Crucified (4 page)

At least not until the TV show came out.

Wyatt was a vagabond. He wandered the world in search of his next subject, and when he found something worthy of his attention, he stayed in that spot for as long as it took him to research. He did, however, own the top floor of a brownstone in New York: the loft in the Manhattan residence of his best friend, Jack, and the unrequited love of Wyatt's life, his best friend's wife.

Love is the fart

Of every heart:

It pains a man when 'tis kept close,
And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose.

How true, poet Suckling, he thought.

The loft was an open library of floor-to-ceiling shelves, an archive of every book Wyatt'd owned since he was a boy.

Study the titles and you'd have a road map of his mind.

A hideaway bed pulled down from the wall for when he was in the Apple.

Home enough.

"So I'm sitting at the signing table," Jack had said one night when the three of them were having fondue in the brownstone, "and this meek, downcast woman fumbles her copy of my latest thriller when she's putting it down for me to autograph. As she grabs it, her sleeve pulls back to reveal scars on her wrist.

She tugs it down quickly, but not quickly enough to hide the slashes from me."

"Attempted suicide?" asked Val. The way she arched her eyebrow broke her secret admirer's heart.

"Slashing," Jack replied. "Each cut's a cry for help. Slashers don't slit deep enough to kill themselves."

"It's a coping mechanism," Wyatt said, lifting his fork from the pot of bubbling oil. "The pain of self-mutilation dulls emotional distress."

"Thank you, Freud," said Jack. "Are you going to drink from the bottle, or will you share the wine?"

 These two had been ribbing each other since they met at boarding school. Jack had attended because his parents were Ivy League, while Wyatt had scraped through on a trust fund because his parents were dead. Why his dad had vanished remained a national security secret. His mother's death the following day was said to be suicide.

Wyatt didn't believe it.

His mom had loved him too much.

As he refilled Val's glass from the bottle of Beaujolais, her phantom lover drank in her aura with his eyes.

Masochist, he thought.

"I glance up," Jack continued, "and take in her troubled face. As I sign the book to Greta—that, she said, was her name—I hear a muttered comment.

'"What was that?' I ask.

"'Nothing,' she replies.

' " I ' m sure I heard you say, "Thanks for giving me back my life." What does that mean?'

'"Forget it.'

'"You can't leave me in suspense,' I argue. 'You must tell me, Greta.'

'"I hurt myself,' she mumbles.

'"So I see.'

'"I don't cut deep. But yesterday was different.'

"'Why?'

' " M y mom was sick a long time and died at home. There were lots of pills near her bed. I was going to take them to end my pain. I was sitting on the sofa with the pills in my hand, about to wash them down with a quart of milk, and that's when I saw the ad by my feet. It said you'd be signing your new book here. You left your hero to die at the end of the last one. I didn't want to die myself without knowing if he did too, so I put off taking the pills until I read this novel. The truth is I feel much better today, so thanks for giving me back my life.'

"And with that, she clutched the book to her chest and shuffled out the door."

"Damn!" said Wyatt. "I don't get fans like that."

"You write history, buddy. We know how your books end.

I'm in the adrenaline-rush biz."

"You just let her go?" asked Val.

Jack shook his curly thatch. "If I had, she might be topping herself even as we eat. I called her back to the table. 'Know what a blood pact is?' I asked. She shook her head. 'It's a promise you can't break, Greta, because it's sealed in blood.

Well, I have a blood pact for you.' I encircled her scarred wrist with my thumb and index finger. 'That's the blood,' I said. 'The pact is this: If you promise me you won't try to kill yourself again, I swear I'll never stop writing books
for you.
Deal?'

"Greta thought about it. Finally, she said, 'Deal.'"

Jack turned to his wife and shrugged. "Sorry, Val. It seems I dealt our retirement away."

Overlapping her hands on her heart, Val batted her eyes.

"My hero," she said with a falsetto voice. "You deserve something
special
for that."

