Stealing Trinity (15 page)

Footsteps pounded to the top of the companionway. She hoped it was Edward. Even in his I-told-you-so mood he'd have to have the compassion to remove the humiliating evidence. Alex appeared. She could only see his legs as he stood strongly against the wind. He was yelling toward the front of the boat, something about the foresail. She heard a muffled reply, and then Alex clearly, "Watch your step up there, man!"

He descended to the top step, one arm extended back out of sight to hold the tiller, which was just aft in the cockpit. He paused on seeing her. What a revolting sight I must be, she thought. Lydia heard something drop to the deck up front, and Alex shouted again to Edward before refocusing on her.

"Are you all right?" he called down.

She nodded, trying to force a smile. Alex left the steering long enough to trot down and remove the bucket, sliding it above and out of sight. He then scurried back up and divided his attention between her and the compass.

He said, "I should never have asked you to come, Lydia. This is my fault. I'll tell Edward we're going to turn back."

"No, it's not important. I feel better now."

"This weather is miserable. I'm not enjoying it."

Another ill wave rose in her stomach and Lydia rolled away, moaning. When it passed, she felt his gentle hand on her cheek. "Oh, Alex," her lips quivered, "it's all right, really. I'll be fine. Edward won't want to turn back."

"Then I'll make him."

"No. Please don't."

He seemed not to hear her as he moved to the stairs, but in the next moment Mystic lurched hard. Lydia heard the rigging creak and she was nearly thrown to the floor as the boat heeled severely to port.

"Dammit!" Alex raced above to the tiller and the boat soon righted. Lydia heard him yelling again. "Sorry Edward --

Edward!" Alex's head twisted back and forth. "Where the devil are you?"

There was an edge to his voice Lydia had never heard. "What is it, Alex?"

"I don't see Edward!"

"What do you mean? Where is he?"

She saw Alex scurry forward on deck, then reappear moments later. "I don't see him! I think he's gone over!"

It took a moment for Lydia to register the significance of those words. "What? You mean he's in the ocean?"

"Quick, come here! I need your help!"

Adrenaline overrode her suffering, and Lydia scrambled topside. Alex was at the helm, his hands feeding lines, his eyes scanning Mystics wake.

"When I left the steering the boat heeled over hard. He's gone overboard. We have to come about and find him."

"Dear God! Edward!" She stood next to Alex and began scanning the waves. White patches of foam where waves had broken dotted the surface everywhere. She squinted as the wind whipped salt spray into her eyes.

"Look over there," Alex pointed. "I'm reversing course."

He worked the sails and soon they were looking ahead. Lydia's stomach churned again, but the source was different now -- sudden dread, a panic that swept over her. Time and again she thought she saw something, but it was only the tossing seas, splashes of foam bristling to life and then receding into the cold black water. After what seemed an eternity, Alex turned the boat again.

"We'll go back over it once more!"

Lydia looked to Alex for hope, but his face had turned grim. She instinctively took his arm. "We have to find him, Alex. We have to!"

He put an arm around her shoulder and said with certainty, "We will."

The second pass was no more use than the first. Alex turned the boat toward shore.

"What are you doing?"

"We have to go for help."

"No! No, Alex, we can't leave him out here!" Her body trembled and Lydia felt herself losing control. "We have to find him!" she screamed, reaching for the tiller.

He took her by the shoulders and forced her eyes to his. "Lydia, we must get help! We can't do this on our own. Within an hour there will be twenty boats out here. That's how we'll find him."

Lydia felt his strength, his will, but her heart sank at the idea of leaving Edward out here alone.

"It's his best chance," Alex insisted.

Lydia nodded, tears welling up as she looked helplessly across the reeling ocean. "All right, Alex. You know best. But please hurry!"

Indeed, within the hour, twenty-three boats were scouring Rhode Island Sound for Edward Murray. They swarmed across the water like a colony of bees in search of a lost queen. Captains considered wind and current. Sailors, police, friends, and family scanned relentlessly until the light was lost. Even then a handful kept at it, waving flashlights and lanterns, shouting into the inky darkness in hope of a weak reply. The last boat docked shortly after midnight, Alex Braun and Sargent Cole aboard.

