“What the hell were you doing in the official parking area?” he roared, poking Neil’s chest in the tender area.
Doing his best not to wince, Neil glanced at the burned truck, his mind racing. A thought came to him. He hardened his face and voice as he turned back around. “Say, are you the one that my little Nicole is after?”
“What?”
“You heard me!” Neil snapped. “I don’t care who you drive for. Are you the sweet-talking sonofabitch my Nicole wrote the note to? The one who made the filthy suggestions that inflamed her?”
The SS driver narrowed his eyes, cocking his head. “Your Nicole?”
“Yes, dammit! She’s my daughter.” Neil placed his hands on his hips in a defiant pose. “We live beyond the railroad tracks over there, and my wife heard her telling her younger sister about a handsome SS man she was meeting to do all sorts of untold things with. Sick, beyond her years, sexual things!”
The indignation disappeared from the driver’s face instantly. He poked his lips out and shook his head. “No, that wasn’t me.”
Neil did a full circle, his eyes searching. “Well, we spoiled her little rendezvous, but then she got away from us and we think she’s up here looking for the man. She’s like a bitch in heat for him. If I find her or that bastard…”
The driver was momentarily stunned before a smile creased his face. He patted Neil’s back, now speaking affably as he, too, scanned the area. “Believe me, I will keep a close lookout for your Nicole.”
“Make sure you do. She’s up here somewhere. Send her home.”
“Have no fear.”
Neil began to walk away, closing his eyes in relief.
“Sir,” the driver called out.
Neil froze. Oh shit. He slowly turned around.
The SS cocked his head. “Sir, what is your accent? It sounds strange.”
“I’m Austrian by birth, but we moved to Canada after the Great War. We came back to raise our children in the Reich.” Neil popped his right hand straight out, giving the Nazi salute. “Heil, Hitler!”
The soldier returned the salute and quickly scurried away. Neil headed back to the campground with his prize identification in his pocket. Before he got too far, he glanced back to see the horny driver. He was ignoring the burned truck. Instead, Neil could see him, once again covering his tunic, scrambling all around the parking area, peering behind every vehicle, no doubt looking for Canadian-raised “Nicole,” the teenager who was still hot-to-trot.
And from the stadium Neil could hear Hitler, fully-oiled as he was well into his deceitful speech.
~~~
It was late in the evening when Peter and Neil finally arrived at the farm. The old Adler truck creaked to a stop before Neil watched Frau Heinz emerge from the farmhouse and bear hug her son. Peter was quite conflicted after the rally, and understandably so. He was only an adolescent and adolescents are impressionable. It would be almost impossible for him not to have been swayed by the otherworldly pageantry he’d witnessed, and by the carefully scripted speeches he’d heard. Peter’s brigade commander awarded each of the attendees a Hitler Youth Knife and scabbard. Peter had worn it home, on his belt, touching it occasionally.
After Frau Heinz shooed Peter inside, instructing him to brush his teeth and go straight to bed, she came around the truck to Neil. He was smoking a cigarette, his left hand massaging his aching side. Frau Heinz stared at him; the two shared a moment of silence.
“How’s your side?” she finally asked.
“Sore but getting better.”
“How was the rally?”
“Unimaginable,” Neil answered truthfully. “And nothing inappropriate happened. You have my word.”
She leaned her head back, viewing the stars in her relief. “Did Peter do well?”
“He was the model companion. You have a fine young man for a son.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for looking after him.”
“No…thank you,” Neil countered. “For saving me, hiding me, and letting me get to know each of you. I’ll always be better for it.” He glanced around. “Where’s Gabi?”
Frau Heinz frowned. “I made her go to sleep. Have you decided when you’ll leave?”
“Thursday.” By waiting until Thursday, he’d have a few more days to heal. He’d also then have a full week to locate the hidden children, and doing so should be a snap with his newly acquired identification.
Surprising Neil, Frau Heinz hugged him before he went inside. Before he fell asleep, he tucked his prestigious Nazi identification away with the other forged papers.
Considering what the day had meant to Peter and his mother, and with his new treasure, Neil considered the trip a rousing success. With such a priceless identification, setting up transport for the children should be a breeze. He could now afford to relax just a bit—there was plenty of time remaining.
Or, so he thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Since meeting with Antonio at the airfield, the Wilhelm Kruger murder investigation had ground to a halt. Twice Thomas had run into Gerhard Michener, and neither time did Michener even ask the identity of the deceased. He must have still been too nervous about Thomas’ threat, afraid that if he were to push the old retiree too hard, Thomas would follow through and wreck his little empire with an enormous steel ball. On each occasion, Michener nodded upon hearing Thomas’ intentionally bland update, clapping Thomas on the back, offering his unending support before he disappeared in a hurry.
