Crucified Read online

  C R U C I F I E D

  As devil's advocate, MICHAEL SLADE has acted in over one hundred murder cases, and has argued a dozen appeals in the highest court.

  His specialty is the law of criminal insanity.

  The thirteen Slade novels fuse the genres of police procedure, whodunit, suspense, horror, historical, war, and legal thriller. Visit Slade's website at: www.specialx.net.

  ALSO BY MICHAEL SLADE

  SPECIAL X THRILLERS

  Headhunter

  Ghoul

  Cutthroat

  Ripper

  Evil Eye

  Primal Scream

  Burnt Bones

  Hangman

  Death's Door

  Bed of Nails

  Swastika

  Kamikaze

  This first world edition published 2008

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9 - 1 5 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, S M I IDF, by arrangement with Penguin Canada.

  Copyright © 2008 by Headhunter Holdings Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Slade, Michael

  Crucified

  I. Conspiracies - Fiction 2. Suspense fiction I Title

  813.5'4(F]

  ISBN-13 : 978-0-7278-6652-3 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-080-8 (trade paperback) The Lamentation on page 15 courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1890 (91.26.12). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  All Severn House titles are printed on acid-free paper.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  MPG Books Ltd., Bodmin, Cornwall.

  Intravit autem Satanas in Iudam

  qui cognominatur Scarioth unum

  de duodecim.

  And Satan entered into Judas,

  who was surnamed Iscariot,

  one of the twelve.

  — L U K E 2 2 : 3

  When the existence of the Church

  is threatened, it is released from

  the commandments of morality.

  With unity as the end, the use of

  every means is sanctified, even

  deceit, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death. For all order is for

  the sake of the community, and the

  individual must he sacrificed to the common good.

  — D I E T R I C H V O N N I E H E I M , B I S H O P O F V E R D E N ,

  DE SCHISMATE LIBRI III ( 1 4 I I )

  GOLGOTHA

  JERUSALEM, 33 A.D.

  Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .

  Sunlight sparked off the hammer as the Roman nailed the wrist of the supine Jew to the crossbar that would surmount his execution post. The spike that pushed through the flesh was seven inches long, with a square head crowning a tapered shaft. As the legionary labored, insects buzzed around the Jew's wounds, birds of prey circled the crest of the hill, and a gathering mob taunted the doomed man. Nearby, soldiers boisterously cast lots for the Jew's robe, having stripped him of all but his loincloth. A woman—possibly his mother—sobbed as the spike passed through the nerve, causing the fingers to curl like claws.

  Thud . . . thud . . . thud . . .

  The nail sank deep into the rough-hewn wood.

  Devised by the Persians and brought to the Mediterranean by Alexander the Great, crucifixion was raised to an art by the Romans. To communicate its unbearable pain, they coined the word excruciatus, meaning "out of the cross." By law, the citizens of Rome could not be crucified. It was a disgrace reserved for slaves, barbarians, and those who—like this "messiah"—preached heresy against Pax Romana.

  This hammer-wielding Roman was a master at crucifixion.

  He drove the nail between the bones of the wrist because he knew the flesh of the palms wouldn't support the weight of the body. He was careful not to break the bones or pierce the arteries, for his aim was to kill the Jew as slowly and as agonizingly as possible. Having impaled the central nerve and several liga-ments, the spike would shoot bolts of fiery pain up this arm until the wretch expired.

  The heat of the midday sun drenched the Roman in sweat.

  He finished hammering the head of the nail down to the skin of the wrist and then crawled around to the other end of the patibulum.

  Aided by a cohort who tugged the Jew's free arm along the crossbar, he began to pound a spike into that wrist too.

  Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .

  The man being crucified was already half-dead. Earlier, he'd been scourged with a whip called a flagrum, the lead-tipped leather thongs tearing his back to shreds. With a crown of thorns shoved down around his brow, he'd then been forced to carry this heavy crossbar from Jerusalem to Golgotha, the execution mound beyond the city's walls. Unable to bear the burden, he'd stumbled along the way, until a passerby was commandeered to help shoulder the weight. Up this rugged hill they'd come, with a Roman centurion leading the procession and a soldier carrying a sign announcing the Jew's name and his crime.

  Clang . . . clang . . .

  Done.

  It took a gang of soldiers to hoist the crossbar up ladders to the top of one of the permanent uprights—the stipes—

  erected on the hill. Once the horizontal patibulum was fitted into its slot, completing the cross, the hammer man bent the Jew's legs at the knees and positioned one foot over top of the other. Then he nailed them through the arches to the vertical post. Finally, the sign—the titulus in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek—was pinned to the cross above the crucified Jew's head as a warning to others.

  Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, the sign read.

  Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.

  Taunts from the mob grew louder as the executioner stepped back to admire his handiwork. He'd ensured the death would be as slow as possible, with maximum suffering. Crucifixion killed in as little as three to four hours or as much as three to four days, depending on how much blood the victim lost during the lashing.

  So weakened was this Jew from the severity of his beating that the Roman was certain he would be dead by sunset.

