by Dora Benley
What People Say About Dora Benley's Novels
Salisbury Affair
This is a pacy thriller written in the style of the period in which it is set, creating an authentic atmosphere of the political intrigue of the nineteen thirties, which underpinned spying and espionage right across Europe. The heroine, Dora and her fiance, now husband, Sir Edward Ware, battle against blood curdling spooks determined to wrest the vital Lawrence Maps, which hold the key to military domination of the Middle East. In the background Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia are drivers of the need to protect these documents and add a useful historical backcloth. The new bride finds her love and loyalty tested by her husband's unexpected connections with one of the apparent villains. Their grit and determination carries them through all the trials, yet the ending leaves the door tantalizingly open to another adventure to come . . . a ripping yarn, well worth an entertaining read.
— Gordon Williams
I loved the first 24 pages- it had lot's of detail and gave me goosebumps while reading it.
— Raegan Ralls aka Bianca Di Angelo
Latin Lessons
Scary, puzzling. Couldn't put it down!
— Michael Parker
Old Faithful
Plot
Seventh Book of the Edward Ware Thrillers At War Series
Dora Benley
Cheops Books, LLC
Edward Ware Thrillers At War
Old Faithful Plot
By Dora Benley
Published by Cheops Books, LLC
Cover design by Daniel Teran
Copyright © 2018 by Dora Benley
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-941654-35-4
LCCN: 2018938534
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Chapter 1: June, 1933
The Franconiablew her whistle as she docked in the harbor at Manhattan that morning in early June of 1933. With chill Mrs. Michael Byrne wrapped her fox stole around her shoulders. Dora glanced around the pier. A man four yards off wearing a big, floppy hat appeared to be eying her.
Had Adolf Hitler sent his spies to New York City to follow her? Colonel Sir Edward Ware, Edward to her, had cabled her a couple of months ago from Europe with the terrible news that the man that they had unsuccessfully tried to defeat all during the past decade had just been elected Chancellor of Germany in January. Now he would be after them with renewed efforts. As always, the Dictator wanted those top secret Lawrence military maps, key to world domination, and would do anything to get his hands on them.
The ramp was being connected to the Franconia. Sure enough just as she had hoped a six foot man with wavy blond hair with touches of gray wearing a bowler hat appeared first in line to disembark. She watched Colonel Sir Edward Ware in civilian dress search the pier looking for her with those penetrating blue eyes of his. She raised her hand, smiled, and waved at him. She blew him a kiss. Edward finally saw her. His eyes grew big. He waved back.
Spies or no spies nothing could keep her from her long time fiance to whom she had been engaged for the past eighteen years. She dashed toward him, her high heels striking the pavement as she wove in and out of the crowd. On leave from Mid-East Headquarters in Cairo, Edward hurried toward her from the ship, and they met midway on the pier amidst a thickening crowd of other passengers.
She leaped into his arms. She had not seen him now since Christmas of 1932. It was well into the New Year. His current visit had been delayed by military operations in Cairo. Now she could cling to him and kiss him again and again.
"I bet you longed for the sight of land all the way here!" She kissed him on the cheeks. "I remember how awful it was looking out at the gray nothingness and counting the whitecaps sloshing past when crossing the North Atlantic. I used to count the number of hours left at sea until we could be together."
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She was sniffling as she recalled visiting England to be with him. She did not know how she survived all these constant separations from Edward, all made worse now by this monster, Adolf Hitler.
The Colonel was the discreet British type. He did not like emotional displays on the pier, and he was already signalling a taxi, raising his arm high into the air. He shoved her inside.
"Waldorf Astoria," he snapped to the cabbie. The door slammed shut with an extra loud bang. The Waldorf was their usual haunt for trysts in New York City.
"Edward, what's wrong?" Dora asked, instantly sensing something. Her fiance's brow was furrowed. He was staring straight ahead out the front window moodily as the cabbie nosed his way through all the traffic.
Edward shoved into her face a newspaper article he must have cut out of the Times of London: Hindenburg Says You Can Trust Hitler. He shook his head and sighed at the heavy weight of the bad news.
At that very moment they passed Madison Square Garden. He remarked, "That's where there was a rally in March against Hitler. The Americans are getting the right idea before the British. That is for certain."
"Americans don't like dictators," she assured him as she glanced through the troubling article.
"The upper class in London believes crap like that. They think that Hitler is their friend. He brings order to the rabbles who follow him about. That is all they care about, keeping the lower classes in line." He shook his head. "They do not understand that it could be the beginning of the end for Europe as they know it. And what if Hitler takes a liking to Britain and wants to add it to his growing empire of influence?"
