Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“You and who else?”
“Four others.”
“So, it was really true,” Waxman mused.
“What are you talking about?”
“I had heard that a squad of Negro soldiers were sent to Africa to gather intel on the German presence in the Denakil Desert.”
“We didn’t find much,” German confessed.
Waxman shrugged.
“A few months ago, four men began meeting at The Royce every week. I believe that one of the men was a Nazi officer whom I had under surveillance in Ethiopia.”
“Are you sure?”
“I only watched him through binoculars. I never got closer than thirty or forty yards, but I think it was him,” German replied.
Waxman stood, walked to the window, and gazed at the street below.
“I lost... my wife recently,” German added.
“I’m sorry,” Waxman said.
“I believe they meant to kill me,” German explained.
“You think they did it?”
German nodded his affirmation.
“Had they seen you in Ethiopia?”
“No. Never.”
“Then how...”
“He told me in the restaurant that I had developed and unusual interest in him. She was killed in our apartment the following day. The four of them never returned to the restaurant after.”
“I see,” Waxman mumbled.
“I saw him again yesterday in a tobacco shop off Lenox. The store was locked in the middle of the afternoon. There was an expression on his face. It was hateful... mocking.”
German’s face had become wet with tears, but he was barely aware of it.
“There are evil men in this world, Mr. Johnson,” Waxman observed pensively. “They didn’t all die with the fall of Germany. Many of them are here right under our noses. Let me tell you a story that I think you will appreciate.
“Long before America entered the war, British intelligence smuggled a military physician into a humanitarian field hospital near the Ethiopian coast. He was there to see an Ethiopian rebel who had become critically ill. The man died shortly after he left, but he was able to confirm the cause of death. The man died of acute radiation exposure.”
“What are you saying?”
“The atomic bomb that your country dropped on Japan was developed from German technology.”
“So that’s why they sent us to Ethiopia,” German said. “They thought the Nazis had a bomb in Ethiopia.”
“No. Not a bomb, but perhaps some of the material and technology to create one. In case the war didn’t go well, the Nazis decentralized some of their technology. It made sense. What better place than an isolated site protected by their fascist allies.”
“But we never saw anything.”
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there,” Waxman replied.
“So what do you think this is about? These men... my wife.”
Waxman fumbled through several folders and finally laid a series of grainy black and white photos before German.
His eyes immediately settled on the picture of a young man wearing a Nazi uniform who had a receding hairline. The similarity was unmistakable. This was the man he had seen in Ethiopia — a younger version of the man with the staccato voice.
“Revenge, Mr. Johnson. The Nazi concept wasn’t just political philosophy. It was a faith, a religion, an evil that transcended Hitler’s moment in history. There are those who won’t accept defeat and the horror they are willing to visit upon you is beyond your wildest fears.”
“Who are you?” German asked. His mind was unable to fathom all that he was hearing.
“My country exists under a British mandate, Mr. Johnson, but we’re not foolish enough to leave our security to others. If we were to fall into that trap, we would share the same fate as our families who died in Hitler’s concentration camps. That’s all you need to know.”
“So you’re some kind of diplomat?”
“Something like that,” Waxman smiled.
German smiled too. He knew a lie when he heard one, but it was a lie he was willing to accept.
Another week had passed, and the knock at German’s door was completely unexpected. Now that Angelina was gone, his phone rarely rang, and the diverse visitors who colored his life no longer brightened his door.
“Waxman. How did you find me?”
Waxman’s only response was a smile.
Waxman needed to see the tobacco store where German had last seen the man with the relentless eyes. Waxman’s purposes were still suspect to him, but it was a task German was all too willing to pursue. The long hours spent alone in grief and reflection had convinced him that the Nazis were involved in the death of his wife. Wife. He had come to call her that as if it had been a reality.
They found a corner where they could observe the store in obscurity. The closed sign on the door never changed, but occasionally there appeared to be movement inside.
Finally they saw the men. Two of them exited the building and got in a car in the alley and left.
German wanted to do something immediately, but Waxman cautioned patience. They watched the building most of the day observing the random exits and returns of the men. There seemed to German to be a pattern of movement developing, but Waxman dismissed it. Eventually all four men left together.
Waxman sprinted across the street with German close behind. He entered the locked door so quickly German thought he had a key. Waxman seemed to have more talents than would be expected in an ordinary man.
“Here,” Waxman said as they moved inside the store.
He handed German a pistol.
“What’s this?” German asked.
“Security. Peace of mind. I thought we might need it. You ever shoot anybody?”
German diverted his eyes and turned away. During his entire tour of duty, he had never fired his weapon. For that matter, he had never felt an immediate threat to his life until he returned home.
The store smelled of the rich odor of tobacco. It appeared well stocked with cigars, pipe tobacco, and cigarettes. There was also cigarette paper for those rugged souls who preferred to roll their own. A few tables and chairs sat in the middle of the floor for customers who wanted to relax with tobacco and coffee.
Waxman moved cautiously toward the back of the store with his own pistol in hand.
A back door led down a darkened stairway to a lower level. A wall switch turned on a single naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating an unoccupied room, which appeared to be a storage area. There were several unopened crates along the periphery of the room. Waxman inspected the markings closely while scowling. He rambled through papers and folders left on a desk. He found notebooks and perused their contents.
“Just as I suspected,” he muttered.
He used the phone on the desk to make a call.
“Who are you calling?” German asked.
“Friends,” Waxman answered succinctly, without making any effort to explain further.
“What is this place? What’s going on here?”
“These are dangerous men, Mr. Johnson.”
“Shouldn’t you call the police... the FBI?”
“Nobody’s going to help us,” Waxman interrupted. “There are no suspects in your wife’s murder, and the police aren’t asking questions anymore. Your former commanding officer didn’t even want to talk to you. There are others coming who could help us, but they won’t be here in time. I’m not absolutely sure how much time we’ve got, but if I guess wrong, hundreds of thousands of people could die. These men who killed your wife want to kill you, and they want to destroy your country as well as mine. We have no choice.”
“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
“Mr. Johnson,” Waxman began with a weary sigh. “Many of the scientists and theoreticians in Germany were not friends of your country. Some of them accepted every word the Nazis spoke. Had the timeline been slightly different, it could have been New York and Washington going up in smoke and flames rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This man you saw in the Ethiopian desert was in Hitler’s nuclear research program. What better place to hide than Harlem? Hide among the invisible and you become invisible. With a device as small as one of these crates, they could destroy this city and all of its people.”