The Hess Cross (4 page)

Crown was thoroughly wet and cold, but he didn't mind. He was comfortable with himself for the first time since disastrous June. He was out of the depression that had almost killed him. The mist that had sunk into his mind and anesthetized him for all those weeks had lifted.

As he rubbed his hands together to fight the chill, once again, for the thousandth time, his mind sped back to the beginning of his sickness, to Operation Reinhard. Their chief, who was called the Priest and who said his name was Richard Sackville-West, had assigned Crown and Maura to the mission. They had arrived in Newcastle-on-Tyne almost a year ago and had driven to the camp in the Northumberland Hills along the North Tyne River. The partisans were already bivouacked and anxious to begin the training. Ten of them, the finest in the Free Czech Army, had been handpicked for a mission they would have very little chance of surviving. For the next six weeks, Jan Kubis, Josef Gabcik, and the others spent ten grueling hours a day sharpening their skills under the tutoring of John Crown, the small-arms expert, and Miguel Maura, the knife-and-fist specialist. The Priest and his British counterpart determined the Czechs were ready, and on December 28, 1941, the commandos were parachuted into Czechoslovakia for their mission—the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

Perhaps no man in history deserved to die more than SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. As head of the Reich Security Service, Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and chief administrator of all German concentration camps, Heydrich was responsibile to only two men, Hitler and Himmler. He was regarded by inner circles
as Hitler's successor. At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Heydrich was selected to administer the Final Solution of the Jewish question, which he did with cynical brutality from his office in Prague. He ruled Eastern Europe with a cold sadism and a merciless iron hand. Heydrich, the tall, blond nightclub devotee and Mozart and Haydn addict, murdered thousands of people.

On May 29, 1942, as Heydrich's limousine slowed for a corner at the outskirts of Prague, Gabcik leaped into the street and pulled the trigger of his Sten gun. Nothing happened. The weapon had jammed. As Heydrich and his chauffeur stood to draw their pistols, Kubis lobbed a bomb into the rear seat. The explosion ripped open the Reich Protector's back and embedded horsehair from the seat deep into his flesh.

Heydrich lived for nine painful days. News of his death was greeted with hearty applause at the ops room in England, where Crown and Maura had been praying for the infection to spread. As German bombs tore London apart and as most of Europe suffered under the Nazi boot, they had proved to the world that the Nazi criminals were not inviolable, not invincible. They could be reached. Vengeance could be had. A wave of hope spread through the conquered lands. Crown and Maura shared in the euphoria.

Then came the first reports from Lidice, a small mining town fifteen miles west of Prague, unconfirmed reports of German retaliation for the death of Heydrich. Rumors of burning and shootings. On June 10 the Germans confirmed the worst in their proclamation to the Czech people. The entire town of Lidice had been razed, and the remnants of the buildings had been plowed into the ground. The entire male population, 173 men, was shot. Two hundred women were shipped to concentration camps, and a hundred children were sent to Germany for reeducation and resettlement. Hitler ordered that Lidice be erased from the maps.

John Crown disappeared for two weeks. When Miguel Maura found him in the poverty ward of the Leeds hospital, Crown was close to death from drink and lack of food, and his elbow had been shattered from a drunken fall down a stairwell. The Priest relieved them from further assignments, and Maura spent the next weeks standing by Crown, helping him fight the dulling depression that ruled his waking moments and pierced his sleep.

Crown's recovery was long and painful. Miguel was his link to sanity during those weeks. Maura, whom Crown had worked with since meeting him in San Sebastian during the Spanish Civil War, argued and cajoled Crown out of the lethargy and melancholia. At times it was a kicking, screaming struggle, but Maura finally dragged Crown through the layers of depression and made him function again. Chicago was their first assignment since he had recovered. The Priest's first team was whole again.

Crown's thoughts returned to cold Chicago when he saw Maura bob around a clot of university students. A few women turned to watch him pass, a typical reaction. Maura was a classically handsome Basque, with a finely chiseled nose, gleaming even teeth, and large dark eyes.

"You ready to do some business?" Miguel greeted his partner with the phrase that had come to mean a lot to them.

"Just as you are," Crown answered, and meant it. "It's good to be back at work, whatever the Priest has in store for us."

