Dead Lock

by B. David Warner

  There would be at least two thousand visitors here tomorrow. The more the merrier.

  How had Roosevelt put it? December 7, 1941 - a date that would live in infamy?

  July 11, 1943, was going to top that.

  90

  Andy and I had been tapped to write an article profiling some of the workers of the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company for tomorrow’s special dedication edition. These fellows had worked fourteen months straight in shifts that ran around the clock, in freezing cold and blistering heat, and they had built the MacArthur Lock in sixteen months. Years ago, the Weizel and Poe Locks had taken eight years to complete and the Davis Lock took six.

  As we got to the gate, security was tight. An Army M.P. checked our credentials carefully as we entered the fenced area. The MacArthur Lock was closest to land, and a hundred or so folding chairs had been set up on the grass at the edge of the lock for tomorrow’s ceremony. The chairs were earmarked for the ceremony participants, their families and guests. Regular folks who got here early would take up the back rows, and there was a large area behind the chairs where visitors would stand. It was clear officials expected a large crowd in spite of G.P.’s editorial.

  Andy and I split up. I interviewed half a dozen workers and then took a last look around the area. To my left, out toward the end of the MacArthur Lock, where it flowed into the St. Marys River, I spotted Corporal Cummins and his sidekick with their anti-aircraft gun. Cummins waved as I approached.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Brennan. Collecting background for an article?”

  “Yep. Any new word from Fort Brady on an attack?”

  “Nothing. But we’ve been on full alert since yesterday.” He pointed to the ammunition clip hanging from the gun, “Old Betsy here is loaded and ready for anything the Krauts can fly at her.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  The telephones were ringing when I got to the office. As I suspected, the commotion was due to G.P.’s editorial. The first call had come from our illustrious mayor Roland Swenson, but others followed. The pressure on G.P. had been tremendous.

  Not all the calls were negative; some praised G.P. for having the guts to run the editorial. Some callers merely had questions.

  News of the war continued to pour in from the wire services all afternoon: an armada of some 2,700 ships was approaching the island of Sicily from virtually every port on the Mediterranean.

  I was home soon after five, let Mick out and fixed supper for myself.

  I was in bed by eleven. Tomorrow was the Big Day.

  But I could never have guessed just how big it would be.

  91

  July 11, 1943

  D-Day

  Early on the day of the dedication, Andy Checkle and I stood beside the St. Marys River at the site of the original Fort Brady. Built in 1822, it was now a city park. Scotty had sailed the Caiman up here, just half a mile or so east of the locks. The huge yacht was moored at the dock just feet from us, ready to sail into the MacArthur Lock later in the day.

  The sun shone bright and the temperature felt hot even at ten o’clock in the morning. The day promised to be a scorcher.

  A crowd had gathered in the park to get a look at the ship they’d been reading about in the newspapers. Suddenly I heard someone call my name and turned to see Ellen Landon, my old high school chum, standing in the crowd.

  We embraced, and she introduced her husband. “It’s Ellen McKenzie now,” she said. We spent a few moments catching up on each other’s lives since graduation; then began reminiscing about our high school days. Ellen had, of course, heard about Shirley’s passing.

  “It was a real shocker,” she said. “It seems like yesterday we all met at Toad Hall, talking about teachers and . . .” her face reddened as she glanced at her husband, “boyfriends.” We both laughed as she told her husband, “That was before I met you, Honey.”

  But Ellen’s comments about our Toad Hall hit me like a thunderbolt. Suddenly I had to find Scotty.

  Andy and I bid a quick goodbye to Ellen and her husband and ran aboard the Caiman.

  We found Scotty guiding a vacuum over the carpeted floor of the main salon.

  “Scotty, I think I know where Shirley’s diary is,” I called over the roar of the vacuum.

  Scotty turned off the vacuum; I had his attention. He listened as I told him about Toad Hall and why I thought the odds were good that Shirley had hidden her diary there.

  “So you see, we’ve got to get to the Minneapolis Woods for a look around right away.”

  Scotty seemed skeptical. “How can you be certain this Toad Hall of yours is still there?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” I said. “But it’s our last chance to find the notes Shirley kept during her investigation. It’s sure worth a try.”

  “People will be arriving to board the Caiman in less than two hours,” Scotty said. “Can’t it wait until after the ceremony?”

  “Don’t you see? It may be too late after the ceremony. If there’s an attack, people will be dead. I need you to go with me. Andy can drive to town and file our story with the paper.”

  “There’s too much for me to do here,” Scotty said. “Stay and help, then I’ll drive you there as soon as the dedication is over.”

  “I’m going now,” I said. “Either you go with me, or I’ll get Andy to drive me.”

  “What about your story?”

  “Hell with the story. I’m talking about people’s lives. Maybe hundreds or thousands of them.”

  Scotty drew a deep sigh. “Alright. I’ll go with you. But I damn well hope this isn’t some wild goose chase.”

