Target Churchill (28 page)

“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.