It had been too late to stop the wire. Marcus Wood’s sources had informed him that the transmission had been extremely smooth.
And now, as he drove a safe distance behind Maggie, Marcus knew only one thing and one thing only: he had to make good on the wire he’d sent.
The nausea in the pit of his stomach hadn’t abated since seeing Maggie alive. It had been a physical shock to his system that had the force of a massive blow to the solar plexus. How had it happened? Who on earth, if it hadn’t been Maggie Graym, was the woman he’d murdered? It didn’t matter. The main thing was to remedy whatever mistake he’d made back there on the swimming pool set.
His hands on the steering wheel shook almost uncontrollably and he realized how irrational he was being by attempting to take care of matters this way. Clearly, he was panicking. A wiser choice would have been to select someone else to deal with Maggie. There were several people he could have called to do the job including Bradford who’d been pulled out of the studio after the Parkin killing and was now doing nothing but sitting around in some damned hotel room.
Yes, he could have had Bradford remove Maggie, but there were reasons he’d decided against it. For one thing, he wanted total credit for this kill. In the wire he’d sent he’d made sure the Fuhrer knew this was his undertaking, his alone. And there was no way he was going to share the glory with anyone else.
If Wood had even the slightest inkling as to the reaction the wire would bring about in Berlin, he wouldn’t have been so anxious to claim credit for killing Maggie. And little could he know that by signing his name to the wire, he had also signed his own death warrant.
At that moment the very same communiqué sat in the ‘out’ tray awaiting delivery to der Fuhrer who would be, as the office joker had said “Fuhrious when he saw it,” which was true. And which was also the reason why no one at Hitler’s headquarters was willing to take it to him.
They knew that it would be upon that poor soul’s head that all of Hitler’s venomous rage would fall.
The message had come through a very complicated coding system via Seattle, Vancouver and Nova Scotia. It had then been signaled by way of secret radio conveyance to agents in Lisbon for immediate dispatch to Berlin.
The whole operation had taken a total of 25 minutes and 17 seconds.
When the trembling aide, selected from the lowest of the low on the Gestapo administration totem pole, brought the communiqué into der Fuhrer’s offices, he was hoping and praying that Hitler’s personal secretary would be kind enough to deliver it for him.
He had, as an extra safeguard, buried it in a pile of other, far less important communiqués so that she wouldn’t notice.
But she did notice.
And when she read what it said, she dropped it back into the aide’s hands as if it was a live grenade. Taking absolutely no pity on the scared aide, she threatened to inform his superior if the communiqué wasn’t delivered to der Fuhrer without further delay.
Taking a deep breath, the aide entered der Fuhrer’s office. Hitler was dressed in a burgundy smoking jacket and had been in a jovial mood all morning. He was still reveling in the news that his troops had recendy annihilated an entire village in France where the occupants had been giving him so much aggravation.
He took the communiqué from the aide’s hand and read it, the smile on his face disappearing rapidly only to be replaced by one of violent wrath.
He became inconsolable. This was lucky for the aide because der Fuhrer was now isolated in his own grief and couldn’t focus on anyone else. He could, however, focus on things and objects and having wiped his desk of everything on it in one crashing heap, he proceeded to smash every piece of priceless crystal to be found on his shelves.
As the aide snuck out of the office he left behind a madly muttering Adolph Hitler. In the outer office, Gestapo staff felt quite safe from Hitler’s lashing out while he was so occupied with ranting and raving.
But they were but all too aware how highly dangerous it would be for them once the ranting stopped. And it was.
It was at this time that der Fuhrer paced back and forth across the room demanding explanations as to why his little nightingale, his little dancing bluebird, hadn’t been protected in Hollywood, why she hadn’t been accorded the same security as others valuable to the Reich.
To this, not one of the officers present had anything to say. What did they know of this episode? Nothing. They remained silent and hoped to blend in with the wallpaper.
“I want only one thing,” der Fuhrer shrieked. “And that’s the animal responsible for this!”
He grabbed the communiqué that he’d crumpled and smoothed it out. “It appears that this criminal swinehunt has even signed his name to this heinous act.” Obviously, Hitler hadn’t recognized Wood’s name or remembered their brief meeting seven years before. Addressing his chief aide, he said: “You will go to Hollywood. You will locate this Marcus Wood who took it upon himself to snuff out the life of my beautiful flower. Then, you will personally transport this vicious beast back to me in Berlin. You will embark upon this mission immediately.”
The chief aide considered the task before him and after a few moments, spoke up.
