The Hess Cross (34 page)

Crown stopped popping his elbow and perked up at the words. It meant the questions were about over as Hess's amnesia ended the session.

"Come on, Hess. You do this every day, and every day I don't believe you," Peter Kohler said, his voice low with menace.

"I'm telling you, I can't remember some things. My mind isn't as sharp as it once was. I can't remember." Hess's voice assumed a high, quavering pitch. "I'd tell you if I could."

"Well," said Enrico Fermi, already out of his seat and gathering his notes, "we might as well end the session. We won't get anything more today."

As usual, Fermi beckoned Crown to stay a few minutes to discuss progress. It was the only part of the sessions Crown enjoyed. Fermi was a visionary, a futurist. Their post-session discussions had on several occasions turned to Fermi's view of the future, a future aided by nuclear fission. Fermi was an optimist, a believer in man's ability to use science to better his condition. Applied science was his key to the future. Crown left these discussions feeling strangely elated.

The conference door closed, leaving Fermi and Crown alone.

"You weren't anxious to prolong the meeting today," Crown said as he poured water from a pitcher.

Fermi smiled. "With good reason. The graphite pile is completed. We'll be pulling the rod from the pile this afternoon."

"Do you ever worry that in all your figures and theories, you've made one little mistake somewhere that, although it doesn't look like much, simply means your theory is wrong and you won't have a sustained reaction? All you'll have is a big pile of pencil filling."

"That would be like you going into action with one of your pistol chambers empty. I doubt that happens often." Fermi laughed in his soft, catching way. "I think the theory is sound. This afternoon will be the proof."

"Can I supply a bottle of wine for the celebration?" Crown asked.

"We've got a case of wine already. Italian wine. There's going to be a dozen scientists, and another dozen technicians and engineers over there. If the experiment's a success, the wine won't last long. We've been working on this for a year, and we've developed a big thirst."

"On your other front, how do you think the interview went today?" Crown asked.

"We found out something incredible today, which you may not have caught, with your attention diverted like it was."

Crown's ears warmed. "It's that obvious?" he asked.

"You don't have to be Italian to notice the electricity shooting across the table between you and Miss McMillan. If my experiment fails, it'll be because of all the charged particles streaming from this room. Even that dolt Hess notices it. I think he fancies himself the matchmaker."

"That's embarrassing as hell."

Fermi's wonderful laugh filled the room again. "Well, back to the new discovery. Remember Hess saying that a
German professor has decided that pure graphite cannot be used as a moderator in a pile?"

"I remember something like that."

"Quite simply, that professor is wrong. I'm using graphite this afternoon. That's what that huge pile is in the squash court, as you know. Graphite is the perfect moderator. My tests show that. The German scientists have made a costly mistake."

"Why costly?" Crown asked, sipping the water.

"Because if they don't use graphite, they'll probably have to use heavy water, and lots of it. It's a much harder substance to come by. It means that because of a mistake in their calculations, the Germans have been thrown off the trail. That mistake might cost them a year or two."

"So you think they're behind in the bomb race?"

"Far behind. I'll send off a report to your boss tonight, after our experiment. There will be a few sighs of relief when they hear."

Crown slipped into his overcoat as Fermi said, "You're welcome to watch our experiment this afternoon. Probably at three or four o'clock. History in the making, as they say."

"Thanks, Doctor, but I've got other plans. A private organ concert that promises to be interesting."

"More so than splitting atoms?" Fermi asked as he closed his briefcase.

"The side show will be, believe me. Good luck, Doctor."

After Hess was locked in his cell, Crown met Heather in front of the EDC house. Because of the guards in the house and on the street, it was one of the few places Crown could relax. They stood enjoying the cold. She played with a button on his overcoat, and he laughed at her imitation of Hess. She blushed when Crown told her of Fermi's observation of electricity in the conference room. She asked how long Fermi would need Hess, meaning how long she would
be able to stay in Chicago with him. He didn't know. He waited until a group of five or six students passed them going his way. He and Heather walked a few paces behind them toward Rockefeller Chapel. The students were his shield.

