The Hess Cross (33 page)

"I've no idea. Neither does Smithson, and he knows all about that base. Three bombs were used, one on an antiaircraft trainer, one on a weather station, and one on an amphibious-craft garage. The third bomb also blew down the security shack. They were destroyed, all right, but why? I can't imagine buildings with less strategic importance. So we have three top commandos going to great lengths to destroy worthless targets."

"Perhaps their intelligence concerning the buildings was wrong."

"That's unlikely. Almost anyone could find out what those buildings were, much less the German Abwehr. Hell, they probably have the whole base plotted to the last inch. But even if the commandos' information was wrong, the buildings spoke for themselves. What they were should have been obvious. They were blown up anyway. Then, there's one last question, the problem of the missing dynamite."

"What?" Crown had caught Sackville-West off guard. The Priest's voice was tinny and distant as he said, "What about the dynamite?"

"They stole three hundred and twenty pounds of it. Yet, our expert says only about half that was used at the navy station. We haven't found the remaining crate of explosives."

There was silence from Washington.

"Where do you think it is?" the Priest finally asked in a voice so dry it blended with the long-distance static.

"The Chicago police are looking for it."

"Wonderful."

"Maybe the Germans simply stole too much of it and then found they needed only half what they stole."

"In light of the caliber of the men involved, does that sound too likely?" Sackville-West asked, his voice no less irritated.

"No. So they have a use for the rest of it."

"Probably. Perhaps a long-fuse bomb already planted somewhere."

"No," Crown answered. "It's easy to fuse a bomb up to twelve hours. Any longer is risky. I think there's someone we haven't caught yet. Maybe another commando."

"Which brings us to your problem," Sackville-West said. "I still say those commandos are in Chicago because Hess is there. I don't know how they know, or why they've come. But it's just too coincidental that these bizarre events are occurring at the same time Hess is there."

"And you think I'm under the long gun because Hess is here?"

"Yes."

"So Hess, the commandos, and my potential assassin are on a common mission?"

"Not the same mission, necessarily, but they've got something to do with each other. That's the only explanation that makes sense."

"I'm going to find out some answers this afternoon."

"From the assassin?" Sackville-West asked.

"As I said, he'll come. And he'll live just long enough to tell me a few things."

"John, the odds against you increase drastically if you insist on that conversation."

"Do you have any better ideas how to break this open?"

"As long as it's you, not me, no. Are you going to need backup?"

"No."

"I have a hunch if Miguel Maura were alive, you'd want a backup man. Why not use Smithson?"

"Well, despite my previous opinion of him, he handled himself well against that Chicago cop who was going to shotgun the Germans. But no, I can handle this alone."

"In other words, you don't particularly want anyone to see your tormentor's fate." Sackville-West's laugh was brittle and cold.

The guard outside the phone booth reached for his holster and unbuttoned the cover snap. Crown's pistol was out of his belt and pointed at the guard through the glass before Crown realized snapping the flap was the guard's nervous habit. The guard's eyebrows shot up, and he backed into the wall when he saw the gun's snout aimed at his stomach. Crown shook his head, and the guard raised his hand away from the holster. He stood frozen as Crown continued the conversation.

"Getting back to the German commandos. We're pretty sure the Nazis want Hess dead because they're afraid he'll do exactly what he's doing this minute with Professor Fermi—talk his brains out. Perhaps the commandos came to get rid of Hess."

"How did they know he was in Chicago?" the Priest asked.

"No idea."

"And if that were their purpose, why did they go to the trouble of the hijacking and the explosions?"

"Maybe to get our attention," Crown said. "Perhaps they're halfway to their objective. We're keeping von Stihl and Lange at the EDC house only a few yards from Hess. Professor Ludendorf is questioning them. Von Stihl has a bad concussion from a bullet crease, and he's not very coherent."

"From what I understand, they might just as well be a continent away."

"That's right," Crown said, still pointing his pistol at the guard. "The house is guarded so heavily, nothing could happen. Plus, they're chained hand and foot to their beds. They've got a little room to move, but not enough to cause any trouble. They'll stay that way until Hess goes back to London."

