He disappeared into the yacht’s salon and reappeared a few seconds later at the helm twenty feet above us.
At an agonizingly slow pace, the lock’s gate began to open onto the western waters of the St. Marys. I heard the Caiman’s engines spring to life with a roar and the yacht began moving forward. As it did, the gangplank began to shatter and I leapt off onto the shore just in time.
The MacArthur Lock stretched 800 feet and there were still 300 feet or so to go before the Caiman would exit into the River. The lock gates had opened barely wide enough for the ship to pass as Crawford maneuvered her through and into open water.
The yacht’s engines screamed at full throttle now, waves of white foam kicking up behind her as she dashed for the open water of the two-mile-wide head of the St. Marys River.
I stood at the side of the lock watching the ship become smaller and smaller. Once Crawford determined he was out far enough for the cargo to explode without igniting the huge cache of dynamite below all of us, he cut the engines.
In the silence that followed, I swear I could actually hear my heart pounding.
The Caiman had to be a mile away and I could barely see Crawford as he appeared on the ship’s deck. I watched him dive into the St. Marys frigid water and begin to swim toward shore. I closed my eyes in silent prayer that he could swim clear of the area before the dynamite in the Caiman’s hold exploded.
That’s when I heard a sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.
The Caiman’s engines were roaring to life again.
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Something had to be done. Fast.
As I gazed out to the point of the river where the Caiman was now becoming terrifyingly larger, my eye caught the specter of Corporal Roy Cummins and Private Joe Johnson standing at the side of Old Betsy at the end of the lock.
My heart racing, I took off my high heels and ran the four hundred feet to where they stood. I was out of breath when I reached them.
“What’s happening, Miss Brennan?”
“That boat is loaded with explosives and the man piloting it is trying to get it back here. It’ll destroy the locks and kill everyone.”
Corporal Cummins swung the barrel of his anti-aircraft weapon toward the onrushing Caiman. “I blow her out of the water.”
“You’ve had enough trouble with the authorities, Corporal. You aim the gun. I’ll do the rest.”
Cummins looked through the sight for a moment then turned to me. “Old Betsy is pointed directly where that boat will be in five seconds,” he said. “Johnson, get ready to feed the ammunition.”
I looked out into the river where the man I had once fallen in love with was about to die by my hand.
Could I do it?
Are you serious? Could I kill the man who had played my heart like a cheap guitar . . . the man who now threatened to kill thousands of my fellow Americans?
“Goodbye, Scotty.”
I grabbed the handle of Old Betsy and pressed the trigger.
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The explosion blasted the Caiman from timbers to toothpicks and its reverberations blew out store windows up and down Portage Avenue and beyond.
But fortunately the yacht was far enough off shore that the thousands of pounds of dynamite packed in the tunnel under the unsuspecting crowd never ignited.
A crew removed it, gingerly, the next day.
Jack Crawford gave me a real scare. After diving off the Caiman, he disappeared in the water and I feared he had succumbed to the blast. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when he swam ashore not far from the MacArthur Lock. I felt so glad to see him that I embarrassed myself by giving him a hug, wet as he was.
Difficult as it seems to imagine, the dedication ceremony continued after a half hour pause. In spite of the momentary excitement the crowd was blissfully unaware of how close to annihilation they had come.
Awards were presented, including the Army-Navy “E” award to the workers of the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company for their efforts in working around the clock to complete the MacArthur Lock in record time.
The U.S. Government took great pains to cover up the story of what really happened at Sault Ste. Marie that day, of how close America had come to a disaster that could easily have changed the course of the war. Authorities feared that Americans would be demoralized if they knew how close the Nazis had come to attacking us within our own borders.
The secret of the breaking of the top-secret Enigma code died with Scotty. The Germans never learned that the Allies knew what they were going to do before they did it. Actually, Polish experts had broken the code in 1939. They handed the secret over to the British just before their country was overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg.
In all the commotion that day, few people had seen what actually happened. I was at the far end of the lock, away from the crowd, when I pulled the trigger on the anti-aircraft gun. They heard the explosion, of course, but the official word was that the yacht’s engine had overheated and the boat had been piloted out into the river just in time.
