Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller

by Chuck Driskell

  But now Neil’s concern began to grow.

  The two policemen in the car talked to the bobby before handing him a sheet of paper. The bobby straightened, staring at the paper before stabbing it with his finger. Neil could only see the back of the paper, but the sunlight shone through, displaying a great deal of ink. It was either a sketch reproduced by mimeograph or an actual photograph.

  Neil lifted his new suitcase, his eyes turning southward. His taxi was parked several blocks away in Mayfair, right next to Christ Church. Another police car squeaked to a halt between him and the taxi. Neil began to walk, turning toward the Tube station at Hyde Park, away from the police. He glanced over his shoulder, watching as the bobby scanned the area. He shouldn’t have turned because, when he did, the bobby locked in on him. He pointed and, over the din, Neil heard him yell, “There he is!”

  Neil had two simple choices: stop and face the music—or run. Normally, when incorrectly accused of anything, Neil would vigorously fight the charge. But Lex Curran’s murder had left him on edge, and on guard. It was just too convenient for Curran to disappear for two years, only to surface—literally—when Neil was departing town under a shroud of secrecy.

  Something about it smelled like a fabrication. And a setup.

  The second choice, to run, was Neil’s best option, and he took it. He sprinted down the two flights of stairs into the Hyde Park Tube tunnel. At the bottom, a bored attendant sat behind iron bars, reading a newspaper. Neil smacked a pound down, asking for a ticket.

  “Where to?”

  “Day pass. Whatever.”

  The attendant shrugged and slid a ticket over the cool granite counter. Neil ran into the station, leaping the turnstile as he rushed to the platform. Only a few teenagers milled about.

  “How long ‘til the next train?” he asked, breathless.

  The closest teen turned to him with Bassett hound eyes. “You a yank?”

  “Yes. How long?”

  “I dunno. Five minutes, maybe ten.”

  Neil ran.

  Police whistles could be heard, coming from the stairwell. They would be descending, probably five of them, if not more. One had certainly gotten on the radio, and he would have broadcast a positive identification of the fugitive American in this area. The American agents would hear this and, if Neil were correct, their orders would be to shoot to kill. Most of them were probably still out at the docks, a good thirty minutes away. As Neil leapt from the platform and onto the tracks, heading east, he gave himself twenty minutes before all of London would be teeming with Scotland Yard, intent on capturing him. Worse was the bevy of American agents from the Department of War, bound and determined to end his life. Either way, if Neil didn’t shake these locals immediately, he didn’t like his chances.

  Now well into the tunnel, he stopped, looking back to the light of the Hyde Park station. No one was following him yet, but he could hear the commotion as the police questioned the teens. He swiveled around. Ahead of him, at roughly twice the distance, was the light of the next station, Green Park.

  Neil caught his breath, watching, measuring his options.

  The police from the Hyde Park station still weren’t following him. That could mean only one thing: there were cops awaiting him at the next station.

  Or a train was barreling in his direction.

  Either way, he was trapped.

  Slow your mind. Think clearly. Focus.

  Standing in the darkest shadows of the north side of the tunnel, he allowed his eyes to adjust as his mind hearkened back to the summers at the Shoshone Indian reservation in the southern Sierras. At night, he and the older boys used to play a modified game of hide and seek. Neil could remember being surrounded, just like this, the circle closing in on him. And while it was just a game, Neil remembered the agonizing fear as the boys grew closer. At the last instant Neil would make a desperate move and would get caught every time. Until one summer when the elder, who had watched Neil get nabbed by his friends, took him aside and showed him the technique to escape the situation.

  “You have to disappear,” the old man told him in his heavily accented English, a mild look of mirth on his face.

  “I’m not magic,” Neil had replied, exasperated.

  “Magic has nothing to do with it.”

  “Then how do I do it?”

