The Reunion

By Curt Autry

"[An] intriguing tale of espionage, murder and suspense"—Publishers Weekly

Nine surviving members of a U-boat crew captured duringWorld War II gather in North Carolina for their 60th reunion, only to find themselves targets for a group kill.

Meanwhile, after scouring hospital records to find her biological parents, a 36-year-old unwed mother from Oklahoma stumbles upon an obscure family connection to the murders. Carolyn Baker unknowingly holds the clue that could solve the crime, explain her own past, and expose long-concealed secrets. As she thrusts herself into the FBI investigation, the killer's plan shifts....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9781615952977

Curt Autry

Curt Autry - news anchor, Emmy award-winning reporter, and best selling author – has been the weekday anchor for Richmond Virginia's WRLH, FOX News at Ten since its debut in 1994. His work can also be seen on the NBC affiliate in Richmond. Curt began his broadcasting career in Texas, and has made stops in Oklahoma City and Raleigh along the way. Curt's first novel "The Reunion,” is a historical thriller that has been praised across the country. For the community, Curt volunteers his time working with several charities and is a frequent speaker for local civic clubs and other organizations. Curt is married and has 3 children.

Book preview

The Reunion

The Reunion

Curt Autry

Poisoned Pen Press

Copyright © 2002 by Curt Autry.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001098495

ISBN: 1-59058-015-X Hardcover

ISBN: 1-59058-019-2 Trade Paperback

ISBN: 9781615952977 ePub

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Poisoned Pen Press

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Scottsdale, AZ 85251

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Dedication

To my grandmother,

whose love and homespun wisdom

can be found throughout this book.

Acknowledgments

To my editor and publisher, Barbara Peters, thank you for showing me the way—your guidance made this novel immeasurably better.

Two books were invaluable resources: The Codebreakers, by David Kahn, and Graveyard of the Atlantic, by David Stick.

My friends and unofficial reading committee at WWBT: Gene, Sabrina, Colleen and J.W.—your valuable time, suggestions and support were greatly appreciated.

And to my best friend and wife, Michelle—I love you.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Author’s Note

The Reunion is a work of fiction scattered with several truths. For a time, Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City did operate a home for unwed mothers. There really was a prisoner of war camp in Alva, Oklahoma, during the Second World War. And the crew of U-352 was captured off the coast of North Carolina on May 9th, 1942. Much of the narrative about the sinking is historically accurate. The submarine still sits in about one hundred feet of water at the exact coordinates described in this book, and is a popular spot for sport divers.

Curt Autry

March 1, 2002

Epigraph

The field is the world,

and the good seed stands for the heirs of the kingdom.

The weeds are the heirs of the evil one.

Matthew 13:38

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

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1

Arlington, Virginia

Walter Huber had become a shut-in. The old man hadn’t left his house in almost a year. It was a modest, wood-frame house Walter had scrimped to purchase for his new bride. It was the house where he first made love to his wife, where they raised their two boys, where neighbors gathered following Lila’s passing, and it was now the place where he would die.

His white hair was sparse on top and close-cropped around his ears, and his skin a waxy pallor reserved for nursing home patients and others who rarely ventured into sunshine. Age spots and crusty patches of melanoma freckled his forehead—cancers that would never get their chance. Walter always suspected that time or the pistol in the nightstand would claim him first. Men from the old country, like Walter, were not meant to outlive their women and children. His oldest boy, Gunter, had died in a rice paddy in Vietnam, God’s will, he told himself at the time. But it was his wife’s death two years earlier that left him in a hapless state from which he would never recover. The disease that claimed his beloved Lila was now slowly nibbling on Walter’s soul.

When the hospital offered no hope, Lila was sent home to die. He extended the two months the doctors gave her into eight with his constant doting. Unfortunately, his efforts were expensive, depleting nearly all of the funds from what should have been an ample retirement account. But the money didn’t matter. Her neediness made Walter feel alive and, unexpectedly, taught him to fall in love with her a second time.

Sometimes, late at night, when the sounds of her strained, raspy breath kept him awake, he’d stare at the bony frame beside him and see the young Lila with dark, restless eyes. He longed for that defiant little girl from Baltimore who married him anyway when her parents swore that nothing good would come from a marriage to a German national so soon after the war. But that apparition rarely lingered, and reality always set in with a sudden forceful shudder, followed by quiet tears. He wept for the warmth of her skin, her laughter and snuggles in the night.

