“Not to worry, my good man.” Blackthorn replied. “I will secure the bonds for you and deposit them in the Wells Fargo Bank today. That is where you were to take the money?”
“Well, yes, but...”
“No buts, Thomas. Now, if you would be so kind as to pass the key to the train station locker over to me. I will arrange for everything.”
McBride hesitated. “I don‘t know....I was told to put it in the bank myself. My orders from Dev were to keep the money under lock and key at all times until I did that.”
“But you received those instructions—and I can attest to their accuracy—before your second mission was conceived. Your first mission was a failure, Thomas, even if the fault was not directly yours. You must not fail a second time and I am affording you the opportunity to salvage something from your first mission. You are vital to the success of the second mission. My role in that is almost over. I will personally attend to securing the bonds and make certain we salvage something from your first failure. You have my word on that.”
The waiter arrived with McBride‘s breakfast and Blackthorn pulled a time piece from the watch pocket in his trousers and looked at it. “I must leave now, Thomas. Be of good cheer. It‘s not often in life that one is given a new chance to make amends so quickly. And you know, Thomas, that it was a grave error in judgment on your part to obey the German‘s orders to pull your men away from the warehouse last night? The Army Council will be looking for scapegoats. It‘s just as Dev always says: ‘There must be scapegoats.‘ Trust me on this, Thomas, no one will dare make a scapegoat of the man who killed Winston Churchill.”
Blackthorn rose and placed his hand on McBride‘s shoulder. “Your other three men, however, are a different story. In light of their being absent last night from the warehouse, you obviously have no choice but to conduct a field court martial and sentence them to death.”
McBride blinked. He had been worried that Blackthorn would blame him for last night but now he was throwing him a life preserver. He craned his neck to look up at Blackthorn. “When in hell are we going to have time for a bloody court martial?”
“We just did, Thomas,” Blackthorn said, patting his shoulder. “We just did. I‘m on my way now on your behalf to arrange for the sentence to be carried out. By the time the morning is over, there will be no witnesses left to the fact that you were out drinking when the largest arms shipment in the history of the IRA was destroyed. And now, if I could trouble you for the key?”
Reluctantly, McBride fished in the right-hand pocket of his trousers and handed the key to Blackthorn. He stared straight ahead and watched Blackthorn‘s reflection in the mirror as he walked out the front door of the Pig ‘N‘ Whistle and stepped into the back seat of a black and white automobile. Not to worry, McBride thought. Not to worry. Winston bloody Churchill was a dead man. Everything would turn out all right after all.
10:15 a.m.
Blackthorn settled down in the back seat of the automobile bearing the markings of the Los Angeles Police Department, a small American flag and a gold badge on the front bumper announcing it was the personal vehicle of the Chief of Police. Blackthorn extended his hand, recalling the first time he had met Ed Davis.
“How‘re you doing?” Davis had said on that occasion. “I‘m Ed Davis, the Chief of Police hereabouts. But you can call me ‘Two Gun,‘” he had said, pulling back the lapels of his navy blue serge suit to proudly reveal a pair of pearl-handled .38 caliber police special revolvers nestled in twin holsters, one under each armpit.
Blackthorn looked now into the narrow squinting eyes and bright red face of his companion who pulled a crisp white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and patted the perspiration on his bald forehead, across which were plastered several strands of brown hair, combed up and over from the fringe of hair above his ears.
“Thank you, Chief, for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with me again.” Blackthorn pulled a plain white envelope from inside his coat and handed it to Davis. “In the envelope, Chief, are the names of three individuals and the rooms they presently occupy at the Hotel Cecil. My employer is certain that these three men are the ones responsible for the destruction of the warehouse last night in Long Beach. I presume you‘re aware of that?”
“You bet I am, Mr. Brooke,” Davis replied. “That sure was some blow out.”
