“Of course, I knew. At first, I wasn’t any happier about this than you. But I had my orders. Von Heissel is a mechanical genius, and he was ready to share his expertise with the War Department in exchange for protection… a new identity and a grub stake. We would have been fools to turn him down.”
“So, he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch? Is that it?”
“That’s the way the world works sometimes,” Vaughn said. “You might not like me very much, Dalton, but even you must realize that I follow orders whether I agree with them or not.”
Hurley turned his gaze back to Von Heissel. “Well, sir, I don’t take orders from anyone, anymore. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not in America right now, so whatever assurances you made him don’t count for diddly-squat.”
Von Heissel continued to meet the menacing stare, outwardly unperturbed. “Mr. Hurley, I would ask you to consider that you are on my ship. I have dozens of loyal crewmen aboard who have sworn to protect me and carry out my every wish. If I desired to do you harm, why would I have sent them to rescue you from that mob at Alamut? And why would I reveal myself to you now? Surely, you can see that I have no malign intent.”
Dodge saw the conflict twisting inside his friend. He felt Nora’s hand still gripping his arm, silently repeating her plea. He gave her a reassuring nod, then stepped forward, putting himself between Hurricane and Von Heissel. “Baron, would you excuse us please? I’d like to talk to my friend. And you, General.”
Von Heissel seemed pleased by this, though his expression did not change. “By all means. I have a great many matters to attend to.” With a nod to the rest of the room, the man that was both Walter Barron and Baron Von Heissel turned and headed through the exit doors.
Vaughn let out a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Dalton, I know what you’re going to say.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t think you do.” He led them to a corner of the hall, well out of earshot of the rest of the group. “Listen, there’s something more going on here. Barron… Von Heissel… whatever he wants to call himself… is using us. Doc Newcombe told me as much; he told me that Barron is just using his relationship with the War Department to fund his research. I don’t think he has any intention of giving you a working death ray.”
Vaughn’s eyebrows drew together. “Whether he wants to or not, we’re going to get it, by God.”
Dodge shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple. There’s more going on here than we realize.”
Hurricane was still breathing heavily, struggling to keep his anger in check. “Of course there is. Von Heissel’s a snake, and he’s just waiting for his chance to strike.”
“I agree, but we don’t know what his plan is.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll kill him, and that will be the end of that.”
There wasn’t a trace of hyperbole in Hurricane’s declaration, and Dodge knew the big man was both capable and ready to make good on this threat. But he also knew that such precipitous action would spell doom for all of them. Von Heissel’s statement about his loyal crewmen had been a none-too-subtle reminder that they were already under his thumb.
Dodge turned to Vaughn. “General, you know more about this device than any of us… save maybe Doc Newcombe. How would it be used? I mean, as a weapon.”
Vaughn spread his hands. “Deployed from an airship like this. You pull up over a target, turn it on, and everything below turns to dust.”
“And if you were the one under attack, how would you defend against it?”
“Simple. I’d either shred the airship with anti-aircraft guns, or send a squadron of fighter planes to knock this gasbag out of the sky.”
Dodge nodded. “So, as a weapon, it’s not really that useful, is it?”
Vaughn opened his mouth, then closed it again as Dodge’s comment sank in.
“It has to be something like an airship,” Dodge said, “because it takes a few seconds for the device to do what it’s supposed to do. You have to be stationary over the target, and close to it too, maybe only a few hundred feet above it. If you put the wave generator on a bomber, flying over a couple thousand feet in the air at close to two hundred knots, it wouldn’t even give the people on the ground a headache.”
Vaughn mulled this over. Dodge could see that, in his eagerness to deliver a spectacular new weapon to the War Department, the former officer hadn’t considered such practical matters.
Dodge pressed his point. “And even if you somehow managed to get the airship in place, say for some kind of sneak attack, you’d maybe get to destroy one target before the enemy retaliated.”
“Majestic is armed,” Vaughn replied, but without much conviction. “Gun turrets and a squadron of fighters.”
“I saw those Sparrowhawks in the hangar,” Hurley said, considerably calmer than he had been a few seconds earlier. “Those’d last all of about a minute against modern fighter planes.”
“Von Heissel’s up to something. I think you know that, General. We need to figure out what his plan really is, and for now, that means going along with it. Helping him find what he’s looking for.”
Hurricane looked aghast. “Help him? Help him build a weapon that can destroy a city?”
“I don’t think that’s his plan. I’m sure whatever it is, it’s going to be much worse than that.” Dodge managed a wan smile. “But all of this hinges on the belief that an ancient travelogue, based on an even older legend, will lead us to a source of some mythical metal that will enable Von Heissel to actually make his machine work. I’d say the odds of that happening are pretty long.”
The earned a chuckle from the big man. “Well, I’ve seen crazier things happen. But you should know, I’m not one for play acting.”
“I think if you made all nice with Von Heissel, he’d be suspicious. All I’m saying is, try not to kill him, okay?” Dodge waited for Hurricane to nod his assent before adding: “Not yet, anyway.”
As he entered Majestic’s library, Dodge could not help but feel he was stepping into the lion’s den. Even as he had passed the message to a steward, requesting a private audience with Von Heissel, he had been acutely aware of the potential danger of such a meeting.
He didn’t yet know whether to count Von Heissel as an enemy, and although his instincts — and perhaps more importantly, Hurricane’s immovable position on the matter — told him that the Prussian noble was every bit the villain he had been two decades before, he had to know for sure. The question was, how could he probe that issue without goading the man into precipitous action?
Von Heissel stood calmly, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out the small porthole into the sky beyond. He turned at the sound of the door closing behind Dodge and inclined his head.
“Barron Von Heissel,” Dodge began. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Please. In the eyes of the United States government, I am Walter Barron. I have a new name and a new life. Von Heissel is an artifact of the past.”
Dodge thought it interesting the man had chosen a surname so very close to his title; that didn’t seem like the action of a man eager to put his past away. “Very well, Mr. Barron, then. First, I wanted to thank you for orchestrating our rescue from Alamut.”
“Think nothing of it. In a sense, I was merely helping you and Mr. Hurley rescue my own crewmen who were unarmed and likely would have perished in the attack. I should be the one thanking you.”
Dodge nodded politely. “My airplane is presently tied up at the dock in Bandar-e Pahlavi, on the Caspian coast. I was hoping that you could see your way clear to drop us off there.”
“And by ‘us,’ you mean yourself and Mr. Hurley?”