Top Secret
Partial transcript, radio communications between Senior FBI Officer in Portsmouth on 15 May 1943 and field agents under his command. Note: Due to technical difficulties, only the transmissions from the Senior FBI Officer were intelligible.
SFO: …what the hell do you mean, you’ve lost him? How in hell did you lose him? He was practically in your [expletive deleted] lap! Car Four, Car Six, do you have anything?
Car Four: Unintelligible.
Car Six: Unintelligible.
SFO: [expletive deleted] We’ve got the [expletive deleted] Führer coming up the river, and no one knows where Miller is? Outpost Two, what do you have?
Outpost Two: Unintelligible.
SFO: [expletive deleted] Comm shack, come in.
Communications Office: Unintelligible.
SFO: [expletive deleted] Contact the Camp Carpenter transit camp immediately. If they don’t hear from me in thirty—that’s three-oh—minutes, the Miller woman and the Miller minor are to be shot. Understood?
Communications Office: Unintelligible.
Outside the PSNH building. Not much traffic on the streets. Think!
To his Packard, fumbling at the door, keys in hand. Don’t drop the keys, don’t screw this up, you’ve only got a few minutes, just barely enough.
The engine started with a roar.
He backed up, moving fast; a crunch as a rear fender clipped a telephone pole.
Somebody was shouting. A National Guardsman, rifle in hand, trotting from the PSNH building.
He shoved the column lever into first gear, popped the clutch.
Just a few blocks away. Just a few blocks away.
Tires squealed as he turned right, shifting again and then once more. Pedal to the floor. The Packard’s engine roared. The steeple… one of the most prominent structures in town.
Just the other night, Tony was in his house.
In his house!
Stealing his clothes to fit in. No doubt the people behind Tony had the resources to fake documents, and sure, it could happen, hide a weapon in the church days ahead of time, before the security lid came down.
A checkpoint up ahead. Barrel through?
The Guardsmen were armed with submachine guns.
Able to tear through metal and glass and flesh in seconds.
Sam slammed on the brakes, screeched to a halt, rolled the window down, and flashed his inspector’s badge and summit pass and yelled, “Get that goddamn barricade moved! Now! This is an emergency!”
Sweet Jesus, that was just what they did, they moved quickly back, dragging the wooden and barbed-wire barricade off to the side. He slammed the Packard into first gear, jammed his foot on the accelerator, and powered through, a front fender crumpling as it clipped the barricade.
Just two more blocks.
Tony, damn you Tony.
If I can get there in time and arrest your ass, my family could be home by tonight.
Market Square, center of downtown Portsmouth. Church on the left, more National Guardsmen, Portsmouth cops, some huddled around a radio with a long extension cord. He slammed on the brakes again, jumped out, and started running.
Shouts.
He ignored them, running toward the old North Church. Red brick and tall windows and three doors, spaced across the middle, high white steeple, and up there was his brother. He bounded up the steps, coat flapping, and a Portsmouth cop—Curtiss, that was his name—said, “Sam! What’s wrong?”
Sam yelled, “Get that door open! Open it!”
The cop muscled aside two National Guardsmen and opened the door, and he was inside.
A cool interior, scented with wax and candles. Empty pews stretching away. He looked around, heart pounding.
Door off to the left.
Opened it and went two narrow flights of stairs emptying onto the choir loft and organ, sheets of music on the chairs…
Dammit!
He swung his head around, hearing voices from downstairs—Curtiss arguing with the Guardsmen—looking hard, hoping not to hear the sharp report of a rifle from overhead.
Small wooden door, half hidden by a black curtain.
He ran across the choir loft, tore at the curtain, grabbed the door handle.
Locked.
Christ almighty!
He looked around.
A metal fire extinguisher hanging on the wall.
He pulled it off, tearing fingernails in the process, brought it to the door, raised it high, and brought it down.
The doorknob flew off and rattled across the floor. He dropped the fire extinguisher and pried the door open.
Worn wooden stairs, narrow and high, in a spiral. He started running up, his shoulders brushing against the plaster walls. There were voices in here too, from above. His .38 Smith & Wesson Police Special was in his hand and he went higher and higher, yelling out his brother’s name.
To the top, just above the clock gears and machinery.
A man turned. The room was small and cluttered with boxes and rusting metal parts. A hole had been cut from the steeple in the direction of the harbor. The room smelled of dust and pigeon shit.
The man looked to him, holding a scoped rifle. “Hey Sam,” the man said. He was wearing one of Sam’s old black suits, the elbows and knees shiny from age, a suit Sarah had wanted to throw out.
Sam stood, legs shaking, arms at his side. “Put the rifle down. Come over here.”
More voices. A battery-operated radio broadcasting a commentator with an excited voice, describing the approach of Hitler’s boat. That’s how it would work. The assassin would know when exactly to raise his rifle and pull the trigger.
Tony said, “Not going to happen, Sam.”
“Tony. Get the fuck away from there and drop the rifle. Now!”
Tony had the impatient look of an older brother. “Sorry. Worked too long, too hard, sacrificed too much to get here.”
Sam raised his revolver. “Drop the rifle, Tony. I don’t care what you did at the Yard, don’t care what they did to Dad. Look—Sarah and Toby have been arrested. They’re in a labor camp. They get out if I bring you in! Do you hear me? I bring you in and they’re free!”
Tony seemed to shudder, as though something had struck hit him deep and hard. “I wish you hadn’t told me that, Sam.” A pause, as if he were trying to regain his strength. “And you might be lying, for all I know.”
“You numb shit, I would never lie about my family.”
Tony said, “Sam, I love ’em both, more than you know, but they’re soldiers, just like everyone else. Drafted but still part of the fight. And what I’m doing here, it’s more important than them, you, or me.”
“Tony!” he yelled, hearing loud voices in the steeple.
“Leave me alone, Sam. I’m going to take care of that monster down there. Somebody should have killed the bastard years ago. He’s long overdue.”
Sam stepped forward. “Tony, he’s a bastard, but just one bastard. You kill him, and so what? Another bastard will take his place. He’s just one man. That’s all.”
Tony glanced out the opening. “No, that’s not all. He holds it all together. Get rid of him and the whole rotten system collapses. One man can turn this world to hell. And one man can make it right. And that’s gonna be me.”
The voice on the radio squawked, “Now! Now the boat has docked, and I can make out Chancellor Hitler as he starts to step out…”
Tony raised the rifle and Sam said, “Don’t!”
His brother didn’t turn. “Or what? You’re going to shoot me? Why? Because it’s your job? Your duty?”
Another step closer. “Yeah, it’s my job and duty. And saving that bastard will get Sarah and Toby free. Now drop the rifle!”
Tony murmured, “We all got roles to play, and I’m sorry, mine is the more important. You can piss around the edges, host an Underground Railroad station, but when it counts, I’m going to make it all right.”
The rifle came up to his brother’s shoulder and the radio commentator said, “… the dock. Hitler is now on American soil for the first time, walking briskly to the Navy Yard commander—”
Tony’s head lowered to the scope.
The sound of the shot was deafening, pounding at Sam’s ears.
The revolver recoiled in his hand.
The rifle clattered to the floor, and Tony slumped over.
Sam ran to his brother and knelt as Tony looked up, disbelieving, his face white with shock. “You—”
“Tony, damn you,” Sam said, his face wet. Sam fumbled at his brother’s coat and shirt, and the radio was blabbering, and there were footsteps, racing up the stairs. Tony grasped Sam’s wrist hard.
“You did it… I can’t believe it… you actually had the balls to do it…”
Sam ripped the shirt open, buttons flying. “I aimed for your shoulder, Tony. You’ll be okay. It’s just a shoulder wound.”