Walter was hard of hearing. The TV blared. For four thousand dollars, which is a position in football and the name of a popular anti-perspirant? asked the game show host. Tight end, left flank, wide receiver… He didn’t wait for the fourth choice to scroll up. Right guard, he yelled out to no one as he struggled to keep his eyes focused on the screen.

The game shows usually signaled the peak of Walter’s cognitive function for the day, but tonight he didn’t make it to the end of the program. The eighty-six-year-old man was dozing long before the contestant moved on to the next round.

Walter wasn’t bored by tonight’s game—this had become his nightly ritual. Barbara, his daughter-in-law, had brought over dinner, a skinless chicken breast served with white rice and smothered in a mushroom soup gravy. It was a meal designed to help keep his cholesterol in check, but one with little appeal. It didn’t bother him; the old man couldn’t taste much anyway. He ate the food to avoid being scolded as he sat across from the only true companion he really cared about anymore, his twenty-seven-inch Sony.

His routine was quite predictable. He’d doze in his chair and wake when he heard the theme music for the eleven o’clock news on the CBS station in nearby Washington. He would listen to the weatherman give the forecast, start to doze again about the time the sportscaster came on, and then drag himself to bed just as David Letterman started his opening monologue.

***

The attic of the old house smelled like mothballs and Ben-Gay, a combination that was making Joey sick to his stomach. He intensely hated old people.

He had been crouching under an attic beam for the better part of an hour. Even though he was young and in good shape, his legs were beginning to cramp. As he started to rise, the shrill of a police siren in the distance instinctively dropped him back into a crouch.

After the initial scare, he became angry with himself for acting so stupidly. He knew the police weren’t coming for him; after all, there was plenty of crime in this old neighborhood. Arlington, Virginia, wasn’t exactly the suburbs anymore. Dope dealers and thieves could cross the bridge from the District of Columbia like anyone else, and often did.

The fat daughter-in-law would return soon. Joey knew the schedule well. With the quiz show playing at a deafening level, any noise emanating from the staircase would go unnoticed. Still, he didn’t take any chances. Joey descended the stairs quickly, fearing the porch light and the long, narrow windows on either side of the front door that would allow him to be seen from the street.

The hardwood floors creaked under Joey’s weight as he cautiously made his way to the kitchen. He could see the old man’s profile through the shutter doors separating the kitchen and the family room. His head was cocked to one side, his mouth gaped open in a loud snore. The old fool probably couldn’t even remember what he had for lunch let alone something that happened sixty years ago.

Joey didn’t mind the killing, but engaging this old man in conversation was a prospect he dreaded. He pulled the 9mm semi-automatic pistol from the waist of his jeans and began screwing the silencer into the barrel of the gun. This would be the third hit in as many months. He was becoming good at killing. The task that first made him sick to his stomach was now becoming a rush; the adrenaline flow kept his head swimming for hours afterward. There was a bulge in the front of his jeans as he crept along the stairwell. Murder had become a high no woman could provide.

Ironically, the intruder felt some pity for this old man, not because he was about to die, but for the shabby way he lived all alone in this small, dusty house. The furniture was worn and the carpet and curtains long out of date. It was a dismal place where someone obviously came in to pick up but never really cleaned.

As Joey passed through the swinging shutter doors and stepped down into the small family room, he noticed Walter stir, but it was the feel of the cold steel at his temple that brought the old man out of his slumber.

There was just a flash of terror in Walter’s eyes. He had no real fear of death. Walter embraced the thought of rejoining Lila and ending his pain. The old man had faced death several times before, but on this occasion he had no gumption to fight. Walter sat silently, almost in a trance-like state, staring at the glow from the television. He carefully listened as Regis recited the sixteen-thousand-dollar question, purposely never acknowledging the intruder.

There was no talk. Joey opened his mouth to bark out the first in a series of questions and suddenly thought better of it. None of the others had anything of consequence to say, and this one wouldn’t either. Besides, his superior would never know. He teasingly rolled the barrel of the gun across the old man’s forehead.

Do you believe in the hereafter, old man?

Walter’s hands were folded in his lap. Yes I do.

Joey smirked. Is that your final answer?

When Walter didn’t respond, Joey squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet through Walter’s brain and into the La-Z-Boy recliner. His head snapped back sharply from the impact and then slumped forward. Blood showered from both the entry and exit wounds before steadily flowing down his torso to a pool in his lap.

Joey tingled with exhilaration. Little Joey—the kid his dad always called the runt of the litter—was a bona fide killer. His next stop at the ATM would reflect the accomplishment with another seventy-five-hundred-dollar deposit, a wire from Fleet National Bank of Providence.

