Target Churchill

by Warren Adler

  The audience chuckled politely, but there was little applause. With rising tension, Miller waited for a burst of applause. The pain in his leg was excruciating. It was no longer a match for his mental discipline. His heartbeat accelerated. With the sleeve of the nurse’s uniform, he wiped away the sweat that had dripped into his eyes causing a burning sensation.

  The action caused the rifle to swerve from its target. Through the sight, he observed the dignitaries on the platform. Although most of them had their eyes on Churchill, one man, sitting just to the side of the rostrum, was paying no attention to the speaker. Like a moving searchlight, his eyes were scoping the area in a persistent arc, looking upward briefly to the spot where he was perched. Instinctively, he lurched backwards, further obscuring the barrel of his rifle from the man’s prying eyes.

  By pulling the rifle back, he had lost his position and had to make a painful correction, shifting his weight and losing the rifle’s perch on the lip of the scoreboard, forcing him into a position that was much harder to maintain. For the moment, he lost his concentration, and when he had regained it and fully positioned himself again, Churchill was deep into his speech. The audience sat in rapt attention. Without the metal lip for support of the rifle barrel, he needed all his willpower to keep his arm steady. Finally, he felt ready again, his finger on the trigger, his eye focusing through the scope as he waited for the masking burst of applause to begin. So far, the reaction of the audience had been tepid.

  The speech confused his expectations. Although he paid little attention to content, the speech was measured but not rousing. The applause was sporadic but not as spirited as either he or the Russians had contemplated. He felt seriously handicapped by not being able to judge the length and loudness of the applause.

  He forced himself to be alert to the content and instinctive about the moment of greatest applause. It was a gamble he had to take or abandon the mission completely. Then suddenly, he heard a beginning hesitant wave of applause.

  Churchill was saying something about the atomic bomb, then the words: “It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world.”

  The applause held briefly then quickly subsided. He had expected it to be sustained. What was going on here? Why were these people merely polite? Why were they not enthusiastic with excitement as the crowd was with Hitler? He was baffled.

  Beads of sweat burned into his eyes. Pain shot up his leg. He had to move the barrel farther forward to keep the target in his sights. He was having difficulty keeping the rifle in position. His arm had begun to shake. Looking through the scope as he sighted again, he saw the man who had caught his attention before. The man looked up, his eyes squinting. In the magnification of the telescopic vision, the man was looking directly at him. Could he be seen from that distance?

  Again, he was forced to retract the rifle barrel. Waiting a moment, breathing deeply, slowly expelling his breath to calm himself, he repeated the difficult maneuver of sighting on his target. In the process, he noted that the man who had been looking upward had disappeared. Churchill’s voice boomed on into the silence.

  What was wrong with these people? Had they no respect for this leader? Were his words so lifeless and hollow? Hitler had brought the house down at the end of every sentence.

  ***

  Thompson’s nerves were on edge. It had taken all of his powers of persuasion to get the Secret Service to allow him to take the seat he had chosen directly to the side of the rostrum. His discomfort level had risen as the group entered.

  He had long trusted his sixth sense and the agitation it generated. At times, he had attributed it to supersensory perception, but only after the fact, when its danger signals had been validated. When it was not accurate, he dismissed the feeling as a kind of false positive, meaning that the danger had passed on its own, without his intervention.

  As his eyes surveyed the gymnasium, something had caught his attention, but so briefly, he could not trust it as valid information. At first, he dismissed it as merely a manifestation of his paranoia. A glint, a tiny movement emanating from the opening near the scoreboard had arrested his interest, but only for a mini-second.

  Yet the more he fixated on the area, the more he was troubled by what he had imagined he had seen. Earlier, he had checked the entrances to both scoreboards. One had been inaccessible. The other was locked, secured by a chain. Had he missed something?

  He kept his eyes glued to the spot, concentrating his gaze, frustrated by the limitations of sight, wishing he had a pair of binoculars.

