Hands of the Traitor (26 page)

"We are holding you in connection with
the murder of Pierre Delois, monsieur," Captain Lacoste informed
them. They were now back in the security cabin with their hands
handcuffed behind their backs. "And you will be glad to know that I
am sending a car to Madame Boissant's house. I would not like
anyone else to die. There, what do you say to that?"

Henri had turned up safe and well,
embarrassed at being caught out. Matt looked at his watch. While
they'd been sitting around, waiting, anything could have happened
to Sophie -- and the Heinmans were probably out of the country by
now.

"I will tell you who is to blame for
all this," said Matt angrily, managing to sound confident with his
French. "Have you ever heard of Domestic Chemicals International?
That small cylinder is from one of their wartime
experiments."

Lacoste shrugged. "Now you want
to tell me fairy tales, monsieur
?
"

"The gold is dangerous," said
Matt.

"Ah, the gold, monsieur." The stark
fluorescent light of the security cabin emphasized the lines on
Captain Lacoste's sharp features. He poked at the gold cylinder
cautiously.

"Dangerous," repeated Matt.

"And I believe you, monsieur." Lacoste
nodded slowly. "If this is what the Dutchman found, you were right
to warn my men not to open the cap. We do not always listen to
murderers, but in this instance I think you are speaking
sense."

The black plastic chair felt painfully
hard. Matt shuffled himself to a more comfortable position. "So
what are you going to do?" he asked. "Is someone coming from Calais
to take charge?"

"Calais?" Lacoste responded
contemptuously. "Calais does not control this area, monsieur. I
have told the army to send an expert to search for explosives. Then
we will take you down to the
gendarmerie
, and I can go home and get some sleep. But for
now you will stay here because the army may have questions for
you." Lacoste clearly wanted Matt and Zoé to feel totally to blame
for his lost sleep.

Matt turned to Zoé and spoke quietly
in English. "I need to phone Ken Habgood. He can fix up a lawyer
for us."

"We are innocent," protested Zoé. "We
do not need a lawyer."

"You don't understand how the
police..." Matt broke off as Lacoste's radio burst into life. It
sounded as though a whole bomb disposal squad was rushing to the
site. Somewhere along the line the message must have got
confused.

Lacoste wiped the inside of the cabin
window with his sleeve and peered into the night sky. "Alphonse,
Alphonse, be quick and move my car. Make sure there are no loose
sheets of metal around. The army is sending a
helicopter."

Tall Alphonse rushed to move the big
Peugeot, but returned immediately. There were no keys in the car. A
lengthy search of the security cabin revealed a bunch of keys under
a notebook, within Matt's reach -- if he hadn't been in handcuffs.
Captain Lacoste seemed to be remarkably careless over
security.

But Alphonse need not have
hurried. An hour later, Lacoste looked at his watch for the tenth
time and cursed the army. Four o'clock in the morning? Did they
think the
gendarmes
had nothing better to do than sit around?

Suddenly they all heard it: the heavy
beat of rotors coming from the east, followed by a brilliant flash
of blue as the helicopter's spotlight probed the ground ahead. The
military machine hovered low over the pine trees at the edge of the
site, before coming down to land in the floodlit compound amid a
storm of paper.

Matt stood up, his hands handcuffed
behind his back, and cleared the mist from the window with his
shoulder. For a moment, he felt transported back to a time he had
never known. A memory of an event he had never witnessed, but one
he had heard about from his grandfather. This was the Nazi launch
site, and tonight the German army was bringing in two American
visitors by air. It was a stupid thought. In spite of his
grandfather telling of a plane landing in the compound, dropping
gently over the high wire, it was surely an impossible feat for a
fixed wing aircraft.

The engine slowed until Matt could
pick out the individual beats of the huge blades. As the high
pitched whine from the turbine died, men in combat uniforms leapt
out, accompanied by bellows of command from their
sergeant.

Matt almost enjoyed the comedy of the
proceedings. The man in charge was a supercilious army officer who
introduced himself as Major Monet. He informed everyone that he had
come to deal with the bombs. When Lacoste showed him the small gold
cylinder, Matt guessed the man felt stupid, arriving in style for
such a trivial find. He could sense anger below the
surface.

Captain Lacoste shrugged in a
convincing act of indifference. "
C'est tout
, Major Monet. That is all we have for you
and your men. The Englishman here told us it is
dangerous."

Matt realized that the blame was being
shifted smartly. Now that there would be no praise for astute
reporting of a highly dangerous substance, a deadly Nazi legacy,
someone would be required to carry the can. And who better for the
job than an Englishman being held for questioning on a charge of
murder?

Major Monet held the gold cylinder
casually.

"Matt, tell him it is not safe to
touch," shouted Zoé.

The Major looked round in interest.
"Mademoiselle?"

"Don't open it here." Matt felt tired.
"There's something highly toxic inside. The Nazis left it here in
the war."

Major Monet turned in disgust.
"An Englishman tells the bomb disposal team how to do their work!"
He lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke at Lacoste. "Perhaps
we should make a full search of the site. Somehow, I doubt that
your lazy
gendarmes
have done a very thorough job."

Matt knew the Major was trying to
justify the trip. He also noticed the provocation in the statement,
but Lacoste sounded bored.

"Very well, Major, search anywhere you
wish. Perhaps your team of highly trained warriors will find
Hitler's art collection as well as his gold."

By six-thirty it was getting light,
and Major Monet came into the cabin empty handed. He took the gold
cylinder from the table and turned to Lacoste who was finishing yet
another cigarette.

"As this is all that has been
found, we will be on our way." He glanced at Matt and Zoé. "Captain
Lacoste will be receiving a bill from the army. My colonel does not
take kindly to time wasters." He nodded to Lacoste. "Especially if
they are captains of a tin-pot
gendarmerie
."

