Old Faithful Plot

by Dora Benley

  "I think I see him now!" Frau von Wessel, always dressed in the pink of fashion, waved at a nattily attired man just entering the room. He smiled, waved back, and headed over to where they were sitting in the corner near the front desk. Frau von Wessel pulled out the geologist's chair, showing off her scarlet red Coco Chanel below-the-knees suit with gold buttons in front and a white ruffled collar all the way up to her chin and around her wrists. A black cap sat on top of her raven locks.

  "Welcome, Dr. Giesling!" Frau von Wessel enthused, removing her white gloves before sipping her coffee.

  "I was just outside watching the Old Faithful Cone smoke," Dr. Giesling noted looking at his pocket watch. "It is supposed to erupt again in about fifteen minutes according to the charts at the front desk here. Do you want to see it?"

  Dora opened her mouth and shut it. She did not know what to say. These three conspirators obviously were up to something. What exactly was hard to say. Edward would obviously make the decision. He seemed to know these people better than she did.

  Dr. Giesling hurried up with his coffee and practically downed it in two or three gulps. He stood up again right away.

  Dora thought they appeared to be very anxious to get them out of here as if it could not wait. Her commonsense said no, but Edward was standing up. She had to follow his lead.

  "We are on our way out anyway. We might as well see what dastardly scheme you are up to now," Edward said.

  Dora rose and stood beside Edward, brushing shoulders. After her long trip across the country her own Elsa Schiaparelli suit was practically in tatters. She never got a chance to change out of it. She had been wearing her sleeveless floral silk dress made of white silk with purple, pink, and yellow flower prints for days and days with only a thin cashmere sweater for warmth. But now was hardly the time to think about fashion.

  Edward took her hand. They marched out behind the von Wessels with Dr. Giesling leading the way. Edward always made sure that nobody was behind him. He did not want them to knife him or shoot him in the back.

  They emerged from the restaurant onto a vast wooden boardwalk with wooden benches facing a hillside with lodgepole pines in the background. It was scarred by all the eruptions. Very little grass grew on the hillside. It was mostly just dirt, wet mud, and white silica that formed a hard crust on the surface of the earth. Steam was vaguely drifting up from the geyser's vent and blowing in their direction.

  Kids were racing about smiling and pointing. Tourists were photographed with the geyser vent in the background. Dora wished that she could be relaxed, too, and not always to feel that she had the weight of the world on her thirty-eight-year-old shoulders.

  "Do tell Colonel Sir Edward Ware and his lady friend, Mrs. Byrne, a few things about your most recent researches into vulcanology," Frau von Wessel smiled at the scientist.

  "Yellowstone National Park is what we call a 'supervolcano'," he began. "More than a third of what you know as the park sits within the caldera or cone of an ancient volcano including Grand Prismatic Spring and obviously Old Faithful itself. The key thing is that unlike many volcanoes of that age it is not extinct."

  "Obviously not!" Frau von Wessel tittered.

  Her husband smiled. "Do you think it will erupt again any time soon?" For some reason as he asked this key question he cast a significant glance at Edward standing to Dora's right.

  Edward stiffened. He whispered to Dora, his lips hardly moving, "There is obviously some plot, some threat to us. We have got ot figure out what it is before Churchill's next agent gets here and gets killed along with the others."

  She nodded gravely.

  The professor continued, "It is hard to say exactly when it will erupt next. No one can tell for sure. It depends on lots of factors. I discover more every day."

  "Such as?" Edward interjected a forthright and bold question that was right to the point as far as he was concerned.

  The professor shrugged. "Such as earthquakes, of course. They usually precede most volcanic eruptions. Nothing special about Yellowstone in that respect."

  "What is so catastrophic about this particular volcano then?" Dora cast the cone a wary look.

  "One thing — size," the Professor answered. "You may drive around and look at the various mudpots, springs, geysers, and formations but you can't put them all together in your mind to see what it really is all about."

  "How do you put it together then?" Edward just had to press.

  "From the air," Frau von Wessel answered.

  Dora wondered about that response, From the air! What had been going on here? Had the Germans been flying low over Yellowstone and snapping spy photos? In an American national park? Were Dictators from foreign lands allowed to operate as they chose there? She would think it was well out of range of their planes. Just the idea of it made shivers go up her spine. Had FDR allowed them to do it? She could hardly believe it. But then the new President was so concerned with his New Deal legislation that he probably was not thinking much about foreign policy right now. As Edward had told her when they drove past Madison Square Gardens when she had met him at the docks, the Jews of New York had been protesting against Hitler. But it had not caught on with the rest of the people in the country.

  "I have a photograph for you here," the professor spoke proudly. He took it out of his jacket pocket and thrust it into their faces.

  Dora had never seen a photo in such vivid color before as he held it in front of them and proudly displayed his handiwork, for no doubt he must have been the one to take the picture. You could still make out the boardwalks to tell you it was Yellowstone and not someplace else. But in this photo they boardwalks receded into the distance and were hardly noticeable if you were not looking for them. Instead the onlooker focused on all the bluish white smoke. It was gathered in a central raised area hovering over the park ominously.

