Hands of the Traitor (21 page)

"
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."