by Andrew Gross
“Thanks,” I said, sucking in a fortifying breath and heading over to the front door.
The dough-faced driver, Freddy, now Friedrich, followed me. I looked at him once as if to say, Is this really necessary? If I was going to run, why would I have even shown up in the first place? He opened the door to the side of the loading bay and I stepped outside. Truth was, my stomach was doing somersaults and a breath of air would do me good. I inhaled one deeply into my lungs. They had me in an army captain’s uniform. And they were going to Westchester. Kensico, like the map I’d seen and like I’d told Fiske.
“Cigarette,” I showed him, digging into my jacket pocket and coming out with a Chesterfield and my matchbook. He nodded for me to go ahead, and I lit it up, muttering thanks, and stepped away from the building, inhaling a deep drag of smoke into my lungs. The white Buick was two cars down.
I glanced behind me and gave a brief smile to Friedrich, to say, Feeling better now. He remained in the doorway, keeping an eye on me as Bauer had said as I took another drag and blew it out, and tried to look about as lost in my thoughts as I could. It was cold and I put my free hand in my trouser pocket to warm it, and bounced on my feet to keep my blood moving. My breath came out of my mouth.
I looked down. The shoes would give me away, I thought, my own brown leather ones and not a crisply polished set of blacks. They’d forgotten that. If someone even noticed.
Behind me, Curtis came over and muttered something to Friedrich in German. My watchdog nodded in my direction as if to say, What about him? And Curtis shrugged and said what I took as, “Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere.” In a moment, I looked back and the two were gone, back inside the brewery.
I blew out a plume of smoke as aimlessly as I could and glanced at the Buick, only a few feet away. I knew that whatever their plans, whatever their intent for Emma, they didn’t need some witness blabbing about it, whatever took place tonight. Which only reinforced Fiske’s belief that they would shoot me as soon as I was no longer useful. I glanced around again, and took another step up the street, to the Buick. I didn’t see anyone watching. Fiske said the gun would be under the rear passenger’s tire. My heart started to race. I looked around one last time. No one there. I wondered if any of Fiske’s team was watching. Now was the time, I thought, if it was ever going to happen. And that weapon would come in handy.
I flicked my cigarette to the curb near the rear wheel of the Buick, took a step toward it, and stamped it out with my shoe. Sensing the moment of opportunity, I dropped my matchbook on the pavement, my heart starting to pound now, then kneeled down as close to the rear wheel as I could, as if picking it up, my hand reaching for the black revolver Fiske had assured me would be there.
Barely a foot or two away now.
I got my fingers around the handle.
“Mossman,” a voice called behind me. The door opened again.
I jerked my hand back.
Friedrich stepped out. He looked at me with kind of a suspicious glare. “Lose something…?” he asked, seeing me kneeling there.
“No.” My heart nearly fell off a cliff. “Just this.” I picked up the matchbook and showed it to him and stood up. The gun futilely remaining there. “Dropped it.”
The big German merely shrugged and waved me toward him. “Come on, they’re ready for you inside.”
I stepped away, not sure what I should do. What could I do? The gun remained on the street. No way to get it now. I was going into a trap unarmed, one where I knew they intended to kill me. Other than Fiske and his crew. At the reservoir. We’ll be there, he’d said. They’d be my only hope.
“Yeah,” I said, blowing out a breath, with a last futile glance down to the Buick. “Thanks.”
It truly was a trap now.
41
I went back inside. Friedrich closed the door after me and locked it. Trudi Bauer was heading back into the office. “Feeling better, Herr Mossman, I hope?”
“Yeah, much,” I said. But inside, my heart was beating like crazy.
“Good. We’ll need you fresh and ready for your big role,” she said. “Willi, our guest is back. Prepare the truck.”
“Go ahead.” Willi nodded to Curtis.
The janitor and Friedrich went over and drew the canvas tarp down.
It was the same truck, only painted. No longer black.
It was now military gray. Like an army truck.
