Target Churchill

Chapter 26

Shaken by the thumping upbeat music of the band, Miller awoke from a troubled sleep, sweating profusely and in pain. His leg was swollen and pulsating. He reached for the bottle of aspirin in his pocket and opened the cap. His hands shook, and upending the bottle, the aspirin tablets spilled out, dropped, and scattered down the stairs. He tried to retrieve some of them, but they had dropped too far down, and the pain foreclosed on his leaving his post.

Peering out into the gymnasium, he observed the crowds, who were moving into their seats. The band played stirring Sousa marches. He tried to will himself to transcend the pain but he was having less and less results. He had begun to perspire profusely.

The rifle was beside him, the note nearby. He estimated that he had less than an hour before the arrival of Churchill and Truman.

He had adjusted Stephanie’s nurse’s uniform during the long wait and had removed the wig and hat and rolled down the stockings. The uniform was too tight and he had to keep the top buttons open to leave his arms free enough to hold the rifle.

Planning a quick getaway, he slipped on the wig and put the nurse’s hat over it. Using the hand mirror, he put on lipstick and surveyed his handiwork, judging it barely acceptable. Although he had dry-shaved earlier in the day, it had not been very effective and his beard was returning.

Stephanie’s uniform was closer fitting than he had expected, but he felt certain that in the resultant confusion, he would manage to get through the locker room to the rear entrance without discovery. Hopefully, he would quickly get to his car and find a safe refuge until the smoke cleared and he was able to move on. Beyond that, he would have to depend on his instincts. What worried him most was the increasing problem with his leg. At some point, he knew, he would have to get treatment.

The pain was a grim reminder of Stephanie Brown. The Jewess had duped him. She deserved her fate, as did all her deceitful tribe. The memory energized him, and the stab of anger took his mind off the pain.

Picking up the rifle, he mounted it in the crook of his arm and checked the telescopic sight. He was concerned about the tremor in his hands, although mounting the rifle against the lip of the scorecard container steadied the barrel enough to take accurate aim through the telescopic sight. Timing would be crucial.

The most critical problem was to wait for enough loud applause to mask the sound of the shot and give him his chance to escape. Unfortunately, there was no way of knowing when this would occur. It stood to reason that if these Americans loved the fat pig so much, their applause was sure to be prolonged and loud. He felt certain that luck would carry him through and that, in the end, he would be preserved to carry on the war.

Except for the annoyance of the pain, he felt surprisingly calm. He had his battle plan. All he needed now was the appearance of his target and the right moment. Below, the rows and rows of seats were being filled with an eager, expectant audience. Various dignitaries were beginning to take their seats on the platform. The band continued to play rousing patriotic music.

He remarked to himself on the puny audience compared to the great rallies he had attended in Germany, where Hitler strode down the center of the vast stadium lined with a sea of raised hands and a thundering cry of thousands of voices: “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” The cry reverberated in his memory. His eyes filled with tears.

At last, the waiting was over. From the entrance of the girls’ locker room, he saw Truman and Churchill emerge. Churchill was wearing a resplendent scarlet robe, and Truman was turned out in a black one. They were wearing robes denoting academic distinction. Churchill was to receive an honorary doctorate, a fact conveyed by the newspaper story.

Through his telescopic lens, he could see his target: a stocky, balding man with a round, pink face, who followed Truman to the platform. The audience rose, and the band played “Rule, Britannia!” and “The Star Spangled Banner.” Through the sight, he visually roamed through the faces of the dignitaries then tested his aim on the speaker’s rostrum, which was festooned with a number of microphones and an arrangement of ivy for decoration.

At this moment, he could easily pull the trigger and kill Churchill and, for good measure, Truman. He resisted the temptation. For some reason — perhaps the sense of honor and obedience drummed into him by his SS training — he was determined to follow Dimitrov’s order.

From his own perspective, he had come to believe in his unique destiny, that fate had chosen him to avenge his Führer by killing Winston Churchill, the devil incarnate who had done the Jews’ bidding, their puppet on a string. He appreciated the irony of the Russians’ desire to kill Churchill for their own reasons. They had their agenda; he had his. The convergence was just another example of his extraordinary luck.

He watched the ceremonial proceedings: The crowd stood, the national anthems were played, and then came the Pledge of Allegiance. A minister rose and offered the invocation, and the audience settled down.

