Prologue
Unfinished Business

December 12, 1934

Garmishch-Partenkirchen

 

Above the snow line, the German Alps tore at the sky like the jaws of an ancient flesh eater. Storm clouds grazed the windswept peaks and the jagged rock appeared to move as if the beast was awakening. Two men, neither young, both strong, watched from the balcony of a ski hotel with quickening anticipation.

Hans Grandzau was a guide whose weathered face was as craggy as the mountain tops. He carried in his head sixty years of traversing the wintery slopes. Last night he had promised that the wind would shift east. Bitter Siberian cold would whirl wet air from the Mediterranean into blinding snow.

The man to whom Hans had promised snow was a tall American whose blond hair and mustache were edged with silver. He wore a tweed Norfolk suit, a warm fedora on his head, and a Yale University scarf adorned with the shield of Branford College. His dress was typical of a well-to-do tourist who had come to the Alps for winter sport. But his eyes were fastened with a glacial-blue intensity on an isolated stone castle ten miles across the rugged valley.

The castle had dominated its remote glen for a thousand years. It was nearly buried by the winter snows and mostly hidden by the shadow of the peaks that soared above it. Miles below the castle, too long and steep a climb to be undertaken lightly, was a village. The American watched a pillar of smoke creep toward it. He was too far away to see the locomotive venting it but he knew that it marked the route of the railroad that crossed the border to Innsbruck. Full circle, he thought grimly. Twenty-seven years ago, the crime had started by a railroad in the mountains. Tonight it would end, one way or another, by a railroad in the mountains.

“Are you sure you are up to this?” asked the guide. “The ascents are steep. The wind will cut like a saber.”

“I’m fit as you are, old man.”

To assure Hans he explained that he had prepared by bivouacking for a month with Norwegian ski troops, having arranged informal attachment to a United States Army unit dispatched to hone the skills of mountain warfare.

“I was not aware that American troops exercise in Norway,” the German said stiffly.

The American’s blue eyes turned slightly violet with the hint of a smile. “Just in case we have to come back over here to straighten out another war.”

Hans returned an opaque grin. He was a proud veteran, the American knew, of the  Alpenkorps, Germany’s elite mountain division that had been formed by Kaiser Wilhelm in the 1914-1918 World War. But he was no friend of the Nazis who had recently seized control of the German government and threatened to plunge Europe into another war.

The American looked around to be sure they were alone. An elderly chambermaid in a black dress and white apron was rolling a carpet sweeper down the hall behind the balcony doors. He waited until she had moved away, then palmed a leather pouch of Swiss twenty-franc gold coins in his big hand and slipped it to the guide. “Full payment in advance. The deal is, if I can’t keep up, leave me and take yourself home. You get the skis. I’ll meet you at the rope tow.”

He hurried to his luxurious wood-paneled room where deep carpets and a crackling fire made the scene beyond the window look even colder. Quickly, he changed into water repellent gabardine trousers, which he tucked into thick wool socks, lace boots, two light wool sweaters, a windproof leather vest, and a hip-length gabardine jacket, which he left unzipped.

Jeffrey Dennis knocked and entered. He was a smooth young operative from the Berlin office, wearing the Tyrolean hat that tourists bought. Jeffrey was bright, eager and organized. But he was  no outdoors man.

“Still no snow?”

“Give everyone the go ahead,” the older man told him. “In one hour you won’t see your hand in front of your face.”

Dennis handed him a small knapsack. “Papers for you and your, uh, ‘luggage.’ The train will cross into Austria at midnight. You’ll be met at Innsbruck. This passport should be good until tomorrow.”

The older man looked out the window at the distant castle. “My wife?”

“Safe in Paris. At the George V.”

“What message?”

The young man offered an envelope.

“Read it.”

Dennis read in a monotone, “‘Thank you, my darling, for the best twenty-fifth anniversary imaginable.’”

The older man relaxed visibly. That was the code she had chosen with a wink the day before yesterday. She had provided cover, a romantic second honeymoon in case anyone recognized him and asked whether he was here on business. Now she was safely away. The time for cover was over. The storm was building. He took the envelope and held it to the flames in the fireplace. He inspected the passport, visas, and border permits carefully.

“Sidearm?”

It was compact and light. Dennis said, “It’s the new automatic the German cops carry undercover. But I can get you a service revolver if you would be more comfortable with an older gun.”

 The blue eyes, which had swept again to the castle across the bleak valley, pivoted back at the younger man. Without looking down at his hands, the tall American removed the magazine, checked that the chamber was empty, and proceeded to field strip the Walther PPK by opening the trigger guard and removing the slide and return spring from the barrel. That took twelve seconds. Still looking the courier in the face, he reassembled the pistol in ten.

“This should do the job.”

It began to sink into the younger man that he was in the presence of greatness. Before he could stop himself he asked a boy’s question. “How long do you have to practice to do that?”

