yellowing photo in his hand. The 1944 shot of the Ace of Clubs' crew was snapped after the test flight that fateful day. The seven airmen stood under the plane's bomb bay.
The navigator flipped the photo and squinted at its back.
There, he had recorded the names, nicknames, and combat positions of the doomed fliers:
F/Lt. Fletch "Wrath" Hannah - Pilot
Sgt. Mick "Balls" Balsdon - Navigator
Sgt. Hugh "Ox" Oxley - Flight engineer
Sgt. Russ "Nelson" Trafalgar - Bomb-aimer
Sgt. Earl "Sweaty" Swetman - Wireless operator
Sgt. Dick "Ack-Ack" DuBoulay - Rear gunner
Sgt. Trent "Jonesy" Jones - Mid-upper gunner
The old man's arthritic finger touched one of the names.
"Were you the traitor?" he asked.
The rhetorical question was interrupted by knocking on his door.
Rook? he wondered.
JUDAS CHAIR
THE NEXT DAY
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
The pope and Wyatt Rook die on the same day and end up before St. Peter at the pearly gates. The keeper of the keys to heaven asks each man for his name and looks him up in a book.
After passing out wings, halos, and harps, St. Peter says, "If you'll both come with me, I'll show you to your dwellings."
The three walk along the clouds until they come to an insignificant cottage. "Here's where you'll stay for the rest of eternity," St. Peter tells the pope.
From there, he leads Wyatt to his abode—a palatial mansion with a private swimming pool, a celestial garden, and a terrace overlooking the pearly gates.
"Enjoy your stay," St. Peter says, turning to go.
Taken aback, Wyatt blurts out, "There must be some mistake. You put the pope in a shack, and you put me here."
"No mistake," St. Peter says, shaking his head. "We have most of the two hundred or so popes in heaven. They're commonplace. But you . . . well, we've never had a lawyer."
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
Fat chance, Wyatt thought.
When he showed up at the pearly gates—assuming the Bible was right about the afterlife—he would probably be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants by St. Peter's heavenly bouncer and given the bum's rush down to hell to join the other broiling lawyers. So many sins had Wyatt committed in his hedonistic life that he had begun to hope there really was nothing more. If not, he was damned.
Wyatt Rook is sitting in his loft one night when there is a sudden flash of light and smoke swirls out of the floor. The Devil steps from the twister to address the lawyer: "I understand you'll give anything to succeed in life. So I've come here to make you an offer. You'll expose every secret you go after, your books will all be bestsellers, and your documentaries will all win Oscars. In return, I'll take the souls of you, your parents, your grandparents, your wife, your children, and all your friends."
Wyatt thinks about it.
"So what's the catch?" he asks.
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
That's more likely, he thought.
However . . .
Had he been trundling north to York on this train before the book-signing at the Unknown Soldier, he'd almost certainly have been fantasizing about Val. "Thou shalt not covet thy best friend's wife," the Ten Commandments warn, so that would have been more for St. Peter to add to the hellish side of his scales. Yet here he was thinking about Liz Hannah and her wayward buttons instead, so perhaps even this sinner could be redeemed.
Unless, of course, his naughty thoughts were another sin.
A poor hand of poker.
He should have held out for her bra.
Wyatt didn't have the time to make this trip. He was in Britain to sell his books and flog his documentaries. Still, if there was a chance that Mick Balsdon held the key to solving the Judas puzzle, then Wyatt couldn't afford not to make this trip. But what had really convinced him was the thought of Liz's grandmother dying without knowing the fate of her husband. Wyatt's life was ruled by his need to learn what had happened to his parents, so he knew that
The navigator flipped the photo and squinted at its back.
There, he had recorded the names, nicknames, and combat positions of the doomed fliers:
F/Lt. Fletch "Wrath" Hannah - Pilot
Sgt. Mick "Balls" Balsdon - Navigator
Sgt. Hugh "Ox" Oxley - Flight engineer
Sgt. Russ "Nelson" Trafalgar - Bomb-aimer
Sgt. Earl "Sweaty" Swetman - Wireless operator
Sgt. Dick "Ack-Ack" DuBoulay - Rear gunner
Sgt. Trent "Jonesy" Jones - Mid-upper gunner
The old man's arthritic finger touched one of the names.
"Were you the traitor?" he asked.
The rhetorical question was interrupted by knocking on his door.
Rook? he wondered.
JUDAS CHAIR
THE NEXT DAY
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
The pope and Wyatt Rook die on the same day and end up before St. Peter at the pearly gates. The keeper of the keys to heaven asks each man for his name and looks him up in a book.
After passing out wings, halos, and harps, St. Peter says, "If you'll both come with me, I'll show you to your dwellings."
The three walk along the clouds until they come to an insignificant cottage. "Here's where you'll stay for the rest of eternity," St. Peter tells the pope.
From there, he leads Wyatt to his abode—a palatial mansion with a private swimming pool, a celestial garden, and a terrace overlooking the pearly gates.
"Enjoy your stay," St. Peter says, turning to go.
Taken aback, Wyatt blurts out, "There must be some mistake. You put the pope in a shack, and you put me here."
"No mistake," St. Peter says, shaking his head. "We have most of the two hundred or so popes in heaven. They're commonplace. But you . . . well, we've never had a lawyer."
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
Fat chance, Wyatt thought.
When he showed up at the pearly gates—assuming the Bible was right about the afterlife—he would probably be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and the seat of his pants by St. Peter's heavenly bouncer and given the bum's rush down to hell to join the other broiling lawyers. So many sins had Wyatt committed in his hedonistic life that he had begun to hope there really was nothing more. If not, he was damned.
Wyatt Rook is sitting in his loft one night when there is a sudden flash of light and smoke swirls out of the floor. The Devil steps from the twister to address the lawyer: "I understand you'll give anything to succeed in life. So I've come here to make you an offer. You'll expose every secret you go after, your books will all be bestsellers, and your documentaries will all win Oscars. In return, I'll take the souls of you, your parents, your grandparents, your wife, your children, and all your friends."
Wyatt thinks about it.
"So what's the catch?" he asks.
Clickety-clack . . .
Clickety-clack . . .
That's more likely, he thought.
However . . .
Had he been trundling north to York on this train before the book-signing at the Unknown Soldier, he'd almost certainly have been fantasizing about Val. "Thou shalt not covet thy best friend's wife," the Ten Commandments warn, so that would have been more for St. Peter to add to the hellish side of his scales. Yet here he was thinking about Liz Hannah and her wayward buttons instead, so perhaps even this sinner could be redeemed.
Unless, of course, his naughty thoughts were another sin.
A poor hand of poker.
He should have held out for her bra.
Wyatt didn't have the time to make this trip. He was in Britain to sell his books and flog his documentaries. Still, if there was a chance that Mick Balsdon held the key to solving the Judas puzzle, then Wyatt couldn't afford not to make this trip. But what had really convinced him was the thought of Liz's grandmother dying without knowing the fate of her husband. Wyatt's life was ruled by his need to learn what had happened to his parents, so he knew that
Similar Books
