by Ace Collins
While Wilshire snapped the vial in two and attempted to get the man to breathe in the vapors, Curtis walked over to a table to look at the one book the old man at one time had been reading. It was a Bible and, like Bleicher’s, it was in English, not German. How strange.
She opened the cover and saw Otto Mueller’s name written on the title page. Yet there was one major difference in the two books. Unlike the apparently new one they had found buried with Wilshire’s father, this one was well worn. Many of the pages were dog eared. Yet, as she thumbed through the chapters, she saw no verses underlined. Most people who read Scripture enough to show wear on the pages also marked passages and wrote notes in the margins. These pages were clean.
Then she remembered the passage marked in Bleicher’s Bible. Rapidly flipping the pages from the back to the front, she landed in Genesis. And like a forty-foot neon sign, there it was. Mueller had underlined the same passage: Genesis 7:17–23.
There was a link between Mueller and Bleicher and with Schleter, with Swope’s Ridge. Those underlined words proved it. If she had actually thought to pray, she would have considered her discovery an answer to that prayer.
All doubt vanished. She was suddenly sure of her motives and had the faith to believe they were correct. Why else would that Bible have been there for her to find?
23
“HE’S COMING TO,” THE ENGLISHMAN ANNOUNCED. “Diana, keep watch outside the door. This conversation has to be quick. Give a light knock as a warning.”
Curtis was not going to depend on a man she barely knew, so she ignored Wilshire’s order. She could not walk away from an interview this important. She believed this was an opportunity destined to happen and not just of their making.
“We’re fine,” she assured Wilshire.
Mueller’s arms began pulling at the restraints; his eyelids fluttered, and his breathing became a bit deeper, more intentional. The smelling salts were working, but how much of the man would come back to them and what was the state of his mind?
“Otto,” Wilshire whispered. He followed by asking in German, “Can you hear me?”
The old man slowly nodded.
“How did you know Henrick Bleicher?”
“Bleicher?” Mueller whispered.
“Yes, Bleicher.”
The old man smiled but said nothing. Wilshire glanced at Curtis. “You really need to be watching outside.”
She nodded, walked over to the door, opened it a crack, and looked down the hall. She eased the door shut. “We’re clear.”
In German, Wilshire said, “Otto, tell me about Bleicher.”
“English,” the old man said.
“No, he was German,” Wilshire said. “He was in the SS.”
Instantly agitated, Mueller formed his hands into fists His eyes glaring, he growled, “English. English.”
Curtis moved toward the bed. Wilshire said, “I’m guessing he knows I’m English and doesn’t trust me.”
“No! “ Mueller said.
“Calm him down,” Curtis said, “or we’re going to have company.”
“English! “ Mueller almost yelled again.
“Peter, tell him your father was Henrick Bleicher.”
“English! “ the old man said again.
Curtis looked at the Bible on the table. “I know what he wants. Talk to him in English.” Leaning close to Mueller’s ear, she asked, “Do you know John Schleter?”
“Yes,” the old man said. “You know Schleter? Where is he?”
“In America. He moved there after the war,” she said.
“Who was he?” Wilshire asked.
“The driver,” Mueller said. “And Henrick, did he get out of the country too?”
Wilshire said, “What do you mean, did Henrick get out of the country?”
“How do you know Henrick?” Mueller’s voice was much softer.
“He was my father.”
The old man cocked his head and studied his guest. “You are Peter?” Tears welled up in his eyes. “My child, I held you when you were so tiny. So long ago. So long ago.”
“Yes, I am Peter. Tell me about my father.”
“We thought Henrick was dead,” the old man whispered. “Now I know. He accomplished the mission. I worried for nothing. That’s why no one died in America. All these years, I kept waiting for news of the deaths. And your father…how many millions he saved. Did he destroy all of it?”
Curtis looked to Wilshire. What was he talking about? What had Bleicher destroyed? Or was it still on Swope’s Ridge?