Tony grimaced, lips trembled. “Hurts like hell… shit, doing your duty. How true blue can you be?” Footsteps grew louder. He coughed and said, “Hope the hell you know what you did… one man… hope you know what you did…”
Sam said frantically, “I do. Look, you’ll be okay, you’ll see a doctor, and Sarah and Toby, you’re gonna free them. You’ll see.”
A shake of the head, Tony’s voice raspy. “Sam, you did good, guy, you did good. Tell Sarah and Toby… tell them—”
Before Tony could finish, the tiny steeple space was full of men in suits, and in front was Special Agent Jack LaCouture of the FBI. Sam turned toward him, starting to explain, when LaCouture drew out his revolver and shot Tony in the head, the sound of the report hammering at Sam.
Sam was yelling, screaming, spattered with blood, flailing, and the FBI agents grabbed his arms, disarming him. LaCouture shouted, “Get that body out of here! Now, dammit!” Amid the yelling and thrashing and tears, in just a matter of moments, Tony’s body was taken away in the arms of the other agents, his limp bloody head bumping against the dusty floorboards, brain tissue and bone chips everywhere. LaCouture took charge as Sam struggled against two beefy agents, and then LaCouture said, “All right, leave us alone for a couple of minutes. Get out of here, all of you.”
Sam broke free, sobbing and cursing, as the FBI agents obeyed, pushing through the narrow door. LaCouture stood there, revolver in his hand. He said, “Inspector, calm your ass down or I’ll shoot you. Then you’ll go into the history books as a co-conspirator with your brother. And your wife and son will grow old behind barbed wire. Your fucking choice.”
Sam stood there, tears rolling down his face. The radio was on, blabbing away, and LaCouture kicked it with a polished shoe, breaking it, silencing it. “There,” the FBI man said. “Damn chattering.”
“You didn’t have to shoot him! You son of a bitch, you didn’t have to kill him!”
“Oh, sonny, I’m sorry, but yes I did. You see, there’s not going to be a trial and months of headlines. There’s just going to be a story about a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. That’s what the world is going to know. And you’re gonna play your part. The good brother who didn’t know a damn thing. But if you say one word about what just happened, your wife and son ain’t never gettin’ out.”
Sam was shivering so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. His hands felt empty without a weapon. He shifted, felt his foot touch something.
Tony’s rifle, on the floor.
LaCouture said, “Nice going, leading us here. You did quite well, Inspector. Mind telling us how you figured out he was here?”
Sam forced the words out. “You were tracking me. All the time. Following me.”
LaCouture nodded. “Yeah, especially today. Think those observers were busy just watching the harbor? Hell, no. They were also busy watching you. To see where you went. Boy, by the time you got to the church, I was hell-bent for leather, following you. You see, there was a moment when—”
Sam kicked at the broken radio, and LaCouture looked down long enough for Sam to drop to a knee, raise the rifle, catch the surprised look in LaCouture’s eyes, slide his finger through the trigger guard, squeeze the trigger, and—
Click.
He desperately worked the bolt as an unfired cartridge flew out, spun to the floor.
Click.
LaCouture’s smile flickered.
Sam stood up clumsily. He threw the rifle at LaCouture’s feet.
“A setup. You filthy bastards. A setup. A loaded rifle that wouldn’t fire.”
The FBI man’s nod was triumphant. “Your brother didn’t escape from that labor camp. We practically gave him a get-out-of-jail-free card, made sure he didn’t get picked up along the way, made sure he believed he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. There were other people involved, fellow travelers, mostly domestic Commies with a couple of NKVD boys tossed in, and they’re being picked up right now. Even me and Groebke, we played our parts—snooping around the police station, checking out your files and his files. Your brother was the perfect patsy, Inspector. Dumb bastard didn’t even think of test-firing the rifle. It had a disabled firing pin. You filled your role, too.”
“I led you right to him.” The word seemed to choke in his throat. “Why?”
“Because when Hitler finds out that the Kingfish’s FBI saved his Kraut ass, he’s going to be in a better mood,” LaCouture said. “Maybe make more treaty concessions. Buy more bombers, ships, guns, spend a fortune to kill Reds and put our people to work. A new era for them and us.” LaCouture reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small pair of binoculars with a long leather strap. He tossed them over to Sam, who caught them with one hand. “Go ahead, take a look,” LaCouture said, motioning with his revolver. “Step over there and tell me what you see.”
Sam walked stiffly to the cut-out hole and brought the glasses up. He looked out across the harbor, to the Navy Yard and the moored gig. People were milling about, and there was Hitler, striding past an honor guard of sailors and marines. At the end of the reviewing line, standing by his open convertible, in a surprise move, was the President.
“Come on, Inspector, what do you see?”
Sam turned. “Nothing. There’s nothing I want to see.”
LaCouture said, “Oh, no, what’s there is the future. You’ve heard of Lindbergh’s wife, Anne, and her book? There’s a new wave coming, of strong countries and stronger men, to make things right. Parliaments and congresses and the people’s voice—forget them, that’s all over. There’s a new order coming our way, an order led by men like Hitler and Mussolini, and we’re going to join with a man like Long.”
Sam looked down at his brother’s blood. “Count me out.”
“No, we’re all part of it, every one of us,” the FBI man insisted. “You know”—his voice sounded dreamy, almost reflective—“last year I was sent to Germany, part of an exchange program, made some real good friends. They trusted me and I trusted them, and they took me on a long, long drive… someplace in what was once Poland… to one of their camps…”
Sam kept on staring at the blood, listening to the FBI man’s memories.
LaCouture said, “The camp, what a place… so simple, really, so simple. Just a place to deal with your enemies. You never saw such terrible beauty. They wouldn’t let me inside, but they told me what happened. These trains came in, filled with your enemies, and everything they had was seized, and then they disappeared. They just disappeared. Your enemies came in full and alive, and then they didn’t exist anymore, and what a wonderful thing. We’ve barely begun here in the States, Inspector. We’ve just barely started to catch up to what the Germans can do, and they’re going to teach us so very much in the years ahead.”
Sam stayed silent.
“Do you understand now? Do you?” LaCouture pressed.
Sam looked up, thought of his tattoo, of Burdick, of Sarah and Toby, of his betrayed and murdered brother. “Yeah. I understand everything.”
He swung the binoculars at the end of their leather strap, breaking LaCouture’s nose.
LaCouture howled, brought both hands up to his bloodied face, and Sam dropped the binoculars, was back in high school, tackling the Southern son of a bitch, pounding him against the walls of the steeple, now on the filthy floor. He started punching the bastard in the ribs, in the jaw, in the ribs again, punching, flailing, getting punched in return, footsteps, shouts, and he was yanked up and off LaCouture, breathing hard, sobbing, one cheek bleeding, FBI agents holding him back.
LaCouture struggled to his feet, a lace-edged handkerchief against his face, smeared with blood. Sam wasn’t thinking, was just trying to break free, to get at the FBI guy, the one who had killed his brother, imprisoned his family. LaCouture came up to him, speaking thickly. “Through… that’s it… you and your family… they ain’t never gettin’ out of that camp, not ever, and you’ll be with ’em before sundown, your wife and kid… they’ll get beat up and raped, and it’s all your fault, fool, all your stupid fault, asshole…”
Sam tried to get at him again, and LaCouture said, “Out. Get him out of here.”
Sam tried to at least to spit in the FBI man’s face, but two agents were already dragging him through the door.
He sat still, cheek bleeding, wrists aching, heart aching, everything aching. He was in the back of one of the FBI’s Ford sedans, handcuffed, deposited there by the FBI agents who had dragged him down from the steeple. A brother killed in a supposed plot to assassinate Hitler, and here he was, in a parking lot near the North Church with other FBI sedans and army trucks, waiting. Arrested for assaulting an FBI agent, and not just any agent—the agent who had saved Hitler’s life on this vital summit.
