Hands of the Traitor (23 page)

*

PIERRE DELOIS glanced up at the murky sky.
The drizzle that had been sweeping across the construction site
throughout the day seemed to have stopped at last, but thick clouds
still scurried in from the west. He'd not wanted this job. Security
at a busy night club was more in his line, with plenty of young
women to impress. This place was too lonely. Henri had slipped into
town to visit a friend. It was totally against the company rules of
course; there were always supposed to be two men on duty after
dark. What did the management think -- the ghost of the Dutchman
was coming back with his big knife?

He stood in the doorway of the security
cabin and checked that all the perimeter lights were working.
Slowly he breathed in the night air. A handful of old locals had
got together recently and decided that this area had been some sort
of Nazi war base. Not that they'd ever mentioned it before -- not
until the Dutchman came here with his metal detector.

Within hours the site had been swamped.
Half the rabble had come to eyeball the bloodstained ground, the
other half to dig for treasure. News of Nazi gold spread rapidly,
but no one had been allowed to search -- except the authorities.
And they'd found nothing other than a tonne of scrap metal in small
pieces.

Even now treasure hunters tried to get
into the compound with their detectors. He blamed the irresponsible
press. What had possessed a group of ordinary shoppers to take on a
maniac with a knife? And why would the crowd turn on each other?
There were some weird people about. Anyway, by this time next week
the whole site would be covered in concrete, and no one would be
able to dig. Then they could take down the security
fence.

Henri wouldn't be back for another
hour, perhaps two. Pierre glanced at his watch for the sixth time
in ten minutes. Thinking about those killings made him anxious. A
noisy car drew up out of sight in the unlit zone close to the reed
beds.

Perhaps the management were right to
insist on doubling up the roster at night. This was an isolated
spot when the supermarket closed. Treasure hunters didn't all come
with spades and trowels. Some used long knives. Knives were quick,
so they said. He stood with his back firmly against the wall of the
cabin. The Dutchman had been using a large knife.

He took some comfort from the tall
chain link fencing between himself and the outside world. Even so,
it might be best to turn on the auxiliary floods. He had a bad
feeling about this night.

Chapter
17

SOMEWHERE ALONG
the way a small
rock had caught the exhaust system, and every time they drove over
a bump the engine became noisier. Zoé's
raccourci
through the woods came out in a small
track on the far side of the supermarket site. Matt parked in the
shelter of the reeds and rolled under the car with the torch to see
how bad the damage was.

He emerged holding a small plastic box
from under the wheel arch.

"What is it?" asked Zoé.

"Someone wants to know where we are.
Damn." He pulled the battery compartment open and tore out the
small nine volt battery. "Let's see if it's fresh." He touched the
terminals on his tongue and pulled a face. "It's new. This bug was
put here for us." He left the battery out and threw the bug into
the back of the Mini. "I bet it was the Heinmans. Jason Heinman's
been following our every move."

Suddenly Zoé called out. "Look,
Monsieur 'Einman is coming."

The white Citroen drove past the site
and stopped a few yards down the road, caught in the floodlights.
Jason Heinman jumped out and stood beside the wire. Maybe he was
waiting for the lights on the construction site to go out. In that
case he was wasting his time. Extra floods suddenly bathed the
whole area in a harsh glare.

Zoé caught hold of Matt's hand and
pulled him back. "Be careful. Monsieur 'Einman may know we are here
from his little bug. Perhaps he has a gun."

Matt knew that Zoé was serious in her
warning, and she might well be right. He tried to pass it off.
"Well, I'm not armed. I'm just a simple PI. And the bug is dead
now."

"There is a sharp knife in the food
box, Tommy. Here, take it."

"Tommy?" He took the knife.

Zoé laughed nervously. "I keep
thinking about your grandfather. Sophie said her Tommy had a
knife."

They stood silently on the sandy
ground by the side of the car. Matt's ears had been deadened to the
outside world during the drive, but his hearing was now recovering
and he became aware of the sounds of the countryside at
night.

So much for Zoé's shortcut. The whole
exhaust system would need fixing before they went back to England.
Maybe he'd get himself a different car. Maybe Tom Grieves had a son
with an unwanted wreck, or Florian might have a spare Mercedes.
Whatever he got, he'd check it for trackers.

He peered into the darkness.
"Listen:
les
grenouilles
,
frogs." The deep croaking came from all around. The reed beds must
be full of the creatures.

Zoé pushed her way in front, seemingly
untroubled as the dripping reeds soaked her clothing. "Keep still."
She put her hand out to keep him back.

Matt held onto it, gaining a sense of
confidence. Angry voices from the gate to the compound were
followed by a single shot that made them both jump. Seconds later
the site was plunged into darkness. The frogs became
still.

Matt put his arms round Zoé and held
her tightly. Her damp body against his felt beautiful. He pulled
her even closer and smelt her perfume. She made no attempt to break
free. Why did this have to happen now, out here amongst the wet
reeds?

"One of them has been shot. Keep
still," he cautioned.

"Please." Zoé began to struggle at
last. "Let me have the air."

A hand lamp flashed wildly across the
compound, then the person holding it swept the beam slowly up and
then down the road.

"We will go closer and see who it is,"
whispered Zoé.

To Matt's annoyance she broke away
from his grip. It had been good while it lasted. "These reeds are
noisy," he warned. "Move slowly."

The reed bed ended close to the tall
wire link fencing. Matt was reluctant to break cover. Before he
could argue the point with Zoé the floodlights came on with such
suddenness he could almost hear the sound of the light. The
American was moving cautiously inside the compound under the full
glare of the floods. Even with the headphones on, it was
unmistakably Jason Heinman, the tall man with the pointed beard and
baseball hat.

