CHAPTER 15
Howard Hart’s car was not at the mansion, and the house was barely lit. But the light from one window burned bright.
“That’s my father’s den.” Harry raced into the house. I was seconds behind him, glancing left and right over my shoulder, expecting trouble to be hiding in every shadow.
We charged through the house, room after room—half of which were now empty, the expensive pieces of furniture gone and paintings missing from the walls—until we slowed near the open door to the den and cautiously peered inside. Harry let out a sigh of relief when he exclaimed, “Mother!”
We hurried inside and Crystal Hart looked up in shock. “Harry? What are you doing here?”
“We’ve come to get you. You’re not safe.”
“I know that, darling. None of us are. Which is why I’ve come for these.” She picked up a handful of blueprints and telegrams, maps and schematics, which she had pulled from the drawers of her husband’s desk. “Holden, your father is dealing with some very dangerous people.”
“I know.” Harry gestured to me with a nod. “I hired my friend here, Buck Baxter, to find out why you were acting so strange, sneaking away at night.”
“And let’s just say, your secret is quite the Pandora’s box,” I added.
“You have no idea, Mr. Baxter.”
“I think we’re starting to piece it all together,” I answered.
“Which means you’re next. It’s time to leave… for good. No more sneaking these papers out and discreetly replacing them without his knowing. We need to take these to someone who—”
“Someone who’s not dead yet?” I asked.
Her brow creased with fear and heartache. “You know about Agent Jarvis? And the others?”
I nodded.
Mrs. Hart held a trembling hand to her chest, trying to calm her nerves as she spoke, looking from me to Harry. “More lives are at stake. More than you can possibly imagine. When I overheard your father’s business dealings with the Germans, I couldn’t stand by and let it happen. I had to do something to stop them. Before I knew it, the FBI was involved.”
“And before you knew it, they were all dead,” I said.
Suddenly two pairs of headlights passed across the window and we heard the sound of cars braking sharply outside.
“They’re here. Hurry.” Mrs. Hart started snatching all the papers off the desk, scooping them all up and shoving them into Harry’s arms. “Take them. Take them and run.”
Harry looked at his mother with alarm as she reached into the open drawer beside her and pulled out Howard’s pistol. “Mother? What are you doing?”
“You need to take this evidence and get it to someone who can stop this madness.”
“What about you?”
Down the hallway we could hear the drumming of running feet, getting closer.
“I’ll keep them at bay for as long as I can. Although as soon as your father discovers his desk has been emptied, I dare say you won’t have long to get away.”
“We’re not leaving without you.” Harry turned to me, pushed the papers into my arms, and grabbed his mother by the forearm.
The sound of racing footsteps grew louder and louder.
Harry pulled at his mother’s arm, but she resisted.
“Go, Harry!” she ordered. “Now!”
“Not without you.”
The footsteps squeaked on the floorboards as they slid to a halt just beyond the door.
Harry let go of his mother.
He shoved me against a bookcase.
He kissed me, fast and hard, then yanked at the copy of Julius Ceasar next to my head.
The bookcase began to turn. “Harry?”
Harry stepped off the revolving floor. “I can’t leave her.”
I tried to grab for him, but I couldn’t reach him without dropping the papers.
The bookcase turned, enveloping me in the dimness of the tunnel.
I glanced through the quickly closing gap in time to see the one-eyed German enter the den first.
There were others behind him, but I couldn’t make them out.
The bookcase sealed shut and I heard a single gunshot.
I let the papers flutter from my arms and desperately, silently, pulled at books, trying to find the peephole until soon a small shaft of light beamed out from the bookcase.
I pressed my eye to it as close as I could.
I saw Harry with his hands gripped on his mother’s arm, the one holding the pistol. He’d clearly pushed her arm away just as she’d fired the weapon.
In the doorway, Hammer stood with one hand to his cheek, blood trickling through his fingers. He already looked battered, his clothes torn and his face bruised from the fall out of the limo. And yet he still managed to laugh.
From behind him, Herr Garbutt, Howard Hart, and several other German soldiers appeared.
“Herr Hammer?” said Garbutt. “Are you shot?”
“It’s just a graze,” he replied. “Unfortunately for her, she won’t be so lucky.”
“No!” exclaimed Howard, forcing Hammer’s arm down as he tried to raise his gun. “I thought I made it clear, I want her alive. Both her and my son. You already disobeyed me once when you tried to seal Holden’s fate the same way you did the Feds. How many times do I have to tell you, when we get to Berlin, I want the German people to see me as a family man. A man they can believe in. A man they can trust. A man they can follow into the future.”
Garbutt chuckled. “You sound like you have plans to take over the entire Third Reich. Mein Führer will not like that at all.”
“I assure you, I have no interest in stealing the limelight from your Führer . All I’m interested in is staking my claim on the world’s transportation industries. All of them. And if that means bringing Hitler’s enemies to their knees, city by city, then so be it.”
“Dad?” Harry asked, a look of disbelief and panic on his face. “What are you talking about? What are you planning to do?”
“Something your mother has been trying to foil for months. Do you both honestly think I didn’t notice all the skulking about, all the whispers and watchful eyes and tiptoeing around? What do you take me for, a fool?”
“You’re a fool if you think you can get away with this,” Mrs. Hart snapped. “You’re throwing away everything you’ve built, everything you’ve worked so hard for. You’re going to get us all killed. All because of your ego, your pride, your insatiable lust for power and money.”