  Death would be by asphyxiation. Normally, breathing in is an active process, breathing out a passive one. Here, the weight of the Jew's body pulling down on his shoulders and outstretched arms would tug his chest muscles into a fixed state of inhalation.

  To exhale, he would have to push up on his impaled feet and flex his elbows, causing the pierced nerves to shoot pain through his body. His flayed back would scrape against the rough wood of the upright post, opening the wounds for greater loss of blood.

  Fight to breathe, fight to breathe. Every lift would make him weaker, and soon his gasps would be too shallow to support life.

  Then he'd die.

  "I thirst," the Jew murmured in a voice that could barely be heard. That, too, required exhaling.

  One of the soldiers offered him wine vinegar from a sponge raised on a rod.

  The Roman guards couldn't leave until this Jesus was dead, so the man who'd nailed him to the cross whiled away the time by watching the so-called king of the Jews
pay for his heresy.

  With the descent of the sun, the shadow of the cross crept over the execution mound until ominous clouds blotted out the blue sky with angry gray.

  "That's the price," the Roman snarled, "of refusing to bow to us. Just as your shadow has vanished from the face of the earth, so you will be forgotten."

  But the shadow of the cross continued to elongate until it reached through the centuries for almost two thousand years to the here and now.

  NIGHT FIGHTER

  GERMANY, NOW

  Clang! The sound of metal striking metal ground the bulldozer to a halt. Reversing the earthmover, the driver leaned out of the cab to peer around the dusty windshield. In front of the blade, there appeared to be an aluminum shark's fin jutting from the dirt.

  "Verdammt/" the road builder cursed in German. How long would resurrecting the past stall his work?

  It took them a day to unearth the plane, but finally they could read the nickname painted below the cockpit window of the long-lost Second World War bomber.

  The Ace of Clubs.

  + + +

  GERMANY, 1944

  Whatever this secret mission, it must be something big.

  Assassinate Adolf Hitler?

  Is that it? wondered the pilot.

  Is that why his orders—marked "For your eyes only"—commanded him to break away from the bomber stream and fly this solitary mission to an isolated village, to drop a bomb load on what appeared to be—from the target photo with his orders—a rural country estate?

  Is it Hitler's hideaway?

  A new weapon?

  And why the secrecy?

  If Flight Lieutenant Fletch "Wrath" Hannah died tonight, he'd like to know what he'd died for.

  Through the cockpit window, the pilot watched the bomber stream—eight hundred Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes miles to the north—rain death by moonlight on Berlin. Tons of high explosives boiled like bubbles in a cauldron, blasting buildings to bits. The diamond white glare of the firebombs darkened to deep red once the flames took hold. It looked as though every factory, every house was burning. Berlin glowed like a huge hearth full of flickering embers. And even here—

  Boom! Boom! —driven by the wind, Wrath felt shock waves buffet his plane.

  The pit of hell, he thought.

  As the city belched fire and smoke, the hatred shot skyward in searchlights and flak. Sweeping back and forth in a slow frenzy, the blue beams were master lights that caught a wing or a tail so the slave beams could scale the ladders to "cone" the lit-up planes. Synchronized to the lights, anti-aircraft guns tore the sky apart, spewing tracers like sparks from a grinding wheel.

  Dazzling bursts and ragged smoke clustered near the planes, until the flak was so thick the pilots could almost land on it.

  Ninety-nine whoomfs could miss, but that hardly mattered if the hundredth ripped off a wing or riddled a crew with shrapnel.

  There was only one way to counteract flak.

  Our Father who art in heaven, thought Wrath dryly.

  Each plane flew straight and level for the last leg of its run so the bomb-aimer could plant his crosshairs on the target.

  Wrath winced as one Lane blew up in midair, the fuel tanks falling to the ground as balls of fire. A Halifax spun to earth in ever-tightening turns, twisting faster and faster until it disintegrated from centrifugal force. Engines flaming, controls shot away, crippled bombers were going down in every kind of distress. Exit hatches popped open so crews could bail out, their parachutes blossoming in the gunsights of Hun fighters.

  There but for the grace of God, thought Wrath.

  A moonlight monster gazed back at him from the glass.

  There was nothing human about his face. The seven crewmen wore the combat gear of RAF raiders. The pilot's head was sheathed in a leather flying helmet. Goggles protected his eyes from shrapnel. Headphone flaps covered both ears. Clamped over his nose, mouth, and chin, his oxygen mask dangled a tube like an elephant's trunk. Inside was a microphone he could use to communicate with his crew.

  The TR9 intercom system was standard in British bombers. Each crew member connected to it by plugging in an electrical lead from the mike in his oxygen mask. The deep-throated engines made a lot of noise, so often the men were reduced to handing notes around or blinking the colored lights of the signal system. Rely on that in combat, though, and you wouldn't last long.

  "Intercom check," Wrath announced as the glow of Berlin aflame retreated into the distance and the Ace of Clubs flew deeper into the lonely sky ahead.

  "Rear gunner to pilot. What's up, Skipper? The war's back there. I see it behind us."

  "Pilot to rear gunner. I don't know, Ack-Ack. Orders are to leave the stream and bomb a hinterland village."

  "Their's not to reason why . . ."