  "All these springs and pools are grouped together into one giant volcano. There is no other volcano on earth that big," the professor asserted. "Or that potentially destructive."

  Dora did not like the way they kept on emphasizing how destructive it was. It made her wince.

  "Tell them when the last time was that it erupted," Herr von Wessel said. He was giving Edward the eye.

  "Scientists think that it last erupted about six hundred thousand years ago, recently as far geologic time goes. We know also that it has erupted at least three times in the past two point one million years," he explained to them.

  Why this seemed to delight the von Wessels Dora could not imagine. But both were beaming at the scientist. How could Hitler threaten them with a volcano? He could have no control over when the next eruption would occur — could he?

  Chapter 31: The Yellowstone Volcano

  "Dr. Giesling has reason to think the super volcano will erupt again sooner than we think." Herr von Wessel pronounced doom on the park. But somehow, just like his wife, this pleased him and even seemed to delight him in fact.

  Dora exchanged glances with Edward. She whispered to him, "What can these German spies be up to now? What do they have to do with volcanoes?"

  Edward cast her a look.

  "Darling, do tell Colonel Sir Edward Ware and Mrs. Byrne all about it," Frau von Wessel smirked. "They are just dying to find out. I can tell." She gave Dora and Edward the eye.

  "Ever since 1923 scientists have been measuring the growth of the volcano under the surface of the ground," the professor bragged to them. "The volcano has been growing at an unprecedented rate — inches per year. And mind you, this huge cone has a magma plume that extends all the way down to the earth's mantle and the earth's core with estimated temperatures of two thousand two hundred degrees Fahrenheit," the Professor announced.

  The Professor paused as if to allow sufficient time for all this bad news to sink in. He seemed to think that the tremendous temperatures alone would cow them.

  "Get to
the point!" Edward sounded more than annoyed. "What does this have to do with Germany, Hitler, or anything at all? For Christ's sake, it is thousands of miles away from Berlin."

  Herr von Wessel, Frau von Wessel, and Dr. Giesling all eyed each other in a significant fashion as if sharing a big dark secret. Herr von Wessel nodded at his wife as if to signal her.

  "We do not know everything there is to know about volcanoes, let alone supervolcanoes in Yellowstone. But anything can set them off, especially earthquakes." Frau von Wessel spat in Dora's and Edward's faces. Did she think that that she could make the Rocky Mountains around Yellowstone quake with one glance? It appeared so.

  "Yellowstone suffers from constant earthquakes," Dr. Giesling piped in. "Sometimes swarms of earthquakes occur simultaneously. Most of them nobody takes notice of, even though some of them go on for days at a time. Nobody can feel them unless they rate at least three on the Richter Scale. But a few have been significant They have caused certain geysers to stop erupting sometimes permanently and sometimes for a period of years. They have shifted the location of geysers, causing them to reappear somewhere else in the park or just shift hundreds of feet in either direction. Sometimes an earthquake can make a geyser more intense and larger. You can never tell." He promised a bag full of magical tricks.

  "Hitler is not in charge of controlling the volcanoes in Yellowstone or anywhere else for that matter!" Edward snapped. "So why does he keep on threatening us with seismic activity as if he were the ancient god Poseidon who used to create tidal waves in ancient Greece and used to cause marble columns to crack if he didn't like you?"

  "Let us say that I am sure that you do not want the geysers, especially Old Faithful, to erupt in a more intense fashion especially when you are here inside the park, now do you?" Herr von Wessel asked, refusing to explain his threat anymore than he already had. "I mean it would be more than inconvenient, wouldn't it?"

  Dora whispered to Edward, "Have these people gone mad? Herr von Wessel acts as if he could control the geysers himself and turn them on and off at will the way you turn on and off the tap!"

  "Hitler has spread a certain kind of insanity throughout Germany," Edward whispered in her ear. "I am all too aware of how that has affected the thinking of the German people for the worse. But I was not aware that he had made sure that no one in his country could think in a logical fashion anymore."

  Edward faced Herr von Wessel. "Aren't you an educated person, Herr von Wessel? Can't you think critically?" Edward persisted in a loud tone of voice. "You can't believe surely that Hitler has supernatural powers, that he has turned into some sort of devil with absolute powers over the wind, the sea, the volcanoes, and earthquakes? Do you think he has become a modern day Zeus or something?" Edward confronted the ace German spy.

  Herr von Wessel laughed. His wife giggled along with him. "Hitler does not need to be supernatural to call upon the power of the volcano here," he explained to Edward. "Old Faithful is ready to erupt all by itself. All it needs is a little push to get it going. Then it will erupt the way you have never seen before." His eyes got big. He seemed to be impaling the Wares with his bold stare as if daring them to contradict him.

  There was a big pause.

  "What do you mean by a push?" Dora asked the obvious question.

  "Do you remember the Vesuvius volcano?" Frau von Wessel said the unexpected.

