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.”