“Well, yes it was. My employer is disturbed. He had clients in South America who had paid good money and were expecting to receive weapons in return. My employer believes one of his rivals was responsible. He refused to cut the rival in for what I believe you Americans would refer to as a “piece of the action” and he believes this is the method his adversary has chosen to teach him a lesson. Unfortunately, my employer is an old-fashioned sort. He believes in ‘an eye for an eye.‘ To begin with, that would be the three men at the Hotel Cecil.” Blackthorn smiled. “There will be others, of course, including the adversary himself. But that need not concern you or your fine organization here in Los Angeles, as my employer‘s adversary maintains his primary residence back East.”
“Happy to help, Mr. Brooke. Happy to help. We don‘t like riff raff in L.A. Ah....I believe the agreed price for this service I am to render your employer was...?”
“Ten thousand dollars U.S. in small unmarked currency,” Blackthorn said, handing him a second envelope. “I believe you‘ll find everything in order.”
Davis opened the envelope and quickly thumbed through the bills with a practiced eye before depositing them inside the blue serge suit coat. “Three prisoners shot while trying to escape. Now tell me again about this reception for the zeppelin. All you want is for one of my men to stumble and fall? And for that you‘re willing to pony up another five Gs? I don‘t get it.”
“It‘s personal, Chief. You don‘t have to get it. My employer has gambling interests all along the east coast and well into Canada. You may have read that Mr. Churchill recently completed a tour of Canada. Unfortunately, that tour included certain private, by-invitation-only, gambling establishments operated by my employer in Montreal and Toronto where Mr. Churchill gambled heavily at Chemin de Fer and lost. As I believe you Americans would say, his bank draft ‘bounced‘ and he has refused all of my employer‘s entreaties that he honor his debt.”
Blackthorn watched the light of recognition dawn in the police chief‘s beady eyes. Gambling was as illegal in the United States as alcohol and just as prevalent. Once in Los Angeles, Blackthorn had quickly found out that a string of gambling ships anchored just outside the three-mile limit were under the personal protection of Two-Gun Ed Davis who was paid well by the ships‘ owners to tip them off before any federal raids. Accordingly, Blackthorn had carefully chosen the gambling debt cover story to explain why Blackthorn‘s employer only wanted to teach Churchill “a little lesson”. No one would be hurt.
“Boy, I sure wouldn‘t want to get on the wrong side of your employer, Mr. Brooke. He sounds like a hard man.”
Blackthorn smiled as he handed the third envelope over to Davis. “He‘s a firm man, Chief. But fair. Firm but fair. Now, if you‘ll be so kind as to have your man drop me off at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, I have business to attend to.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Brooke,” Davis said. “Ralph, the Roosevelt Hotel and step on it. A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Brooke. Look me up again next time you‘re in L.A. We like to be real friendly to our visitors here in Southern California. ‘To protect and serve‘ is our motto. With the emphasis on service, if you get my drift.”
The police car pulled up in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt and Blackthorn briefly grasped the extended sweaty palm of Two-Gun Ed Davis. “I understand, Chief. I do indeed.”
65.
Churchill’s in Danger!
Hollywood, California
Friday, 23 August 1929
1:30 p.m.
A genial smile spread across the features of Herbert Hoover‘s bland, broad face. “And so it gives me great pleasure to introduce Dr. Hugo Ecken
er, the designer of this great airship who has so kindly interrupted his historic voyage to be with us today.”
The crowd in the Hollywood Roosevelt‘s Blossom Ballroom burst into sustained applause. Kurt von Sturm rose to his feet to join in the celebration along with the other zeppelin officers at whose table he sat. Sturm was impressed with the hotel‘s architecture. He could see why Hearst chose it as a venue. On the outside, it had the same Spanish-Moorish design as La Casa Grande at San Simeon. Occupying a prime three-acre site on Hollywood Boulevard, the hotel complex contained four buildings and three hundred thirty-five guest rooms around an interior courtyard, adjacent to which was an Olympic-size swimming pool. He and the zeppelin officers had entered through a two-story high Spanish colonial lobby with tall potted palms alongside Moorish arches. A sweeping marble staircase at one end of the lobby led up to the Blossom Ballroom, also done in a Mediterranean style, parquet floor, and mirrors galore.