A dignitary in a robe, probably the president of the college, made a short speech, then another man conferred upon Churchill the honorary degree. When that was done, Truman took the rostrum and introduced Churchill. The introduction seemed oddly flat and very brief.

“Mr. Churchill and I,” the president said, “believe in freedom of speech. I understand Mr. Churchill might have something useful and constructive to say.”

The pain made his leg twitch. Perspiration rolled down his forehead, pooling in his eyes and clouding his sight. Truman’s introduction did not rouse the audience to cheers as Miller had expected. He had taken aim, his finger tightening on the trigger, but the moment passed too quickly. Churchill stood and walked the short distance to the rostrum. Churchill began to speak.

“I am glad I have come to Westminster. The name Westminster is somehow familiar. I seem to have heard it before. Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a large part of my education.”

The audience chuckled politely, but there was little applause. With rising tension, Miller waited for a burst of applause. The pain in his leg was excruciating. It was no longer a match for his mental discipline. His heartbeat accelerated. With the sleeve of the nurse’s uniform, he wiped away the sweat that had dripped into his eyes causing a burning sensation.

The action caused the rifle to swerve from its target. Through the sight, he observed the dignitaries on the platform. Although most of them had their eyes on Churchill, one man, sitting just to the side of the rostrum, was paying no attention to the speaker. Like a moving searchlight, his eyes were scoping the area in a persistent arc, looking upward briefly to the spot where he was perched. Instinctively, he lurched backwards, further obscuring the barrel of his rifle from the man’s prying eyes.

By pulling the rifle back, he had lost his position and had to make a painful correction, shifting his weight and losing the rifle’s perch on the lip of the scoreboard, forcing him into a position that was much harder to maintain. For the moment, he lost his concentration, and when he had regained it and fully positioned himself again, Churchill was deep into his speech. The audience sat in rapt attention. Without the metal lip for support of the rifle barrel, he needed all his willpower to keep his arm steady. Finally, he felt ready again, his finger on the trigger, his eye focusing through the scope as he waited for the masking burst of applause to begin. So far, the reaction of the audience had been tepid.

The speech confused his expectations. Although he paid little attention to content, the speech was measured but not rousing. The applause was sporadic but not as spirited as either he or the Russians had contemplated. He felt seriously handicapped by not being able to judge the length and loudness of the applause.

He forced himself to be alert to the content and instinctive about the moment of greatest applause. It was a gamble he had to take or abandon the mission completely. Then suddenly, he heard a beginning hesitant wave of applause.

Churchill was saying something about the atomic bomb, then the words: “It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world.”

The applause held briefly then quickly subsided. He had expected it to be sustained. What was going on here? Why were these people merely polite? Why were they not enthusiastic with excitement as the crowd was with Hitler? He was baffled.

Beads of sweat burned into his eyes. Pain shot up his leg. He had to move the barrel farther forward to keep the target in his sights. He was having difficulty keeping the rifle in position. His arm had begun to shake. Looking through the scope as he sighted again, he saw the man who had caught his attention before. The man looked up, his eyes squinting. In the magnification of the telescopic vision, the man was looking directly at him. Could he be seen from that distance?

Again, he was forced to retract the rifle barrel. Waiting a moment, breathing deeply, slowly expelling his breath to calm himself, he repeated the difficult maneuver of sighting on his target. In the process, he noted that the man who had been looking upward had disappeared. Churchill’s voice boomed on into the silence.

What was wrong with these people? Had they no respect for this leader? Were his words so lifeless and hollow? Hitler had brought the house down at the end of every sentence.

Thompson’s nerves were on edge. It had taken all of his powers of persuasion to get the Secret Service to allow him to take the seat he had chosen directly to the side of the rostrum. His discomfort level had risen as the group entered.

He had long trusted his sixth sense and the agitation it generated. At times, he had attributed it to supersensory perception, but only after the fact, when its danger signals had been validated. When it was not accurate, he dismissed the feeling as a kind of false positive, meaning that the danger had passed on its own, without his intervention.

As his eyes surveyed the gymnasium, something had caught his attention, but so briefly, he could not trust it as valid information. At first, he dismissed it as merely a manifestation of his paranoia. A glint, a tiny movement emanating from the opening near the scoreboard had arrested his interest, but only for a mini-second.

Yet the more he fixated on the area, the more he was troubled by what he had imagined he had seen. Earlier, he had checked the entrances to both scoreboards. One had been inaccessible. The other was locked, secured by a chain. Had he missed something?