"He must have shot the guard.
You're right, Zoé, we should have gone to the
gendarmes
."

"I can find the way to
the
gendarmerie
in Saint Omer," Zoé whispered. "Come back with me through
the reeds."

"You go. I'll wait here until
the
gendarmes
come."

"But Monsieur 'Einman has a gun. He
will shoot you."

"No, Zoé, I want you to get
away. Tell the
gendarmes
the man is armed."

Zoé hesitated, holding his hands. "I
am worried about you, Matt."

"He's already started digging. He's
too interested in his detector to notice me."

Zoé gave him a kiss. She held him
tightly, even after their lips parted. "Be careful,
Tommy."

Matt heard the Mini leave. Probably
half of the Pas-de-Calais heard it, the exhaust was so loud. It
sounded like the start of a Grand Prix. Jason Heinman sprinted to
the security cabin.

The lights went off, plunging the area
blackness.

*

THE SOUND
of the engine alarmed Jason,
but he was reassured to hear the raucous car drive away from the
site. Probably some boy racer with a souped-up engine showing off
to his girlfriend. He felt agitated enough already, having taken a
wrong turning in the dark and becoming totally lost.

He'd activated the tracker when he was
getting near the site, just to check that Rider wasn't around, but
the receiver had stayed silent. The inquisitive PI must be well out
of range, perhaps even back in England. Anyway, that certainly
wasn't a small engined car. Perhaps he'd missed a courting couple
down one of the small tracks.

He turned the floods on again and
continued his search. He'd made a mistake with the lights. This
site would always be lit right through the night. Putting the place
into darkness, even for two or three minutes, had been stupid. And
that damned Glock had been deafening.

He lifted the headphones from his ears
and stared across at the high chain link fencing. His father was
positive: right here, where the drainage ditches intersected, the
blonde had buried the gold cylinders. Twelve samples of Berlitzan
oil, brought to this place by his father and grandfather. Twelve
gold cylinders intended for testing on the English.

No, not twelve any more. The English
soldier had wasted one in 1944, and the crazy Dutchman Van Heteren
had found one. But there should still be ten -- just waiting to be
dug up. He'd promised Hammid Aziz two, which left eight to take
back to the States for analysis. Eight cylinders that would
guarantee him financial security for the rest of his life. He could
walk away from Domestic Chemicals any time he wanted and supply the
international arms trade with a world-beater.

He decided to keep his gloves
on to make sure everything he touched would be free of prints --
even the Glock. He looked at the illuminated display panel on the
metal detector. The hi-tech machine needed adjusting yet again. The
dealer in Calais insisted this was the latest state-of-the-art
device that would work where other machines failed miserably. The
range of settings in manual mode seemed complex, with knobs for
setting sensitivity and background threshold, but the only position
of interest on the scale was marked
Gold
. Thankfully the instructions came in English as
well as French.

He'd spent the whole afternoon on that
damned beach outside Calais burying test objects, coins and bottle
tops and rusty bolts, and his gold ring. It had been a struggle to
get any sort of response at depth. And then, in spite of the heavy
drizzle he'd mastered it. The machine detected his signet ring in
the wet sand, while leaving the nearby ferrous objects alone. But
things had changed since leaving the beach.

He fiddled with the threshold control.
It had worked this afternoon. Once he'd got it right, he'd gone on
to dig up two gold rings lost by bathers, and a badly corroded
watch with a gold case. The ingenious meter was clever by the sea,
but useless inland. The headphones chattered away noisily, while
the needle wavered like a crazy pendulum. If he could dig up just
one cylinder of Berlitzan oil he'd go away happy.

The instructions warned that under some
conditions pieces of aluminum and iron could give a positive
reading on the gold setting. They could, and they did. He'd already
found plenty of both. A loud signal raised his hopes -- until he
dug out yet another strip of rusty metal. Several other ferrous
objects gave positive bleeps, though the meter readings tallied
with the gold sector. The Dutchman must have been a
magician.

He looked around. Someone might have
seen the compound lights go off and then on. He got another signal
from the detector. It hardly seemed worth digging, but he felt
obliged to use the small folding spade the dealer had strongly
recommended. The people who designed these stupid detectors should
be made to use them on sites like this.

He caught sight of a flash of gold
about twelve inches down, just in time to stop himself plunging the
folding spade into the red soil at the bottom of the
hole.

The gold glinted under the floods.
Gold was an amazing metal. No matter how long it was in the ground,
it always came up as fresh as the day it was put there. Carefully
he lifted the slender cylinder from the soil, glad of the
protection his gloves gave from the dirt. The detector had actually
lived up to its claims. He ran the search head over the hole and
got another signal, slightly to the left. He clawed at the soil to
remove another large piece of rusty steel.

No way was he giving up now. With the
ferrous metal out of the way he swept the search head over the hole
again, and got several sharp signals over an area the size of a
large doormat.

Soon he had ten small cylinders side
by side on the wet grass, looking like a row of golden candles.
Berlitzan oil.

For a moment he paused, wondering how his
father and his grandfather had felt when they brought these
cylinders here on a night like this. Albert B. Heinman, president
of Domestic Chemicals Incorporated, 1921 to 1944. He could show a
moment's respect for the old bastard, the grandfather he'd never
known.

The wail was not a ghost of the
departed. He leapt to his feet. The French
gendarmes
were coming -- or one of the
emergency services. The driver of the noisy car must have been
watching and had gone for help. He grabbed the gold.