by Dora Benley
"Yes, darling?" he replied.
"Who were those other two?" she pressed. "The ones who were dressed to the hilt?"
He shrugged.
"They were speaking German, too. Did Hitler send them as well?" she asked.
Edward paused.
"Well?" she insisted. Somewhere in the distant past she could remember running into German spies like that. And those dark eyes. They reminded her of something from back in the Great War in a hotel in Paris. Someone had shot at her.
"Dearest, I did not want to tell you this, but when Hitler goes after something he believes in going whole hog. Churchill warned me about it. He said he had heard that Hitler was sending half his storm trooopers, all those SA men, whoever he could summon up," Edward warned her.
"They are all in the United States at the same time?" she questioned him in horror.
He nodded. "The first one who gets the maps gets rewarded by the Chancellor."
They drove through the night in silence. When she saw his eyelids close and open again she even offered to take the wheel. He was very reluctant at first but then pulled over at a gas station and relented. He was sound asleep as soon as she started down the Lincoln Highway driving all by herself for the first time on this unexpected journey into the Heartland of America in flight from a bunch of thugs who grew more numerous all the time.
Dora talked aloud to herself to keep herself awake. No one could hear her, not even the sleeping Edward.
"Well, Mom and Dad, you wouldn't believe it, but here is your daughter at night in the dark in the middle of nowhere I have ever been before," she tried to encourage herself by gripping the steering wheel. "If I survive until the next stop, maybe I should mail you a postcard or two from the Lincoln Highway. I could say something like I wish you were here having fun like me." She laughed at herself in a forced fashion. "But then Edward would probably be horrified. He would warn me that Hitler's thugs would intercept the mail and find out where we were. So maybe I should call you when I get a chance — except that might be bad, too," she bit her tongue. "Someone might be tapping the phone line. Oh my! Well, maybe I will see you again someday when this is all over. Keep your fingers crossed," she prayed. She crossed her fingers even though she continued to hold the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver in the storm tossed sea — except that this was the American Midwest and hundreds of miles from any ocean.
Chapter 12: Mishawaka, Indiana
Somewhere near midnight the gas tank seemed too low. Dora pulled off the road at the Lincoln Highway Inn in Mishawaka, Indiana right outside of South Bend. A sign called it "the Princess City". They were staying here whether they liked it or not, whether the hotel had room or not, and whether everyone at the hotel spoke German or not. They did not have any other choice.
"Edward, wake up!" She nudged the sleeping man next to her in the car.
He grabbed for his gun before his eyes were even open as if assuming that something bad had happened.
"Darling, we are just staying here for the night," Dora tried to soothe him.
She and Edward managed to get the very last room. The hotel staff were going to save it for somebody else who had called in ahead of time until Dora slipped the clerk a spare twenty. They found out that surprisingly enough the restaurant was still open until midnight for dinner. She could only suppose that the workers at the hotel were accustomed to having people drop in late coming off the highway.
Dora and Edward entered the restaurant to music blasting away as if it were still high noon. They could either eat in the bar at the counter with the pull up stools and the red and white striped floor in an art deco style or choose the more conservative dining room. They chose the more quiet venue that featured a ruby carpet and yellow window hangings with private tables for two. The tables for two were very important.
They had already eaten dinner far back on the road, so they decided to have a late night snack before going to bed. Dora ordered hot chocolate. Edward did the same. Edward still was missing his hot tea with cream and sugar once again. It did not help either that the chocolate had American touches. Whipped cream several inches high floated on top of the chocolate and a maraschino cherry balanced precariously on top of that. Edward groaned. And to top it off the staff served crackers with peanut butter as a midnight snack! Dora could only moan herself since she was not in the mood for laughing when she saw the appalled expression on Edward's face.
To make matters worse as soon as they were served their hot chocolates, that very same fashionably dressed mystery lady that Dora had glimpsed at a distance back in Indiana came strutting through the doors to the restaurant. Dora was stunned once again by the svelte lines of her body. She was wearing the same black dress with the striped top in a lighter color.
The clasp on her belt matched the emblem on her white sailor's cap. Dora could now count the six strands of pearls looped around her neck. The lady was also wearing a black top with long sleeves underneath her striped vest. The black top boasted white cuffs at the wrists that featured emblems that matched her hat as well as her belt. Hardly the fashions you usually saw in the middle of nowhere USA!
The mystery woman sashayed up to a table by the window on the opposite side of the room from Dora and Edward. She unbuttoned the pearls fastening her gloves and removed them one by one. Then she eyed their table, stared at Edward, and smirked.
Who could she be? A fashion model? A German actress turned spy? Who was Hitler employing now?
"Edward, who is that?" Dora felt chills going up her spine.
Edward did not answer. He seemed frozen in place. She sensed that he knew.
Before he got a chance to open his mouth, the lady's companion showed up, too. The gentleman with a men's summer suit with plaid pants, matching white shoes, and a brown jacket with a bow tie leaned his walking stick against the table. He took off his straw hat and stared at Dora and Edward quite openly and quite boldly as if he certainly recognized them.
