Trophy for Eagles

by Boyne, Walter J.

  Caldwell turned to one of the young officers. "See if you can check that out with Hafner's accountants."

  Bandfield asked, "But why would he get rid of Charlotte?"

  Murray assumed a bulldog look, then put his head down in his hands. He couldn't bring himself to talk about Charlotte. There was no way they could understand. Murray was pretty sure that Charlotte and Dusty had been planning to run off together. God, that would have hurt. Maybe it was better that they crashed.

  Bandfield whispered to Caldwell, "He's been carrying a torch for Charlotte for years. This really hits him hard."

  "Jesus, that's creepy."

  "Yeah, well, look at him. He's a creep, all right."

  Roehlk raised his head, and Caldwell asked, "Where do you think Harrier's gone, Murray?"

  Roehlk started to reply, then caught himself. He'd probably already said too much. He was going to need all the information he had to bargain with. If they started checking into some of Harrier's other activities, the trail would lead back to him.

  "I don't know. Let me go. I'll find him for you. He probably went to California. Or Germany maybe. He was always talking about how great it was in Germany."

  Bandfield tried a different tack. "I don't believe you, Murray. I think you probably sabotaged the airplane. You were more upset about Dusty and Charlotte's affair than he was."

  Roehlk reacted. "That's not so. No matter how much I hated Dusty, I'd never do anything to hurt Charlotte."

  "No. Hafner had been an officer, he was a prosperous businessman. It doesn't make sense for him to do this. As much as I don't like him, I don't think he would do anything like this."

  Roehlk's face contorted, and he let the tears run. "If anyone believes me it ought to be you," he said, turning to Bandfield. "He's done a good job of screwing you over the years."

  Murray moved his hand to cover his mouth and became completely silent.

  . Bandfield walked around the table and grabbed him by the throat. "Tell me what you know, you bastard, or I'll choke it out of you." His hands closed. Caldwell started to move forward, then stopped, signaling the military policemen to stand fast.

  Roehlk tried to struggle, then croaked, "If I tell you, what's in it for me? Do I get some protection if this goes to court?"

  Bandfield slammed him back in his seat. "I'll tell you what's in it for you. I won't kill you here, right now, if you start talking."

  Caldwell waved him away. "Now Bandy, let's be reasonable and listen to what Murray has to say." He adopted an avuncular tone. "If you help us get Hafher, I can guarantee we'll give you full support at the murder trial." Caldwell's voice came down so hard on the word murder that Roehlk winced.

  Murray was breathing heavily. Maybe the angle was to get Bandfield on his side, to make him so angry with Hafner that he would forget about everything else.

  Rubbing his neck, he said, "Jesus, Hafner has always done exactly what he's wanted to do. You were right about your airplane back at Roosevelt Field. He had me make a time bomb—I didn't know what it was for, thought one of the mobs wanted it. He stuck it in your airplane. That's why he didn't try to press charges when you slugged him. He figured you were on to the facts, and so he backed down."

  As he talked, a measured truculence surged back into his frame, and his squat body seemed to absorb power from the smoke-filled room.

  Bandfield leaned forward, "You're not telling me anything I didn't know, Murray. I thought he'd done it right from the start. Why are you bothering me with that sort of stuff?"

  "I'm just trying to show you what kind of guy he was. He had no respect for life at all. Look what he did in Oakland."

  Bandfield's breath came in short gasps. He hesitated, then said very slowly, "You mean in 1927, the Pineapple Derby?"

  Murray nodded.

  "What did he do then?"

  "Well, you know he figured that Jack Winter was his only real competition. He had me make a timer."

  Bandfield felt an iron band constricting his chest, but he kept his voice calm. "You put a bomb in their airplane?"

  "No, it was a little battery-powered magnet. Hafner put it under the cowling, near the compass. A few hours after takeoff, the timer turned on, and gradually built up a current that pulled the compass in the wrong direction. It probably only took them fifteen or twenty degrees off, but it was enough."

  Bandfield snapped. He grabbed Murray by the throat again, shaking him. The MPs had to pry his fingers from Murray's throat.