Aside from Michener’s lack of interest, it hadn’t been easy to conceal the secret of the cadaver’s identity from everyone else. Fortunately, Thomas still had the coroner on his side. Two other officials, both from the polizei in various departments, had requested the identity of the deceased. Deliberately misleading the officials, Thomas and the coroner informed them that they had yet to discover it—making the cadaver a “Max Mustermann”, the German equivalent of a John Doe. The coroner helped Thomas, and further muddied the case, by asking if any men fitting the dead man’s description had been reported as missing. Without a missing person, there was very little pressure to solve the case. Thomas thanked the heavens that Wilhelm Kruger’s defection had been decades ago.
Wanting more on the victim, Thomas reached out to the Brits through an old associate at the consulate in Munich. Typically tight-lipped, especially in dealing with the growing threat of the Nazi regime, his associate’s contact finally—and unofficially—acknowledged that Kruger had indeed defected during the Great War, working as an urban farmer in London over the balance of years. Kruger also had a rap sheet, mostly consisting of petty crimes, and was known to consort with an unsavory international crowd, primarily in the Shoreditch area of London. A day after Thomas’ inquiry with the consulate, his contact called Thomas back to inform him that there was, indeed, a missing persons report filed in London for “Willi” Kruger. The report was filed by his Irish-born wife, two days after Thomas discovered the body. This was the final piece of evidence he sought, confirming for Thomas that the cadaver in his possession was indeed the man in question. But it still revealed nothing to him as to the why.
Why would a man who had worked so hard to leave Germany come back?
It was then that Thomas connected all of this with Antonio at the Velden airfield, and his revelation about the magically occurring midnight fuel purchases. Thomas concluded that the fatal trip had almost certainly not been Kruger’s first trip back. If not for growing animosity between England and Germany, Thomas would have sought permission to go to London and interview the wife. Even though Gerhard Michener was giving Thomas a wide berth, Thomas had no illusions about the shitstorm that would occur if he were to make such a request. No, he would have to content himself with running the investigation from Germany.
After scouring what little information that remained of pilot Wilhelm Kruger’s German military background, Thomas found nothing of pertinent interest, finally deciding that the only solution to this case was
to focus on locating the shooter. Sometimes the easiest solution presents the most difficult problem, like the fastest trail to the top of the mountain. Yes, it’s short, but it’s also straight up. Thomas knew, at this point, that only the shooter could clear up the mystery. He also knew that, as the case grew colder, the likelihood of solving it began to decrease exponentially. And Thomas began to get that dreadful, familiar feeling that this one was going to go into the stack marked “unsolved.” To Thomas, such a hollow denouement was unthinkable. This case was his last chance to live—he needed to create some sort of break.
And during the nearly three weeks Thomas had been in Nürnberg, sleeping four hours a night on a cot at one of the polizei’s outpost stations in the quiet town of Roth, three canvass teams of two had been moving in a grid pattern southward, going door to door inside the triangle of space Thomas theorized the black airplane would have traveled. They reported in after each and every day, and after each and every day the report was the same: nichts.
After tightening the scope of the search to the much smaller area where Thomas now believed the De Havilland Hornet Moth had run out of fuel, they were still coming up zeroes. There was still an area left to be searched, but Thomas was beginning to darken about the prospects of finding the airplane, or the man in question.
Thomas reexamined Willi Kruger’s cold purple body with his friend the coroner, probing every square inch of the deserter, looking for something, anything, which might give him an additional clue.
There were no more clues.
One day Thomas traveled by train, far north to the industrial city of Hannover, searching out Wilhelm’s old school friends, ignoring the curious stares as he questioned them about a man they had long since forgotten. That trip yielded next to nothing. People remembered Willi Kruger as a shrewd opportunist. The word “snake” was used several times, especially by the women.
After his unfruitful trip north, Thomas traveled south, this time by car, back to the airfield at Zorneding, interviewing the mop-headed air chief who had seen the alleged aircraft fly by during the morning of the murder. His story remained the same: strange aircraft; flying south—too low for a climb over the Alps. Thomas explained his theory on the fuel, and his research that had yielded the range of the Hornet Moth. The air chief agreed that, if Thomas’ assumptions were correct, the airplane had likely been flying on fumes. But the air chief knew of no other airfields to the south, and had heard nothing of a crash or an emergency landing.
All roads led to nowhere.
Thomas scrutinized every shred of information in his possession, but his results were still the same. He had nothing other than a frosty cadaver, and now his case—his final case—was just as cold.
After breaking the seal on the bottle of English gin, Thomas filled his highball glass to the top, staring at the clear liquid for a full minute. It had been thirty years since he had ingested alcohol, back when he was burning the candle at both ends, using booze as a sleep aid. It would serve the same purpose tonight: the gin would relax him, and would also serve as a sort of private wake. A wake because, if the final few square kilometers yielded no evidence, his case was dead. A wake because, if no evidence turned up, it was time to turn the investigation over to the Office of Special Investigations.
And after he turned it over, Thomas knew what was in store for him.
Once the Nazis discovered that he knew the identity of the man as a known deserter—and had kept it hidden—they would demand he be punished. By his actions, he would be summarily judged as an enemy of the state, and would most likely be executed by firing squad.
Thomas coughed a quantity of blood into his fresh handkerchief.
