by Dora Benley
"Yes, yes, of course!" Edward agreed. "Who could help it after what happened last night? I had a bizarre nightmare myself to be quite truthful sitting there on the bench in the dark outside exposed to the elements. But dreams are one thing. Reality and Hitler are quite another."
"Not exactly the sort of thing that makes for sanity," Lindemann quipped.
"What is that?" Dora noticed what looked like a burnt cinder at the top of one of Edward's breast pockets. She brushed it off. It fell to the ground.
Lindemann picked it up and examined it closely. He shrugged. "After all, Yellowstone's Old Faithful is a kind of volcano. Maybe it spouts water most of the time. But I am sure it kicks up debris from the magma chamber near the center of the earth, too. Or maybe even just small rocks and debris."
So that was the way it was to be! It looked like it was from the Vesuvius volcano, but of course that was impossible and there were other explanations, too. She was no longer very sure what was real and what was not quite real, at least this morning and especially after last night. Maybe in some shadowland, reality and dreams merged in unexpected ways. After all, this was 1933 wasn't it? It was not your ordinary, vanilla-flavored year. It was the year of HItler, FDR, and his the only thing we have to fear is fear itself speech, the Great Depression, and even the blockbuster horror movie King Kong. She had even heard about a Loch Ness Monster in Scotland! If Hitler had invented a strange time travel machine to get back to ancient Rome and change history and Edward and the Prof had stopped him in his tracks with his evil spy duo the von Wessels, so be it. Of course it could not make sense in any ordinary way. But it felt like a real triumph all the same.
Dora took the cinder and put it in her handbag as a souvenir. The fact that they might never be sure what exactly had happened made that explanation all the more convincing.
"Well, I don't think we should dilly-dally discussing our nightmares. Let's get out of here!" Dora was the first to suggest.
The two men agreed. They hurried back to their cabins and snatched up their few possessions. They leaped into Edward's Cadillac, Dora in the front seat beside him as always. Edward slammed his foot down on the accelerator before she could even slam the front door of the car behind her.
"After all," Edward said, "the von Wessels could come at us out of anywhere. We had better beat them out of here the first chance we get, and that is now."
They drove and drove in semi-darkness towards the east with the sounds of the geyser explosion receding behind them.
"There's a broken down pickup truck blocking the road just ahead of us." Edward slowed down. Dora studied the jalopy in the beams cast by his headlights.
"That vehicle must be connected to the unfortunate incident at Old Faithful," the Prof commented.
Dora made a snap decision. "Can't we leave by another entrance road?" She quickly fumbled with her map in the darkness. She could have sworn that there was another nearby exit from this nightmare land.
Edward announced, "We are almost at the South Entrance exit now."
They left the figure 8 road at West Thumb and went due south past the sleeping Grant Village which had apparently heard nothing of the would-be explosions at Old Faithful that night. They drove as silently as possible past the Lewis Lake, named after the famous explorer, and then through the Lewis River Canyon culminating in the thirty-seven foot high Lewis Falls barely visible in the fading moonlight as a tall pine forest shaded them from the stars overhead.
Dora prayed, Dear God, may I never see another geyser in my life. She crossed herself. She knew it was not the geyser's fault, but her nerves could not take it. The combination of geysers, volcanoes, and Hitler was too much for the Pittsburgh heiress. She would stay on the East Coast from now on, thank you.
By dawn they could see the Colter Bay area on Jackson Lake. The Grand Tetons rose behind them with snow sprinkled like powdered sugar on the tops of the mountains.
Dora said, "We should stop for breakfast!"
Suddenly she remembered who inhabited the place during the summer and was soon introducing the Prof and Edward to the Rockefellers. Her father had done plenty of tire deals with them over the years. The trio could be safe for a couple of hours until they had to proceed onward to the nearest railroad station.
Some hours later they arrived in Idaho Falls and the train station. No one wanted to drive back across the country when they did not have to. The train would be much faster. They did not forget to complete the transfer of the Lawrence maps standing there on the platform after first checking around for the von Wessels. After all, that had been the original purpose of Churchill sending an agent to America — he had to take the dangerous maps from Edward and return them to the backbencher before the von Wessels really did get hold of them in America.