  Andy drove us the eight miles downriver to Scotty’s Packard, then turned around and headed for the newspaper.

  The dedication loomed just hours away.

  92

  Scotty’s Packard made good time. We reached the Minneapolis Woods in fifteen minutes.

  We left the Packard beside the road in front of the old Frederick’s mansion, a colonial style house that had seen better days. Much better. Windows were broken, the roof had caved in on one side and weeds replaced what had once been an elegant lawn. We walked around to the back of the house and after searching for a minute or two found the trail that led back toward Toad Hall.

  Plant life had encroached on much of the trail making it narrower than I remembered. We followed the path as it wound around a gigantic oak and down a slight hill. We walked until we could see the cabin up ahead. It, too, had been a victim of overly aggressive plant life. As we came closer, though, I could see that brush had been cleared from around the doorway, making it possible to enter and leave.

  Someone had been at Toad Hall within the past few weeks.

  The old door creaked as we entered the cabin, stepping from the warmth of a July day into a cool, damp and somewhat bleak interior. I looked around the living room, streams of light coming in through windows that had long ago given up their glass. A table sat in the center of the room, wooden chairs were scattered about, some lying on their sides. Toward the rear there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. To the left sat a giant stone fireplace that hadn’t felt the heat of a fire in three decades.

  The smell of the cabin interior was exactly as I remembered: a musty combination of wood and plants. The whole scene was pure nostalgia. As I gazed about the room I could picture the five of us. Shirley, Sue, Mary, Ellen and me sitting around this very table, telling stories and laughing uproariously.

  That seemed so very long ago now.

  It was time to get to work. The main room took seconds to search; there was nowhere to store anything. I headed for one of the bedrooms and hit pay dirt almost immediately.

  93

  Andy Checkle reached the News office just after noon. The parking lot adjacent to the Soo Morning News was filled with employees’ cars, so he drove two storefronts farther and parked in the city lot.

  He sprinted to the office, anxious to file the story of the Caiman preparations and meet Kate back
at the locks for the dedication ceremony. That was the real story today, and the News had promised a special edition to hit the stands later this evening.

  Once inside the building, Checkle hurried to his desk. He spread his notes on the desk and began typing almost immediately. The story seemed to go as smoothly as the preparations aboard the Caiman.

  When he finished fifteen minutes later, he looked up and noticed something was wrong. Mary Nelson was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

  He approached her desk. “Something wrong, Mary?”

  She looked up. “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “G.P. He’s in the hospital. He had a heart attack.”

  The shock ran down to his toes. “A heart attack? How bad? How is he?”

  “No one seems to know,” Nelson said. Her voice broke as she said, “Why, we’re all in the dark.”

  As Checkle looked around, he noticed for the first time the worried expressions on the faces of his co-workers.

  The pressure had finally gotten to G.P. The man who nothing seemed to faze had succumbed after all. Checkle knew he had to get to Kate with the news. But he needed to know more. How serious was the attack? Was G.P. conscious? Kate would ask questions about her uncle’s condition and she deserved more than, “we’re all in the dark.”

  He ran for his car and set off for the hospital.

  94

  Entering the bedroom, I immediately noticed a single bed that sat against the far wall of the room. The bed was simple enough, a wooden frame and a slightly rusted bedspring covered by an old mattress. I approached it and when I lifted the mattress my heart skipped a beat. On top of the bedsprings lay a writing tablet. The kind kids use in school.

  “Scotty, come in here.”I picked up the tablet and let the mattress fall back into place. As I opened the cover and glanced at the first page I recognized Shirley’s handwriting immediately.

  I looked up to see Scotty in the doorway. “Shirley kept a journal,”I said. “This had to be what the person who searched her house was after.”

  “Give it to me, Kate.”

  I leafed through the journal. “Look, Scotty. Shirley wrote entries on a daily basis. Starting in January when she came back to the Soo.“

  “Let me have the journal.” Scotty was now standing next to me. His voice sounded strange, demanding and nervous all at the same time. Ignoring him, I continued skimming the pages. I found notations concerning shipments of dynamite and other explosives to the Banyon Mining Company in Sault Ste. Marie.

  “Kate. Give . . . the . . . tablet . . . to . . . me.”

  “What’s in here that you don’t want me to see?”

  “Just hand it over and we’ll forget all about it.” He grabbed for the notebook and we wrestled for a moment. He finally tore it out of my hand.

  “Scotty, Shirley was working for the FBI. Why don’t you want me to read what she wrote?”

  Before he could answer, a newspaper clipping fell from the tablet. I leaned over and picked it up.

  As I read the headline, and the story underneath the picture of a young, blond-haired man, the entire room seemed to grow cold.

  95

  Banyon Copper Mining Heir Dies in Fiery Auto Crash

  Phoenix, Arizona, July 3, 1934 – The son of the late copper scion Martin Banyon of Iron Mountain died in the wreck of his Duesenberg convertible coupe outside Phoenix on Tuesday night.

