Crucified Page 11

  "Phew," said Liz. "That thought makes me shiver. Like that photo of the man falling from one of the towers on September 11."

  "What would you do?"

  "Jump, I guess," she said.

  "That's what he did. Nick took the plunge. With only a parachute harness, he fell eighteen thousand feet through the dark sky and hit the ground."

  "Splat!" said Lenny.

  "Uh-uh." Sweaty shook his head. "Three hours later, Nick opened his eyes and saw stars."

  "No way!" Liz exclaimed.

  "How?" Wyatt asked. The historian knew the answer, but he played along.

  "Alkemade found himself lying on his back in snow in a thicket of trees. Though cut, bruised, and burned, he was still in one piece. A fluke of fate had plunged him into the tops of some highly sprung pines. The trees had bounced him branch to branch, breaking his fall. Beyond the thicket, the earth was bare, but in the shadow of the pines, the ground had snow."

  "Unbelievable," said Liz.

  "That's what the Gestapo thought. Nick's leg was twisted, so there was no escape. The Nazis thought he'd hidden his chute somewhere. But the web lifts on his harness weren't extended, as they would have been if he'd pulled the ripcord.

  And when the wreck was found, lo and behold, there were the charred remains of his chute.

  "By then, the gunner was a POW in a Stalag Luft camp.

  At a prisoner parade, the Gestapo presented Alkemade with signed proof that he had fallen from three miles up."

  "Amazing," said Liz. "Life's roulette wheel. One gunner hobbled away from certain death, while poor Ack-Ack never got out of his turret."

  "At least we know what happened," Sweaty replied. "The Junkers shot him through the chest."

  "No," Wyatt said. "He wasn't shot. Ack-Ack was the victim of an impossible crime."

  LOCKED ROOM

  "I thought you said Ack-Ack had three holes punched through the back of his flying suit?"

  "I did," Wyatt agreed.

  Sweaty frowned. "So when that Junkers 88 shot our tail to shreds, three bullets entered through the gap in the turret and struck Ack-Ack in the chest?"

  "No," Wyatt said.

  "Why not?"

  "If the Junkers got him, wouldn't there be three holes in the front of his suit too?"

  "So Ack-Ack was shot in the back when he turned around to get his chute."

  "No," said Wyatt. "Ack-Ack wasn't shot at all. He was stabbed in the back with a knife."

  "Stabbed!" Sweaty exclaimed.

  "Yes. Three times. The third stab was so hard that it snapped the blade off the knife."

  "That's impossible."

  Wyatt shrugged. "So it's an impossible crime."

  He'd snapped a slew of digital photographs in the Ace, and now he used the camera to put on a slide show for Sweaty, Lenny, and Liz. Some of the shots showed the blade he'd withdrawn from the skeleton.

  "It seems to me," Wyatt said, "that what we have here is proof that Judas was behind the last flight of the Ace. Let's assume the Ace was going to be the means by which to insert a secret agent into the Reich. What better way to do it than to shoot the plane down in a manner that allows the crew to bail out? If I were in charge of the operation, I would separate the Ace from the bomber stream."

  "Why?" asked Liz.

  "So other British planes wouldn't be around to open up with their guns when the Ace got attacked."

  "That fits," Sweaty said. "Our secret mission. Splintering the Ace off to bomb the village."

  "Why that target?" Lenny asked.

  "No particular reason," Wyatt replied. "Any lonesome village would have done. The village wasn't the target.

  The target was the Ace."

  "Christ!" cursed Sweaty. "You should have seen the brew-up. We hit it with incendiaries punctuated with bombs.

  All those civilians killed for nothing!"

  "Not for nothing," Wyatt said. "They were sacrificed to down the Ace. That was sneaky. The operation was masked by the tactics of Bomber Command."

  "I don't understand," said Lenny.

  "The war over Germany was a cat-and-mouse game.

  The British swamped Nazi defenses by funneling as many aircraft as possible over each target in the shortest possible time. The Germans reacted with their night-fighter system.

