“Captain Zabriski?”
Follow Me Home had still had at least one of her big bombs onboard; the shock wave of its detonation had plucked at his parachute two miles away as the huge bomber had ceased to exist as it, and its trapped crewmen had come to earth. A few seconds later he had been in the water and it had been getting dark. He had not been picked up until around midnight; at that time the southern horizon was still lit by the fires of Valletta and the dazzlingly bright searchlights of the British patrol boats quartered the sea. It had been the weaker beam of the lamp of an ancient chugging Maltese fishing boat which had found him drifting helplessly in the fierce current of the Comino Strait between the main island of Malta and smaller Gozo to the north. At first the fishermen had thought he was an RAF flyer; Nathan had been convinced they would throw him back into the sea when they realized their mistake…
“Captain Zabriski?”
Nathan blinked; reality returned with all the subtle nuances of an unexpected punch in the solar plexus. The guilt and self-loathing rose like some unimaginably foul bile in his throat.
“It is time, Captain Zabriski.”
“Yes,” he grunted.
Edna Zabriski attempted to throw herself at her son in a whimpering flood of tears. Nathan stood tall, unemotional as his mother clung to him and sobbed loudly on his freshly pressed brand new uniform. After about a minute he stiffly held her at arms’ length.
“I thought you were dead!” The woman blurted. “The British killed you and the President was going to do nothing about it!”
Nathan had looked to Walter Brenckmann. The other man had stood aside, mutely witnessed the one-sided ‘reunion’. He nodded for the prisoner’s son to reply.
“The British saved my life, treated me well and put me on a plane back stateside at the earliest possible date, Ma.” He spread his arms. “Here I am.” He flicked his gaze to Walter. “Lieutenant-Commander Brenckmann kept his side of the deal. Now you’re going to answer all his questions or you will never see me again.”
This latter would be just fine by Nathan.
He took a seat beside Walter Brenckmann, Edna Zabriski took her place on the other side of the table, snivelling and periodically breaking down as her odd — there was no other word that did it justice — slowly story began to take shape.
She had been living in the city where she had been brought up, St Louis on the night of the war and only learned several weeks later that her estranged husband had been in Seattle. She had believed he would come back to her once his ‘fling’ with ‘that whore’ he ‘met working for Boeing’ was over. It seemed she had had some kind of breakdown in the early spring and been taken in by people from her local congregation. She was a devout Episcopalian, prone to periods of strident righteousness. She had fallen out with her ‘church friends’ and apparently come under the spell of a more fundamentalist, born again community that followed the teachings of a peripatetic firebrand preacher who had ‘communions’ in a dozen cities in the Mid-West, Kentucky and West Virginia.
The man Edna Zabriski described sounded like a cross between Rasputin, Wyatt Earp and a gun-toting snake oil salesman. It seemed he roamed the country evangelising the angry and the lonely, the gullible and lost souls who just want to believe in something. His text was vengeance, his appeal charismatic, talismanic, and to a third party who had never encountered him intensely nihilistic. The evils of the World would never be washed clean unless the blood of the guilty had been spilled, basically. Vengeance is mine. The trouble was that when Edna Zabriski spoke of ‘the Preacher’ there was awe in her voice and the light of righteousness in her eyes; suddenly the dowdy middle-aged woman in custody awaiting an appointment with the electric chair was instantly ten years younger, alive, filled with hope, half-way to redemption and atonement.
It seemed that the Preacher took ‘the chosen’ to his bed — well, the women leastways, especially if they were comely or willing virgins — and anointed and blessed only those he deemed fit to do the Lord’s work beside him.
Yes, Edna Zabriski had been one of the ‘lucky ones’.
The Preacher had known her carnally and he had given her ‘grace’ to ‘avenge the fallen’.
“Did this man force himself upon you, Edna?” Walter Brenckmann had asked.
“Oh, no!”
Walter had tried very hard to resist the temptation to constantly scratch his head in astonishment.
“It was the week before I took the train to Washington,” Edna Zabriski continued. Once she had started talking there was no stopping her. “The brothers and sisters already knew I had people in Washington,” she explained, “and they said they had friends who would vouch for me if I put in for a government job on Capitol Hill. He visited me that one time in September after I got the job at the White House. He promised that in the next world He and I will be married, together for all time. He took me to a hotel down town and while we lay together he told me what work the Lord had in mind for me.”
“And what work did the Lord have in mind for you, Edna?”
“To kill the Slayer of Nations, of course!” The woman retorted, giving Walter Brenckmann and theatrically schoolmistressy look before turning a more benign, forbearing scrutiny onto her stone-faced son. “I thought it would be easier than it was,” she added, distracted by a moment of doubt. “The President seemed like such a nice man when I actually met him. A real gentleman. He always said such polite things about the coffee I brought him. But I knew all along that he was the Devil’s servant.”
“How did you know that, Edna?” Walter inquired. The whole thing was like a bad dream populated with people so insane they would look out of place in Alice in Wonderland.
“He bears Lucifer’s mark on his forehead.”
Nathan Zabriski and the young naval officer exchanged incredulous looks.
“The mark of Cain!” Edna Zabriski insisted, disappointed that her son and her inquisitor could be so blind. “Our Lord said that there are none so blind as they who will not see!”
The two men viewed her thoughtfully, not knowing what if anything there was left to be said. Neither were trained interrogators and Walter Brenckmann was a little surprised that the professionals sitting behind the two-way mirrors had not yet stepped in.
Edna Zabriski was reciting something under her breath.
“I’m sorry, Edna,” he interrupted, “but I didn’t quite catch that?”
The woman looked up, met his stare.
“Ezekiel 25 verse 17,” she explained, no longer the meek, beaten down captive he had encountered earlier that day. “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them!”
Walter knew he was so far out of his depth he was drowning.
“Okay…”
“Galen taught me to recite Ezekiel 25 verse 17 when Lucifer’s claws reach out for me and my faith falters. I weakened that day in the White House. I had doubt. In that crowd in the Oval office I couldn’t say the words out aloud. I had to say them silently and by the time I finished the verse somebody had moved between me and the President. It must have been God’s will that another died in place of the Slayer of Nations’ that day.”
Galen!
“Who is Galen, Ma?” Nathan Zabriski asked, breaking his silence.
“The Preacher,” Edna Zabriski said as if she believed her son was hard of understanding. “My Preacher’s name is Galen Cheney.”