Trail of the Twisted Cros

by Buck Sanders

  The crewman wiped his sooty face. “Somebody sure as hell knew what he was doing down there with explosives, that’s all.”

  Slayton agreed. He sniffed the air. Unless he was imagining things, there was a definite smell of cordite hanging about.

  “You smell that?” Slayton asked the crewman.

  “What?”

  “Cordite. Smell it?”

  The crewman sniffed.

  “Sort of gunpowdery smell?”

  “That’s it. Do you use it or anything like it in your explosive work?”

  “Hell no,” the crewman said. “Blasting to move through a pit’s the old-fashioned way. We use sonar today. Cleaner, safer, and no heat source necessary.”

  Nonetheless, Slayton knew the smell of cordite. It was even stronger now, wafting up from the main elevator shaft, the unmistakable odor of nitroglycerin, gun cotton, and gelatinized acetone. He had smelled it many times in Vietnam.

  “How do you control who goes down into the mine?” Slayton asked.

  “There’s just the man you want to see, over there,” the crewman said. He pointed to a large man wearing a blue suit and a safety helmet, who was being interviewed by a television reporter. “C.J. Tolson, general manager. He’ll have to tell you all that business.”

  Slayton thanked the crewman and walked slowly toward Tolson, not wanting to interrupt the interview.

  “—a terrible disaster for the entire community,” Tolson was saying. “We at Lovebridge intend to get to the bottom of it, with the help of the FBI and all available investigative authority here in the State of West Virginia.

  “I can assure everyone listening that all the usual intensive safety procedures were in effect—”

  Slayton only half-listened to the rest of the Tolson interview. The one question that was relevant—who could have planted a bomb?— would certainly not be asked by the modern-day press, a remarkably uncurious lot.

  When he was through, Tolson chatted with the hair-sprayed television reporter, inviting him to his home that evening for dinner to insure against anything untoward being said on air that might spoil the meal. The reporter eagerly accepted, as one would when summoned to an evening’s entertainment in a mining town by the man who heads the mine.

  Tolson took off his coat when the television crew had left. It was a hot day, and he knew it would get even hotter.

  “Like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Tolson.”

  Tolson gave him a reassuring smile, then a brush-off.

  “I just talked to the press,” he said. “You missed out. Sorry, fellow. I’ve got work to attend to, as you can plainly see.”

  “You’ve got me to attend to, mister.” Slayton pulled out his Treasury Department identification.

  Tolson swallowed hard and mumbled something of an apology, something about not expecting a T-man to look like Ben Slayton. Slayton had heard that sort of thing before and found it amusing. People expected him to look like one of J. Edgar Hoover’s crew-cut agents. Instead, Slayton was a man of highly individual style, a characteristic that often rankled Hamilton Winship.

  Rarely would Slayton deign to wear a suit and tie in Washington, for instance, preferring instead his jeans and sweaters and boots. His dark brown hair was kept longer than the current style, which particularly annoyed Winship. His choice in clothing made Slayton appear more athletic and less businesslike than the other T-men, which was, of course, to Slayton’s advantage, both professionally and personally. Professionally, he never quite “looked” like a T-man, which was often convenient during those times when looking like a government agent was a death warrant; personally, he didn’t quite fit the uniform, and was happily allowed to report to his superior —the very uniformly dapper Hamilton Winship—by telephone, from his home in Virginia.

  “Tell me now, Mr. Tolson,” Slayton said, his voice friendly and open. “What are the procedures followed when the men check in before their shifts and go down inside the mine?”

  “Well, let me show you, Mr.—”

  “Slayton.”

  “Yes. Slayton. Come with me.”

  Slayton followed Tolson to a low building about a hundred yards from the elevator shaft. Inside was a small office with roster sheets and the like, a large communal shower room, and rows upon rows of lockers for the men. Near the door the men would take exiting the building for the elevator shaft was a large board filled with tags, all of them with numbers punched on their metal faces.