“What do you think, Captain?” Willi grinned at me. “Like it? I know you were familiar with the previous color. Friedrich, Kurt…” He clapped his hands. “Now we can leave.”
Willi beckoned me into the front. In the middle. He climbed in next to me. Curtis, in his sergeant’s uniform, jumped in behind the wheel.
He turned the ignition on and we pulled out of the loading bay as Friedrich hopped out of the sedan and shut the metal door behind us. We continued on, to York, and then, at the light, turned north. I glanced through the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following.
No car picked up behind us.
“Looking for something?” Willi Bauer said. I had no gun now, only the hope that Fiske would be at the scene, as promised.
“No.” I shook my head. “Just nervous. Blame me?”
“You have nothing to be nervous about, Mr. Mossman. Do what we ask of you and everything will go as planned. And you and Mrs. Mossman will have your daughter once again.”
“And a couple of thousand people will be dead,” I said.
“Maybe a hundred thousand. Till they figure out just what is going on.” We turned north and then headed back west at the Boyd’s pharmacy on Ninety-sixth Street. “Think of it as the cost of war,” he said. “In London, just as many have died for two years now, and your own government merely stood on the side and did nothing.”
“Well, we’re coming in now,” I said grudgingly, “whatever you do.”
“We’ll see.” He looked forward. “We shall see.”
We continued west, the truck bouncing on the pavement through the park, to the West Side. There, we continued on through some traffic and picked up the West Side Drive.
“Where are we heading?” I tried to confirm, noting that we were driving north toward the bridge. “What do you need me to do?”
“As you know, to a reservoir,” Willi said. “It’s being guarded by a small detail. You’ll need to advise them that a water-quality test is taking place. You’ll say your instructions come straight from the Civil Defense Unit of the 9th Battalion of the Army Engineers. You’ll outrank anyone on site, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“At two in the morning?”
“As I said, you’ll outrank them. You’ll see to it they don’t object.”
“What’ll happen to the guards?”
“We’ll take their weapons. Maybe lock them in the guardhouse, till we’re gone. We’ll see.”
“That’s all?”
“That and make sure any other guard detachments are diverted while we do what we are there to do. Curtis will be with you.”
I glanced at him, driving. He had a gun in his belt.
“Kensico?” I confirmed. I threw it out there. “In Pound Ridge.”
Willi didn’t answer.
“One thing that’s bugged me,” I said. “You mentioned this poison was a gas. What did you call it?”
“Sarin,” Willi said. “Apparently an acronym of the inventors’ names.”
“A gas would normally dilute as soon as it blended with water,” I said. “Especially in such a vast quantity of water. No matter how lethal.”
“And now you are a chemical engineer as well…?” Willi turned to me with a smile. “Don’t burden yourself with this detail, Charlie. But to answer, it is not gas at all we are putting in, but the ingredients encapsulated in the tiniest of microscopic pellets. They will not dissolve in the water supply at all, but be carried like lethal messengers through the viaducts into the faucets, the food supply, and the drinking water into thousands of bodies. We have special glov
es ourselves to avoid any contact; even the tiniest of contacts would be instant death for us too. But not to dwell on all this, Charlie. We have a special role designed for you as well.”
My heart picked up. Tiny, microscopic capsules. Of this deadly poison. Contained in the beer kegs. There had to be millions of them. Who knew how many people would be affected if this came off.
Hundreds of thousands of people could die.
We drove on, passing under the George Washington Bridge, until we hit the Bronx. It was one thirty now. Traffic was nonexistent. I figured we had about another forty or forty-five minutes until we got to our destination. Kensico was in Pound Ridge. I’d never been there, but Fiske figured they would take 9A all the way up and cut over on some local roads up there.
“These guards,” I said. “They’re just going to let us in? They’re going to believe we’re doing a water test? At two in the morning?”
“They are enlisted men, Charlie. Probably their first assignment. You’re a captain. They won’t argue. Just make it convincing, whatever you do. When they’re gone you’ll help us bring the beer kegs up from the truck to the head of the viaducts.”
