who know about your sordid past. What does it matter to you? You'll be dead yourself soon."

  His father ignored the taunts. "Have you found Sophie yet?"

  He'd say no more. He'd tracked Matt Rider's car to a small house not far from the hotel, a house with an old woman standing by the door. He was planning to check who lived there, but there had been other things to occupy his time. After lunch he'd bought a metal detector in Calais and taken it to the beach to try it out. Finding the remaining cylinders of Berlitzan oil at the missile site was more important than finding an old crone.

  He started the engine of the Citroen and turned to his father. "If you'd left the past alone, none of this would have happened. The old soldier would have had his brief moment of glory in the papers and everyone would have forgotten about it. You've really stirred up a rats' nest."

  Then he noticed his father's right hand. "Just look at that ring," he added. "That's the old soldier's ring, isn't it? You're macabre, you are. That damn ring won't do you any good. You're like Midas in reverse." He hit the Citroen into gear. "All the gold you touch turns brown."

  He swung the car round and glanced in his mirror as the Citroen bounced onto the track used by the construction traffic. The Mini was still in the supermarket park. Matt Rider needed a lesson in minding his own business.

  The car jerked violently as it hit the bumps but Jason was oblivious to the surface of the track. "Hold the speed down, boy," his father shouted. "I can't hang on with my bad arm."

  "If you can't take it, you shouldn't have come."

  They drove past the rear of the Mini.

  "You want to know where the English PI is?" said Jason. "That's his car. He's sitting in it with a young woman, and they've been watching us since we arrived. I wonder if he knows you murdered his grandfather last night."

  "Hell, Jason, what do we do?"

  "How about I shoot him?"

  It was meant to be a joke, but his father wiped his hands anxiously. "Jason, my son, I sure as hell would like that PI out of my hair."

  *

  "They've seen us, so there's no point in going after them." Matt put the camera on the floor behind his seat. Five clear photographs on maximum zoom. "The old man's got a scar on his chin, like the man at the hospital."

  "He is the man who killed your grandfather?"