McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [156]
“Berlin, I’d guess.” Sir Seaton kept Dolly at a steady pace.
“We’re going to Berlin?”
“Good Lord no, old boy. Our work’s done here. We’re going home. If I put on a little speed at the crossroads, we should be just in time to catch the dawn zeppelin for London.”
Without Sinclair’s knowledge, Begg had already stowed the luggage. There had been no hotel bill to settle. By dawn they reached the great Munich Aerodrome and were soon installed in a comfortable suite. Through the portholes came floods of intermittent sunshine caused by the movement of the ship in her cables. A radio bulletin playing on the State Radio took on a rather excited air, and as soon as he had disrobed, washed, and settled in his seat, Begg turned the volume up.
He listened in some amusement, but Sinclair was aghast at the news. He even failed to notice the almost effortless lifting of the huge liner as she uncoupled from her masts and began her journey to London.
There had effectively been a complete disintegration of the Nazis. Already the Reichstag party seemed divided into opposing camps headed by Strasser and Göring. Nazi officials were issuing contradictory statements since the arrest earlier that morning of Adolf Hitler, self-confessed murderer of the man he termed the “Jew Fifth Columnist Himmler,” hitherto his trusted aide and an ex–chicken farmer. Hitler understood that he could no longer hope to be vice-chancellor, but now it scarcely mattered, since he had in his own words “torn out the heart of the hydra sucking the life from Germany, keeping the nation safe against injustice and horror for a thousand years.”
“You effectively put the gun into Hitler’s hand and killed Himmler!” cried Sinclair. “Really, Begg, sometimes . . .”
“I told you, Taffy, that I did what I was supposed to do. Zodiac knew only too well that there are few better and more trustworthy messengers than you and me. So he sent us to Hitler with the evidence he had carefully manufactured over months. Those papers were enough to convince almost anyone and in a bad light they were even harder to detect. But they were forgeries, old man. Planted for someone to find. Just as those apparent sniper shots which always missed their targets were intended to distract attention from what was actually being accomplished. Zodiac had been looking for a good way to make the Nazi leadership fall out. When he knew we were on to him, he simply made us his cat’s-paws. Pretty audacious, eh.”
“But Zodiac killed that poor creature, Fräulein Raubal,” insisted Taffy.
“Not at all, Taffy, though you could argue Hitler effectively drove her to her death. She killed herself, as everyone insisted. She tested the poison first. You smelled that distinctive odor as readily as I did.”
“Cyanide!”
“Exactly. The smell of cyanide, if taken by mouth, lingers on the lips long after the taker has gone to the hereafter. That dead canary the young lady carried around all day. She had already tried the stuff on the bird and saw that it worked. She took a pretty heavy dosage, I’d say. The police remained deceived by the gunshot. The way she lay on the floor made it seem to others that she had died in the throes of passion. But I believe she died in the throes of death.”
“But she was shot, Begg. Shot by Zodiac!”
“True.”
“So Zodiac is the real murderer. . . .”
“No.”
There was a knock at their door and Begg called, “Come in!” A busboy with a salver presented him with a card which he glanced at; then he smiled and tucked it into his upper waistcoat pocket. He offered the boy a silver coin. “Ask Countess von Bek to join us at her pleasure.” He beamed across at a bewildered Taffy.
“No?”
“No. Zodiac was, of course, Fräulein Raubal’s lover. He played the violin by night and courted her by