  The elder took Neil into the woods every evening for two weeks, spending hours helping Neil perfect the art of concealment and escape. Each night he adorned Neil with an extra decoration on his breechcloth tunic, not unlike a military award for superiority in a particular discipline.

  “While you might be there in body,” the older man told him, “you have to be elsewhere in spirit. If your spirit is hidden well enough, they will never find your body. And you will live to see another day.” He showed Neil how to use the trees, the water, the earth and even the wildlife to escape. After every lesson, the elder would always finish with one statement. “It ends with your spirit. Do not concern yourself with your body. Your spirit must be gone.”

  There was, indeed, nothing magic about the elder’s lessons. Essentially, one has to believe in his concealment or escape in order for it to work. Neil later learned the power of visualization in his business life, too. Athletes used it. Actors used it. And the elder Shoshone had taught it to Neil. That had been in July. The other teenagers never found him again that summer. Nor the next.

  Neil closed his eyes, summoning his inner spirit. Keeping his eyes shut and a hand dragging the wall, he patiently began to shuffle in the direction of the Green Park station.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SAL CONTINUED TO COME UP ZEROES ON THE REUTER CASE. Captain Yarborough was under pressure from the chief to move the case forward or turn it over to another team, and it was only thanks to Sal’s Greek doggedness that the chief had extended the deadline by another week. But since finding Meghan Herman, Sal had come up with nothing. The lack of any other evidence screamed to him that there was something incredibly meaningful hiding out there somewhere—he just hadn’t found it yet. When there was virtually nowhere else for him to turn—at the exact moment Neil Reuter was busy extracting his spirit from a London subway tunnel—Sal showed up bright and early at a spick and span barbershop on Folsom, directed there by the wife of J. Harrison Musselwhite, IV.

  The bell on the door in the two-chair establishment jingled when Sal entered. Musselwhite was the only man in a barber chair, probably the first customer of the early day. The striped apron was spread around him and his face was well lathered with white shaving cream, freshly whipped in a mixing bowl that sat perched on the counter behind him. Next to the mixing bowl and behind Musselwhite, a barber, a good distance into the fourth quarter of life, sharpened a straight razor on a leather strap, tapping his foot out of time with tinny music coming in over the radio. The barbershop was quite masculine and smelled of fresh mint and Listerine.

  “Dan’ll be right in, friend,” the old man said with a genuine smile and what sounded like an Irish lilt. “Go ahead and have a seat. Newspaper’s on the table, there. Coffee in the back, if’n you please.”

  Sal removed his fedora, showing what little hair he had. “Dan wouldn’t have much work to do on me. I just need to chat with your customer, if you don’t mind.”

  Upon hearing that, Musselwhite opened his eyes, turning them to Sal. After seeing him, he closed them again, nestling into the chair and exhaling. He seemed mildly perturbed that what was probably a relaxing weekly ritual was being derailed. “Mornin’, detective,” he said, his voice flat. “Surprised it’s taken this long for you to come back to see me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been real busy chasing dead ends.”

  The other barber emerged from the rear, wiping his hands on a towel. Sal would have given two-to-one odds that he was the old barber’s son, and that even he was pushing sixty. The barber brightened upon seeing Sal and yanked an apron from a hanger. Sal shook his head. “No haircut for me, pal.” He dug into his pocket and handed
the barber two quarters. “Lemme rent the chair for fifteen minutes.” The barber took the money, shrugged, and disappeared again into the back room.

  Sal leaned back in the chair, staring into the mirror ahead of him, studying Musselwhite. The accountant seemed perfectly relaxed, his eyes closed again as the barber went to work, slowly scraping the skin of his cheeks below the short sideburns. The sound of the razor on Musselwhite’s face was akin to paper being slowly ripped.

  “Mr. Musselwhite, exactly why did your former employer sell everything and leave town?” Sal asked.

  “I told you already, detective…I don’t rightly know. Anything I give you will be a guess, and no better than your own guess.” He paused. “And I’m hiding nothing. Got no reason to.”