Open a history book today and you’ll read that the freighter Carl D. Bradley was the first boat to use the MacArthur Lock, and in a way it was. The Bradley had been scheduled to be the first freighter through the MacArthur and was positioned out in the river just a few hundred yards away.
The Caiman and its owner have been conveniently forgotten.
The two men who worked for Scotty were arrested. The government originally planned to try them for treason. But the men testified that while they knew they were breaking the law, they were unaware that Scotty Banyon was a German agent. They were convicted of fraud and served ten-year sentences.
G.P. was released from the hospital after a three-week stay. He recuperated at home, but returned to the Morning News long before the doctors had recommended. He was a tough old bird, tougher even than a heart attack.
It took me longer to recover. My wounds ran deeper than even I had imagined. After a year of grieving the loss of Ronny, I had healed enough to think I was in love with another man. Now that he had died by my own hand, I found myself empty of emotion for months afterward. I consoled myself writing the story of Shirley’s role with the FBI and why she died. Like all of those who serve their country during this and other critical times, she was a true American hero.
I eventually returned to the Detroit Times to continue my investigative reporting of the mob’s counterfeiting of rationing stamps.
Andy Checkle turned into a first rate reporter, moving on to Chicago and winning the Pulitzer Prize for his stories about that city’s battle with corruption in local government.
Corporal Roy Cummins attained the rank of sergeant before being honorably discharged at war’s end and returning to Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute where he helped Coach Eddie Robinson establish the school as a major football power. Louisiana Negro Normal became Grambling College in 1946. Roy Cummins was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Felice Miller eventually married a doctor from the Canadian Sault Ste. Marie across the river and had four children.
How had Jack Crawford managed to trick everyone at the Morning News into believing he was an honest-to-goodness newspaper editor? I’d like to think I wasn’t fooled, but of course, I was; just like everyone else. I doubted his judgment several times, but never added two and two together and come up with four.
It seems Crawford had worked for his college newspaper and picked up enough skill to talk a decent game. And, of course, G.P. was in on the charade all along and covered for him if he made any glaring errors.
By the way, it seems Mick had Crawford figured right all along. He turned out to be a pretty decent guy.
But that’s another story for another time.
Epilogue
Light from a full moon bounced across dark waters and illuminated the conning tower of German submarine U-571 that had poked its way to the surface and now lay floating approximately three hundred meters off the sand
y New Brunswick coastline.
The U-boat had traveled across the North Atlantic to reach the eastern shore of Canada. It had navigated, submerged, through the Cabot Strait into the Gulf of St. Lawrence last evening.
Two men stood on deck surveying the scene, one holding a pair of powerful Ziese binoculars. The stillness of the warm summer morning was broken by the sound of waves licking the sides of the submarine.
“It will be light soon.” The speaker, the older of the two, wore the uniform of a Kapitänleutnant in the German Navy. As if to punctuate his words, the first morning cries of a Piping Plover echoed across the water.
“He should be here soon,” said the younger officer, glancing at his watch. “If he is coming.”
“We will give him the window of time in our orders,” said the Kapitänleutnant, “but no more.”
“In that case, he has exactly fifteen minutes.” The younger man held out a pack of Sondermischung Typ. 4. “Cigarette?”
The Kapitänleutnant took the offered cigarette and lit it, carefully cupping his hands to cover any light that might be seen from the shore. He inhaled deeply and blew out a stream of smoke. “We are precisely where we should be,” he said, pointing toward the shoreline. “The small fishing village of Shippagan lies exactly three kilometers to the west. If we fail to connect, it is his fault, not ours.”
Seven minutes passed. Then another seven. The morning was getting brighter. The younger man looked nervously at his watch.
“We have heard no report of the locks at Sault Ste. Marie being destroyed,” he said. “Perhaps our man failed and is embarrassed to return.”
The Kapitänleutnant nodded. “Or perhaps he was caught or killed.” He lifted the Zeise binoculars to his eyes for a last look at the shoreline, then turned for the hatch and motioned for the younger officer to follow.
The hatch closed and in moments the U-571 slipped silently beneath the waves and began its voyage back to the Fatherland.
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© Black Rose Writing
Dead Lock Page 18