Hands of the Traitor (9 page)

Major Jackson seemed to be taking
little interest in the news of possible United States involvement.
"We'll make a few inquiries," he said lightly. "But they won't be
American. Some bloody Krauts by the sound of it." He suddenly
smiled. "Can't complain about the place blowing up, can we? Saved
us a bombing raid, what! You must be one hell of a shot with that
plumber's delight."

"The Sten? Just a lucky hit on the
pilot as he was opening the throttle, Major."

"Lucky my foot! You're going to get a
gong out of this, you see if you're not. I'm putting your name
forward to the Colonel. He'll give it the highest backing. Now,
let's take a little look in that bag of tricks you've brought
back."

"
No!
" He clutched the kitbag tightly to his body, an
involuntary movement that frightened him by its
severity.

"Oh, come now, Captain. Whatever
you've got in there belongs to the military. You've had a nasty
shock to the system but you'll get over it with a bit of rest in
the country."

Still he held onto the
kitbag.

The Major took a deep breath.
He was senior to Alec in both rank and years. "Captain Rider, this
is an order.
Open it!
"

Grudgingly Alec loosened the cord and
tipped the bag on its side. The long French knife, streaked brown
with dried blood, rattled across the table.

Major Jackson laughed as though trying
to coax a reluctant child. "Well, it looks like you put it to good
use. What's next?"

Alec tipped the bag again. The Major
and the two men gasped with horror as Alec picked up a human hand
wearing a large signet ring on the middle finger.

"
My God, man, what have you
done?
" Major
Jackson leapt to his feet and stood back a few paces.

"It's ... I don't know, sir, I can't
remember." He sat down and began to breathe great gulps of
air.

Major Jackson came forward cautiously.
"That's one hell of a souvenir to bring back from France, Captain
Rider."

"Yes, Major. Perhaps when I remember
more about it..."

Major Jackson peered into the kitbag.
"Any other nasty surprises in store?"

Three grenades, the Sten, and various
items of clothing. Nothing else. Tipping the kitbag upside down he
shook it to prove that everything was out.

A small item fell onto the floor. He
reached down and retrieved it.

"What's that, Rider?"

Alec let out a cry of
agony.

"Pass it to me, Captain." The Major's
voice was firm. "It looks like a gold cross."

"It is, Major." He felt faint again.
He'd returned with a human hand and Sophie's gold cross. "I think I
killed the girl, Major. That's her cross. I'd like to see the
padre."

The Major laughed nervously. "That's
not a girl's hand, Rider."

"I seem to have killed more than one
person out there. I'd still like to see the padre,
Major."

"You've not brought back any of those
gold candles you were telling us about?"

"The girl tried to help me. I told her
I'd bring her back to England. She..." He let his head drop
forward. "I just don't remember. There's so much I just don't know
any more."

"Don't
want
to know!" snapped one of the two men
sitting in on the debriefing.

"That must be her blood on the knife,"
Alec said hesitantly. He found further talk impossible as he took a
long, hard look at the hand on the table. The middle finger had
gone blue around the gold ring. Elsewhere the skin looked white and
wrinkled, like a cut of cheap pork at the butcher's. The whiteness
of the flesh emphasized the dirt behind the fingernails. It was
disgusting.

He felt his body sway. "If you'll
excuse me, Major, I need some fresh air."

*

New York

"WELL, BUDDY, I see you managed to get
your old man killed in France." Skorensky grinned. "Boy, you
certainly blew that trip."

Frank Becker Heinman sat at his desk,
his right arm in a sling, and looked apprehensively at the chief
executive officer of DCI. He had to find a way to put this man in
his place. Thanks to his father's stupidity, he'd suddenly found
himself president of a pharmaceutical company, a few days off his
twenty-first birthday.

The senior staff must be made to think
he was hard, like his father. "Watch it, Skorensky; that's my
father your talking about."

"I didn't mean no disrespect,
Frank."

He detected the change in Skorensky's
face. Maybe he should remind the middle-aged man of a few facts.
"I'm sure you didn't, Skorensky. Only a fool would risk putting his
job on the line."

"Like I said, Mr. Heinman, I didn't
mean no disrespect."

Frank realized that the form of
address had changed from buddy to Frank to Mr. Heinman. He tried to
force a smile, but the deep cut on his chin made him wince instead.
A fragment of the English soldier's grenade had ripped away a small
piece of flesh. He hoped that Skorensky wouldn't notice the sweat
on the palms of his hands. "We could be in trouble over our
involvement with the Nazis."

Skorensky winked. "DCI could, Mr.
Heinman."

Frank Heinman felt a shiver of panic.
"We all could, Skorensky. Me as the new president, you as chief
executive officer, and Jacco Morell as chief scientist. We should
have stopped all contact with the Nazis when Uncle Sam went to war.
DCI has been in too deep with the Berlitzan Project." He wiped his
hands in his handkerchief. "They could put the three of us in the
chair for it. Well, you two anyway. I guess I'm too
young."

"Don't go worrying yourself over Jacco
Morell, Mr. Heinman. He ... sort of took off, as soon as the word
came through of your father's death."

The news that the chief scientist was
missing came as a surprise. He'd been planning to interview Jacco
Morell next. "What about his family?"

"No problem, Mr. Heinman." Skorensky
smiled slyly. "Jacco Morell didn't have a family over here. He'll
not be telling anyone about the Berlitzan Project."

Frank gripped the edge of the desk
with his left hand, his right arm held tightly by the sling the
German doctors had given him when they'd set the smashed bones. "Is
anything missing?"

