The Hess Cross (16 page)

"I'm going to have whatever goes with the wine you recommend," said Crown. Without waiting for the exchange to become more irritating, Crown ordered an obscure burgundy from the hills east of Paris. The supply of this French wine in America was rapidly diminishing, and it would be exorbitantly expensive. That is, expensive for anyone not on a carte-blanche government expense account, as Crown was.

"I haven't been in a restaurant since the blitzkrieg started," Heather said, lifting her napkin. "London hotels and restaurants aren't getting gas and electricity. And many of them have closed because the air raids empty the places every night."

"Not even an air raid would clear this place. Everette Smithson recommended the Pump Room to me and said several dozen of Chicago's high and mighty almost live here. Everyone knows everyone else. I feel like I'm crashing a party."

Heather surveyed the spangled, furred, studded, and polished Pump Room people as they gushed and gooed. She said, "You and I would last five minutes at this party. Our yawning wouldn't be considered very polite. Who's the greeter?"

"Probably Ernest Byfield, the owner. Smithson says you've made Chicago society when he can greet you by name. He also owns the Buttery in the Ambassador West Hotel. He largely dictates Chicago's taste in food and wine."

Jimmy, the wine steward, rolled a half-barrel on wheels to their table. It was filled with ice in which were buried several bottles of wine. Bunches of purple and green grapes were draped over the barrel edge and hung almost to the first metal stave. With the smoothness of decades of
service, Jimmy inserted the screw, popped the cork, and poured a taste into Crown's glass. Not knowing whether his act was for Jimmy or Heather, Crown swirled the dark red wine, sniffed the bouquet, sipped it loudly, swished it around in his mouth, and, much to Jimmy's relief, did not spit it on the floor, as proper wine tasting dictated, but swallowed it. He nodded approval to the steward, who poured two glasses and placed the bottle in the table-side ice-filled replica of the half-barrel.

Heather and Crown had been together for a week, and he knew surprisingly little about her. Their conversations had been short and without exception related to their mission. He had read her meager file, supplied by the air chief marshal. She was twenty-nine years old and had lived in London all her life. Her parents supplied her with a public-school education, and she had attended one of the London colleges Crown had never heard of. She had been working at a series of insignificant jobs and attending college part-time for six years. The file did not summarize, but Crown guessed she had been drifting, perhaps searching. When she volunteered for the British service, her life seemed to focus and accelerate. Her position with the air chief marshal indicated her proficiency for the work and her dedication. Attached to her background file was a letter from the air chief marshal attesting to her ability as an adjutant.

"How did you become Air Chief Marshal Hilling's adjutant?" Crown asked.

"I was his typist for several months. A secretary. One morning I put a memo on his desk telling how his command could be more efficient if certain positions were eliminated and others made directly responsible to his office. The air chief hardly looked up when I gave it to him, and it lay on his desk for over a week."

"He finally noticed it?" Crown was concentrating on her beautiful lips, not her words.

"Yes. There came the nasty day every executive dreads—
the day dedicated to clearing off the corner of his desk, which is piled with nonurgent letters and orders. The chief usually delayed this until the pile reached a foot high. When he came to my memo, he spent half an hour studying it, and then called me in to ask questions. The reorganization began the following day."

"That must have been traumatic for Hilling's subordinates," Crown said.

"It was. Word leaked that I caused the rearrangement that sent many officers to new posts and a few to new ranks."

"And who leaked that?"

"I wouldn't know." Heather smiled wryly. "But from that moment, no other lieutenant in the RAF was treated with such deference and, by a few former antagonizers, plain fear."

"Good God, you're a devious one."

Heather laughed and continued, "And no longer did other RAF officers call me 'my little lieutenant' and return salutes while mouthing kisses. I felt marvelously secure."

Heather sampled the wine and said, "I'm glad we could be together tonight. We don't get to talk freely much."

"No, not with the deputy führer around. He's a strange case. How've you and he been getting along?"