"When'll that be?"

"Fermi has been talking to him for about an hour every morning. He's doing that right now down the hallway. Even with Professor Ludendorf and Peter Kohler's help, it's a slow process. Hess's mind fades in and out. Hess's information is interesting, but not exactly earth-shaking. Fermi is convinced Hess knows more, and that's why he doesn't object to talking to Hess, even though the time of his experiment is close."

"When?"

"He told me he was going to try it this afternoon. That's why he's so impatient and excited during the interview this morning. He keeps looking in the direction of the squash court as if he could see the pile through the walls."

"If the experiment is successful, it'll be one of the greatest achievements in human history. I can't blame him for being excited," Sackville-West said.

"No, neither can I. Well, I'll get back to the interview. This is the sixth time Fermi has questioned Hess. The strain on all of us is beginning to show. I'm glad Ludendorf and Kohler handle Hess so well. I wouldn't have the persistence."

"One last thing, John." Crown knew the voice. The Priest saved the hard questions for last, and this was it. "I trust you have your plans regarding Heather McMillan worked out?"

Crown couldn't answer. After several seconds, the Priest continued, "You know our policy. You have a little discretion, but not much. This matter won't ever be released to
the press, so she won't get a trial." Sackville-West again paused for Crown's response. Again there was none, so he added, "I can send another operative to Chicago to relieve you of that responsibility, if you want."

"No. No, that won't be necessary."

Heather's time was coming. His actions were to be automatic. And terminal. It was standard procedure. Following the books.

She had made massive inroads on his better sense. Crown had tried to insulate himself so his emotions wouldn't get the upper hand. As he sat sweating in the suffocating booth, he knew he had failed. The hard line between work and play had blurred. He could no longer think of Heather as a tool used to trap an assassin. Yet that's what she was. A disposable tool.

She was tracing Crown. Heather was a shadow whose job was easy. She didn't have to wait in freezing Chicago sleet outside a building for hours while her mark was inside, or follow him through city traffic, or run up six flights of stairs while he rode an elevator. She was what the trade called a grace shadow, one who was in the good graces of the mark. She accompanied him openly and constantly. All she had to do was to occasionally report to her employers, which Crown had seen her do three times in the past week.

She was a traitor, and he was in love with her. Christ, what a spot. He had postponed coming to a resolution. He thought about her constantly, but had avoided the decision. The choice would soon be upon him. But there wasn't a choice. She was bought by Miguel Maura's killers. She was a paid informer, and she could have only one fate. As he sat in the tiny booth, Crown became so angry at his predicament that he unconsciously cocked the Smith and Wesson. The guard outside the phone booth went up on his tiptoes against the wall and raised his shaking hands even farther.

"Does Fermi give any indication when he'll be done with
Hess?" Sackville-West's voice snapped Crown's thoughts back to the booth.

"No," Crown replied, and continued rapidly as if to compensate for the unknown amount of time he had been lost in his reverie. "The bomber crew is out at Midway, and they're ready to go on a few minutes' notice."

"Good luck this afternoon, then."

The telephone was heavy in Crown's hand as he lifted it to the hook. He felt as if he had spent thirty minutes in a sauna, and he slumped against the phone-booth wall, overwhelmed with fatigue and resignation. The effects of his long-gun vigil mingled with an immense sadness, and he was enervated. He wanted to walk away from the business, go back to Oregon and become a harbormaster. Leave Hess and Fermi and, most of all, leave Heather, leave her alive. . . . Without completing the thought, he pushed himself up and shoved open the booth door. He was surprised to find the guard backed up against the wall across from the booth with his hands in the air.

"Something wrong?" Crown asked.

"Jesus," the guard blurted without lowering his hands, "you've held a cocked pistol on me for ten minutes."

Crown noticed his pistol for the first time since he had drawn it. He slipped it back into his pants and muttered an apology as he walked past the guard to the interview room.