He kept his eyes glued to the spot, concentrating his gaze, frustrated by the limitations of sight, wishing he had a pair of binoculars.

Churchill’s words set off a modest round of scattered applause. At that moment, he saw the glint of what he had only imagined before. His mind would not allow further speculation. He had to act, see for himself.

Rising from his seat, he moved quickly off the platform. People looked at him with raised eyebrows. The ever-alert Secret Service people look puzzled. He offered a smile to reassure them that nothing was amiss, hoping he was suggesting a common personal emergency.

As soon as he had moved through the boys’ locker room entrance, he went swiftly to the chained door behind the bank of lockers. Grabbing the chain, he pulled hard, expecting resistance. Unanticipated, the metal loop slipped out effortlessly, the chain dropping to the floor. In a split second, the ruse became clear.

Cautiously, he opened the door and moved up the metal staircase. From the gym floor, he heard fragments of Churchill’s voice… the words, “their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.”

The applause began like a rolling clap of thunder. He drew his pistol and moved up the steps.

The applause swelled. Miller aimed, his finger on the trigger. Then suddenly, a clatter behind him disrupted his concentration, and he turned to see dark movement behind him. He quickly shifted the position of the rifle to the danger coming from behind him. A man was ascending the steps. He shifted the position of the rifle and aimed it squarely at the man climbing toward him.

In the semidarkness, he could make out the man’s features, recognizing him at once as the man who had been looking upward from the platform.

“Stop,” he said, his voice masked by the applause.

In the shifting of his position, he had been forced to put pressure on his bad ankle. A stab of pain shot through him, but he retained enough of a grip on the rifle to continue to aim it at the intruder’s midsection. Then he saw the pistol in the man’s hand.

“The pistol,” he hissed. “Drop it.”

He heard the sharp sound of the pistol as it clattered down the stairs.

Thompson froze, forcing calmness, looking upward. He was no more than ten steps from the person and was shocked to see that it was a woman. The woman was youngish, obviously determined, not panicked, wary, her expression pained but not by anguish. She was wearing white. The barrel of the rifle, he noted, was unsteady, and the woman’s balance seemed precarious. In the background, he continued to hear Churchill’s resonant voice, like a clarion in the wilderness, the only sound emanating from the gym.

His mind quickly assessed the situation, the reality of the assassin’s predicament and his own, the sense of waiting, both of them, ears cocked, listening for the obliterating sound of mass applause.

Thompson stared at the woman and moved slowly upward one step, then another.

“Stop,” the woman ordered. “I’ll shoot.”

A man’s voice! Thompson instantly understood the plan, the escape route, the disguise, the medical team below, and the exit to the rear. This was someone who wanted to preserve his life, had planned carefully.

“Go on then,” Thompson said, taking another step.

“I will,” the man threatened.

“Not yet,” Thompson said, rising again to the next level.

As he moved, Thompson listened to Churchill’s words, calculating the moment when the applause might break out again, his muscles taut, ready to spring and, if necessary, take the bullet, forcing the man off-balance, inhibiting his positioning. That was his hope. He had read the speech and heard it rehearsed, knowing by the rise and fall of Churchill’s cadence when applause was to be expected.

“Who sent you?” Thompson asked, moving upward yet another step.

“None of your fucking business, Jew.”

Thompson smiled at what seemed like the obvious clue, perhaps too obvious.

Disgruntled Nazi, he thought.

“It’s over, lad. You’ve lost.”

“We’ve just begun,” said the man with the gun, with obviously false bravado.

His accent struck Thompson as American.

Keeping his eyes on the barrel of the rifle, Thompson took another step.

“One more and it’s over,” the man with the gun said.

“I doubt that,” Thompson said, still separated by two steps.

He searched for the man’s eyes. They stared back at him with cold contempt.

Suddenly, Thompson stiffened and raised his arm.

“Heil Hitler!”

The response was immediate, a reflex. The man raised his arm, loosening his grip on the rifle. At that moment, Thompson heard the words, “a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.”

Thompson heard the swell begin and moved upwards swiftly, elbow raised, as he struck out with his left hand against the barrel, the grip weakened, too late to prevent the discharge. He heard the sharp popping sound of the shot, then felt a searing pain in his upper arm. For a moment, he was thrown back but managed to stop his downward motion by grabbing the handrail, which bent under him but held his body weight.