Sargent, looking more tired than Braun had ever seen him, mumbled to Wescott, the dockhand, "Keep her ready. We'll head back out at first light."

The words were belied by a hollow expression.

"Sir--" Braun began.

"I know, Alex. He won't be alive in the morning. A man in his marginal physical condition -- he wouldn't have lasted more than an hour." Sargent looked up the hill. "I'm going to tell her now."

"Would you like me to come?" Braun offered.

Sargent shook his head. "No. It's for me to do." He turned silently and began a slow climb up the steps to the main house, a man with an impossible weight on his shoulders.

Braun watched him disappear into the back entrance of Harrold House. Minutes later, from a hundred yards, he heard her plaintive wail. He turned to the water, now bathed in a soft moon, and lit a cigarette. Braun took a long draw, held it, then purged the smoke in a smooth, controlled exhalation. How quick, he thought. How easy. Tomorrow the authorities would launch the fleet again, this time looking for a corpse -- in the sea, or perhaps washed up on the beaches or jetties of Newport. The boats would crisscross Rhode Island Sound in a determined quest for whatever remained of Edward Murray. Braun took another draw from his cigarette and smiled. He worried little, for he knew that they would all be looking three hundred feet too high.

Thatcher sat on the bed in his hotel room, papers stacked in three piles. Night had fallen in the four hours since his arrival, and the only illumination came from a single lamp, a cone of amber that rose above a fabric shade to scatter weakly across the place. There were other lights in the room, but Thatcher was far too engrossed to notice -- he had stopped at the first hotel, taken the first room offered, and turned on the first light switch. His suitcase sat unopened at the foot of the bed, and the drapes were still pulled across the rooms lone window, the potential of a nighttime overlook of Cambridge Common never having crossed his mind.

He'd spent two hours at the Administration Building scribbling notes from Braun's university records, only stopping when the clerk had threatened to shut him in for the night. Not having time to record everything, Thatcher had prioritized the most important information while mentally reserving the option of returning tomorrow for the rest. He had also taken from the receptionist a list of professors in the School of Architecture.

The guiding principles of his investigation were shaky, and knowing so little about the Manhattan Project -- Brauns assumed target -- Thatcher had to fall back on assumption. Wherever Braun was headed there was a chance he'd need help -- since U-801 had dumped him ashore without his gear, he might require money or a means of communication. Thatcher knew that Germany's spy networks in America had been shattered by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, so it was reasonable to assume that Braun would specifically avoid any existing Abwehr contacts. This left two options -- he might return either to his old school or to Minnesota, where he'd grown up.

Minnesota had been first. During Braun's time at Harvard, from September 1937 to May 1940, his tuition had been paid through his father's bank in Minneapolis. This funding stopped abruptly in the winter of '40, when Braun apparently paid his spring tuition, in part, from his own standing Boston account. The balance was never paid, and after summer break that year he had not returned.

Hours earlier, Thatcher had put through a call to First Savings and Trust in Minneapolis, connecting just before the place closed for the day. A Mr. Snell, in Accounts, was leery of the longdistance investigation, as any good bank man would be, but on hearing the name Brown he minced no words. Mr. Dieter Brown, Alexander's father and only known relative, had been an outspoken Nazi supporter. In the years before the war the local timber magnate had forged an uncomfortable name for himself in local circles, and in '39 the widower sold his stakes and emigrated to Germany. The banker's tone made it clear that the elder Brown had burned his bridges upon leaving, casting America as doomed in the face of the German Reich.

It made sense, Thatcher reasoned. The elder Brown had gone back to Germany -- no doubt dropping the Anglicized spelling of his name -- and then called for his son to join him. Perhaps the son declined, comfortable in his situation at the time. Might the father not cut off funding? Logical, but pure supposition. The banker's information did make one very useful point, however. Alexander Braun would find neither friends nor support in Minnesota. With his family name tied firmly to the Nazi cause, it would be the last place he'd go.

