Thomas was not the slightest bit disappointed. This was the answer he knew Michener would give and, being a political climber, had to give. Like the fine poker player he once was, Thomas had calculated all of this beforehand.
He allowed a silence to settle over the room before speaking. “Gerhard?”
“Yes?”
Thomas awaited eye contact, ready to unleash his royal flush.
“Go ahead,” Michener said, seemingly unworried.
“If you do not do this, I will inform the current Ministerpräsident, who doesn’t trust you I might add, of the bribe you took in nineteen-twenty-three, from the Holtzheim family.” Thomas let that sink in for a few seconds. “You took it to spoil the investigation of their out-of-control eldest son who raped and killed that poor Swiss girl. You made it look like she drowned. A thorough investigation will reveal the money you received during those horridly lean years, and how you used it to purchase your garish country estate at Höhenfels. If I remember correctly, you told people, quite offhandedly, that your wife had ‘family money.’” Thomas’ mouth smiled, although the rest of his face did not. “But you and I know your wife’s family never had two pfennigs to rub together, don’t we?”
Michener’s bleary eyes widened. After a moment of silence, he swallowed and began to speak, stabbing a finger toward his predecessor. “How dare you come here and make such an—”
“And,” Thomas said, cutting him off, “I will inform your wife and Schutzstaffel Obergruppenführer Siegfred Kraling of the sexual relationship you had with his wife while he was deployed in Prussia. It was proven to me by a now dead officer, and I kept the telltale proof. You impregnated her and paid a nurse to perform an illegal abortion. The nurse, fearing you might ultimately harm her, photographed you both without your knowledge, and I have the evidence in my possession. The SS commander is a powerful and jealous man, Gerhard.” Thomas leaned forward. “He will have you killed…if your wife doesn’t first.”
The royal flush was now fanned out on the table.
Michener’s breathing became loud and ragged as he stubbed the cigarette out. “Mein Gott!” he exclaimed as he crossed the room and stared out the side window, eventually leaning against the mullion for support. “You come here and unashamedly threaten me, the high chief?” Michener turned, still holding himself up with his left hand. “You’re bribing me, dammit!”
The buzzer clicked and the secretary asked if everything was all right.
“Go powder your nose!” Michener boomed, regaining a measure of his swagger. The intercom clicked off before the sound of high-heels tapped out of the anteroom.
Thomas sat motionless until Michener had calmed a bit. “I overlooked the bribe and your reckless affair when I was here. I did it against my own good judgment, and it shames me to this day, especially the case with the murdered girl. By the time I knew about it, the paint had long since dried. And despite these heinous acts, you were always a loyal protégé, except in the very end…” Thomas fought to remain neutral in expression, “…when you left your knife hanging from my back.”
Michener looked as if he might break down in tears, shaking his head as he again stared out the window, no doubt calculating his options. He eventually turned, his eyes completely red and moist. “You believe those things about me?”
“They’re absolute fact, of which I have indelible proof.”
Michener’s lip trembled as he eyed his predecessor for a half-minute. Finally he dipped his head, his voice almost a whisper. “What else do you want from me?”
“Nothing at all, Gerhard. My life is now nothing more than tedium. It’s like the scratchy hollowness at the end of a phonograph record of beautiful music, playing over and over, never ending in its vacuity. For me, all I want is the thrill of working one more case. I want to hear that beautiful music one more time…just once more is all I ask. It’s a selfish request after a long life of what I hope was selfless service.”
He coughed.
Michener, a man who was accustomed to far more potent power plays, cocked his eyebrows. After a moment he actually smiled, probably due to Thomas’ raw human appeal. Michener walked to his desk and sat, digging through his file drawers until he found a certain piece of paper. He dipped an ink pen before filling the form out in a beautiful script.
Looking up, he held the paper across the desk. “Very well, Thomas. You shall have what you want. And, of course, you shall give me every shred of the evidence you bribed me with.”
“Later.”