"The same. I sat in on Professor Ludendorf and Peter Kohler's interrogation of Hess after you and I met Mr. Fermi on Saturday. Most of the time he just sits and stares, but once in a while the professor can get him to talk. He'll let Hess talk about anything, so he rambles on and on about life in Germany. He loves to tell about how he first saw Hitler and joined the Nazi party. Ludendorf and Kohler eventually shut him off, especially when he talks about the Nazis. I think it makes them sick to hear about it."

"No wonder," Crown said, absently swirling his glass by
the stem. "The Nazis chased both of them from their homes and jobs. Ludendorf told me he wants to go back to Germany after the war."

"They finally got Hess to talk about the German experiments, but he gets really fuzzy about them. And he uses terms none of us know. I dutifully wrote them down, and I'm preparing them for Mr. Fermi to look at before his interview with Hess."

"Are you getting used to Kohler's interrogation?" Crown asked.

"Not really. Most of the time he glares angrily at Hess, letting Ludendorf ask questions and steer the conversation. But once in a while Kohler yells at Hess to quit hiding information, or asks the professor to let him question Hess alone for a while. Ludendorf never lets him, but the threat is always there, and Hess knows it. Kohler really frightens him."

"Well, that's a proven technique," Crown said, reaching for the menu.

"What are you going to have?" Heather asked, purposely leaving the business talk and looking at her menu. She had never seen menus like those in the Pump Room. Not only was the script difficult to read, but the foods were grouped according to seasoning, rather than by entrée. One list was headed "Dishes Highly Seasoned with Garlic." She would not eat garlic tonight.

"Top sirloin and a baked potato."

"You won't feel like a member of the proletariat, ordering meat and potatoes here?" she teased.

"I'll have them set it on fire at our table and serve it shish kebab, if you like."

When the red-coated waiter visited their table, she ordered chicken hash.

"Chicken hash?" Crown exclaimed. "That's something my mother served whenever there was nothing else to eat.
It has the parts of the chicken in it that I couldn't get down unless they were disguised."

"Don't be funny. The Pump Room's chicken hash is famous, isn't it?" she asked the waiter.

Looking like a general in his red coat with gold piping, their waiter explained, "Actually, it was famous at Jack and Charlie's Twenty-one in New York City before it came here. We do it with more flair, though."

Several minutes later the general rolled an entrée wagon to their table. He gripped a deep-dish pan with a towel, splashed alcohol into it, and brushed the hash with a punk. The flame leaped halfway to the ceiling, illuminating the booth with a yellow glow. As the fire died, the waiter swirled the hash in the pan to cook it evenly and slipped it onto Heather's plate. He returned a minute later with Crown's order.

"You were raised in Oregon?" Heather asked as she sprinkled pepper on the hash.

"Yes," Crown mumbled through the steak.

"Well, tell me about it."

He swallowed and said, "My upbringing was pretty mundane. My father is a channel master on the Columbia River."

"What's a channel master?"

"The Columbia below Portland is treacherous, particularly out over the bar at the mouth of the river near Astoria. When the Columbia rolls into the Pacific, huge swells grow. They're dangerous by themselves, but they also change the sand on the ocean floor and river bottom. The lower Columbia is a graveyard for scores of ships that didn't make it. So a channel master takes a small boat from Portland out over the bar to the incoming ship. The master guides the ship in."

"I've heard how beautiful the Columbia is," Heather said.

"I used to go with my father on his trips down the Columbia. The most inspiring place I've ever seen is the last fifty miles of that river. The Columbia just doesn't lie there, like the lower Mississippi. It swirls into blue patterns as it passes, as if to show it's a force that alters the weather and slows the tide. The river is blue, but not your blue in England, or Chicago blue. It's Columbia blue, a blue so deep it sparkles."

"I'd like to visit your river."

"See it in the fog. When an opaque film obscures the banks, the Columbia is the world. The air is diaphanous, and the sky and river blend together. When boating through the fog, small river islands appear and vanish as if by sleight of hand. Fog slows movement, and the river seems eerily still through the haze. But it's a lie. The Columbia is always deadly."

"It sounds surrealistic."