“Then you’ll make that call?”
“What call?”
“For Emma,” I said, pressing.
“We’ll make it once we’re back. Not before. You’ll be coming with us. Emma will be dropped off at a specific location. Don’t worry, we’ll advise you.”
“So why did you need me? Curtis’s English is good enough.”
“Just do your job. You’ll see, Charlie. All will be made clear.”
The answer, I knew, was that they were going to pin the whole thing on me. Dressed in a stolen army uniform. By the time anyone thought anything else, they’d be long out of the country.
I sat back and took a deep breath. I rested my head against the seat back. I would have felt a whole lot safer to have that gun in my pocket. I knew my only chance I had of surviving the night was Fiske and his team now. Thank God we knew the location. They’d better be there.
We crossed into Westchester County. I saw a sign for Yonkers. I figured we still had another half hour to go. I put my head back and tried to relax, tried to tell myself to calm down, when Willi suddenly pointed to an exit sign, McLean Avenue, and said, “Here.”
Here?
Curtis put his turn signal on and moved into the right lane.
We were still twenty miles away.
“I thought we were going to Kensico?” I said to Bauer, as matter-of-factly as I could. Inside, my body was in riot.
“What made you think that?” Willi turned to me, mooning his eyes wide.
“I don’t know. I just saw the map.” I shrugged. “No big deal.”
“Change of plans, Charlie.” Willi looked at me and smiled. “The Hillview Reservoir is the last stop for water heading into New York City. The Kensico ducts feed directly into it. Besides, too many guards there.”
“Hillview, huh?” Fiske and his team wouldn’t be there. No one would. I was a dead man, I realized. Unarmed. No one backing me up. And Emma … No way to be sure she was ever released. Not to mention that thousands of lives might be lost. I’d just have to do what they wanted, I said to myself. We pulled off. The road was dark. Virtually no other car around. I glanced in the mirror once again and didn’t see anyone following us. My throat felt dry as sandpaper. “All the same to me.”
42
It was only a short ride on pitch-black roads to a turn-off with a small white sign that read, Hillview Water Facility.
We stopped on the side of the road well up from the gate. This was a small facility. Lightly guarded. Not exactly a prime target in the first days of the war. The chances of any action coming here must be a million to one. Behind us, Friedrich and Trudi came to a stop in the Ford.
“This is where we’re counting on you, Charlie…,” Willi said. “Switch seats.” He opened the door and shifted over to the middle, and I prepared to jump into the passenger seat. “When we get to the gate, you get out and tell the guards precisely what we went over. That we’re here to do some water testing. They won’t have any choice but to believe you. Just remember, you’re a captain with the Army Engineers. This looks like a military truck. Make yourself sound like someone in authority.”
My eyes went wide as I looked over at Curtis and saw him take his gun out of his jacket and screw onto the barrel what I took to be a silencer. He cocked the action and the ka-ching sent a chill through me. “What’s that for?” I asked.
“Eventualities,” Willi said. “Just do your job. Hopefully, it will not have to be used.”
I caught Curtis’s eye. “Let’s hope so.”
I shut the door as Curtis stepped on the pedal and threw the truck in gear, and slowly we crept along the access road, a poorly paved single lane. I was now a participant in a plan to not only poison thousands of innocent people, but maybe cost a few soldiers their lives, soldiers who were now directly in front of me.
The truck bounced along the road at about five miles per hour. Friedrich and Trudi kept up in their car about forty yards behind. This is it, Charlie. There was no escape for me now, except to do what they said and pray that Willi and Trudi kept their word. No one would come to my rescue. I kept telling myself, hoping against fear, they had no reason to harm Emma once the job was done. But my eyes went to the gun in Curtis’s lap. “Any eventualities,” I muttered to myself again.