  Sal believed him. “Tell me about Reuter. Things I may have missed.”

  Musselwhite opened his eyes briefly. “How would I know what you’ve learned? I could speak about Neil Reuter for months.”

  “Humor me. Stream of consciousness.”

  Musselwhite closed his eyes again. “Well, he’s a reader, a voracious one. Perhaps his books or magazines would give you a clue to his whereabouts. He likes chess, and he’ll readily learn and play most any strategy game such as backgammon or poker. Only if he has time, mind you. And if you beat him, he won’t speak to you for a few hours. He’s not big on losing. He’s not big on food either. Eats to live…doesn’t live to eat, unlike me. He had a small yacht, but that was for his wife. Neil likes success but hates the notoriety.” Opened his eyes. “Hates it.”

  Sal jotted that down.

  “Drinks too much, too…especially since the murder, but I think he did it to help himself cope. He drank before the murder, too, but it would come and go in spurts. Probably something from the war. Neil enjoys helping charities…deserving ones…and is well-known for enlisting others and matching their donations only if—”

  “Wait a minute,” Sal interrupted, stabbing his notebook with his pencil. “About the military…” Sal gathered his thoughts as the scraping of the razor continued. “Did he often talk about the war?”

  “Never. Not once.”

  “Not once?”

  “That’s what I said, detective. I don’t forget that type of thing.”

  Sal frowned as he flipped to the half page of notes he had taken while on the phone with the Army’s personnel division. He scanned them, remembering that the man in Washington had informed him that Reuter had been an officer, serving in logistics, in France.

  “Do you know anything else about his service?” Sal asked.

  “No, but he had a few Army friends that would sometimes come around. Maybe you should pester them.”

  Sal let out a long, slow breath, his cheeks expanding into a facial globe like an old trumpeter’s. “Mr. Musselwhite, Reuter’s wife is dead. He’s gone. His stuff has been sold. His personal effects have vanished. Plus, the man had no real friends that I can find. So, how in the hell am I going to find the name of any old Army buddies he might have had?”

  The barber had finished scraping the gray hairs from Musselwhite’s face. Using a pair of tongs, he produced a scalding towel from a steaming pot, unapologetically wrapping the financial man’s face. The sudden intense heat made Musselwhite’s entire body tense. Sal winced. Once the apparent shock from the searing high temperature had settled in, Musselwhite spoke one muffled word.

  “Agnes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Agnes Gentry.”

  “The housekeeper?”

  “Yep.”

  “She’d have names of visitors?”

  The towel, essentially a face-turban, nodded up and down. “I’d wager she has a detailed list. She never wanted to be caught off guard by Neil. He didn’t like to be blind-sided by unwanted guests, so I’ll bet you she has a list of all approved guests.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Sal mumbled. “If that turns out to be the case, then I oughta be fired. I never once thought to ask her.”

  Musselwhite removed the towel from his face. “Since I’m now unemployed, maybe I should come down and apply for a job as a detective.”

  Sal donned his russet trilby, adjusting it. “Thanks, Musselwhite. I’ll let you know when I find him.”