  They allocated levels of artillery altitude above their cities to searchlights and flak guns. Above that, Wilde Sau—'wild boar'—fighters were free to roam at will. They used the lights to pick off bombers below. Even more lethal were the Zahme Sau—'tame boar'—fighters. They infiltrated the bomber stream and tracked the RAF with onboard radars. But because Nazi controllers didn't have enough interceptors, they had to guess which cities would be targets that night, then dispatch enough planes to meet the threat."

  "We were cunning," Sweaty said, taking over. "To trick the Huns, Group HQ launched 'spoof' raids at targets faraway from the real ones, and ordered diversionary attacks of a size the Nazis couldn't ignore at secondary objectives.

  Meanwhile, the main bomber stream flew a complicated dogleg course over Germany, only veering toward the primary target at the last minute. To maximize confusion, we wireless operators jammed their ground-to-air radios, then our German-speaking controllers issued phony countermands."

  "What did you think you were doing that night, Sweaty?"

  Wyatt asked.

  "Flying a top-secret mission."

  "And the main bomber stream attacking Berlin?"

  "We thought that was a big diversionary raid to mask us."

  "Now, consider the Ace from the Nazis' point of view. After you were shot down, how would those not party to the Judas conspiracy see your op?"

  "As a spoof raid for the main attack."

  "And the Junkers?"

  "It got lucky. The lone wolf fighter was on its way to save Berlin when it chanced upon us."

  "So," said Wyatt, "if I controlled the British end of the conspiracy, I'd hide the secret agent among the crewmen of the Ace, send the plane on a solitary op, over the Reich, and tell my German counterpart the name of the target village.

  And if I controlled the other end of the plot, I'd send a night fighter to shoot down the Ace without killing the agent. I'd have the Junkers 88 destroy the tail. The only crewman in harm's way would be the rear gunner, but he could ruin the whole plot if he fired back. The only surefire protection would be to have the secret agent stab Ack-Ack to death before the night fighter attacked. With the Ace crippled, the six forward crewmen would bail out through the front hatch.

  When he landed, the secret agent would surrender to the Gestapo. Imprisoned in a Stalag Luft camp, the airman would be where Judas could find him."

  Sweaty shook his head. "Your theory doesn't fit the facts, Wyatt. Ack-Ack was alive when the Junkers attacked. He was the one who raised the alarm. We'd been mates since training.

  I know it was him."

  "Couldn't the agent have stabbed him after that?" asked Lenny.

  "Impossible. We were all in our battle stations every second of the way on our lonely run. Our only hope of survival was one hundred percent teamwork by every man. Our only defense against enemy fighters was coordination between Jonesy, our mid-upper gunner, and Ack-Ack, far back in the rear turret. Between them, they commanded a wide field of fire. Just as we relied on our navigator to guide us to the target, we relied on our gunners to warn us of incoming fighters and advise on the evasive maneuvers to take.

  "From where I was stationed, I could see every combat position in the bomber. Wrath, the pilot, and Ox, the engineer, were above me in the cockpit. Balls, the navigator, was with me, and Nelson, the bomb-aimer, was up front in the nose.

  Jonesy, the mid-upper gunner, was in the dorsal turret. The lower half of his body was visible in the fuselage tunnel.

  I could see the passage back to the tail, so I know none of us went back to the rear turret from the moment we strapped in for the bombing run until the moment we bailed out."

  "You're sure?"
pressed Lenny.

  "Cross my heart. The moment Ack-Ack shouted 'Fighter!

  Fighter! Corkscrew starboard, Skipper!' through the intercom, every man reacted. A moment's delay invited disaster. A split second later, the night fighter raked our tail, Wrath plunged the Ace into an evasive dive, and our mid-upper guns returned fire. But the plane was crippled, and we were going down.

  There wasn't a minute to lose if we hoped to bail out.

  Glancing back along the tunnel, I saw the mid-upper gunner descending from the dorsal turret. He—like everyone except the rear gunner—would escape by the front hatch. There was no sign of Ack-Ack, and now we know why."

  "That doesn't make sense," said Liz. "How was Ack-Ack stabbed three times in the back when he was the only airman in the rear turret?"

