Forgotten Cross

FORGOTTEN CROSS

By Morris Thyme

MARTIAN PUBLISHING

Copyright 2012 by Martian Publishing Company

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

No portion of this volume may

be reproduced in any format

without the express written

permission of the copyright holder.

This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to persons or

organizations, living or extinct,

is entirely coincidental.

1945

CHAPTER ONE

He looked in the mirror to check his suit: double-breasted, wide lapels, dark gray with pin stripes in a lighter gray. It would appear to be a top-of-the-line tailored suit from one of those plush Savile Row houses – actually it was a knock-off from a sweat shop in Prague.

The matching hat, which he donned and took a couple of minutes to adjust to just the right angle, completed the picture of respectability. He considered the new him in the mirror, but thought to get a woman’s opinion.

Mary? What do you think? The heavily practiced English rolled easily off his tongue. No response. He turned from the mirror to the woman sitting across the small room. A suite the desk clerk had called it. Mary!

She abruptly turned to him. Yes?

He walked across the room, chiding her with a wagging finger. You must get used to your new name. Stop your wool-gathering and pay attention.

Yes, Hein-… John. She took a deep breath. It is very hard, and I am so nervous, but I will try and remember.

He was disappointed to notice her English still showed traces of accent, unlike his perfect Manchestrian dialect. Please see that you do! The training has been quite long enough that you should be better prepared. Your very life – our very lives – depend on your remembering every facet of your new identity. Our mission is of the utmost importance. You know this!

She sighed. Yes, I do. She bowed her head and fidgeted with the handkerchief in her lap. I will try harder to remain focused and do my duty.

Very good. See to it! He went back to the mirror and continued admiring his reflection, adjusting the tie, tilting the hat a bit more. He was watching her in the mirror between adjustments. He wondered where they had ever come up with this one. And sourly wondered why he had been saddled with her rather than someone more efficient. She was certainly attractive enough. He had enjoyed thinking about their time alone together later. She was the type who could be quite a performer in the sack. But until then she was a constant bother. She needed such constant reminding! Our training must not fail us, Mary. The purpose we undertake demands perfection as well as sacrifice on our parts.

Satisfied at his image, thinking his impoverished upbringing in the streets of Frankfurt and the years in the army had never shown him this dashing, this refined. He went to the small table beside the door and sorted through a small pile of papers there. Selecting a few items, he slid them into his inside breast pocket.

Here we go, now. I am taking the passports and tickets, and you, he slipped the remaining items into her purse, will carry the money and the other documents. He closed the purse and held it out to her. We had best be going now.

She rose and took her light coat off the bed. Nearing, she took the purse from his outstretched hand and draped the coat over her arm.

Remember! We are John and Mary Breckinridge of Manchester, England, returning from a business trip to Paris. Shall we, Mrs. Breckinridge? He extended an elbow for her to take. Holding her steady, they descended to the lobby and out of the hotel. The traffic was light on the street and there were only a few military vehicles, he noted. The war was far to the east now and France was returning to normal. And the port of Le Havre flexed its commercial muscles once more.

Shall you require a car, monsieur? the doorman asked.

She tightened her grip on his arm. He looked at her enquiringly.

It is not a great distance, John, and the weather is horribly nice. Can we walk? I think it would calm my nerves.

He patted her hand and thought, her English is quite passable when she concentrates. He turned to the doorman. No, thank you. My wife would prefer to walk.

As you wish, monsieur. He bowed slightly.

Still patting her hand lightly, he guided her down the sidewalk. The pier was less than a quarter mile and they had sent their bags on ahead earlier in the morning. And she was right: it was a perfectly glorious morning. The walk would do both of them some good. For her, it would calm her nerves. For him, a chance to perfect his characterization of the successful English businessman abroad. He walked erect, confident, nodding pleasantly to passers-by, touching the brim of his hat to women as they walked past.

As they walked, he noticed Mary became more agitated with each passing person they encountered. Finally, she seemed to lose control and pulled him into an alleyway.

He released her hand and looked quickly both directions down the alley. Then turned back to her and hissed quietly in a menacing tone. What is the matter with you? We’ve been through this over and over. Are you getting cold feet?

No, she shuddered, I just need a few moments to pull myself together. I’m so tense!

He shook his head in disgust and wondered which imbecile had chosen her for this mission. Perhaps they had mixed up the psychological profiles, but this woman was not going to be able to pull this off as she was far too flighty. Pull yourself together, he spoke with disgust. Maybe you need to take a powder.

Yes, she seemed relieved, that might help. She opened her purse, and began poking around in it. She turned away from him.

He turned to look the short distance back toward the street. They would have to get going soon. They did not have that much time to waste. He looked at his watch, then back at her. Come on, Mary, we cannot delay too long. They won’t hold the boat for us, you know.

There’s plenty of time, she seemed quite calm now. She turned to face him and he noticed a gun was in her hand, with a silencer.

What is…? The sudden pain in his chest stopped the question in his throat. He pressed a hand to the pain and looked down. A red stain grew larger as he watched. He thought it was going to ruin his immaculate suit. He looked back at her face and wondered briefly at the cold look in her eyes. Where was the neurotic woman he had been speaking with only a moment before? And then he thought nothing more.

It took her only a moment to retrieve the passport and ticket for Mary Breckinridge from his pocket, drag and lean a nearby wooden pallet over the corpse and leave the gory scene behind her.