Ahead, I spotted a light, and then a wooden gate blocking the road came into view. Next to it, a small guard hut. Two flags, one the Stars and Stripes, the other on a blue background, which I assumed was New York state, hung limply on poles. At the sight of our headlights, someone stepped out of the hut, no doubt surprised that anyone was pulling up here in the dead of night. The country had been at war only a few days and this kind of target, which likely wouldn’t even have been protected before then, was as quiet and backwater a posting as a freshly trained recruit could draw for himself.
We pulled up and came to a stop in front of the gate. A second guard came out. Both young, barely out of high school. Carrying rifles. One was a corporal—I could see the two stripes on his arm—the other a private. In the darkness, our truck probably looked like any other military vehicle.
“Captain,” Willi Bauer said, nodding to me, “it’s your show now.”
I looked back at him with ice in my gaze. I opened the door and stepped out.
“Corporal.”
Both sentries snapped to attention at the sight of my bars. “Sir.”
“We’re from the 9th Engineer Battalion. We’re going to be conducting some tests on the water supply here. You’ve been briefed, I believe?” I went around the front of the truck and came up to them directly.
“We have not, sir,” the corporal said. He was young, twenty-one at most. Probably just out of basic training. Who knew, this might well be his very first assignment. The private looked like he was still in high school, barely even shaved. “No one alerted us to anything,” the corporal said, clearly nervous at the rank standing before him and the events taking place at the odd time of night. “I was told to let no one in. May I ask to see your orders, sir?”
“Orders…?”
“Please, sir,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. “We were instructed to let no one in.” His eyes glanced down and he seemed to fix on my brown shoes.
He looked back up at me.
I was about to tell him again that I was certain that they had been properly briefed, when I heard a dull thud, thud, and both sentries grabbed their chests with grunts and fell to the ground. Curtis stepped out of the truck, holding his pistol.
I shouted, “No! No!” Arm extended, he squeezed the trigger and each of their bodies jerked from two more rounds, an eruption of blood on their chests, and went still. Curtis faced his gun downward and put a final bullet into each.
“My God, what have you done!” I stared at the bodies in shock. “They were cooperating. They were just kids.”
I stood, gaping in horror at the two dead guards. The thought that they were at risk in any way, guarding a body of drinking water in Yonkers in the middle of the night, likely never entered their minds. I looked at Curtis, stuffing his gun back in his belt, and knew that in minutes, that could be me lying there with a bullet in my chest.
“Go help Curtis dispose of the bodies,” Willi said to me.
“No. What did you even need me for if you were going to kill them from the start?” Then I knew. I saw Curtis take one of the guards’ rifles and lean it on the side of the truck. That was for me later, to make it seem like I was shot by one of the guards.
“Help him,” Willi Bauer looked at me impassively, “or I’ll give Oberleutnant Leitner the nod and you’ll never have a clue in the world what becomes of your daughter.” Clapping his hands, he said to Curtis, “Schnell, schnell.”
The black Ford with Trudi and Friedrich had driven up. Curtis dragged one of the sentries into the guard house. I took the other by the armpits, trying not to look at his face, and carried him in. Outside, Willi lifted the gate, and I was instructed to climb back in the cab. Curtis got behind the wheel and I noticed he had the dead sentry’s rifle with him. We continued up the narrow road toward the reservoir. A high chain-link fence that circumvented the perimeter of the reservoir came into view. Friedrich jumped out of the sedan with a pair of metal cutters, ran up, and severed the chain that bound the gate. He threw the gate open and suddenly we were staring at millions of gallons of water to be pumped into New York City. Water that was about to become a carrier of gruesome death.
Willi got out and went through the gate, holding his map. Trudi followed. “Over here.” He waved us on, heading onto the six-foot-wide concrete perimeter that encircled the water table. I could see the map was similar to the one I had seen of the Kensico Reservoir, where Fiske was likely encamped now with his team of agents, while I was here. Willi studied it a second, looking out over the edge. “The viaducts come in here,” I heard him say in German, pointing. “Help them unload the cargo, Mr. Mossman, if you please,” he said to me.