Thinking that the bullet had found its mark in the intruder, Miller had turned quickly to point the barrel toward the man on the rostrum. There seemed a momentary restlessness in the audience, which appeared to have quickly dismissed the popping sound, the report muffled by the downward direction of the bullet into the stairwell. Churchill did not miss a beat in his speech and the audience settled. But before Miller could aim, a hand had grasped his bad leg and pulled on it. The pain seemed to explode in his head. The man grasped the barrel of the rifle and wrestled it forward. Miller struggled to retain it but could not hold his position on the stairway, and he began to topple. The rifle slipped out of his hands. Instinctively, he reached for his pistol, but strong hands had pinned his arms.

He kicked himself free with his uninjured leg taking the bulk of the pressure. The man began to fall, slipping partway down the winding staircase. Miller tried to regain his balance but his leg collapsed under him, and his downward motion continued until the body of the man who held fast to the handrail halted it abruptly.

Miller reached out and grasped the man’s throat. The man struggled, letting go of the handrail and grabbing Miller’s wrists in an attempt to pry them loose from their death grip. The man grunted, gasping for air.

“Nothing will stop me. Churchill is a dead man,” Miller hissed into the man’s ear.

The words seemed to give the choking man renewed strength. He pushed upward, and Miller’s grasp loosened. Then his leg gave way, and he began a freefall, careening downward headfirst.

It took Thompson a few moments to regain his sense of awareness. The applause had ended. He could hear Churchill’s voice in the background but could not understand what he was saying. His breath came in gasps as he tried to ascertain the full extent of what had transpired. He felt shaky, obviously too old for such physical challenges. Quickly, he appraised his wound. Blood was flowing, but the bullet had merely grazed his forearm.

Below he could see the crumpled body of the assassin. The nurse’s uniform was ripped open by the force of the fall, and the wig had slipped off from the man’s head. A pistol lay intact in his belt. Thompson made his way down to where the body lay.

The person’s face was visible, the eyes open, empty of recognition. Thompson, who had seen such scenes many times before, reached out and felt the body’s neck pulse. He couldn’t find it. Clearly, the man was dead. He contemplated the body, inspecting it further. It was that of a blond male, the Aryan model. He looked foolish in his nurse’s uniform, torn apart now, the white stockings ripped. He noted that the man’s left ankle and calf were swollen, an obvious clue to a previous trauma.

Going through the man’s pockets, he found what he recognized as car keys. They were attached to a leather holder stamped with the logo of what he knew to be Chevrolet. It gave him yet another clue to what was being contemplated as an escape option.

This was a well-planned operation. The man had worked out his exit strategy with care and foreknowledge. Such planning hinted at a lone gunman. This was not a suicide mission. The man had carefully prepared for his own survival. A car, he deduced, was parked somewhere nearby, surely close to the exit from the locker room.

Leaving the body, Thompson moved up the stairs. He looked across at the other scoreboard. It was clearly unoccupied, confirming his first assessment.

Churchill was continuing to deliver his speech without incident. Occasionally, there was applause.

Thompson found the rifle, inspected it, and from his knowledge of weapons, noted that it was SS issue PPC 7.92 Mauser, which seemed another obvious clue to the origins of the perpetrator, too obvious. His eyes scanned the perch the assassin had chosen. He found the remnants of sandwiches, an empty milk bottle, and a note with its blatant words of vengeance. Overkill, he decided. Someone was working overtime to pin this on disgruntled Nazis. He put the note in his pocket.

As always, he had trusted his sixth sense, and yet again, this had saved Churchill’s life. He was suddenly aware of the origin of this subliminal activity and the idea that had triggered it.

He has signed his death warrant. The words that Victoria had heard Maclean utter echoed in his mind. That was the trigger to his intuition.

As he pondered the fortunate and somewhat miraculous outcome and how much he and Churchill owed to Victoria’s confession, he was aware of the dilemma he now faced.

During the war years, the Russians had always chosen the path of suppression, preventing public knowledge of such attempts, as if such a revelation would have a self-perpetuating power. At this moment in time, to reveal a Russian connection, of which he was now certain, would only further inflame an already gravely unsettling situation.

He debated informing Churchill of what he had discovered. That too, he rejected, knowing that such a revelation would greatly inhibit Churchill’s future action and spur his family and friends to urge him to keep a lower profile. Their persistence was not to be discounted. Worse, if he revealed this assassination attempt, Churchill’s leadership might be foreclosed forever. No, he decided, the world needed this man.

