Crucified (22 page)

Anything to stop the insects burrowing beneath his raw skin.

"Itchy and a burny and a sting!"

The boy threw up.

Then a crack of light appeared around the door, and he thought the angel of the Lord was coming to harvest him.

Instead, it was his father with the Holy Grail.

"Christ, cure my son," his father prayed, and he touched him with the relics.

"And by dawn the next day," the Art Historian told the Legionary, "I was better. The doctor said the penicillin must have won the struggle, but I knew it was a miracle worked by the Holy Grail. I'm
still
allergic to penicillin. Deathly so. Imagine what will happen if the Judas relics end up in secular hands. The healing power of Christ won't rest in his one true Church. How can we
not
use every means we have to obtain those relics for the Holy See?"

"Here he comes," interjected the Legionary.

Exiting from the arrivals gate, Sweaty stopped to scan the crowd for a familiar face. He spotted the men waiting for him and hauled his suitcase over.

"Why the secrecy, Lenny?" Sweaty asked the Legionary.

Wyatt was inside the fuselage of the
Ace of Clubs
, counting the number of unexpended rounds in the ammo boxes and belts that fed shells to the rear turret, when Rutger heaved himself in from the pit outside.

"Interesting," mused the American.

"What is?" the German asked.

"The guns in the dorsal turret"—Wyatt pointed overhead—

"were each fed six hundred rounds from boxes within the bubble. Almost all the rounds were expended when the mid-upper gunner opened fire on the Junkers 88."

"That makes sense."

"Right. What Sweaty—Earl Swetman, the wireless operator—told me was that as Ack-Ack—the rear gunner, Dick DuBoulay—shouted a warning through the intercom, the Junkers 88 strafed the plane. The pilot yanked the bomber into a dive, while Jonesy—the mid-upper gunner, Trent Jones—

fired back. He made no mention of gunfire from the rear turret, which would have been drowned out, had it occurred, by the deafening din of the closer guns."

"Was the night fighter hit?"

"Probably not. It came at them again. But that time, neither turret shot back."

"Why?" wondered Rutger.

"Sweaty feared the rear gunner was dead. By then, the Junkers had torn the bomber's tail to shreds, and Ack-Ack's turret was smack-dab in the line of fire."

"And the other gunner?"

"Hours before, as the plane was nearing the coast of Europe, both gunners had tested their weapons over the open sea. The interrupter gear of the dorsal turret malfunctioned, so while the rest of the crew prepared to enter enemy airspace, both gunners got together to solve the problem. Later, as the Junkers attacked, Sweaty feared the gear problem wasn't fixed."

"So the dorsal guns ceased firing?"

"Possibly.
After
Jonesy had all but emptied his ammo boxes at the fighter in its first pass."

"What's so interesting about
these
boxes?" Rutger asked, nodding his head at the ammunition supply for the rear turret.

"Almost all the rounds are here. The number of expended shells is what I'd expect from the test fire alone."

"Meaning the rear gunner didn't fire a single shot during the night fighter's attack?"

"So it would seem."

"Perhaps the guns jammed?"

"All four at once? Unlikely."

"So?"

"So the rear gunner must have been killed
before
he could fire back. I could accept the logic of that if his body was riddled with bullet holes. But not when he got stabbed three times in the back."

Rutger frowned. "First, the Junkers attacked, strafing the tail with cannon fire but missing the rear turret. Then Ack-Ack yelled a warning to the crew by intercom. The pilot jerked the plane into a defensive corkscrew as the mid-upper gunner fired at the Junkers. But before the rear gunner could fire back, too, one of the crew knifed him to death."

"Impossible. According to Sweaty—and I believe him—all seven men were in their combat positions."

"So how do you explain it?"

"I thought Ack-Ack might have been killed by some sort of mechanical device hidden in his turret. A machine that could knife him several times, then vanish along with the blade's broken-off handle. But a thorough search of the bomber has failed to yield any evidence of that."

"Puzzling."

"The only possible explanation is that Ack-Ack was already dead inside the rear turret long before the Junkers appeared on the scene."

"So when was he killed?"

"Back when both gunners were together at work on the problem with the interrupter gear. While our victim was sitting in the rear turret, the traitor stabbed him three times in the back, then closed the doors, pocketed the snapped handle of the knife, and climbed up into the mid-upper turret for the bombing run. From that point on, the crewmen remained in their combat positions until they bailed out."

"So the killer was Trent Jones?"

"Consider the case against him: That was his first mission with the crew of the
Ace of Clubs.
Jonesy was the odd man out, and more important, he was stationed halfway back from the forward five crewmen, which meant that his comings and goings would be the least in view."

"But why kill the rear gunner?" Rutger asked.

"To keep him from shooting back. The Junkers 88 was sent by Judas to shoot down the
Ace
and insert the secret agent into Hitler's Reich. The British conspirators had to guarantee success, so they sacrificed the rear gunner and doomed the other five crewmen to captivity or death."

"Jones became a Judas goat: the decoy that lures other animals to the slaughter."

"It seems that way."

"You don't sound convinced."

"Two things trouble me. Why does the DNA of the skeleton found in the rear turret match that of the bludgeoned body pulled from the river? Was Lenny Jones really Ack-Ack DuBoulay's grandson? If so, why did he lie?"

"And the second worry?"

"Sweaty swears that Ack-Ack DuBoulay
himself
raised the alarm through the intercom. He's certain that Ack-Ack was alive when the Junkers attacked. They'd known each other since bomber training."