“I trust you. Now, please, Thomas, tell me about this murder.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS FULLY LIGHT NOW. There were puffy rain clouds to the west, glowing orange as the eastern sun bounced off their condensation. But for Neil, his southerly path was all clear. He had allowed the aircraft to climb slowly, registering just over eight thousand feet on the altimeter. His side still hurt, but the lightning pain had been slowly replaced by fiery throbbing. It felt as if someone were holding a low-burning hand torch to the tender skin and not letting up. Neil kept his arm clamped over the wounds as best he could, having bunched his shirt to stanch the bleeding. He lit his final cigarette, angered with himself for not purchasing more in the Shoreditch pub. Then his mind drifted to Jakey. He would be the very first one to find humor in his lifelong friend piloting an airplane over Bavaria while suffering from a leaky gunshot wound.
Neil grunted, unable to laugh at the lunacy of the situation.
His thoughts of Jakey were interrupted by a cough from the engine. It caused the aircraft to shudder before again running normally. A minute later, the sputter happened again. Neil’s eyes searched the control panel, focusing on one instrument in particular.
The fuel gauge now showed empty.
“Damn!” He’d been so consumed with his pain that he’d forgotten to keep an eye on it.
Neil pulled hard on the cigarette and peered out all three sides of the cockpit. The remains of an enormous city were beginning to disappear in the distance off the right side of the aircraft. Directly ahead, at quite a distance, loomed the large white peaks of the Alps.
As Neil scanned the earth below him, the engine stopped sputtering, wheezed several times and died completely. The propeller seized to a halt almost perfectly straight up and down. The loud sound of the engine and prop were now replaced by the cool rushing of air.
Danger filled the cockpit.
To some people, danger is a foreign sensation, causing immediate panic. But for years, Neil had operated in a climate of danger. Sometimes at low levels, other times when loss of life was imminent. This was one of those times. Had there been a danger gauge in the cockpit, the needle would have been pinned in the red.
I’m probably going to die, he thought, so I might as well go out kicking.
He felt the stick getting mushy. His inputs on the rudder pedals effected no significant change, and in seconds the airplane shuddered violently as it stalled and nearly rolled on its back. The airplane yawed left and began a rush to the ground, elevating Neil’s stomach into his throat.
Clamping the cigarette between his lips, he willed himself not to provide input. Yet. He knew that airplanes needed speed to remain in the sky. And since the aircraft was now plummeting, it was gaining speed. After hearing the rushing wind grow to a roar, he pulled aggressively on the stick, feeling nauseous as the Hornet Moth completed an ugly and unintentional split-S maneuver. What had been zero gravity a moment before now tugged on his face and insides, making him feel like he might burst through the bottom of the airplane as he successfully pulled the airplane from the dive.
Neil used the dark strip of horizon as his level, the loud rush of wind staying constant as he kept a small amount of downward pressure on the stick. He was now headed north—the way he had come. In the distance and to his left, he could see the large city sprawl again, underscored by the impressive spires of its churches and cathedrals.
But he didn’t want to go that way.
A glance at the altimeter showed Neil that he had burned off two thousand feet with his inadvertent death-defying stunt. He lost even more altitude when he banked hard to the left, pulling on the stick to execute a tight turn back to the south. Now, once again headed to the south in the direction of the looming mountains, Neil watched the altimeter closely, knowing he had to sacrifice altitude for distance. He had flown for a little more than an hour since the incident at the airstrip and, judging by his average airspeed, Neil estimated that he had traveled a hundred miles and change—more than enough distance to avoid the manhunt that would occur.
But only if he could land and walk away.
As he passed through four thousand feet, Neil scanned in earnest for potential places to land. Ahead in the distance were two bodies of water. One appeared to be a medium-sized lake. It was slightly to his right. To the left was a smaller lake, and between them what appeared to be a connecting river bounded by acres and acres of lush-looking farmland. Judging by his speed and altitude, Neil felt he would overshoot it if he continued on his same course. He also knew that pilots liked to land into the wind. So how the hell would he know which way the wind was blowing? Neil looked to his left, scanning the ground for people, livestock, anything. He was anxious, knowing that in a matter of minutes he would be on the earth—in some state—whether or not he was ready.
