Crucified (33 page)

"I'll call."

"Promise?" His was a cold smile.

"Cross my heart."

+ + + 

Liz watched the detective wend his way to his car through the dispersing mourners. Many were elderly veterans from the Second World War, and some had wounds they'd carried most of their lives. After Ramsey drove away, Liz returned to the walkway that led from the church to its parking lot. She sloshed to her grandmother's Rover. A taxi was idling in the space next to her driver's door, and as she inserted her key in the lock, a voice called out.

"Pardon, lass
ie.
"

Liz turned.

"Is the funeral over?"

The vet in the rear of the cab had facial scars so horrific that Liz almost glanced away. Not only had he lost one eye, but the skin on that side of his head was a patchwork of grafts made to repair third-degree burns. Liz wondered if he had bailed out of a blazing bomber.

"Yes," she said. "It's over. Did you know Sergeant Balsdon in the war?"

"No. I know Sweaty."

Liz approached the rolled-down window. "Sergeant Swetman said he'd be here."

"It's me," Wyatt whispered from the mouth of the scarred veteran. "There's a pub a mile to the north. Make sure you're not followed. Meet me round back."

+ + + 

The empty taxi passed her on the rural road a minute before Liz pulled into the carriage loop behind the Black Bess Pub, named for highwayman Dick Turpin's horse.

Wyatt and his bags were waiting by the door. The sign beside him read, "We do bed-and-breakfast." His bags went into the back seat, then he strapped into the front.

"The police want you," Liz said.

"I know. Let's park somewhere and talk."

They found a lovers' lane and got lost among the dripping trees. They looked like a couple having a quickie instead of lunch. Soon, the windows fogged as if they were.

Wyatt filled her in on the double murder in Sussex.

"Lenny tried to kill you?"

"The fellow we knew as Lenny in Germany wasn't the real Lenny. He killed the real Lenny before we arrived and dumped his corpse in the river. The German police fished him out after you left. The guy we knew as Lenny—the gunman who took a shot at me—was an imposter. He must have learned from the real Lenny that none of us had met him."

"And infiltrated our group to learn what we know?"

"Has to be."

"And your disguise?"

"I found Balsdon's body. The Yorkshire cops suspect me. I was in Germany when the real Lenny was found. The German cops suspect me. Then I found two more bodies, conveniently leaving my calling card at the door. The Sussex cops will suspect me. I'm a lawyer. That circumstantial evidence is so strong that
I'd
consider prosecuting me. I went to Sussex to get your number, to warn you that the killer might be stalking you and Sweaty. That failed, so I had to slip through a tightening dragnet to get here. That's when I remembered a sign I saw in a shop near where we first met."

"At the bookstore?"

"A costume shop down the street had makeup artists in to do monsters for Halloween. I got my bags from the Sussex station, changed into dry clothes, and hopped a train to London before the police could react. The makeup artist who worked on me was reading a graphic novel. I asked if he knew Two-Face—"

"The
Batman
villain?"

"Uh-huh. And he asked if I knew the
Dick Tracy
villain who was inspired by Two-Face."

"Did you?"

"Sure. Haf-and-Haf. That got us yakking about the Phantom of the Opera and Jekyll-and-Hydes who show
both
personalities on their faces. I asked him to make me up like a geriatric half and half so I could baffle everyone at my Halloween party."

"Sneaky."

"When you first saw me, how did you almost react?"

"I wanted to avert my eyes."

"We all do. It's gauche to stare. I trained it from London to York, with everyone trying
not
to stare at me. Ramsey walked by and didn't twig."

"You do a good old man."

"I used to act in school." Wyatt spread his arms for the footlights, as far as the confines of the car would allow. "It's great to be back on Broadway!" he said in his best Barrymore.

"A man of many talents.
King Lear
at age fifteen?"

"I was the Fourth Wise Man in the Christmas pageant."

"Never heard of him."

"That's because on his way to that manger in Bethlehem, he came across Roman soldiers about to kill a mother and child.

So he offered his gift of the magi to buy their freedom, and never got to give it to the baby under the star."

"Is that what you artistes call 'dramatic irony'?"

"My wise man shuffled, and when I first stepped onstage, I managed to kick the fire, knocking off the red cellophane.

The audience had to watch a biblical play with a bare light bulb onstage. When it ended, no one clapped. I thought I'd bombed.

Only later did I read the notice in the program: 'Due to the content of this production, we ask you refrain from applause.'"

"Some people take their religion
way
too seriously."

"As we're finding out."

"When did you get to the funeral?" asked Liz.

"After it started."

"How did you know my car?"

"The bag in the back seat is the one you had in Germany."

"Any idea who our Lenny is?"

"Someone hyper-religious. Did you notice the Christ-like scars on his hands?"

"Stigmata?"

"More like nail holes."

"He was
crucified?"

"Wouldn't that fit? An ultraconservative Christian wants the Judas package."

"For what?"

"The package will tell us. Before I turn myself in to the cops, there's one more clue to follow. I need a photograph of Ack-Ack DuBoulay. He was the secret agent aboard the
Ace of Clubs"

"That's easy," said Liz. "My grandfather's photo album was at my grandmother's house. So, in case it might be of use when we met up here—"

"You brought it with you?"

"Eureka!" Wyatt exclaimed. "I've seen this face."

He touched the picture of the crewmen of the
Ace of Clubs
standing under the bomb bay doors of an RAF Halifax and zeroed in on the warrior next to a young Sweaty.

