He nearly screamed out when he felt it. On his shoulder. Next he heard the familiar voice whispering in his ear in a calm, reassuring voice.
“It’s okay, Sean. We can do this,” Michelle said.
He turned to find her kneeling over him, a look on her face that told him everything he needed to know. He squeezed her arm in return and nodded. What a fool he’d been to even consider for a second that she was not up to this. Hell, she was more up to it than he was. His panic and paralysis gone, Sean drew a deep breath and then moved forward quickly with Michelle right behind. They were now directly in front of the fence. While Michelle kept watch Sean cut out a small section of the chain link. They slipped through this opening with their gear, Sean leaned the cut section of fence back into place and they plunged into the forest.
A minute later they knelt down and Sean pulled out the document that Heinrich Fuchs had given Monk Turing. The paper was now full of new writing and calculations that Sean and Michelle had worked out. They had to chance a light as they peered at the map.
Fuchs had left no helpful marks on trees or an X on the ground to mark the entrance to his tunnel, not that those would have survived over the years anyway. Yet they didn’t have to rely on that because of Monk Turing. On the Fuchs document Monk had carefully noted directions, landmarks, compass points and, through his daughter, left one important clue as to their target. He also knew that Monk Turing had not braved death to cavalierly retrace the escape route of a German POW. Turing must’ve had another reason, a good one.
Following Turing’s directions they headed northwest and reached a small clearing completely surrounded by birch trees. This was it. Sean started marking off paces but Michelle stopped him.
“How tall was Turing?” she asked.
“Five-seven.”
“You’re seven inches taller,” she whispered. “Let me walk the paces.” She did, using shorter strides than she ordinarily would. Monk Turing must have had the most meticulous mind, Sean thought, because when Michelle stopped walking around trees, and through bushes and other forest clutter, he knew they’d found it. They were in a part of the woods that seemingly had had no human intervention for decades if not centuries; and yet if you knew what Sean knew, it had.
He knelt down and traced the letter with his hand. It had been done with a long vine of kudzu pulled from one of the trees and laid on the ground.
X didn’t mark the spot; the letter V did. V, Sean knew, for Viggie because Monk had written that on the document as well. The two of them dug their hands under what appeared to be the normal ground cover of deep forest. Yet their fingers finally found the edge of the weathered board and they pulled. A four-by-four square of wood rose up revealing the entrance to the tunnel.
They lowered themselves through the opening and then let go of the edges, dropping a few feet and landing on the tunnel’s dirt floor. Standing on Sean’s shoulders, Michelle reached back through the opening and replaced the cover over the entrance.
As she did so, Michelle saw a bit of rope encircling the support board that held up the tunnel’s cover.
“Monk must have put a rope here before he got into the tunnel,” she said, pointing it out to Sean. “He’d have to use it to climb back out. The hatch is too far off the ground.”
“I brought some rope too,” he said. “On the way out, I’ll hoist you up and you can tie the rope up there. Then I’ll use it to climb out.”
With the hatch replaced, they risked turning on their lights. As they moved forward the tunnel wall sloped downward, forcing the tall people to bend over as they walked. The walls were solid red clay, dry and firm. Every two feet or so there were decaying timbers set into the ceiling and also wedged against the walls.
“Doesn’t look like it would pass your basic mine safety inspection,” Michelle said a little anxiously. “You think he built this all by himself? I mean that’s a lot of work for one guy.”
“I think other prisoners helped him, but he was the only one to actually use it.”
“Why?”
“I think the other prisoners were released after the war in Europe ended, maybe about the time the tunnel was finished. But Fuchs wasn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Like Horatio I did a little history reading. If Heinrich Fuchs was a signal operator on his ship he would’ve had to be familiar with the Enigma code. Back then the Allies didn’t release any prisoner with knowledge of that code. They kept them to exploit that information and also to keep them from returning to Germany.”
“But Germany was beaten.”
“Right, but there were still pockets of die-hard Nazis and German high command officers spread all over the world. The last thing the Allies wanted to do was give them back code operators who could help the Nazis develop another communications network.”
“Which goes to show an appreciation of history can be very helpful in day-to-day living.”
“I’ve always thought so. Okay, let’s do it.”
CHAPTER
80
THE BOEING 767 had the strengthened engines and other enhanced capabilities required for long hauls over the ocean. The wide-body
jet banked left and reached the continental United States, passing over Norfolk, Virginia, and continuing the descent to its final destination. The 767 didn’t belong to any domestic or foreign commercial airline. It was not owned by any business or individual, nor was it operated by the United States military. Normally a jet without one of those ties, when passing into U.S. airspace above one of the most important military installations America possessed, would have prompted the scrambling of fighter jets from Norfolk and an uncomfortable intercept in the air. However, no sirens sounded and no Navy pilots raced for their planes because the jet had clearance from the highest command levels to fly to any point in the United States it wished. The 767 continued on, just as it had every Saturday at this time for at least the last two years. In less than thirty minutes the pilots would engage the landing gears after setting the wing flaps for the final descent onto a runway fully paid for by the American taxpayer, a long strip of concrete virtually no U.S. citizen would ever be allowed to set foot on.