He shifted his weight, conscious of the pain in his body and of the tears that would not stop. His brother. Angry, committed, and blindly dedicated Tony. His burning sense of righteousness used against him in a plot he believed would set everything straight but in the end just made it worse. Sam could imagine President Long, bragging to Hitler about the plot, showing him the afternoon headlines, proving how dedicated the Americans were to this new arrangement, this new world order. Like LaCouture said, this new wave was about to drown the old ways of democracy and individual liberty.
Damn that Tony, ready to sacrifice Sarah and Toby to kill Hitler. What right did he have?
That bastard. Because of him, they would all be in a labor camp. He lowered his head. He couldn’t stop crying.
The rear car door opened, and Sam looked over, bracing for another blow.
“Inspector,” Hans Groebke said, his eyes emotionless behind his glasses.
“Come here to gloat?”
“Hardly.” The Gestapo man held up a tiny key. “If you lean forward, I will release you.”
Sam stared at the man. “Not a chance. Get me uncuffed, and then I’m shot while trying to escape. Oldest trick you clowns have come up with.”
Groebke shook his head. “No, no trick. Lean forward, I will uncuff you. And then we can talk for a moment before I send you on your way.”
Sam struggled to gauge what was going on behind those quiet blue eyes, and then he gave up. He was just too damn tired. They’d finally defeated him. He had no fight left in him. He leaned forward. Groebke bent toward him, and there was a click as the cuffs were undone. Automatically, he brought his hands forward, rubbed at his wrists. Groebke said, “We shall speak, then, of deceit. And tricks. And appearances.”
“Sure,” Sam said bitterly. “You assholes used my brother as a tool, set him up. He had no chance at all. You got him out of the labor camp and here to Portsmouth, where he could get killed like a dumb cow at a slaughterhouse.”
Groebke shook his head. He took out a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes, pumped one out. “No, that was LaCouture’s business. Not mine.”
“Oh? What was your business?”
A wry smile as he placed the cigarette between his lips and lit it with a gold lighter. “To see that your brother succeeded. And in that, I failed very much indeed. I knew of many things, but not of the disabled rifle.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam demanded.
“Sorry, I thought I made it clear. Although I will always deny that this conversation ever took place. You see, I wanted your brother to succeed, to kill my chancellor. That’s why I was here in Portsmouth, to make such things happen… to keep an eye on you… and to assist your brother if necessary. But I failed. He was contacted by LaCouture and his crew, the disabled rifle was provided, and now Hitler, that beast, will live, and many more innocents will die.”
“But… you’re goddamn Gestapo!”
“True. But first, remember, I am a cop. Just like you. A cop in a small Bavarian village, with obligations and duties, until I was promoted to where I am, eh? So what you see, what you think you see, may not always be the truth.”
“Some goddamn cop!”
“But I am also a German patriot, Inspector,” Groebke said quietly. “There are not many of us left, but we have tried to kill that monster. What he is doing to the innocents, in the camps and in the cities, he is doing in the name of the German people. If we lose this war, our name and our culture will be stained for a thousand generations times a thousand.”
Sam was speechless. Groebke took another drag of his cigarette. “But there are other reasons. I had a brother, too. He was killed in the British landings. And for what? For the ravings of a madman who has the power to seize a people and their destiny.”
The Gestapo man turned slightly, as if he were trying to see the shipyard through the nearby buildings. “Now my madman is meeting your madman, to divide the world between them, to make it a place for their visions and appetites. And the one chance we had today, that single chance, is no more.” Groebke dropped his cigarette on the pavement, twisted a foot hard against it.
“Thanks for cutting me loose,” Sam told him. “I owe you one. But I’m going to be in a labor camp before this day is over.”
The German smiled. “It will be, as you Americans say, handled. Your FBI man, I have learned some things about him and his trip to my home country, and he owes me some things as well. Don’t worry, Inspector. You won’t be in a labor camp. He and I will no longer be in your lives.”
“My wife and boy…”
“I will try, but I don’t think I have that influence,” Groebke said. “Maybe later, but believe me, it is safer for them to be there and not here. I wouldn’t go to the camp to get them out by yourself—that would be far too dangerous. Too easy for you to get arrested there. Go back to your police station, Inspector. Your job here is done.”
Sam didn’t move. His cheeks were still wet from his tears. “Why are you telling me all of this? What’s the point?”
Groebke shrugged. “LaCouture and the others, they think of me as the perfect Gestapo officer, eh? But you—I wanted you, Inspector Miller, to know who I really am, so when I leave this country, I will have the satisfaction that at least one American knows the real Hans Groebke. This is for you as well.”
The Gestapo man reached into his coat pocket and took out a revolver. Sam recognized it as his own. He took it and holstered it and wiped at his eyes, thinking of what Tony had said to him up in the steeple. “Yeah, my job. I did my part, too. As shitty as it was.”
Then he climbed out of the car started to walk out to Market Square.
Except for a desk sergeant reading a pulp western magazine in the dingy lobby, the building was deserted. The police station seemed to be the only refuge left for Sam; he could not return home, not now. Upstairs he trudged to the city marshal’s office, but that, too, was empty, as was Mrs. Walton’s desk.
He sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the piles of paper and memos and file folders at his desk without touching them. All this work that awaited him. For the briefest of moments, he felt a stirring of anticipation, that with this whole summit fiasco concluded, he could go back to being a simple police inspector with a simple family, a simple life. If only he could get Sarah and Toby out, he could start again. It would be difficult, and it would take a very, very long time, but he just wanted it to be like it was two weeks before, before he found that dead body by the railroad tracks.
That’s all he wanted.
He stretched out his legs, looked down at his shoes, and saw stains there.
From his brother’s blood.
Sam put his arms on his desk, lowered his head, and wept.
Hours later, the piles had been sorted, some papers dumped, others reviewed, and some old case files reread. It had been routine, plodding work, and Sam almost cherished every moment. He had no idea what time it was; he didn’t care.
There were footsteps behind him. He turned, and Marshal Hanson stood there, a bland expression on his face. “The prodigal son returns,” Hanson remarked.
“If you like, sir,” Sam said. “I’ve been released from my federal duty.”
Hanson was dressed in a well-cut black suit. Sam saw that the man was swaying just the tiniest bit. Sam had never seen his boss drunk.
Hanson gently placed a hand on Sam’s back. “Jesus, son, I heard what happened today. A damn, damn shame. I sure wish it could have ended in a different way… but there was no other choice, was there? Tony was trying to assassinate Hitler. It must have been a tremendous loss, but the summit had to be saved. In a way, it was a sacrifice—a hard sacrifice for the greater good.”
Sam forced the words out, thinking how Tony had been betrayed. Some sacrifice. “That’s true, and if you want a briefing of what went on, I’d be glad to—”
Hanson lifted his hand from Sam’s back. “No, no, the FBI man in charge said I would get a full report later. I need to run along. Tell you what, you finish what you have to do and then go home, Okay?”
Sam wondered what in hell Groebke had on LaCouture, dirt that kept the FBI agent silent about the city’s only police inspector breaking his nose. “No, I don’t think so. I really want to get a jump on my work. I’ll probably spend the night here.”
Hanson said, “All right, but you won’t be sleeping in the basement. Use the couch in my office. There are a couple of blankets in the closet.”
“That’s very generous of you, sir. And if I may talk about—”
Hanson swayed. “Yes, yes. Your wife and son. Not now, Sam. There’s too much going on now. But I promise, once it settles down, we’ll see what we can do. It’s a federal beef, but I’ll see if I can help.” He rubbed his eyes wearily. “Sleep well! We’re going to need you tomorrow, when this whole thing wraps up.”
