Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

“We had done it all. We took the power of steam with all its difficulties and converted a lightweight turbine, a simple and effective boiler, a lightweight condenser, and easy controls to outperform the best internal combustion or even jet aircraft. That was the good part. However, add the new fuel sources of the nuclear age and we had created a monster, which might sadly fall into the hands of the wrong people. When we started back in the late Twenties, we had no idea it would lead to this. We wanted a cargo plane or a bomber that would carry a few light bombs and then return to base. Quite innocently, we had created an almost invincible bombing platform that could remain aloft, ready to bomb anyone on the globe.

“The question was who were the wrong people. With my knowledge of Wall, knowing of his rapport with powerful people in this country, I begin to worry about my views that we, the Americans, were the best people, as compared to the Soviets who were supposedly the worst. Quite frankly I had come to believe that no one country was completely worth my trust or should totally possess the Magnolia Whispers.

“July 3 1946.

“I have contacted my friend Vallery at the United Nations. A terrifying invincible weapon in a country’s sole control will start another war until the weapon becomes outdated. The old legend of magnolia whispers proves this. An invulnerable weapon is never invulnerable. The Nanticokes put their trust in the sounds of trees and my family simply burned down the trees.

“Giving Magnolia Whispers to the United Nations assures that every member nation will own its technology. Is this treason? The question is to what community I am committing treason, my country or another country or all countries? Is it treason to want to save lives? We have just fought a war where the enemy claimed that they showed no treason to humanity by simply following orders. Am I a traitor or a humanitarian?

“Hiram Jones has just been in my office. He’s announced that he is planning to carry out Wall’s orders and facilitate moving the lab north to Aviatrice headquarters. Regardless of his pleasant assurances, I know I’ll lose the plane and all my research. I’ll be taken there to work, but I have no illusion that with the new scientists and engineers, the research control will be out of my hands.

“Another call from my wife today. The boy is sick again. She went over again how she wants me to resign and go into business with my cousins in Baltimore. I can work for the steam electric plant in Baltimore. I can make electricity for the city, she says. A comfortable job and I’ll be home more often. The war is over, she says. Is the war over, I ask myself?

“To stop the research would be the easy way out. The research is not the sin. This new technology can help people if it is properly applied. If it can be limited to building aircraft that can help rather than destroy, it would improve the lives of millions. How to do that? The great breakthroughs go to the military first. Then when the enemy is dead, the technology moves to the living.

“Becca tells me that she overheard Hiram talking on the telephone about stealing the seaplane. Not taking it to the new lab. I don’t understand why he would steal the seaplane.

“I have the combinations to the safes. In one of Hiram’s I find more information. It is not Hiram alone. Wall is in on this. But more than stealing the seaplane, they plan to bomb a Soviet ship in a so called accident and cause a United Nations crisis. No doubt they expect much support in the government and the military. I read that the United Nations is very controversial. Scares of war will mean Wall will build more aircraft, make more money.

“Into my mind came the words that Wall had used on our last telephone conversation only days before. He had once again tried to convince me to leave the Navy and come to work for him. His words were, and I remembered them so clearly, ‘You’ll have to come to help us when the next war breaks out.’

“I replied, ‘We have the United Nations now. Wars are over.’

“I heard him laugh into the telephone, his tone that of the businessman that he was, that sense of overwhelming power to do what he wanted to do, accomplish anything at whatever cost. Then he said, ‘The time is closer than you think, Captain.’ ”

He hung up and left me wondering what he meant. Now, after reading this message, I know what he plans. He would set the world into chaos and only to sell more airplanes that he and others would force me to build for him.

“In the last year I’ve learned that Wall is indeed capable of such cruelty. He fathered a child, not to love, but to run his empire, someone only he could trust. The child’s a girl and, true to character, he was violently upset not to have a boy. He has already discarded the mother, paid her off, and is raising the child himself with selected servants. The child’s name is Jessica. Wall has become the ultimate Nazi, who believes only in his own race, which is himself.

“What to do? I have no one to turn to in Aviatrice. The pioneer flier who started the company is long dead. The Navy? I suspect it is, and probably innocently, beholden to Wall. The post war officers are all new faces. They know nothing of the Great Boat and the original plans for her. Who can I trust? The police, but that will take time. Hiram might be alerted. Politics might enter this. People in high offices who hate the Soviets could help Wall. Hiram and Wall could simply cause an incident another way. Meanwhile the plane will be in the hands of Aviatrice.

“If I steal the plane myself, when to go? I know I must destroy all the records so the plane can never be built by anyone else. We had known since the beginning of the war how to scramble, how to destroy the lab if it is attacked. For years we thought the Nazis would send a submarine into the harbor and lob shells at the lab. All the documentation can be removed. I have the explosives so that I can blow up the machines here that I have designed to build the seaplane’s controls. The destruction of this lab was planned, if attacked. Now those plans can be used.

“July 4

“Today I find more papers in Hiram’s safes, recent communications from Wall. Thank God I found them. I know why he is here. I know what I must do. I have no choice.

“My God, he plans to bomb the Soviet battleship that is approaching New York City. He plans to kill hundreds in that old ship. Maybe even sink her. The United Nations will not recover from such an incident. Hiram will claim it was an accident and, with Wall’s influence, probably receive no punishment, but the harm will be done. Soviet and American suspicions of each other will be fanned to threats of war and all dialogue between them will stop.

“Vallery. I do have hope with him. I have spoken to him again. He has often talked about the peaceful use of the technology. An international forum might use the potential of the Magnolia Whispers in a beneficial way for all nations. In all events, Hiram and Wall have to be stopped, and I have no time left.