Sturm had briefly considered canceling his appearance at the luncheon after the disaster at Long Beach last night because there was still much to do, the destruction of the arms notwithstanding. But it had been the airship‘s captain, Ernst Lehman himself, who had invited Kurt and it would have been a sign of disrespect to have disappointed his father‘s old friend. He didn‘t often think of his father or even talk about him to anyone. Watching your father die in the flaming coffin of a zeppelin was not something to share. Had he lived, it might well have been Peter Strasser, not Ernst Lehman, as captain of this magnificent ship on its epic voyage. Once Germany reclaimed her greatness, Sturm thought, and passenger zeppelins became reality, then he would reclaim both his name and his dream to again command an airship. But greatness for Germany came before loyalty to the Geneva Group. Sturm knew what he had to do. He had always known.
Sturm looked over at the next table where Cockran and Mattie McGary were seated. He took note of the sling on the man‘s arm. Apparently one of Cromwell‘s incompetent Americans hadn‘t been as compassionate as Sturm. McGary had been there as well and entirely too close as her photographs proved. She was a brave and beautiful woman. He noticed the casual way her hand rested on Cockran‘s forearm. He envied Cockran. Maybe he should have killed him last night after all. He noticed a silver locket on a thin silver necklace around her neck, the same locket he had seen on a bracelet on her wrist two days earlier durng the tea with President Hoover. He wondered if it were a recent gift from Cockran as she had not been wearing it that night at the Chicago warehouse.
Sturm by now had recalled where he had seen Mattie before. In Munich, six years earlier, at the residence of Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, the foreign press chief of the little-known National Socialist Workers Party. It had been the day before what was now called the Beer Hall Putsch. Her silvery gown had been cut low in the back as well as the front, her décolletage as daring between her breasts as it was on each side. He had tried in vain to be introduced to Mattie but Putzi‘s hand was on her ass and he set his sights instead on Hanfstaengl‘s statuesque blonde wife who was only too happy to oblige. But he had occasion two days later to recall the stunning journalist when he saw The London Daily Mirror’s front page coverage of the putsch over McGary’s by-line with a photograph taken in the middle of the action, a shaken Adolf Hitler fleeing the scene, stepping over the bodies of his less fortunate followers. Sturm‘s usual prey were married women. McGary wore no wedding ring but she was someone for whom he indeed would make an exception. He would do his best to bed her should they ever meet again. And, if past were prologue, his best was very good indeed.
Dr. Hugo Eckener, his thinning grey hair cropped close, eyes blinking behind wire-rimmed spectacles, acknowledged the crowd‘s applause with an embarrassed wave of his hand. “Allow me to pay tribute at this time to the valuable support from the United States Navy Department. I am also grateful to President Hoover for his kind words which coincide with my own view that the era of great adventure is not over. But, above all, we salute Mr. Hearst whose financial support has allowed us to show that airship travel is as safe as ocean liners.”
Eckener paused and wiped the perspiration from his forehead and his eyes. Or was it a tear? Sturm couldn‘t tell. “Something similar to what inspired Magellan must also have been in our blood when the idea of flying around the world in an airship occurred to us. Our plan developed the thought that this great trial of the airship, by which the public would judge it, would give a definite proof of the craft‘s usefulness under any weather conditions.”
Eckener paused again and this time Sturm could see it was indeed a tear at which he was dabbing. “Due to its light construction and the vulnerability inherent in its large size, the Graf Zeppelin can thrive and exist only in an atmosphere of unclouded peace. It is like one of those opalescent butterflies which fascinate as they flutter in the summer sunshine but seek a sheltered corner whenever a storm blows up. Often, when people greet it so enthusiastically, I have felt as if they were seeing in it a sign and symbol of the universal dream of lasting peace.”
Sturm was the first to his feet, catching Eckener‘s eye and raising his glass in a silent toast to his father‘s old mentor. That Germany had to have her revenge for the Treaty of Versailles went without saying. But there was more than one way to accomplish that. Doing so with technology like Dr. Eckener‘s “Dream Machine” was one way. And now that there would be no IRA coup d’état, Sturm knew the plundering of Poland by Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union would not take place as planned. But Sturm didn‘t mind. As he had told Philip Cromwell when they arrived on the Graf Zeppelin barely two weeks earlier, he had conceived the mission to America and the IRA coup d’état as a back-up plan. Sturm smiled. Careful men always kept more than one contingency plan in reserve. And Kurt von Sturm was a careful man.