"Well, whatever it is," Miguel added with his slight Spanish accent, "we've got some serious carousing to do between now and then. I know this interesting little place downtown, and I'm thirsty."

The little place was Lip's Lower Level, a notorious Loop saloon that catered primarily to sailors from the Great
Lakes Naval Station north of the city. For some reason Crown didn't understand, Maura loved the smoky, raucous atmosphere of this dive. They spent the evening pitching down schooners of beer and enjoying each other's company. An accurate gauge of Maura's inebriety was the number of times an hour Crown had to prevent him from showing his prowess with his throwing knife to the surrounding sailors. When it reached four, Crown dragged the Basque from Lip's.

Chicago November slapped them as they stepped from Lip's onto the sidewalk. Crown pulled the coat collar tight around his neck. Maura seemed oblivious of the biting wind. His coattail flapped around his knees.

"I forget, amigo. How did we get here tonight? Your car or mine?"

"You don't own a car. Mine's parked across the river."

Crown and Maura turned into the wind and walked north on Dearborn Avenue. The street was strangely vacant. The freezing temperatures had chased most people from the Loop. Even the lunatics and alcoholics who surface after the rush hour each day to fester on the sidewalks had been beaten into hiding by the cold. A few sailors hurried to the buses that would return them to the Naval Station.

Lake Michigan wind lost none of its chill as it streamed from the lake and poured around Loop buildings. Maura hurriedly buttoned his coat. Pitted against Chicago's wind, the beer had kept him warm for only a few minutes. He dug his hands farther into his coat pockets. He and Crown walked in brisk unison on Dearborn toward the river.

"Have you figured out why we were brought here, John?"

"No, but whatever it is, it isn't going to be the usual. Hyde Park smells of a boring assignment. The Priest didn't say anything other than it's important."

"I hope the job makes up for being in this miserable city."

"Don't knock Chicago. There are a lot worse places. The
last time I got out of a cab, a man rushed up to me and asked where I came from and how much I paid the cabbie. If a cabbie is caught twice screwing a fare, he's suspended for a week. In New York, a cabbie will drive you around the block for as long as he thinks he can get away with it."

Crown was not sure Maura was listening, but he went on, "And you seem to get along with the sailors at Lip's. In Norfolk, Virginia, all the boardinghouses have signs saying 'No Dogs or Sailors Allowed.' If a Spaniard came looking for a room, one of those old ladies who runs the boardinghouses would have a conniption fit. Chicago's not a bad town. You've even got a room."

Both men laughed, and their breath rolled in frozen waves as it hit the air. They approached the Dearborn Street Bridge and the temperature dropped. Or maybe it was the sight of the river and bridge.

The Dearborn Street Drawbridge was the apex of architectural theory that form must be subverted to function. The bridge was utilitarian ugly. It was too short to require inspiring, sweeping suspension spans and not high enough above the river to need towering understructure. The Dearborn Bridge was a plank laid on dwarf pylons. As if in recognition that the bridge was beyond aesthetic help, it had been painted vomit ocher. The paint was thoroughly chipped, and rust splotches grew under the paint flakes. Crown thought of a giant metal Goliath felled not by a rock from a sling but from terminal skin disease.

As they stepped onto the bridge catwalk, the brown odor of the Chicago River caught them.

"Mother Madonna, how can the people of this city put their sewage into their beautiful lake?" Maura asked, wrinkling his nose against the smell.

"They don't," Crown said. "In 1900, Chicago engineers built a series of dikes and channels in order to get ships from Chicago up the Chicago River to the Mississippi. To do
this, they made the river flow backward. It now flows from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi."

"What about the sewage?" Maura asked.

"They still dump it into the Chicago River, as you can tell from the smell. But now it goes to St. Louis and New Orleans, not out into their precious lake."

Maura laughed heartily. "And I thought Chicagoans were stupid."

Looking back, John Crown would always say the car sounded sinister. Something about its high-revving motor or the squeal of its tires as it turned onto the bridge from the north caught his ear, but he readily discarded the hunch. Hundreds of cars crossed the bridge every hour. This one swerved wildly as it came toward them. The black automobile was low-slung and streamlined, and its polished grille reflected the bridge lights. It wove back and forth like a mole frantically looking for its hole.

