XPD Read Online Free PDF Page A

US Third Army and attached units who were concerned with the movement of material from the Kaiseroda salt mine, Merkers, Thuringia, Germany, in the final days of the Second World War are urgently sought by B. Lustig Productions Inc. The corporation is preparing a major motion picture about this historical episode. Veterans should send full details, care of this newspaper, to Box 2188. Photos and documents will be treated with utmost care and returned to the sender by registered post.
    Kitty King watched him search through the items.
    ‘Nothing seems to have been taken,’ said Stuart. ‘Did you leave the door open when you went down to the dustbin?’
    ‘There was no one on the stairs,’ she said.
    ‘Waiting upstairs,’ said Stuart. ‘The same kid who did the burglaries in the other flats, I’ll bet.’
    ‘Are you going to phone the department?’
    ‘Nothing’s missing. And the front door has no signs of forced entry.’
    ‘The papers for your trip were there, weren’t they?’
    He nodded.
    ‘Then you must have known about going last Sunday – when you put the tickets and things in there.’ There was a note of resentment in her voice.
    ‘I still wasn’t sure until I saw the DG late this afternoon.’
    ‘I wish you’d discussed it with me, Boyd.’ He looked up sharply. This was a new side of Kitty King. She had always described their relationship as no more than a temporary ‘shack-up’. She was a career woman, she had always maintained, with a good degree in political science from the London School of Economics, and the aim of becoming a Permanent Secretary, the top of the Administrative Class grades.
    Stuart said, ‘If I phone the night duty officer, they’ll be all over us. You know what a fuss they’ll make. We’ll be up all night writing reports.’
    ‘You know best, sweetheart.’
    ‘A kid probably, looking for cash. When he found only this sort of thing he got out quickly, before you came back upstairs again.’
    ‘Does your wife still have her key to this place?’ Kitty asked.
    ‘She wouldn’t break open my desk.’
    ‘That’s not what I asked you.’
    ‘It was just some kid looking for cash. Nothing is missing. Stop worrying about it.’
    ‘She’d like to get you back, Boyd. You realize that, don’t you?’
    Boyd put his arms round her tightly and kissed her for a long time.

Chapter 5
    The Steins – father and son – lived in a large house in Hollywood. Cresta Ridge Drive provides a sudden and welcome relief from the exhaust fumes and noise of Franklin Avenue. It is one of a tangle of steep winding roads that lead into the Hollywood hills and end at Griffith Park and Lake Hollywood. Its elevation gives the house a view across the city, and on smoggy days when the pale tide of pollution engulfs the city, the sky here remains blue.
    By Californian standards these houses are old, discreetly sited behind mature horse-chestnut trees now grown up to the roofs. In the thirties some of them, their gardens blazing with hibiscus and bougainvillea as they were this day, had been owned by film stars. Even today long-lost but strangely familiar faces can be glimpsed at the check-out of the Safeway or self-serving gasoline at Wilbur’s. But most of Stein’s neighbours were corporate lawyers, ambitious dentists and refugees from the nearby aerospace communities.
    On this afternoon a rainstorm deluged the city. It was as if nature was having one last fling before the summer.
    Outside the Steins’ house there was a white Imperial Le Baron two-door hardtop, one of the biggest cars in the Chrysler range. The paintwork shone in the hard, unnatural light that comes with a storm, and the heavy rain glazed the paintwork and the dark tinted windows. Sitting – head well down – in the back seat was a man. He appeared to be asleep but he was not even dozing.
    The car’s owner – Miles MacIver – was inside the Stein home. Stein senior was not at home, and now his son Billy was regretting the