“It’s done? So soon?”
“The summit’s a success. Ended a day ahead of schedule. Agreement reached on a number of issues, so on and so forth, but bottom line, Hitler is going to get his arms, the Kingfish is going to get his full employment. Both of them are going to be safe in their jobs for a long time to come.”
“And the Jews?” Sam knew he was pushing it, but he had to know. “Will they continue to come over here?”
Hanson looked about, ensuring they were alone. “Oh, yes. Hitler is eager to get rid of them, and Long is eager to put them to work. But Sam, no more talk of that, all right?”
“All right,” he agreed. “So that’s it, then.”
“Yep,” his boss said. “Hitler and Long, both heading home tomorrow, and Long is going to visit Berlin next week to seal the deal. There you go. History made again in our little Portsmouth.”
Sam thought of Tony. His spirit must be furious. Not only to die in vain, but Sam was certain LaCouture had been right: Tony’s death had made the summit a bigger success.
“Yeah,” he told Hanson. “Our little Portsmouth.”
It was a sign of his profound exhaustion that Sam slept deeply on Hanson’s leather couch. After getting up, he went down to the basement, getting a bowl of oatmeal and some bacon for breakfast, again served by the American Legion’s women’s auxiliary members. He ate at a long table full of talkative and gossipy cops and feds, and he tuned them all out. He wanted to get through this day, do his work, and let the summit circus leave. Newspapers were passed around, with loud screaming headlines about the success of the summit, and buried in them were brief stories about Tony. If anyone said anything about his brother, he was certain he would punch out the first one, but no one did. They seemed to know enough to leave him alone.
If he was fortunate, in the next day or so, his family would be freed, through either Hanson or Groebke. If not, then the hell with what Groebke had said, he’d go to Camp Carpenter and demand to see the commandant and get his family out of there. Whatever it took, he would get them out.
At his desk again, he tossed aside the old message from Mrs. Walton to contact the medical examiner. As he dove through a pile of burglary reports, trying to find some pattern, some new angle of attack, a woman’s voice said: “Inspector? Inspector Miller?”
He swiveled in his chair.
“Yes?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“The desk sergeant. He told me to come see you.”
He got up and dragged over an empty chair, trying to hide his displeasure. He hated these refugee matters. “Please, do sit down.”
“Thanks,” she said carefully. The women had blond hair cut in a bob, and her worn light blue cotton dress spoke of careful mending. She sat down and gripped a battered black purse in her lap. Her accent was British.
“So,” he said, picking up a fountain pen and a notepad. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Alicia Hale,” she told him. “I’m looking for my husband. Your Red Cross helped locate him, so I know he’s in your city, and I know who he’s been seen with. Some kind of writer. This is the third time I’ve come here looking for help, and I hope you can do something.”
From her purse, she took out a black-and-white snapshot of a smiling man wearing a British military uniform. Sam studied the photo and said, “Is it Reginald Hale?”
She smiled in astonishment. “You know my Reggie?”
He handed the photo back to her. “I’ve run into him a couple of times. We have a mutual acquaintance. Your husband’s missing a leg, correct?”
She placed the photo carefully into her purse, as if afraid someone might steal it. “Yes, he lost that during the invasion. We were separated soon afterward; Reggie was evacuated with some of the wounded, and I stayed behind. We’ve only managed to exchange a few letters over the years.”
“Oh. And if I may ask, how did you get here?”
She frowned. “Through bribes, what else? The new government has been issuing travel visas for humanitarian reasons. Just a drop in the bucket, but it makes for nice propaganda. If you pay enough for them, the government grants them. The visas work only in North America. Mothers and wives aren’t allowed to see the POWs in Germany, now, are they?”
“Prisoners are still being kept? I remember reading a story a couple of months ago saying the last of the POWs had been sent home.”
“Ha,” she said, and he noted how rigidly her hands were holding the purse. “A load of cod swollop, that is. Most of our boys are working in arms factories in France and Germany. Half starved and overworked, that’s what they are.”
He wondered what she would say if she knew what he had done yesterday to save Hitler’s life and prolong the POWs’ misery. He said, “So. You can’t find your husband, is that it?”
“Not in this soddin’ mess, can I? But I found out he spends time with this writer—”
“Walter Tucker,” Sam supplied. Alicia Hale nodded and continued.
“I had to pay a taxi man a hefty fare to bring me to the man’s flat, but he wasn’t there, and the desk sergeant, he said maybe you could help me.”
Sam asked, “Mrs. Hale, is it possible your husband’s papers are no longer in order?”
“Who the hell knows? Does that make any difference?”
“Not to me, but it may explain why he’s hiding out—with all the hoopla over this summit.”
She seemed to shiver. “To think you Yanks are treating that bloody bastard like royalty! Should ’ave sunk his boat when it got here, you should ’ave.”
“Maybe so,” he said, not wanting to think any more of the summit, “but if we can find Walter, I’m sure we can find your husband.”
“That would be brilliant.”
He put his pen down, “Are you here to take him back to England?”
A violent shake of her head. “Not bloody likely. No, I’ve got a cousin who has a farm up in Manitoba. Once I get my Reggie, we’re going there and never going back. Not ever.”
“Good for you,” Sam said. “Look. Let’s go see if we can find your husband. I have an idea of where to start.”
He took her to his Packard, dented and scratched from the previous day’s desperate drive. A part of him was still mourning his brother and aching at the thought of Sarah and Toby behind barbed wire, but he forced his focus to the job, and he closed the passenger door after she slid in.
When he started the car, he asked, “What part of England are you from, Mrs. Hale?”
“London.”
“Oh. What’s London like nowadays?”
He headed toward the center of the city. The checkpoints had all come down. With the summit over and a success, it looked as though security had dissolved, although there were still armed National Guardsmen at each corner.
“Horrible, the city is, simply horrible.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She sat properly and primly, purse again in her lap. “Parts haven’t been rebuilt since the bombing and street fighting. Food, petrol, clothing, they’re still rationed, but if you know your way around the black market, almost anything can be had. In reichsmarks—the pound is worthless. People have to make the most awful decisions every day. Taking a government job or cooperating with the officials… are you being a collaborator? Or are you just a realist? Do you show allegiance to King Edward, even though he’s only on the throne thanks to Herr Hitler. Or allegiance to the queen and her daughters marooned in Canada? The resistance—are they truly fighting for freedom? Or are they just terrorists and criminals? The interior zones, the unoccupied zones—some say that’s the worst. At least in the occupied areas, the Jerries keep some sort of order… the miserable bastards.”
He turned in to a bank parking lot and found an empty space. As he switched off the engine, she said, “Is it true, what I heard? That Churchill’s been arrested in New York?”
“Yeah, it’s true. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I hope the Jerries hang the fat bastard and then shoot him, make sure he’s dead. It’s all his fault this happened.”
She opened the passenger door but remained motionless. Sam, too, sat still and listened. “In ’40, after France fell, there were rumors Hitler wanted an armistice, wanted a peace treaty,” she continued. “It wouldn’t have been all milk and honey, but we would have been left alone, for the most part. Drunk Winnie wouldn’t sit still for it. That belligerent old bastard, fight them on the landing fields, on the beaches, blah bloody blah. Spurned old Hitler, he did. And after the invasion, the government collapsed and tried to make peace, but it was too late then. Too late for me and my Reggie.”
As they walked, he grasped her elbow and leaned in to her and said, “Like I said, the trick is to find Walter. After that, we can find your husband.”
Alicia looked around at the swelling crowds. “Going to take some luck, isn’t it, then?”
