The German nodded and sat the stool, his hands cupped on his knees and empty, the suit wrinkled but well cut.
“The Reich wishes Palestine, Arabia, and all of the desert to be free of Zionists and their British protectors.”
Saba considered him and his noble wishes for a people he could not know. “And the Germans? Are we to be free of our princely benefactors when this is accomplished?” She glanced at the Times. “Your Führer offers flowers to the English, a grand partnership against Stalin in the East.”
Herr Schroeder smiled, his skin as colorless as the English but brighter. “Like Palestine, we are a small country; one devil must be confronted at a time.” His face attempted fervor. “But eventually all territory enslaved by the British Empire should be freed of their king and his Jews.”
Saba glanced at the Palestinians, turning her half-closed hand at her stomach, a gesture of disdain meant to teach them something about all Europeans, the shifting loyalties of treacherous men who would “help” the people of the desert.
Erich Schroeder followed her glance, then returned with more real respect in his voice, less noble alliteration. “The oil of your deserts can make the Arab servant or king, prisoner of the Jew or his master—”
“I have no quarrel with the Jew, unless he is German or Pole or Russian and he would colonize my homeland.” Saba leaned closer. “His god, your gods, do not interest me if you stay in your forests and out of mine.”
The German smiled and nodded again, his blond hair falling over one eye. “May I ask where you learned your English, your politics? Quite impressive.”
“The desert is full of teachers, Herr Schroeder, and of thieves and patriots dying for the causes of others.” Saba stood and folded the newspaper one-handed. The pistol eased to her hip, finger still tight on the trigger. “You waste your words, bright eyes, and handsome smile. I fight for no one but Palestine.” She stayed in his face. “And for her I will kill you, your Führer, and the children of your precious Reich . . .” Saba allowed that to hang in the air. “If their deaths drive the invaders from this desert.”
“Please.” He motioned for her to reconsider, to sit. “I have traveled a great distance and at great expense. We have common ground, you and I, if you will listen.”
Saba checked the seated Palestinians; two sets of brown eyes implored her to listen. In truth, she had no choice. She could listen now or in the morning after her superiors commanded her again to do so. Benefactors with quality arms and budgets as large as their mouths were in short supply, and without the support of the despised Iraqis, her unit would be forced away from the fight and into the piecemeal bandit tactics where she had begun.
Saba offered coffee from her fire and invited the three men into her tent.
Inside, the partisans sat away from her—this invitation was a first—and allowed the German her right side, both out of courtesy for his money and respect for her temper. She was lightning with the dagger and favored her right hand. Saba watched her men scan the interior without moving their heads, examining her small stack of captured books and newspapers, the worn pillow of her sleeping rug, and two rifles with a leather ammunition belt strung over the barrels.
The German spoke without honoring her tent. “It is said that you pass well for a man, although I’m confused at how this could be.”
Saba frowned. “I do not hunger for attention, the affection of men.” She nodded at the two Palestinians. “I am surrounded by them and their odor.”
Herr Schroeder stayed silent, his bright eyes trying to read her.
“Your business, Herr Schroeder. Your time in my tent is short.”
He cleared his throat. “The refinery at Sitra Island, Bahrain. It produces gasoline, in theory for automobiles that are almost nonexistent in the desert—”
“I have no fight in Bahrain. My enemy is here.”
Schroeder smiled. “Your fight requires resources, no? And your enemy is most assuredly England, and she is everywhere.”
Saba had no argument for that and didn’t.
“Final tests on this refinery are complete. The gasoline will support England’s mechanized battalions in Palestine and elsewhere in Arabia, not automobiles. It is a specialized refinery, one that will also produce fuel for airplanes, planes that one day soon will bomb your villages and cities.”
Saba had never flown, but understood and feared superior industrial armament such as tanks. She had seen planes over the desert and read of them in the Times. “I know nothing of refineries.”
“But you will, through me. The English have completed a large plant in Abadan, Iran, and are building another in Palestine, not two hundred miles from here in Haifa Bay. The Haifa plant is to be secretly modified during its construction and modeled after Sitra-Bahrain, immediately after Sitra-Bahrain proves successful.”
Saba shrugged, wondering aloud why this was in her tent.