While it would be impossible to validate the truth of his deduction that this was most likely a Russian operation, rather than a Nazi revenge killing, he stuck with the theory that the speech and the assassination were intricately connected. Would this be a final attempt? The question brought him to the outer limits of his logic. When they returned to Britain, he would go back to his grocer’s business and Churchill would return to a life of creative retirement in Chartwell. It was best, he concluded, to let sleeping dogs lie. Out of respect, fear, and loyalty, he felt in his bones that his decision was correct.

His mind groped with a scenario that would remove all traces of the assassination attempt, meaning removing the body and all the so-called clues that were meant to deflect the truth and inspire the idea that was designed to pin the crime on a disgruntled Nazi determined to avenge the death of his Führer and the defeat of his party. If the assassin’s bullet had found its mark, he mused, the ploy might have worked, and the “blameless” Russians’ most formidable enemy would be gone. The death of Trotsky came to mind. And yet, the man had reacted by rote to his “Heil Hitler” salute, a sure sign of Nazi indoctrination.

They had found the perfect assassin, a genuine Nazi who spoke English with an American accent. Clever buggers, he thought.

He inspected the wound in his arm, which had ripped a hole in his jacket and stained his shirtsleeve with blood. The pain had subsided. Bending over the body, he tore off a strip of material from the lower part of the white skirt and fashioned a makeshift bandage, which he wrapped around his upper arm.

Moving down the staircase, he stepped over the body, went through the door, and reattached the chain. Revealing his credentials to the guards at the door, he stepped outside to where the ambulances were parked near a line of cars. He went down the line searching for Chevrolets, found a number of them, and tried the keys.

On the tenth try, he found his objective. He turned over the motor; it kicked in and caught. Then he shut off the ignition again, walked to the rear of the car, and raised the trunk. It was empty, except for a spade — a miraculous find, which partially settled the matter of disposal. The issue now was to get the man’s body and weapons out of the area without being observed and to find a final resting place.

Making his way back to the gymnasium, he stood near the platform and observed Churchill’s speech. It was unusually long, spoken in Churchill’s carefully cadenced manner and conviction. He surveyed the audience who were listening intently but not reacting with the expected enthusiasm that one might have wished for. For Churchill, the speech was more professorial than political, and he was deliberately speaking over the heads of the audience in the gymnasium to the world at large.

Finally, the speech was over. The audience rose as one and gave the former prime minister a standing ovation. Indeed, this was the moment the assassin might have chosen for the masked shot of death.

Plans called for the president’s party and Churchill to spend an hour or so at a reception at McCluer’s home then to head back to Jefferson City for the return trip. Thompson followed the group through the girls’ locker room, which exited to the parking lot from which he had just returned. The caravan of cars began moving into the parking lot. As Churchill waited, he whispered to Thompson.

“Did I make a botch of it, Thompson?” Churchill asked.

“Not at all, sir. It was quite compelling.”

“The audience seemed bored.”

“Not at all, sir. Reserved would be a better word.”

“The applause was not exactly deafening,” Churchill mused, his voice tired.

“Thank God,” Thompson mumbled.

Churchill, thankfully, did not hear the comment.

“I have been told the newsreel camera broke down in the middle of the first iron curtain statement.”

“Attentive reporters will carry it, sir, despite it’s not being in the text.”

“Are there still attentive reporters? I wonder.”

Thompson knew the signs of a new wave of approaching depression.

“Better to have gotten the message across in your own way. This was a fine speech, sir, one of your best. Your view needed to be articulated.”

“And so it was,” Churchill snickered. “And an egg was laid.”

The cars moved forward and Churchill and Truman settled themselves in the backseat of theirs along with the college president.

Thompson held back deliberately, as the caravan moved on toward the president’s house. Now he was faced with the dilemma of body disposal and getting back to the train before it departed.

Standing in the lengthening shadows as darkness descended, Thompson watched as the ambulances and the medical personnel moved out of the locker room with their equipment. Although his course of action was clear, there were no guarantees he could accomplish it without incident. In such matters, many things could go wrong. If observed, the embarrassment to Churchill would be profound. Few, if any, would understand Thompson’s motives. The chances were that, if discovered, he would be detained and forced to reveal the facts of the attempted assassination.