“Walter is a regular when it comes to his writing. Once a week he produces a short story for one of the magazines, and every day he goes to the post office, always at about noon. And that’s where we’re going.”
People swept by, some carrying small American flags, and from the bits of overheard conversation, he learned what was happening: President Long was motoring back from the shipyard after yesterday’s triumph, and the local Party, doing a good job of grassroots efforts, had turned out this crowd to cheer him on. The Party… He shuddered at what would be waiting for him when the summit was over. Throwing his lot in with the marshal and the Nats, he thought.
The National Guardsmen had moved into the streets, rifles held up in a long, flowing honor guard. He found his fingers tightening on Alicia Hale’s arm. “That’s the post office,” he explained. “Walter should be either entering or leaving in the next few minutes.”
Sirens wailed and Sam said, “We’ll wait for the motorcade to come by and then cross the street. We do it now, we might get run down.”
She just smiled, and he felt a flash of envy for the wounded British vet, to have such a woman find the means and strength to cross the ocean and come to a strange city, to find her mate.
There. Could it be?
He leaned in to her and said over the approaching sirens, “Jackpot. There he is, going inside.”
Sure enough, there was Walter trundling up the wide granite steps, worn leather valise in one hand. He disappeared into the building. The wail of the sirens grew louder.
Alicia had her hands up over her ears, squeezing them, her purse hanging off her wrist. “I hate sirens. Ever since the air raids.”
Sam tried to give her a reassuring smile. The sirens yowled louder as the motorcade became visible, people waving their flags, cheers and applause. Three cars came up the road, Secret Service agents perched on the running boards, President Long in the rear seat of the last vehicle, waving his straw boater. Some of the crowd started chanting, “Long, Long, Long!,” but Sam heard another chant rise up at the same time: “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” Hearing those voices, looking at his poorly dressed neighbors, bad skin and bad teeth, poor shoes, patched suits and dresses, he felt the power in their cries. They had hope again, hope after so many years. He had a trembling thought that they would be betrayed again, that it was all a lie. Oh, for some there would be jobs, but those jobs would come with a price tag: devotion and blind adherence to the Kingfish. And for those on relief, the relief funded in part by the Jewish slave labor, they would pay the same price. These people would be asked to sign over their vote and freedom in exchange for a steady paycheck, and who could blame them if they did?
After the cars went by in a cloud of exhaust and dust, Walter came out of the post office, joined by a man who was walking with some difficulty.
Sam turned to Alicia. “Your husband, does he have a fake leg? A prosthetic?”
She raised her voice over the crowd. “Yes. He wrote me about it… an American charity group presented it to him last year. He doesn’t need his crutches anymore.”
They were blocked in by the crowd, still clapping, still chanting “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” He watched Walter and Reginald talking and then the crowd shifted and he lost view. When he gained the view again, the British airman was gone.
Walter was still there.
Reginald was gone.
On two legs. Not a set of crutches like before.
People were jostling and bumping them. He pulled her to a nearby utility pole, pushed her against it, and said, “You stay here. I’ll make my way across the street, talk to Walter, find out where your husband went.”
“You’re quite kind. It’s been so very long since I’ve seen him.”
Something in her voice touched him. “You must still be proud of him, a hero pilot and all that.”
Tears were in her eyes, but her face was puzzled. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Your husband. Reginald. A pilot in the RAF. You must be quite proud.”
She said, “You’re quite wrong, Inspector. Reggie was never a flier. Not ever.”
Now it seemed as though the crowd had vanished, that it was now just the two of them, staring at each other in disbelief. “You showed me his photo,” Sam said incredulously. “In uniform. He told me he was a pilot. And so did Walter.”
A firm shake of the head. “I think I bloody well know what my husband did in the service. He was not a pilot.”
Sam stared into her determined face. “What was he?”
“Royal Engineers.”
“Royal Engineers? Doing what?”
When she told him, he broke free, shoving his way through the crowd.
Running across the street, he almost got hit by a speeding Chevy as another motorcade roared by, this one carrying reporters and newsreel photographers. When he got to the post office, out of breath, Sam elbowed his way almost viciously through the crowds, feeling the same urgency and despair that had seized him yesterday when he was trying to reach his brother.
Where in the hell was Walter?
The writer had disappeared. Sam ran up the steps, looked around. There. Walter was going down the street, joining the streams of people, heading to the B&M railroad station to bid the successful President farewell.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. At long last, the Depression seemed to have met its match.
He rejoined the crowd, forcing his way through, holding up his badge, saying over and over, “Police business, move! Police business, move!” But it was like some damn festival, the people were so happy and wouldn’t get out of the way. Elbows were sharply jabbed into his ribs, and once a heavyset woman stepped on his foot with a high heel, but by the time the station came into view, he was close.
He spotted the pudgy shape moving ahead. Sam took a breath, pushed his way past an older couple, almost causing the woman to fall.
He grabbed Walter’s coat collar.
“Hey!” Walter called out, and Sam spun him around. A bout of nervous laughter came from his tenant. “Oh, Sam! Christ, what a fright you gave me. I thought I was being robbed. Or even arrested.”
Sam had his hand on Walter’s coat and dragged him to a hardware store and its doorway. He pushed Walter in and, breathing hard, said, “You’ve got one minute to tell me what the hell is going on here, or I’ll turn you over to the feds. Let’s see how your college background helps when they give you an ax and a fifty-foot pine to cut down.”
Walter tried to laugh again, but the nervous sound seemed to strangle in his throat. His white shirt was wrinkled, and his red necktie was barely tied about his plump neck. He glanced around and said, “Really, Sam, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Walter, where’s your valise?”
“My what?”
“Your valise. Your briefcase. Where the hell is it? It never leaves your side. You’ve told me that often enough.”
“I suppose I left it at home this morning when I—”
Sam slapped his face. “Don’t lie to me!” he raged. “I saw you carry it into the post office, and you were carrying it when you left with Reggie Hale!”
Tears were streaming down the bewildered older man’s face. Sam grabbed his shirt collar, twisted it, shoved him against the doorway. “He’s not a pilot, is he? He’s in the Royal Engineers. Bomb disposal unit. That’s how he lost his leg. Not being shot down by a German fighter plane. Injured when a bomb went off as he was trying to—”
The valise was gone.
Reggie Hale was gone.
An expert in explosives.
Heading to the train station.
“You…” Sam left the sentence unfinished, and ran back out to the crowded sidewalk. Now Walter was there, desperately clinging to him, trying to hold him back.
“Sam! Please! It’s too late! Sam!”
Sam tried to punch Walter, but this time the exprofessor surprised him by ducking his head and then coming back up and pleading, “It has to happen! It has to happen this way! There’s no other choice!”
“You… you’re going to kill the President!”
In a stunning move, Walter struck him, and Sam rocked back on his heels. “No!” Walter shouted. “Not a president! A dictator, an emperor: A fraud who just pledged our lives, our sacred honor, to help one of the great monsters of our time to slaughter millions. That’s what’s out there, about to leave Portsmouth. Washington, Lincoln, Wilson—those were presidents. Not that freak of nature, that accident of circumstance!”
Sam broke free, plunged again into the crowd.
What to do?
A phone in this chaos?
He looked around. No cops. No National Guardsmen.
Where the hell was LaCouture when you needed him?
The crowd swept him closer. There was the platform, and the President stood up there, waving his hat, wrapping up a speech whose words couldn’t be heard, and cheering. Sam felt his body go rigid, bracing for the platform to disintegrate in a cloud of flames and broken wood.
Bang.
He flinched.
The band started playing a Sousa march, the bass drum banging. There were more cheers, and then Long moved out of view and Sam’s throat clenched up.