And if the Nazis didn’t kill him, whatever was going on inside his body surely would.
Curiously, he wasn’t at all frightened; Thomas had long ago made his peace with death.
He took the highball into his hand and took a small sip. The pine needle-taste of the gin assaulted his senses as the innocuous-looking liquid seared his tongue and throat. Even though it had been thirty years, the taste was as familiar as something he might drink every day. He turned the highball up, gulping the remainder of the gin before smacking the heavy glass onto the bedside table. Thomas screwed the cap back on the bottle and extinguished the flame on the kerosene lantern. He slid into the tightly made bed and stared into the darkness.
He would tell Michener tomorrow, but not until the end of the day. The canvassing crews were finishing their search near the towns of Miesbach and Hausham, almost to the political border with annexed Austria. The plots of land there were large, and it would only take them another full day to speak to the residents and farmers on their list. And if, by the end of the day, they had again found nothing, Thomas vowed to walk into Gerhard Michener’s office and tell him everything.
And accept his fate.
There in the dark, Thomas cursed himself for a fool, drinking liquor like some scorned teenager. He was very disappointed in himself, not because of the drinking—but because he couldn’t crack the case.
As he pulled the gray wool blanket up over his shoulders, in the back closet of the station at Roth, Thomas murmured a word of prayer, on behalf of various nieces and nephews he hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years. At the end of his prayer, he petitioned for something, unlike he had done since his childhood.
“Please give me a break in this case, Lord. I beg you. I want to perform just one more time. I want to be useful. Please…”
Thomas ended his prayer.
It took ten minutes for Thomas to feel the gin’s full effect, giving him the gift of six hours of deep sleep.
~~~
Central London was dreary on Tuesday morning. The temperature was cool, the wind was blowing, and a growing mist swirled around the buildings, making umbrellas useless. Preston Lord jerked the napkin from the inside of his collar and pushed the grapefruit backward. He stood and took a final swig of his coffee as the waiter rushed over, holding his jacket and his overcoat for him. Lord despised hats, instead choosing to walk in the damp and press the water from his hair upon arrival. He dropped a few shillings on the white tablecloth of his hotel restaurant and shoved the front door open before the doorman could. He was on a mission, and this was the last day he would stand idly by while Scotland Yard fed him their same lines of bullshit.
Sure, his time in London had been rather enjoyable. He’d had some fun with a few of the girls, eaten decadent food, imbibed his share of their reddish ale, and even managed to take in two shows—but a week-and-a-half was enough. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried. He’d worked every single angle, from putting word on the street through snitches, to going cell-to-cell with recently apprehended criminals. He’d interviewed the employees of the Queen Mary before she sailed again, and had even managed to have Reuter’s picture run in the paper with the promise of a large reward. The tips that had trickled in had all been garbage.
Lord stuffed his hands deep in his pockets as he walked past the statues in Trafalgar Square. The mist had collected on his face and hair, running freely like tears he hadn’t known since he was a boy. He’d certainly caused many a tear, but to Lord, crying was the ultimate sign of weakness—a completely impotent, craven emotion. After a quick right just past the station at Charing Cross, Lord walked down the grade of the mews, staring at the brown water of the Thames. At the lower road, he turned again, entering the side door of the ancient Scotland Yard building. The guard at the desk nodded as Lord paid him no heed. He walked through the building as if he owned it, eventually striding into the anteroom at the captain’s office, throwing his overcoat at the secretary, ignoring her objections about his bursting in, which he did. Loudly.
Gregory Highsmith sat behind his desk, stirring his tea. He glanced up at Lord and frowned before turning his attention back to a sheaf of papers.
“I need you to throw everything into this search, and I want it done this morning,” Lord demanded, stabbing a rigid finger into the ancient w
alnut desk.
The tinkling of the silver spoon inside the bone china was the only sound for half a minute. Highsmith tapped the spoon on the rim, placed it into the saucer, and took a sip. He settled himself back into the creaky chair and pursed his lips. “Well, we all have needs, don’t we, Mister Lord?”
“You’re going to stop dicking around and put some real heat to this,” Lord said. “You know exactly who is backing me, and you know your damned hierarchy in their ivory tower is complicit as well. I haven’t gone back up the chain to tell them I am getting shit, but I will, this morning, tell them that I am getting shit, unless you do some actual work, and tell your tepid investigators to stop feeding me shit.”
Highsmith sipped his tea again and knitted his brow. He touched his phone. “Please, feel free to call anyone, because I’m still not quite sure what it is you’re after. In fact, my man on the street tells me you seem to be more interested in cotching around, drinking French wine and shagging pay-by-the-hour harlots than you are finding your man.”
Lord felt the flush in his cheeks. So they had followed him. Arrogant, sneaky, East End, poor-bred Cockneys. As he was taught years before in freshman debate, when wrong, do not engage. Change tack. He straightened and said, “The break has to come today, or a mountain of shit is coming down, and so help me I will see to it that you’re going to be buried squarely under it.”
“You enjoy the utilization of that fecal word, don’cha?”
Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller Page 34