They were ushered upstairs to the suite that Dora rented out permanently as the site of their rendezvouses. She always kept clothes in the closet so she did not have to pack them. As soon as they were alone, Edward shut the drapes, turned on the light, and made sure the door was locked. He yanked her into the bathroom where he turned on the shower, and burst out so no one would hear him if the room was bugged by German spies, "Hindenburg is a jackass the way he runs Germany! He was even a jackass the way he conducted the war before that. He keeps on ceding more and more power to this upstart, Adolf Hitler."
Dora remembered wheedling a map out of Hitler at the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany ten years before when the upstart was a total neophyte. She had been helping Edward fight the Germans as far back as the Great War when the Kaiser was the bugaboo instead of Hitler. That was after a German submarine commander torpedoed the Lusitania on which she was sailing in 1915, sank the ship, and killed a number of her friends. The Germans had been causing trouble for America and Britain for a long time.
"What does Winston have to say about it?" she whispered, so as not to be heard over any bugging devices despite the sound of the plashing water all around them.
"Winston is even more frustrated than I am if such a thing is possible. He can't do anything," Edward sighed. "The MP is just a backbencher, not even part of the Conservative government under Baldwin that wants to spurn him. They all act like Nazi sympathizers, cheering Hitler on."
"Surely it can't be as bad as all that!" Dora protested.
After all, she had not seen Edward in months. She wanted to get past this bad news and get on to other, more important, more personal matters as quickly as possible.
"It is even worse, I am afraid," Edward sighed over the sound of the shower. "I have not told you everything yet. Just as I was leaving for Southampton to catch this ship, one of Churchill's informants brought news of a couple from
the German Embassy in London who have been assigned to trail us and find those maps."
"Where are the maps this time, Edward?" she questioned him.
She remembered how much trouble this sort of thing had caused in the past. All through the war and all the way until now defending the Lawrence maps against first the Kaiser and then Hitler had become a full-time occupation. The Kaiser had first caught onto them in 1914 when T. E. Lawrence, Edward's mentor, best friend, and commanding officer, had started to draw them while excavating with Leonard Woolley at Carchemish in Turkey. He had wanted to show the British high command how to best take and defend all sorts of locations around the Middle East and Mesopotamia. He had worked in the intelligence office in Cairo during the war near Middle East Command. But when he had gone off into the field and become Lawrence of Arabia Edward had served under him as his adjutant. One of Edward's chief duties had been to hide the winning battle maps that made Lawrence the only successful general of the whole war. Naturally the Germans on the losing side wanted to pursue Lawrence's secret battle techniques to develop their own brand of aggression in preparation for the next war which the Chancellor, Hitler, seemed determined to bring about.
Edward pointed to his own short shirt sleeve. He rolled it up a little and showed her the stitched in secret compartment in the lining.
Dora was alarmed. "Why didn't you —"
"I did not have time. Winston called me at the cruise terminal. I took the call minutes before the ship was supposed to board," he confessed.
"Here!" She helped him take off his jacket. "Let's put the map under the bed in the other room at least for now. Better yet, let's hide it between the mattresses." She left the bathroom, yanking Edward behind her.
She stuffed his jacket between the mattresses as she had promised. She sat down on top of the bed and held out her arms to him in desperation that he might not even kiss her today.
"Dora, what could I be thinking of!" He sat down on the bed beside her and kissed the palms of her hands one by one.
Dora had been spending a fortune on doctor's appointments back in Pittsburgh and even here in New York to help her conceive, and it did not help that her rendezvouses with Edward were months apart. She was already thirty-eight years old. They did not have many more years left to keep on trying to have a baby. They had a plan that as soon as she got pregnant she was going to sue her husband Michael Byrne for a divorce despite the scandal it would cause. Edward's career in the British army would somehow have to survive it.
She hurried out of her clothes and climbed on top of him. He was bringing her to a climax. She was barely aware of the window behind the bed. A flash went off in the skyscraper across the alleyway only about ten feet away
"Edward!" she gasped, clutching the sheet to her breast. "Are we being photographed?"
Chapter 2: New York to Gettysburg
He practically toppled her as he scrambled to his feet. He never completely undressed, and had only to button himself up as he gaped out the window. Edward had told her many times how he had learned this fast method of dressing in the military. "It must be that bastard husband of yours! The German spies would not do anything that blatant. It would attract too much attention."
All Dora needed was to be plagued by both Michael and Hitler at the very same time, each with their own set of spies! Edward had remembered to lock the door and shut most of the drapes. But one person could not remember everything. There was a small window right behind the bed. No one had recalled it. If you had a zoom lens of the best variety and you trained it in exactly the right place at the right time you could see all too much.
"Dora, I still don't understand why you let yourself be pushed into marrying Michael!" He got out his one bag and threw it on top of the bed. "We have more trouble than we can handle with Hitler and the German spies. We don't need Michael's paid detectives from Pittsburgh looking for an excuse for your husband to divorce you before you can divorce him."