Once on the street, she walked at a moderate pace. Nothing too slow or too fast, nothing to draw attention. Nervously, she reviewed the plan, hoping she had everything properly dealt with. She had made sure he signed-in at the hotel in only his name – as pompous an ass as he was, that part was simple. Her nervousness had exempted her from being introduced to anyone as Mrs. Breckinridge. And she doubted he had admitted the fact to anyone as he was far too impressed with himself as Mr. Breckinridge to sully his image with a foolishly pathetic wife. She had written out the luggage tags this morning in his name alone. If anyone remembered him being with a woman, surely no one would be able to recognize her.

In another alley closer to the pier, she shredded the passport for the Breckinridge persona into tiny pieces and distributed the fragments among several trash bins. She then continued along the length of the cramped passage until it let out on a street near the pier.

She looked at her watch. There was plenty of time before she sailed. So she strolled past the area of the docks to stop at a small café in the direction away from the hotel, and the body. There was plenty of time for a light breakfast.

She nibbled on a flaky croissant saturated with butter as a loud horn sounded. That would be he ship to Southampton, she thought, carrying their luggage out to sea. Her left hand pressed gently on her abdomen. She did not have the urge yet, but soon she would have to start eating for two, as the Americans said.

Reaching deep into her purse again, she loosened the false bottom and retrieved the most valuable document hidden there. She smiled as she pulled out a passport she was ordered to destroy days ago.

The gun would have to be tossed overboard somewhere across the Atlantic, but this valuable deed to her new life would be kept safe. It was all that separated her past from her future.

The artisans at the ministry had created three sets of documents for the couple: the Breckinridges of Manchester, the Galloways of Ottawa, and the Wilsons of America.

When word arrived at the safe house in Paris last week that the situation most advantageous would be afforded the Breckinridge identity, she had been instructed to destroy the other papers. She had burned all but this one, with which she caressed her cheek, lovingly.

As Mary Breckinridge, she would have sailed to England. Now, as Mary Wilson, of Newark, New Jersey, she would sail to America and await her husband’s return from the front. It would be a long wait indeed. A wait long enough to ensure that her child grew up in a free country.

She sipped her coffee and caressed her stomach.

A smile came slowly as she thought of the time the two of them would have.

~~~~

2003

CHAPTER TWO

Frank Mayhew dabbed at his closed eyes. Too many tragedies, one too soon following on the heels of another. Opening them again, he saw the same ugly scene. The casket was sitting above the grave so recently carved out of the frozen ground.

He did not turn to see the priest but he knew he was spouting some litany or other. The words were indistinct, as if muttered with a mouthful of communion wafers. The small puffs of clouds emanating from his mouth showed he continued to drone on, but Frank's eyes remained on the metallic box before him. He had entirely cut off the audio portion of the show some time before.

A lot the priest should know of loss, thought Frank, he did not have children. A condition, he realized with a sudden wave of bitterness, that was almost his own, now. Too many tragedies, one too soon following on the heels of another.

He screamed silently at the unseen master of this ceremony: children should not die before their parents! There could be no pain greater to endure. Nothing to make you feel so damned worthless, empty, and useless. Bringing children into the world to have them ripped out before your eyes… ripped out like your eyes…

And they had once had three wonderful children.

Sharon was a beauty. Smart, kind, funny, and a crusader – Sophia Loren, Mother Theresa, rolled into one. Too busy with her causes to ever think of being something as mundane as a cheerleader.

Ben was a son he could be proud of. Taller than himself and broad shouldered like his father, many had remarked how much they looked alike, which usually made both of them proud – he still had that heavy set frame, even though most of the heavy had set-tled elsewhere. Ben had been the athletic one, who shared his interest in watching football.

Frankie was the quiet one, bookish, reclusive; hating anything to do with sports and physical activities like fishing and hiking. He would always be the one who wanted to remain back at camp – no wonder the family campouts had dwindled over the years. The indecisive one, the wishy-washy one. The one who – he remembered with a wave of embarrassment – had once asked if he was adopted, because he didn't seem to look like Ben at all.

Frankie, the one who he was left with.

God had an impossibly ironic twist of mind. Too many tragedies, one too soon following on the heels of another.

In 2001, his daughter had died in the Twin Towers in New York. His older boy would have died in the Pentagon the same day but for a raging fever which had kept him confined to bed that fateful morning; only to die in Afghanistan within the year in that never-ending war in the Middle East.

The double loss had been too much for his wife to bear. Laura had succumbed within six months, a curse on her lips as she died, railing at a President who had killed two of her own children by his ineptitude.

Two months later, prostate cancer had taken his father, an oncologist unable to stem the tide of lethal cells in his own body. Looking much like a priest betrayed by his deity, he was powerless to force his own beliefs on his rapidly declining reality.

And now his mother.

Too many tragedies, one too soon following on the heels of another.

Children should never die before their parents – that was a cardinal rule, almost. But parents eventually died as well, and before their own children. It was not an easy thing losing one's parent – extremely painful, indescribably painful – but nothing as devastating as losing a child. After burying two children, a wife, and a father, he was almost too numb to mourn his mother.

Almost, but not quite, because they had been very close all his life. When he was young, as he grew, even in times of discord with his wife, his mother was always there for him, as he had been for her. They were each other's support probably because he was her only child, as she had been his only mother.

Eyes clouding, vision blurring from a recurrence of the waves of grief, Frank looked down into the hole. The hole. What a crisp, concise concept. And what a marvelously clean, wonderfully symmetrical cold metal box it was that held the once vibrant, warm, expansive person