  "What we have here," Wyatt declared, "is a 'locked room'

  puzzle. If we solve the /zmvdunit, we'll solve the whodunit."

  "We unmask the secret agent?"

  "How equals who."

  "But how do we solve it?" Lenny asked.

  "We seek help."

  "Help from whom?"

  "From John Dickson Carr."

  + + +

  Some brains do crossword puzzles. Some play chess. Some calculate the odds of Texas hold 'em poker. It matters not what you do to exercise the 'little gray cells'—as Hercule Poirot put it—as long as you do something to keep your mind from atrophying.

  Wyatt solved mysteries.

  Historical and detective puzzles.

  "Carr?" said Lenny. "You mean the mystery writer?"

  "Read him?"

  "No, but I've heard of him. Before we moved to Wales, I worked as a librarian."

  "Carr," Wyatt explained for the others, "was a grand master in the golden age of detective fiction. He's still the undisputed king of the locked-room puzzle. The setup in a locked-room puzzle is this: A body is found, by itself in a room with no secret escape. The cause of death is such that seemingly the murderer must still be in the room. But he or she isn't, so how was the 'impossible crime' committed?"

  "Poe?" said Sweaty. '"The Murders in the Rue Morgue'?"

  "A telling example. Most consider it to be the first detective story ever written. Murder by razor in an apparently inaccessible fourth-floor room."

  "An orangutan did it," said Sweaty.

  "And then we have Sherlock Holmes. 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band.' Probably the most famous story. The victim is frightened to death in a locked room."

  "A snake dunit," said Liz.

  "Uh-huh. A swamp adder. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explained how to solve such a puzzle. 'It is one of the elementary principles of practical reasoning,' he wrote, 'that when the impossible has been eliminated, the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth.' Here's a sneaky example: The cops convict a killer of murder, but they can't send him to jail or execute him. Why?"

  "Beats me," said Liz.

  "Because he's inextricably joined to his Siamese twin. One half is guilty. The other half is innocent."

  "Why turn to Carr?" asked Lenny.

  "Because he wrote the book on solving locked-room puzzles.

  The Three Coffins, or The Hollow Man, as it was called in Britain.

  In it, Carr offers the seven ways to solve a locked-room puzzle.

  Explanation one: The crime isn't murder but a series of coincidences ending in an accident that looks like murder. For example, the victim's skull is cracked as if by a bludgeoning, but in fact, he fell from a book-shelf ladder and struck his head on the furniture, then crawled across the room before he died."

  "Stabbed three times in the back," said Lenny. "That can't be what happened to Ack-Ack."

  "I agree. Explanation two: It's murder committed by someone impelling the victim to kill himself or die in an accident. Here, the example is death by autosuggestion—a film with subliminal messages urges the fatal action. Years back, a test was done with split-second 'Buy Popcorn' ads spliced into a drive-in movie. The popcorn stand was mobbed by the audience in the intermission."

  "Doesn't fit either," said Liz.

  "I agree. Explanation three: It's actually death by suicide, made to look like murder."

  "Example?" asked Lenny.

  Wyatt grinned. "A man stabs himself with an icicle, which melts and evaporates."

  "The rear gunner's seat," Sweaty said, "had no back support. So Ack-Ack couldn't have stabbed himself three times on a knife attached to the seat."

  "Could the knife have been fixed to the doors?" asked Liz.

  "No," said Wyatt. "I checked. Besides, someone removed the knife's handle from the turret after the blade snapped off."

  "Why?" asked Lenny.

  "I have no idea. Presumably so nobody would find it. But why would that matter once Ack-Ack was dead in the turret?"

  "Explanation four?" asked Liz.

  "It's murder complicated by illusion or impersonation.

  The victim lies dead in a watched room. With witnesses by his side, the killer shines a flashlight through the window.

  Inside, they see a shadowy figure move. But when they enter, all they find is the corpse. The witnesses didn't know it, but the killer had taped a small silhouette to the lens of the flashlight."