Dora cringed. She wondered how the German couple would make themselves understood in an out of the way place like Mishawaka, Indiana. The lady immediately started ordering in English with an accented voice.
Dora was stunned. She clapped her hands over her mouth.
All at once it was deja vu. Dora must have paled. Edward's hand crept over and covered hers on her lap. That deep alto voice echoed through her memory as a long lasting nightmare from the war. All those years ago in 1918, the year before the Great War ended, she had feared that Edward was dead. Lawrence wrote to her in Pittsburgh telling her that Edward had been captured by the Turks in the Syrian Desert. She had defied her parents and hurried to Paris to meet with Lawrence during the Paris Peace Conference in early 1919 hopefully to find out what had really happened to her fiance. Edward had magically showed up after all, having escaped in a raid led by Lawrence of Arabia. But he and his mentor, T. E. Lawrence, had to go into hiding. He and Lawrence were still being pursued by enemy thugs from Germany despite the Paris Peace Treaty which did not bode well for the future. As Dora herself was leaving the French Foreign Ministry Building, a dark, mysterious lady from an upper story window had aimed at her and fired.
This mysterious vamp looked like the very same fiend down to the last black eyelash, and she sounded like her, too.
"Edward, is that — is that — H?" she gasped. That was the only name the mysterious creature had been known by in those days.
"Yes," he hissed, "that is H, Hitler's top henchwoman and her husband, Helmut von Wessel, the German financier who made Hitler possible. You could say he picked the German dictator up out of the dirt and made him Chancellor more than even Hindenburg did."
She gulped. "Hitler is certainly rolling out his big guns."
"That is what he thinks the maps are worth." Edward rose to leave the table without taking his eyes off the von Wessels.
The woman spoke to her companion at
the other table.
Now Dora remembered. That voice, that horrible deep alto voice. That deadly lady and her husband were the ones who had kidnapped her in Santa Fe when she and Edward were hiding maps there in the early twenties about ten years ago. They had set the cottage on fire in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where they were staying. She and Edward had narrowly escaped. That voice had come to her through the flames as they had driven away.
Then there had been the time in 1929 after the Wall Street Crash a few years back when she had been sailing to England with Edward and Winston Churchill all very unexpectedly. The Prince of Wales had been aboard. He had been rumored to be closeted with a mysterious dark woman with a deep alto voice. Churchill had gone to great trouble to pry the bad influence away from His Majesty — no doubt that same lethal lady. She made Dora shiver.
Somehow the horrible creature, this modern day Medusa, seemed even worse than before. She was snickering to her companion right now with her gloved fist to her mouth. No doubt she was laughing at them, the victims she had trapped so cleverly here in the middle of nowhere USA at this ungodly hour. But then like the Devil this Medusa must never sleep. The sound was low and throaty and seemed to echo throughout the room. It filled the cavernous spaces so Dora could not even hear her own pounding heartbeat.
Dora did not have to wonder for long what had happened to the other thugs, the ones they had first run into in Gettysburg. They must have been the ones who had ratted to Hitler or his handlers in America. They must have reported Dora's and Edward's precise coordinates and their location. Right now the men in the trenchcoats marched in behind the von Wessels and occupied another table.
"There they are! The illicit couple!" shouted the two reporters with the big cameras as they burst into the room behind the German spies. They were the ones hired by Michael, who had been pursuing Edward and Dora since New York City. They must have hitch-hiked or thumbed a ride with the Germans. They started flashing their cameras in Dora's and Edward's faces as Edward threw down the money, concealed his face with his arm, and fled from the restaurant with Dora at well past midnight.
They did not bother to take refuge in their motel room. They leaped into the car and escaped into the night. Who cared about the lost money!
"Edward, we have to sleep somewhere!" Dora pleaded.
"Maybe we will have to sleep in the car," Edward suggested. "I will pull over to the side of the highway when I find a safe place."
That did not seem very safe or very comfortable. She shook her head. "I don't know if I could do that." She held onto the vestiges of civilized behavior that she was accustomed to. After all, he had to bunk down in the desert when he was riding with Lawrence of Arabia. But Dora had always slept in a bed with sheets and blankets, thank you. As much as he told her that a military wife had to think like a soldier, she had not been sure until now just how literal Edward was being.
About 2AM they came upon the next best thing to pulling off the road onto the shoulder. Edward parked at the Bob's BBQ and Cabins at the junction of Indiana Route 2 and US 20. They concealed the car right behind a cabin and walked right up to the main desk. Fortunately there was somebody still at the front desk to pay. They were asleep before they knew it, spies or no. She woke up about 4AM to use the bathroom. She thought she saw someone peering through the window at them. It turned out to be an owl with yellow eyes.
Chapter 13: Chicago, Illinois
The next morning Dora and Edward breakfasted at the Plaza 30 Truck Stop Restaurant. The only other customers were big, burly truckers, not spies from Germany or slick detectives with big cameras. Dora had to watch Edward bump shoulders with these men when he was ordering. And the cash register clerks always gaped at him in amazement when they heard his upper crust British accent. They seemed almost embarrassed to hand m'lord American country flapjacks with greasy syrup dripping with butter. But Edward accepted the plates with a grim endurance borne of too many military campaigns when he was out in the desert eating Arab Bedouin fare. Certainly, Dora thought, that could not taste much better.