2:30 p.m.
The crowd burst into applause again and rose to its feet. Cockran sat directly in front of the dais at a table with Robert Rankin, Inspector Thompson, David Brooke-Smythe, Churchill‘s brother Jack, and their two sons. Churchill was seated on the dais next to Hearst. President Hoover was on the other side of the podium. His left arm still in a sling, Cockran was not able to join in the applause which greeted Hugo Eckener upon the conclusion of his remarks. He watched as Hearst, Hoover and, finally, Churchill, shook the German airship pioneer’s hand. One Secret Service agent was guiding Hoover behind the podium and off the platform. They were met by six more Secret Service agents who formed a protective barrier around him and guided Hoover through double swinging doors into the kitchen.
As soon as the President and the Secret Service entered the kitchen, Inspector Thompson and Rankin joined Churchill on the dais along with two detectives from the LAPD. Thompson whispered in Churchill‘s ear and Rankin guided him by the elbow off the platform.
The LAPD had been adamant that the kitchen was the safest means of egress. The police had said specifically that they didn‘t want the President leaving through the front lobby, a journey that would have required him to descend an elaborate marble staircase to the hotel‘s lobby. To his credit, Hoover had been reluctant to leave through the kitchen, primarily on the grounds that it wasn‘t dignified. But that had all changed at the security meeting between the LAPD and the Secret Service, which Thompson, Rankin and Smythe had attended on behalf of Churchill. Smythe had spoken up in support of the LAPD’s position, Rankin later told Cockran, based on the IRA’s threat to Churchill‘s life. That had been enough to persuade the Secret Service and Scotland Yard as well, notwithstanding Churchill‘s views to the contrary.
As had been done in San Francisco, Rankin and Inspector Thompson, along with the two LAPD detectives, formed a moving diamond around Churchill. Rankin was at the diamond‘s top and Thompson at the back while the two detectives flanked Churchill on either side. Smythe was right behind Thompson followed by Cockran, Mattie, Jack Churchill and the Churchill sons.
What came next happened quickly but, as with the fire fight at the warehouse, Cockran remembered it all later as if
it were being played in slow motion. The kitchen was a nightmare in white, a buzz and noise emanating from the genuine enthusiasm shown by the kitchen staff at the President‘s passage. One of the Secret Service agents behind the President was as tall as Rankin and Cockran could see him at the far end of the aisle at least a hundred feet away.
The white-uniformed kitchen help lined the ten-feet wide aisle but maintained a respectful distance, leaving the aisle free. The tall Secret Service agent had just left the room when the LAPD detective on Churchill‘s right tripped and fell heavily into a large refrigeration unit. The eyes of Churchill‘s body guards all turned toward the fallen detective but Cockran was the first to see Tommy McBride enter the aisle, his right arm extended, holding a revolver.
“Look out! There‘s a gun!” Cockran shouted but McBride was too fast and fired twice, both shots hitting Churchill in the back. Then, another waiter in white coat emerged from the left and began firing. The noise level of the shots in the confined space of the kitchen was ear splitting and Cockran watched Smythe draw his weapon and add to the noise level by firing several shots in the general direction of Tommy McBride.
By this time, Rankin had thrown his large body over the stricken Churchill, providing an effective shield against further harm. Inspector Thompson had pulled out his weapon as well but, unlike Smythe, had not fired it.
Smythe continued firing and Cockran watched, in disbelief, as he shot Rankin squarely in the back. The impact of the bullet rolled Rankin partly off of Churchill‘s body and Smythe shot again, hitting the now exposed Churchill with a third shot in his back. With the shot at Rankin, Cockran had taken the sling off his left arm and moved quickly forward. He was almost on top of Smythe when the man‘s shot hit Churchill. Before Smythe could fire again, Cockran slammed into Smythe‘s back, grabbed his right wrist, and jerked it sharply upward, the man‘s next shot firing up into the ceiling, away from Churchill and Rankin.
The DeValera Deception Page 33