Hands of the Traitor Read Free Page B

on
the middle finger. A right hand. He'd wiped the dirt from it with
his sleeve and revealed a large gold ring engraved with two ornate
letters and a single eye. A green gemstone filled the eye. Slipping
the ring into the bag, he'd dropped the disintegrating hand back
into the hole. Only metal remains were of interest.
    The extension to the French
out-of-town shopping mall promised some exciting finds. The Germans
had occupied this area near Calais in both World Wars. There were
pieces of metal in the ground, definitely military, and mostly
World War Two. Yesterday the construction team had found a small
aluminum panel with Nazi markings.
    Germans had built steel launch ramps for
their flying bombs on sites like this in the Calais area of
northern France. Pieces of ferrous scrap metal infested the ground,
and only his long experience with the detector made it possible to
avoid the spurious signals that intruded every time he swung the
search head. Steel was nothing but a curse. He had to move slowly,
and he had to move carefully.
    In a few weeks the foundations for a
shopping mall would cover this piece of land. If there were Nazi
relics under the soil he might have to call the club down for a
mass search.
    Mass searches weren't so
good ,
because mass searches involved people.
    Henk looked warily at the
crowds visiting the new supermarket for their Saturday shopping.
The car park overlooked this area of ground marked out by ancient
drainage ditches. The site was abandoned for the weekend. Le
week-end , as
they said locally. He almost smiled as he recalled this French use
of English, and continued to move slowly over the dry grass,
wearing his headphones and keeping the white search head of the
detector close to the ground. People paused to stare as they pushed
their laden trolleys of groceries back to their cars. Several
families came down the slope to watch as he prepared to dig another
small hole. What did they think he was looking for -- Captain
Kidd's bloody treasure?
    "Go home, there's nothing to
see!"
    The stupid children stood excitedly,
their silly chatter attracting a group of friends. Before long a
swarm of people descended on the site. Half-witted fathers who'd
come to collect their kids now stayed to watch. There had been
nothing interesting in the last five holes, but everyone stood
open-mouthed as they waited for the signal that heralded the crock
of gold.
    Henk sighed. He needed to concentrate
on the meter reading on the control box, on the crispness of the
sound in the headphones, on the area over which the signal came.
Every year he saved himself hundreds of hours of wasted digging by
carefully analyzing the signals. He knew of no one else who could
find small objects on this junk infested site.
    He turned his back on the
spectators in the hope they'd lose interest. The day was hot and
tempers were frayed. Two children crouched down and their small
hands darted into the hole just as he unearthed a circle of shiny
metal. One kid nearly got his hand cut by the knife. Henk pushed
him out of the way -- rather roughly -- but only because he was in
danger.
    The boy fell backwards and hit his head on
the ground. He began to scream, and his father was standing just
behind.
    The argument that followed made Henk
irritable. The French father seemed unable to understand that a
metal circle might be the end of a live shell case. Ammunition
hidden in the ground for a long time could be dangerous, but Henk
reckoned he knew how to deal with it.
    He didn't know how to deal with stupid
parents.
    The father obviously believed he knew
how to deal with treasure hunters who pushed his son around. He
lashed out with his foot. Henk stood up quickly and towered above
the man. The father swore a torrent of abuse and tried to pull his
son back towards the car park.
    His son refused to go.
" C'est de
l'or! " he
shouted, wrenching himself free.
    Henk knew the excited kid was right:
the metal circle was undoubtedly gold. Brass went green