“Mr. Mueller,” she said, “why were you so worried about the people in America?”
“The Ark of Death,” Mueller said. “It must have been sunk. It must all be on the ocean floor. Our prayers were answered.”
“Ark of Death?” Wilshire asked.
A smile crossed Mueller’s face. “Your father must have stopped it. The last time I saw him, he was trying to get away from the storm troopers. He told me to pray for him. So many bombs that night. So many bombs. I prayed in the church all night long, but when I didn’t hear, I was sure he didn’t make it. But he must have stopped the Ark. My prayers were answered.”
Mueller looking up at Wilshire and whispered, “Your father was a good man. So brave! He gave up everything to fight Hitler.”
“To fight Hitler?” Wilshire asked. “He was an SS officer.”
“So they thought.” Mueller smiled. “Like me he was a double agent. He had to get to America before the Ark did. If he hadn’t, Hitler’s plan…”
The look in the old man’s eyes grew distant. He blinked and took a very deep breath. Curtis and Wilshire leaned closer. Finally Mueller whispered, “He stopped the planes. Schleter helped. He couldn’t have done it alone.”
Otto Mueller’s eyes locked on Peter. “You have his smile. He had a wonderful smile. He…was…”
The room was strangely silent.
“He’s drifted off again,” Wilshire said.
“Did you know about the Ark?”
“Not really. But now I know my father was erased from history because they found out he was a working for the Allies. That must be why it was so easy for Mum, a German, to gain admittance to England after the war. That’s why she never quit looking for him. Because some disaster didn’t happen, she expected him to find her.”
Curtis picked up the Bible and walked over to the door. She looked out. “The hallway’s clear. Let’s get out of here.”
Wilshire nodded. He looked down at the old man and touched his head. “You didn’t need to worry. My pop took care of it.”
24
DIANA CURTIS HAD NEVER SEEN AN EXPRESSION LIKE the one now on Peter Wilshire’s face. It had been plastered there ever since they sneaked away from the nursing facility. As soon as they were back in the car, his whole body relaxed. It was as if a great weight had been removed. Until that moment, he had been calm and formal, like a true Brit, but now he acted like a kid. One visit with a feeble old man had transformed him.
As soon as they were certain they weren’t being followed, they stopped at a small cafe about ten miles north of Berlin. Curtis ate in silence, unsure what to say that could put the day’s events into perspective. Instead she waited for Wilshire’s reaction. But his eyes looked right through her. It was as if he was in a trance and didn’t want to wake up. Yet the silence wasn’t awkward. There was something beautiful about it. The lack of words came from joy and happiness…and peace.
They left the cafe and Wilshire headed toward a small flower filled city park instead of the car. They strolled down a brick path and sat on a bench. It was twilight. A light breeze surrounded them with the fragrance of new blooms. On the other side of a stand of trees, a group of children laughed.
Stretching his legs, he put his hands behind his head and looked skyward. “See it? The first star.”
She nodded.
His eyes fixed on the darkening sky, Wilshire said, “Schleter. He must have been my father’s driver in those last da
ys in Germany. That’s what Mum meant. She knew they were together. She knew if I found Schleter, I’d find out the truth about my father. I was afraid I’d never know, that I’d die before I found out the truth. But I’ve always been afraid of the truth, afraid of what I’d find. Now I know I had nothing to fear. You found Schleter, and you found the Bible with my father’s name, and that led you here. In a way, this afternoon, Schleter drove my father home one more time so I could know him as he really was.”
“Yes,” Curtis said, “in a way he did. But there’s more.”
And she launched into the story of the tragic night on Farraday Road, Schleter’s fortress-like house on Swope’s Ridge, the rumors of a curse, the deaths somehow tied to that land. She then told about the old, abandoned school bus and finding the trapdoor under the bus, the vault that had so protected the coffin for decades.
And before she could say more, Wilshire said, “My father was buried there.”