  Churchill’s words set off a modest round of scattered applause. At that moment, he saw the glint of what he had only imagined before. His mind would not allow further speculation. He had to act, see for himself.

  Rising from his seat, he moved quickly off the platform. People looked at him with raised eyebrows. The ever-alert Secret Service people look puzzled. He offered a smile to reassure them that nothing was amiss, hoping he was suggesting a common personal emergency.

  As soon as he had moved through the boys’ locker room entrance, he went swiftly to the chained door behind the bank of lockers. Grabbing the chain, he pulled hard, expecting resistance. Unanticipated, the metal loop slipped out effortlessly, the chain dropping to the floor. In a split second, the ruse became clear.

  Cautiously, he opened the door and moved up the metal staircase. From the gym floor, he heard fragments of Churchill’s voice… the words, “their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.”

  The applause began like a rolling clap of thunder. He drew his pistol and moved up the steps.

  The applause swelled. Miller aimed, his finger on the trigger. Then suddenly, a clatter behind him disrupted his concentration, and he turned to see dark movement behind him. He quickly shifted the position of the rifle to the danger coming from behind him. A man was ascending the steps. He shifted the position of the rifle and aimed it squarely at the man climbing toward him.

  In the semidarkness, he could make out the man’s features, recognizing him at once as the man who had been looking upward from the platform.

  “Stop,” he said, his voice masked by the applause.

  In the shifting of his position, he had been forced to put pressure on his bad ankle. A stab of pain shot through him, but he retained enough of a grip on the rifle to continue to aim it at the intruder’s midsection. Then he saw the pistol in the man’s hand.

  “The pistol,” he hissed. “Drop it.”

  He heard the sharp sound of the pistol as it clattered down the stairs.

  Thompson froze, forcing calmness, looking upward. He was no more than ten steps from the person and was shocked to see that it was a woman. The woman was youngish, obviously determined, not panicked, wary, her expression pained but not by anguish. She was wearing white. The barrel of the rifle, he noted, was unsteady, and the woman’s balance seemed precarious. In the background, he continued to hear Churchill’s resonant voice, like a clarion in the wilderness, the only sound emanating from the gym.

  His mind quickly assessed the situation, the reality of the assassin’s predicament and his own, the sense of waiting, both of them, ears cocked, listening for the obliterating sound of mass applause.

  Thompson stared at the woman and moved slowly upward one step, then another.

  “Stop,” the woman ordered. “I’ll shoot.”

  A man’s voice! Thompson instantly understood the plan, the escape route, the disguise, the medical team below, and the exit to the rear. This was someone who wanted to preserve his life, had planned carefully.

  “Go on then,” Thompson said, taking another step.

  “I will,” the man threatened.

  “Not yet,” Thompson said, rising again to the next level.

  As he moved, Thompson listened to Churchill’s words, calculating the moment when the applause might break o
ut again, his muscles taut, ready to spring and, if necessary, take the bullet, forcing the man off-balance, inhibiting his positioning. That was his hope. He had read the speech and heard it rehearsed, knowing by the rise and fall of Churchill’s cadence when applause was to be expected.

  “Who sent you?” Thompson asked, moving upward yet another step.

  “None of your fucking business, Jew.”

  Thompson smiled at what seemed like the obvious clue, perhaps too obvious.

  Disgruntled Nazi, he thought.

  “It’s over, lad. You’ve lost.”

  “We’ve just begun,” said the man with the gun, with obviously false bravado.

  His accent struck Thompson as American.

  Keeping his eyes on the barrel of the rifle, Thompson took another step.

  “One more and it’s over,” the man with the gun said.

  “I doubt that,” Thompson said, still separated by two steps.

  He searched for the man’s eyes. They stared back at him with cold contempt.

  Suddenly, Thompson stiffened and raised his arm.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  The response was immediate, a reflex. The man raised his arm, loosening his grip on the rifle. At that moment, Thompson heard the words, “a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.”