The sly smile vanished. "Nothing, Mr.
Heinman. I've checked out the safe. No papers out of order, no
chemicals unaccounted for. People are saying Jacco missed your
father and just took off."

"You didn't...?" Hell, he missed his
father.

Skorensky turned on a conniving grin.
"I'm here to help you, Mr. Heinman. You wait until you're properly
better before you worry your young head about the business. That
damage to your arm ain't gonna heal overnight. And your chin still
looks a mess, if you'll excuse me saying it."

Frank began to feel anxious again.
"But you've covered up the death of my father in
France?"

"It's like I told you, Mr. Heinman.
Officially, your father disappeared on a hunting trip up in Alaska.
A good one that, seeing as there's no body. And you got those
injuries when you fell trying to rescue him. There'll be no big
deal made if you stick to the script."

Frank breathed more easily. The
tightness in his chest eased slightly. "You're a reliable man,
Skorensky." He wiped his hands again in his handkerchief and
noticed a small ink stain on his father's ... on
his
desk. "I guess our
troubles didn't disappear with Jacco Morell."

"You're right there, Mr.
Heinman."

Skorensky had the facial expression of a
devoted and trustworthy servant. Frank recognized it as the
expression that had caused his father so much pleasure. It was a
false servitude, and it brought little relief now. He rubbed the
ink mark with his thumb but it stayed put. "They can't touch us for
what happened in France."

"That's correct, Mr. Heinman. Not if
you've got it right. Some big explosion, and all the Berlitzan oil
destroyed."

Frank nodded. "You're right,
Skorensky."

"And Mr. Heinman beyond recognition -- if
you'll excuse me saying so."

"Totally beyond recognition. Even if
the American GIs dig him up, they'll never know who it is. Not
after what that grenade did."

"What about the signet rings, Mr.
Heinman?"

He knew! The rat knew! The expression
on Skorensky's face gave him away. He just sat there, with those
stupid innocent eyes, asking about the rings. How the hell had
Skorensky found out?

"I fancied there had to be more to it,
Mr. Heinman. Your father told me those rings were the badges of
office, for the head of DCI to wear. Only you've not put them on
since you came back from France, so I thought
perhaps..."

"Shut up, Skorensky."

So oily, so suave, and so cocksure of
his position. The man was a threat to the company. It all came back
to the Berlitzan Project. The Feds could wipe DCI off America if
one whisper of their Nazi involvement got out.

"I'm going to need your help,
Skorensky." Frank knew he was failing to impress. This small,
dark-haired man who'd been at his father's right hand for years
probably still saw him as a podgy school kid.

"You ... you don't know the half of
the problems ahead, Mr. Heinman."

Frank took one look at his
father's choice of company chief executive officer. The man had
glanced suggestively at the outer office where the glass screen
allowed the secretary's head to be seen at the typewriter.
"
Karen
McDowell?
"

"Afraid so, Mr. Heinman. Your father's
put one up her, so to speak. Not the first time either, so she
claims. It seems he arranged things for her with money in
'37."

It was as though one of those German
flying bombs had smashed into the Manhattan office. "She's ...
she's not serious?"

Skorensky's eyes told Frank that Karen
was serious. They also told him that the chief executive officer
was rather enjoying this moment.

He jumped to his feet. "She has
proof?"

Skorensky tipped his chair back slowly.
"She has what she calls ample proof -- about both occasions. I also
think she knows something about the Project."

He took out his white handkerchief
again, still damp from the sweat on his hands. "Who else knows
about this?"

"She's very discreet, Mr. Heinman. She
thinks it might help the company if you dealt with it
informally."

Frank rubbed his chin, cautiously feeling
the fresh scar. As president he needed to act with authority -- and
the lack of that damn Heinman beard wasn't helping. He twisted the
handkerchief round his fingers, and the vomit rising in his throat
now reached his mouth. "Skorensky, you've got to help me, before
she goes public."

Chapter
9

London

THE FIRST V2 rocket blasted off from its
small launch pad in the Netherlands on September 8 1944, and
crashed without warning on the houses of Chiswick in west London
during the evening mealtime.

Alec Rider heard the explosion
from several miles away. He tried to discover the reason for the
noise by tuning to the BBC news. The explanation of a gas explosion
convinced nobody. Within days the capital reeled under an onslaught
of several hundred terrifying
Wunderwaffen
.

At first the British authorities managed
to keep the worst details of the monster rocket secret, afraid that
panic might set in. But news soon got round amongst the Londoners.
Air raid warnings were useless, for the military experts could find
no way to detect a missile dropping vertically at five times the
speed of sound. One moment life was normal -- as normal as life
could be in a heavily bombed city -- then the clear and silent sky
brought an explosion of earthquake proportions, flattening houses
within a radius of many streets.

Churchill was desperate to find a way
to halt the carnage. By now one thousand of the massive V2s had
been launched, with six hundred of them hitting London. The British
Prime Minister had already ordered heavy bombing raids against
German cities, but he admitted in secret that the Germans could win
the war within a matter of weeks.

Alec Rider quickly came to the same
conclusion.

The army sent a summons for him to
return from sick leave for questioning. No, he told Major Jackson
in the same office where he had been debriefed following the
pick-up from Strouanne, the compound in the Pas-de-Calais could not
possibly have been a launch pad for a giant rocket. Surely the
British knew all about the V1 sites by now, since they had already
overrun most of northern France close to the coast.

"Thank you, Captain. It would appear
we have killed one monster, to be confronted by a worse contender
for a Nazi victory." The Major sat forward in his chair. "Feeling
better, old chap?"