Read Online Hands of the Traitor by Christopher Wright - Free Book Online

inside his head. It had been light for some time, but now
the sky turned black. A whole day must have passed. He'd received
head injuries and was unable to move. He closed his eyes and let
the darkness take over.
    The night passed slowly until the
bright morning sky replaced the starlight, burning his eyes with a
painful intensity. Suddenly he knew where he was. The high plants
that surrounded him were the reed beds by the Nazi base.
    The world had blown up. Bits of memory
returned. He'd not received these injuries from the explosion. He
had a vague recollection of the French girl, Sophie Bernay, helping
him to his feet. And the Americans called Heinman. The older man.
There was something else.
    Two gold rings.
    The knife.
    A grenade in the American's
mouth.
    The knife had been sharp.
    Anger. Anger against the Germans.
Anger against the Americans. Sophie's face. Blood. Screaming. The
explosion....
    Then the silence.
    He made his first move since regaining
consciousness, cautiously touching his head. He could vaguely
remember someone striking him heavily.
    The occasional sound of voices drifted
across the reeds. German voices mixed with the pain that wracked
his body. He guessed that his mind was beginning to hallucinate.
He'd done something terrible with the grenade and the knife. The
insanity of his fevered brain was too vivid. The memories were
confused and terrifying. Impossible, totally repulsive.
    He rolled onto his side to be
sick.

Chapter 8
    SECURITY LIGHTS shone around the
site; temporary bulbs strung up on hastily erected gantries,
scarcely penetrating the darkness that blanketed the scene of
destruction. Resting had done him good. Alec Rider found he could
stand without too much pain.
    Unless he'd totally lost track of
time, the MTB would be ready tomorrow night to collect him and his
colleagues from Strouanne on the French coast, between Wissant and
Cap Blanc-Nez. The long walk would be difficult in the dark, but
far less dangerous than crossing hostile territory in daylight. The
kitbag was important: it now contained something vital. He couldn't
bring himself to loosen the draw cord.
    The main concrete building had
disintegrated; the wooden huts blown away like paper. Sophie Bernay
had gone. There seemed to be no one left, apart from a group of
Wehrmacht soldiers loading lorries with what little remained on
this launch site for the Führer's Vergeltungswaffen . The runaway Storch had ripped into
the V1 storage bunker, and the resulting explosion had devastated
the entire area.
    Gold!
    Suddenly he remembered Sophie's gold
candles. The corner of the compound was now under a heap of
concrete panels dumped by the soldiers clearing the debris. Major
Jackson had told him to find poison gas in gold cylinders, but it
was impossible to dig for them now. Perhaps they weren't important.
Maybe they were some form of payment from the two Americans for
services rendered. Within a few weeks, the Allies would overrun
this part of France. The gold might be a lucky find that would
change some soldier's life for ever.
    Alec accepted that he'd failed. Sophie
Bernay would have known why the two Americans had been here. Sophie
was the sort of girl who'd make it her business to ask things, to
find out answers.
    Just thinking about Sophie made him
tense.
    He had an indistinct memory of Sophie
Bernay speaking after the explosion. And the Americans; the
Heinmans and Sophie talking together, having an argument. The blow
on his head had caused more than concussion. It had blotted
something out. Something he did not even want to
remember.
    *
    THE MTB CAME on time to the rescue point
at Strouanne. Six of his colleagues were waiting with him. A total
of seven SOE men -- out of twenty who'd been dropped off.
Casualties on that scale made a blow on the head seem
trivial.
    He sat by himself below decks in the
cramped cabin, leaving the others above to joke and exchange
stories of their experiences in France. None had come up with any
secret