  “Every man’s got a tag and every man’s got a number. His number’s on the tag, and that’s the one he’s got to wear. His name’s checked off the duty roster by the foreman in charge, and the tags are collected at the end of the day,” Tolson explained.

  “What about visitors?”

  “Visitors get special tags, marked with letters, which are kept in the safe in my office. We can check that safe if you like, just to make sure all those tags are accounted for.”

  “Not just yet. Tell me something first about the workers’ tags. Can they be duplicated?”

  Tolson beamed. “Glad you asked,” he said. “Glad you asked.”

  Slayton was taken to Tolson’s own office, which was in a separate building adjacent to the one they had just been in. When they were inside Tolson’s private quarters, Tolson opened his safe and removed a small box. He opened it and showed Slayton an ultraviolet marker and light-detection device.

  “We got security gadgets just like the government,” Tolson said. “In fact, you might be interested to know that we just instituted this ultraviolet marking system last week. All the workers’ tags are marked, though they don’t know it. That way, we can tell which tags belong to us and which tags are counterfeit, in the unlikely event that any are.”

  “Very good,” Slayton said, trying to sound impressed, but becoming more impatient with Tolson’s almost ebullient attitude at the sight and sound of what would surely become one of the most tragic mine disasters in American history.

  Slayton thought quickly, trying to figure a way to shorten the time he would have to spend with Tolson. He might have to return to him for questioning, but time was now precious. He had none to waste on someone too helpful to official investigators, a common problem to all police agencies.

  “I already told the FBI about the ultraviolet marking procedures,” he said, thrusting forward his chest as if he expected Slayton to pin a medal on it.

  “You what?”

  “As soon as I heard of the blast, I naturally telephoned the FBI.”

  “How does one ‘naturally’ telephone the FBI when a mine explodes?”

  “Well, I was informed that the business with this Johnny Lee Rogers—”

  “What?”

  “Well, all the radio stations have it. At least the one I listen to.”

  Slayton hadn’t thought to monitor the media. He wondered if anyone in Washington had thought to do so.

  “What does the radio report say?”

  “It says that somehow, Lovebridge was going to explode as a protest against the imprisonment of Johnny Lee Rogers.”

  “How does the radio station know that?”

  “All I heard is that someone was supposed to have called the Associated Press office in New York and said so.”

  Slayton was somewhat relieved. Most broadcast outlets wouldn’t use the material, not right away. Sure, West Virginia stations would use it, even though the AP probably marked the news item “advisory only.” Most likely, editors across the country would think it too preposterous a connection, merely the telephone call of a crank, the sort that happen every day in any large city. Fortunately, Slayton thought, there was no word about Nixon in any of this second-hand report. Another Presidential assassination attempt was not what the country needed, even if it was directed at Nixon.

  It was important, Slayton knew, to keep events such as this as quiet as possible for as long as possible. That way, the terrorist wasn’t tipped off in any way as to the direction of his pursuit. Too often, when news media got hold
of an exciting story, the authorities would become excited during interviews and spill too much information about the investigation in process. Criminals in general, and terrorists in particular, read such interviews very carefully.

  Slayton suddenly thought of the obvious.

  “What about attendance sheets?” he asked.

  “You want today’s?”

  “Of course.”

  NEW YORK CITY

  The mobile forensic unit at the Nixon house finished testing the envelope addressed to the former President for any indications of a bomb or poison.

  Using a pair of razor-thin steel tweezers, one of the examiners opened the envelope, the one not cleared by postal investigators as usual. The message was neatly typed on a piece of white eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch paper:

  The Führer is to be guaranteed safe passage to Algeria, within ten days. We begin counting down at 18:00 this date. In addition to his release, the Führer is to be provided one million American dollars worth of gold. Any resistance at any stage of his release and passage to Algeria will be answered by us in a manner demonstrated this morning in West Virginia.