"Where?" Liz asked, excited.

"In one of the U-boat files I got from Rutger."

The rain was drumming down so hard they had to yell to be heard in the tin can that was Liz's car, and the weak light forced Wyatt to pull off his eyepatch to see. On the train ride down to Sussex before his dip in the Channel, he'd moved the group photo of each U-boat crew to the front of its file. With the photo of Ack-Ack resting on the console between their seats, Wyatt and Liz compared his face with each submariner's.

"Found him," said Wyatt, waving a photo. "The Judas agent flown in by the
Ace
shipped out to Scotland in a U-boat called the
Black Devil."

Papers passed back and forth as they analyzed the file.

Booting up his laptop, Wyatt researched the
Elektro
boat, then read and reread the British military report—a copy of which was in Rutger's file—on a submarine captured in the Firth of Forth in July 1944.

The deeper the historian delved, the deeper the frown that creased his brow.

"What are the odds?" he muttered.

"Of what?" Liz asked.

"Us having to solve
another
locked-room puzzle. First, a bomber in the air. Now, a sub under the sea. Am I being haunted by the ghost of John Dickson Carr?"

"Lay it out," said Liz.

"Look at the back of the photo. It lists the crew in order.

Ack-Ack was the first watch officer. The 1WO. That means he was second-in-command, and he would have been in the conning tower. Just him and the skipper. The rest of the crew was stationed down below.

"The Type XXIII
Elektro
boat didn't enter service until late in the war. The
Black Devil
was sent on a secret run to the Firth of Forth to test its revolutionary, silent-running, electric-propulsion system. It was to make the trip
entirely
underwater.

And not to engage the enemy unless attacked.

"So say I'm Ack-Ack. What would I do? I'd stay in my role as second-in-command until we entered the Firth of Forth. I'd have the Judas package stashed aboard with me. I'd put the skipper out of commission—maybe with poison—and take command of the sub. Then I'd find a way to surrender to the British."

"Package delivered," said Liz.

"But the scheme went wrong. The
Black Devil
was spotted in the Firth of Forth—perhaps radar picked up the periscope—and suddenly, the sub was under attack. It fired its torpedoes. One missed, but the other hit a destroyer. A depth-charge barrage forced the U-boat to surface, and also caused chlorine gas to kill the crew.

The British had to pry open the sealed sub. Inside, they found a crewman with a smashed-in face, the result of being hurled about by the blasts. Unrecognizable, Ack-Ack was never identified."

"What happened to the package?"

 "That's the puzzle. All the Germans knew was that they'd lost another sub. The casualty rate for U-boats was seventy-five percent. Their average life expectancy was three cruises."

Liz whistled.

"Do you know the story of Enigma?" Wyatt asked.

"The cipher machine captured from a U-boat during the war?"

"Decoding it made it possible to intercept wolf packs on the hunt and blast them before they struck. That helped the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic. By capturing the
Black
Devil
, the Royal Navy had the most sophisticated submarine in the world in hand. They would have searched it with a fine-toothed comb."

Liz tapped the copy of the declassified report in the file.

"But there's no mention of the Judas package."

"So where did it go?"

"Perhaps they kept it from the report."

"But surely the relics would have come to light by now.

Or there'd be rumors of their existence."

"We have quite a puzzle," said Liz. "Ack-Ack had the package on the sub. It wasn't found in a thorough search. So how did he make it vanish from the submerged boat?"

"Exactly."

"Through the torpedo tubes?"

"In this type of U-boat, the torpedoes were loaded from outside. So that means nothing could have been ejected from inside the hull through the torpedo tubes. The crew couldn't reload."

"Through the snorkel?"

"The snorkel was connected to the diesel engine and used to expel fumes while charging the batteries. No way."

"Through the periscope?"

"It, too, was sealed."

"Through the toilet in the head?"

Wyatt laughed. "It was hard enough to get waste out that way. Whatever was in the package, it was too big."

"Maybe the sub surfaced?"

"It didn't. The Brits captured the log. The whole idea of the test was to stay submerged."

"I'm out of ideas."

"So am I."

"Assuming the package was aboard, it's baffling."

"It's your classic locked-room puzzle. How do you sneak a sardine out of a tin can that's sealed and remains sealed after the sardine is gone?"

+ + + 

"Ramsey thinks you're dangerous. He threatened to send me to jail if I help you."

"You'd better play it safe and drop me somewhere."

Liz slipped into her Texas drawl and sang the first few bars of "Do Not Forsake Me: The Ballad of High Noon."

"Tex Ritter, you're not."

"I like a man who knows his movies. I'll not have my cowpoke go it alone against the Miller gang."

"Your
cowpoke?"

"So where do we go from here?"

"First, let's get out of Dodge. We'll drive north from Yorkshire until Sheriff Ramsey is eating our dust. Then we'll find a room for the night and puzzle this out."

"Don't take off the makeup."

"I won't."

"As little girls, we're raised for a night like this."

"I don't get it."

"Beauty and the BeastT

"Liz Hannah," Wyatt said, raising an eyebrow. "Inspector Ramsey got it wrong.
You're
the dangerous one."

+ + + 

A listening bug affixed to the rear window of the car transmitted everything they said to the Legionary. He knew where Liz would be from their discussions in Germany, and he'd used the time while Liz was at Balsdon's funeral service to plant the bug and a GPS tracking device. When Wyatt arrived later, it made this a double header.

Good, thought Satan.

They'll go to hell together.