Smoke…
He noticed smoke from a stove chimney drifting in the direction he was flying. It wasn’t being sheared off upon exiting the chimney, but the wind appeared to be steady enough to make a forty-five-degree stream of smoke to the south, meaning the wind this morning was from the north. Hopefully it was blowing enough to matter to the aircraft he was piloting. It was time to pick a spot and land this airplane.
Then the realization of what he was about to attempt to do hit him.
From his time during the Great War, Neil knew that landing an aircraft was supposed to be what separated the men from the boys. It was the one basic, yet critical, action that took years to master. The razor’s edge difference between a pilot’s life or death. And here he was, a man who had simply flown a great deal as a passenger, with two ragged holes in his body, over a country that was fast becoming his country’s enemy—again—banking an airplane whose owner was now dead, working out the physics of the problem as if it were an experiment in a laboratory.
But this was no experiment.
The ground coming up at him made that perfectly clear in Neil’s mind.
He tapped his pocket with his left hand, cursing when he remembered he was out of cigarettes. A cigarette would help mightily right now.
As the smaller lake passed to his left, Neil was now low enough to see the canoes and fishing boats tethered at small docks around the water’s edge. He began to bank east, alarmed at the way the airplane plummeted. From the east he continued his turn around to the north, into the wind. The sun swapped sides and, as Neil leveled the wings, the greenhouse effect warmed his face from the right side. He was quite low now, and the surrounding trees and scenery filled his peripheral vision, making him feel as if he were dropping like a stone. Neil pushed forward on the stick to gain speed, afraid he would stall again the way he had done earlier.
At this altitude, a stall would be his undoing.
With the nose in a downward attitude, Neil could see the brown, loamy earth approaching him quickly. He had flown in enough airplanes to know that he always felt pilots were landing too fast, only to have them pull up at the last moment, seemingly preventing a catastrophe. But there had to be a reason they did that, and Neil followed suit. He kept the stick forward, now amazed at the way the bales of hay whizzed underneath. He even saw a scarecrow. The eastern sun was still fairly low and, once Neil was near the ground, the cockpit darkened slightly as the foothills and forest to his east blocked the sunrise he had enjoyed for the last hour.
He suddenly remembered the flaps Willi had used when landing at the airstrip. They were operated by a lever and helped the aircraft fly slower. Neil decided it was too late. He didn’t dare divert his concentration from what he was doing. He’d just have to land without them.
Now mere feet above the ground, aware of the rushing sound from the speed he had gained, Neil leveled at what he estimated to be twenty feet above the ground, knowing he’d probably made an amateur mistake. But he held it there, bleeding off excess speed, keeping his eyes on the horizon. The fields went on and on—there was plenty of room. As the speed decreased, Neil was startled when it felt like the bottom suddenly fell out on the airplane. He pulled the stick into his belly but it was too late.
The Hornet Moth dropped the final twenty feet, the right wing dipping slightly.
Neil yelled out in pain at the jolt when the wheels bounced from the earth, sending twin rooster tails of earth as the airplane bounced ten feet back into the air. He pressed the stick forward. As the craft moved nose-down again, Neil’s eyes went wide when he saw where he would hit next. He instinctively pulled back on the stick—it was of no use. His speed was too slow to generate lift and the steeply cut drainage ditch rushed at him, making Neil feel as helpless as he ever had. He let out one final shouted protest at his helpless situation.
The impact jerked the propeller from the aircraft, leaving it stuck in the ground like an Olympian’s javelin. The far side of the drainage ditch tore the landing carriage from the airplane, also ripping off most of the lower wing as the fuselage skittered forward, dirt and grass spewing from the unintentional plow. The violent impact hurtled Neil’s luggage forward as he was thrown against the control panel and the left window. The remaining aircraft came to its rest, right side up, facing ninety degrees left of the direction he had been heading.