“Yes.” She had thought the Brit would be angry at her previous deception. But hearing the truth seemed to fill him with pride.
“Hard to believe my father died in America. The mission led him there. But how did he die? And why was his body hidden so securely?”
“He was shot by a German rifle. To pull off something as big as Mueller made this mission of death sound, the SS would have had men on the ground in the U.S. Even after the war ended, they probably kept looking for those who had deceived them, and that included your father. Somehow he stopped the mission. He must have found the Germans. Or they found him and got the drop on him.”
“In our business,” Wilshire said, “most of us die because someone gets the drop on us. I’ve been lucky.” He studied the sky and in a wishful tone added, “I’d like to find out how he died, what this mission was all about. Now that I’m sure he was working for the right side, it makes me want to know more about him. He must have had a lot of courage. He must have been a jolly good gent.”
Curtis nodded. “A lot more courage than I can imagine. Going undercover as part of Hitler’s inner circle would’ve been invaluable to the Allies and would have taken nerves of steel.”
“You know, Diana, I’m no longer a young man. I was born in 1945, so you can do the math. For several years now I’ve seen my life winding down and wondered what you do when you retire. I’ve long tried to run from that thought. Yet maybe I’ve been so restless, so dogged in my pursuit of criminals, so devoted to my life as a law officer because I was trying to make up for the great harm and pain that I believed my father had helped foster in the world. I blamed the SS for his not being in my life. I blamed it for my mum’s heartache. Believing he was so bad made me yearn to be a better person. It gave me purpose. It drove me. Looking back on it now, maybe that was good. Maybe he was teaching me all along.”
Glancing back up into the night sky, he said, “Now what will drive me will be knowing what he sacrificed in order to save millions of lives. I no longer have to keep myself busy trying to prove my family’s worth to mankind. It’s already been proven. Anything I do is just a bonus.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Peter. A shame you had to wait so long to understand that.”
He nodded. “Back at the nursing home, when Mueller kept saying that his prayers were answered, I realized so were mine.”
“I guess they were,” Curtis agreed.
“No, don’t write off what I just said as another cheap ‘thank God’ whisper in the night.” He turned to face her, his tone serious. “Wrap your brain around it. Understand that I’ve been sincerely praying an impossible prayer for more than three decades. That prayer asked God to rewrite history. I kept begging and begging for a way I could embrace who I am, who my father was. Your finding his body in Arkansas, your visit to the archives, our trip to see Mueller—all those unrelated events led me to know who my father really was.
“God did answer my prayers. History was rewritten. That is impossible…and yet it happened!
“I have to believe that for Pop to do what he did, to sacrifice all that he did, meant he believed, he had faith. Suddenly faith is alive in my life too.” He thumbed his chest. “I feel it inside here. I’ve never felt so alive! “
25
CURTIS WAITED, ALLOWING HER COMPANION TO SAVOR the moment a bit longer. Night had cloaked the park in a darkness broken only by circles of light under the lampposts. A few people walked the paths, some with dogs, others alone, maybe cutting through the park on their way home. Finally she decided to find out if he knew the story of the Ark of Death that Mueller had mentioned. “Because of what you’ve been looking for all these years, I assume you know a great deal about World War II history.”
“I know some.”
“The Ark of Death. Did that mean anything to you?”
Wilshire shook his head. “When he said it, no. But there’s a story I once heard about how Hitler planned to use a specially built Sterbenden Schiff, which means ‘dying ship.’ I heard it when I was young in England. It scared me to death. I thought the ship was out at sea, hiding in a fog bank, waiting for an order to launch an attack and wipe out all life on earth. As an adult I figured the story’s sole purpose was to frighten children at bedtime. What you Yanks call a bogeyman tale.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
“Maybe not. I once overheard my mother speaking to a relative in the kitchen. They were talking in German, and it sounded serious, so I hung back by the door. I heard Mum whisper, ‘Bogen des Todes.’ My Sunday school teacher the week before had told us about Noah’s Ark and described it as a boat of life. So Bogen des Todes, which means ‘Ark of Death’ in German, caught my attention.”