“England has centuries-old networks throughout the region. She uses those networks to reward and protect those desert monarchs and their families who select England’s surrogates to develop the oil reservoirs. As you have seen, England’s military and monetary resources are deployed against any rival who opposes these corrupted monarchs and, by default, England.”
“Why tell me how the great nations of Europe poison the wells of others?”
“You read and write English. You can travel as a Bedouin man or woman as needed. This refinery in Bahrain is a partnership of American oil companies and the shortsighted sheikh in Bahrain, both protected by England’s navy and air force. We wish you to assist a skilled team of Arabs who will cripple the refinery but not destroy it.”
“Why Arabs? And why only cripple it?”
The German nodded a slight congratulation. “The Arab must be seen as fierce, too potent for the English to subjugate further. Nor should the desert appear safe for American investment without the good will of the region’s true owners, the Arab.”
“This benefits the Germans?” Saba remembered their part in the American Revolution, 30,000 mercenaries fighting for the British Crown. “Do Göring and Hitler wish to be peacemakers or reign in the desert as they would in Austria?”
The German seemed confused, either at her meaning or her command of strategy.
He spoke deliberately. “Germany, and all of Europe, faces the great Bolshevik threat massing in the east, an army of millions. It is in Germany’s national interest, and the world’s, that the desert states rule themselves, forming alliances with those who would benefit their future. The Reich wishes to be remembered as one who helped you fight the colonial powers in Palestine and throughout the region.”
“For that you would be remembered.”
He settled, comfort returning to his posture.
Saba said, “It is your weapons that arm this camp and bin Faisal’s mullahs, yes?”
Schroeder nodded.
“And for that you expect me to agree? To attempt a bombing for which I have no experience? I am a desert fighter and nothing more.”
The German added twinkle to his blue eyes. “There are many ways to fight all the invaders.” He glanced toward the Iraqi section of the camp. “We wish to arm and teach the Raven, add new weapons to her arsenal.” Erich Schroeder leaned closer, but not close, and whispered, “That is my offer . . . to you alone. A payment you may one day spend as you will, against anyone you will.”
CHAPTER 8
December, 1937
Merry Christmas, gentlemen.” Eddie wiped sixteen hours of sweat and grease and tired from his face, grinned at D.J. Bennett holding a dirty glass, then at Foreman Bill Reno offering the bourbon bottle. It was the three Americans’ second Christmas together at the end of the earth: seventeen months and none of them easy. Eddie’s thrill at bringing his designs to life had been more than tempered by the harsh realities associated with actually doing it.
Eddie, Reno, and D.J. clinked glasses, pleased that the evening’s efforts hadn’t killed them or anyone else. The radio chir
ped on Reno’s desk: “Little Orphan Annie” was looking everywhere for Santa Claus. Eddie poured himself another shot. You’d have to drink a great deal of Bill Reno’s J.T.S. Brown to mistake Bill Reno or D.J. Bennett for Santa Claus.
But that’s who D.J. was. Had it not been for the often hardnosed, narrow-focused, oddly perceptive King Ranch cowboy, Eddie would be long dead. Eddie knew it; D.J. Bennett knew it; Bill Reno knew it; God knew it. What had begun with blackmail and suspicion in front of the Biograph Theater—Eddie a fugitive/D.J. an outlaw in uniform—had become a partnership: Eddie worked sixteen-hour days to duplicate what he’d accomplished as a test in East Chicago and D.J. kept the desert from killing him.
And it was clear the desert wanted to kill Eddie Owen. Redesigning a refinery while you built a refinery that had never been built before was either a bold act of innovation or, as some said, an overt preparation for war. Building said refinery in one of the most inhospitable deserts on earth was, well, troubling.
Eddie’s weekly letters home couldn’t do the desert justice even if he’d wanted to be truthful, which he didn’t. Three British RAF pilots were dead and three badly injured. Nine Spitfire and Hawker wrecks dotted the sandy bottom of Bahrain’s gin-clear Tubil Bay. Eddie’s AvGas was the reason. Eddie had duplicated his construction success at East Chicago, but his AvGas production runs were hideously flawed, his attempts at correction and balance far from complete in spite of double-shift days and relentless pressure from every direction. At the demand of its oil company clients, Culpepper Oil Products was actively recruiting other engineers and attempting to train them in East Chicago.
