Trail of the Twisted Cros (8 page)

“What does the radio report say?”

“It says that somehow, Lovebridge was going to explode as a protest against the imprisonment of Johnny Lee Rogers.”

“How does the radio station know that?”

“All I heard is that someone was supposed to have called the Associated Press office in New York and said so.”

Slayton was somewhat relieved. Most broadcast outlets wouldn’t use the material, not right away. Sure, West Virginia stations
would use it, even though the AP probably marked the news item “advisory only.” Most likely, editors across the country would
think it too preposterous a connection, merely the telephone call of a crank, the sort that happen every day in any large
city. Fortunately, Slayton thought, there was no word about Nixon in any of this second-hand report. Another Presidential
assassination attempt was not what the country needed, even if it was directed at Nixon.

It was important, Slayton knew, to keep events such as this as quiet as possible for as long as possible. That way, the terrorist
wasn’t tipped off in any way as to the direction of his pursuit. Too often, when news media got hold of an exciting story,
the authorities would become excited during interviews and spill too much information about the investigation in process.
Criminals in general, and terrorists in particular, read such interviews very carefully.

Slayton suddenly thought of the obvious.

“What about attendance sheets?” he asked.

“You want today’s?”

“Of course.”

NEW YORK CITY

The mobile forensic unit at the Nixon house finished testing the envelope addressed to the former President for any indications
of a bomb or poison.

Using a pair of razor-thin steel tweezers, one of the examiners opened the envelope, the one not cleared by postal investigators
as usual. The message was neatly typed on a piece of white eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch paper:

The Führer is to be guaranteed safe passage to Algeria, within ten days. We begin counting down at 18:00 this date. In addition
to his release, the Führer is to be provided one million American dollars worth of gold. Any resistance at any stage of his
release and passage to Algeria will be answered by us in a manner demonstrated this morning in West Virginia.

FAIRMONT, West Virginia

While Tolson danced around him, occasionally asking questions like “Do you think that means something?”, Slayton riffled through
the stack of papers recording the attendance records of mine crews working all shifts prior to the morning explosion, going
back to twenty-four hours earlier.

It took a few minutes to match absentees of today with those of yesterday, to see if there had been any suspicious patterns,
any shift swapping, any lateness coming out of the pit—anything at all that might make some sense.

He found nothing that needed asking about. He went back to today’s absentee list. Four men absent from the shift that had
been more than likely killed en masse. Four very lucky men.

“Darryl Easton?” Slayton asked. He looked at Tolson, waiting for an answer.

“Good man. About to retire.” Tolson shrugged his shoulders, unsure as to how he could help.

“Gene Ray Thomas?”

“Drunk.”

“Eddie Lee King?”

“Same,” Tolson said. “Probably him and Thomas out together on a toot.”

“Colin Hays?”

The color drained out of Tolson’s face. He took a step backward and nearly fell down doing so.

“Hays… he’s absent? Today?”

“Says so here on your foreman’s report,” Slayton said. “What’s so special about Colin Hays?”

“He’s the local head of that Nazi outfit—you know, the one that Johnny Lee Rogers runs.”

NASSAU, the Bahamas, 8 September, 5:55 p.m.

“Enough sun now for you, honey?”

She said her words with the soft Bahamian lilt as she rubbed lotion on the fleshy shoulders of the large pink man sprawled
on his stomach atop a blanket, to protect him from the heat of the sand. He gurgled a response, soothed by the touch of her
long, cocoa-colored fingers.

She moved her fingers slowly down the curve of his spine, making him wriggle with a sensuous anticipation of the manner in
which she earned her living. She let her hand rest lightly at the edge of his European-cut swimsuit, which looked ridiculous
on him, showing as much as it did of the decades-long accumulation of beer and Southern cooking.

Skillfully, she buried two fingers down below the cloth of his briefs, massaging his buttocks, slipping her hand down the
cleft between his cheeks. He moaned, then turned over to reveal the tent that his male member had suddenly made of the material
struggling to cover it.

