Hands of the Traitor (17 page)

"Then I can't help you."

Aziz must have been interested. "Maybe
I have a small radio tracker. The transmitter not work more than
ten kilometers away, but it good. No one can escape from it, my
friend, if you stay close."

Jason knew where Matt Rider was going.
Ten kilometers; about seven miles. That should be enough range to
make sure the English PI wasn't following him around the Calais
area. "I need it tonight."

Aziz nodded slowly.
"Carlo?"

Carlo turned with his usual grin.
"It's in the trunk, Mr. Aziz."

"You've got it all here?" asked Jason.
"A handgun as well?"

"Perhaps, Becker, perhaps. First you
tell me more about this oil."

"Sure." He made a mental note to go
through every item in his bags for a transmitter, so Aziz wouldn't
turn up in France. Then he slid across the seat until he was close
to the arms dealer. "Let me tell you about the crazed gunman
running through the shopping precinct, about the mad axe man in the
schoolyard. Tell me, Hammid my old friend, do you understand the
meaning of the word 'frenzy'?"

*

JASON thought that finding where Matt
rider went in France would be easy, as long as the PI took his car.
At least Milton Miller had done something useful by getting Rider's
home address from the electoral role -- before ending up in the
local hospital. Miller even knew what car Rider drove. Jason took a
taxi to a street a couple of blocks away. He'd be less conspicuous
walking from there. An orange Mini was parked right outside Rider's
place under a streetlight.

The magnetic bug from Aziz was small
enough to slip under a rear wheel arch. The Englishman would be a
pushover. He switched on the unit and reached under the car. The
tracker grabbed onto the metal with a reassuring snap.

He recalled the words of
Aziz.
No one
can escape from it, my friend.

Tomorrow he'd be in France. All he had
to do was check that Matt Rider's car was nowhere near, and find
Sophie Bernay. He could let his father know where to contact her,
then fly back to New York and get on with the serious business of
running DCI.

*

THE NEXT morning, Matt drove onto the
ferry at Dover. He was conscious that this trip might come up with
an unwelcome result. If he'd got things back to front and DCI was
innocent, and Sophie decided to accuse his grandfather of a wartime
murder, no one in his family was going to thank him.

Even Miller's visit to Ken Habgood
might be innocent. Miller had been in shock on the stretcher after
the accident, and would probably have nodded his head to anything.
But why had Miller come all the way from America to call on
Ken?

The attendant waved Matt into a narrow
parking slot in the bowels of the ferry, just wide enough for a
Mini. He left the car in gear and pulled the handbrake on hard.
Miller was out of harm's way now, and the Heinmans wouldn't know
where to find him in the Pas-de-Calais.

He went up to the passenger lounge
with Zoé, still feeling uneasy.

France
-- Pas-de-Calais

JASON YAWNED
. Last night had been a late
one, slipping the tracker under Rider's car, followed by an early
rise to catch the Eurostar this morning.

He took a taxi from the railway station at
Calais, dropped his cases off at the hotel, and asked to be taken
for a drive in the countryside. After half an hour he saw a small
garage with a car rental sign, paid the driver, and went inside. He
quickly discovered that his rudimentary French, learnt in Canada,
was hopeless when it came to fixing things like renting a motor
vehicle.

He eventually came away with a white
Citroen, a manual shift model, and drove to the local town hall.
His trip to France was perfectly legal, but something told him to
be wary of advertising his presence. Even renting the car out of
town was not without a certain risk. Maybe his baseball cap would
provide anonymity.

He decided to phone Aziz. This time he'd
use a public call booth. Last night Aziz had proved that his cell
phone wasn't secure. The bug had been easy to find, a small device
stitched into the back pocket of his case. Carlo had a damn cheek,
opening the case somewhere between DCI headquarters and JFK, but
he'd turned the tables on Aziz last night by dropping the bug into
the carry-on case of a Swedish tourist at the hotel who was flying
home in the early hours. It should have given Aziz and Carlo a
worrying start to the morning.

He pressed the handset against his left
ear, trying to blot out the sound of traffic racing along the busy
highway. He'd taken one hell of a chance in offering Hammid Aziz
goods he didn't have -- goods he might not even be able to
get.

"Where are you. Becker? Are you in
Sweden?" Aziz demanded.

"France." He had no intention of
explaining. "Is there a problem?"

"No problem, Becker. You a very smart
man, I think."

"So do we have a deal?" It was hard
not to laugh.

"What you tell me about poison gas
last night, it interest me. Listen, Becker, I no tell your father
what we do, but I ask questions. I find out about DCI in the war.
You right, I think your father and grandfather help the
Germans."

"I already know that." He must hold
back from outright rudeness.

"One thing it bother me,
Becker."

Aziz's voice sounded faint. Jason
shifted his position in the noisy phone booth, trying to find the
place that gave the best sound deadening. "You'll have to speak
louder, Hammid."

"Why the Nazis wait so long for
Domestic Chemicals to make the oil?" Aziz shouted. "Why they no
copy it and make their own?"

Jason moved the phone away from his
ear. "I don't know." He turned to see a young woman with a phone
card in her hand approaching the booth. She stood impatiently
outside.

"Why the Nazis no make their own oil?"
Aziz repeated.

"They probably didn't know how to make
it, Hammid." He pulled his baseball cap lower and turned to face
away from the woman. "It was a DCI secret."

Damn the woman. She might speak good
English -- which was more than Aziz could.

"The Nazis, they had their own
chemists, Becker. If they had samples, why they no animalize
them?"

"Analyze."

"What you say?"

"Analyze. Why didn't they analyze
them?"