“Hiram keeps asking me to take some leave, get out of the office myself. He will take the night work he says. In my opinion he intends to fly out in the Magnolia Whispers after I have left. He will do this soon.

“Hiram would try to get out of Philadelphia airspace by either flying under the radar or waiting until the system goes down, which it often does. He must be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. That radar goes down some nights but it is only for a few minutes.

“I learn that Hiram has put bombs on my plane. He’s probably going to fly sometime after the Fourth. He’s not here today. Taking leave time for a short vacation, he said.

“It is nighttime and all is quiet here at the lab. I will fly Magnolia Whispers tonight.

“The radar has gone down. I must hurry.

“All data has been taken from the safes. I have set explosives at the lab. The materials I can’t take will be burned, along with the tooling, the dies, and the special machines. Not even Wall or his people have seen the latest drawings of the valves that control the turbines. They were installed by me for testing next month at high altitude.

“I write this as I fly.

“The seaplane was easy to maneuver tonight. She almost wanted to leave her berth when she knew it would be the two of us again. As I taxied down the river I thought about all the flights over our farm in River Sunday, the signals of love to my wife. The Magnolia Whispers shudders as the lab explosions go off behind me.

“I will fly out to the east and then go down the coast to the Eastern Shore. Hide out at the old farm in the back country. The villagers will take care of me. My wife will know I am there. They have no love for the outsiders and they know me from the many times I have flown in that little creek. Then I will have time to contact Vallery. I’ll let that great body of countries decide. When it’s time, I’ll fly her right up to the doorstep of the United Nations buildings at Lake Success, New York, and let Vallery take possession of Magnolia Whispers right there at the lake.

“I hear one of our wartime songs on my broadcast band, a song that so many men carried on their lips as they died in the agony of battle,

“You leave the Pennsylvania station at a quarter to four,

“read a magazine and then you’re in Baltimore,

“dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer,

“ then to have your ham and eggs in Carolina,”

“As the song dies away, I think of those men, some of them my young engineers, who died, their deeds often unknown and not witnessed in the fury of combat. If I die on this flight, no one will know what I was about, but that is the risk of all soldiers. At least Hiram will not be able to bomb that innocent ship and start another war.”

“That’s all he put down,” said Jesse.

He closed the diary and glanced at Mike and Robin. “We’ve got to do this,” he said.

Robin nodded and said, “Let’s take her to New York. Let’s finish what he started.”

Hobble came up then, Jonathan and Regal beside him. Mike looked at Robin, new worry in his eyes for her safety.

“I’ll worry about me,” Robin said, smiling at him and touching his arm tenderly.

“If we make it to New York, we insure my grandfather’s bravery means something,” said Jesse.

“You’re right,” said Mike, rubbing his neck. “The flight has to be made.”

Chapter Seventeen

11 AM, July 3

The Tabernacle, Maryland

“This is a flight I’ve always dreamed of making,” said Robin. “Piloting an old fashioned aircraft and facing the same danger as the old timers.”

 She looked at Mike. “You could fly it. You could pilot again if you’d try.”

“No,” Mike said, pausing for a moment as he looked at her thoughtfully, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Everyone fails, even your father,” she said. “His biggest failure was letting you down.”

“It’s hard to think of my father failing at anything.”

“No one is so brave that he is never a coward,” she answered.

Regal spent time with Robin going over the controls. He touched every knob on the board with respect and as he did, he talked, “You see, when we get to steam, every valve and handle has a history, developed through hard experience, sometimes loss of life. Years of tradition and hard-working engineers that the diesels and the gasoline engines don’t share.”

“Kinda like sailboats and motorboats,” said Robin.

“Yes, ma’am, just like that. Steam is kinda like sailing. It’s beautiful like that. No engine in the world has the soft whisper of a steam engine. “

“First,” Regal said, “We drain the water out of the system. That’s done to prevent locks when the engine starts running. Water don’t move like steam does. It could bust her wide open if the water isn’t drained.”

“Same as draining oil out of the big gasoline engine pistons,” she said.

“Same idea,” he said as he adjusted several valves. “We want to get her steam up to pressure.”

“She burns mineral oil,” she added.

“Yes Ma’am, she does. We touch her off and she heats water through this long tubing to get up the high pressures. We got her batteries charged up so she has juice for her blower. That cleans out the combustion chamber, then we send in the fuel and spark it. That gets some heat in and makes your steam. Once she is running, she don’t need the starter. She has auxiliaries to run the blower and pump the water in.”

He smiled at Robin. “When you got your steam up, you can let it in to turn the turbines up on the wings. After that the spent steam comes back to the condensers on the wings and converts to water to start the process again.”

“I need to keep up the pressure so I always have steam,” said Robin.

“That’s the beauty of this machine,” said Regal proudly. “The engineer built this system knew his stuff. Controls automatically increase the boiler heat or pump in more water so you always get the steam you need. Also, this rig will produce steam no matter how high in the atmosphere you take the plane.”

“Best keep her in level flight, though,” observed Robin.

“I think so, too,” said Mike. “The Catalina wasn’t much for aerobatics. With all this steam material I would not want to trust her if she got too far off level flight. Remember it’s a test model. Keep it level in flight and we won’t have any trouble.”

Robin thought for a moment and said, “So the boiler heats water to make steam, that goes up to the turbines, then comes back down as water again. Pretty simple.”

“Well I don’t know how simple it is, but it’s different from your gas engine,” said Regal. “You get your power right away, don’t have to wait for the revs to build up. Course folks don’t like sitting on all that boiler with the pressure.”