Duxford Airfield (the band) Pt. 10

Alan Astrachan, Danny Wickersham's attorney, was standing inside the briefing room and staring out the large windows as all of us entered the room. Officer Pack closed the door behind us.

"Al, is that you?" I asked, surprised.

Walking over to the man, I extended my left hand.

"Its me, Tim. I heard about what happened out at the mansion today, I'm so glad no one was hurt" Alan said, firmly shaking my hand.

...Alan looked drained, yet he was impeccably dressed as usual. Alan was also wearing his prosthetic right arm today, I noticed.

"Andrea, Helen, good to see the two of you, also. Earl, Miss Kendall, good to see both of you again as well" Alan nodded.

Earl then introduced Alan, Andrea, Helen, and myself to the other two oil field workers, Jack Gillette, and Rod Lewis. All of us shook hands.

"Coffee, water, or a soda, for anyone?" Benny asked cordially.

"Coffee for me, please, black" I replied.

"I'd like a soda, please" Helen replied.

"Nothing for me, thanks" my wife replied.

"I'd like a soda, also, please" Kendall replied.

Everyone else declined the offer.

"Please, sit down, everyone" Alan said, after we had received our refreshments.

All of us sat down.

I now noticed Officer Benny Pack switch on an antiquated reel to reel tape recorder.

"First, let me say how good it is to see all of you, alive. The radio stations have been reporting on the oilfield for the last hour now. The reports have indicated that there was some type of horrible accident within the oil field but that no one was hurt. It is very good to see all of you, my friends" Alan said, closing his eyes.

"Thank you, Al, its good to see you too. Are you representing the hearsay witness?" my wife suddenly asked.

"In a way, yes, Andrea. Give me a moment to collect my thoughts, please, and I'll explain" Alan said as he continued to stand, staring out the window and facing away from us.

Alan said nothing for a full minute as he stood, deep in thought.

It was Helen that broke the silence.

"...At least the painting were saved, before the swimming pool collapsed. They might have all been destroyed, otherwise" Helen said with a deep sigh of relief.

"They're fakes" Alan replied bluntly, still with his back to us.

"...Wha, whaaat? What did you say, Alan? What was that you said? What, what are fakes?" Helen gasped, staring at the man.

Alan slowly turned and faced us again.

"The paintings are fakes" Alan repeated with little interest.

"...Even the twelve tablets is a f-f-f-aaake?" Helen stammered, her mouth half open.

"The paintings are all fakes, they're elaborate fakes, but they're still fakes.

"Alan, how do you know this?" Andrea asked incredulously, with some disbelief.

"Because I spent three days inside Prominent House once, and Danny told me they're fakes.

"Awww nooo!..." Helen cried out, covering her face.

Alan rubbed Helen's shoulder with empathy before he continued addressing us.

You see, I, am the hearsay witness that Officer Pack has told you about.

" - You're the hearsay witness?" I asked, somewhat shocked.

I've known, for over fifty years, that Isaac King had been shot in the forehead, Danny told me that. However, Danny didn't see the killing and he never knew where Isaac King had been buried, so I never made any official report on the incident because it was just a rumor, until now" Alan said as he closed his eyes.

"Oh my God..." Andrea gasped.

Alan now continued.

"...I'll start at the beginning. The remains that you discovered today, were in fact, those of Isaac King. He was killed one dark and stormy night in early nineteen-nineteen as he was preparing to leave, enroute to his Senate hearings. Whenever King and his mistress would travel, the railroad would be notified ahead of time and his private Pullman car would then be side railed in front of Prominent House. It always left promptly at 6:30PM, regardless if King was onboard it or not" Alan began.

"Did the the Countess kill him?" I interrupted, leaning forward.

"...No, the Countess did not kill Isaac King. She tried to kill him that night but failed.

The Countess did fire at King several times with a small caliber shotgun that evening but missed each time, barely. King narrowly escaped with his life when he darted out into the open reception area of the mansion.

Coinciding with this fact, Isaac King had in his employment a body guard by the name of Colonel Douglas Mortimer, a former bounty hunter and mercenary of several wars. The Colonel was an extremely capable man and as loyal a man that ever walked. He had been in King's employment for an extremely long time, decades in fact.

