Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller

by Chuck Driskell

  “Go!”

  Gabi stalked out, slamming doors, breathing choice words. The mother waited until a screen door slammed shut before turning back to Neil, rattling the bedpost so hard it hurt. “You better start talking, mister. And I want the truth.”

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “I’m not stupid. Explain it to me.”

  “Well…who I am and why I’m here shouldn’t matter, but if you’ll help me, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you a great deal.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Why don’t you want anyone to know you’re here?”

  Neil ignored the question, grunting as he shifted to a cool area of the feather mattress. “Here’s what you’re going to do. I will give you money, plenty of money…but you have to help me get better.”

  She took her pipe from her work apron and clinched it between her stained teeth. Neil could see where the upper and lower teeth had grown outward from holding that pipe in the same position for so many years. “Help you get better, how?” she finally asked.

  “I need my jacket from the airplane.”

  “The one with the gun in it?” she asked, crossing the room and hefting Neil’s Colt in her calloused hand. “It was on the dirt after your crash landing.” She tapped the letters stamped into the hardened steel. “This gun is American and it smells of fresh gunpowder.” She replaced it. “Don’t try to mislead me, either. We hunt birds and boar in the winter. I know all about guns and rifles.”

  Neil did his best to focus through the growing pain. “I’m not going to try to mislead you,” he said, surprised his German was coming so clearly. “I am American, and it cannot be known that I am here. As I said, I will pay you, but I need your help.”

  “Pay me with what?”

  “Give me my jacket.”

  The woman lifted his dirt-mottled jacket from the firewood bin. She tossed it to him. Neil let out a loud breath when he found the tin buried deep in the inside pocket. He opened it, removing the velvet bag. From the bag he pulled a large diamond, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, holding it between their riveted gazes.

  “This will do for starters.”

  “A rock?”

  “A diamond,” he corrected.

  “Still a rock,” she declared, dragging a wooden match over the stone of the fireplace and puffing her pipe.

  “We can discuss its value later.” He glanced around. “Where am I?”

  “My son’s bed.”

  “Where are we, geographically?”

  “In the middle of nowhere, really. This land’s been in my husband’s family for more generations than anyone can remember.”

  “Husband?”

  “He’s long since dead.”

  “Where’s the closest town?”

  “Hausham.”

  “Is that in Germany?”

  “Is now, although most everyone here still considers ourselves Austrians.”

  Neil remembered seeing the mountains, the Alps, dead ahead before he turned and crashed. “Closest big city?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Depends how big you want. Rosenheim’s the next biggest. And if you want really big, then there’s Munich.”

  “How far is Munich?”

  “’Bout sixty kilometers.”

  “Would Hausham or Rosen…Rosen-whatever have a good jeweler?”

  “Rosenheim.” A variation of a smirk appeared on the woman’s leathery, sun-cracked lips. “Do I look like I’d know the answer to that? I haven’t been out of this valley for fifteen years. We sell most of our take to the co-op. What we need, either we buy through the catalog or Gabi gets over in Hausham.” With a shake of the head, she turned and began to walk away. “So I don’t know anything about any damned jeweler.”

  “I’m not going to live,” he pronounced, moving his hand to his wound. “This hole in my side is too big.”

  “You’ve lived this long.”

  “I won’t make it long-term. This isn’t going to heal on its own.”

  “Everybody dies, mister.” She grasped a picture off the same dresser that held Neil’s Colt. The photo was old and stained, displaying the faint ghosting of an unsmiling man. She tapped the frame with a thick finger. “My Albert died forty years before he should have, drank himself to death. Maybe you men are just too stupid to live long lives.”

  “I won’t argue that.”

  She turned to leave.

  “I need your help, ma’am, please.”

  She stopped, leaning over the fireplace and tapping out the burnt tobacco from her pipe. Her eyes stared out the window at the growing light of a Saturday morning. Neil felt she was about to acquiesce.

  “Why should I help you when you won’t tell me the truth?” she asked.