She giggled at the sight, checked around to see if anyone was watching, then covered his erection with her hand, urging it
into an even larger problem which could not have the most desirable solution at the height of the sunbathing hour on the beach
outside Nassau’s Emerald Hotel. She covered her upper lip with her tongue, and he closed his eyes, hurt with the exquisite
pain of not being able to receive her invitation right then and there.

The light, pleasant sounds of a calypso steel band, provided by the hotel for the entertainment of its beach enthusiasts,
floated through the warm, semitropical air. He enjoyed all his sensory input immensely—the sound of the music, the professionally
erotic touch of this tall black island beauty, the smell of the salt air, the hotel… He was not a man accustomed to such comforts.
To him, a drive-in movie and a six-pack was standard weekend fare, and then it could all be ruined if the kids in the back
seat didn’t shut up and settle down.

His wife was no better. She was the sort of woman who asked questions like “What are you doing down there?” when he decided
to do something about the crashing boredom of his so-called sexual life.

Now here he was, basking in an island paradise, living the life of what his buddies would call a “swell.” Put up at the Emerald
Hotel, attended to by this nubile dusky woman, eating and drinking only the best.

He should have joined up long ago, he thought to himself.

“Yep,” he said aloud, then stopped himself.

That was the pledge. He would do his job, and then blow, and then shut the hell up for the rest of his life and never look
back.

He supposed he would miss it all. The hills, and his buddies—his kids. Maybe even his wife. The job? No way. So far, he wasn’t
missing a thing. And under the circumstances, he had a hard time imagining how he ever could.

She was stretched out beside him now, and she had draped his big round body with a terry cloth robe. Below the robe, she was
massaging his penis, which she had released from the swimsuit. His body shook with desire.

“Time to go up to the room, honey,” she whispered to him. Her tongue darted into his ear, ever so lightly, and he jerked in
response.

“Yeah,” he managed, winded.

He rose from the blanket, holding his robe over his mid-section to hide his protrusion. Then he followed her languid walk
across the beach, up to the boardwalk and past the band, toward the hotel. A drummer gave her a sly wink, which she returned.

“Gawd-a-mighty, he delivered on his promise,” he thought, shaking his head in disbelief at what he had won for his service.

He watched the undulation of the young woman’s hips, caught her lusty grin as she tossed her head back to see how the frustrated
fellow behind her was progressing. She was fully two inches taller than he, slender, with big breasts and high, generous buttocks
that nearly burst through the rear patch of her string bikini.

Funny, though, he thought. She being a nigger. Figured the outfit would be against that sort of thing. “Mongrelizing,” somebody
or other called it. But what the hell?

When they reached his room, he freed himself of the bit of cloth that decent society in the tourist classes of Nassau dictated.

She was a bit more coquettish about disrobing. First, she undid the tiny bow that held the wisp of a top half in place. The
fullness of her breasts was something astonishing, to him and every other man. They were cocoa near the chest, the same shade
as the rest of her skin. But the tone lightened toward her nipples, to shades of the darkest honey-color. And finally—those
hard, pointed nipples; dark, nearly violet.

He rushed at her. She covered her breasts modestly, shoved him back, playfully.

She picked at the two bows on her hips, and the bottom section of her bikini fell to the floor. Her pubis was thick black
and shining, a luxuriant, inviting sweetness.

Before he could rush her again, this time with his penis in hand as if it were some sort of lance that grew at his groin,
she took him by the shoulders and pushed him down to the bed. He crashed clumsily down, landing on his back, his manhood at
full salute.

She knelt at the side of the bed, and her soft breasts grazed his knees. She held his thighs, moved them apart, and said to
him, “Now you’ll know some loving.” He melted into the bed, waiting for her to do her wondrous work on his body.

He felt her breath hot against the tops of his thighs, her face moving closer to his groin.

She dropped a hand from his thigh and reached for something below the bed, something she knew would be there.

When her hand emerged, the fingers were fitted around a hypodermic syringe. She raised it slowly toward one of his hips, out
of his range of sight.

She breathed against the tip of his penis and his body quaked. Gently, her dark lips descended and enveloped him. He shouted
his feral pleasure and never felt the slight sensation of sharp needlepoint steel puncture his hip.

