About the Author:
James Thayer is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels. Clive Cussler has called him a “master story-teller,” and his novels are “highly original and absolutely riveting” (Irish Independent), “heart-thumping” (Boston Globe), and “electrifying.” Detroit Free Press. The New York Times Book Review has said that his “writing is smooth and clear…. It wastes no words, and it has a rhythm that only confident stylists achieve.” He is also the author of The Essential Guide for Writing a Novel, a leading manual for novelists.
Thayer is a graduate of Washington State University and the University of Chicago Law School. He teaches novel writing at the University of Washington extension school where he has received the Excellence in Teaching Award in the Arts, Writing and Humanities. He is a member of the Washington State Bar Association and the International Thriller Writers. Thayer and his family live in Seattle. His web site is JamesThayer.com.
The Hess Cross
(Excerpt)
1
A HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE TOMATO PATCHES, oat fields, and dairy barns of southwest Scotland, a German Messerschmitt 110 streaked toward Glasgow. The howl of its dual engines pierced the green Scottish countryside as they pushed the plane 300 miles an hour.
The pursuit-fighter had departed from Augsburg, near Munich, at 6: 00 P.M. and had flown in an unwavering course across the channel. At the English coast the plane had descended from 15,000 feet and begun hedge-hopping to avoid detection by English spotters. A British Spitfire would have made an easy kill of the Me 110, because the Me’s three fuselage cannons and four wing machine guns would never be fired. The three-man fighter carried only a pilot. This was the plane’s first and last flight.
The Luftwaffe serial card in the flight purse identified the pilot as Hauptmann Alfred Horn. Unlike most fighter pilots, Horn was a big man, and his broad, beefy shoulders strained sorely against the side panels of the cockpit. A minor irritation during the first hour of the flight, this discomfort had evolved into a pain that began between his shoulderblades and seared down both arms. But this was the only blemish in a journey that had thus far been flawless.
German coastal weather stations had promised excellent flying conditions over England. Broken clouds at 10,000 feet forecast for the English coast had not materialized, which made flying by landmarks even easier than the Hauptmann had hoped. The packet of maps of England and Scotland in the leather compartment by his knee was unopened. For weeks before the flight he had studied maps and pictures of British towns. Shapes of steeples and town halls had been committed to memory. Now a glance at a distinctive building or lake or mountain would immediately confirm his location and course.
Flying the Messerschmitt was an intense physical experience. Horn’s senses were assaulted by the fighter. On each side of the cockpit was a Daimler-Benz twelve-cylinder 1,350-horsepower engine. Their combined effect was to produce a roar, an endless piercing bellow of such ferocity that only with concerted effort could Horn prevent the cacophony from overwhelming him.
Air in the cockpit was thick with oil and exhaust. During his first flight in an Me 110 five months ago, Horn had prematurely landed the plane and vaulted from the cockpit almost before it rolled to a stop on the runway. He ran toward the hangar, frantically waving for the fire team. With sirens screaming, the fire trucks dashed to the fighter, but found it warm, ready to run, and distinctly not on fire. Horn asked the amused ground-crew sergeant why the Me 110, the crux of the Luftwaffe fighter force and the scourge of Poland, was devoid of such refinements as padded seats, breathable air, and a bearable decibel level. The sergeant explained that in 1938 Hermann Göring and his retinue visited Augsburg for a tour personally conducted by Professor Willi Messerschmitt. Göring was delighted by the Me 110 and posed for photographers while sitting in the pilot’s seat of a plane that had just rolled off the production line. As he climbed out of the cockpit, the obese Reich Marshal became wedged in the hatch. Although this embarrassing incident lasted only a minute, the flushed Göring and the frantic Willi Messerschmitt pulled and grunted at each other just long enough for scores of photographs to be taken. Göring’s aides immediately rounded up most of the photos for reasons of state security, but Himmler was rumored to have two or three. Funds for the comfort of Me 110 pilots became one of Göring’s lower priorities. This incident, the sergeant added, was not mentioned above the rank of lieutenant to that day.
So now Hauptmann Horn was paying for the Fat One’s fat. The engines’ howl, the acrid cockpit air, and the increasingly sharp shoulder and back pain began to dominate and muddy his thoughts. Scottish countryside, so breathtaking from 15,000 feet, swept past at a mesmerizing pace as the Messerschmitt screamed toward Glasgow a few hundred feet above the ground.
Dusk made hedge-hopping even more dangerous. Horn peered intently through the windshield, trying not to lose the land’s contour. At this elevation the altimeter was useless. He suppressed the urge to yank back the stick and climb to a safer altitude. Treetops and hills flew at him in an unending, numbing stream.
Dusk dimmed to darkness. Horn could now see only the land’s silhouette against the deep purple sky. Fewer landmarks were recognizable. His eyes flashed to the instrument panel. The directional gyro and magnetic compass, glowing in muted green light, showed his flight to be on course, directly northwest. All other instruments checked out. He smiled grimly as he saw the fuel gauge registering eighth capacity. This, it said, was a one-way flight. Years would pass before he would again see his lovely Ilse and their four-year-old son, Wolf.
In the weeks before his flight, Horn had bid a silent good-bye to his family. Wolf would be much older when his father returned and Horn worried that his son’s memories would not survive the absence. The boy was young. Memories didn’t last. And so during April and early May, Horn had left home late and returned early each day to be with him. They walked for hours in the zoo at Hellabrunn and along the Isar River. Evenings were spent playing games in the study of their home at Harlaching. At Horn’s request, his wife used rolls and rolls of film capturing father and son together.
Horn sadly remembered his wife’s many questions during this time. Why during the war should he come home early? Why the new radio transmitter-receiver in the workroom, contrary to war regulations? And why the long hours reading in the study at night, door bolted from the inside? Not telling his beloved Ilse about the plans had pained Horn. But a few hours from now she would know. The entire world would know. And they would not believe.
Horn looked up from the panel and instantly knew he was in peril. There was no purple sky, only blackness. Gott in Himmel. The ground. He jerked back on the stick and slammed the throttle to full. The Daimler-Benz engines erupted with sound and Horn was thrust back into the metal seat as the Messerschmitt shot upward. For three timeless seconds the fighter screamed into the blackness. And then the curved, dark indigo line of the horizon dropped into view and rushed under the plane. The Me 110 skimmed over the crest of a large hill.