  J. Harrison Musselwhite, IV watched him go, waiting until the bell stopped jingling. “So much for the peace and tranquility of retirement. Let’s do it all again, Elmer, this time in peace.”

  ~~~

  Eight time zones and more than 5,000 miles away, Neil opened his eyes and estimated the Green Park station to be several thousand feet away. Someone was leaning out over the tracks, aiming a light in his direction, but he was too far away for them to have any hope of seeing him. If a local train were to come to either station, Neil imagined that the police would keep it from proceeding. But an express train was a different story, and Neil didn’t want to wait around to find out which type of train was first up.

  He continued to scurry down the north side of the single track, running his hands along the damp wall. He ducked below a solitary green light, carefully avoiding its luminance. Several enormous rats skittered over his new shoes. After a moment, his hand slid into a recess of several inches. Widening his eyes, he tried to make out the indentation in the darkness of the tunnel. He put the suitcase at the base of the notch so he could use both arms. As his hand worked over the rectangular outline, Neil could feel the alternating temperatures of the resident stone and the warmer recessed surface, making him hopeful it was a door.

  He controlled his breathing, focusing on his spirit. This had to be the way out, the portal to his exodus.

  You must believe…

  A commotion grabbed his attention from the Hyde Park station. At first he heard yelling and more police whistles. He turned to look, immediately recognizing the horrifying round white light of an approaching train. It vibrated with speed, clearly not about to slow down. Neil focused his eyes on the frantically waving figures on the platform, feeling his chest tighten as the train blew through the station at a high rate of speed. It was coming directly at him, and Neil estimated he had ten seconds before it would turn him into one helluva mess.

  The hawk, the fox, the lynx. Which will you be?

  Neil’s mind raced. He could flatten himself against the shallow indentation, but he wasn’t confident the train would clear him. If not, it would grind him against the wall, leaving a trail of American hamburger and a mangled suitcase. There were sparks showering from the train’s topside, at its electricity source. The light on the front was powerful, illuminating the space like the brightest of days. Neil whipped his head back to the indentation, mere seconds from being crushed, confirming that it was indeed a door. There was no door handle, but a plate where the handle would be, marked by a bolt-lock in its center.

  Neil pushed on the door. Nothing. He threw his body into the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  It’s a football field away…

  The pushing wind from the barreling train assaulted Neil, making his ears pop as the air pressure changed in the confined space. Instinctively, he jerked the Colt from his waistband, raking the slide and pulling the trigger as fast as he could, hoping the saltwater hadn’t fouled his bullets. He pulled the trigger again and again as the tongues of flame flicked from the end of the Colt. The heavy .45 caliber bullets punched holes through the plate like it was school paper.

  With the impossibly loud train feet away, Neil lowered his shoulder and ran into the door, falling over the lip as he lunged into the blackness. Instinctively, he reached back through the opening, yanking his suitcase in just as the train passed.

  The passing train was so deafening Neil was unable to even think. He lay there in a muddy puddle until the train passed, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. Neil’s heart thudded in his chest while his ears rang from the train’s roar. He patted his face, his chest, his legs.

  Ten fingers…ten toes…

  Neil staggered to his feet and pushed the door shut. He was in
another tunnel, this one quite ancient, with four-way arches and solitary bulbs hanging low, half of them lit. Piping and plumbing of all sizes ran in every direction. Hot steam shot out at various spots, making the underground space feel like a haunted Russian bath.

  Neil knew he only had a minute or two. If he were to simply turn and run, they would probably realize he hadn’t been run down and then they would catch up to him in short order. He needed something to slow his pursuers down. He began to scour the space, picking up occasional parts before discarding them. After a full minute of searching he found a ten-foot section of pig metal pipe. He rushed back to the door, propping the pipe against it, wedging it against a notch in the brickwork behind him. With the pipe in place it would take a tank’s force to open the old door from the subway tunnel.

  But they’d still see the bullet holes. They would know he was still alive. He had to get far away—and fast.

  Neil turned and jogged in the opposite direction. He knew he was headed north. After what must have been a block, the tunnel intersected a cross tunnel, this one leading to the east and west. Neil continued forward. He repeated this until he had gone twenty blocks to the north, at which time he turned east, going twenty blocks again. Exhausted, especially from running with his new suitcase, he bent double, stopping to rest. Once he’d caught his breath, and realizing he was soaked from sweat and steam, Neil began to look for an exit. He suddenly felt a rumble that shook the earth beneath him. He froze, realizing it must have been another subway line on the opposite side of the wall, the sound heavily dampened by the thick stone. Neil crossed the wide passageway of his own tunnel, singeing his hand on a scalding pipe as his slid underneath.