The Phantom Patrol

Book 19: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery

by James R. Benn

Genres: World War II; War & Military; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

An investigation into a gang of Nazi-affiliated art thieves leads Billy Boyle and his comrades directly into the line of fire at the catastrophic Battle of the Bulge.

Winter 1944: Months after the Liberation of France, ex-Boston cop Billy Boyle finds himself in a Paris reeling from the carnage it has endured but hopeful that an end to war is in sight. When Billy finds a rare piece of artwork after a tense shoot-out in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, he thinks it could be connected to the Syndicat du Renard, a shadowy network of Nazi sympathizers known to be smuggling stolen artwork out of France.

Trailing the Syndicat, Billy discovers that someone with a high level of communications clearance—someone in the Phantom regiment of the British Army—may be using his position to aid the thieves. Billy, determined to stop the abettor, heads up to the frontlines where he experiences a last-ditch battle against overwhelming odds. There, the ruinous Battle of the Bulge unfurls in the Ardennes Forest. Can Billy and his team survive the bracing onslaught and return the stolen artwork to its rightful protectors?

Read more

Release date: September 24, 2024

Publisher: Soho Crime

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One
Paris, December 13, 1944

The night was cold, cloaked in a deep darkness brought on by a bank of clouds sailing in on the winds and vanquishing the moonlight. Dead leaves, crisp and brittle, swirled in man-sized cyclones on the cobblestones, one so dense that I mistook it for someone sauntering through the graveyard.
     But no one was strolling through the Père Lachaise at this hour. I knew that for a fact, having been here lying in wait for the last five hours. Standing in wait, as a matter of fact, with only Marcel Proust for company. He didn’t have much to say, being six feet under. I had a small cemetery chapel to lean against. But that didn’t stop my legs from cramping up, and not for the first time, I sat on Marcel’s cold tombstone, offering up my apologies for the disrespect.
     I heard a scrunching sound, maybe leaves being crushed underfoot. Or the wind, sending leaves skittering against a wall.
     Scritttch. The sound drew nearer.
     I squinted, trying to locate where the noise came from. Somewhere along the path, close to where Kaz was hiding. I couldn’t see him, but we’d been through enough that I trusted he was right where he needed to be.
     I spotted it. A large leaf, its curled lobes arched downward, its stem pointed upward like the tail of some gruesome insect dancing down the cobblestones. I almost laughed. Spooked by a dead leaf. I checked the luminous dial on my watch. A little past four in the morning. We’d expected them at one o’clock, or oh-one-hundred, the way the army liked to say it. I began to think about giving the whole thing up. Blame it on bad intelligence, but it seemed to me that the Syndicat du Renard was not coming out tonight.
     I thought about slinking back through the tombstones and monuments to where Kaz was hidden near the grave of Oscar Wilde. The Père Lachaise Cemetery, all eighty acres of it, was a ritzy final resting place for the rich and famous, as well as regular Parisians who were lucky enough to get in. We were here with a team of Counter Intelligence Corps agents, waiting for a gang that aimed to do a little grave robbing. Or so we’d been told.
     I stretched, trying not to stiffen up. I moved around the tiny chapel, watching for any sign of movement before I headed in Kaz’s direction.
     Then I heard the footsteps. The fall of a bootheel on gravel.
     Silence.
     A sliver of light, quickly extinguished.
     I froze, listening for another sound. It was impossible to see any distance through the crowded grave markers, crypts, and mausoleums, but from what I could make out, the light and sound had come from behind me, deep within the cemetery.
     Had they already gotten in? We had the entrances covered. Two CIC agents were at the rue des Rondeaux gate, thirty yards in the other direction. Our source had said they’d use that entrance, but I guess his dope didn’t extend to their arrival time.
     I took off a glove and unholstered my Colt, stepping over graves and catching the slightest of sounds, probably much like the noise I was making. I stopped beside a tree, about halfway to Kaz’s location. I edged around the trunk and saw a mausoleum, not six feet in front of me. The thick wooden door was open.
     They’d been inside the cemetery all night. Before we got here.
     Patient bastards.
     I heard the clink of metal on wood. The sound of tools being carried.
     I followed the sound, which was headed for Kaz’s position. There was no way our guys outside or even the two agents at the gate had heard, and I could only hope Kaz had picked up on the clatter.
     The wind kicked up, swirling leaves again and making enough noise for me to barrel around a couple of tombs and make my way to the path. That’s when I saw them, four guys gathered around a flat gravestone. They were blurs, the darkness too complete to make an identification. Which was why we had CIC special agent Jerome Salinger with us. He’d interrogated a few men who were suspected of black market activities but had been let go for lack of evidence. Later they were found to have links to a syndicate run by an unknown character known only as the Fox.