  Thompson heard the swell begin and moved upwards swiftly, elbow raised, as he struck out with his left hand against the barrel, the grip weakened, too late to prevent the discharge. He heard the sharp popping sound of the shot, then felt a searing pain in his upper arm. For a moment, he was thrown back but managed to stop his downward motion by grabbing the handrail, which bent under him but held his body weight.

  Thinking that the bullet had found its mark in the intruder, Miller had turned quickly to point the barrel toward the man on the rostrum. There seemed a momentary restlessness in the audience, which appeared to have quickly dismissed the popping sound, the report muffled by the downward direction of the bullet into the stairwell. Churchill did not miss a beat in his speech and the audience settled. But before Miller could aim, a hand had grasped his bad leg and pulled on it. The pain seemed to explode in his head. The man grasped the barrel of the rifle and wrestled it forward. Miller struggled to retain it but could not hold his position on the stairway, and he began to topple. The rifle slipped out of his hands. Instinctively, he reached for his pistol, but strong hands had pinned his arms.

  He kicked himself free with his uninjured leg taking the bulk of the pressure. The man began to fall, slipping partway down the winding staircase. Miller tried to regain his balance but his leg collapsed under him, and his downward motion continued until the body of the man who held fast to the handrail halted it abruptly.

  Miller reached out and grasped the man’s throat. The man struggled, letting go of the handrail and grabbing Miller’s wrists in an attempt to pry them loose from their death grip. The man grunted, gasping for air.

  “Nothing will stop me. Churchill is a dead man,” Miller hissed into the man’s ear.

  The words seemed to give the choking man renewed strength. He pushed upward, and Miller’s grasp loosened. Then his leg gave way, and he began a freefall, careening downward headfirst.

  It took Thompson a few moments to regain his sense of awareness. The applause had ended. He could hear Churchill’s voice in the background but could not understand what he was saying. His breath came in gasps as he tried to ascertain the full extent of what had transpired. He felt shaky, obviously too old for such physical challenges. Quickly, he appraised his wound. Blood was flowing, but the bullet had merely grazed his forearm.

  Below he could see the crumpled body of the assassin. The nurse’s uniform was ripped open by the force of the fall, and the wig had slipped off from the man’s head. A pistol lay intact in his belt. Thompson made his way down to where the body lay.

  The person’s face was visible, the eyes open, empty of recognition. Thompson, who had seen such scenes many times before, reached out and felt the body’s neck pulse. He couldn’t find it. Clearly, the man was dead. He contemplated the body, inspecting it further. It was that of a blond male, the Aryan model. He looked foolish in his nurse’s uniform, torn apart now, the white stockings ripped. He noted that the man’s left ankle and calf were swollen, an obvious clue to a previous trauma.

  Going through the man’s pockets, he found what he recognized as car keys. They were attached to a leather holder stamped with the logo of what he knew to be Chevrolet. It gave him yet another clue to what was being contemplated as an escape option.

  This was a well-planned operation. The man had worked out his exit strategy with care and foreknowledge. Such planning hinted at a lone gunman. This was not a suicide mission. The man had carefully prepared for his own survival. A car, he deduced, was parked somewhere nearby, surely close to the exit from the locker room.

  Leaving the body, Thompson moved up the stairs. He looked across at the other scoreboard. It was clearly unoccupied, confirming his first assessment.

  Churchill was continuing to deliver his speech without incident. Occasionally, there was applause.

  Thompson found the rifle, inspected it, and from his knowledge of weapons, noted that it was SS issue PPC 7.92 Mauser, which seemed another obvious clue to the origins of the perpetrator, too obvious. His eyes scanned the perch the assassin had chosen. He found the remnants of sandwiches, an empty milk bottle, and a note with its blatant words of vengeance. Overkill, he decided. Someone was working overtime to pin this on disgruntled Nazis. He put the note in his pocket.