As she threw on her clothes, she tried to explain to Edward what she had said many times before. After she had come to Paris to meet him in 1919 during the Paris Peace Conference, he and Lawrence had disappeared for about six months. She thought her fiance was dead. Her father, the business tycoon and President of Benley Tire and Rubber, had arranged the marriage of his only daughter with Michael Byrne and made him Vice President of the company. Michael used to be a good friend from the Great War who had also survived the sinking of the Lusitania. Now he was not even that anymore, especially since she had refused to consummate the marriage.
Edward was on the phone with a nearby car dealer who was supposed to bring them whatever he had in a big hurry. "We will meet you in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria with our bags packed in about half an hour." Edward looked down at his pocket watch. "And remember, we want a full tank of gas. We will be needing it."
When he hung up Dora said, "What do you have in mind? Should I be packing?" She referred to the clothes she kept in the suite that she rented out from the hotel three hundred sixty-five days a year so that no one else ever used it and she could stop by to meet Edward whenever he was in town.
"We have to get out of New York City, that is what." He kicked the chair. "We are too much on display here. If that Michael of yours gets too many photos and shows them to the New York newspapers and the London papers start to print them, I could be dismissed from the military. And Churchill would not be able to rely on me as much to get information about Hitler."
That had always been the caveat that had prevented them from getting divorced until now, the scandal and the effect on his military career. It was to be solved only by her getting pregnant and then shaming Michael into coming to terms about a divorce. Perhaps he would have to agree to it or her father would fire him as Vice President. But then she would have to come clean with her father about all her unexplained absences from Pittsburgh over the past fourteen years.
"Can't we call a cab?" she asked.
"I want to get far out of New York City," Edward snapped. He looked out the window toward the street below as if he were already getting impatient.
She wondered what was going to happen next. With Edward and his operatives and spies you never could be sure. She had to be prepared for anything at any time. It had been this way since she had first run into him the day after the sinking of the Lusitania. He had met her in Queenstown, Ireland, rescued her, and taken her back to Ware Hall in the south of England. It had been one big adventure ever since.
She, too, wanted her revenge on the Germans whether they were led by the Kaiser or by Hitler. She had lost friends when a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania when she was onboard on May 7, 1915. But more than anything she wanted to bear Edward's child, preferably his son, and get married to him in a ceremony that had been years delayed. She was supposed to have married him at Christmas in 1915 only months after she had fallen in love with him. Here it was eighteen years later. They were still just engaged. And she was married to somebody else. That was hardly progress.
"How far out of New York City?" she asked.
"We will discuss that when we get to New Jersey." He looked down at his watch once more.
The phone rang. Edward grabbed it almost as if he were expecting something. The foreign operator was on the line. Edward said he would accept the phone call. Dora recognized Winston Churchill's voice booming out of the phone receiver warning Edward about the Chancellor's new secret agents. He went on and on speechifying to Edward. She took advantage of the little extra time to comb her hair in the bathroom and wash her face. She even had time to pack some of the clothes and underwear that she kept here in New York.
Edward ushered her out of the room and into the elevator in a big hurry before she even had a chance to finish packing her clothes for an unexpected trip of unknown proportions. She wished she could invite him back to Pittsburgh. But then there was Michael who lived practically next door to the Benle
ys. So she and Edward had better not go near the place.
Fortunately they had to wait only a few more minutes in the downstairs lobby while Edward paid a tip at the front desk. At least she could arrange for the staff in the kitchen to pack them a hurried picnic basket. She wanted to be prepared in case they had to eat their lunch on the road.
The car dealer showed up with a Lincoln KB Dual Cowl Phaeton, a current year 1933 model in blue with a tan roof. Dora handed several hundred dollars in cash to the man and tipped him a hundred more for his trouble. It was her job as the daughter of a robber baron to pay for all the unexpected adventures Edward got himself into. In this case, she guessed it was partly her fault for marrying Michael as Edward opened the door and practically shoved her into the front seat he was in such a rush.
The picnic basket arrived thankfully just in the nick of time. That little meal might be the only civilized thing that was to happen today.
As they drove west out of Manhattan into New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel built just a few years before, Dora said, "All right, Edward, what did Winston have to say that was so important?" She knew something must have come up as she handed him a sandwich and then unwrapped one of her own. She just could not imagine what it was. Usually the back bencher did not communicate with Edward when he was out of the country.
"Don't look now." He glanced at the rearview mirror as they entered the Pulaski Skyway that crossed the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers and Kearny Point. "But I think we're being followed."
Dora felt a tremble go up her spine as she looked up at the rearview mirror. Men hiding behind a darkened windshield were trailing them. They must have come through the narrow tunnel too.
"That is why Winston was calling me." Edward speeded up onto Route 1. "He wanted to warn me that Hitler was taking new liberties in pursuing us. President Paul von Hinderburg is turning a blind eye to his activities."
