The Hess Cross (39 page)

Crown nodded.

"Then this should end here."

Von Stihl rolled to a crawling position and like a dog with a wounded foot inched toward the submachine gun. It must have been unbearably painful, but his face was composed, even serene. His mangled knee left a long pool of blood behind him as he crawled the four yards. He dropped to a sitting position and very slowly reached for the Schmeisser. His hands gripped its stock, and he brought the weapon to him. Crown waited until the barrel began to slowly swing to him, then fired once into von Stihl's heart. The German lowered the weapon and lay back on the runway, dead.

Crown crawled under
Iron Mike's
belly and stuck his
head up through the hatch. It was dark, darker than the night outside. He listened intently and heard nothing, then climbed up into the plane's fuselage. He struggled over wiring and piping and bomb-rack brackets, then almost tripped over the prostrate form of an alive and terrified Enrico Fermi. The scientist's eyes were wide open, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. He said nothing. Crown stupidly patted him on the shoulder, then crouched forward toward the cockpit ladder, guiding himself by holding the backs of the wicker seats.

Through the darkness, he saw an inert body slumped against the side of the plane. He grabbed its shoulder and rolled it face-up. Josef Ludendorf's throat lay open, and his shoulderblade protruded from his flight jacket. At the moment of impact, a propeller fragment had torn through the fuselage and ended his life instantly.

Crown jerked his gun up at the rustling above him. A black boot stepped on the cockpit ladder, then another. With the movement of an old man, Rudolf Hess slowly climbed down to the fuselage floor, until he was at eye level with Crown's pistol.

With a voice soft in its dignity and despair, the deputy führer said, "Crown, this time it's really over, isn't it?"

Historical Notes

Rudolf Hess was convicted at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials of crimes against the peace and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Today he is the only remaining prisoner at the Spandau Prison.

German submarine U-513 was depth-charged by U.S. Navy aircraft on July 19, 1943, near Santos, Brazil. All hands were lost.

Fritz Knochlein, the SS captain who ordered the massacre of British soldiers at Le Paradis, was tried for war crimes. Two British soldiers, who had been forgotten under the pile of bodies, testified against him. Knochlein was executed in January 1949.

Also by James Thayer:

House of Eight Orchids
The Gold Swan
Terminal Event
Force 12
Five Past Midnight
White Star
Man of the Century
S-Day: A Memoir of the Invasion of England
Ringer
Pursuit
The Earhart Betrayal
The Stettin Secret

About the Author:

James Thayer is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels. Clive Cussler has called him a “master story-teller,” and his novels are “highly original and absolutely riveting” (
Irish Independent)
, “heart-thumping” (
Boston Globe
), and “electrifying.”
Detroit Free Press.
The
New York Times Book Review
has said that his "writing is smooth and clear. . . . It wastes no words, and it has a rhythm that only confident stylists achieve.” He is also the author of
The Essential Guide for Writing a Novel,
a leading manual for novelists.

Thayer is a graduate of Washington State University and the University of Chicago Law School. He teaches novel writing at the University of Washington extension school where he has received the Excellence in Teaching Award in the Arts, Writing and Humanities. He is a member of the Washington State Bar Association and the International Thriller Writers. Thayer and his family live in Seattle. His web site is
JamesThayer.com
.

The Earhart Betrayal

Prologue

July 2, 1937

The Electra's dual Wasp engines filled the cockpit with a comforting low rumble.

Two thousand feet below, the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean was blue and chilling and utterly endless. The sky and sea were blurs that met on the horizon in a misted seam. For the hundredth time, the pilot squinted at the distance. Released, and squinted again. Two tiny dots speckled the seam.

"Saipan and Tinian," Fred Noonan, the navigator, muttered angrily. "I still don't like any of this. Those islands are held by the goddamn Japanese."

"All we have to do is pick up the documents. There's no other way to get them out," the pilot said soothingly, then inched the stick forward. The Electra's nose dipped almost imperceptibly. "Imperial Navy plans of some sort. We'll only be on the ground sixty seconds."

"We didn't even put this thousand-mile dogleg into our flight plan. The Brits at Le should've been told."