“Anything else?”
“Consider this: Nazi scientists used concentration camps as testing grounds for poisons. They were looking for more efficient ways of killing large groups of people. Maybe they discovered something, some weapon of mass destruction, perhaps a kind of poison gas. Think of the hysteria if such a bomb were dropped from a plane or fired from a ship. A whole city could be destroyed. It would’ve turned the war around. Maybe a ship was sent and my father intercepted it and somehow sank it. Maybe the Ark of Death was real.”
Curtis nodded. That made sense. But if the war ended with no one dying, why was Mueller still so frightened even now? She had seen his face and heard his voice. He was terrified. “Why is it that we spend so much time finding new ways to create death and so little looking for ways to enhance life?”
Peter, probably still caught up in the truth about his father, didn’t respond.
“We need to be heading back. I want to get to the States tomorrow and figure out how this ties in with the mystery I’m trying to solve.”
“Do you think it does?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
As they strolled back through the park gate, Wilshire asked, “When you have this thing figured out, could you send my father’s body back to me?”
“Of course. I’m guessing your family’s going to be very excited to know the real story.”
He shook his head. “They don’t even know he was in the SS. I’ve hidden that from everyone. Now I can talk. You can’t imagine how it feels. Thank you, Diana.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
They walked back to the white Mercedes in silence. Unlocking her door, he waited until she was safely inside, shut her in, and walked around to the other side. He had just closed his door and was reaching for his seat belt when something caught his eye.
“Diana, I’ve a favor to ask of you.”
“Sure.”
He reached into the back seat and picked up Mueller’s Bible. His fingers lightly traced the embossed words on the cover. “Could this old Brit have this?”
She nodded.
He smiled, then his expression changed. With no word of explanation he grabbed her hair and forcefully pushed her head toward the floor. Caught off guard, she screamed as pain shot through her neck and down her spine. The glass on the passenger side of
the rental car shattered in a volley of shots. Peter’s tight grip relaxed. She heard squealing tires and a roaring engine, then nothing but stark, foreboding silence.
Stunned, Curtis sat up and studied the man who less than twenty-four hours before had saved her life. Now he had done it again, but this time he’d paid the ultimate price. Like his father, he had been executed. But this hit had been delivered mob style.
She fought the urge to run. She fought the urge to scream. She even fought the urge to cry. Instead she forced herself to study his bullet-riddled form, trying to memorize every detail of the senseless death illuminated by tranquil moonlight. Blood seeped from a dozen different wounds. His back was pressed against the driver-side door panel. His head had flopped over on his shoulder. And just like his father, who had died more than sixty years before, Peter clutched a Bible in his left hand.
She turned her head away, pulled her purse from the floorboard, and reached for the door handle. She was about forty feet from the car, hidden by the midnight shadows, when the first person exited a nearby building to see what had created all the commotion. The curious observer was quickly joined by a few others. From her hiding place, Curtis tearfully watched them move slowly toward the car. Then she heard the first wails of police sirens. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, turned, and walked away.
Thirty minutes later she was on a train to Berlin. Two hours later she was packed and in a taxi heading for the airport. By dawn she was flying over England. But no matter where her body was or what window she peered from, her eyes saw a horror she couldn’t fathom—Peter Wilshire’s lifeless eyes staring straight into her soul.
26
LIJE EVANS PULLED HIS 1936 CORD WESTCHESTER into the barn behind his house. He had taken the car out for a cruise as much to relieve boredom as to allow the classic’s juices to flow. Yet even being behind the wheel of this motoring icon didn’t hold his interest for long. The evening air felt stale and the concrete ribbon of Arkansas 9 bored him. So he’d driven only a few miles from his home on Shell Hill before he made a U-turn and headed back home to his log-and-native-stone house overlooking Salem, a town of twelve hundred that his family had called home for three generations.