Look Behind You (The Order of the Silver Star) by Elisabeth Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page B

contaminant enough, but he decided not to worry about it. Skinwalkers or no skinwalkers, he had a performance to prepare for the SS.
    By the time he finally heard footsteps coming toward him, as he had expected, he was well engrossed in examining a bomb. And he didn’t jump when a voice demanded, “What are you doing here?”
    “My job ,” he shot back crossly, stepping back from the bomb and producing his identity papers for the weasel-faced Oberscharführer attempting to loom over him despite being half a foot shorter. 5 “Major Eric Engelbrecht, Luftwaffe Intelligence. I had information regarding an attempt to sabotage this mission.”
    The SS man examined his papers, sniffed, and handed them back. “And you did not contact the Gestapo?”
    “I didn’t wish to bring accusations with no proof. And proof is precisely what I have not found here.”
    “There was already an inspection scheduled.”
    “Yes, and for all I knew, said sabotage would have brought the building down on your heads before you could find the one bomb that was out of place.”
    Weasel-face’s eyes narrowed. “What gives you the right to supersede a Gestapo investigation?”
    “Aside from the fact that there is none yet? This is a Luftwaffe installation—and I outrank you, Feldwebel ,” Chris added, deliberately using Weasel-face’s Heer rank rather than his SS rank. There was a time and a place to be annoying, even toward the Gestapo, and this was definitely it. “I had planned to come to the Gestapo when I was finished and provide such proof as I could find, but since there is no evidence of sabotage here, you are now informed and I shall take my leave.”
    “And if we find any sabotage, Herr….”
    “ Major Engelbrecht. You won’t. But I believe the Paris Gestapo already has a file on me, should you feel the need to pry. Good day.” And he stormed out before Weasel-face could correct him for not saying Heil Hitler .
    He had to pull over halfway back to Paris because he was shaking so badly he could hardly control the car. And he prayed fervently until he felt he could get through the next few days without jumping at shadows.
    But the day of the raid came and went, and Chris didn’t get the visit from the Gestapo he’d been fearing. He didn’t get any mysterious ailments, either, or anything more than damage reports from London. He was beginning to wonder whether his mind had been playing tricks on him about the spell and the grimoire when, as he was walking back to his quarters at the end of his shift, someone bumped into him and picked his pocket. Before he could take a swing at the thief, said thief turned back—and it was Cuchulain.
    “Terribly sorry, sir,” Cuchulain said. “Here, I believe you dropped this.” And he held Chris’ wallet out to him.
    Chris straightened his jacket and took the wallet with a nod of thanks, being too startled to do more than that. Back in his quarters, though, he opened the wallet to find a five-Mark note tucked inside, with a small note on flash paper tucked inside that.
    Well done on the holy water , the handwritten note said. Word from Killarney is, the curse on those bombs would have wiped London off the map. – C
    The only thing that stopped Chris from completely falling apart at that moment was the realization that the five-Mark note was a forgery, printed on the wrong kind of paper. Swallowing hard, he ran his fingers over it and discovered that the lacework hid pinpricks with a message in Braille:
    London agrees, waiting on DC, looks likely.
    Chris silently drew a deep, ragged breath and let it out again. After that, he used his lighter to set fire to both messages; the flash paper went up in seconds, but the fake money he set to burn in his ashtray. Then he looked around and noticed that the corner of one of his pajama shirts had gotten caught sticking out of a closed drawer. It hadn’t been like that when he’d left that morning. A quick inspection revealed a microphone in the