The pilot laughed softly, "Believe me, Fred, they know all about it on Howland. They've got cruisers and planes ready. They even lengthened the airstrip there to accommodate us. This little detour isn't as spontaneous as you'd like to think."

"I don't like the goddamn Japs or their islands," Noonan persisted, nervously ruffling the chart.

"Has it ever occurred to you," the pilot said lightly, "that 'goddamn' and 'Jap' are separable words?"

"Americans, British, Australians and goddamn Japs. That's how I learned it."

Minutes later, the plane skimmed the coconut palms that ringed Saipan's south airfield, a mud strip hacked out of the jungle. The Electra touched down and the pilot fought against a starboard drift as gravel grabbed at the wheels. The plane bounced to a stop a dozen yards from the wall of vegetation at the runway's end. Noonan flipped off his straps and pressed his head against the cabin ceiling, angling for a view off the port wing where he thought he had seen a metallic glimmer.

It was more than a glimmer. An olive green, flatbed truck pushed its way through the tangle of jungle onto the strip. On its door was a rising sun, and on the bed was a three-foot square crate, solid and heavy, canting the truck.

Noonan turned toward the freight hatch. "I hope the driver is our man." He slid open the hatch. A burst of glittering light and twisting wire slapped at his face, and he reflexively punched at it, ducking his head. The fluttering wire fell away, back to the man who stood under the hatch.

"It's just a pulley, mate. Here, I'll try again." This time the truck driver wound his arm slowly, giving Noonan time to sight on the wire and pulley.

The navigator caught the apparatus and stared at it for several seconds. "We're here for some papers. We won't be needing a pulley, will we?"

"Much heavier than they should be, I must admit." The driver looped the hook onto the crate. He was a tall, rangy man with slightly stooped shoulders and a seamed, thoroughly British face. They had been told to expect a Japanese. "Attach the pulley on an overhead girder, will you? Won't take a minute, and you'll be on your way."

The navigator reluctantly obeyed, cranking the crate off the truck bed to the Electra's hatch. He gripped the crate and grunted as he wrestled it into the plane. "I don't care what your friend in Washington says, this crate is too heavy for documents," he said to the pilot. Quickly lifting a hammer from the Electra's tool kit, he pried open one of the slats and bent close, peering into the box. Blinked, then looked again.

"What is it, Fred?"

"It's an elephant's trunk!" Noonan pushed his arm through the opening. "It's a whole elephant. I can feel the trunk and an ear. A miniature stone elephant, for Christ's sake." Noonan pulled his hand from the crate, then angrily turned to the hatch. "Listen, pal, our deal was to fly some documents out of here, not some elephant carving. If you think. . . ."

Pointed unerringly at his right eye, the pistol stopped Noonan midsentence. In a calm monotone, the driver said, "Climb down out of there. And call the pilot."

Noonan's hands moved away from his body. "Mister, these islands are Jap-owned. If we don't hurry. . . ."

"Jump down. Now." Had there been even a hint of incompetence in the driver's voice, perhaps Noonan would have balked. He one-stepped the wing and hopped to the ground, his eyes never leaving the revolver.

The pilot's face emerged from the hatch's shadow. "What's wrong, Fred?"

The pistol moved fractionally. "You, too. Get down."

The gun followed her movements until Amelia Earhart stood alongside her navigator. Her glance flickered between the driver's face and his crate.

"Back away from the plane," the driver ordered. The high whine of an approaching troop truck filtered through the jungle.

"Mister, we're just here to pick up documents. We're due at Howland Island . . .," she said.

It was the first time in their long friendship Noonan had heard pleading in Amelia Earhart's voice. It was the last thing he would ever hear.

The pistol barked twice. Two muffled pops that rustled with the leaves were lost in the overgrowth. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan slumped to the runway.

The driver quickly climbed up the wing and into the hatch, aware of the scrambling sounds in the jungle. An approaching patrol. Perilously close. But the driver paused at the crate. His hand hesitated, trembling. He slipped it slowly into the crate until the coolness of the stone rested against his palm. His breath caught and his stomach tightened, a carnal stirring.

