Blood Red City by Justin Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

drawings.
    â€˜The Reichsfuhrer should be told,’ Kruger said to Hoffman as he handed him the wooden box.
    â€˜I shall inform him when he returns,’ Hoffman said. Himmler was at meetings with Hitler all week. Often, Hoffman went with him. He didn’t enjoy the experience.
    Kruger opened the box. If he thought it odd Hoffman had put the bracelet inside, he didn’t comment. He removed the bracelet. It was hinged and he pulled it open. He closed it round the girl’s right wrist. It hung heavy and inert as she drew.
    â€˜Nothing,’ Kruger said, disappointed.
    â€˜Hardly surprising,’ Hoffman told him.
    â€˜I suppose not. But we can always hope. I wonder if it is worth trying the other bracelets we have? One of them may be a match.’
    â€˜It needs to establish a link at both ends,’ Hoffman pointed out. ‘It must match not just the girl but whoever, whatever she is seeing through. We can establish a link at one end with the ritual but even that doesn’t always work, and we never know which of these it might link to.’ He waved his hand to take in all the sleepers across the whole room.
    â€˜Then this is probably as good as it gets,’ Kruger said.
    â€˜We are lucky she is picking up anything at all,’ Hoffman said. He gently pushed back a strand of the girl’s hair that had fallen forward across her face. Not that she noticed.
    *   *   *
    Sarah hardly noticed the passage of the days – the weeks. Spring was turning to summer without her really noticing. Most of the time she had no idea where she was. The people she was with changed constantly, as everyone seemed to do the training stages in a different order. Maybe, she thought, it was a deliberate policy to dissuade any of them from becoming friends. Not just a security consideration, she realised, but because for many of them this training would lead to almost certain incarceration or death.
    Knowing that meant she saw her colleagues in a different way. She realised that the bluster and arrogance of some of the men, the spiky abruptness of some of the women, was down to nerves more than character.
    The final stages of the training seemed more sedate. Sarah spoke some French, and learned more. She was shown how to forge documents – which required a lot more patience that she’d ever believed she had. She spent a day learning to fire and handle enemy guns and explosives – almost as long as they’d spent teaching her about Allied weapons.
    Arriving at the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire to complete the final stages of her training was almost a rest.
    â€˜Here you will learn surveillance techniques as well as deception,’ the chief instructor, Major Woolridge, informed Sarah and the others. He was a tall, slim man with a plummy voice and a thin moustache. About a dozen trainees were assembled outside the impressive country house, standing on the gravel driveway. ‘But don’t believe for a moment that the heat is off, because it isn’t. So I’ll see you back here at oh-six-hundred tomorrow for a visit to the assault course.’
    Every day started early with the assault course, or a run through the extensive grounds, or both. Sarah reckoned she was fitter than she had ever been. As exhausted as she had ever been. It was a surprise as well as a relief to be given some free time one sunny, warm afternoon. One of the instructors gave Sarah and several other trainees a lift into Southampton. He ‘suggested’ that they should not be seen together, so they each went their separate ways.
    It was a refreshing change of pace just to wander round the town. But it wasn’t long before Sarah realised she was being followed. She first saw the man as she was walking along a quiet street. He paused to light a cigarette as she glanced back, turning out of the wind, but also so that his face was hidden. She recognised the same man from his raincoat and hat