     We were hoping the Fox would turn out to be one of the men Salinger had interrogated, or that one of his men could be convinced to turn against him. We wanted an identification badly. The Fox had been responsible for the assassination of a CIC agent who’d gotten too close. Which is why we’d laid this trap. The syndicate might think they’d outwaited us, but we still had the place surrounded.
     I heard the brush of fabric against stone.
     A hand gripped my shoulder.
     “Billy,” came the whisper. It was Kaz, light on his feet and his Webley revolver at the ready.        
     “They’ve been inside all along,” I said softly, leaning close.
     “Yes. They failed to extinguish their light when they opened the mausoleum. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. What shall we do?”
     I knew Kaz would be up for a fight. The only question was, how to make sure we won it.
     “Let’s take them,” I said.
     The scrape of stone on stone told us they’d gotten to work with a pry bar.
     “We could wait for them to remove whatever they are after,” Kaz said.
     “Or grab them while they’re busy with the stone,” I said.
     “Good,” he whispered. “Let us announce ourselves with a gunshot. That will bring the others running.”
     I nodded and squeezed his arm. We stepped onto the path, each of us automatically keeping to one side, maximizing the space between us. The figures ahead and to the right hadn’t noticed us yet, which told me they’d expected us to be gone.
     Or, that waiting for hours was their regular routine. A routine of extraordinary patience and caution. I didn’t like it.
     But it was too late for second thoughts. Kaz raised his pistol as I leveled my automatic at the men clustered together over the grave.
     “Halt!” I shouted. Kaz fired, the discharge shattering the still night.
     Two shots came at us, and we each dove for the cover of the nearest stonework. It looked like only one man had fired, probably a lookout who was at the ready. But the burst from a Sten gun announced they’d come loaded for bear.
     Or for us.
     I fired at the afterimage of the muzzle flash, then ducked as another burst slammed into the mausoleum. Kaz let off two more shots and I backed up, taking cover behind a tree as a gunman fired into the position I’d just vacated. I didn’t have a clear shot at him, but as I scrambled between the graves, I realized these guys must be soldiers. Deserters, probably, but they knew to outflank an opponent after keeping him pinned down. I got behind them and heard frantic shouts in French coming from farther down the path.
     More of them? Maybe. But I didn’t have time to count. I rose from behind a tomb and fired once, twice, aiming for the moving bodies coming my way. One guy grunted and went down. I instinctively ducked, expecting return fire. There was one shot, then nothing.
     “They’re running,” Kaz shouted. “Get clear!”
     Now I really had a bad feeling.
     I went back the way I’d come and saw two figures moving down the path. Our CIC agents.
     “Take cover!” I shouted. I heard Kaz yelling at the reinforcements coming from the other direction, sending them after the retreating gunmen.
     Then the explosion. It came from just over the wall, a blast followed by the whomp of exploding fuel. A truckload of it, by the size of the fireball.
     The next explosion was different. A sharp crack and a small, bright flash came out of the open grave. Not enough to do a lot of damage, unless you were standing over it. Which is what I would have been doing if Kaz hadn’t given the warning.
     I walked up to the smoldering tomb as flashlight beams and the tread of boots drew closer.
     “Did they get away?” Special Agent Salinger asked, skidding to a halt and playing his flashlight over the grave. It was empty, except for drifting smoke, shreds of burnt canvas, and scorch marks.
     “One of them didn’t,” I said, pointing to where I knew one man went down. Salinger went to inspect the corpse as Kaz returned, shaking his head.
     “They’re gone,” he said. “Up and over the wall, I suspect. The burning truck drew everyone’s attention.”
     “Obviously part of the plan,” I said.
     “Hey, Captain Boyle,” Salinger said. “I wish you hadn’t plugged that guy. We could have interrogated him.”
     “There was a lot of shooting,” I said. “I thought asking nicely wouldn’t be very effective.”
     “What do you mean?” Kaz asked Salinger as he eyed the corpse.
     “He’d taken a slug in the side,” Salinger said. “A bad wound, but not fatal. So why the bullet to the head?”
     “I did fire twice,” I said. “But I think I only hit him once. I heard him grunt when he went down.”
     “It was up close, right between the eyes,” Salinger said. “There’s a tattoo of unburned powder. Looks like a small caliber weapon. That wasn’t you?”
     “Nope. I wasn’t that close, and my .45 doesn’t qualify as small caliber. But I did hear another shot. I thought it was aimed at me,” I said.
     “Excellent planning and a ruthless approach,” Kaz said. “Who are we dealing with here?”
     “And what the hell was in that grave?” I asked.