  "Let him go, Bandy. We've got enough on him to send him up for murder."

  "Where the hell is Hafner, then? I'm going to kill that murdering bastard."

  All of Bandfield's long years of frustration and anger poured through him in a tide of hatred, a wild frustrating rage that could only be assuaged with violence. He reached over and sent a fist smashing past the startled MPs into Roehlk's face. The little monster had just admitted complicity in arson and a multiple murder, and it hadn't even dawned on him that he'd done anything wrong.

  Murray reeled, spitting blood. His voice was plaintive. "Say, listen, I just did what I was told. He never told me what he was using it for. Most of the time it was for the mob. But I could guess, afterward."

  Bandfield realized that deep within he had always thought that Hafner might have had something to do with Millie's disappearance. He forced himself to regain control. He would fix things, once and for all.

  "Where is Bruno now?" he repeated.

  "I don't know. He kept getting calls from Washington right before the accident. And I think he kept most of the money stashed in his office in Farmingdale. He had a room there in the back with a big safe, wouldn't let anybody near it, not Charlotte, not anybody."

  Bandfield grabbed Caldwell's arm. "I'm going after him, Henry."

  Caldwell hesitated. Bandfield had his RC-3; he could be on Long Island in three or four hours. "Okay. I'll try to stop him if he's going by train." Caldwell went in the next room and came back with a Colt pistol. "I don't know if you know how to use this, Bandy, but you ought to have something. He's dangerous. Do you want anybody to go with you?"

  Bandfield shook his head no.

  *

  En route to Farmingdale, Long Island/June 24, 1935

  The volcano of hatred spewing within him kept Bandfield's fatigue at bay, permitting him to enjoy the speed of the P-36. He'd kept the throttle forward, and with the help of the tailwind, had been averaging 280 mph ground speed. The fuel gauges, always unreliable, wound down toward zero.

  Caldwell was going to be furious when he realized that Bandfield had pulled the Curtiss pursuit out of the hangar, literally stealing it from the Air Corps. It was 80 mph faster than the RC-3, and he knew he didn't have a minute to waste.

  Bandfield checked his options. The best thing would be to capture Hafner, to bring him to trial. But Hafner was too smart, and had too much money. He might get off. The only reasonable course was to put an end to Hafner's depravity, to kill him in cold blood.

  Bandfield resolved not to give himself the luxury of letting Hafner know what was coming. It would be nice to toy with him, to make him suffer as Millie must have suffered, knowing that death was coming. But Hafner was too tricky, too powerful to play with. He would kill him as soon as he found him, just as he used to shoot rats at the junk pile.

  The weather was decent, at least. He wondered if Caldwell was doing any good trying to stop Hafner on the ground. He'd feel pretty foolish having flown across country in the middle of the night if the FBI picked Hafner up in Dayton.

  *

  Wright Field, Ohio/June 24, 1935

  Henry Caldwell slammed the phone down. He'd contacted everyone he could think of—the FBI, the Farmingdale sheriffs office, the MPs at Mitchell Field—and not one of them had been any help so far. Hafner had vanished into thin air.

  The railroads had been the best; they had quickly checked the trains leaving Dayton that Hafner might have boarded, and there was no trace of him. Even using an assumed name, H
afner was such a giant of a man that the conductors would have remembered him.

  The police in New York had been friendly, but uncooperative. He had his first stroke of luck when he finally persuaded the local sheriff to go out to the plant. He was waiting to hear from him. Maybe they could at least find out where Hafner was headed.

  Caldwell's hunch was that he was going back to Germany, sure as hell. It was the only thing that made sense in the whole dismal mess.

  Exhausted, Caldwell looked at Murray and turned to the guards. "Put this animal in a cell and maintain a twenty-four-hour guard. Make sure you take his belt and stuff from him. We'll need him for a witness."

  *

  Farmingdale, Long Island/June 24, 1935

  Bruno Hafner paused, confident that he had all the time in the world, and trying to be sure he had left nothing to chance. The factory was deserted, except for the night watchman he'd sent off to town on a bogus errand. Sitting outside, just refueled, was the rented Vega he'd had waiting for him in Columbus, Ohio. Between the bus ride to Columbus and the flight out in the Vega, he hadn't had time to eat, and his stomach was growling. He'd grab a bite later.