Even though he could not hear it, all of the sounds he had been exposed to through the night were now replaced by sheer, eerie silence. No more engine; no more propeller; no more gunshots; no more rushing of air; no more yelling. Just the thick heaviness of clear, uncut quiet.
Neil’s freshly healed head wound had ripped apart. His eyes were closed. He was not moving.
After a full minute, the silence was replaced by the sounds of running feet and urgent voices.
The voices belonged to his welcome party.
Welcome to Nazi Germany.
PART TWO
Into The Reich
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THIS WAS A FEVER DREAM. It had to be. Even through his closed eyes, the darkness was rimmed by red when the white jags of lightning flashed. Did I just fly an airplane? Did I crash? Neil Reuter pressed his parched, cracked lips together, his mouth coated in an acrid dryness and the taste of rusty metal. He heard the haunting voices, one of them shrill and urgent. He also smelled smoke. The aroma wasn’t typical wood smoke; it was more like the smell of a fire when petroleum objects were added. Neil opened his eyes, seeing the blur of hands and arms before feeling the collateral splashes of several buckets of icy water. There was a great deal of jostling, a click, and then everything came clear when he was tugged from the blackened wreckage.
The metallic taste in his mouth was quickly replaced by manure-tinged dirt. He spat, unable to breathe deeply enough to repel much of the filth. Through the fog of his condition, Neil’s mind curiously hearkened back to his boyhood, when he’d tasted hurled earth during heated dirt-clod wars with the kids from down the street. Spitting again, he decided right then he’d sell his soul for a sip of good clean water.
With a groan he turned his head, staring at a heavy woman of probably 50 years of age. With deep lines in her weathered face, she peered at Neil as if he might be a space alien. She wore a tight kerchief over her head and held a curved pipe clamped in her mouth. Neil rotated his eyes to see a boy in his teens, mouth agape, standing between the woman and a girl of perhaps twenty.
Farmers. Their clothes were a dead giveaway; sewn together with heavy fabric and absolutely no concern over fashion. These people had come to work their fields this late summer morning, only to find a crashed airplane
and an idiot inside who was somehow still breathing. Neil knew that any minute now, the father would come along and that would be that. Neil felt he might live to see the bowels of a German prison, but judging by the level of dehydration he was experiencing, he might not.
It’s not simple dehydration…it’s shock and blood loss…you know that…
“Help me up,” Neil said, offering his left hand to the boy. He watched as their eyes went wide upon hearing his American English. Getting his bearings, Neil switched to German. “Helfen Sie mir, bitte.”
The boy grasped both of Neil’s arms and pulled. As Neil made it to his feet, an unbearable wave of pain flashed through his body. He was lightheaded from loss of blood, and the pressure the tug put on his injury made his vision darken. Neil’s head felt like an over-inflated balloon and, just before he fainted, he managed to speak the German words, “Bitte nicht weitersagen, dass ich hier bin.” It meant, “Please, don’t tell anyone I am here.”
He thudded to the ground.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Neil came to again, his eyes staring straight up into the cobalt sky. He listened as best he could to a brief discussion among the family—the discussion seemed to border on an argument. He twisted his head to each of them, watching their gesticulations as they debated. From what he could understand, the children appeared to be taking his part more than the mother.
Finally, the older woman dismissed the boy and he leapt over the ditch, sprinting off through a tilled field. Neil nestled his head into the cool earth as he waited. Where’s the Pale Horse now? God, Jakey would fall down laughing if he could see this scene. Oh, sure, he’d be concerned about my injury, but my flying an airplane would be too sweet for him to let go…
Neil lifted his head to look at the two women. They were both peering off into the distance. Through his pain, Neil cranked his head around, seeing the boy returning with a horse and a small wagon. The old horse moved about as fast as a hunched-over, elderly man’s shuffle and, after a good ten minutes, the teen led the nag back to where Neil lay, breathing raggedly.
Final Mission: Zion - A World War 2 Thriller Page 21