“My dear, since when have you ever had a problem with my power and money? You wear it well. At least you did, until the day you decided you wanted to be brave and try to stop me. What was it, Crystal? Were you bored? Did you need a new distraction? I could have bought you a tropical island in the Pacific if that was the case. Nevertheless, you had to go and stick your nose where it didn’t belong, at the same time letting Agent Jarvis stick his cock where it didn’t belong. It wasn’t all business and no pleasure with the FBI, was it, my darling? At least when it came to Agent Jarvis. You really should make sure you have both earrings on when you get out of the back seat of a limousine, dear.”
Mrs. Hart tried to raise her pistol again, but Harry stopped her.
The attempt was enough to give Howard a good belly laugh. “Of course, once I discovered you were sneaking all my plans to the FBI, I had no choice but to let you have your Mata Hari moment. After all, it was the easiest way to lead us to the agents helping you. But then Holden had to get involved, along with his hired help, Mr. Baxter. Tell me, son, is it just his investigative skills you pay him for, or do you hire Mr. Baxter for other services rendered?”
Harry’s jaw clenched, as did mine. “If you must know,” he said. “Buck is my boyfriend. I’ve loved him since before I ever met you. And if he was here now, he’d kick your ass. All of you.”
Howard laughed again. “You see, this why you’ll never walk in my shoes. Your naivety, your gullibility, your need for a happily-ever-after… quite frankly, Holden, it’s embarrassing. To think you could ever inherit a dynasty as powerful as Hart Industries is ludicrous. I know I’m constantly touting you as the heir to my fortune, but it’s just part of the performance, a narrative for the newspapers to print. In all reality there’s no way on earth my legacy will be yours. You have no ferocity. You have no fight. You don’t have a ruthless bone in your body, which is precisely what it takes to forge an empire. Hence you will forever remain in my shadow, as will your mother. You’ll smile for the ca meras, you’ll do as you’re told, and when I’m through with you, you will both quietly disappear from view. By then, the world won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“Enough talk,” said Herr Garbutt. He clicked his fingers, and Hammer promptly walked around the desk and stepped up to Mrs. Hart, towering over her. He took the hand holding the gun in his mighty, knuckle-bruised paw, and squeezed.
Mrs. Hart’s knees buckled in pain.
“Let her go!” Harry demanded, trying to pull Hammer off.
But with his other hand, the German gave Harry a backhanded slap so hard it knocked him to the ground.
“Harry!” Mrs. Hart dropped the gun and knelt beside her son to help him up.
That was when Hammer glanced down at the empty desk. “The drawers. They’re all empty.”
Howard and Herr Garbutt raced around behind the desk to stare down in horror at the open drawers.
Immediately, Howard grabbed his wife and yanked her to her feet, forcing a whimper out of her. “Where are the documents? Where’s everything? ”
Harry pulled himself up. “Let her go.”
But before he could wrestle his mother free of his father’s grip, Herr Hammer shoved Harry out of the way and pointed the gun at him. “ Now can I kill him? Let me kill them both.”
“No!” Howard shouted. “Take them to the car. We’re leaving now, before anyone can stop us. The Millennium Express is about to make an early departure.”
Before the Nazis dragged him out of the room, Harry slid a quick, discreet glance sideways at the bookcase, and for a split second—even though he couldn’t see me—Harry was looking straight at me.
And I wondered if I was ever going to see his handsome face again.
I sprinted down the tunnel, clutching the scrunched-up papers to my chest.
I reached the door that led out into the moonlit maze, then tried desperately to remember how to find my way out.
“Left, right, right,” I muttered, turning one way then the other. “No, left, left… no, right, left… fuck!”
I ran through the maze.
I took a left and came to a dead end.
I backtracked and turned right, then again, then left.
“Fuck!” Another dead end.
I turned around, perhaps too quickly, and staggered into the hedge on one side, snapping twigs and branches. The blow from the explosions earlier that evening, along with all the panic and fear and the desperate need to rescue Harry before it was too late, was obviously making my head spin and my feet unsteady.
I turned back, made a left and then another, then came to another dead end.
I saw broken twigs and branches in the hedge to my right, and realized I’d just gone around in a circle.
“Fuck!”
The curse was met with laughter.
Uneasily I realized it was the laughter of a child.
What the hell was a child doing in the maze in the dead of night?
I peered through the milky blue light of the moon, seeing nothing but hedges in every direction. “Who’s there?”
The laughter came again, this time clearer.
I knew that laugh.
From a passage to the left, a young boy suddenly appeared.
For a moment I stared in disbelief, wiping my eyes before whispering, “Harry? Is that you?”
“You’re lost, aren’t you?” the boy replied, still giggling. “Did you forget?”
“Forget what?”
“The way out.”
I nodded, staring at the boy, still rattled with shock. Was I hallucinating? Was I dreaming? Had the bomb blasts tilted my brain on its axis? I had no idea, but it was Harry alright. There was no mistaking that scruffy blond hair, those bright blue eyes, that smile that made you wanna follow him anywhere.
“It’s right, right, left, right, left. Come with me, I’ll show you.”
With that he vanished.
“Wait! Kid… Harry… wait!”
I raced to catch up with him, clutching the papers still, desperate not to lose any.
With every turn I caught a glimpse of him in the pale moonlight up ahead—the back of his head, an untucked shirt tail, the heel of his boot—before he vanished around another corner.
I followed…
Turned one last corner…
Then suddenly the boy was gone…
And before me stood the exit to the maze.
In the distance I heard car engines start up and the sound of tires peeling down the drive.
I knew Harry was in one of those cars.
I had to fight the urge to make a mad dash across the grounds and cut them off at the gates to the estate, but I knew I had to get the papers to safety first.
I also knew I had to rescue my Harry.
But exactly how I was going to do that, I had no idea.
Until I whispered to myself—
“I need a family meeting.”