  All he had to do was trundle the little parts cart, filled with diplomatic pouches stuffed with currency, out to the Vega. A quick trip to Canada, to the German embassy in Ottawa, and he was on his way home.

  Things had gone incredibly well, except for that cretin Murray's reaction. He wondered where he was. He was too smart to go to Caldwell or the police, but they'd probably picked him up by now. They had nothing on him, and Murray couldn't talk without indicting himself. The Dummkopf would probably show up at Charlotte's grave every year with a bouquet, the way the stupid women did with Valentino.

  He stowed the pouches and took the cart back to the building. With one last glance around the deserted plant, he said, "Auf Wiedersehen."

  Bandfield's eyes were heavy, but a single thought of Hafner would send the adrenaline of hate rushing through him. The man had ruined so many lives, for such little purpose. Bandfield shuddered in revulsion when he realized that Millie could have been circling in the Vega, knowing she was doomed, for eight or nine hours after he had landed at Wheeler Field, and for four or five hours after Hafner had been found.

  It must have been nightmarish for Winter and Gordon, too, anxiously checking the horizon for any sign of the islands. He wondered if they sensed what had happened.

  And now this crazy business. Why had he killed Charlotte and Dusty? Hafner had known about them for years, and seemed to enjoy the relationship in some perverse way. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, he killed them both, and destroyed his company as well.

  Bandfield wished he were more familiar with the Curtiss he was flying; he had just guessed at the cruise power settings, and it was obviously using fuel faster than he had planned for. Bandfield turned the selector which gave readings on the fuel tanks—two main and two auxiliary—and they read the same as they had thirty minutes ago: zero, zero, zero, and zero.

  He adjusted his parachute. If the engine quit before he got to the field, he'd jump and let the shiny new Curtiss auger in somewhere in the countryside, and face Caldwell's wrath later. Stealing a modern Army fighter shouldn't be worth more than a ten-year jail sentence, twenty if he crashed. At the moment, a term in jail sounded rather peaceful.

  The fatigue that had gnawed at him as a bulldog gnaws a bone disappeared when he recognized the outline of Hafner's field at Farmingdale. It looked exactly like the little chart they'd drawn for him at the Wright base operations, a rectangle lit on three sides by roads. He was surprised that the boundary lights were on.

  The field had popped up suddenly, and he was high; with exquisite timing, the engine coughed and quit as he started his descent. He tapped the fuel gauges and switched tanks again, knowing it was useless to do so. Bandfield ran a quick estimate of his height, his airspeed, and the distance he had to go, wishing he knew which way the wind was blowing.

  The Curtiss was silently sweet, a four-thousand-pound glider reaching down through the stray cirrus clouds to reach a perfect approach path to Farmingdale. As he passed through three hundred feet, he saw that he had the field made and put the gear down while sliding his canopy back. Twenty seconds later, he saw that he was a little high, allowing the luxury of twenty degrees of flaps. A night dead-stick landing in a strange airplane at a strange field after almost twenty-four hours of nervous tension—this might be interesting.

  At two hundred feet he saw the blur of another airplane pass underneath him, exhaust torching.

  Bandfield's Curtiss touched down, bounced, and rolled to a stop. He looked back to see in the distance the dim red winking of a disappearing exhaust.

  No one came out to meet him, and he abandoned the Curtiss in the middle of the field. As he reached the factory, the guard had returned, rolling through the gate in a Graham sedan. He was puzzled to find Bandfield there and Hafner gone.

  Bandy yelled, "Have you seen Hafner?"

  The other man peered suspiciously at the wild-eyed Bandfield, nearly hysterical and staggering from fatigue. Bandfield had to produce his Air Corps identification before the guard would talk.

  "Sure, Mr. Hafner was here. He had a beat-up old Lockheed Vega that I helped him fuel. Then he sent me into town."

  Frustrated, Bandfield said, "I just saw someone take off."

  "If you saw a plane leaving, it had to be him." It was obviously all he knew.