Only the frantic yells pulled the driver from the stone. With a last lustful glance at the crate, he lowered himself into the cockpit. He quickly tested the ailerons, then pulled the accelerator with a smooth, practiced motion. The Wasps thundered and the plane lurched forward, bouncing into a turn. More throttle, and the Electra gained a steady rhythm as it coursed down the strip, flinging itself toward the palm trees. The pilot pulled the stick, and the plane hesitated only a second before muscling itself into the sky and shooting over the waving leaves.

Three Imperial Navy shore patrolmen struggled through the jungle wall as the Electra's tail disappeared over the trees. One soldier fired, but his target was already too distant. With weapons drawn, they ran toward the bodies on the runway. The patrolmen did not see Amelia Earhart's Electra bank toward Singapore.

* * * *

I

Two dull sensations: the suffocating, gaseous heat and the wet slap of vomit sloshing across the truck bed. Three days with the doors bolted shut. Jolting days wedged between the bodies of the hopeless.

* * * *

Amelia Earhart's bones brought them to Singapore, to this Bugis Street café to meet the transvestite. Joseph Snow sipped his Tiger Beer, then stared uncomfortably ahead, directly into his wife's eyes.

"These poor girls have spent hours primping and you won't even glance at them," she smiled, lifting her tea cup. Under the tropical sun her black hair seemed cobalt blue and her smoke-colored eyes paled to a steely noncolor.

"They aren't women, they're men, and you can grin all you want, I still feel like a fool sitting here."

Connie Snow looked flatteringly at several of the transvestites. It was midday, a smothering blanket of a day in May, 1946, and Snow left damp patterns wherever his hands touched. Yet the Bugis Street women sitting in groups around the tables were fresh and unruffled. They occasionally tasted their tonic water, seldom spoke to one another and constantly searched for red-headed devils. A few wore elegant cheongsams, slit to the knees. Others had the latest Western fashions, silk blouses with blocked shoulders. The wigs surrounding the brown faces were of improbable colors: honey and auburn and cinder gray. And the gold. Gold earrings, gold bracelets, gold cigarette holders. One lovely specimen graced her eyelids with gold sequins.

Still locked on his wife's eyes, Snow said, "What do I call the contact? Him or her?" "

He'll be dressed as a lady. Call her 'her.' She'd be offended. . . ."

Gleeful laughs from the next table interrupted Connie's lecture. An Australian sailor— cap and ribbons and spats— lowered himself into a chair between two of the café's spangled and ambiguous patrons.

"Hello, Jack. You buy Betty Grable a tonic?"

The sailor grinned enormously. "Your name's Betty Grable, is it? Well, Betty, you're going to have a good time with this cobber."

"You bet you, Jack." The transvestite's eyes followed the sailor's hand as he reached for his sea purse. "Sodding hot weather, eh, Jack? Any more come with you to see Betty?"

Snow turned back to his wife who had lost interest in the sailor's fleecing. She spread on the table two photographs of Amelia Earhart, one showing her in a nurse's aide uniform, her eyes soft and guileless, her full mouth playfully turned up at the corners. A face of innocence and energy. The second photo was taken years later at Southampton after her first flight across the Atlantic. The mayor of Southampton supported her elbow. Her mouth hung open with fatigue, and her eyes were glossy and unfocused. The flight suit was rumpled and soiled, accentuating her sagging appearance.

"You know, Joseph, when she wasn't cloaked in those leather helmets and jackets, she was quite pretty."

"Staring at those old photos won't help us. We're after her bones, and bones all look alike, especially when they've been buried for a few years."

"You're being testy," she said, still examining the prints.

"And just because it's ninety degrees, my beer is piss-warm, and I'm under siege by a dozen sexual oddballs gives me no right to be testy."

She looked up to laugh, but one of the oddballs was standing at her husband's shoulder, reaching for a chair at their table. Snow instinctively gathered his feet to rise, hesitated, then dropped back. The transvestite delicately lowered herself into the rattan chair.

"I am Rose," she said, placing a beaded purse on the table. Her voice was neither feminine nor masculine, but a mellifluous whisper that both promised and intrigued. Her satin blouse was the color of her name, and suggestively swelled where no man's shirt would. Her eyes, almond-shaped with deep brown irises and langorously heavy eyelids, were made up for evening, painted in dark, graceful arches.