They were still in bed when Wyatt left the following morning. He flew from JFK to Heathrow to promote the British edition of his latest book, and hopefully to clinch a deal for his TV show. That's why he was signing in the Unknown Soldier, a bookstore just off Charing Cross Road.

"Hello, Mr. Rook. My name's Liz Hannah."

Wyatt gazed up from the table to greet the next person in line, but instead of an armchair general smelling of pipe tobacco, he found himself face to face with an eyeful of cleavage. A knockout in her mid-twenties—about five years younger than he was—Liz was attractive enough to give Val a run for her money, and she'd spent the cash to purchase all three of his books.

White Sands.

Black Rain.

And his latest,
Dresden.

"These look read."

"They are. Purchased weeks ago. After I saw the DVD of your TV show."

"You work in broadcasting?"

"Yes," she said.

"Liz with a zee? Or just my signature?"

Some people got his books signed with an eye to selling them to collectors. Others were after a dedication as proof they'd met the author.

"Mr. Rook," Liz said, "I have a proposition. Will you join me for tea once you finish here?"

+ + +

The teashop was just a hole in the wall, selected because it was three doors down from the Unknown Soldier and Wyatt had more publicity appearances to make.

"A Brit usually asks a Yank to coffee," he said, perusing the menu.

"You drink coffee in the morning and tea from noon on,"

Liz replied.

"Where did you learn that?"

"Here and there. The Internet. New York papers."

"Am I being stalked?"

 "Yes, and now you're in my clutches. I know a lot about you, Mr. Rook."

"Like what?"

"You have both a law degree and a Ph.D. in history. Your doctoral thesis was on conspiracies. You parlayed that into two bestselling books.
White Sands
shows how the Pentagon whitewashed Wernher von Braun so he could arm America with nuclear missiles and later put a man on the moon.
Black
Rain
reveals how President Truman set the Japanese up for atomic destruction so he could bend Stalin to his will in postwar Europe. Having put your boots to homegrown conspiracies, you're now going after Bomber Command for the firebombing of Dresden in the final months of the Second World War."

"That bothers you?"

"Not in the least. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.

That's what I need."

"Tea?" asked the waitress, notepad in hand.

"Please." Liz ordered, shifting her attention. "And bring an Eccles cake for the gentleman."

"Is
that
on the Internet too?" Wyatt asked.

"It's in the
Post
photo. There's an Eccles cake on the table in front of you."

"You're observant."

"I like to know what I'm buying."

As she left the table, the waitress threw Wyatt a scowl reserved for gigolos.

"From what I gather, you're a bit of a ladies' man," Liz continued. "In every social photo, you have a different date. I suspect you go for intelligent females who won't tie you down."

"Is that your proposition?"

"Hardly, Mr. Rook."

"Then why undo two buttons on your blouse?"

"Fashion."

"Hardly, Ms. Hannah. For that, one would do. Two's because you want something from this 'ladies' man.'"

"Your attention."

"Well, you've got that."

"Mission accomplished," she said, buttoning up. "There, is that better?"

"No," he said.

"Damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

"You didn't need the honey trap."

"But setting it up was fun."

"Let's get down to business. Why was I lured here? What exactly
is
your proposition?"

"Have you read about the
Ace of Clubs,
the bomber resurrected in Germany? The pilot, Fletch Hannah, was my granddad.

On my grandmother's behalf—to give her peace of mind before she dies—I want to retain you to find out why he disappeared."

+ + +

"Why me?" Wyatt asked, sipping tea and munching the Eccles cake.

"How old were you when your father vanished?"

"Nine."

"You don't practice law?"

"No."

"So why the law degree?"

"I use it to access government files that officials want kept secret. It's a research tool."

 "It's a powerful tool, judging from your work. When we screened your documentaries at the network, I was amazed by how many long-kept secrets you brought to light, and how little knee-jerk reverence you have for the sacred cows of your country."