"What are we seeing at the chapel?" she asked as she reached for his hand.

"Bach's Christmas Oratorio. As I said yesterday, it's only the organ rehearsal. The choir and solo vocalists won't be there."

"Why not wait for the performance?"

"We might not be here then. It's two weeks from now. And I hate the coughing and rustling and whispering that goes on when there's an audience. This way I get my favorite part of it without the extra noise. There'll be only three people in the entire cathedral—you, me, and the organist."

"I didn't know you were such an organ buff."

"Sure. My parents had an old Cornish pump organ. I got pretty good at it, too."

"Do you still play?"

"No," Crown replied, picking up the pace to stay with the clot of students. "The choice was organ or football, so there wasn't any choice. Now I couldn't play a chord progression, but I still enjoy cathedral organ music."

They walked along Kimbark to Fifty-ninth Street and then west toward the chapel. Fortunately the students were headed the same way. Crown's eyes darted from tree trunk to shrub to passing car. After almost a week, the vigilance was automatic. He walked with one hand around Heather's and the other discreetly on the stock of his pistol. Perhaps he was being overly cautious. The assassin would not strike on the street, with all the witnesses. He would wait for the first time Crown would be alone in over a week. That is, alone with Heather, the assassin's accomplice. That time would be in a few minutes inside the chapel.

Rockefeller Chapel had been named after the university's largest benefactor, John D. Rockefeller, who over the course of thirty years had contributed over thirty million dollars to the school. The trustees wanted his chapel to reflect his past and hopefully future generosity. It was as tall as a seventeen-story building, and like the great cathedrals of Europe, was constructed entirely of masonry without steel support. Immense exterior buttresses flanked the arched double doorways facing Fifty-ninth Street. The gray stone reminded Crown of a fortress rather than a church.

As they approached the doors, the carillon in the tower played Wagner's Parsifal tune—the Dresden "Amen"—and then the Great Bourdon, the 40,000-pound brass bell, sounded twice for the hour. They could feel the waves of bass sound pass through them as they stood before the cathedral.

Heather pointed to the gargoyles above the panel windows high on the front facade. "They're less fierce than the others around campus."

"Sure. You wouldn't want a demon on a cathedral. The one right above the doors is the archangel Michael. I don't know who the others higher up are. Maybe Rockefellers."

Heather laughed lightly and took his arm as they passed through the doors into the nave. The ceiling vaults loomed in the shadows a hundred feet over their heads. Through the ribbed arches on both sides of the nave were the side aisles. Above the arches were the long windows rising to the masonry webs near the ceiling. A row of pews extended the length of the nave. Two ornate pulpits rose from the floor near the far end. An exquisitely carved front piece separated the apse from the ambulatory at the tip of the cathedral. The north wall consisted of glass panels that allowed the nave modest illumination from the overcast sky.

Above the east pulpit, hanging like chrome stalactites,
were the enormous pipes of the cathedral's Skinner organ. Lined in even rows against the wall were the smaller pipes, which at a distance looked like a row of silver needles on black cloth. The large bass pipes hung in two enormous open cylinders attached to the wall. The rehearsal had begun, and the pipes filled the cathedral with soaring billows of sound, the mystical, inspiring swells of the Oratorio, Bach's Christmas gift to Germany.

Crown guided Heather to the spiral staircase that led to the choir gallery above the entrance to the cathedral. The stone staircase was not much wider than Crown's shoulders, and was very steep. Heather gripped the handrail as they wound up the stairs. They stepped through the narrow doorway into the gallery, walked to the banister, and sat in the front pew overlooking the nave. Behind them were the gallery organ pipes rising from a cabinet in back of the last pew. The tallest pipes were near the gallery wall, and as the row neared the center of the gallery, each pipe was fractionally shorter, forming a graceful inverted silver arch.

Heather asked where the organist was, and Crown pointed to the west apse behind the crossing. He said the organ was so complicated it looked like the instrument panel on an airplane.