Lacoste yawned. "Your men have enjoyed
their little game of soldiers?"

"We are off to get some breakfast,"
Monet announced. "We will pay a surprise visit to the military base
near here and wake up the cooks. That will also be added to the
bill."

The military bomb squad climbed on
board the helicopter with far less vigor than they had shown on
arrival. The machine rose in a cloud of dust into the dawn light,
its spotlight stabbing at the early morning mist clinging to the
flat fields. Then it was gone, leaving behind a bitter taste of
earth from the disturbed ground.

Before it was even out of hearing,
Lacoste ran across to answer the phone in his car. He returned
slowly. "I have ... There is bad news. The body of an elderly woman
has been discovered in a house..."

"Madame Boissant?" Zoé let out a sharp
cry.

Matt looked at the Captain standing in
the doorway of the cabin. It was obvious: Zoé had got it in one.
Whatever respect Matt had felt for Lacoste was now gone.

Lacoste leaned against the doorframe,
looking at the ground. "We need to identify the body, of course."
He looked up at Zoé and shrugged. "There was nothing we could have
done to help, mademoiselle."

Matt stared at Lacoste. The excuse was
pathetic. "We told you to get someone there a long time ago, and
you did nothing about it."

Captain Lacoste put his hands
out, palms up, in a gesture of helplessness. "Do not look to me for
comfort, monsieur. I am holding you responsible for the murder of
Pierre Delois. You may hold me responsible for the death of an old
woman if you wish. There is, however, one striking difference
between our two cases. I am the captain of the
gendarmes
who is standing here free, and
you are a prisoner wearing handcuffs. I hope you can appreciate the
distinction."

"You might as well have killed her
yourself!" Matt knew he was doing himself no favors by this
outburst. "You're guilty of murder!"

"No,
I
am not guilty of the murder of Madame
Boissant, monsieur." Lacoste strutted to the door of the small
security cabin. "But we will soon have
you
on a charge of murder. I am going home to
get some sleep. At ten o'clock in the morning you will appear
before the magistrate to be formally charged.
Au revoir
, monsieur."

Matt turned to Zoé. "The first chance
we get to escape, we take it. Okay? Whatever happens, I'm going
after Jason Heinman and his father."

Chapter
20

MAJOR MONET
strapped himself securely into
the seat when his team returned to their helicopter at
eight-thirty, following an unexpectedly good breakfast. "God save
me from hysterical
gendarmes
," he muttered. It was humiliating to return to camp with
one small cylinder. His men had spent two hours searching the site
for more of the damn things. He turned the gold cylinder in his
hands. He could hear liquid moving inside.

He put it into the bag on his lap.
Carefully. This had been a frustrating night. Charlotte had sounded
disappointed on the phone when he'd rung her from the nearby camp.
Charlotte always provided a warm welcome, and he'd done without sex
last night -- all because of some stupid over-paid and under-worked
police captain who listened to his suspects.

Monet shouted into the mouthpiece of
his headset. "Get us back to base as soon as you can!" Girard, his
pilot, wasn't one of the best. He'd had trouble finding the site in
the Pas-de-Calais on the way out. The fool had better have more
luck at finding his way home in daylight.

"It wasn't much for an outing, was it,
Major?" Giles, the sergeant charged with the practical duties of
defusing unexploded bombs, grabbed the gold cylinder from the bag
on his lap.

"Leave it, Sergeant!" shouted
Monet.

Giles recognized the tone in the
Major's voice. Major Monet acted like a frustrated old bachelor on
these occasions.

Anyway, he wasn't the only one to have
missed the comforts of bed last night. Giles had only been married
seven months. It seemed at times that the Major was more concerned
about his sexual gifts than his work. How often was it, anyway,
that the group had to perform hours-of-darkness
operations?

Giles disobeyed his Major and kept
hold of the gold cylinder. If it had stood up to Monet's shaking,
it couldn't be all that unstable. The cap was designed to be
unscrewed. The helicopter banked sharply to port, the second turn
in the past five minutes. Girard was probably lost
again.

As soon as they were level, Giles
twisted the cap. It turned slowly. Whoever had made this cylinder
was an expert machinist. The fit was superb, and the fine gold
thread was absolutely unharmed by the ground.

"
Mon dieu
, it smells like some randy old cat on the
doorstep!" Giles waved the small cylinder under Monet's
nose.

Monet unclipped his lap belt and rose
angrily from his seat, aware that his men were watching. The
helicopter banked again. He put his left hand out to steady
himself, and accidentally knocked the cylinder from Giles'
hand.

Girard turned away from the controls.
"Will you pillocks all sit down, you're upsetting the balance!" he
shouted, as the helicopter banked sharply to the right.

Monet couldn't understand his
extreme reaction to this insolence, the violent rage he had no wish
to contain. He'd never behaved like this in front of his men
before. The pilot had exceeded his authority, and the
imbécile
would have to be
taught a lesson. A lesson he would remember for the rest of his
short life. He leaned forward and grabbed the controls.

*

FRANK HEINMAN
felt secure at
last. Waiting until after breakfast before leaving town had been a
great idea. And now, with Jason driving the white rental car, and a
tank full of gas, they could be with Simon Urquet in the Geneva
office by mid afternoon.

An old truck, hand-painted in bands of
gaudy green and orange, crawled up the hill in front, belching a
trail of black smoke into the morning air. Jason blasted the horn
and flashed his headlights but the truck refused to leave the white
line.

Frank shook his head. There was plenty
of time. They'd got out of Calais easily, mixing with the traffic
just after eight. There was no sign of police roadblocks, but
tearing past a hippie wagon on the wrong side of the highway with
the horn blaring would draw attention to their Citroen.