This was the man who had imprisoned his brother, had imprisoned and killed so many others, and whose thugs found great joy in using his brother as a pawn to be tossed away, destroyed when he was no longer needed. Walter was right. The man wasn’t his President. He was a criminal.
And Sam’s wife and son were in a prison controlled by this man and his people.
But let him die, to stand here and let it happen… A rush of emotions surged through him, led by revenge. Let the goddamn Kingfish get killed. Why not? The bastard deserved it as much as Hitler did.
He stood still, frozen, among the happy, jostling crowd.
And yet… and yet…
There were thousands and thousands of Jewish refugees alive in the United States because of Long. Tens of thousands of Jews who hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been gassed, hadn’t been shot. And thousands more were on their way.
But Long was the key, as his boss had said. Without Long, there was no agreement. With Long dead—maybe things would improve. Maybe.
But with Long dead, thousands more—without a doubt—would die.
Sam kept moving, shouldering through the crowd, holding up his inspector’s badge, pushing ahead, seeing in his mind’s eye poor Otto, starved and beaten and away from home, Otto and his barracks mates, depending on Long’s decision, depending on the Americans, depending on Sam, goddammit.
On the platform there was a knot of people at one end, waiting to get onto the Ferdinand Magellan. The Portsmouth cops let him through, thank God, and now he was on the platform, running, the stench of fear and burnt coal in his nostrils, and up ahead were men carrying submachine guns under their coats, other people, newsreel men, and waving a boater, President Long, whooping it up, laughing—
Joining the crowd, walking deliberately, limping, Reginald Hale, carrying Walter’s old valise, walking straight toward Long and the crowd of people—
A Secret Service agent, large and wide in a black suit, shoulder holster visible under his coat, tried to block Sam, who shouldered him aside like the football player he once was, and he elbowed and spun—
“Hale! Stop! Right there!”
Reginald Hale turned at the sound of his name, his face suddenly white and frightened. He carried the valise with both hands. Sam pulled his revolver out, holding up his badge in the other hand, yelling loudly, “Bomb! He’s got a bomb! He’s got a bomb!”
Yells and screams and a phalanx of armed men grouped around the President, their submachine guns held up like spears of some old Roman guard. Hale was moving forward, too, the valise held against his chest like a prized possession, moving faster.
Sam shot once, and Reginald stumbled, fell to his knees. Men and women on the platform flattened to the ground, screaming as the guns opened up. Sam saw it all as the British army officer, his body jerking from the blows of the .45-caliber slugs, fell backward and rolled off the platform to the railway bed below, and as a couple of the braver guards stepped forward to fire again at him, the shattering boom! of the explosion tore them to pieces.
Sam sagged against a cement pillar, opening and closing his mouth, his ears ringing. A man came into view, kneeling next to him. Sirens were wailing. The man’s suit was soiled with coal dust and blood. He mouthed something, and Sam said, “Huh? What?”
The man yelled into Sam’s ear: “I said I need you to come with me.”
“I can’t move.”
“You better move,” he answered, “because you’re putting the President’s life in danger, you moron.” The man grabbed Sam’s arm, and Sam angrily shook it off and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Parker. Agent in charge of the President’s Secret Service detail.”
“Is he okay? The President?”
“Oh, shit yeah, but he’s had to change his underwear. Do me a favor and forget I told you that.”
He helped Sam to his feet, Sam letting him. There were shiny spent cartridge cases and pools of blood, and by the platform edge, where Reginald Hale had fallen, there were two figures covered by stained white sheets. Expensive leather shoes poked out from under the sheets. Wooden police barricades were being set up, keeping screaming crowds and desperate photographers and newsreel men at bay. At the other end of the station platform, the Ferdinand Magellan was at rest, smoke and steam curling lazily up into the sky.
Parker gripped Sam’s arm again and said, “Come on.”
“What for? And why am I putting the President in danger?”
Parker looked at him as if he were a first-grader appearing in a high school math class. “The President wants to see you. The man who saved his life. And you’re putting him in more danger because I want him the hell out of this town. Two assassination attempts on Hitler and Long in two days is too much. The quicker I get him back to Washington, the better, and that’s why I need you.”
Sam was half dragged, half propelled to the rear of the train, which had a wrought-iron railing about the stern car, complete with presidential seal. Secret Service and two of Long’s Legionnaires stood guard there, all armed with pistols or submachine guns. “Do me a favor, okay?” Parker told Sam. “Do this thing and I owe you one, bud. Just go in there, let the President gush all over you, then get the hell out. Quicker you’re done, quicker I can get back to my job. Oh, and you need to do something for me—your sidearm. Nobody but Secret Service and his Legionnaires see him with weapons.”
Sam said, “I’m not sure where it is.”
Parker grunted, flipped open Sam’s coat, and pulled the revolver from the shoulder holster. Sam didn’t even remember putting it back after shooting Reggie Hale.
He said nothing as Parker led him past the unsmiling men. As the door opened, Sam ducked in, his ears still ringing, his legs trembling. There were men crowded in the leather- and wood-lined train car. The window shades were drawn. A Southern voice, so familiar from radio and newsreels, boomed: “Everyone get the hell out, all right? I want to see this young man, this hero, and I want to thank him myself!”
In a matter of seconds, Sam was alone with the President of the United States.
Huey Long sat on a light yellow settee, plump legs sprawled out before him on the carpeted floor. He had on a bright red silk dressing gown and blue pajama trousers. His feet were clad in black slippers, and a thick glass was in one hand. Long was grinning, but his face was red, and Sam saw his hand was shaking, making the amber-colored liquor slosh back and forth in the glass.
“So!” came that familiar voice. “The man of the hour! My personal savior. Just who the hell are you, son?”
Sam stepped forward on the fine Oriental carpeting, trying to take it all in. Part of him couldn’t believe he was here, talking to the man, and part of him was also aware of his stained and torn suit.
“I’m Sam Miller, sir. I’m an inspector with the Portsmouth Police Department.”
“You’re the one who warned us all? Who fired that first shot, eh? Against that mad bomber?”
“That’s right, sir.”
The florid face became suspicious. “You said your name was Miller. Dammit, didn’t a guy named Miller try to kill Hitler yesterday? That man a relative of yours?”
“Yes… a relative, I’m sorry to say.”
He waited, then the train seemed to stabilize as Long laughed and roared, “Damn, relatives can be a hell of a thing. If you knew what some of my relations back in Winn Parish were up to… I’m jus’ glad you were here savin’ my bacon at the last minute. How in hell did you know what was gonna happen, son?”
“Sir, it’s a fairly long story, well, I think you’d want to get out of Portsmouth instead of listening to it. It’s a pretty complex investigation.”
Long laughed again. “Damn, boy, that’s what they were tryin’ to do to me—to get my ass out of town—but hell, I told ’em, first, I don’t want to skedaddle out like some scared nigra hearing a haunt from the woods, and second, I want to meet the brave peace officer who not only saved me but saved his country.”
The President’s eyes narrowed as he took a healthy swallow. “You know that, right? You saved your country, son. Only the Kingfish could get that son-of-a-bitch housepainter over here to sign that treaty, and that treaty, son, is gonna mean millions of jobs for people at home. None of us got any taste to get into that fight over there in Europe, but if we can make some money off the deal, then why the hell not?”
Sam thought of Burdick, knew they and the others would survive with Long still alive. “That’s a good point, sir. A good deal.”
Long finished off his drink with a contented sigh. “It certainly is.” He quickly got up and extended a hand, which Sam shook. His skin was cold and clammy. Long said, “This wasn’t the first time someone tried to kill me, and it probably won’t be the last. Hey, you wouldn’t be interested in being in the Secret Service, would you? I sure could make it happen. You could be on the White House detail. Some travel but”—he laughed again—“I’m told there are some side benefits.”