So far, and with great effort and probably personal risk, D.J. had kept Eddie from being replaced and Eddie’s family off the road to California. How D.J. had accomplished this he repeatedly declined to share, saying, “Just be glad your boy Culpepper’s got some character flaws.” D.J. pointed Eddie at Bill Reno’s transatlantic radio. “You’re on.”
“On what?”
“Our foreman set up a call to your folks.”
Huh? That would be a week’s pay. The Owen family used paper and pen. It allowed everyone to eat.
Reno barked, “Bullshit I did. Mr. Goddamn Mayhem Bennett here said the call was part of your contract, that I’d be on the wrong side of all things clean and holy should I object.” Reno eyed D.J. “Not that the risks somebody’s been takin’ on your behalf are approaching clean and holy. Or smart.”
Eddie looked at D.J. D.J.’s face was blank.
D.J. said, “Your ma’s got ’em all waiting by the phone at the general store in town. You bought ’em a tree, a turkey, and a gift or two for the kids.”
Eddie blinked. His family hadn’t had anything approaching “Christmas” in seven years. He looked at Reno. Reno shrugged. Eddie looked back to D.J. Eddie’s eyes began to mist. “You did that?”
D.J. drank bourbon. “Santa Claus.” D.J. chinned at the radio. “Use the fuckin’ thing; we ain’t got the whole goddamn day.”
Eddie hugged D.J. hard. “Thanks.” He clamped D.J.’s arms to his side and choked out, “For everything.”
D.J. said, “You don’t get extra for being a girl.”
Seventy-five days had passed since Christmas.
D.J. didn’t see how Christmas had helped a damn bit. He spit by his shoe, watching Eddie pace the marl inside the boxing ring behind the canteen. The kid probably wouldn’t fold—Eddie’d shown no quit thus far, and a reasonable man would’ve—but the kid was right up against it. Times like these, a conscience worked against a man.
D.J. said, “Tomorrow’s gonna happen whether you worry about it or not.”
Eddie’s gas was crashing RAF planes pretty regularly now, four more in the last thirty days. Two more pilots were dead, boys Eddie’s age, boys with families just like his.
Eddie exhaled, rubbed his face, and kept pacing the ring.
“You’re the best at this, kid; exact science, it ain’t. A new man comes in from Culpepper, he’ll have to learn what you already know, if the sumbitch can learn it. Either way, there’s gonna be dead planes and dead pilots. Just lots more of ’em with the new guy.”
Eddie rubbed his face again. “I can’t kill these RAF pilots anymore. Someone else has to be able to do this better. Let ’em fire me. I’ll go home; the family, we’ll do something, somehow.” Eddie looked at D.J. “I’m sorry, I can’t kill any more pilots. We’ll stop tomorrow’s test—”
“Nobody’s stopping nothing. Hitler’s on the march. You and me can cry all night but the RAF is flying your gas tomorrow. One of these days the gas will work—maybe that day is tomorrow, maybe it’s next month—but it’ll happen because we didn’t fold when it got bloody.” D.J. stepped inside the ropes and into Eddie’s way. Eddie stopped and looked up. Twelve inches separated the two men. D.J. said, “I’m proud of you, kid. And we both know I don’t say that easy. Tomorrow’s a trench fight. If we lose, we take the beating, stand up, and go again. We do that because we’re made outta the same stuff that kept your pa on that farm, your ma there with him. Your people don’t run. Your people don’t quit. And neither do we.”
Eddie exhaled.
D.J. said, “Pick your head up, goddammit. I’ll not have these miserable bastards see you wonderin’. C’mon. Around the corner—we’re drinking to tomorrow. She’ll have winners and losers, but she ain’t putting nobody we know on his knees.”
