Old Faithful Plot

by Dora Benley

  Edward shoved her around the vehicle despite the lizard and pushed Dora into the passenger seat from the other side. He climbed over her into the car and slammed the door behind him. They left the lizard in parking lot and zoomed off. Bullets were flying again. They were being pursued by another gunman, and Dora did not think it was the horrible reptile.

  Dora could never remember exactly how they escaped from what was clearly one of the biggest traps they had ever fallen prey to. Somehow Hitler's agents had intercepted the information about where Churchill's agent was supposed to meet them. They had gotten there first, not Dora and Edward. That must be why the last couple hundred miles to the Stone Tree House no one seemed to be pursuing them. Instead Hitler's agents were preparing to ambush them in the restaurant and hopefully kill Edward and Dora so they could steal the much coveted maps, key to world domination, which Edward was hiding up his sleeve as usual.

  "Edward," she exclaimed when they were safely back on Route 66, "do you know what that horrible lizard was?"

  He nodded. "It was pictured on one of those maps of Route 66 and Arizona that I bought along the way. I think it is called a Gila Monster."

  Dora shuddered at the word "Gila Monster" and ran her hands up and down her arms. The creature certainly resembled a monster.

  "It is one of only two poisonous lizards in North America. Both are located here in the southwest desert. You do not want to tangle with it. It's leftover from the Jurassic Era, scientists think," Edward informed her. "Very deadly."

  "You mean when dinosaurs roamed the earth?" She put her hand to her neck.

  He nodded.

  No wonder the creature had reminded her of a miniature dinosaur! Something from the prehistoric age just like King Kong. 1933 had a way of bringing them all to the surface all of a sudden.

  "Perhaps the von Wessels captured it and put it in the parking lot just to slow us down in case we escaped the gunmen indoors," Edward suggested.

  The von Wessels reminded her of a Gila Monster duo. King Kong must be one of their friends. She shivered at the memory of Helga von Wessel's face framed against the movie screen next to King Kong on the Empire State Building. Dora knew her nerves would never be the same again.

  Chapter 20: Grand Canyon

  Suddenly Dora and Edward saw a roadblock ahead.

  "What is going on there?" Dora asked. "Route 66 isn't the kind of place for a roadblock."

  "There is hardly any traffic!" Edward objected, sounding suspicious.

  He slammed on the brakes and pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He got out his binoculars from the glove compartment and spied what was going on up ahead.

  Edward sighed and handed the binoculars to her. Dora anxiously peered through them. Her mouth fell open. Straight ahead stood Frau von Wessel and Herr von Wessel by the side of the highway giving directions to two of their hired thugs. Herr von Wessel was wearing his fancy white summer suit with his conspicuous walking stick. Helga was modeling another Coco Chanel outfit. They were deep in discussion and obviously did not see them. They had piled a bunch of sandbags in the middle of the road as if deliberately trying to create an obstruction for traffic for more than obvious reasons. They had missed them at the Petrified Forest. Now they were trying to capture them on the run.

  Edward turned his car around in the middle of the road and headed back in the other direction. He stepped on the gas. They zoomed past the entrance to the Petrified Forest which they had just left behind moments before. At least the agents who had been chasing them there seemed to have disappeared, but who knew where? Edward and Dora just kept on going in what was obviously the wrong direction if they wanted to get back to where they had started days before this useless distraction on Route 66.

  But was that where they were going? Who knew? They had to talk to Churchill first.

  "At least I can't imagine why anybody would think I was traveling this direction," Edward confessed as they sped past the sign for Winslow.

  "Where do we stop for the night?" Dora looked down at her watch in great agitation as they headed for Flagstaff to judge by the sign markers on the road.

  "I do not want to stop in any town or city. They probably have that covered tonight at least if they are out prowling about searching for us. When they found out that their ambush did not succeed and left them without the Lawrence maps, they pulled out all the stops."