“No, sir, thank you. I think I’ll stay here.”
It was an odd thing, it was as though a radio switch had been clicked somewhere behind those bright eyes of President Long; he had seemingly lost all interest in Sam. Tugging his robe closer to his ample frame, he said, “Well, son, thanks again for what you did, and for comin’ in to talk to me. If you ever find yourself in D.C., by all means, stop by, and if there’s anything I can do—”
It came to Sam like a flash of lightning from a cloudless sky. “Mr. President, there is one thing you could do for me.”
“Eh? What’s that?”
Sam took a breath. “Sir, my wife and son. They could use your help.”
“How’s that?”
“My wife, Sarah, and my little boy, Toby. They’re being kept at the internment facility at Camp Carpenter, outside of Manchester. They haven’t done anything wrong. They were picked up by mistake just before the summit. I’ve tried to get them out, but…”
Long pursed his lips. “Your wife, she didn’t do anything?”
“Mr. President, she’s just a school secretary. She’s the daughter of the city’s mayor. She’s a supporter of yours for years now, and my boy, he’s only eight. How could they be a threat?”
There was silence for a few moments, just the grumbling and rumbling of the steam engine. Sam could feel sweat trickling down his neck. Long stared at him. Then he nodded. “All right. You write down their names right there on that pad, and I’ll check it out, and maybe I can get ’em sprung.”
“Mr. President?”
“Eh?”
“Could you make it an official pardon? That way, my wife won’t have to be scared about being picked up again. You know how mistakes are made.”
Sam wondered if he had pushed too hard, if everything was threatened. But Long smiled and said, “That must be some wife, you’re so desperate to get her home. All right, a pardon. I guess you deserve that after what you did for me and your nation. But I need the names, and they need to be checked out. Now, if you don’t mind, Inspector…”
Sam didn’t mind. He took out his fountain pen, scrawled Sarah and Toby’s names on the notepad, hardly believing he had pulled it off. Long took it and headed to the far door, yelling out, “All right, you sons of bitches, I got one more piece of paperwork to take care of, and then let’s get this train goin’ the hell out of here!”
Sam went out the way he’d come in, and by the time his feet were back on the platform, the sharp shrill of the train whistle cut through the afternoon air. The Ferdinand Magellan glided away, the President, and current dictator, of the United States safe and sound.
Sam looked again at the sheet-covered bodyguards, and he shuddered, thinking of the bloody mess on the tracks below. Reginald Hale, killed in a foreign land, trying to murder a foreign leader.
He knew he should feel remorse at what had happened, regret for the poor man’s wife, who had done so much in vain to free her husband. But as he walked down the bloodstained platform, he didn’t care.
His family was coming home.
He spent several hours in Marshal Hanson’s office, telling and retelling his story to Hanson, to the Secret Service, and even to a bandaged and angry Special Agent LaCouture of the FBI. And when it was over, LaCouture said to the Secret Service, “You heard what the man said about Hale and how he got here. I want arrests to start right away. We’ll start with that writer tenant of yours, that Tucker.”
Sam said, “Walter… he’s just a science professor, a pulp writer, that’s all.”
LaCouture touched the bandage across his broken nose and snarled, “The hell he is. He’s an accomplice to an assassination attempt.”
Hanson intervened, “Sam, you know that’s how it’s going to be. I know he’s your neighbor, but he’s got to be brought in.”
LaCouture glared at him and said, “Just be thankful I ain’t chargin’ you, too, Inspector.”
Sam said, “You know, Jack, your nose really looks good. It truly does. Do you want me to rearrange it again?”
LaCouture cursed and moved toward him, but Hanson and two Secret Service agents hauled him back, and Hanson said, “All right, all right. My inspector here has had a long day. I’m sure he can talk to you tomorrow if you’ve got any other questions. Okay?”
With that, the office emptied until it was just Hanson and Sam.
“Sam,” Hanson said, going back to his desk. “You did something magnificent today, something historical. You saved the President’s life.”
“Tell you the truth, I didn’t care about the President,” Sam said bitterly. “I cared about those poor bastards in Burdick and everywhere else. That’s what I was thinking.”
Hanson took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief. “If you say so. Look, you’re beat. Time for you to go home, take a few days off. Then you come back, and we’ll clear all this up.”
Sam was too tired to argue. “Sure. That sounds good.”
As he went to the door, Hanson called out, “One more thing—”
Sam turned and saw something flying at him. He caught it instinctively with one hand. He looked down at the thick black leather wallet, opened it up. The gold shield of an inspector. Not the silver shield of an acting inspector.
“Congratulations, Sam,” Hanson said. “Now get the hell out of here.”
Sam clasped the wallet and shield tightly in his hand and tried to remember when this scrap of leather and metal had once meant so much.
At his desk, he picked up his coat draped over the chair, the sleeve still damaged where that cig boy had tried to cut him the other day. Poor sweet Sarah. Never did get around to mending that sleeve. By his typewriter was the day’s mail. One envelope stood out—from the state’s division of motor vehicles. He recalled the request he had made so many lifetimes ago. He tore open the envelope, read the listing inside of yellow Ramblers belonging to area residents of Portsmouth.
There was only one. He read and reread the name and decided it was time to go home.
He pulled the Packard into his driveway, and he saw lights on downstairs. Lots and lots of lights.
Sam leaped out of the car, raced up the front steps, and opened the door.
Sarah. His Sarah, standing there, his lovely Sarah, looking at him, staring at him.
It was wrong. Everything was wrong.
She was standing there, arms folded. Her face was pale and looked thinner. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while, and her pale blue dress was stained and wrinkled. Her silk stockings looked like they had runs, and her shoes were scuffed and soiled.
“Sarah,” he said.
There was a pause. “You got a haircut.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he replied, knowing nothing could be said about Burdick, nothing at all; that secret was terrible to keep but too terrible to share.
A voice from the kitchen, sobbing. “Mommy, look at what happened to my models! They’re all smashed!”
Sam called out, “Toby! What’s wrong?”
His son ran in, holding a cardboard box in front of him, the smashed pieces of his models sticking out. Sam’s heart ached at seeing the tears on his boy’s face. He said, “Toby, look, I’m sorry, we’ll get you new ones.”
“But Dad, these are mine! We built them together!”
Looking at Sarah stiffly standing there, Sam said carefully, “Bad men came into the house, Toby. Bad men came in and broke your toys. But I promise you, we’ll either fix them or we’ll get new ones.”
“It won’t be the same! It won’t! Why didn’t you stop them, Daddy? Why didn’t you stop the bad men?”
“Toby, please…”
“You promised! You promised! I hate you! I hate you!”
“Toby, back to your room.” Sarah raised her voice, “Mommy needs to talk to Daddy.”
Still sobbing, Toby tore from the room, carrying the broken pieces with him, as Sam looked to his wife.
“How long have you been back?” he asked. I hate you, the little voice had shouted. I hate you…
“Only a few minutes.”
“How did you get here?”
She said, “A Long’s Legionnaire who hadn’t taken a bath in a month drove us back. We got home to this.” Sarah gestured to the broken furniture, the piles of books, the debris of what their life had been.
Sam said, “Long’s Legionnaires broke in, while I was away on the job.”
“And you didn’t have time to clean up so Toby and I didn’t have to look at this when we got home?”
He ran a hand over his hair. “The past couple of days, I haven’t had time to take a breath. I did the best I could.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said, lips pursed. “You saved the life of the Kingfish. Congratulations, I guess.”
Something dark flared inside him. “Not guess, Sarah. You should say congratulations. It’s because I saved Long that I was able to get you and Toby out. Nothing else was going to work. I saved his Cajun ass and in return, he got you and the boy out.”
