The Devouring: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery - Hardcover

Buch 12 von 21: Billy Boyle World War II Mystery

Benn, James R.

 
9781616957735: The Devouring: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1616957735 ISBN 13: 9781616957735
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

A murder in wartime Switzerland reveals Swiss complicity with the Nazis in World War II, and US Army detective Billy Boyle is called to investigate.

Europe, 1944: Captain Billy Boyle and his friend Lieutenant Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz are sent to neutral Switzerland to work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), investigating Swiss banks that are laundering looted Nazi gold. The US and Swiss governments are about to embark on diplomatic discussions regarding the Safehaven Protocols, aimed at limiting the amount of war materials exported by Switzerland to the Nazis, stemming the tide of looted gold, and preventing postwar use of Nazi wealth by war criminals. With the talks about to begin and the Gestapo ever present, the OSS wants Billy and Kaz to protect the participants, which turns out to be a very deadly task.

The plans go wrong from the beginning when Billy and Kaz crashland in France. As they make their way through occupied territory to the border, they meet Anton Lasho, a member of the Sinti ethnic group, whose family was slaughtered by the Nazis, and who is, in turn, a one-man Nazi-killing machine. They’ll need his help, because as they find once they make it across the border, Swiss banks are openly laundering gold “harvested” from concentration camps, and those who are profiting will do everything they can to protect their wealth and hide their dark secrets.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II mysteries. The debut, Billy Boyle, was named one of five top mysteries of 2006 by Book Sense and was a Dilys Award nominee. A Blind Goddess was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and The Rest Is Silence was a Barry Award nominee. Benn, a former librarian, splits his time between the Gulf Coast of Florida and Connecticut with his wife Deborah Mandel.