  Neil nodded. “Okay. I’m not supposed to be in Germany. I’m here illegally.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story that I promise I’ll tell you later. For now, I need you to keep my presence a secret. Enough?”

  “Maybe. What exactly do you want from me?” she asked, not turning her gaze to him.

  Neil propped himself up, grunting through the pain. “Have your daughter go sell a few of these diamonds, then talk to a doctor you trust. Pay the doctor to come here, and fast.”

  “There’s no doctor around here I would trust. Only one nearby is that crooked Dornier Guriard, and all he’s worried about is his position with those damned Nazis. Thinks he’s gonna be the local Kreisleiter.”

  “Well, is there anyone else who can patch me up?”

  The woman eyed Neil for a moment as she chewed her cheek inside her mouth. “Yeah, I think I know one person who might have the ability.”

  “Good, because it—”

  “How much is that rock worth?” she asked, cutting him off.

  Neil clenched the diamond in his palm. “Get your daughter up here and let’s find out. If infection sets in, I won’t have days, I’ll have hours.”

  ~~~

  After making a deal with the dubious Frau Heinz, it was Gabi who had the task of selling several of the diamonds. Neil had sat in the bed, drenched in sweat from his pain, watching through the warped glass as Frau Heinz and Gabi pumped water from the yard pump, carrying it bucket by bucket to the adjacent barn. It was there, presumably because they had a warming flame, where Gabi had taken a bath. Neil watched with guilty interest as the mother led her daughter back across the yard, shuffling in wooden clogs and wrapped in a thick blanket.

  Another half-hour passed before they came back into the bedroom, politely knocking as they had begun to do. Frau Heinz had entered first, beckoning her daughter. Gabi seemed hesitant, finally coming in with her head bowed. She wore a flowered dress, displaying a trim midsection and a larger bust than Neil might have imagined. Her blonde hair was pulled into a woven mound at the rear of her head, and around her shoulders was what appeared to be a handmade shawl. It didn’t match, and it was obvious the dress was thirty years old and severely out of fashion, but the young woman’s natural beauty and radiating vitality more than made up for it. Her breaths were shallow as she looked at Neil for approval, eyes alight and hopeful for a flattering remark.

  “Sehr schön,” Neil whispered, a remark about her beauty. Gabi had beamed, clasping both hands in front of her. Frau Heinz had frowned at that point, no doubt feeling there was a bit too much of a spark coming from what she probably still viewed as her little girl.

  “Yes, well,” she had said after clearing her throat, “let’s discuss this before Peter comes back. He doesn’t need to know about selling diamonds and what not.”

  In Neil’s pain, he’d forgotten his instructions to the boy for concealing the airplane wreckage. “Is he having any luck?”

  Frau Heinz shrugged. “He’s cutting evergreens from the south boundary. It’s hard work and takes time. When we were in the barn, I could see he’d covered about half of the wreckage. I’d imagine he’ll get it mostly covered by sunset.”

  “What time is it?”r />
  “Mid-afternoon,” Frau Heinz answered.

  “And the jeweler?”

  “We need to hurry before he closes,” Frau Heinz replied. “Besides, the veterinarian will be here after sundown.”

  Peter had come in from the fields an hour after the women had left. With a note of pride, Peter informed Neil that the shattered airplane was now completely camouflaged. Despite Neil’s agony, the boy brought in a checkerboard, placing it on Neil’s covered legs. As Neil disinterestedly allowed Peter to beat him, he did his best to occupy his mind by learning more about the Heinz family.

  He learned that Frau Heinz’s husband had died shortly after Peter was born, of cancer—or at least that was the story Peter had been led to believe. Neil guessed what Frau Heinz had said, about her husband drinking himself to death, was probably the unvarnished truth. But Peter had no recollection of him, knowing only that his mother vowed never to marry again.

  According to Peter, their farm was quite large, occupying the upper plain to the east of the two natural lakes: Tegernsee and Schliersee.

  “Any idea how far Innsbruck is?”

  Peter shrugged. “Over the range. Few hours by car, maybe?”

  I’m close.

