‘Well, thinking about it, yes. I think it was a year or so after they disappeared, we received a letter from Tom. He said that they’d moved to Florida, and he was working again and they were happier down there, and not to worry, that he would be in touch again when they had settled into a home.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘No, not any more. I replied to his letter, but he never wrote again. I think they must have moved home once more and just… well, you know how it is with family. Sometimes they just give up on each other. Tom and I were never that close, not even when we all lived in Port Lawrence.’
Damn. This was feeling like a dead end.
‘Well, I’m sorry to hear about this. I’ll have to let Tom’s crewmates know he can’t be found. I do apologise for disturbing you.’
‘Not a problem, young man.’
He said goodbye and hung up.
The woman seemed, at least to some degree, to have confirmed McGuire’s little tale. That his childhood buddy, Sean, and his father had been gently hustled out of town… and probably with enough shut-up money for them to start over very nicely, thank you very much. And that, along with McGuire’s tale of navy ships at sea and the cove cordoned off with barbed wire and soldiers, that… and the fact that there were two Luftwaffe bodies lying off the coast of New England, inside a B-17 riddled with bullets. When it came to writing up the story, the old boy McGuire might well prove useful — he’d definitely get something out of it. But it was a shame he couldn’t track down this boy, Sean… an old man now, of course.
Chris decided following up on Sean Grady could wait until he was done with the diving up here. Then that was a line of enquiry he could pursue later on… just to add a bit more meat and gristle to the story.
Chapter 10
Somewhat oddly he was thinking about the Department when it rang him. He had been thinking how best to deploy what remained of the legacy budget. There was just under 300,000 dollars left, and it was arguably approaching the time when he could look to start wrapping things up. Bob Palantino, the last man left on the payroll, was approaching his mandatory retirement age. Bob had been a good desk man, reliable, discreet and very organised. When Bob served up his last day, he wondered whether it would be wise to bother enrolling a replacement. The old guy knew most of it.
But not everything.
Bob knew enough, but then he had worked down there on that windowless mezzanine floor for a long time now, nearly forty years. If he took on a replacement to continue as the ‘caretaker’ after Bob hung up his hat, then it would mean bringing someone new in on the secret, and that meant introducing an unnecessary element of risk. The fewer in the know the better, especially now, after such a long time. After all, the secret, ‘Truman’s legacy’ as he sometimes liked to refer to it, was very nearly dead and buried.
Or so he had thought.
Then there had been that damned call from Bob. After all this time it looked like someone had snagged their nets on the bomber, Medusa.
He had spent some time pondering what to do over that.
Well, now, what it didn’t require was a rushed, ill-considered response… absolutely no need to panic here. It was just the wreck of a wartime plane sitting at an acceptable depth in uncomfortably cold water; hardly the sort of destination for casual holiday snorkellers, and not exactly a big story; just a small item of interest in a local rag.
But, he reflected, it would need to be dealt with in due course. It would need tidying up.
He had enough money left in the budget to hire in some freelancers. A couple of divers hired in to go down there and collect the offending item. No questions asked. Probably ex-servicemen, ex-agency bagmen, professional enough to just get on and do the task and leave the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ to someone else.
That would wrap it up nicely. He would have them retrieve it carefully and have them take it out into deeper waters and drop it there.
He had begun to discreetly organise this ‘tidy-up’ job, once more returning to DC and the dark dungeons of the Department floor, at least for a few days, providing old Bob with a bit of company while he set about making the necessary calls to start the wheels turning when, as an old acquaintance of his had the habit of saying, the proverbial hit the fan.
He discovered there was some damned journalist poking around in the town near the crash site. Poking around and asking questions. God knows if the nosy shit-stick had access to diving equipment and been down below to take a look at the plane.
He hoped to God that this guy hadn’t.
Agitated and unnerved by the thought, he distractedly rubbed his temple, attempting to ease away the tension building up there. He didn’t need this. Not now. After so much hard work on his part, for so long… so much dedication, it could all unravel if this nosy sonofabitch managed to spot what was down there in the plane. If he sat back and did nothing, there was just enough out there to be pieced together. There was enough there to tell the tale; enough goddamned skeletons to crucify the Department.
What the hell — not to put too fine a point on it, to crucify him.
He took a deep breath, still gently caressing the side of his head, trying to massage his headache away and clear his mind, and decided the next move.
This needs to be handled carefully, gently, my friend. Observation first; find out how much he knows, see what he’s got, if anything, and then take it from him. Most important… find out the exact location of Medusa, and remove what’s down there.
He picked up a phone.
He needed a small team of freelancers, ones with street surveillance experience and enough smarts to stay invisible. And, of course, the dive team.
And that was pretty much going to clear out the last of the Department’s budget.
Chapter 11
11 April 1945, east of Berlin
The road leading into Berlin was a logjam of vehicles, mostly trucks, he noticed. What was left of the Eastern armies had precious few armoured vehicles left, and those that hadn’t been torn apart by T34s or enemy artillery were being mustered for one of several rearguard actions being hastily thrown together along the Potsdam River.
Leutnant Hostner shook his head. This ragtag procession of men, trucks and the occasional horse-drawn cart wasn’t an army any longer. It didn’t deserve that kind of description, that kind of word. It didn’t deserve any word that conveyed the concept of order, discipline or structure. This was a disorganised rout, little more than a shambolic stream of refugees, united only by a shared desire to leave behind a war they had lost months, if not years, ago.
It certainly wasn’t an army. Not any more.
The road had been used as one of the principal supply arteries leading east through Poland towards Russia. It had been widened and resurfaced to facilitate the movement of vehicles and supplies and had been a superbly efficient channel down which thousands of trucks had passed effortlessly since ’41 to supply the rapidly advancing eastern front. But now it was riddled with potholes and craters and caked with a thick layer of mud.