  As they jetted past Flagstaff Dora was becoming concerned. Were they going to head all the way to the Pacific Ocean? The atmosphere was increasingly spooky, too. They drove past peculiar, dark mountains on the side of the road that looked rather ominous.

  At a gas station Edward glanced at a map. "The San Francisco Peaks. Apparently those are extinct and dormant volcanoes that haven't erupted for quite awhile."

  "I thought they rather looked like volcanoes!" Dora exclaimed. "Odd finding something like that in a place like this." She shivered.

  "This desert seems to collect oddities," Edward commented. "First the Gila Monster, then the extinct volcanoes by the side of the road." He shook his head.

  Dora was not unhappy to get past those omens of past disasters along Route 66.

  Edward turned right onto a long, flat road headed away from Route 66. The sign said Grand Canyon National Park.

  "What are we doing here of all places?" Dora exclaimed.

  "You don't see any German spies, do you?" he countered.

  "No, but I am not headed way down there into the canyon no matter who is after us!" Dora insisted. As they drove past Mather Point on their way into the park she saw tourists climbing over railings and sitting on rocks with nothing at all between them and infinity hundreds of feet below. If they made one false step, they would be crushed on the rocks of the Grand Canyon in the purple red light of sunset.

  Dora swallowed hard.

  "When I climbed over rocks in the Syrian Desert and down into King Abdullah's Tomb in Petra, I never encountered anything half this steep. That is why I came here. I figured the von Wessels would deduce even we would not try something so crazy."

  They drove past Yavapai Point into the park and up the hill to the El Tovar Hotel on the rim. "You are in luck," the front desk clerk told them as they registered under false names. "There is a cancellation, and I have the Mary Colter Suite available."

  With almost no luggage they were escorted upstairs. Dora and Edward ordered late room service and went to bed. Early the next morning before it was totally light out Dora woke up to use the bathroom. She peered out the front window of the suite through the cracked drapes straight into the Canyon. Tourists were up and about looking for an opportunity to take a picture at sunrise as the golden sun struck this rock and now that, some resembling statues of long ago gods or monsters of mammouth size. In the midst of that maelstrom of horror and wonder, there in front of the El Tover stood what had to be the von Wessels. Dora would recognize that creature in the high fashion suit and her husband in the white summer suit anywhere! She cringed.

  She fled back into the bedroom and woke up Edward. They quickly dressed and ordered coffee. He tipped the front desk to sent a porter to the exposed parking lot on the rim and fetch their Cadillac so the von Wessels would not spot them.

  Quickly they leaped into the car at the service entrance behind the hotel where the groceries were delivered and the trash taken out. They fled from the park at dawn before it was fully light out, and in June that was very, very early indeed.

  A mule deer raced across the road into the pine forest as Edward slammed on the brakes. Was the deer working for the von Wessels, too?

  Dora rubbed her eyes and yawned. At this hour of the morning it all seemed like a bad dream.

  Chapter 21: Omaha, Nebraska

  As they drove down Route 66 Edward announced that he was going to take a diversion. The most deserted route of all was Route 139. It had just been opened several years bac
k. But at least it was an easy way to turn into the Navajo Indian Reservation just to the north of Route 66, get lost there for a few hours, and erase whatever trail they might have created for the von Wessels. They could get to Albuquerque that way, too, in a much more indirect fashion, skipping over much of Route 66.

  Albuquerque was the nearest big city, certainly the biggest city in New Mexico. It was not big enough for international phone connections. But Edward was able to send a telegraph to Churchill from the Hotel Parq Central near the Old Town Plaza. They waited tensely for a response in their own private room where they had food delivered. They were not going to risk sitting in a public restaurant on display while they tapped their fingers on the table in anxiousness and wondered what to do next.