  FAIRMONT, West Virginia

  While Tolson danced around him, occasionally asking questions like “Do you think that means something?”, Slayton riffled through the stack of papers recording the attendance records of mine crews working all shifts prior to the morning explosion, going back to twenty-four hours earlier.

  It took a few minutes to match absentees of today with those of yesterday, to see if there had been any suspicious patterns, any shift swapping, any lateness coming out of the pit—anything at all that might make some sense.

  He found nothing that needed asking about. He went back to today’s absentee list. Four men absent from the shift that had been more than likely killed en masse. Four very lucky men.

  “Darryl Easton?” Slayton asked. He looked at Tolson, waiting for an answer.

  “Good man. About to retire.” Tolson shrugged his shoulders, unsure as to how he could help.

  “Gene Ray Thomas?”

  “Drunk.”

  “Eddie Lee King?”

  “Same,” Tolson said. “Probably him and Thomas out together on a toot.”

  “Colin Hays?”

  The color drained out of Tolson’s face. He took a step backward and nearly fell down doing so.

  “Hays… he’s absent? Today?”

  “Says so here on your foreman’s report,” Slayton said. “What’s so special about Colin Hays?”

  “He’s the local head of that Nazi outfit—you know, the one that Johnny Lee Rogers runs.”

  Chapter Seven

  NASSAU, the Bahamas, 8 September, 5:55 p.m.

  “Enough sun now for you, honey?”

  She said her words with the soft Bahamian lilt as she rubbed lotion on the fleshy shoulders of the large pink man sprawled on his stomach atop a blanket, to protect him from the heat of the sand. He gurgled a response, soothed by the touch of her long, cocoa-colored fingers.

  She moved her fingers slowly down the curve of his spine, making him wriggle with a sensuous anticipation of the manner in which she earned her living. She let her hand rest lightly at the edge of his European-cut swimsuit, which looked ridiculous on him, showing as much as it did of the decades-long accumulation of beer and Southern cooking.

  Skillfully, she buried two fingers down below the cloth of his briefs, massaging his buttocks, slipping her hand down the cleft between his cheeks. He moaned, then turned over to reveal the tent that his male member had suddenly made of the material struggling to cover it.

  She giggled at the sight, checked around to see if anyone was watching, then covered his erection with her hand, urging it into an even larger problem which could not have the most desirable solution at the height of the sunbathing hour on the beach outside Nassau’s Emerald Hotel. She covered her upper lip with her tongue, and he closed his eyes, hurt with the exquisite pain of not being able to receive her invitation right then and there.

  The light, pleasant sounds of a calypso steel band, provided by the hotel for the entertainment of its beach enthusiasts, floated through the warm, semitropical air. He enjoyed all his sensory input immensely—the sound of the music, the professionally erotic touch of this tall black island beauty, the smell of the salt air, the hotel… He was not a man accustomed to such comforts. To him, a drive-in movie and a six-pack was standard weekend fare, and then it could all be ruined if the kids in the back seat didn’t shut up and settle down.

  His wife was no better. She was the sort of woman who asked questions like “What are you doing down there?” when he decided to do something about the crashing boredom of his so-called sexual life.

  Now here he was, basking in an island paradise, living the life of what his buddies would call a “swell.” Put up at the Emerald Hotel, attended to by this nubile dusky woman, eating and drinking only the best.

  He should have joined up long ago, he thought to himself.

  “Yep,” he said aloud, then stopped himself.

  That was the pledge. He would do his job, and then blow, and then shut the hell up for the rest of his life and never look back.

  He supposed he would miss it all. The hills, and his buddies—his kids. Maybe even his wife. The job? No way. So far, he wasn’t missing a thing. And under the circumstances, he had a hard time imagining how he ever could.

  She was stretched out beside him now, and she had draped his big round body with a terry cloth robe. Below the robe, she was massaging his penis, which she had released from the swimsuit. His body shook with desire.

  “Time to go up to the room, honey,” she whispered to him. Her tongue darted into his ear, ever so lightly, and he jerked in response.