Not, of course, to Michael Graham, the renowned organist who would accompany the orchestra and choir during the Oratorio. Graham was a master of the four-manual, thirty-six-rank organ and was known as the Organ Lion. He had been guest soloist at all the nation's major theaters and churches, including the Chapel of the Intercession in New York and the New York Paramount Theater, which housed the finest studio organ ever built. Graham was a perfectionist who demanded the utmost from the organs he played. He was known to adjust an organ for a full hour before playing the first bar. He had already done his
regulating on the Rockefeller Chapel organ, and he now sat in his cockpit engulfed in the organ's resonant tones. He was unaware of his audience of two.

Heather reached for his hand, but Crown didn't respond. He seemed lost in the music, which streamed into the gallery from the pulpit pipes, to mix with the tenor pipes behind them. She playfully squeezed his hand and again received no response. His eyes were narrowed in concentration, and Heather detected something she had never seen before, a dangerous iron glint. His jaw was tight, and his cheeks were sucked in with mental effort. She absently touched his arm. It was flexed hard. She wondered if there was something to Bach's Oratorio she was missing.

The assassin entered the cathedral's south door five minutes behind them. He wore a brown trench coat and rubber-soled shoes, and he carried a Luger, which had a black silencer attached to its barrel. He stood for two minutes in the shadows of the entryway searching the pews. The nave was empty. The organ drowned all sound and made him even more cautious than usual. He stepped softly to the side aisle and then to the cloister walk. No one. There was only one place his quarry could be. The choir gallery.

With his arm cocked and pistol raised, he silently climbed the spiral staircase. At the top of the stairs, he leaned against the banister post and for the final time twisted the silencer tight. He checked the safety and raised his arms to ensure they were free. He took a deep breath and jumped through the door into the gallery. The Luger's sight swept the pews.

The gallery was empty. Empty? Impossible. He had seen them enter the cathedral. The assassin had only one second to be puzzled. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur behind the gallery door. John Crown hit him in the
Adam's apple so hard the slap sounded clearly over the organ. The assassin dropped to the floor at Crown's feet, and the Luger skittered along a pew.

Heather rose from the floor in front of the first pew and saw the assassin's blond hair. "My God, Peter Kohler," she gasped, and her hand reflexively covered her mouth.

As Crown dragged Kohler toward the gallery organ pipes, he said, "Meet me at the cathedral's front door in five minutes."

Heather didn't move. She stared with wide eyes at Kohler, who sputtered and coughed as he came around. Crown said more forcefully, "Leave, now."

Her gaze switched to Crown and didn't leave him as she groped down the pew toward the door. "What are you going to do?"

Crown's eyes burned as he jerked the dazed Kohler to his knees. "He killed Miguel Maura," Crown said to no one. "Killed Miguel Maura." Kohler tried to stand, but Crown yanked him off his feet toward the rear pipes.

"John," Heather called over the soaring organ, "listen to me. Listen to me . . . "

He turned to her and said with a ferociousness that startled her, "Leave. Get out." She scrambled down the stone stairs, frightened for her life, without knowing why.

Michael Graham had warmed to the Rockefeller Chapel organ. The stops and pedals and keys were now familiar to him, and he felt comfortable with their action. The organ was beautifully pitched and had very little lag time. The chapel's echo seemed tailored to the Oratorio. The lighting on the sheet music was just right. The hardwood seat even seemed to fit his posterior. At times like this, Graham merged with his instrument, to become the composer's ultimate statement. His hands flew over the keys with elegant
precision, and his feet swept from pedal to pedal with masterful grace. Bach poured from the pipes and filled the cathedral with his spirit.

A sharply discordant note from a gallery piccolo pipe snapped Graham upright on the stool. He stopped in mid-bar and instantly determined it was the organ, not he, that had just spat on Bach. He pressed the offending key. From the gallery came a gurgling whoosh that should have been a melodious high-pitched tone. He checked the stops and pressed the key again. Same cacophonous result. He had never heard anything like it. It sounded vaguely evil.

He grabbed the organ-pipe wrench from under the stool, in case the piccolo pipe had somehow fallen off its mount, and with his brow wrinkled with concern, he walked to the south end of the nave and climbed the spiral stairs to the gallery.