"Four hundred thousand Americans died in the Second World War for
something.
It wasn't so a rocket man who climbed the ladder of Himmler's SS and was tied to the deaths of twenty thousand prisoners of war could be turned into an American icon. Two hundred thousand Japanese were fried in the bombing of Hiroshima, and it wasn't to save half a million Americans from dying while invading Japan. It galls me that my government still peddles those empty lies, so I explode them."

"Don Quixote."

"Tilting at dirty windmills."

"I think that's just the buildup. You're after much more.

Once you have a reputation for getting to the truth, you'll go after the White House to find out what happened to your dad and why it's been covered up. Presidents consulted him on foreign crises. Then one day he vanished, and no one will tell you why. You want to crack that puzzle."

"Don't forget my mom. The lie is that she killed herself the following day, distraught over the loss of my dad. But no way would she abandon me to face life alone. Someone assassinated her, and someday—
believe me
—her killer will pay."

"I believe you." Liz took a sip of her tea. "So why write
Dresden?"

"So critics can't accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist with an ax to grind with Washington. Dresden was Britain's Hiroshima. Here you have a city of minor industrial importance—after almost six years of war, it was one of the few unbombed cities in Germany—and it gets singled out for razing by RAF firebombs in February 1945, at a time when Dresden was crammed with refugees. No one knows how many were incinerated, but it was anywhere from 35,000 to 135,000 people. These are the kinds of things that vex me."

"There you have all the reasons why I'm stalking you," said Liz. "First, you know how to smoke out the secrets of Bomber Command. Second, as an outsider, you won't pull your punches. And third, you grasp why I—like you—need to know the truth about my family."

"You've lost me."

"What does 'Judas' mean to you?"

"I assume you don't mean the disciple who betrayed Jesus?"

"No."

'"Judas' was the codename Hitler gave to a mystery man who tried to betray him in 1944. El Alamein and Stalingrad were turning points of the war. Those losses spawned a conspiracy within the German army to oust Hitler and negotiate peace with the Allies. Allegedly, Judas made contact with Churchill and offered him top-secret information about Hitler's atomic bomb. He also planned to smuggle out recently found biblical relics. Rumor is that Churchill told Bomber Command to parachute in a German-speaking secret agent, who would then smuggle the Judas package out by submarine. But the package never reached Britain. The plot against Hitler failed. The traitors were executed. And Judas's identity remains an unsolved mystery of the Second World War."

"Do you believe the rumor?"

"It's unsubstantiated. But isn't that how secrets escape?

A confidant lets a secret slip 'off the record,' and whisper becomes rumor. With Judas, the rumor seems to come from several sources."

 "Did you see this?" Liz asked, handing him the tabloid interview with Mick Balsdon, the wartime navigator of the resurrected
Ace of Clubs.

"No," said Wyatt.

"Read it."

So he did.

"Balsdon, my granddad's navigator, believes the secret agent was disguised as one of his fellow crew members.

The flight plan he was given on the hush-hush never made sense to him. They were told to break away from the main bomber stream and fly a solitary run to an isolated target of no apparent value. That's how their plane got shot down by a lone wolf fighter, and why they had to bail out over Germany."

"It's not uncommon for vets to embellish their war records,"

Wyatt countered.

Liz shook her head. "Mick's put together an archive documenting his belief. It's taken him a lifetime. For years, he's kept in touch with his surviving mates and the relatives of those now gone. The discovery of the
Ace of Clubs
offers him a chance to prove he's right. Mick's confined to a wheelchair and is in failing health, so he can't make the trip, but he wants those who can to travel to Germany for the opening of the bomber.

The plane's a time capsule from 1944. It might hold a clue to the Judas puzzle."

"You're going?"

"Yes."

"Where do I fit in?"

"If Mick's right, imagine the book and TV show you'll get out of this. Mick still lives in Yorkshire, the wartime base of the
Ace.
Will you at least go to see his archive?"

"Ms. Hannah—"

 "Liz."

"I'm a busy man. I don't have time to—"

"Every man has his price."

"Yes, and mine's higher than two undone buttons."

Flick.

Flick.

Flick.

Liz undid three.