Crucified (21 page)

"Nice try," said Liz, and she threw back the sheet to rub salt in his wound.

+ + +

"Yikes! What happened to you?" Wyatt asked when Liz came out of the elevator into the hotel lobby, dragging her suitcase on wheels. She was dressed like she was off to a shareholders'

meeting at Virgin Atlantic.

"It's the real me. I'm off to see my mum."

"But"—he took in the corporate outfit—"you look so businesslike. What happened to the free spirit I've known up to now?"

"That trollop was for
you."

"I liked her."

"I'm sure you did."

"You mean she's gone?"

"Uh-huh."

"I feel so
used."

"You'll get over it," said Liz. "In a decade or two."

With the next landing of the elevator, out stepped Sweaty.

He was sporting a blazer with the squadron crest.

"This was sudden. You okay?" Wyatt asked.

"When you reach my age, problems magnify. It's nothing serious, but I want to see a doc who's fluent in English.

I've got one of those multi-day erections they warn you about on TV."

Liz laughed. "The dose is
one
pill, Sweaty."

"Now you tell me, sweet stuff."

Halfway to the airport, they hit the autobahn. Cars went zooming past them at a thousand miles an hour. By the time they'd parked at the terminal, Wyatt's nerves were shot. If that's what German drivers called the pleasure of driving, he was glad he lived in a country with speed limits and highway patrolmen lurking in trees with handheld radar.

"Good luck with the puzzle," Sweaty said on the terrorists' side of the security gate.

"Call if you hear from Lenny. I'll hunt for him here," said Wyatt. "I'll see you in York."

"It's not the meeting Balls proposed, but hopefully, his funeral can honor his crusade."

"And thanks for these," said Liz, holding up the relics from Wrath Hannah's uniform. "I know they'll give my grandmother comfort."

Liz kissed Wyatt on the cheek.

"Hey!" grumbled Sweaty in his best James Cagney voice.

"That's
my
girl."

"Of course I am," said Liz, looping her arm through the sergeant's to guide him off to the security desk.

Let's settle out of court, Wyatt mused. Liz can be your moll and my maul, respectively.

+ + + 

Having seen their plane off to London, Wyatt hung around the airport for the flight from Berlin. Before Liz and Sweaty altered their plans, he had arranged to greet an arrival today.

The
Ace of Clubs
puzzle had grown so complex that Wyatt knew it was time to bring in his Big Bertha gun, Rutger.

The last time he saw his Teutonic buddy, Rutger was the size of a Wagnerian opera heroine. His weakness was food. Put him in a kitchen and out would come gourmet schnitzels and mugs of cool beer. Though he had many friends who qualified as bon vivants, Wyatt thought Rutger was the best host of all.

So he was surprised when the man who came through the gate looked like Jack Sprat.

"What gives, Rutger? You are but a mere shadow of your former self."

"I have a new girlfriend who's threatening to break up.

She says I crush her in bed."

We work to the same incentive, Wyatt thought.

As do most men.

"Thanks for coming."

"Yours was an offer I couldn't refuse."

"Is that them?" Wyatt asked, indicating Rutger's overstuffed briefcase.

The German nodded. "A copy of every Kriegsmarine file describing a U-boat mission to Britain between the shooting down of the
Ace of Clubs
and the failure of the generals' July Plot to assassinate Hitler. If—as you theorize—the secret agent parachuted in by the RAF bomber was to smuggle out the Judas package by submarine, he must have sailed to Britain in one of these U-boats."

"Gotta be. Wouldn't Judas want his peace offering in Churchill's hands for the surrender negotiations immediately after Hitler was eliminated from power?"

"That's logical."

"How does fifty-fifty sound? To split the royalties?"

"Overly generous."

"I could not have written
Dresden
without your help. Not a penny did you ask of me. Like most who speak the world's dominant tongue, I can't read yours."

"Surely you studied a language?"

"You'll laugh."

"Try me."

"I studied Latin."

Rutger laughed. "That's of use."

"I'll have you know that I have read
Winnie-the-Pooh
in Latin."

"Not many Americans can say that."

"Judging by what I hear on TV, few could read it in English either."

Rutger laughed again.

"It's getting so bad that publishers are sending books over-seas for editing," Wyatt added.

"To England?"

"Hell no. They can't speak English either. The last vestiges of the language are in India."

"So what is Pooh in Latin?"

"Winnie-ille-Pu."

"Do you do readings?"

"Tor mi', dixit sollemniter, 'egomet, Winnie-ille-Pu, cau-dam tuam reperiam'."

"Sounds grand. What does it mean?"

"'Eeyore,' he said solemnly, 'I, Winnie-the-Pooh, will find your tail for you.'"

Rutger laughed a third time. "Fifty-fifty? You mean it?"

"One, I need your research. Two, I need a translator. Three, I think we could jointly write a good book. Four, I owe you for
Dresden.
Five, I plan to work at your house over gourmet meals with fine wine. And last, you found the grave of Wrath Hannah for me. His granddaughter is most thankful."

Rutger gave him a meaningful look.

Wyatt grinned. "I couldn't possibly comment."

+ + + 

Rutger's arrival at the
Ace's
resting place caused a stir. While he was off holding court amid lesser historians, Wyatt was intercepted by a hard-eyed detective with the Federal Criminal Police.

The Bundeskriminalamt.

It sounded worse in German.

"Herr Rook?"

"Yes."

The cop presented his ID. "Detective Inspector Horst Stritzel. May I ask you some questions?"

"About what?"

"Herr Jones. Do you know him?"

"Lenny Jones?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I know him. What about him?"

"When did you see him last?"

"The day before yesterday. We were to meet for breakfast the next morning, but he didn't show up."