Thatcher had then turned to the other records. Alexander Braun had been a strong student, with excellent grades and superior written evaluations from his professors. He had played football, run on the track team, and made extra money as a German language tutor. Thatcher decided there had to be a fair number of professors, friends, and acquaintances who could offer insight to the man. It had only been five years, he reasoned, so some of them must still be around. He turned to the faculty list for the School of Architecture and reached for the phone book, but a look at his watch gave pause. It was five minutes after midnight. Where had the time gone? Thatcher wondered. And how much farther away had Alexander Braun slipped?

He put down his papers. The pain in his head was mounting, and he went to the wash basin for hot water and towels. His stomach also stirred, and he realized that he had forgotten about his sandwich. Was it still in the car? He sighed. How ever do I survive?

Thatcher draped a hot, damp towel across the back of his neck. It felt wonderful, and he decided that a good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast would bring everything to rights. Then he could get back to work. Someone in Boston would remember a man like Alexander Braun. They'd know his friends and his haunts. If the spy needed help, this was where he'd come.

Chapter 20.

Braun spent the morning on the water, but official enthusiasm for the search faded by midday. The initial inquiry came next. Questioning that normally would have taken place at police headquarters was deferred to the library of Harrold House -- the Cole family had suffered a loss, and a sympathetic detective gathered his information over tea.

Lydia, lightly sedated, sat quietly in a leather chair. Sargent hovered over her, a bear minding its cub. Braun was across the room, a visual ploy to reinforce the concept of distance between him and Lydia. He had not been any closer since taking her hand yesterday as she stepped from Mystic onto the dock, to collapse into her fathers waiting arms.

The detective was a burly local who had a quirk of scratching the back of his neck. The man tread lightly, and wasted his first twenty minutes with condolences and offers of support. He then moved on to establish the basic facts concerning who, what, when, and where. The why was nicely forgotten.

In time, the detective had quiet words with Braun. The most critical issues were dealt a glancing blow. Where was Edward when Braun had last seen him? Did he seem in good spirits? Had anyone been drinking? Braun naturally tried to assume some blame, cursing himself for leaving the tiller free and losing control of the boat. It was a novices error, committed by an unseasoned sailor. A mistake for which he would never be held accountable. Edward had been the skipper, and he d been working on deck in heavy weather without a safety line. Still, Braun brooded openly in a punishment of conscience.

When the detective finished his questions, Braun receded to a remote corner of the room to sulk further against the tragic events. While the investigation ran its tender course, Braun mentally reviewed the death of Edward Murray for probably the twentieth time. The thoughts had nothing to do with regret, nor even a sense of victory, but were rather an accountant's appraisal of the efficiency of his work. It was a mirror of the well-practiced analysis that had evolved during his time as a sniper. With each kill he gathered new elements of use, and tossed out the ineffective. It was an application of learning that his old professors at Harvard would never have imagined, though something, he was sure, many would have appreciated from a purely academic standpoint.

Lydia had been firmly entrenched in the bunk below, Edward above, working at the bow. Braun had simply carried his sailbag up front, extracted the mushroom anchor when Edward was turned away, and struck him on the head. The blow had not been fatal, only enough to knock him senseless -- a bloody mess to clean up would have cost valuable time. Braun caught Edward as he fell, avoiding any loud thumps on the deck to alert Lydia, then quickly removed the remaining items from the large canvas bag before stuffing his victim in. Braun was intimately familiar with the nature of decomposing bodies -- he knew they exuded a tremendous amount of gas, so he used the oyster knife to puncture a few holes through both the bag and Edward. As anticipated, any blood that came from the wounds was neatly contained inside the canvas. He then dropped the knife and the anchor into the bag, drew the opening shut, and tied it securely. When he eased the lot over the side it was dead weight, disappearing in no time into the churning black waters.

This part of the sequence had taken just over a minute -- but he was not done yet. A single item from the bag remained, the old fishing reel. He pulled out twenty feet of line and tied a knot at the base of the reel. Holding it aloft, he kept the tension constant and threaded the line through rigging as he moved aft. Braun kept up a disjointed conversation as he approached the companionway, adding muffled replies in something resembling Edwards voice. The indistinct words were further masked by the sound of Mystic crashing through the seas. On reaching the cabin, Lydia had spotted him right away. She looked awful, an arm draped across her forehead. Braun released the fishing line and the reel thumped to the deck.