A surprisingly warm smile creased the stern face and he said, neither unkindly or without humor, “Practice at night, Jeff, in the rain, when someone’s shooting at you and you’ll pick it up quick enough.”

 

 

Chapter 18

October 14, 1907

Eastbound On The Overland Limited

 

There were two of them.

The punch from behind flung Bell reeling at the first boxer who gave him a shot to jaw. The blow spun him like a top. The second boxer was waiting with a fist that knocked the detective clean off his feet.

Bell hit the ballast with his shoulder and rolled across splintery ties and banged into one of the rails. The cold steel made a pillow for his head as he looked up, trying to focus on what was happening to him. Seconds ago he had been standing on the rear platform of a first class all-stateroom train. Then he ran to rescue a woman who turned out not to need rescuing. Now two bare-knuckle prize fighters were hurling punches at him.

They circled, blocking any thought of escape.

A quarter mile down the tracks the busy depot switch engine stopped on a siding and cast the long glow of its headlamp down the rails, illuminating Bell and his attackers enough to see each other, but not so brightly, Bell knew, as to be seen by anyone who might intervene.

By the distant headlamp he saw that they were big men, not as tall as he, but each outweighed him handily. He could tell by their stances that they were professionals, light on their feet, knew how to throw a punch, knew where to hit the body to inflict the most damage, knew every dirty trick in the book. He could tell by their cold expressions to expect no mercy.

“On your feet, boyo. Stand up and take it like a man.”

They backed up to allow him room, so confident were they of their skills and the fact that they outnumbered him two to one.

Bell shook his head to clear it and gathered his legs under him. He was a trained boxer. He knew how to take a punch. He knew how to slip a punch. He knew how to throw  punches in lightning combinations. But they outnumbered him and they knew their business, too.

The first man poised to charge, eyes gleaming, fists held low in the brawling stance of bare-knuckle champion John L. Sullivan. The second held his hands higher in the style of Gentleman Jim Corbett, the only man who had ever knocked out John L. Sullivan. “Corbett” would be the one to look out for, a scientific boxer as opposed to a fighter. His left hand and shoulder were protecting his jaw. His right, guarding his stomach, was a sledgehammer held in reserve.

Bell stood up.

“Corbett” stepped back.

“Sullivan” charged.

Their strategy, Bell saw, was simple and would be brutally effective. While Sullivan attacked from the front, Corbett would stand by to slam him back whenever Bell staggered out of range. If he lasted long enough to tire the first man, they would exchange places and start fresh.

Bell’s two-shot derringer was in his hat, which was hanging in his stateroom. His pistol was on the train, too, steaming toward Cheyenne. He was dressed in the evening attire in which he had dined and played poker, tuxedo jacket, pleated dress shirt with diamond studs, and silk bow tie. Only his footwear, polished black boots, largely concealed by his trouser legs, instead of patent leather dancing pumps, might have caused a discerning maitre d’ not to seat him at the best table in his restaurant.

Sullivan threw a roundhouse right. Bell ducked. The fist whizzed over his head and Sullivan, thrown off balance, stumbled past. As he did, Bell hit him twice, once in his rockhard stomach, which had absolutely no effect, the other on the side of his face, which made him shout in anger.

Corbett laughed, harshly. “A scientific fighter,” he mocked. “Where’d you learn to box, sonny? Harvard?”

“Yale,” said Bell.

“Well here’s one for Boola, Boola,” Corbett feinted with his right and delivered a sharp left to Bell’s ribs. Even though Bell had managed to move away from most of it, it was like getting hit by a locomotive. He tumbled to the ground with a searing pain in his side. Sullivan ran after him to kick him in the head. Bell twisted frantically and the hobnail boot aimed at his face ripped the shoulder of his dinner jacket.

Two on one was no time for Marquess of Queensberry boxing rules. He scooped a heavy piece of ballast from the rail bed as he rolled to his feet. “Did I mention I also studied in Chicago?” he asked, “On the West Side.” He threw the stone with all his strength into Corbett’s face.

Corbett cried out in pain and clutched his eye. Bell had expected to stagger him, if not take him right out of the fight. But Corbett was very fast. He had ducked quickly enough to dodge the stone’s full force. He lowered his hand from his eye, wiped his blood on his shirt front, and closed it into a fist again. “That’ll cost you, College. There’s quick ways to die and slow ways to die and you just earned a slow one.”

Corbett circled, fists high and low, one eye dark, the other glaring malevolently. He threw several jabs, four, five six, contrived to calculate by Bell’s reactions just how good he was and where his weaknesses lay. Suddenly he came at Bell with a quick one-two, a left and right designed to soften him for a heavier blow.

Bell slipped both punches. But Sullivan charged from the side and landed a hard fist  across Bell’s mouth that knocked him down, again.

Bell tasted salt in his mouth. He sat up, shaking his head.  Blood ran down his face, over his lips. The switch engine light gleamed on his teeth.

“He’s smiling,” Sullivan said to Corbett. “Is he loco?”

“Punch drunk. I hit him harder than I thought.”