"How long have you known him?"

"We just met. Why?"

"Herr Jones's body was fished from the river yesterday."

Wyatt scowled. So that's why Lenny had missed brunch.

"Has he been identified?"

"Is there some reason for doubt?"

Wyatt caught the narrowing of the eyes in the tight-skinned, bony face. He'd seen that same look of suspicion on the face of Detective Inspector Ramsey of Yorkshire CID when he was being questioned at the Balsdon murder scene.

Uh-oh. Deja vu.

"Who identified the body?"

"Should that present a problem?"

"I got the impression no one here had met Lenny before."

"Interpol returned a match from Jones's fingerprints in America."

Wyatt shrugged. "So why ask whether I doubt your identification?"

"Herr Jones's face was bludgeoned beyond recognition."

"With what?"

"What do you think?"

"Are you trying to trap me?"

"I'm trying to discover the motive for Herr Jones's murder.

His face was bashed in with a hammer. Why would someone do that?"

"Why indeed? We live in the era of DNA. You don't need teeth or fingerprints to identify someone any more."

"What brings
you
here, Herr Rook?"

"I'm researching a book."

 "About the
Ace of Clubs!"
asked the BKA inspector.

"Yes."

"And the Judas agent?"

"I was asked to investigate by the granddaughter of the bomber's pilot."

"We know. I've been in contact with Detective Inspector Ramsey. Herr Jones was living in Wales."

Suddenly, the American's nerves were on high alert. "Have you reason to doubt that Lenny was who he said he was?" he asked. "A descendant of the gunner?"

"No, he was definitely the grandson," said Stritzel.

"How do you know?"

"DNA."

"That was quick."

Actually, Wyatt wasn't surprised by how quickly the test results had come in. These days, a lab could produce Lenny's DNA profile within hours.

"The geneticist who tested Herr Jones's DNA," explained the cop, "was also the forensic scientist who extracted DNA from the skeleton found in the bomber."

He indicated the turret of the plane in the pit.

"Those DNA profiles matched," Stritzel said, "proving that Herr Jones was the rear gunner's grandson."

The
rear
gunner? thought Rook.

London's airport was the crossroads of humanity. While the Legionary and the Art Historian waited at the gate, heads talking languages neither had heard before milled around them. There was a lingering smell of high-end Scotch from a duty-free purchase someone had dropped on the floor. A distressed young man rushed past them on his way to the toilet, muttering, "That will teach me not to eat the special in the Marrakech bazaar."

"You touched it?" asked the young priest, his voice low for this tete-a-tete between conspirators.

"Yes," replied the Art Historian. "The Holy Grail."

"When?"

"As a boy. In 1944."

"Where?"

"At home. In Germany."

"How did that come about?"

"I was dying when, by chance, Judas called on my father.

My father was also Art Historian to the Vatican. He wasn't a member of the Nazi Party. He was a Catholic above all else.

But because of his expertise as an art historian, he received a visitor one stormy night in 1944.1 sat near death up in my room."

"From what?" the Legionary asked.

"Meningitis. Exacerbated by the effects of black-market penicillin."

"Penicillin?"

"Yes. It was a brand-new wonder drug, but I was allergic to it and had a terrible reaction. My father had to tie me to an armchair to keep me from clawing myself to shreds. The doctor told my father he'd return in the morning to sign what would undoubtedly be my death certificate."

"But you pulled through."

"Thanks to Judas. He knocked on the door an hour later to ask my father's opinion on relics he possessed."

"The Holy Grail?"

"Right. The Holy Grail isn't the chalice from the Last Supper.

Nor is it the body of Mary Magdalene. Those are merely myths spun from the twelfth century on."

"The relics are authentic?"

"That's what my father deduced because of the map and the document the man also had. But the absolute proof occurred when he carried the relics up to my room."

So vivid was that childhood life-or-death experience that the Art Historian began to relive it as he described it to the Legionary.

Thunder rattled the windowpanes of the upper-floor room where the delirious boy sat lashed to the arms and legs of an antique chair. The walls of this room—like those of the rest of the rooms in the house—were decorated with artwork seized from galleries that were "Aryanized" by the Nazis or stolen from Jewish collectors who'd fled to freedom or gone to death camps. This was the clearinghouse for the best pieces. To those who bought and sold treasures on the black market, there was nothing better than authentication by his father. The loot would be integrated into museum collections or shipped to anonymous hoarders, never to see the light of day again.

Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, Picasso—all hung within these walls.

The artwork displayed in this room, however, had divine pedigree. To the Nazis, it was sacrilege that works of religious sanctity had found their way into grubby secular hands, so they'd given the Art Historian an opportunity to rectify that travesty. He assessed the sacred works that came into this house, picking the best for a secret gallery hidden behind the fortifications of the Vatican.

"Itchy and a burny and a sting!"

That's what the boy blubbered repeatedly in his delirium.

He was only five, but he sensed that he was dying. One minute he was burning with fever, and the next he shivered with chills. His head ached, one eye twitched, his neck felt stiff, and he recoiled from light and sound. As the storm filled the room with flashes of blue light, images in the paintings came to life.

Hell was a pit under crimson skies, where oceans of fire and billowing smoke broiled and choked tormented sinners.

Grotesque monsters—half demon, half machine, with hunks of human anatomy—tortured those who'd been abandoned by the Church. Overseeing the horror was Satan, with horns on his head, a black goatee, flaming red skin, and a long tail tipped with a triangular barb. In his hand, he held the piercing tines of a dung-heap pitchfork.

Sinners got skinned alive.

The boy thought they were lucky.

He would have sold his soul to the Devil to be skinned alive, too.