When Isaac King fled into the open entryway of the mansion that night, the Countess then fired one last shot at King as he bolted for the doorway, but her aim had been spoiled when the Colonel grabbed the barrel of the weapon. The last shot that the Countess fired went harmlessly into the large overhead clock. The Colonel then took the shotgun away from an enraged Countess, rendering King safe from harm at that point.

Seeing that the Countess was now unarmed, King then pulled his own revolver and began firing wildly at her as she had stood near the Colonel. King was firing in a blind rage and had wanted to kill the Countess but he'd apparently been a lousy shot. However, the Colonel was not. He killed King with a single revolver shot, at sixty feet, having been in fear for his own life at that point, as well as that of the Countess." Alan elaborated.

"Why did she try to kill him? Was it because of King's mistress?" Andrea asked.

"Of course not, King's mistress and the Countess were the best of friends" Alan retorted.

"Whaaa?" I gasped.

" - Oh, c'mon, Alan. Best of friends, really?" Helen chided with disbelief.

"I'll explain that in a moment. First, you asked why the Countess had wanted to kill Isaac King that evening. The reason is simple, maternal instinct. You see, the oldest boy of the Countess, Philip, was a child from her first marriage to a man named Franklin Epps, Epps was killed in France during the war. The Countess had been carrying Philip when King had proposed marriage to her, after Franklin Epps was killed during battle in nineteen-sixteen.

Philip had been born with a rare Autism, and King had always despised the boy.

The second boy, David, - Danny's father, was in fact a child of the Countess and Isaac King both, but not Philip.

On the night of his departure for the Senate hearings, Isaac King had openly stated that once he returned from the Senate hearings, exonerated, that Philip would be sent away, never to return.

With this statement, the Colonel and other witnesses present had later stated that something deep within the Countess had then snapped and she'd made every effort to kill Isaac King that night.

Another reason the Countess wanted to kill Isaac King is because she strongly suspected that he had used his influence with Germany to have Franklin Epps sent to frontline battle in France, where he'd promptly been killed, in nineteen-sixteen. With the passing of Epps, the door had then been open for King's courtship and eventual marriage to the Countess" Alan explained.

"...Oh my God, the online dictionary had been right" Andrea sighed, hiding her eyes with her hand and slowly shaking her head.

"What about the Pinkerton that had lived onsite at the mansion? We found evidence that King had employed a full time Pinkerton" I said, staring up at Alan.

"Yes, there was a Pinkerton and he was witness to the killing, he was promptly paid off that night. He was given one-hundred-thousand dollars cash, on the spot, with the threat of death if he ever tried to double-cross the Countess. The Colonel had made the threat himself and the Pinkerton had taken it seriously, as he well should have. The Pinkerton then quickly rode off into the stormy night and was never seen or heard of again" Alan replied.

There was a long silence that followed as Alan remained standing and now turned back toward the window again.

I briefly glanced at Helen now as she was furiously scribbling notes in shorthand. Helen also appeared to be recording Alan's narration with her phone, as was my wife.

"...The Countess and mistress were the best of friends, how does that work?" Helen slowly asked, looking up from her notepad.

"That's where the paintings become relevant. After the birth of the second boy, David, the marriage between the Countess and Isaac King rapidly deteriorated. As time passed, the Countess became more and more convinced that King had helped orchestrate her first husband's transfer to front line battle in France, where he had been immediately killed, in the year nineteen-sixteen.

King had since openly aligned himself with Germany, to the point of arrogance, and this fact alone enraged the Countess. She had no money of her own at that point to speak of, but the Countess had made a few close allies that strongly stood with her against Germany. The Countess and these friends secretly began scheming and trying to come up with a plan to foil King and his cohorts from aiding Germany. By this time, the Countess had developed a livid hatred for Isaac King, to the point of obsession" Alan said.

"...Who were these people that stood with her, Alan?" I asked slowly.

"They were social elites, but Danny said the Countess would never reveal their identity, even to him, many decades later. However, Danny did believe that they were people possessing many millions and that they held great influence on the world stage." Alan answered.

"What did the Countess and these people do then?" Earl Billingsly asked.

