by Mark Donahue
Chapter 19
United States of America—1943
The trip from Philadelphia to Phoenix was both stressful, as Rolle worried about Germany’s gold, and exhilarating, as he saw America for the first time in real life and not in a book or newsreel. For a country at war on two fronts, it appeared to Rolle as if America were at peace and thriving. No lines for food, everyone working, no soldiers patrolling the streets. What in God’s name was it like in peace time, he wondered?
Assuming he was no longer under surveillance, Rolle realized that had he wanted to escape to save his own life, he had the perfect opportunity to do so during his trip across America. It would have been easy to melt into one of the big cities he passed through and start a new life in this strange land. But the thought was only a passing one. His life was of little consequence compared to what the gold would mean to Germany if he were able to execute his plan and return it after the war.
His country needed him now more than ever. After everything he had already given up for the Fatherland, not to return the gold would be a waste of his life, and a financial disaster for Germany. He had to try. But he needed help. He would have to trust someone, maybe even several people, if he were to overcome the odds that faced him.
Rolle’s final stop was downtown Phoenix. The calls he received from his men at the end of the day reporting their positions relieved his concerns as to the gold, and the fact his men would deliver it to the distribution point as planned. All twelve trucks were now within a day’s ride of Phoenix and would be given precise schedules over the next eight hours as to when they would reassemble at a location thirty miles east of town.
Rolle realized that he had only two days to initiate the most delicate part of his plan. He also realized that once the gold was reassembled in one location, he was at his greatest risk. For if he was accurate, Becker’s plan for the gold did not include shipment to Reich sympathizers around the Southern hemisphere. Nor would it contain a provision for keeping Rolle alive. Rolle was certain that Becker’s plan called for amassing gold in Arizona for the purpose of making dozens, or even hundreds, of German traitors wealthy Americans, after the war ended.
The first gold-laden truck was scheduled to arrive at the distribution point at precisely 6:00 p.m., almost three weeks to the day since the gold had left the Berlin train station and nearly six months since Becker presented Operation Rebirth to Rolle.
Rolle looked at himself in the mirror of his hotel room near the Phoenix train station, and hoped the gaunt, lined, exhausted image looking back at him had the strength to last forty-eight more hours. After that it would be done. Either he would be dead and the misery over, or Germany would be on a path to have its lifeblood returned to her based on Rolle’s plan.
Despite his fatigue, Rolle found sleep elusive once again. He awoke the next morning as tired as he had been the night before. He lay in the too-soft bed, no doubt the cause of his aching back, and stared at a scorpion that had climbed up the curtain in his dingy hotel room. It was then he decided that this would be the first day of what he considered his plan.
With just over ten hours left before the first truck was to arrive at the truck stop four miles from his hotel, and thirty miles from the distribution site, Rolle set out to find the help he needed. He returned to a bus station he had visited the day before, where he had seen some men lying under a clump of trees that bordered the property, drinking out of brown paper bags.
A day later, ten to twelve men eyed Rolle carefully as he walked slowly toward them. Like the day before, the men began to shuffle off in different directions. By the time he arrived at where, only moments before, several men had been lounging on old tires and boxes, only two remained, both sound asleep.
Seeing an opening in the fence behind the boxes, Rolle walked around the sleeping men and peered through the hole, when he was suddenly pushed from behind while at the same time pulled by the front of his shirt. As he tumbled through the opening, he rolled down a three-foot embankment hitting face-first in the sharp scrub grass. Losing his glasses and spitting blood and dirt, he could not protect his wallet and watch, which were removed before he was able to regain his bearings. Through blurry eyes, Rolle gazed up at the four dirty men who surrounded him.
Saying nothing, one of the men walked toward Rolle, and without warning, kicked him in the stomach. Rolle moaned in pain as his breath escaped his lungs a second time in thirty seconds, and he felt the panic of gasping for air that seemed suddenly impossible to inhale.
“That’s for spying on us, asshole,” the smallest of the men said nonchalantly. “Now get the hell out of here.”
As the four men began walking away dividing up the eighty dollars in Rolle’s wallet and bickering over who would take temporary possession of his watch, Rolle, finally able to regain use of his lungs, gasped, “Wait, there’s far more than that waiting for you, if you help me.”
Hearing potential opportunity, the four men stopped and turned to face Rolle. With a grin on his face, the small man once again approached him, and Rolle flinched as he drew back his foot and laughed as he faked a kick to Rolle’s stomach.
“You one of them queers that just likes to get beat up or what, cuz we’ll beat the livin’ shit outta ya for just ten dollars,” the little man said as he belly-laughed. His friends laughed too.
“No, I am serious,” Rolle said, as he tried to focus on the man’s face. But the noon day sun directly overhead made Rolle squint, and he was wary of another kick he wouldn’t see coming.
“What would you pay us, and what would we have to do?” the small man’s tallest companion asked.
“I need three or four men who are not afraid of the police and want to make five hundred dollars each for one day’s work,” Rolle said calmly.
Suddenly the tall man moved forward and around the small man and said, “What kind of job would be worth two thousand bucks that wouldn’t involve a killin’?”