"I suppose so, but unlike a painting, sound permeates the picture. The boat's horn booms through the fog bank every few seconds and bounces back from the hills. And the gulls and cranes squawk at the boat. The sounds are mesmerizing, and the haze disorienting. Fog enters the mind."

"Now you make it sound frightening," Heather said, nibbling at the hash.

"Once, when I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, I was standing at the bow of my father's boat as we churned through the fog to the bar. Suddenly it just overwhelmed me. I imagine it was like the instant you realize you're lost in a forest. I ran to the pilothouse. Maybe because my dad suffered the same thing once, he grabbed me, sat me down in his pilot's chair, and said, 'See these instruments. See this foghorn chain and this wheel. You and I are in control of this boat and this river. We don't fear the Columbia.' I've never forgotten that lesson."

"Where's your father now?"

"He's still piloting the river, and Mom's still cooking his dinner. They're happy."

"What about you? Are you happy?" she asked as she stopped eating and looked at him intently.

"I suppose I am. I keep busy and don't think about it much. And my steak is getting cold. You talk for a while."

"My life to date has been singularly uninteresting. Born and raised in London. Working for the air chief marshal is the highlight of my life."

"Why've you never been married?" he asked abruptly.

"How did you know that?"

"You know I've read your file. I don't work with anyone whose dossier I haven't studied."

Color touched Heather's cheeks as she remembered the embarrassing questions she had answered on her security-clearance forms. The air chief marshal must have supplied it to the Americans. Piqued, she said, "Does the file say I've just never felt the need to have a husband?"

"No, but I'll add it as a postscript, if you like." Crown smiled.

She wasn't beautiful, he thought. Heather was more and less than that. Her eyes were large and green and liquid. She didn't blink. Her eyelids languorously fell and rose like wings of a summer butterfly. The physician who had reported in her file that her hair was reddish-brown didn't have an eye. Wisps of honey blond fused with light red and a tincture of brown. The shades whirled together and constantly restated themselves as light played with her hair.

Miguel Maura would have called hers an Italian mouth, the most sensuous in the world, wide, with a full lower lip. Crown guessed she had the rare ability to pout without being hilarious. The spray of freckles across her nose hinted at playfulness and sunshine and kept her from being
mysteriously sensuous. She was probably a brat as a kid, Crown decided.

Heather was wearing a simple black, long-sleeved dress. It clung to her and concealed very little. The V neckline dropped just far enough to suggest the swells of her breasts. True to the ridiculous style of the day, the dress's shoulders were lightly padded and unfortunately gave her a blocky appearance. A single strand of pearls defied the mannishness of the padded shoulders.

"You look athletic," Heather said, playing with what was left of her salad. "Did you ever play football?"

"In college I played American football, not soccer, which is what I think you call football. I'm a little thin to be on the front line, and a little slow to run, so I was the punter," Crown replied, wondering why she made him feel like talking about himself.

"What's a punter?"

"He's the guy who kicks the ball when there's nothing left to do. He boots it to the other team, and they can run with it. But I was kicked off my college team."

"Why? Weren't you a good punter?"

"I was good enough, but during one game I punted to the other team, and their runner made it past all my team's tacklers, so I was the only one left between their runner and the goal. My coach didn't like how I stopped him."

"How?" Heather grinned.

"Well, I went a little crazy and punted him in a place so painful that women don't understand. He had to be carried off the field, and I was thrown off the team."

They laughed, and the waiter who had caught the story also laughed. They ordered baked Alaska, to have another ignition at their table.

"The wine is perfect."

"It was Miguel Maura's and my favorite," Crown said
after sipping the burgundy again. "We spent two nights at the winery where this was made."

"Were you on a tour?"

"So to speak. Miguel and I found ourselves in front of the German advance across the hills east of Paris. It was ridiculous. By the time Miguel and I and our Free French guerrillas reached the château, we were in full retreat. The winemaker was a patriot and gave us a case of burgundy to take with us when we left."

"A nice gesture."

"It was, considering we also took his son with us as a recruit. The old man had tears in his eyes when the kid left, and he gave him the family's French tricolors, which had hung for so many years near the château. The son promised to return the flag when France was liberated."