  Echoing his mother, Peter informed Neil that Hausham was the closest town with basic items for subsistence. Peter typically went there with his sister at the end of every month, and conspiratorially related how the two of them would share forbidden cigarettes on the bumpy ride home. Peter still attended school, a co-op of the farms in the area. The school claimed a total of sixteen children that comprised almost every grade in the spectrum. They wouldn’t start back until mid-September, after much of the harvest was complete.

  “When did your sister stop going to school?” Neil asked.

  Peter smacked the black disc on the back of the checkerboard, demanding his König, which Neil dutifully gave. He didn’t want to play again after this thrashing.

  “My sister completed her last grade three or four years ago.”

  “Did she not want to go to university?” Neil asked.

  Peter looked up. “Why?”

  “That’s just what some people do.”

  “No one around here goes to school longer than they have to,” Peter answered. “Unfortunately, our mother insists I finish Realschule.” After a bit of discussion, Neil learned this was roughly equivalent to finishing high school.

  They chatted a bit about the local area. Peter informed Neil that all of the young men had gone off to Munich to be in the Wehrmacht.

  “I noticed your uniform,” Neil said. “Hitler Youth?”

  Peter twisted his lips, barely nodding.

  “Do you like it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  Shook his head again. Forcefully. Something about this subject bothered Peter. Neil decided to table it for the time being. He changed the subject and enjoyed his time with the young man.

  An hour later, they had heard the sound of the puttering engine followed by squealing brakes. Peter was sitting next to his new houseguest, listening, for the fourth time, to the altered tale of how Neil had crash-landed the airplane. Peter thought Neil’s wound was from the crash. Neil, per Frau Heinz’s instruction, relayed the entire story as if he were simply a normal pilot who suffered a critical failure.

  The front door slammed. Frau Heinz’s large body ushered in a blast of barnyard air as she immediately shooed Peter out, instructing him to do his chores while supper was prepared. Once Peter was out of the house, Gabi came into the bedroom, having already quickly changed into her long nightdress and an equally long robe. She took the chair Peter had sat in. Frau Heinz walked behind her daughter, glowering at Neil before she dropped a pile of reichsmarks on his wool blanket.

  “That’s the sum total, right there.”

  Gabi touched Neil’s arm, giving it a light squeeze. “How did we do?”

  “I’m sure you did fine,” he grunted, still in considerable pain. He struggled to smile at Gabi before turning his mind back to the next task at hand.

  “How much should I pay your friend for the surgery?”

  “He isn’t my friend, he’s the local veterinarian. And how would we know how much to pay for surgery on a human being?” Frau Heinz asked.

  “Tell me how much some common items cost. I don’t know anything about the value of a reichsmark, so maybe I can use it to get a frame of reference by knowing what you pay for other things.”

  Gabi and Frau Heinz told him the value of their old Adler truck. They spoke of the price they received for the cow’s milk to the co-op, and the subsequent price for each liter to the other consumers. Additionally, Gabi knew exactly what beer and cigarettes cost, making Frau Heinz momentarily cock her bushy eyebrow at her daughter. They gave him the prices for a loaf of bread, a pair of work overalls and, finally, helping Neil more than anything, Frau Heinz was able to estimate the price of a bottle of Russian vodka at six reichsmarks. Back in the States, Neil paid between two and three dollars. After listening to the many other items, some of which were helpful, he hastily decided that a dollar was worth somewhere between two and three reichsmarks, splitting the difference and deciding on 2.50 reichsmarks per dollar. Neil assumed that a farming veterinarian, at least back in the States, made a decent living. Perhaps as much as a hundred dollars per week. Per Neil’s formula, the vet likely made 250 reichsmarks per week. Thus, in order to perform an illegal surgery—and keep his mouth shut—Neil planned to pay a month’s wage, one thousand reichsmarks for the surgery.

  Assuming Neil was still alive to pay him.

  “The vet’s a flag-waving Nazi,” Frau Heinz warned.

  “Will he keep all this quiet?” Neil asked.

  “He’s a greedy Schwein.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I think he will…if you pay him enough.”

  Gabi chatted with Neil for the next hour as they awaited the veterinarian.

  “Where the hell is that man?” Neil had grunted after the sun had fully set. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last.”

  It wasn’t long before Neil passed out from the pain.