The Countess and her friends wanted to devise a plan to financially undermine Germany, as well as Isaac King himself. However, several months passed, with one rejected idea after another, as these friends plotted in secret.

Eventually the friends were introduced to a woman simply known as Annette. Annette was an exceptionally beautiful woman and claiming to be an art specialist who'd once lived in Paris. I don't know when or how the introduction to Annette was made, only that it was.

"Who was this, Annette?" Benny asked.

"No one knows, but after years of my own extensive research, it's my personal belief that she was a woman known only as 'The Chamaeleon.' She was one of France's top operatives at that time" Alan replied.

"You mean she was some type of special agent?" Andrea asked, unsure.

"She was a highly skilled operator trained in espionage and counter intelligence by the French government. By this time the war was ravaging France in every way possible and the French government was desperate to fight the war on every level possible by then. The Chamaeleon was considered as one of France's most valuable assets" Alan answered.

"What does she have to do with King or the Countess?" I asked.

"The general idea was for Annette to seduce King and become his mistress, and then lead him to the phony paintings in hopes that he would buy them, which he eventually did" Alan replied.

"Any idea how much King was duped out of?" I asked.

"Close to seven-million dollars, in nineteen-hundreds money. Isaac King believed that he was buying future political leverage against France and her allies, with his purchase of the paintings" Alan answered.

"King couldn't have been that stupid, could he? He must have had the paintings appraised by experts at one time or another" I reasoned.

"The paintings were elaborate fakes, created by some of France's most notable artists for the war effort. The paintings had also been aged by leading scientists and they were almost foolproof. There was no such thing as carbon dating in those days, of course" Alan answered.

"The Chamaeleon had undoubtedly been trained in the art of seduction, Tim. It most likely took several months or maybe even a year or more for her to convince King to purchase the paintings. Even if leading experts had declared the paintings as fakes, King probably wouldn't have believed it. He most likely would have chosen instead to believe the word of his mistress, and her own experts" Andrea reasoned.

"Yeah, that makes sense, now that I think about it" I nodded.

"Were the paintings being sold on the black market, do you know, Alan?" Andrea then asked.

"Danny indicated to me that King believed he was buying the paintings from an anonymous disgruntled French diplomat, turned traitor. The real paintings had, by that time, been secretly tucked away in a safe place" Alan explained.

"...Where are the real paintings now?" Helen asked quietly.

"Some are in museums, some are in private collections and others were stolen during The Second World War and never found" Alan answered softly.

"Alan, going back to the night that King was killed, what you're telling us is that authorities believed King had either skipped out on the Senate hearings or been killed by French Nationalists, as the online dictionary now suggests" I speculated.

"It was hoped that it would appear that way, yes. The Colonel lit all the lanterns within the railcar and then blew a hole in the Pullman car's door with the shotgun. He then spread an ample amount of King's blood around the car and made it appear that a struggle had taken place. The Colonel then disposed of King's remains on site, which you discovered today" Alan replied.

"Danny told you all of this, Alan?" Andrea asked incredulously.

"Yes" Alan replied with a sigh.

"Why would he tell you, Alan? No one was ever closer to Danny than either Andrea or myself, but he would never talk about his past, at all, with us. We'd never even heard about the Countess, Prominent House or anything, before a few weeks ago!" Helen now said in frustration.

Without answering, Alan now walked to the table and opened his briefcase. He then handed me an eight by ten color photograph of a man in Uniform and wearing the Green Beret, the man was Alan himself.

I briefly studied the photo and then silently passed it to my wife.

"That is a photograph of me in nineteen-sixty-seven when I was working with the C.I.A in Vietnam. What I did during that time is irrelevant and still classified information. What I can tell you is that I lost an arm and several of my closest friends during that tour. At one point I woke up in a hospital, my arm was gone and they were giving the guy, in the bed next to me, Last Rites. He was a big man and his whole face was bandaged. He wasn't expected to live through the night I was told.

That man was still alive the next day, and the next after that. As the days went by, I paid little attention to this man, he was mostly silent and he wasn't one of my friends, he was just an Army Private. After a week in the hospital we began to talk some, but only briefly. I discovered that like me, he was a native Texas boy but thats about all we had in common. I honestly didn't think he'd survive his wounds so I really made no effort to get to know him that well. I had my own recovery to focus on.