Morning came because it always does, this one with a hangover. Eddie glanced at D.J., stoic behind the wheel of a parked 1936 Ford convertible the hipsters back home called a “breezer.” Eddie sat in the passenger seat, staring across the bay at the runway of Shaikh Hamad’s new airport. Eddie squeezed at the tremble in his hands. The tremble should’ve been directly related to tomorrow’s bare-knuckle contest with Ryan Pearce, troubling for sure, but not the reason for today’s stomach or last night’s D.J.–Eddie, father-son chat in the boxing ring and canteen. Eddie’d had another “vision,” this one now titled Mixture 41. Across the bay, an RAF pilot selected by loser lottery was about to bet his life on it. Mixture 41 was an off-balance blend that had appeared in Eddie’s head three weeks ago while lying on his cot trying to imagine the girl he’d fall in love with. Two girls actually, one for him, one for D.J. The nightly search for “happy ever after” was a ritual, the only break in an endless chain of heat, hate, failure, and death. The worst nights were a cauldron of guilt and self-doubt, and of late had required more and more of D.J.’s father-son chats. D.J.’s uncanny ability to shift from his hardass “major” persona and its bare-knuckle protective perimeter to a genuine, almost gentle, South Texas cowboy was a thing of beauty. Eddie was pretty sure there was no better living creature than D.J. Bennett. Odd, that God packaged this way, but then God had made dinosaurs, animals with jaws full of teeth but who only ate when hungry and never their own children.
Although D.J. was absolutely positive a war to end all wars was coming, Eddie’s “happy ever after” was just as positive that he and D.J. would be alive when it was over. They’d sit down with Benny Binion and Floyd Merewether, probably out in Nevada, far away from the rubble and disease D.J. said would be the postwar future for much of the world. With Eddie as his sidekick, D.J. ’s postwar future wouldn’t be like what D.J. had faced at the end of the last war, his wife and only son lost to a range fire, the “Hoovervilles,” and the labor riots. D.J. liked to play cards, loved horses and outside. The Eddie-and-D.J. show would set up in Nevada as part of Benny’s plans for legalized gambling. Eddie’d had a vision for Benny’s gambling, could now see how engineering and mathematics and a sense of fair play would be a good use of a first-class education, university-taught and otherwise. There’d be no dead pilots. Eddie and D.J. would import the scrub mesquite so D.J. could cook his jackrabbits. The entire Owen family would relocate to Nevada and be safe. It would be aces.
Yeah, it would, if Eddie could stay the course. If the RAF pilot about to fly Mixture 41 survived the next ten minutes in his cockpit, bettin
g the rest of his life on Eddie’s vision. Eddie squeezed his hands whiter. He’d “seen” the entire formula, the combustion colors, all the way to the engine tones. His slide rule couldn’t prove it and he’d fallen asleep still trying. Unconscious, he’d dreamed the vision all over again. Eddie told no one, including D.J., and spent part of the next fourteen nights making the modifications in secret, then ran the gas and hid the liquid. On night sixteen, he began to test, and the RAF group captain had somehow found out. The group captain told Eddie, “Prudence and caution are not attributes of the victorious; they are sedition. If you won’t do the job, there’ll be new engineers here to replace you who will.” Eddie’s “vision gas” passed the ground test. The RAF group captain ordered it put in the Spitfire and a young pilot/lottery loser into the cockpit.
On the north side of the bay, a lone Spitfire leaped off the runway and wheeled high into the morning sun, one bad gallon from exploding or splattering into the Gulf. Eddie tensed, bracing one hand against the dashboard of D.J.’s parked convertible. The Spitfire climbed toward 15,000 feet. Eddie concentrated on the engine tone. The Spitfire topped out . . . then broke screaming into an eighty-degree dive. Eddie’s eyes squeezed shut. These RAF pilots had balls like you couldn’t believe and a fatal good humor that made most people cringe. The pilots kept to themselves out on their base at the airport, but as Eddie had written Benny and Floyd, if they could convince these pilots to take up driving, whoever employed England’s RAF would own the Jacksboro Highway.
D.J. grumbled. The plane screamed toward the water. Eyes shut, Eddie focused on the engine tone—still steady, thank you God, but louder, louder, and louder still . . . and for too long. “No, goddammit!” Eddie’s eyes popped open, glued to the blue-water intersect where the crash would happen.
D.J. said, “Pull out. C’mon, Beethoven. You got the gas.”
The Spitfire roared toward the water. And pulled out.
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