  ~~~

  Special Investigator Thomas Lundren waited patiently as the pilot, a diminutive man who walked with the swagger of a man twice his size, poured a steaming mug of coffee. Almost mechanically, the pilot lit a cigarette and stretched in the late afternoon light. After a few moments, he shared a look with Thomas as they both shook their heads. It was beginning to look as if this initial search would be fruitless.

  Disregarding a personal abhorrence for anything other than early-morning caffeine or alcohol of any type, Thomas poured a full cup of black coffee for himself. He was exhausted and needed the energy. He sipped the coffee slowly as he and the pilot stood there in the open hangar, both of them watching as the tangerine sun inched downward to the distant horizon.

  They were at Zorneding Airfield, the final airport on their list. An intermediate landing strip well to the east of Munich, it was significantly larger than the one in Velden. Zorneding was used by a few businesses and mainly wealthy Müncheners with enough income to own their own sport aircraft.

  The air chief, a burly man with a mop of oily black hair, had greeted them upon their arrival, whistling at the Junkers JU-88, outfitted in civilian markings and swastikas. Gerhard Michener had come through in fine fashion, scaring up the lightning-fast aircraft in only an hour after Thomas’ phone threat. The airplane actually belonged to the party and was used to shuttle political bigwigs around Germany at high speed.

  Upon meeting Thomas for the first time, the short pilot, a Luftwaffe reservist, had bragged that he had flown everyone from Marlene Dietrich to Heinrich Himmler. “In our dear Reich, if someone needs to get somewhere fast, I’m the man they call,” he’d said, jabbing his chest with both thumbs.

  Thomas knew he’d found the correct man.

  Once the air chief had fastened the cowling on another airplane, he wiped his hands wit
h a rag and ambled over. Formal introductions were made and, after a brief over-his-head conversation about the JU-88, Thomas politely asserted himself.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but we’re tight on time.” Thomas motioned to the runway. “Have you seen all aircraft that landed here recently?”

  The chief nodded. “I haven’t missed a day in months.”

  Thomas lifted a single finger. “What about Thursday, probably in the early morning? I’m interested in all activity, but that’s the timeframe in question.”

  “I was here all day. When the weather’s good, Thursdays and Fridays are among our busiest.”

  Thomas stepped closer. “It was a black biplane, enclosed cockpit, seats side by side. No markings that I know of. Did it land here?”

  The pilot lowered his mug of coffee, squinting his eyes as he cocked his head. “Funny you ask that.”

  “Why?”

  Thomas’ pilot, who had been a disinterested observer so far, even appeared mildly intrigued as he lowered his cup of coffee.

  The air chief lifted his own mug to the sky, making a line from north to south. “Thursday morning, just after first light, I’d just gotten the coffee made and was waiting on our first customer to show up. I heard an airplane and thought I might be getting some early business. I remember this, because I was surprised—it’s very rare to get a customer that early.”

  “Did he land here?” Thomas asked.

  The air chief shook his head. “Nope. This runway points due north and south, and the airplane came right over me, true as the ass end of a compass needle. He was heading south, puttering along in an efficient cruise.”

  “A black biplane?”

  “Damn right,” the air chief said, nodding. “I’ve never seen one of that manufacture either.” He turned to Thomas’ pilot. “Had kind of a pointy nose and a moth-like stabilizer. I used my ‘nocs to get a good look at it. She was pretty and ugly all at the same time. Probably underpowered with that skinny nose.” Shaking his head, the air chief seemed to be talking to himself as much as Thomas and the pilot. “I know every small aircraft in this area, but I’ve never seen that one, not in person anyway. Pretty sure it was from an English manufacturer.”