Joey frowned as he looked at his watch. He was behind schedule. His backpack was still in the attic. He’d retrieve it, put on his sweats and running shoes, and leisurely jog the three miles to the shopping center where he’d left the Jeep. Just another junior executive on an evening run, he’d leave the neighborhood unnoticed. With luck, and no major traffic, Joey could still make the North Carolina line by midnight.

2

Beaufort, North Carolina

Rolf Werner stood in silence with head down and hands folded as the Coast Guard cutter gently pitched on a wrinkled sheet of blue. From the bow, a chaplain in dress whites eased down a ladder to a steel platform just inches from the wind-chopped water line and tossed a large wreath into the water.

We commit our brothers to the deep, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return. But the Lord Jesus Christ will change our mortal bodies to be like his in glory. We return these souls to the sea. Watching the greenery slip below the whitecaps, the coordinates flashed through Rolf’s mind. 34.21 North, 76.35 West. He smiled. How odd, he thought, that his brain had somehow managed to store those numbers, the exact coordinates he hurriedly punched out in a coded distress call exactly sixty years ago today.

At first, Rolf had no intention of attending this memorial and reunion. North Carolina was a long way from Bonn, Germany, for an eighty-three-year-old man to travel, and his career in the Kreigsmarine had been less than stellar. In two tours of duty, U-352 had only one sinking to its credit. Worse yet, the ship had the dishonor of being the first sub crew captured by the Americans in the Second World War—and by the Coast Guard, no less. These two historical facts were still a source of humiliation to him, when he allowed himself to think about it. But none of that mattered anymore.

An inner calm overtook him like a drug being pumped into his veins. As his eyes wandered around the circle, the tired, hollow shells of men that surrounded him transformed into boys again. He could see all eight of them, just as they were, and call each by name. This was the end of a long journey, a warm place in his soul that would give him comfort until his final day.

***

Up on the bridge, Marvin Bailey cursed the wind as he attempted to light his pipe. He was a mammoth black man, at least six feet four and two hundred fifty pounds with a scraggly white beard and wire-frame glasses designed for function and not appearance. At first glance he was intimidating, yet Marvin had a kind demeanor and was quick to smile.

The once-menacing class VII-C attack submarine was now a mangled mass of corroded struts and beams lying on the ocean floor. All traces of the hand-carved teak finish inside the U-boat had been gone since 1960. In recent years, much of the outer hull had given way to the saltwater. Yet now, floating above the submarine he helped sink, Marvin Bailey questioned whether this reunion was worth the effort.

He studied the old men below as they stared out to sea. Their conversation waned, and a sense of sorrow seemed to sweep over them like a heavy fog. They wiped their eyes clear frequently from a mix of melancholy and the cool salt spray.

At one time they had been the Kreigsmarine’s finest, hand-picked by Admiral Donitz himself. Yet they had the misfortune of serving under the command of one of the youngest, most inept submarine commanders in the German Navy. Years later, at the German Naval academy, instructors would recount his missions as classic examples of what not to do.

Gregg locked his Panasonic digital camera onto the tripod. He held it tightly, using its bulk and weight to help him keep steady. Sally stood behind him, tightly gripping his shoulder as she tried to maintain her balance on the tossing ship.

I’m rolling, he said.

The reporter pushed her lips right to his ear to whisper a few instructions. Watch your audio levels. I know it’s all in German, but I want lots of natural sound.

Let’s bow our heads and pray, said the preacher.

Marvin was the lone holdout. He stayed at the wheel, watching the service from above. He felt like an intruder on his own ship. This is their moment, he told himself. He closed his eyes and said his own little prayer.

Sixty years had transformed the taut young sailors of 1942 into frail old men. Still, Marvin could close his eyes and see them just as they were. Their faces, indelibly etched in his mind, had haunted him for the better part of six decades.

When Marvin opened his eyes he noticed the camera pointed in his direction. His instinct was to turn away, but he didn’t. He had been told that it was his presence that most intrigued the NBC people. The announcer’s voice played over and over in his head. "Captives reunited with their former captor after sixty years! Join us tonight for a Dateline exclusive!"

Marvin knew that notoriety would be the price he would have to pay to exorcise the demons of his military career.