  Witnesses say Martin “Scotty” Banyon, 22, had been racing a black Chevrolet convertible when he failed to negotiate a sharp curve along a highway north of Phoenix and his car rolled over several times before coming to a stop at the bottom of a steep hill.

  Coroner Edward Littleton said Banyon died instantly. There were no passengers in the car.

  Banyon had been the sole surviving member of the Banyon family that had moved to Phoenix from Iron Mountain 10 years ago. Martin Banyon Sr., the founder and former CEO of Banyon Copper Mining Enterprises, suffered a fatal heart attack in Phoenix in 1924, shortly after the move. His wife, Beatrice, died a year later.

  Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

  96

  I looked up at the man who stood in front of me. The man I thought I knew, but hadn’t known at all.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and his reply sent shivers through me.

  “My name is Claus Krueger.”

  My heart and my brain were pulled in opposite directions as I realized there was little doubt that I was looking at the killer of my best friend.

  “You’re a Nazi. You murdered Shirley Benoit.”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “She was a defenseless woman. A woman with everything to live for. How could you kill someone like that?”

  His lips pursed. “I’m a soldier, Kate. Your country and mine are at war.”

  “You’re not a soldier. You’re a damned assassin . . . a spy.”

  “I am a soldier. And a soldier follows orders.”

  “Your orders were to kill an innocent woman?”

  “My orders were and are to deal with anyone who gets in the way. Your friend came close to discovering the details of my mission.”

  “Then you’d better kill me, because I intend to get in your way anyway I can.”

  He grabbed my wrists and held them together with terrible force.

  I said, “If you’re going to kill me, do it and get it over with.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Kate.”

  He was holding my hands so tightly that struggling seemed impossible. He dragged me from the bedroom out into the main room of the cottage.

  “Why be so kind to me? Why not murder me, too?”

  He picked up one of the old wooden chairs that had been lying sideways on the floor and pushed me down into it.

  “I could have killed you easily when I followed you to Negaunee. Or I could have let that mob gunman do the job instead of killing him.

  “There’s no need to kill you when I can make certain you can’t warn anyone in time to do anything about it. Afterwards, I’ll call the Morning News office and tell them where to find you.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small roll of some kind of masking tape. He bent down and taped one of my arms and then the other, to the arms of the chair.

  “Your own military invented this tape,” Scotty said. “They’re calling it one-hundred-mile-per-hour tape because it holds tight even in hurricane-force winds.”

  The bonds felt uncomfortable, but the pain seemed bearable.

  “So G.P.’s information was right. There is going to be an attack.”

  “Yes. And the only way your government could have learned of it is that the Enigma Code must have been compromised. That information will be invaluable to the Third Reich.”

  “And what’s your part in this? Directing German dive bombers to the locks?”

  Scotty smiled. “There are no bombers, Kate. Even our best dive bombers couldn’t penetrate the defenses your army has in place.”

  “What then?”

  “The explosion that destroys your locks will be as unexpected as it is deadly.

  “It will come from below and within.”

  97

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Scotty was taping my right leg to the leg of the chair. He moved to the other side of the chair and taped my leg to the chair leg there.

  Satisfied I couldn’t move, he stood in front of me. He set the rest of the roll of tape on the table.

  “I’ve been receiving shipments of dynamite,” he said. “Tons of it. Miners use explosives to open mineshafts. It was easy for me, as Scotty Banyon, to receive hundreds of pounds at a time.”

  He smiled. “Dynamite is scarce with the war on. I couldn’t have done it without the help of your government.”

  “So you’re going to dynamite the locks? Fat chance. You can’t get near them.”

  “I already have. My men acted last nigh
t. The tunnel beneath the locks is packed with explosives. There’s more aboard the Caiman. Her hold is full of it. Once we’ve sailed into the MacArthur Lock, I’ll set a timer, which will ignite the explosives in the Caiman’s hold. The concussion will cause the dynamite under the locks to blow.”

  “You’ll kill thousands of innocent civilians at the dedication ceremony.”

  “We’re at war, Kate. People die in wars.”

  “But women and children? What kind of government gives an order like that?”

  “You have to understand, Kate. There were thousands of innocent women and children killed in Germany during the Great War, as Americans like to call it. To German people, there was nothing great about it. The war and the Treaty of Versailles afterwards left Germany helpless.”

  Scotty turned toward the door.

  “Your Hitler started the war,” I called.

  He whirled back to face me. “And this time we’re going to finish it. The Fuhrer will stop at nothing short of total victory.”

  “Your Fuhrer is a mad man.”

  “A mad man who single handedly pulled Germany out of economic ruin and restored pride to its citizens.”

  “And now wants to kill American civilians.”

  “No different from the way your soldiers killed German citizens in the last war. Americans think they are untouchable because they can hide between two oceans.”

  He started toward the door again. “Today, they’ll learn the foolishness of that thinking.”

  I called to him. “Wait!”

  He stopped and turned back to me. “Yes? What is it?”