The Prof shook Dora's and Edward's hands, "Though we will be riding back on the train, we must pretend we do not know each other. That way if the von Wessels show up by some ill chance and look for the maps, they won't find them. They would have to recognize me first."
Edward shook the Prof's hand and agreed.
The Prof clapped Edward on the shoulder. "See you back in England." He winked. "We will have lunch together with Churchill at Chartwell. We can celebrate foiling Hitler. It is about the only good news so far to come out of 1933."
"I know what you mean," Dora said. "It seems to be the year of monster movies and Dictators around the globe. Not much else."
"Frightful times!" agreed the Prof as he boarded discreetly behind them. He shook his head and sighed as he headed for his own seat. "But I'm afraid after the Great War you can't expect much good news."
Dora and Edward settled down into their traveling compartment. Dora figured they might snatch a few days together at the Waldorf Astoria before Edward had to ship back overseas and she had to return to Pittsburgh.
As they left the station Dora saw a plume of smoke shoot up into the sky. She told herself that was just the train, silly. Not the Old Faithful Geyser erupting to destroy all of America or exploding to change all of history past and present, too! She, Edward, and the Prof had averted Hitler's disastrous assassination plots for Pliny the Elder and made history better than it would otherwise have been despite all Hitler's misguided efforts.
Afterword:
Otherworldly Yellowstone:
Hitler could not have picked a better portal to the other world than Yellowstone National Park. It doesn't take much imagination to see that the place must have an underworld connection — quite literally and even scientifically.
Who could stand at the brink of Dragon's Mouth, a sulfurous pit where vapors emanate from a crack in the earth that goes down who knows how deep, and not think of the Oracle of Delphi, Mount Olympus, the River Styx, or Hades itself? If one stands there and listens closely you can imagine Odysseus, the Roman Ulysses, standing on the brink of the underworld listening to the cries of the dead, including his dead mother all coming forward towards him with hands outstretched begging for food vampire like.
The Yellowstone geyser basin symbolizes the kind of power that can project one back in time to ages of the earth in the past, even to the beginning of time itself. One can look at its eruptions as opening the door to Pandora's box that leads anywhere you would like to explore in the past.
In this novel Hitler sensed this and sent his agents, Herr and Helga von Wessel, to Yellowstone National Park to threaten Edward and Dora. If they do not surrender the Lawrence maps, key to world domination, Hitler will open the portal of time and return to the source to rejigger the history of the earth. He will make it so that Germany wins all the time every time since ancient times. They will not only win the Varusschlacht, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, they will defeat Germanicus year 14AD and totally expel the Romans from Germany forever. Charlemagne will take over the earth. Germany will unify in the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance. It will not have to wa
it until the middle of the 19th century and Bismarck. It will be not the Holy Roman Empire but the Holy German Empire for centuries. That way if there is a Great War in 1914 they will win that war too. There will be no reparations to pay. Germany will not be in the downtrodden position that Hitler found it in 1933 when he first became Chancellor of Germany and when the thriller novel, Old Faithful Plot, took place.
Dora and Edward have a decision to make so weighty that no one in history before the ever had such a choice. They can surrender the Lawrence maps for their own personal salvation and hand Hitler the key to history on a golden platter to do with as he chooses like a modern day King Midas who has a golden touch. But Edward figures that if he keeps hold of the maps and does not allow himself to be blackmailed, it will be be some sort of restraint on Hitler's behavior.
So it is a chase to the finish. Will it be Edward and Churchill, the cause of England and freedom at the fore? Or will it be Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich who want nothing more than to manipulate and control, to falsify and distort the truth? Let Hitler go back in time, says Edward. Edward will follow him and fight the tyrant in any century that he chooses. Just let the cause of freedom ring in the end.
Available now on Amazon Kindle
Available now on Amazon Kindle
About the Author
Dora Benley is the heroine of the Edward Ware Thriller Series as well as the author of her own books. Her first published book is Dark 3: Special Edition, which is the last book in the series. She is the daughter of a Pittsburgh Robber Baron and has had noteworthy experiences in war and peace in Europe and America. She lives on both continents.