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Chapter One

Light is faster than sound.
     Strange, the things you think about when you’re about to die. Even as tracers lit the night air, their silent silvery phosphorescence clawing at our small aircraft from the ground below, a tiny part of my brain mused on this practical demonstration of that scientific fact. The rest of my brain panicked madly, sending surges of adrenaline coursing through my body, urging me to get the hell out, now.
    Which was not at all helpful, given that we were flying at five hundred feet, heading directly into heavy antiaircraft fire, making one hundred and eighty miles per hour.
    Then came the sound. The chattering of ack-ack fire. Flak exploding in blinding flashes all around us. Shrapnel struck the aircraft, rending the metal, sounding like the devil’s own hail storm on a sheetmetal roof.
    “Hold tight!” shouted the pilot as he dove the Lysander and put it through twists and turns to evade the lead rising up against us. I looked below as he dipped the airplane and saw the twinkling of automatic fire from along the stretch of river we’d been ollowing.
    “They’re on the road,” I shouted to the pilot in the single front seat. It was a column of German vehicles, moving at night to avoid Allied aircraft, and we’d flown dead at them.
    The pilot didn’t waste breath answering. He banked left, violently, diving to treetop level at a right angle away from the river. Looking back, I saw tracer fire searching vainly for us, then fade as the Krauts gave up and continued on their way.
    The Lysander jolted, loud thumps whacking against the aircraft frame.
    “Sorry, chaps,” the pilot muttered, pulling back on the yoke and gaining altitude. “Almost landed in the pines. She’s a bit sluggish, might’ve caught some shrapnel in the rudder.” He banked the Lysander, bringing us around to the river again, the only map to our destination.
    “There may be other columns on the road,” Kaz said, adjusting his steel-rimmed spectacles. Even after nearly being blown out of the sky and tossed around inside the cramped Lysander, he managed to sound nonchalant, his precise English leavened with the slightest of Polish accents.
    “The Saône River is our only landmark,” the pilot said. “Jerry’s travel plans notwithstanding. If we veer off to the east, we run the risk of entering Swiss airspace. It’d be damned embarrassing to be shot down by the Swiss, after all.”
    “Why?” Kaz asked.
    “You know the Swiss. Chocolate, watches, and sheep, that’s what they’re famous for. I’d never hear the end of it, if I lived to tell the tale.”
    “Personally, I’d choose death by chocolatier if I had any say in the matter,” Kaz responded. Switzerland was our ultimate destination, and we weren’t in the market for wristwatches.
    “Don’t worry about the Swiss or the Jerries,” the pilot said. “I haven’t lost a Joe yet, and I don’t plan on starting tonight.”
    We were his Joes. It was what the Special Operations Executive pilots called the agents and commandoes they flew into occupied Europe. No names, nothing to reveal if captured and tortured, just an anonymous one-way ride to some grassy field in the countryside. In a few minutes we were back on course, flying low over dark hills and a glistening waterway, the bright half-moon at our backs providing a tempting target for alert Kraut gunners, the river our only guide.
    “What’s the next landmark?” I asked the nameless pilot.
    “We’ll bear left at the Rhône River in Lyon. There’s a sharp bend in the river, it’ll be easy to spot, even with only a half-moon. Then Lake Gris, a narrow lake about twelve miles long. I set us down outside of Cessens, in a nice open field on a ridge overlooking the water. A bit tricky, but very secluded.”
    Tricky I didn’t mind, if it meant no Krauts.
    We flew on, no sign of movement below us, not a single light visible in the blacked-out countryside. The drone of the engine was mesmerizing, lulling us into a sense of security and safety, the sudden, surprising bright barrage of fire now behind us. The high, clear canopy gave us a majestic view of the sparkling heavens. The  half-moon, the stars, and the faint glow from the instrument panel our only illuminations, guiding us as we traveled across a calm sea of inky black.
    I almost relaxed.
    “What is that?” Kaz asked, leaning forward and pointing at two o’clock. Searchlights flickered in the distance, an orange glow growing at the horizon.
    “Bloody Bomber Command most likely,” the pilot answered in a low growl. “Hitting the rail yards in Lyon. Or the airfield west of the city. Either way, they’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest for us.”
    “Can we go around it?” I asked.
    “No,” he said. “I don’t have the fuel. We’re at the extreme range as it is. I topped off at a forward airstrip in Normandy, but I’ve barely enough to make it back.”
    “We must fly through that?” Kaz asked. As we drew closer, the night sky grew brighter with searchlights, explosions, and burning buildings.
    “Unless you Joes want to abort the mission. Say the word and I’ll turn around.”
    “Have you ever had to abort?” I asked.
    “No. Thought I’d offer, that’s all,” he said, turning to smile at us. SOE pilot humor, I guess. “It’s not as bad as it looks, mates. We’re under their radar, and the Jerries are looking for high-altitude bombers, not our little Lysander.”
    “Don’t fly under the bomber formation,” Kaz said. “Being hit by an RAF bomb would be more embarrassing than being shot down by the Swiss.”
    “Right you are,” the pilot said. “Now all we need to do is catch a glimpse of the Rhône River. It’ll be even easier with the sky all lit up. Jerry’s doing us a favor!”
    That was one way of looking at it.
    We drew closer to the city, the searchlights casting wide beams of white light, looking like columns holding up the night sky. Phosphorescent tracer bullets sought out the bombers, dancing against the darkness in graceful, deadly arcs. Bombs exploded in front of us, maybe a quarter of a mile away. The pilot banked the Lysander, moving away rom the flames and smoke. The aircraft shook as shock waves from the explosions buffeted us, sending the plane into a sideways dive. The ground looked damned close.
    “Hang on,” the pilot told us, as if we hadn’t already figured that one out. He pulled the small craft up, his voice a nervous quiver he couldn’t quite hide. “That’s the main rail yard. We should be fine now. Look, there’s the river.”
    It was the Rhône, heading west from the burning city, shimmering with moonlight and mayhem, antiaircraft fire dying down as the bomber stream departed.
    “Is the airplane damaged?” Kaz...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1616957735
ISBN 13 
9781616957735
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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