"Yes, that what I ask, too,
Becker."

"I have to go, Hammid." He was quickly
losing patience. "I'm supposed to find a geriatric French whore and
a young PI -- all at the same time. And they're not going to be
together, unless the young Englishman is totally
degenerate."

"What that? Degenerate?"

"Okay, we have a deal. Goodbye,
Hammid. I'll keep in touch." He shook his head and replaced the
phone.

He gave the waiting woman no more than
a nod and walked to his rented Citroen. One gold cylinder was all
he needed to persuade Aziz to take his fingers from his throat. He
let the clutch in clumsily. The rental car lurched forward and the
engine stalled. Why the hell did European cars have manual
transmissions?

Aziz had asked a reasonable question.
Okay, so his father reckoned the formula was difficult to copy, but
surely the Nazis would have given the early samples to AG Farben to
develop.

He got the engine restarted and turned
towards Calais. The tracker on loan from Aziz beeped loudly, making
him jump. He waited. Three minutes later it beeped twice. He
rotated the receiver to give an indication of the direction, then
put his foot down and drove towards it. He needed to be sure that
it was Rider's car.

For some reason the Germans had stayed in
touch with DCI by the back door until 1944, almost through the
whole war. The answer probably lay in the complexity of the
formula. Perhaps Berlitzan oil was some mix of hormones that no one
knew how to replicate. Were hormones properly understood in those
days? He shrugged. Anyway it might not have been hormones; it
didn't really matter. Chemical analysis was in the dark ages in the
war.

The highway narrowed and he had to
shift down a gear. The car juddered as he pushed the stick into
fifth by mistake.

Three beeps from the tracker now. The
signal was coming from the south east.

Four beeps indicated he was closing on
it fast.

He drove warily through the rain, past
the typically French houses lining the highway, their green
shutters wide today like eyes watching his every move.

Five clear beeps meant he should be
near enough for a visual.

As he slowed for a cyclist he saw the
shabby orange Mini parked outside a small hotel and bar. He stopped
to check the license plate.

Aziz was right; no one could escape
from one of these bugs. And now he knew where the English PI was
staying. Maybe the man would lead him to Sophie.

Pas-de-Calais, that
afternoon

ZOÉ SAID
she felt exhausted, pointing
out that the Mini wasn't exactly designed for trans-continental
travel. Clearly she intended to stick to her original agreement
about separate rooms, and was very firm as she closed the door when
she decided to take a shower.

Matt went to his own room, the
adjoining one but without an interconnecting door. He settled back
to listen to a tape on his headphones. It was all Florian's fault.
Something French by Berlioz would fit his mood. The March to the
Scaffold perhaps.

He switched the player off after ten
minutes and went out onto the small balcony. It was impossible to
imagine the appalling fighting that had taken place on these
undulating fields and woods: twice, in the last century. Tanks.
Trench warfare. Shelling. He sat on a white plastic chair and
opened the book he was halfway through. It was a whodunit, but
whoever did it didn't really interest him this
afternoon.

He unfolded the map he'd bought
at the local
presse
, and tried unsuccessfully to find the exact place where
the Dutchman had found the ring. Maybe he could go out and start
looking for it. He'd rather be driving around than stuck indoors.
When they went to see Sophie tomorrow morning he wanted to be
familiar with the area.

He'd bought a car magazine on the ferry,
but Zoé had it in a bag in her room next door. It would make a good
excuse for disturbing her. He not only felt restless, he felt
hungry. They could go down the road and find a bar serving coffee
and French pastries.

Zoé's balcony door was open,
but he couldn't see into her room without leaning out and risking
his life. Anyway, he didn't want to be seen as a
voyeur
. He was about to call through the wooden dividing slats
without looking, surely the act of a gentleman when a lady might
still be taking a shower, when he heard Zoé speaking. She must be
on the phone.

"No, Florian. No, no, no." she said in
French.

Zoé went silent. Presumably Florian
was managing to get a word in.

"I hoped you would understand," she
continued. "Can you not guess how I feel?"

Matt moved back into his room. As a PI
he'd listened in to many phone calls without the caller being aware
of the intercept. But this was different. This was Zoé having a
personal conversation.

He was tempted. Surely no harm could
come from listening. He might get a clue as to how she felt about
Florian. No, it would be like cheating. Zoé had made it clear that
she was helping on a temporary basis. If he wanted Zoé he had to
win her in a straight fight, not by listening at
windows.

Can you not guess how I
feel?
He lay
on the bed wondering what Zoé meant. Florian might be able to
guess, but he couldn't.

England, that
evening

"EXCUSE ME,
Sister, I'm here to see one of
your patients. I guess maybe you're in charge?"

Marjorie Ewing stared at the large,
elderly visitor who had turned up unexpectedly. One of the nurses
had told her that an old American priest was in the
hall.

"Visiting hours are over, I'm afraid,"
she said curtly. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Sure thing, ma'am." The man with a
long drooping moustache smiled. "The Rider family has tracked me
down. Well, to be accurate, ma'am, one of their friends did it on
their behalf."

"I'm not sure I..." Marjorie Ewing
wasn't normally lost for words, but a deep scar on the man's chin
distracted her. A very old scar that had healed badly. No one would
be allowed home from hospital nowadays with a disfigurement like
that.

"So sorry, ma'am." The visitor held
out a large hand. "I've not introduced myself. The name is Hawkins.
The Reverend Fergus Hawkins. I'm Canadian. Sure, you will have
guessed that from my accent."

Marjorie Ewing smiled a professional
smile. "You've come about a spiritual matter I expect."