One morning they wheeled him into surgery, and he wasn't expected to live through the procedure. A little while later a nurse walked in and sat at my bedside and talked with me for several minutes. She explained to me that my wounds had occurred when someone had apparently triggered a boobytrap, which I had no recollection of. The nurse then told me that once the dust off helicopters had landed to extract us, that the LZ had been pinned down by several well concealed enemy snipers and we couldn't be reached by the medics.

A gunship came in then and provided covering fire as one man leapt to the ground from the first helicopter. This man ran over to us and discovered that two of us were still alive, and he promptly received shrapnel to the face and chest from an incoming mortar round. With his face in shreds this man hoisted each of us, that were still alive, onto a shoulder and ran the hundred yards back to the Slick that was waiting.

That man was the one they had just taken into surgery that morning, his name was Dennis King" Alan said as he faced the window, with his back to us again.

Andrea and Helen both let out a yelp now and covered their faces as tears began to slide down their cheeks. I pulled Andrea closer to me and Kendall did the same with Helen.

"...Danny always said that he'd been a cook in an officer's mess hall, here in the States, during the war. He also told us that he got the scars from a car wreck, when he was a little kid" Helen said, wiping her eyes.

"I know..." Alan whispered.

Alan was then silent for several long seconds. He then took a deep breath and continued.

"Danny', as he was later known by all of us, and I spent several days in the hospital but I was soon released. However, I would go and visit him each day for several hours and Danny began to open up to me about his life. Danny talked endlessly about his late father, whom I learned had been named David. I also learned about Danny's late uncle Philip and a nanny named Mary, whom Danny had adored. Danny also spoke of an extremely gifted grandmother named Ovia that wrote music and had composed at one time. Danny was extremely proud of all of them" Alan said, speaking very softly.

"What happened to the other man that Danny saved?" Helen quietly asked.

"He died" Alan replied abruptly.

Alan now reached into his briefcase and handed me another eight by ten photograph. This one depicted two men in Uniform. The two men, arms around each other were standing in front of a deuce and half. Alan was minus his right arm and Danny was bravely smiling through the pain of a swollen face, he was also wearing the Silver Star and Purple Heart.

I handed the photo to Andrea.

"That photo was taken on the day that Danny and I were discharged from the Army, in early April of nineteen-sixty-eight. Danny had made plans to return to Texas and so had I, although I had no one left to go home to. My folks were gone by then and I had recently gotten divorced, so Danny invited me to come stay with him while we both healed. I gratefully accepted the invitation.

An old cowboy picked us up at the airport, driving a brand new Buick. Helen, that's the car you now own, the car was actually purchased by the Countess herself. She rolled it off the showroom floor someplace in Dallas and then drove the car home by herself. That's one of the last things she ever did, was present Danny with a new car on his arrival home from Vietnam.

- I'd never seen anything even remotely like Prominent House, or met anyone quite like the Countess. All of us called her 'Mum' and she had a presence that I simply can't describe. She was incredibly small and frail by then, ravaged by years of drugs. Yet, even in her fragile state, a person couldn't be near her and not find themselves completely mesmerized by her. Her charisma was magnetic.

When Danny and I first entered the house she was waiting for us. Danny leaned down and gently took her into his arms, both of them cried for hours then. She slept in his lap as Danny reclined in a large overly stuffed chair that night. I threw a blanket over them and went to bed myself. The next morning Mum insisted that she make us breakfast and the three of us talked for several hours, Mum conversing with us through pen and paper and a mixture of sign language. She was a delightful and extremely elegant woman with a very contagious laughter.

I also discovered that Mum was a phenomenal artist, with pen and paper. - Just name it, and she could draw anything you requested. I watched her draw animals, machines, landscapes, and people. Her ability to draw was like watching a magician perform tricks, it was completely mesmerizing.

By early afternoon Mum indicated to us that she was going to take a nap and promptly did so. Three hours later she was dead, having died in her sleep a happy woman. I think she'd hung on just so she could see her grandson come home from Vietnam...