DANBURY, Connecticut

Johnny Lee Rogers smiled at the men who made up the extra complement of guards. Then he tried a joke.

“Listen, there’s a Chinaman and a Jew, and they’re sitting at a bar, both of them drinking.

“For no reason at all, the Jew leans over and shoves the Chinaman to the floor. Sprawled down there on the floor, the Chinaman’s
flabbergasted. He says to the Jew, ‘What the hell was that for?’

“The Jew says, “That was for Pearl Harbor.’

“The Chinaman says, ‘You idiot! Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. I’m
Chinese!’

“ ‘Chinese, Japanese… what’s the difference?’

“So now the Chinaman gets back up on his bar stool and he sits there quietly, just drinking. For a long time, the Chinaman
doesn’t say anything. Then, he leans over and shoves the Jew down onto the floor.

“Now the Jew is down on the floor and he’s flabbergasted. So he says, ‘What the hell was that for?’

“The Chinaman says, ‘That was for the
Titanic!
’

“ ‘The
Titanic?
You idiot, the
Titanic
was sunk by an iceberg!’

“ ‘Iceberg, Rosenberg, what’s the difference?’ “

It always worked. The guards fell all over themselves laughing. Two of them slapped Rogers on the back, and the bond was made.

“See, you boys got nothing to fear from me,” Rogers said, his drawl at its practiced best on such occasions. “I’m just a good
old boy like you. They make me wear all these fancy clothes when I got to go on television to say all this stuff you know
clear down to the short hairs is true enough, okay?”

“That’s what I was tellin my friend Bob,” one of the guards said. “Hell, I believe all that stuff you say, ‘specially what
you said the day you come in here.

“It’s just,” the guard said, “it’s just that… well, you know, the uniforms and all.”

“Scares some folks off, don’t it?” Rogers asked the men. “Folks who aren’t like you and don’t take the time to listen to the
message and analyze it and see how it makes sense to their lives. Am I right?”

Long ago, Rogers had learned the insurance salesman’s trick of always asking a question to which the answer must be affirmative.
Puts the customer—or the mark—in a positive frame of mind; you make your sale nearly every time.

“Yeah.”

The guards spoke as one.

“Well, let me tell you a little secret, boys. Just between you boys and me, right?” Rogers asked.

The guards nodded as one.

“One of these fine days, when my lawyers get me out of this here slammer, there ain’t going to be any more uniforms. I’m going
to get my message across to everybody, and nobody’s going to be afraid to stand up for Johnny Lee Rogers, anywhere, anytime,
anyhow. You hear me?”

The guards nodded.

“Yes, sir! You’ll just see!”

“Well,” said the guard who had initiated the conversation with the prisoner, “I hope you’ll be able to pull that’n off, Johnny.
I really do. And me and the rest of us, well, we’ll be with you.”

Johnny Lee Rogers put on a humble expression and moved his marks.

“That’s a burden I’ll be proud to carry. Hell, it’s no burden at all. I’m happy to carry your trust in me. I won’t let you
down, men…” He hesitated now, choking, brushing something from his eye.

“Men,” he continued, stronger now, back in manly control, “are you with me?”

The guards nodded.

All the men sat silent for a few seconds. Then someone realized that the room they occupied was inside a Federal penitentiary,
and Johnny Lee Rogers was a prisoner being held in this holding area until extra security forces could comb the penitentiary
corridors he would have to walk through to get to the seclusion area to which he was being transferred.

Someone in Washington had ordered that Rogers be barred from mingling with other prisoners, that he be restricted from visitors,
and that he take his meals alone, only after precautionary testing. The testing was to detect weapons smuggling.

A telephone rang. A guard answered it, grunted something into the receiver, and announced that it was “time to go.”

“Jumpin’ Jesus, sounds like you boys are fixed to fricassee me!” Rogers quipped. “And I ain’t even circumcised.”

Again, the guards appreciated the levity. There were far too few jokes around the penitentiary, Rogers had told them.

The guards escorted Rogers down the long, dimly lit corridor leading from general cell blocks to the seclusion section. He
was deposited in a room that looked amazingly like a Holiday Inn single, including the picture of a ship at sea bolted to
the wall.