"But that can't be if Ack-Ack was knifed before the
Ace of
Clubs
entered Nazi airspace."

"True," Wyatt agreed. "So either Jonesy impersonated Ack-Ack well enough to fool Sweaty, or Ack-Ack wasn't in the rear turret as everyone thought. The intercom didn't indicate where voices came from. It was simply an audio circuit that each crewman plugged into when he was manning one of the combat stations. Sweaty heard Ack-Ack because it was Ack-Ack's voice in the intercom, but it was coming from the mid-upper—not the rear—turret."

"The gunners had switched positions."

"The crucial defense station in a Halifax bomber was the rear turret, since night fighters usually attacked from behind and below. If the rear gunner was shot, the mid-upper gunner took over, because the plane wasn't out of danger until it landed in Britain. And sometimes—as we both know—not even then."

Rutger nodded. "The Luftwaffe lurked over English bases to shoot bombers coming home."

"According to Sweaty, Trent Jones joined the crew of the
Ace
after his own Halifax crashed in a takeoff accident. He'd survived by bailing out through the
rear
hatch, the escape route of the tail gunner. And before the
Ace
departed on its last mission, the crew took their new gunner up on a test flight so that Ack-Ack could check Jonesy out on the turrets and the guns. Turrets in the plural. He wanted to make sure Jonesy could defend them and the plane from either the dorsal or the rear turret."

"So the voice the other five heard through the intercom wasn't Jones's. It was Ack-Ack mimicking the voice of the new gunner."

"Ack-Ack stabbed Jonesy in the rear turret as the rest of the crew focused on the danger of flying into Nazi Europe. Then, masked head to foot, he took over the mid-upper turret. From then on, no one dared leave his battle station to venture back to the rear turret."

"Not when split seconds counted."

"When Ack-Ack spoke in his own voice from the mid-upper turret, those up front assumed he was back at the plane's tail. When he mimicked Jonesy from the same turret, he had five advantages. One, he used few words. Two, Jones's voice was new to the crew. Three, he had a Welsh accent. Four, the roar of engines muffled his voice. And five, all the crewmen expected some distortion because the moisture from their breath froze in their mikes."

"But why was Ack-Ack's identification found on Jones's skeleton in the rear turret?"

"My guess?" Wyatt said. "Jonesy was told he was part of a secret mission to win the war. That's why they were adding him to the
Ace of Clubs'
crew. If the plane was shot down in Germany, his role was to confuse the Gestapo by saying he was Ack-Ack. Then the real Ack-Ack—armed with false papers and able to speak fluent German—would be free to contact Judas."

"That's a dangerous ruse."

"I doubt Jonesy gave a damn. His wife had gone off to Australia with their child. Sweaty described him as quiet and withdrawn, eaten up inside. Now he was being offered the chance to make his life count."

"For king and country?"

Wyatt shrugged. "Actually, Jonesy was being set up to be stabbed. De Count was cracking from battle fatigue, so that gave Bomber Command the excuse to remove him from the plane. Jonesy came aboard ostensibly to replace De Count as mid-upper gunner, but he secretly assumed Ack-Ack's position in the rear turret and was killed there."

"Why not use De Count?"

"He was cracking and unpredictable. The crewmen knew his voice. And it's much easier to stick a knife into a stranger than it is a friend."

"Why choose Jonesy?"

"He was expendable. His life was in the toilet, and he would hardly be missed. If Bomber Command was going to kill off one of their own, why not choose a miserable wretch?"

Rutger scowled. "Your theory holds up. With Ack-Ack gone from the rear turret, the Junkers 88 could fire at will. No danger of hitting the Judas goat. No worry about return fire.

When the attack began, Ack-Ack could raise the alarm, shooting the mid-upper guns
away
from the night fighter."

"As the
Ace
was going down, the pilot ordered the crew to bail out. Ack-Ack—wearing a gunner's Taylorsuit just like Jonesy's—scrambled to the front of the plane, shed the equipment masking his face, and jumped out through the forward hatch. In his pocket, he carried the handle of the knife."

"I like it," the German said. "The bomber crashed in this valley. If the Nazis had found it, the gunner sprawled dead in the rear turret would have had Ack-Ack's ID. If the conspiracy had somehow leaked at either end, they'd think the Judas agent was killed in the attack or the resulting crash."

"Meanwhile, if Ack-Ack met a crewman in a POW camp, he could claim he'd bailed out by the rear hatch. And if a mate had spied him in his forward escape, he could have said both gunners had switched positions so he could work on the interrupter gear."

"Ironically, the landslide buried the
Ace,
which prevented the Nazis from finding the plane," said Rutger.

"What happened to the Judas package, no one knows. The British disowned the mission for the sake of morale at Bomber Command. All that lived on was rumor—until now."

Rutger withdrew a hip flask from his pants. "Schnapps?" he asked, unscrewing the cap and handing the flask across.

Wyatt took a swig and passed it back.

"Well, we have a book, my friend," Rutger said. "We know the identity of the Judas goat."

"I think we know more than that."

"What?"

"We know who Judas was, too."

"Heaven on Earth" was the theme of the paintings on the walls of the Art Historian's London gallery and dealer's shop, a commercial satellite of his headquarters in New York. No prices defiled the artworks. That would be gauche. If you have to ask, you can't afford to buy it and you don't deserve to own it. Instead, these glorious bits of heaven were sold by secret bid. People would pay through the nose to escape from hell on earth by gazing at these uplifting visions in their extravagant homes.