May 9th, 1942

They stood at attention in two single-file lines across the deck of the Icarus. At least five of the prisoners were bleeding, and another ten were dying or dead in the water. A lieutenant with a pocket translation book barked at them in a crude attempt at German. They understood enough to know to clasp their hands together over their heads. Periodically, their knees seemed to buckle under a combination of terror and the ocean swells.

The enemies Marvin had no qualms killing from the safe distance of his gunnery position now stood nose to nose with him, gripped with fear. Marvin avoided their eyes as he frisked them. They had been at sea a long time. He could feel their ribs; their skin quivered at his touch. All were pasty white with dark circles under their eyes.

He watched one boy, no older than sixteen, repeatedly become physically ill, his chest continuing to heave long after his stomach had emptied. Marvin could also smell the urine. Many of the boys had wet themselves, convinced they were about to be shot and thrown back into the sea. It was a kind of terror Marvin prayed he would never know.

3

The shirt read JAKE on the breast pocket. The disguise came from the locker he vandalized the night before. Joey had to smash seven lockers in the Havelock Plumbing Company before finding a pair of blue work pants with a size thirty-two waist. The plumbers at this company must have all been big, fat-ass guys, he surmised. Joey laughed at the thought of the obese workmen bending below a kitchen sink, exposing the crack of their lard butts to a bunch of giggling housewives.

Some guy named Jake seemed to be the only one in the bunch who kept in relatively good shape. Joey took Jake’s shirt, his matching blue work pants, his heavy work boots, his tool box, and even his May issue of Cheri magazine. Joey would become Jake, at least for a day.

He drove back and forth on Front Street at least six times, pensively chewing on his unlit cigar. The old and stately Beaufort Inn was three stories tall with two large columns in front and a weathered tin roof. A National Historic Registry plaque honoring the two-hundred-year-old structure hung beside the front door. The paint and trim appeared fresh. The property was obviously maintained with care, yet he was certain the salt air had taken its toll. It would go up like a stack of hay.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the rear view mirror and smiled. How y’all doin’ today? he said aloud, practicing his southern drawl. His New England accent was difficult to conceal. He tried again. How y’all doin’ today?

Satisfied, he ran a mental checklist and turned to make sure the toolbox and rolls of plastic were still in the bed of the truck. The blue Ford F-10 pickup had been stolen from a shopping mall just north of Richmond and the commercial license plates from a salvage yard a hundred miles further south in Rocky Mount. He bought a Carolina Panthers ball cap to look sufficiently blue-collar and to cover his thick, curly dark hair. He now had everything he needed to complete the job.

It was just after ten o’clock when he parked the stolen pickup in a metered spot on Front Street. The sun felt hot on his shoulders. He wasn’t used to this kind of heat so early in May. He plugged two quarters into the meter. No need to call undue attention to the truck. He grabbed the toolbox, slipped two of the three rolls of plastic under his left arm, and hit the sidewalk.

He casually strolled up the walkway, opened the ornate etched-glass door, and smiled at the two elderly women behind the desk.

Ladies, how y’all doin’ today? he asked, delivering the line like a native.

The portly, white-haired woman returned his grin. Fine, what brings you round today? she asked with a southern familiarity, as if she’d seen him before.

The other old woman couldn’t be bothered. She looked up from her paperwork and nodded in his general direction. I don’t think we called anybody today, she said.

He shook his head. You didn’t, ma’am. The county has us out checkin’ all the gas lines on every building on Front Street, he replied. He casually reached into his pocket, pulling out a copper tubing connector he had picked up that morning at the hardware store. If you have any of these copper connectors, I’ll replace them with a PVC one—no charge. He pulled off his sunglasses and squinted. I don’t know what’s wrong with copper. It’s been just fine for the past two hundred years, but y’all know the county, he said, shaking his head.

He touched a nerve. The stern-faced woman nodded in agreement as if recalling her own squabbles with Carteret County officials over the years.

The heavier woman gave him another one of her big toothy smiles. Sounds like a fair deal to me. You need anything, Jake?

The name caught him off guard, but just for an instant. She had noticed the embroidery on his shirt pocket. Naw, just point me to the crawl space and I’ll get after it, he announced in his best southern drawl.

Around back, under the porch, you’ll see a little white door behind the brick steps.

Thank you, ma’am. It shouldn’t take me too long, he promised.

The woman had lost interest in chatting and continued flipping through her issue of Southern Living. Take your time, Jake.

He found the rotted wooden door that led under the house. The crawl space was approximately five feet high. Brick supports were positioned every four

Reviews for The Reunion

[bemislibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fast paced story about murder and politics involving the surviors from U-Boat.