“Hey, College, what’s the joke?”

“Get in there, finish him off.”

“Then what?”

“Leave him on the track. It’ll look like a train killed him.”

Bell’s smile grew wider. A bloody nose at last, he thought.  Wally and Mack, old friends, I must be closer to catching the Wrecker than I know. The Wrecker had gotten on at Ogden after all. He had laid low, waiting his chance, while Bell ate dinner, played cards, and hosted his victory party in the observation car. Then he jumped off in Rawlins to hire these two to kill him.

“I’ll give him something to smile about,” said Sullivan.

“Got a match?” Bell asked him.

Sullivan lowered his hands and stared. “What?”

“A match. A Lucifer. I need more light to show you this picture I have in my pocket.”

“What?”

“You asked what’s the joke. I’m hunting a killer. The same killer who hired you hydrophobic skunks to kill me. Here’s the joke. The hydrophobic skunks are going to tell me what he looks like.”

Sullivan rushed at Bell, throwing a vicious right at his face. Bell moved quickly. The fist whizzed over his head like a boulder and Bell brought his left down the man’s head as he stumbled from the force of missing. It drove him to the ground like a piledriver. This time when Corbett rushed in from the side, Bell was ready and he backhanded him with the same left, smashing his nose with a sharp crack!

Corbett grunted, wheeled gracefully out of a predicament that would have seen an ordinary mortal fall. He whipped his left high to protect his chin from Bell’s right cross, and his right low to block Bell’s left to his stomach. Conversationally, he said, “Here’s one they didn’t teach you in college,” and hit Bell with a one-two that nearly tore his head off.

Sullivan slugged Bell as he hurtled past. The full force of the blow struck just above his temple and knocked him flat. The pain was sharp as a needle in his brain. But the fact that he felt pain at all meant he was still alive and conscious that Sullivan and Corbett were moving in for the kill. His head was spinning. He had to push off with his hands to regain his feet. “Gentlemen, this is your last chance. Is this the man who paid you to kill me?”

Sullivan’s powerful jab knocked the paper from Bell’s hand.

Bell straightened up as much as he could against the searing pain in ribs and managed to elude the combination Sullivan threw next. “I’ll take you next,” he taunted Sullivan. “Soon as I teach your partner something I learned in college.” Then he turned his scorn on Corbett. “If you were half as good as you think you are, you wouldn’t be hiring yourself out to beat people up in a godforsaken railroad town.”

It worked. As table talk could smoke out poker intentions, fight talk provoked recklessness. Corbett shoved Sullivan aside. “Get out of my way! I’m going to make this son of a bitch weep before he dies.”

He charged in a rage, throwing punches like cannon fire.

Bell knew he had taken too much punishment to count on his speed. He had one last chance to gather all his strength in one killing blow. Too tired to slip the blows, he absorbed two, stepped inside the next, hit Corbett hard on the jaw, which snapped his head back. Then Bell unleashed a right from his knees and plunged it with every ounce of strength he had into Corbett’s body. The breath exploded out of the man and he collapsed as if his own knees had turned to water. Fighting to the last, he lunged for Bell’s throat as he went down, but fell short.

Bell lurched at Sullivan. He was gasping with exertion. But his face was a mask of grim purpose.“Who hired you to kill me?”

Sullivan dropped beside his fallen partner, reached inside Corbett’s coat, yanked out a flick knife. Leaping to his feet, he charged Bell.

Bell knew that the heavily-built brawler was stronger than he was. In his own half dead state, attempting to take the knife away was too risky. He slipped his own blade from his boot and pitched it overhand, dragging his index finger on the smooth handle to prevent it from rotating. Flickering like a lizard’s tongue, it flew flat and true into Corbett’s throat. The brawler fell, spewing blood through the hands that desperately tried to close the wound.

He would not be answering Bell’s questions.

The detective knelt beside Corbett. His eyes were staring wide open. Blood was trickling from his mouth. If he wasn’t dying with internal ruptures from Bell’s blow to his stomach, he was close to it and would not be answering questions tonight, either. Without wasting another moment, Isaac Bell staggered along the rails to the Rawling’s Depot and burst through the dispatcher’s door.

The dispatcher stared at the man in ripped evening clothes with blood pouring down his face. “What the hell happened to you, Mister?”

Bell said, “The president of the line has authorized me to charter a special.”

“You bet. And the Pope just gave me a pass for the Pearly Gates.”

Bell pulled Osgood Hennessy’s letter from his wallet and thrust it in the dispatcher’s face.

“I want your fastest locomotive.”

The dispatcher read it twice, stood up, and said, “Yes, sir! But I’ve only got one engine and she’s scheduled to hitch onto the westbound Limited, which is due in twenty minutes.”

“Turn her around, we’re going east.”

“Where to?”

“After the Overland Limited.”

‘You’ll never catch her.”

“If I don’t, you’ll be hearing from Mr. Hennessy. Get on that telegraph and clear the tracks.”

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