  The sheriff arrived, fuming about the nasty Army major who had cursed him out on the telephone, and they searched Hafher's offices together, finding nothing. Bandfield got a call through to Caldwell in Dayton.

  "I'm glad you called Bandy. I want you to drop whatever you're doing and come back to Dayton. And bring that fighter plane you stole back with you in one piece. If anything happens to it, it will be your neck, and even worse, mine."

  "Have you caught Hafner?"

  "Forget about him. The word has come down from the State Department that we are to ignore the whole thing. I guess there are wheels within wheels. I don't understand it, but apparently the German ambassador has intervened, and State is anxious to keep him happy."

  "How could they know to intervene unless he'd set it up? This proves that man is a murderer, a saboteur, a traitor."

  "Can't hear you, Bandy. Must be the line. Is the Curtiss okay? Can you fly it back?"

  "Yeah, it just needs fuel and oil. I'll get a few hours' sleep and then take off."

  Caldwell hesitated, then said, "No, you stay there. I'll send someone up for the airplane. I talked to Patty, and she wants you to help with the funeral arrangements. No sense in your coming back here."

  "Thanks, Henry. But keep me posted on Hafner."

  "Right. And don't go off half cocked. The guy from State didn't mince any words about letting things cool down. It's serious, Bandy."

  Bandfield said good-bye and tossed the phone across the room, the cord bringing it up short and crashing it to the floor.

  "That louse Hafner never loses! I'll get him if I have to go to Berlin to do it!"

  *

  Sayville, Long Island/June 27, 1935

  Bandfield was surprised at how well Patty was bearing up. She had apparently cried herself out, and was now grimly bent on providing Charlotte and Dusty with a first-class funeral in Charlotte Morgan Hafner style. Given all the twists of circumstance, especially Hafner's role in the accident and his mysterious departure, Bandy had tried to talk Patty into a quiet burial with a private service.

  "Absolutely not! Mother enjoyed life to the fullest, and I'm going to give her a proper send-off."

  "Most people won't think it proper to have one ceremony for both her and Dusty. No one is going to think it proper to bury them side by side."

  "That's just too damn bad. They wanted to be together in life, and couldn't; they can be together in death."

  Part of Party's defense mechanism involved completely ignoring the existence or the whereabouts of Bruno Hafner. Not o
nly had he ceased to exist in Patty's world, she expunged all references to him from the past. Bandfield had returned to Charlotte's home on Long Island just as a big moving van was leaving. When he asked Patty what was in the van, she replied, "Nothing, nothing at all."

  Once in the house, Bandfield knew immediately what she had done. There was not a photo, a single piece of furniture, or a scrap of clothing that had any particular relationship to Bruno. Even the photographic laboratory had been cleaned out. Bruno Hafner had been erased from his own house as cleanly and completely as a wet cloth wipes off a blackboard.

  "I want you to make the funeral arrangements. We'll have the ceremony here—I know a Unitarian clergyman who will officiate. He was a friend of Mother's, a 'very good friend,' I think. I've already purchased the burial lots."

  "Honey, I'm glad to help, but I think you're making too much of this."

  "No, I'm not. I'm her daughter, and I know what she would have wanted."

  Bandfield had gone to the stately Kassly Funeral Home, a three-story red brick building with a huge terrace that encompassed two sides of the structure. Inside he met Everett Kassly, a gelatin-mold man seemingly held together only by his clothing and a skin translucent as a smear of vaseline. Thin blond ringlets topped a too-smooth Campbell-soup-kid face that welled up into a purse of pink lips, perfect for a voice that could have oiled the rust off the Titanic. He looked as if he had never lifted a finger to help himself or anyone else.

  Kassly led Bandfield down into the cool chill of the funeral home's basement to a showroom of caskets ranging from plain walnut-colored plywood boxes to satin-lined and organdy-pleated confections that would have pleased Madame Pompadour.

  "This is our finest model, the Berkshire. It—"

  "Don't tell me about it. Just give me two of the most expensive."

  "Two? Of the most expensive?" Kassly's unctuous voice churned from cream to butter.