  Wrath didn't respond with "Their's but to do and die," to finish the quote from "The Charge of the Light Brigade." He didn't want to jinx them.

  When someone switched on his mike, everybody knew it. The rest could hear the new arrival's breathing over the engines' roar.

  If he didn't talk, Wrath would ask who was on the mike. Because the system didn't identify the men's combat positions—all you heard was yakking on a common line—they had agreed to begin each exchange by saying who was speaking to whom.

  "Pilot to mid-upper."

  "Roger, Skipper?"

  It was strange to hear a voice from the dorsal turret that wasn't De Count's. Monty Christie—thus De Count of Monty Christie—had been with the crew since training. Now branded with the cruel letters LMF—for "lack of moral fiber"—he'd been replaced by Trent Jones for this op.

  "Interrupter gear up to snuff, Jonesy?"

  "Aye, Skipper."

  "You sound distorted."

  "It's cold up here. Hope moisture from my breath isn't freezing in the mike."

  Hours ago, as they'd approached the enemy coast, Wrath had given both gunners permission to test-fire their weapons over the sea. Deafening bangs and the smell of cordite had soon filled the fuselage. As arse-end Charlie of the Ace, Ack-Ack had the most dangerous position. Flying in the rear turret was like being dragged through the air backwards in a goldfish bowl. The average life expectancy of a tail gunner under attack was thirty seconds. That's because Nazi night fighters preferred to zoom in from astern and below. Without the rear gunner, the plane was a sitting duck.

  "There's a balls-up, Skipper," Jonesy had reported. His turret sat halfway back on the dorsal spine of the plane. "The interrupter gear is giving me grief. I worry something broke during the test fire. The rear gunner should know. He's in my gunsights."

  "Ack-Ack?"

  "Here, Skipper."

  "Get forward and help the mid-upper."

  "Roger. Rear gunner going off intercom."

  The plane's turrets were minor marvels of mechanical engineering. Each one was mounted on a pair of concentric rings.

  The inner ring, driven by a self-contained, electro-hydraulic power unit, swiveled around for high-speed tracking of Nazi night fighters. The interrupter gear kept the turret guns from firing when they aimed back at the Ace.

  Wrath waited on tenterhooks.

  He couldn't abort the mission.

  It was dreadfully cold in the tail of the Halifax. Every bit of exposed skin was prone to frostbite. Because there was no heating, the gunners wore electric suits. Wrath could imagine Ack-Ack unhooking his main oxygen supply and intercom plug from his mask before attaching a portable oxygen bottle that resembled a small fire extinguisher. Climbing out of the rear turret, he would crawl up the murky fuselage in his heavy suit, then try to help fix whatever was wrong with the mid-upper's interrupter gear.

  Those gunners were the bomber's only protection against attack. It unnerved Wrath to have either turret vacant. From the moment the Ace entered Nazi airspace until—hopefully—it landed safely back at base in Yorkshire, the gunners would be isolated in the plane's tail end, glued to hard seats for the dura-tion of the run.
r />   Tick-tock . . .

  Time passed with agonizing slowness.

  Then Wrath heard the familiar puff-puff in his earphones of a crewman checking his mike before speaking.

  "Rear gunner to pilot. Problem solved, Skipper. Found the gremlin in the works."

  "Pilot to Jonesy and Ack-Ack. We're counting on you.

  Don't want anything failing if the Huns attack."

  "Aye," said the voice foreign to the crew.

  "I'll stake my life on it," added Ack-Ack.

  Wrath hoped that didn't jinx them either.

  Now it was more than two hours later and the Ace was nearing its target.

  "Pilot to both gunners. Keep your eyes peeled." Confident the two were swinging their turrets from side to side, constantly scanning the sky for night fighters, Wrath banked the plane like a teeter-totter so they could check blind spots under the wings for Huns moving into attack positions.

  That took care of the rear three-quarters of the bomber—everything aft of the cockpit and the nose compartment.

  "Pilot to engineer."

  "Engineer okay, Skipper."

  It was Hugh "Ox" Oxley's job to monitor the mechanical systems during flight—eye the instrument panel, maintain oil temperatures and pressures, cross-feed the petrol tanks when necessary. His station was the jump seat next to the pilot. At present, the flight engineer was checking the master fuel cocks.

  "Pilot to wireless operator."

  "Wireless operator strength nine, Skip."

  The radioman. Earl "Sweaty" Swetman, shared the compartment below the cockpit with the navigator. They'd met an unexpected north wind, so he'd spent most of the flight receiving new meteorological info from HQ to help the navigator adjust wind speeds and directions. Now, for the final leg of the bombing run, he left his radio set to drop bundles of "window"—thin strips of metal foil that confused German radar images—down the flare chute.

  "Pilot to navigator."

  "Navigator loud and clear," replied Mick "Balls" Balsdon.

  His role was to guide the Ace to the target area, at which point the bomb-aimer would assume control for the final run to the actual target. With blackout curtains pulled tight around him, Balls worked with his compass and radar to guide them over the landscape. Unlike his counterparts in the planes pounding Berlin, he didn't have markers to follow or a helpful master bomber circling overhead. He was on his own with just the moonlight as an angel.