It was of some small comfort to know that he did not kill this man. Of course, the evidence of the weapon and the vantage the man had chosen would prove his point that the man was bent on killing. But who? Truman? Unfortunately, the intended victim could never be validated. Only Thompson knew the truth. Churchill is a dead man. The words reverberated in his mind.

Would he be believed? He doubted it. Conspiracy theories would abound. If he was caught trying to dispose of this body, God knows what a Pandora’s Box would be opened. In his heart, he both detested and feared what he must do. The risk was enormous and his justification could easily brand him as a fool. Aside from the humiliation it would engender, what he was doing was clearly illegal and subject to punishment. Perhaps, too, he might be charged with murder. The thought was chilling, and he put it out of his mind. He knew what he had to do.

He moved quickly to the Chevrolet and drove adjacent to the locker room exit, then opened the trunk. Seeing the spade again, he saw its presence as an act of providence. The method of burial had been chosen for him.

The crowds were dispersing rapidly and he could see the line of lighted headlights as people headed away from the college. The police were no longer guarding the exits; apparently, they shifted their presence to the front of the gymnasium to supervise the departure of the crowds.

He moved through the exit door and found that it could be left open securely with a hook attachment and a metal eye drilled into the floor. The locker room was deserted now. He found the light switch and plunged the room into darkness. Moving inside, he looked into the gymnasium. People had begun folding and carting away the metal chairs. The cleanup work had begun in earnest. The photographers and reporters had moved out in buses.

Closing the door that led to the gymnasium, he quickly ducked behind the bank of lockers, pushed opened the door that led to the metal stairs, and dragged out the man’s body, setting it up at the edge of the lockers. Peeking out behind the bank of lockers, he noted that the area continued to be deserted.

Quickly he kneeled and, using the fireman’s technique, lifted the body and draped it over his shoulder, securing it by holding on to its wrist. His arm wound pained him and complicated the chore. He staggered with the effort for a moment but managed to raise himself upright. Suddenly, he was startled by the sound of metal crashing to the floor. It was a Luger pistol. He’d have to make another trip. Again he looked around the bank of lockers. Suddenly, the door to the gymnasium opened and a man looked inside.

“Somebody shut the lights,” the man said.

“Never mind,” another man said, and the door closed once again.

Carrying his burden, sweating profusely, Thompson moved through the exit door and threw his burden into the trunk and closed the lid. It took him a moment to catch his breath, and then he opened the car door on the driver’s side, abruptly closing it again when he remembered the Luger on the locker room floor and the assassin’s Mauser still in the stairwell.

Rushing back into the locker room, he picked up the Luger, put it in his belt, and then he entered the stairwell once again and moved up the stairs looking for the rifle. He found it quickly where it had fallen, removed the ammunition clip, and hunted around for the spent bullet and shell. He found the shell but could not find where the bullet that had grazed him had lodged. Finally, he gave up, calculating that even if it were found one day, people would not connect it to the event.

Then he remembered that he had dropped his Webley, which was also difficult to find. He had to move up the stairs to where he had been when he had dropped the weapon, and then moved down again. Still he could not find it.

He decided to remove the rifle first and come back again. The locker room was still in darkness, and he was able to get the rifle through the exit and into the backseat of the car. Then he returned to the stairwell to look for his Webley. As he moved from stair to stair, he heard movement in the locker room.

Although disconcerting, he continued to search for the weapon, finding it finally and returning it to his holster. When he came out the door to the stairwell, the locker room was a blaze of light and people were using it once again as a smoking lounge. With an air of nonchalance, he moved to the exit, which someone had closed.

“Speech was a little dry,” someone said, a man’s voice.

“Said a lot, though,” an older man answered. “Can’t trust those Ruskies? What do you think, bud?”

Thompson turned. The question was obviously addressed to him.

“Good show,” Thompson said, facing the men.

“He’s a Brit,” one of the men said.

“Figures.”

Thompson smiled and went out the exit door, got into the car, and began to drive out of the lot. His heart continued to pound, and sweat was pouring out of his body, dampening his clothes.

At the exit to the parking area, a policeman suddenly moved into view, waving a searchlight. Thompson braked the car, fearful that the policeman would ask for credentials to prove the ownership of the car.

“Where are you going, buddy?” the policeman asked politely.

Thompson flashed his identification as a member of the official party.

“I work for Mr. Churchill. Just had to pick up some material left by him inside the gymnasium.”