Knowing he now had the men’s attention, Rolle got up, dusted himself off, and replaced his glasses. “I’d think killing someone should be worth more than two thousand. The job I have in mind would require far less than murder. But it will require someone who knows this area, has a car or truck, and will perform several hours of hard labor, and the ability to keep quiet after the job.”
Staring at Rolle, the four men showed no emotion, nor did they ask any further questions except the tall one who asked, “What time, where, and when do we get our money?”
After explaining the details, Rolle walked to the man who had won the right to wear his watch and said, “You can keep my money as a deposit, but I want my watch and wallet back now.” The grizzled mugger smiled, looked at Rolle, then at his partners, and when the tall one nodded, he took off the watch and handed it back to Rolle, who smiled and said, “It is a pleasure to meet men who recognize a solid business opportunity.”
The again watchless man smiled a toothless smile, and said, “You never know, mister, maybe you’ll give us that watch again someday.”
Later, as Rolle paid his daily hotel bill from a large stash of cash he had hidden in his suitcase, he was asked how many more days he would be staying at the Desert Oasis by the middle-aged woman at the front desk, as she handed him his change. “Hopefully, only two or three more nights,” Rolle said, as he tried to avoid eye contact with the woman not wanting her to notice his bruised and cut face.
“Well that’s fine, honey,” she said. “It’s nice to have quiet folks like you visit us. By the way were you in a fight or something? This is a rough neighborhood, and you should be careful.”
“No,” Rolle said. “I tripped and fell yesterday, I am fine.”
“Okay honey, whatever you say. But get some ice on that face of yours, sugar.”
At 7:45 the next morning, Rolle walked six blocks from his hotel to meet his four new partners. He carried two hundred fifty dollars per man as the fir
st installment of the promised five hundred when the job was done. But he was concerned that the men would rob him again, thinking one thousand dollars between them without work was better than five hundred dollars per man with work. But he had little choice. He needed the men for the next twenty-four hours. Without them, his prospects for success or a long life were minimal.
Arriving ten minutes ahead of the 8:30 a.m. meeting time, Rolle eyed his surroundings. The abandoned buildings on each corner allowed him to stay out of sight while he checked to see if he was being followed. He also carefully checked out the few vehicles that traveled the streets of the rundown neighborhood. As 8:30 approached, Rolle was seized by the possibility that his four mugger/partners would likely not arrive on time and perhaps not at all. His apprehension and nausea grew as 8:45 approached and still no men.
As he left the building on the northeast corner and began to traverse to the southeast, the four men suddenly appeared out of an empty doorway. “You were supposed to be here at 8:30,” Rolle snapped as he faced the tall one.
The tall one smiled and said, “Mister, if we was a punctual, dependable bunch, we wouldn’t be livin’ in vacant buildin’s and robbin’ folks for food money. Besides, we was here at 8 waitin’ for you. We saw you hidin’ in that buildin’ over yonder. Tryin’ to spy on us again? You know what happened last time you did that.”
“I wasn’t hiding,” Rolle said. “I was trying to stay out of sight in case someone came by wanting to know what I was doing in this part of town.”
“Well, it looked like hidin’ to us and if we’re gonna work together we need to have an abidin’ trust in each other, right?”
“We are not working together, you are working for me, and if you want to earn a bonus over the five hundred dollars per man we agreed to, I suggest you do everything I tell you and your men to do.”
“What kind of bonus you talkin’ about for us?”
“I didn’t mean the bonus was for your men, I meant a bonus for you, and a large one, if you and your men do the job that I need done.”
Looking back at his three half asleep, scruffy, drinking, robbing friends, the tall one winked at Rolle and said, “Let’s leave that bonus stuff ’tween you and me okay, mister?”
“Okay,” Rolle said, as he handed the thousand dollars to the tall one to give to his friends.
After looking at the map of the area, Rolle pointed out where he needed to be driven and the schedule for the rest of the day. He told the tall one, named Lester, what he wanted his men to do, and it was agreed that Rolle would only interact with Lester during this operation, thus creating a chain of command.
Of the four, dirty, homeless men, Lester was clearly the leader, and Rolle figured if he offered him more money, he would take this operation a little more seriously. Rolle furthered assumed that Lester was thinking how he could not only keep his bonus from his men but also how he could steal their part of the agreed-to one thousand dollar balance.
The truck the men had somehow come up with was an old 1932 Dodge panel truck with just enough rust to keep it from falling apart. As Lester drove, and Rolle took the front passenger seat, the other three men crammed into the cluttered rear of the truck and quickly fell asleep. In addition to a noisy muffler, lack of springs, and inability to exceed twenty-five miles per hour, the truck had a fragrance that combined vast amounts of sweaty, unwashed bodies and long-lost rotted food.
“What is that stench?” Rolle asked.
“Guess that would be my boys. Kinda rich, ain’t they?” Lester answered with a laugh.
The hour drive to the distribution location was hot and miserable. Lester tried to engage in conversation, but Rolle was focused on his now unfolding plan. The site they were headed to had been selected by Becker and was one of the few things that Rolle had not been in charge of. Rolle suspected that the selection criteria was based on remoteness and supposed access to Mexico, Central America, and South America via roads.