Crown entered the conference room without interrupting Hess, who was lecturing on the National Socialist Workers' system.

"You see, it's a centralized government, with all important decisions made at the top, at the Führer's office. That's why we could proceed so rapidly with the experiments." Hess gestured grandly and leaned back in his chair. "We don't have ten levels of decision-making to hinder progress. We can—"

"If we can return to the question, Herr Hess," Enrico Fermi said, without looking up from his pad, where he was either calculating the future of the U.S. atom-bomb experiments or doodling. Crown couldn't tell which. "You said a moment ago that Professor Bothe concluded that graphite was not a suitable moderator for uranium reactors. When did he figure this out?"

"In January 1941," Hess answered, with his hands now calmly on the table, his lecture abruptly halted.

"Do you remember his calculations?"

"He used a 110-centimeter sphere of electrographite of the highest purity, but the diffusion length was not seventy as expected, but only thirty-five centimeters. So he concluded that unless uranium 235 could be enriched, graphite could not be used as a pile moderator." Hess's voice was now lifeless as he revealed the secrets of the German experiments. He seemed to have switched his mind onto automatic, perhaps to avoid thinking of the consequences of his traitorous revelations.

Fermi regularly glanced at the wall clock as the questions and answers continued. He fidgeted in his chair and rhythmically tapped his pencil against an unused ashtray. He clearly wished he was elsewhere today. Crown wasn't sure Fermi was listening. The physicist's thoughts were across the street under the grandstand, where, if his years of calculations were correct, the first self-sustained nuclear reaction would take place that afternoon. Small wonder Fermi was not concentrating on the wandering deputy führer.

Heather started their little game. She looked up to catch Crown's eye. He looked away, and continued to avoid her stare for a few minutes, until with apparent complete collapse of willpower he met her eyes, and she smiled. Only Hess seemed to notice their childish game. He raised his hand and majestically swept the air in a unifying gesture,
as if he had the power to marry them on the spot. He smiled benignly to give official Third Reich approval to their conjunction.

"Quit screwing around, Hess." Peter Kohler's hard voice jerked Hess upright in his chair. Kohler was Hess's constant reminder that harsher tactics were available if information was not forthcoming. But in days past, not even Kohler had been able to prevent Hess's mind from straying and receding after an hour or so of questions. Nothing, not entreaties, threats, promises, could stop him from slipping out of control. So the sessions had been concentrated efforts to drain his head of scientific data. It came in spurts. For five or six minutes, Hess would flow free with hard information that would keep Heather, Ludendorf, and Fermi filling page after page. Then he would fade into pompous pronouncements about the German political system or Lebensraum, Nazi expansionism. The sessions ended when Hess could no longer talk because of amnesia or stomach cramps. After each interrogation, Fermi had said that although he had learned more about the German experiments, he still felt Hess was not telling all he knew. So another session would be scheduled for the following day.

Professor Ludendorf and Peter Kohler proved themselves masters at soft interrogation. They managed to keep Hess on track for perhaps thirty minutes of each session. Ludendorf would lead the discussion and pamper Hess's ego, while Kohler threatened Hess if he balked. It was like prying open a brittle box. If too much pressure was exerted, the box would splinter. If insufficient pressure was used, it would never open. It was a precarious balancing act on the thin line between Hess's sane ego and his weak-minded retreats.

Long months of invaluable service to the Allies had taught Ludendorf and Kohler when to push and when to indulge in whims. They guided Hess through the
conversation expertly, treating him like the fragile package he was. It was an endless give-and-take, a sparring match between the flamboyant and disturbed deputy führer and the meticulous, kindly professor and his impatient, angry assistant. It produced results. The Allies had gained vital insights into the German heavy-water and cyclotron experiments.

The sessions bored Crown to the verge of sleep. He felt like he was eight years old sitting in Sunday school listening to a nonsensical speech on being born again through faith. His butt ached, and he squirmed in his chair. Heather was his only distraction during the sessions, a burdensome one at that.

"I forget. I really do," Hess whined.