He looked down at the object in his hand, the dog tag with the serial number on it, and the German name: OberLt Kleinmann M. That’s all he had left now.
‘Fuck it.’
That bastard Wallace had stitched him up. He had discovered that fantastic bit of news first thing this morning when he had gone to open his door to step outside and spotted the note pushed through underneath the draught flap. It’s not going to make a great news story without any pictures or evidence is it? By now, what you discovered beneath the sea will be long gone. So why not let it go? It’s no longer a news story… it’s just a story now. Hell, it might even make a good book one day. I’ll be watching you. W.
The wily old bastard had played Chris like a fiddle — cosying up and playing new best friend, while all the time, behind his back, his bloody hired thugs were hoovering up the evidence. Now he was starting to wonder how much of what Wallace had told him was the truth anyway, and how much of it was just a yarn he had spun to keep Chris out of his motel room long enough for his men to sweep it thoroughly.
He could dive again on the wreck, but something told him that all he would find this time would be the plane… he was sure even the bodies would be gone.
He kicked at the sand with frustration. It would have been a great story. Better than Nixon and Watergate, better than Bush and Bin Laden, the Hitler Diaries. It would have set him up for life.
Nazi Germany Came Within an Ace of Nuking New York — the sort of tagline that would give a tabloid editor a permanent hard-on. He could have licensed the picture of the bomb itself for hundreds of thousands to the right publication.
But it was pointless beating himself up like this. There were no pictures now, thanks to that old bastard. It was game over.
How about counting your blessings, Chris, me old mate?
‘Yeah? And what blessings would those be, exactly?’ he muttered.
People have been known to go missing for knowing a whole lot less.
Perhaps there was some truth in that. If that shit Wallace really had been a government spook he could surely have made him and Mark just vanish. Those men who had jumped him in his motel room had come within a few moments of wasting him. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. If that old man Wallace — if that was his name — had really been their boss, shit… he and Mark were pretty lucky to have woken up this morning.
And they had been in his room last night. God knows, while he’d been sleeping like a baby, they must have been standing over him, guns raised, aimed at his face, and he could imagine Wallace silently doing an eeny- meenyminy-mo.
Chris heard the Cherokee’s horn. Mark was getting impatient. He wanted to get the hell out of here. Chris couldn’t blame him.
It was time to head back to New York. Elaine Swisson was going to go ballistic when he turned up empty- handed. He knew damn well if he switched his mobile back on, there would be a dozen frantic messages from her, that deadline almost upon them. He wondered what exactly he was going to tell the woman. Perhaps he could come up with something between now and hitting New York.
Well, Elaine, I’ll tell you what happened. A legal eagle from the US Air Force paid me a visit and asked me not to exploit what they consider to be a war grave… and they suggested they might take legal action if the pictures appeared in the public domain. So I guess we’re screwed.
Chris nodded. That would probably do it. News Fortnite readers generally seemed to be of the blue-rinse variety or elderly, medal-wearing vets. If the mention of legal action didn’t cool her enthusiasm, the possibility of alienating her readers would. He wasn’t looking forward to lying to her. He respected Elaine, but the lie would keep things uncomplicated.
Chris decided he would hand some of the advance back to the magazine, and keep a couple of thousand to cover the costs he had incurred in the last week, including paying Mark. That seemed to be the best he could do in the circumstances. And once he’d dealt with Elaine, he was going to have to drop Mark back home in Queens and then return the car to Hertz.
After that, he fancied maybe he would grab a plane at JFK and go back home to London. The old man, Wallace, was right about one thing, though — it might make for a good book. He could always have a go, write up the tale Wallace had told him, as a work of fiction, of course.
Chris turned the dog tags over in his hand and studied the name stamped into the brass surface. He had found them on his bedside table, a parting gift from Wallace.
‘M. Kleinmann, I guess whatever it is you did, or didn’t do, is.. well, I suppose it just never happened.’
He turned away from the sea, as rolling surf once more reached out for his feet. He began to make his way back across wet pebbles and drying sand towards grass-topped dunes and the roadside beyond, where Mark was gunning the engine impatiently.
Without a story behind it, it was nothing but a disc of brass with a name stamped in it. He ran his finger across the indented name one last time before tossing it away as he took a step up out of the dunes and headed across hard gravel towards the jeep.
The little brass disc rolled down the side of the dune, gathering a miniature avalanche of loose sand in its wake. With a gentle tap, it came to rest against the base of a weathered, old, wooden cross that poked out of the sand and was embraced by the coarse grass. The cross had been crudely fashioned from two pieces of driftwood nailed together a long time ago, but had stood the test of time. Engraved on the coarse wood by a boy with a penknife was a simple sentence. The letters now were worn by the elements, scoured by wind-borne sand, but still legible, just: Here was found the body of an unknown airman. Died April, 1945.