  Finally the knock on the door came. Dora jumped six inches. The front desk brought them Winston Churchill's reply:

  Edward STOP These bastards may have killed my agent at the Stone Tree House but wait until you see what I have arranged STOP Go back to the Lincoln Highway. Head forYellowstone STOP I have made new reservations for you STOP I sent my back up agent days ago STOP I anticipated that something untoward might happen STOP Return there at once STOP I hope it is not too inconvenient STOP All in the line of duty STOP WINSTON

  Inconvenient! Winston was not the one who had to drive hundreds of miles in this direction and that based on sudden, changing orders. Dora was losing count of the days. But they were back in Chicago in what seemed like a snap and back on the Lincoln Highway even faster. Edward seemed to fly like a bat behind the wheel of a car. They were soon beyond Chicago and cruising towards Yellowstone. Whether they would actually get there or not would as always be dependent on the enemy.

  Dora and Edward stopped at the bright yellow Ames Tourist Court at the intersection of US Highways 65 and 30 at the east edge of the town of Ames, Iowa. A US flag flew overhead. Dora felt as if they were entering a fort. But for them everything was always a battle.

  They pulled their car into a special garage. It seemed to be part of the rental cabin itself. They had time to study the map about where they were headed — Edward had picked it up at the cashier's stand a few miles back — without being seen.

  Once they had gotten their bearings — Edward was trying to figure out where to turn off the Lincoln Highway to proceed to Yellowstone — they were back on the road heading west. They passed the Brick Street Station. It had lots of license plates from across the US on display. In big letters was New York City on one side of the wall. In big letters on the other side was San Francisco. Apparently they had already come 1243 miles from New York. Dora would believe it! And they had 1721 more miles if they wanted to go all the way to the Golden Gate. But they were turning north instead. At least it made Dora feel as if they were making some sort of progress!

  They managed to get to Nebraska without running into the von Wessels or any of Hitler's other agents. Dora thought that was some sort of epic accomplishment as they drove through seas of high grass on either side of the highway. But it also made her tense wondering what was wrong and why had they not run into them. Had the von Wessels figured out how to do something really horrible that they were not expecting? That was the terror of it all especially considering what had just happened back at the Petrified Forest in Arizona. The spies could jump out at them from any direction at any moment.

  As they were passing under the big arch over the road in downtown Omaha, Nebraska that said: Lincoln Highway Welcome, Dora noticed someone lingering in a window about four stories up. Her eye darted to the other side of the road again about three or four stories up. Another man with a fedora was just standing there as if waiting for a signal.

  "Edward!" She tugged his arm in alarm. "What is going on?"

  "We are trapped, that is what, darling!" His eyes shifted from side to side. "They obviously went ahead of us, guessing our route again. They have been looking for us to arrive for hours. Now they can have their planned fun and games."

  "What are you going to do?" She saw a third man in a fedora behind the drapes in still another room on the third or fourth story. She gripped Edward's arm.

  "Try to survive at least for Winston's sake, and of course yours, my dearest," Edward exclaimed. He gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white as he concentrated on getting through this.

  Dora used to be bored a lot when she was attending high school in Bethel Boro and even when she matriculated at Bryn Mawr College. She even told herself in later years that must have been why she let Charlie Wilkins hang around so long trying to make love to her. She did not have anything else to do. All her needs were provided for. She had plenty of money at her fingertips at all times. She needed some sort of purpose in life, some sort of challenge. She certainly was not a scholar, although she had been a classics major and had studied Latin and Greek. She read books all the time but she often did not finish them because they, too, bored her or did not provide her with the insights she was seeking — or a big enough thrill.

  When the Lusitania sank literally underneath her feet and then Edward showed up in her bedroom the next morning after she, her father, and mother had saved themselves by rowing ashore in a lifeboat, that was the first big challenge of her young life. She was only twenty then. Edward had impressed her as being involved from the beginning in a thousand different political plots and military intrigues. He had not only been to Oxford, he had participated in a real archaeological excavation the year before under Leonard Woolley at Carchemish and knew T. E. Lawrence. He was even about to ship off to Gallipoli as part of his regiment.