“Mien Fuhrer, we have agents in the Los Angeles area who will be more than willing to cooperate in the capture of Marcus Wood for us. Upon contacting these agents in Los Angeles, they will get right on with the assignment. They will track this man down and they will even execute him for us. That way, we won’t have to go all the way to the United States ourselves...”
Hitler, his face turning the burgundy red of his smoking jacket, walked over to the man who had just spoken and in one swift movement, ripped off the insignia of Oberstumbandfuhrer off the man’s chest.
“Traitor!” der Fuhrer spat. “You’ve had the opportunity to serve me and you have refused. Now, instead of Hollywood, you will visit the rock quarries of outer Bulgaria where you will spend the rest of your pitiful life!”
The man was led away wishing Hitler had ordered him shot. Anything was better than this sentence of slow, harrowing death in the rock quarries of outer Bulgaria.
“Now,” Hitler continued, turning his attention to the remaining men in the room, “whom amongst you is willing to serve his Fuhrer in the pursuit and capture of his beloved Maggie’s murderer?”
Before any of the others could raise their hands, one of the young officers, Lieutenant Gerhardt Vanderschloffer, was wildly waving his.
Lieutenant Vanderschloffer was the very same young man whose execution by firing squad had recently been ordered. The words of the officer who’d spared his life came flooding back: “Just stay out of der Fuhrer’s way for a few days and he’ll forget he ever had you killed.”
What he’d said had proved to be the absolute truth. Hitler had indeed forgotten all about it.
Gerhardt, after keeping a low profile for three days and becoming totally bored with just hanging around his room listening to the radio and reading movie magazines, had reported back to Hitler’s headquarters as if nothing had happened.
He’d even picked up his old job as the coordinator of Maggie Graym’s movies. And here he was, waving his hand frantically in der Fuhrer’s face, wanting so much to be chosen for this assignment.
He’d been hoping and hoping that he might be able to go on a mission such as this one, not because he wanted to serve der Fuhrer or because he wanted to do something for the glorious Reich, but when it came right down to it, because he wanted to take in some sightseeing in Hollywood, the film capital of the world.
Gerhardt had heard so much about Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the La Brea Tar Pits and the Santa Anita Racetrack and the Brown Derby and the Hollywood Hills and the Hollywood Bowl and Hollywood and Vine and the Mocambo and the Trocadero, he’d always wanted to see them for himself.
And he wanted to see the homes of the stars. Perhaps he could take one of those tours around Beverly Hills to see where Lana Turner and Alan Ladd and John Wayne lived. He especially wanted to see where John Wayne lived. He’d virtually learned to speak English through watching Wayne’s undubbed films, and could do an uncanny imitation of the star. Maybe he would even see Wayne, speak to him, get his autograph...
Gerhardt was so lost in this fantasy that he only awoke out of it to the sound of Hitler’s raspy voice commending him for responding so quickly and fervently to this request.
“Splendid, splendid,” der Fuhrer cooed, smiling a bizarre yellow-toothed grin and exuding a stale smell on his breath. “You know how to serve your master and the Reich and I can guarantee that your bravery and patriotic spirit will not go unrewarded.”
Gerhardt stood at attention as der Fuhrer spoke. He had absolutely no idea as to how he would get through the net protecting the west coast of America, but it didn’t matter. Hitler knew exactly how he would do it.
“Your assignment comes at a most opportune moment,” Hitler announced. “We are now developing a plane that will fly three times as fast as an ordinary plane. You will be one of the first people to fly aboard our new, secret, experimental, jet-propelled prototype Messerschmitt-262 that travels at 540 miles per hour. It’s still years before we will be able to mass-produce this plane and there’s a chance this prototype, like all the prototypes before it, will malfunction and disintegrate in mid-air, but should it not malfunction and disintegrate, you will transfer in Iceland to a confiscated American dive-bomber which will drop you, if this plane isn’t shot out of the sky by enemy fire, by parachute, at a point over Canada’s Pacific coast where you will travel, by submarine, if the submarine isn’t blown up by the United States Navy, to the Los Angeles area. You will leave immediately and the entire journey should take no more than a day.”
Hearing the words “jet propelled” and “malfunction” and “disintegrate” and “shot out of the sky” and “parachute” and “blown up”, Gerhardt suddenly felt ill, but rather than tell der Fuhrer that he didn’t feel qualified after all, and knowing what had happened to the last man who’d refused, he instead said: “I will deliver the criminal’s corpse to you personally, Mien Fuhrer.”
“Who said anything about a corpse?” Hitler asked, agitated. “I intend for you to bring this monster...this...Marcus Wood... back alive.”
“Alive?” Gerhardt asked, astonished.