"If you think you had a lot to drink tonight, Miguel, look at the two gents in the Buick. They're snockered."

But as the Buick crossed the drawbridge center line it focused on Crown and Maura. It no longer veered erratically, as if driven by a man intoxicated beyond seeing. It bore down on the two pedestrians and clearly intended to crush them against the bridge guardrail.

Miguel Maura lunged forward and hit Crown and thrust him ahead with his arms. Crown stumbled out of the auto's range, but the front fender caught Maura's legs as it slammed into the guardrail. Crown heard his friend's knees pop like crushed walnuts. He turned, to see Maura rebound from the rail onto the car's hood. The Buick bounced away and Maura slid heavily to the concrete sidewalk.

Crown rushed to him. He could see bone splinters protruding through the Basque's torn pants. Blood rushed from the mangled knees onto the walkway. Maura calmly stared at the car as Crown lifted him to a sitting position.

"Jesus, Miguel. Don't move. I'll get help."

Through teeth clenched with pain, Maura slurred, "Watch the window, John."

"Watch" was the word. Five years of assignments together had taught Crown that anything Miguel Maura said to watch was deadly and imminent. Crown spun toward the car and saw through the glare of headlights a black-gloved hand carrying a pug-nosed revolver emerge from the passenger window. The gun fired, and metal hit metal six inches from Crown's sleeve. The gunman and the driver opened the car doors. Their aim would be more accurate from a standing position. Crown and Maura were trapped between them.

"Let's go, Miguel. One way out for us."

Crown grabbed Maura's torso and hoisted him to the rail. He lifted his friend over the pipe, pushed him outward, and dropped him into the Chicago River. As soon as he released Maura, Crown vaulted onto the railing, balanced precariously for an instant, and kicked out from the bridge. The sound of a second shot chased him as he fell toward the black river.

Water as cold as the Chicago River in November is not just cold. It is numbing. Crown tried to fight to the surface, but his limbs seemed disconnected from his body. His legs were impersonal and apart. His forehead throbbed from the cold. Thumbs of freezing water pushed his eyeballs deep into their sockets. His lungs were paralyzed. But somehow he rose and broke the surface of the river.

Crown shook the water from his eyes. Maura was bobbing eight feet away and was gagging from inhaled water. His arms beat the river, trying to keep himself afloat. As he reached Maura, warmth brushed Crown's leg. It was Maura's blood, drifting away in the Chicago River.

"No way to treat a friend." Maura coughed as Crown grabbed his collar and pulled him into a floating position on
his back. The freezing water had taken the glaze from Maura's eyes. He was badly hurt, maybe dying, but he was thinking.

"Let's make it to those boats," Crown said as he tasted the oily film of the river water.

Crown began a one-arm swim to the concrete river shore lined with fishing vessels listing against their moorages. Small waves splashed against the swimmers, and Crown's wet scalp was so cold it felt as if an invisible hand was tearing his hair. Coldness gripped his chest like a vise and made breathing a concerted effort. He kicked against the water and pulled the Basque behind him. Maura stiffened when Crown's leg jabbed a mangled knee.

"God damn, John," Maura gasped in pain, "easy. My legs have been on the short end already tonight."

They fought through a few yards of freezing water, and Crown was already out of breath. He tried to time his breathing with the waves, gulping air in the troughs. Maura sputtered as a wave drowned his inhale.

The Basque's hand slapped wildly at Crown's head. Crown stopped his awkward struggle and saw Maura pointing to the wooden steps connecting the bridge to the river shore below. The driver and passenger of the Buick were scrambling down the stairs to the shore and boats. Through the watery film in his eyes, Crown saw that they each carried a black pistol. The leader stopped at the landing and stared down at the swimmers to gauge their direction. He intended to complete his job while Crown and Maura were perfect targets bobbing helplessly in the Chicago River.

There was no choice. Crown side-kicked, pulled Maura around, and began to swim back to the center of the river. Fatigue and intense cold were quickly draining his strength and made the river feel like molasses. One of the henchmen aimed his pistol. His partner nudged him and nodded to the nearest fishing boat tied to the riverbank.