  “Yeah,” he managed, winded.

  He rose from the blanket, holding his robe over his mid-section to hide his protrusion. Then he followed her languid walk across the beach, up to the boardwalk and past the band, toward the hotel. A drummer gave her a sly wink, which she returned.

  “Gawd-a-mighty, he delivered on his promise,” he thought, shaking his head in disbelief at what he had won for his service.

  He watched the undulation of the young woman’s hips, caught her lusty grin as she tossed her head back to see how the frustrated fellow behind her was progressing. She was fully two inches taller than he, slender, with big breasts and high, generous buttocks that nearly burst through the rear patch of her string bikini.

  Funny, though, he thought. She being a nigger. Figured the outfit would be against that sort of thing. “Mongrelizing,” somebody or other called it. But what the hell?

  When they reached his room, he freed himself of the bit of cloth that decent society in the tourist classes of Nassau dictated.

  She was a bit more coquettish about disrobing. First, she undid the tiny bow that held the wisp of a top half in place. The fullness of her breasts was something astonishing, to him and every other man. They were cocoa near the chest, the same shade as the rest of her skin. But the tone lightened toward her nipples, to shades of the darkest honey-color. And finally—those hard, pointed nipples; dark, nearly violet.

  He rushed at her. She covered her breasts modestly, shoved him back, playfully.

  She picked at the two bows on her hips, and the bottom section of her bikini fell to the floor. Her pubis was thick black and shining, a luxuriant, inviting sweetness.

  Before he could rush her again, this time with his penis in hand as if it were some sort of lance that grew at his groin, she took him by the shoulders and pushed him down to the bed. He crashed clumsily down, landing on his back, his manhood at full salute.

  She knelt at the side of the bed, and her soft breasts grazed his knees. She held his thighs, moved them apart, and said to him, “Now you’ll know some loving.” He melted into the bed, waiting for her to do her wondrous work on his body.

  He felt her breath hot against the tops of his thighs, her face moving closer to his groin.

&n
bsp; She dropped a hand from his thigh and reached for something below the bed, something she knew would be there.

  When her hand emerged, the fingers were fitted around a hypodermic syringe. She raised it slowly toward one of his hips, out of his range of sight.

  She breathed against the tip of his penis and his body quaked. Gently, her dark lips descended and enveloped him. He shouted his feral pleasure and never felt the slight sensation of sharp needlepoint steel puncture his hip.

  DANBURY, Connecticut

  Johnny Lee Rogers smiled at the men who made up the extra complement of guards. Then he tried a joke.

  “Listen, there’s a Chinaman and a Jew, and they’re sitting at a bar, both of them drinking.

  “For no reason at all, the Jew leans over and shoves the Chinaman to the floor. Sprawled down there on the floor, the Chinaman’s flabbergasted. He says to the Jew, ‘What the hell was that for?’

  “The Jew says, “That was for Pearl Harbor.’

  “The Chinaman says, ‘You idiot! Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. I’m Chinese!’

  “ ‘Chinese, Japanese… what’s the difference?’

  “So now the Chinaman gets back up on his bar stool and he sits there quietly, just drinking. For a long time, the Chinaman doesn’t say anything. Then, he leans over and shoves the Jew down onto the floor.

  “Now the Jew is down on the floor and he’s flabbergasted. So he says, ‘What the hell was that for?’

  “The Chinaman says, ‘That was for the Titanic!’

  “ ‘The Titanic? You idiot, the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg!’

  “ ‘Iceberg, Rosenberg, what’s the difference?’ “

  It always worked. The guards fell all over themselves laughing. Two of them slapped Rogers on the back, and the bond was made.

  “See, you boys got nothing to fear from me,” Rogers said, his drawl at its practiced best on such occasions. “I’m just a good old boy like you. They make me wear all these fancy clothes when I got to go on television to say all this stuff you know clear down to the short hairs is true enough, okay?”