  Charlie was the son of a Wall Street banker. He was wealthy just like her father, but Edward was the son of her father's English business acquaintance, Sir Adolphus Ware, of Adolphus Motors. Sir Adolphus bought tires from her father in America. So he had money, too, but Edward had so much more . . .Unlike Charlie who limply and impotently hung around her never really succeeding in making love to her, Edward took possession of her about two days after they met and made sure she would never even think about another man again as long as she lived.

  It was a whirlwind romance that left her engaged and expecting to be married that Christmas when she went to Liverpool to wave good-bye to Edward for the next four years. His cause against the Germans had become her cause, too.

  For the first time in her rich, privileged existence, Dora was not bored. For whole days and sometimes even weeks and months at a time she had something to think about, something to do, something to worry over that was bigger than herself. Dora was even able to forget how rich she was. Her money could help Edward and his causes, true, Edward and his military and political career. But not always. His causes were even larger than money and as big as history itself. That was something that the only daughter of a Robber Baron millionaire had never imagined before.

  It was hard to remember the thousands of dollars in cash in her handbag as Edward swerved the Cadillac into oncoming traffic on the four lane street. They had bigger causes to worry about now, too, in Omaha, Nebraska.

  "Edward, what on earth!" she protested in vain.

  Her mind did not move as quickly as his did. He was always two steps ahead of her. She could not see how cleverly he was inserting his car between two others, forcing them both to stop and creating a scene in the middle of the street. The other drivers climbed out and accosted him with words. "Are you crazy? What's going on?" demanded one man.

  A lady leaped out crying and wailing. "You almost killed me. I could have died in an accident." She was complaining that she would never see her husband or her little girl again.

  "Sorry," he lied, "I lost control of my car. It suddenly swerved toward oncoming traffic. I was trying to stop it."

  A backup developed right where Edward had decided to cause a scene. The first lady in line behind the back up jumped out of her car and came racing up to them. "Were you trying to commit suicide?" She raged at him. "Were you havin
g an argument with this lady?" She nodded at Dora. "Weren't you paying attention to your driving?"

  "I was paying attention just fine." Edward came up with a story all his own off the top of his head. "My car has an agenda all its own. It decided to take off into the other lane."

  Dora tried to improvise and join the scene that Edward had created. "We should take it to a shop. But if we have inconvenienced anyone or hurt anyone we are willing to pay for the damages." She got out her wallet as she had on many occasions before.

  That created even more of a distraction as horns started to beep and people rolled down their windows and shouted at the group gathered in the middle of the street in downtown Omaha.

  Finally to complete the scene of total and absolute confusion, a police car pulled up with flashing lights and started inquiring what was going on. Dora looked up at the windows on either side of the street. The shadowy men in fedoras had vanished even before they got to fire their first shot down at them. The massacre that the von Wessels had envisioned, the Omaha Sunday Massacre, was never to be — all because Edward had the presence of mind to create a monstrous diversion at the last minute.

  Herr von Wessel and his Hitler henchmen had no doubt thought they could get away with a few well-aimed gunshots probably with silencers. No one in the other lanes of passing traffic would notice anything or hear anything when the gunmen struck Edward and he crashed his car. They would not guess what had happened. Edward would be just another Lincoln Highway fatality on the streets of downtown Omaha. The moral of the story: You could not safely turn your back on the von Wessels. They were everywhere all the time just as Hitler was in this ominous year of 1933.

  Chapter 22: Grand Island, Nebraska

  The Omaha policemen talked to Edward in the middle of the intersection for about fifteen minutes. He pointed out to them what had supposedly happened. They could tell he was not drunk. They could tell he was in a rational frame of mind. They were forced to believe him especially after he presented his impeccable British military credentials and showed them he was a visiting Colonel, Colonel Sir Edward Ware in fact.