They drove into Illinois and were on the road so long that day that Dora thought she must have been born a trucker's daughter instead of the only daughter of Robber Baron Winthrop Benley of Benley Tire and Rubber back in Pittsburgh.
They were nearing the highway around Chicago. "I want to talk to Churchill again if I can. I want to see what intelligence he has about all these German spies. I can do that only in a big city."
"Maybe we will have to stop here in Chicago," Dora sighed. "It is about the only big city left before we are lost in the West."
They finally stopped at the Glidden Hotel in DeKalb. It was more anonymous. But it did not have the facilities for Edward to make a long distance transatlantic phone call. So they reluctantly headed to downtown Chicago to the Palmer House with the fancy steps up to the front entrance with gaudy sculptures and a big clock as a kind of frieze. It also had lamp posts outside that were so fancy they resembled chandeliers. It was the sort of place Dora would be expected to go and where she might be spotted and even recognized.
They checked in hurriedly and raced to the elevator lobby with a bank of golden elevators. Their room was sumptuous to say the least, but they were intending to stay only long enough to make that one critical phone call to Churchill. Dora had rented the room for the night, but they would be gone after one hour.
Dora could hear Churchill boom and declaim even at this distance of thousands of miles away.
"Can you get to Yellowstone in three more days, Edward?" Churchill exclaimed.
"I don't know, Winston. We're being pursued by bunch of toughs. We have to duck them at every turn. There are six of them all together. Right now we are in downtown Chicago."
"You are good at ducking toughs, Edward. I can count on you to do it," Winston asserted.
"Dora is with me this time, Winston," Edward reminded the MP.
"Soldier's wife, Edward. Soldier's wife. Pretty soon she will learn to be as fleet of foot as you are!" the backbencher exclaimed.
"That is part of the problem. If you will remember, we are not married quite yet," he glanced at Dora.
She nodded in agreement. If only she had not been tricked into marrying Michael in 1919 her life would be far different than it was today!
"Dora's husband has sent a bunch of photographers after us, too," Edward exclaimed. "They are two of the six pursuing us right now."
"Yes, Yes, I was not going to mention it. Clementine and I saw a photo or two in the Times yesterday," he chuckled. "You know the gossip column. Dora is prominent enough and rich enough to appear in it even on the other side of the Atlantic. But it is all part of Hitler's master plan. Can't let him win, now can we?"
"No, Winston, I guess we cannot!" Edward looked straight at Dora.
Dora took the phone, "We certainly cannot!" she cried. "Not even if Hitler's spies gang up with all Michael's photographers!" She handed the phone back to Edward.
"Those maps are the key to winning the next war, you know. If we have to fight and the Chancellor gets hold of them he will be at Westminster in no time, Edward," Churchill pontificated. "We cannot let that happen. We cannot let him preside over the next coronation in Westminster Abbey, can we, Edward?"
"I have the maps right up my sleeve, Winston," Edward boasted. "Someone would have to kill me to get them."
"That is what I like to hear, Edward. And when you check in to the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone you will be out in the wilderness for sure. You will not be able to call me. I inquired about it. They told me there was only one phone in the entire park at Mammoth Hot Springs at the Headquarters Building. And it has trouble reaching Salt Lake City, which is the nearest hub. So you will be on your own for sure."
Dora nodded, taking in the grave implications.
"I studied a map of Yellowstone Park which unfortunately I have never vi
sited during my travels to the States. I attempted to pick the most obscure place. My agent has been instructed to meet you at a picnic table along the Madison River just about three miles down the road from the east entrance at West Yellowstone," Churchill was very, very specific.
She could tell that Edward was memorizing what he was being told. His lips were moving. He obviously did not want to risk writing it down. Dora tried to remember it, too. Apparently the fate of nations depended upon the sharpness of her memory about picnic tables in Yellowstone.
Out of the corner of her eye Dora spotted something positively sinister. She saw a device that looked like the lens of a camera being lowered down in front of their hotel room window. The thing was almost positioned exactly to catch them standing there. She raced across the room while Edward was still talking to Churchill and yanked the drapes shut, hoping that she was in time so that they would not again appear in the London papers as spectacles for public consumption and for Michael's and Hitler's consumption, too. No wonder Hitler had known exactly where to send his top spies! He had Michael's cameras to help him.
"So we have set the date and the approximate time of day, 3PM. And we plan to meet at the Madison location." Edward reviewed the coordinates. "All this is supposed to happen exactly three days from now. And we are going to have a running start, Winston. It looks as if Dora and I are leaving right now, and we have not even unpacked."
"Good luck, Edward!" Winston shouted on the other end of the line. "Hope we see you soon in Wyoming not personally of course, though I would love to meet you there. I just cannot get past a few duties in Parliament that interfere. But I will see you through my proxy."
As soon as he hung up, Edward peered behind the drapes himself to see exactly what they were confronting outside the Palmer Hotel. Then he grabbed Dora's hand. They were off down the back staircase to the parking lot behind the building where the valet had stashed the blue Cadillac v 16.