  As always, he had trusted his sixth sense, and yet again, this had saved Churchill’s life. He was suddenly aware of the origin of this subliminal activity and the idea that had triggered it.

  He has signed his death warrant. The words that Victoria had heard Maclean utter echoed in his mind. That was the trigger to his intuition.

  As he pondered the fortunate and somewhat miraculous outcome and how much he and Churchill owed to Victoria’s confession, he was aware of the dilemma he now faced.

  During the war years, the Russians had always chosen the path of suppression, preventing public knowledge of such attempts, as if such a revelation would have a self-perpetuating power. At this moment in time, to reveal a Russian connection, of which he was now certain, would only further inflame an already gravely unsettling situation.

  He debated informing Churchill of what he had discovered. That too, he rejected, knowing that such a revelation would greatly inhibit Churchill’s future action and spur his family and friends to urge him to keep a lower profile. Their persistence was not to be discounted. Worse, if he revealed this assassination attempt, Churchill’s leadership might be foreclosed forever. No, he decided, the world needed this man.

  While it would be impossible to validate the truth of his deduction that this was most likely a Russian operation, rather than a Nazi revenge killing, he stuck with the theory that the speech and the assassination were intricately connected. Would this be a final attempt? The question brought him to the outer limits of his logic. When they returned to Britain, he would go back to his grocer’s business and Churchill would return to a life of creative retirement in Chartwell. It was best, he concluded, to let sleeping dogs lie. Out of respect, fear, and loyalty, he felt in his bones that his decision was correct.

  His mind groped with a scenario that would remove all traces of the assassination attempt, meaning removing the body and all the so-called clues that were meant to deflect the truth and inspire the idea that was designed to pin the crime on a disgruntled Nazi determined to avenge the death of his Führer and the defeat of his party. If the assassin’s bullet had found its mark, he mused, the ploy might have worked, and the “blameless” Russians’ most formidable enemy would be gone. The death of Trotsky came to mind. And yet, the man had reacted by rote to his “He
il Hitler” salute, a sure sign of Nazi indoctrination.

  They had found the perfect assassin, a genuine Nazi who spoke English with an American accent. Clever buggers, he thought.

  He inspected the wound in his arm, which had ripped a hole in his jacket and stained his shirtsleeve with blood. The pain had subsided. Bending over the body, he tore off a strip of material from the lower part of the white skirt and fashioned a makeshift bandage, which he wrapped around his upper arm.

  Moving down the staircase, he stepped over the body, went through the door, and reattached the chain. Revealing his credentials to the guards at the door, he stepped outside to where the ambulances were parked near a line of cars. He went down the line searching for Chevrolets, found a number of them, and tried the keys.

  On the tenth try, he found his objective. He turned over the motor; it kicked in and caught. Then he shut off the ignition again, walked to the rear of the car, and raised the trunk. It was empty, except for a spade—a miraculous find, which partially settled the matter of disposal. The issue now was to get the man’s body and weapons out of the area without being observed and to find a final resting place.

  Making his way back to the gymnasium, he stood near the platform and observed Churchill’s speech. It was unusually long, spoken in Churchill’s carefully cadenced manner and conviction. He surveyed the audience who were listening intently but not reacting with the expected enthusiasm that one might have wished for. For Churchill, the speech was more professorial than political, and he was deliberately speaking over the heads of the audience in the gymnasium to the world at large.

  Finally, the speech was over. The audience rose as one and gave the former prime minister a standing ovation. Indeed, this was the moment the assassin might have chosen for the masked shot of death.

  Plans called for the president’s party and Churchill to spend an hour or so at a reception at McCluer’s home then to head back to Jefferson City for the return trip. Thompson followed the group through the girls’ locker room, which exited to the parking lot from which he had just returned. The caravan of cars began moving into the parking lot. As Churchill waited, he whispered to Thompson.