Given the staggering amount of gold and the fact that Germany may be months or even years from the end of the war, Rolle surmised that this location would be visited by Becker’s traitors for years into the future to claim their share of Germany’s wealth. Each conspirator could take their time knowing that they could eventually legally migrate to America after the war, win or lose, and live lives of luxury and excess.
When the two-lane paved highway gave way to a one-lane dirt road, Rolle could see why the location was selected. With only one seemingly abandoned road leading to the site, a vehicle could be seen for miles. With mountains protecting it from the east, north, and west, the huge valley that rose gradually from south to north was a perfect location to guard a country’s wealth and future.
When the overheating Dodge headed up the switch-back road that led to the site, Rolle again reminded Lester and his men of their jobs and the money that awaited them when their tasks were complete. Roughly three miles from the location, Rolle told Lester to pull over to the side of the road behind an outcropping of rock so that they could not be seen from where the site appeared to be on the map. Rolle was certain there was already someone awaiting him and the trucks that were to arrive that evening.
After he gave Lester a third refresher course on the duties of the four men, Rolle opened the back of the truck, and the three men virtually fell out onto the dirt road. As he looked at this woebegone group, Rolle wondered if they could make their way up to the site over the brush and rocks. Even with the ample food and water Lester had brought and nearly four hours to cover the three miles, Rolle could not help but see the irony that the future of Germany rested in the ability of four drunk, smelly, filthy Americans to complete their tasks.
The plan Rolle had laid out made absolutely no sense to Lester. Coming into the desert and being paid all that money for what they were being asked to do seemed just plain crazy. But hell, it was a lot of money, and it was possible that what they would find at the site could lead to even more. Besides, the guy paying them was no threat and if things got tough, they could always just leave, make their way to the main road, and hitchhike back to town. At least they had the thousand dollars; that was more money than any of them had seen in years.
Despite the late start, Rolle was still ahead of schedule. He dropped Lester and his men off at around 11:00 a.m. and made good time driving the still smelly panel truck back into town. In his room before 1:00 p.m., he tried to sleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning, he disgustedly threw his pillow in the corner and gave up. If all went well that night, he knew he would be able to sleep well tomorrow night. If things did not go well, it wouldn’t matter.
After a late lunch, Rolle packed his duffle bag and began his walk to downtown Phoenix. He knew it would take twelve to fifteen minutes to get to the corner of McDowell and Main, where he would be picked up by Becker at 4:00. They would then drive four miles east of the city and meet up with the first truck at 5:00. From there, they would lead the first truck to the distribution location where Rolle’s four smelly and grubby “partners” waited.
The twelve trucks would arrive in one-hour intervals and be unloaded by 6:00 the following morning, the precise time Rolle assumed he would no longer be needed.
The details of the plan that Rolle had crafted, based on the nearly impossible general orders from Becker of moving two hundred tons of gold from Germany to the Arizona desert, had gone remarkably well. Of course there were the deaths in France of the children, the general, and his aides on the Brest docks, the farmer and his son in Missouri, Linda and her thick-necked boss in Philadelphia, but those losses were acceptable to Rolle, and to be expected given the importance of this operation.
Becker was late. After only five minutes, Rolle knew something had gone wrong. Or was this indeed part of the plan…Becker’s plan? Becker had supposedly arrived in America through Canada five days earlier with the help of French sympathizers, and like Rolle and his men, had taken a
circuitous route to Arizona. But as the minutes elapsed, Rolle was certain Becker’s plan was now in effect. The question was why was he still alive?
Before Rolle could answer his own question, he was surprised by a voice that came from a black Lincoln that had pulled up to the curb. “Colonel Rolle?” Not responding directly to the question, he instead asked his own.
“Who did you say you were looking for?”
“Colonel, we have no time for games. I am Jean Dubois, I have been assisting General Becker on the project, and he asked me to pick you up and take you to the distribution site. I apologize for being late, and for General Becker for not being able to meet you personally, but we had a minor breach of our security today and General Becker remained at the site to take care of it.”
Peering into the back of the car, Rolle saw no one and was undecided about whether he should run, and most probably save his life. But he knew if he ran, the gold would surely be lost forever. Without further deliberation, he walked around the front of the Lincoln and slid into the soft, deep, black leather seat.
“What kind of security breach?” Rolle asked.
“I’m not sure. All I know is I was contacted at my hotel forty-five minutes ago and told to find you and take you to the distribution site.”
“What about the trucks? We were supposed to meet the first one at 6:00 p.m.”
“The drivers have been contacted, and a new delivery schedule has been confirmed. The first trucks will arrive twenty-four hours later, 6:00 p.m. tomorrow.”
“On whose orders?” Rolle shouted, as he realized the plan he had so carefully created for Becker and the plan he had indelibly imprinted in his own brain were now both obliterated.
“I believe the orders came from Becker’s immediate superior and had to do with both the security issue and the breakdown of one of the trucks just north of Phoenix.”