  "Forget that," Sweaty said. "It doesn't fit here. Ack-Ack was alive when the Junkers attacked. I'll swear to that, and to the fact that no one went back to the turret between the time of the attack and our bail-out."

  "Strike four," said Lenny. "What's next, Coach?"

  "Explanation five: The victim is thought to be dead long before he actually dies. A drugged man passes out after locking himself in a room. When the door is broken down, the first person in stabs the victim while those who follow him are distracted."

  "Strike five," said Lenny.

  "Okay. Explanation six: It's murder committed by a killer outside the room, although it seems as if the killer was inside.

  For example, the victim is stabbed through the keyhole while peering out."

  "No cigar," said Sweaty.

  "You're down to your final means," said Liz. "What's explanation seven?"

  "Murder by a mechanical device planted in the room."

  "Example?"

  "How do you hide a razor in plain view of everyone in a room?"

  Liz shrugged.

  "Attach it to the blade of a whirling fan."

  "That's ingenious."

  "The killers in Wilkie Collins's 'A Terribly Strange Bed'

  smother their sleeping victims by screwing down the canopy of a four-poster bed from the room above."

  "Wicked."

  "Locks and keys aren't essential for a locked-room puzzle.

  All that's needed is an isolated space. How do you cut a victim's throat and leave him sprawled in virgin snow with no footprints but his own? Hurl a knife-edged boomerang. Crack a bullwhip with a razor tied to the end. What could explain a body with fresh stab wounds found on a beach with no footprints in the sand? The victim's a hemophiliac whose blood didn't clot while the tide came in and ebbed."

  "So where does that leave us?" Lenny asked.

  "If explanation seven is the only one that fits, we must determine what kind of mechanical device stabbed Ack-Ack three times in the back in his turret, then vanished into thin air with the handle of the knife, leaving the blade wedged in his spine."

  HAMMERHEAD

  It looked as though the Legionary was driving the second-hand Fiat, but actually, Satan was behind the wheel. The car passed in front of the hotel window through which the possessed priest had spied on Wyatt and Liz that morning. Tonight, they dined by candlelight at the same table, but each was so engrossed with the other that neither glanced out at the masked hearse. By the time the priest regained his mind, the car was snaking along a dark rural road that hugged the bank of a river. Not only could he not account for his memory gap, but the Legionary was unaware that Satan's latest harvest was hog-tied in the trunk.

  Clang . . . clang . . . clang . . .
<
br />   Stones clanged in the wheel wells of the Fiat, for this road was used as a detour to the end of the valley by trucks from the highway construction crew. The noise reminded the priest of Good Friday in the Philippines when he was a boy . . .

  "Father?"

  "Yes?" said the priest who would become the Secret Cardinal.

  "Why does my father hate me?"

  "He doesn't hate you. He's just a busy man. He must work hard as the ambassador, so he sends you to boarding school.

  My task is to teach you the lessons of the Bible."

  "I'm not his."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "That's what my mother yelled. I heard my parents arguing before she died. My father said my mother was screwing around, so she yelled that I wasn't his."

  The priest sat down and cupped the boy's hand. "Remember what I taught you about the Garden of Eden?"

  "Adam and Eve. The apple and the snake."

  "Yes. Original sin. That's why parents fight and shout such things. Jesus died for our sins, so your mother is in heaven and your father loves you."

  "My father loves the women he sleeps with at the embassy.

  I'm in the way. That's why I'm at boarding school. I wish you were my father."

  "I am. In a sacred way."

  "Why are you a priest? To stop original sin?"

  "No, to keep from sinning."

  "Did Jesus save you?"

  "Yes, he did."

  "When I grow up, I want to be a priest."

  The missionary wrapped his arms around the boy and hugged him a mite too long.

  "May I see it?"

  "See what, my son?"

  "How Jesus saved my mother. Tomorrow is Good Friday.

  Boys in my dorm say they crucify Jesus in San Pedro Cutud.

  Will you take me to see?"

  And so they ventured north on that brutally hot day, the man and the boy who seemed to be father and son, to watch the crucifixions in the village's dusty rice field. The boy had to break away from the priest and push hard through a throng of sweaty onlookers to see.