The policeman looked at the credentials and flashed the searchlight into Thompson’s face. If the man had been thorough, Thompson thought, using his policeman’s logic and training, he would have asked far more questions. Thankfully, he missed seeing the rifle that Thompson had thrown on the backseat.

Easy now, he admonished himself, realizing that the effort had tired him and he was beginning to make mistakes. It occurred to him suddenly that this mission required the incompetence of others to succeed.

The policeman waved him ahead.

He now had to work by instinct alone. He calculated that the reception at the president’s home would last no more than an hour, and the official party would make the twenty-mile drive to Jefferson City in about forty minutes. He estimated perhaps another half hour or so before the train left the station. This left him little time to dispose of the body. Thankfully, the gas tank was almost full. The assassin had obviously planned well on that score.

He managed to follow the signs that pointed in the direction of Jefferson City. As he drove into increasingly rural areas, he searched for some side roads that might lead him into some deserted spot that could give him the cover he needed to accomplish his purpose.

After twenty minutes of driving, he took a chance and moved into a dirt road that ran parallel to a creek. He braked the car at a place that looked deserted enough for his purposes, took out the spade, and began testing the soil for the softest spot he could find. Then he began to dig. The pain in his arm was intense and his back was beginning to hurt. Using all the strength and endurance he could muster, he managed to dig a hole deep enough to serve as the final resting place for the body in the trunk.

He stripped the body, put it into the hole, and filled it up, patting it down carefully. The whole aspect of what he was doing disgusted him. As if to assuage these feelings, he said a prayer over the body, a catechism he remembered from boyhood, ending with “Forgive me, Father.” For some reason, he also remembered the last words of Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities and recited them aloud.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Not to know the true identity of the body struck him as un-Christian. With a heavy heart, he got into the car, drove another few miles, found another deserted spot, and again dug a hole in which he threw the weapons, the clothing he had stripped from the assassin, and other items he had found in the car, including what looked like a packet filled with U.S. dollars. Blood money, he thought as he threw the packet in with the rest and covered everything up.

By the time he was finished, he was exhausted. His arm was killing him, and his back pain had gotten worse. For the first time in years, he started to sob.

Had he done the right thing? Would the body remain hidden for years? In his early police training, he had been told that the earth held many secrets and bodies were often discovered during construction projects, many of them impossible to identify. He wondered if forensic science in the future would improve the process and make it possible for identification in all circumstances. He tried to wish it from his mind but knew he would have to develop some mental strategy to cope with the memory. His own death would take care of that, he thought bitterly.

Checking the time, he knew he was cutting it close. According to his calculations, the train would be leaving in less than a half hour. Reaching Jefferson City, he found an open pharmacy, bought bandages and antiseptic, and received directions to the station. It was impossible now to abandon the car anyplace but close to the station. At this point, he was too exhausted to speculate what would happen when the stray car was discovered. He parked the car within a short walk from the station, removed the spade and put it in a nearby garbage bin, and then walked to the station.

Thankfully, the train was still there, but he could tell by the steam rising from the engine that it would embark shortly. He nodded to the Secret Service men posted at the entrance to the car that contained Churchill’s suite and his adjoining compartment. He stripped, attended to his wound, which although painful did not look serious. Then he showered, slipped into clean slacks, shirt, and sweater, and knocked on Churchill’s compartment door just as the train began to clang forward out of the station.

He found Churchill had changed into his blue siren suit, preparing to leave.

“Thompson,” Churchill remarked, taking a lit cigar out of his mouth. “I thought you had been hijacked.”

“I was in one of the last cars in the caravan, sir. I was certain you were secure. The Secret Service has provided excellent security.”

Churchill inspected him but showed no sign of exceptional curiosity, for which he was thankful.

“I’m off for an informal supper and another round of poker with Truman and the boys,” he said. “I am geared for revenge, although I believe Truman and his minions will not be so merciful this time around.”

“I gather their reaction was less than enthusiastic.”

“I’m afraid so, Thompson. I expect brutality to reign. The press has been hounding Truman for his comments. So far he has been tight-lipped, but he did remark to me that he would try to make it right with Uncle Joe, a futile exercise I’m afraid. But then, I had no illusions that I would come out of this unscathed.”

Churchill smiled and took a deep puff on his cigar.

“But you have, sir,” Thompson said.

Despite his exhaustion, he enjoyed the irony.

“Not quite, Thompson,” Churchill said, moving toward the door. “The poker gallows await.”