  Dora was confused. What did Vesuvius have to do with Yellowstone? Dora had visited the Amalfi Coast with her mother and father a few years back. They had cruised there and stayed at a charming little inn hanging off the rocks at Sorrento overlooking the Bay of Naples. Mount Vesuvius in the distance with olives, dates, and grapes growing up the slopes had looked positively idyllic. Any danger of volcanic eruption must be thousands of years off as it was thousands of years in the past and very distant, not even worth thinking about. It did not remind her in the slightest of all these hellish bubbling hot pools, geysers, and bubbling mudpots that she saw along the side of the figure eight loop road in Yellowstone.

  Dr. Geisling must have noticed Dora's blank face expression. "What Frau von Wessel means is that the type of eruption here at Yellowstone would resemble the eruption at Pompeii and Herculaneum on August 24 in 79AD. First you would have earthquakes. The volcano here at Old Faithful would start smoking like nobody has ever seen before. Then it would erupt with a rain of ash that would instantly bury everything in Yellowstone National Park. No one at Old Faithful would escape if they did not leave in the pre-ash eruption stage. Everyone at other points would have to flee in their cars instantly or they would never escape either. Everything would soon be buried under many feet of hot ash. And hot ash incudes poisonous gases, too," he emphasized. "It would be very hard to survive indeed."

  Dora put her hand to her mouth.

  Herr von Wessel interrupted the geologist. "As it was most residents of ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum fled on foot and escaped the rain of ash. But that was only because Vesuvius was much smaller than Yellowstone. They could outrun it on foot and using non-motorized transportation. But if they had faced Yellowstone in Italy way back in 79AD, then the volcanic gray ash would have caught up with them wherever they could flee. All of the city of Rome one hundred and fifty miles away would have been buried, too. All of Roman civilization would have been encased in ash and preserved for future archaeologists. The empire would probably have come to an end hundreds of years before 476 AD when Rome was sacked by the Huns. Four hundred years of Roman civilization that could have existed would not have existed. The Dark Ages would have instantly ensued, making the Middle Ages even longer than it was. The Roman Empire would later be remembered as something that had existed for only one hundred years from the time of Octavian, Caesar Augustus, to the time of the Emperor Titus, the son of Vespasian. The Flavian Dynasty would have been it. The Empire would never reach its height under Hadrian. The ash and ruin would reign instead." The commercial attache at the German Embassy in London acted as if he had been making a study of it all lately.

  The Professor nodded at Dora and Edward to make sure that it was all final and to make sure that the horrors were sinking in.

  "Still you are not telling me what your little push means," Edward was not to be distracted. "What Nazi intervention are you threatening us with this time?"

  Frau von Wessel smirked. "Hitler can work wonders with the aid of his helpers. Take my word for it. Something is planned and all ready to go. You can prevent it only by handing over all those Lawrence maps." She threatened them. "Come now, they can't be doing you any good. You would think you would want to be well rid of them by now! All those agents that Churchill has sent to collect them have not survived, have they?" She made it all too obvious what had happened to them as Dora had guessed herself.

  Frau von Wessel held out her gloved hand palm side up as if Edward were going to place the Lawrence maps there right this minute.

  So now it was all out on the table. As incredible as it sounded, Hitler's spies were threatening Dora and Edward that if they did not hand over the maps the Nazis were going to somehow blow up Yellowstone National Park!

  All eyes were on Edward Ware. Dora looked towards her fiance herself. It might just be a bluff, but they had to take it seriously because of the possible horrific consequences. And now Edward was being asked to make what could possibly be one of the biggest decisions that any human had ever made in the history of the earth without even consulting Winston Churchill. Of course the von Wessels knew that, too. It was just another element of confusion they were injecting into the mix.

  Edward had to make a split second decision, and he decided to stick to his traditional line. He refused to be shaken no matter what the von Wessels threatened. Her fiance had nerves of steel.

  "As I have told you many times I do not have any Lawrence maps to give you. It is a myth." Edward glared into their eyes in defiance. "My old buddy from the Great War was a great genera
l yes, but a mapmaker no. All sorts of romantic legends swirl about him but they are exaggerations I assure you." Edward had all the more nerve because right now Dora knew that the Lawrence maps were sewn up his sleeve. They were only inches away from the von Wessels' grasp. But thanks to Edward, the von Wessels did not know that.

  "This explosion of the Yellowstone volcano could be the most devastating eruption that mankind has ever seen anywhere on earth at any time in recorded history," Dr. Geisling glared right back at Edward. "And this is all you are willing to do for what remains of western civilization after the carnage of the last war?"

  Frau von Wessel stuck her svelte chin up into the air. She seemed to be gloating, purring just to contemplate how much power she thought Hitler possessed and thus she and her husband possessed through him.

  The Professor motioned to the group to follow him as he started to walk away from the geyser. He led them back inside the lodge. Dora had not noticed it before but one wall just outside the restaurant was covered by a giant wooden map of the United States that indicated it was on loan from the map room at Park Headquarters at the Mammoth Hotel. It seemed to be about seventeen feet by ten feet and was quite striking made up of various kinds and colors of natural wood displaying all forty-eight states, an eagle, and a compass. State capitals as well as national parks seemed to be marked as well as the meridians themselves. She was even able to study the path of the perilous Lincoln Highway across the country, the route that had brought her to her present impasse. But why did the Professor want them to stand in front of the map?