“Sure, I understand.” Her eyes blazed at him. “Acting like a dictator or a Roman emperor dispensing favors because it suits him. I understand a lot. And I’m sorry about Tony, Sam. I truly am.” Tears glittered in her eyes, and she wiped at them and then refolded her arms.
He stared at her, wondering what was going on behind those sharp brown eyes, and then he heard himself saying, “Why did you do it, Sarah?”
“Do what?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Why did you give yourself up to the FBI?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Toby and I got picked up while we were walking down one of the lake roads to a neighbor’s house.”
“That doesn’t make sense—you and Toby being picked up like that, just walking along the road. Unless the FBI was following you, which I doubt. With the summit coming here, with all the resources being stretched out, I can’t see why the FBI would spare the agents to tail you almost a hundred miles away.”
She bit her lower lip again. Sam said, “But after I told you to get out of your dad’s place, you must have made a phone call. You surrendered to the FBI. You wanted to be arrested. Why?”
Sarah didn’t say a word.
He pressed on. “Doesn’t make sense. You giving yourself up to the FBI. Unless you did that on purpose so I’d be blackmailed and would have to cooperate with them when they were looking for my brother. Somebody wanted me to look for Tony. Somebody wanted Tony to be found.”
Her voice quavered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sarah… you can do so many things with ease and grace, from taking care of Toby when he has the flu to cooking a Sunday meal… but you can’t lie worth shit. And another thing—you lied to me when you said you didn’t know anyone who owned a yellow Rambler. But your friend from school, Mrs. Brownstein. The one who helped you with the Underground Railroad. Your mahjongg partner. She owns a yellow Rambler.”
“How am I supposed to know who drives what?” she said carelessly. “What difference does it make?”
“The difference is that a Rambler was used to slow down the train the night that body was dumped. Like it was a setup. And it was. Wasn’t it?”
Tears came back to her eyes, and Sam knew that the woman in front of him, his wife, his lover, the mother of his child, the high school cheerleader he had wooed for such a delightful time, was a stranger.
“Who was he?” No reply.
“Tell me Sarah,” Sam went on. “The man on the train. Oh, I know his real name and where he was coming from. He had escaped from a camp in New Mexico. And what does he do? Does he go south to Mexico, to escape from America, or does he go west to California, where he can disappear in the crowds? No. He makes his way east, heading to the small port city of Portsmouth. Your friend slows the train down enough to jump off, and he ends up here, right? At the city’s Underground Railroad station. A station that—”
A memory, incomplete but coming clear.
“This station… your station… gets wanted people up north to Montreal,” Sam said. “That’s the whole point of why he came here. To get to Montreal. And up in Montreal this week is a delegation from the Soviet Union. Not in Vancouver, or Ottawa, the capitol. They were waiting for someone, weren’t they? Why was he so important?”
“Please…”
“Sarah, who was he?”
“I don’t know,” she said urgently. “All I know is that he had to get off that train, get in our basement, and then get out the next morning. He had to be in Montreal. He just had to be. But he was murdered.”
“And you didn’t tell me any of this that day you knew he was murdered?”
She said, “Not my place to tell you that.”
“Who killed him?”
“How the hell should I know?” she snapped.
“Because you know more than I ever imagined,” Sam said. “And you surrendered to the FBI, didn’t you? Betrayed me so I’d feel compelled to find Tony, to find him and set him up for his murder.”
“Sam…”
“Dammit, that’s what Tony told me just before he was murdered. That there was a grand plan and he and I were part of it. He knew all along he was on a suicide mission. He knew I would play my part as a cop, and you did your part as well.”
Then something seemed to slam in the back of his head. “You used Toby, didn’t you? My God, Sarah, you used our son!” Her face seemed set in granite. He had to catch his breath before he could go on. “Toby asked a lot of questions about spies. Told me he didn’t like getting in trouble but sometimes he had to. That’s right, had to. He was so scared he started wetting the bed. And when he got in trouble at school, he’d see the principal. Frank Kaminski. You know who his brother is. You used Toby as a courier, didn’t you, Sarah? To pass along messages to Kaminski. And I bet you told him to get into trouble on purpose so he’d be sent to the principal’s office.”
He kept looking at the woman he once thought had no surprises for him. “Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s ordering you?”
She stared at him with an expression he had never seen before.
It was disdain.
“Sam… Toby’s hero, so true and noble… and you can’t even see what’s going on right in your own house, can you, Sam? The Underground Railroad—you think that got in place by accident? Do you think thousands of us, hell, tens of thousands, aren’t working day and night to defeat Long and crush Hitler? Do you?”
“Sarah—”
“Amateur revolutionaries, you called us. It’s always been the amateurs who made things right, who fought against the evil and the powerful. But we’re not amateurs, none of us, and we’re working with our brothers in Moscow, London, and yes, even Berlin, to set things right.”
He couldn’t believe what he was going to say next, but it was the only thing he could think of. “Who’s we?”
“Who cares? Its just labels, that’s all. Progressive, liberal, Communist, socialist, even Republican… labels. Call us the resistance, if you like. But what counts is the fight, what people bring to the fight, and I’ve been in the fight for years. Sam, do you know what it’s like to see children at your school, children in what’s supposed to be the richest and safest nation in the world, wearing scraps of blankets? To see brothers and sisters take turns eating breakfast because there’s not enough food at home? And who’s helping them? Nobody, that’s who! If that makes me a bad woman, someone who uses her family to help, then damn it all to hell, I’m proud to be a bad woman, a bad wife, a bad mother—”
“But what—”
She shook her head, furious. “So when I’m told to prepare for a guest from that scheduled train, I do just that. And when I’m told to give myself up to the FBI so that you do what has to be done for the greater good, whatever that is, then I do it. I’m sorry, and maybe you don’t believe me, but I didn’t know it was going to end with Tony being killed. And I didn’t know Tony was going to try to shoot Hitler. I just knew he was in terrible danger, that he was part of something I belonged to as well.”
“And what about Toby?”
She looked toward the boy’s bedroom, and her sharp voice faltered. “He’s a brave boy. A very brave boy… He did what I asked him to do, whether it was delivering messages or trusting his mother, and I wish he had a brave father to look up to.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
Her sad eyes pierced him. “What do you think? From what you’ve told me, what I’ve seen in the papers, Tony was ready to sacrifice all to get himself killed in an attempt to assassinate Hitler to draw attention from what was being planned for that bastard Long, and there you are, protecting both Hitler and Long. Two fascists destroying what’s left of civilization. I secretly saw Tony a few days ago. He said he was doing it all for Toby and what kind of life our son was going to have. Can you say the same thing?”
“I was doing my job,” he countered, knowing how weak it sounded.
“That’s some job you’ve got there, Sam Miller.” She walked away from him, then turned, eyes wet with tears. “I’m going to my dad’s place, Sam. And I’m taking Toby with me.”
He was chilled, as if his blood had been replaced by salt water from the harbor. “For how long?”
“However long it takes for me to think things through. I need to be with someone committed to our fight, someone who wants to change things, to make things better. You’re just part of the system, and… and I’m not sure if I can live with someone like that. Over the years, you’ve done some things here and there—giving money to refugee kids, looking the other way at our basement station, ignoring some of the stupid laws from D.C.—but I need more.”
“Sarah, you’ve got to—”
“Sam, please,” she interrupted. “I feel guilty about a lot of things, and one of those things is your brother. Right now I want Toby to be proud of his dead uncle, a man who sacrificed himself for everything, and I’m not sure what Toby has to be proud of when he sees you. And I don’t like feeling that way.”
“So your dad’s place is the answer?”
Again a sad look that went right through him. “I don’t see why not. I’ve always trusted Dad even when you’ve had nothing but contempt for him. I admire him, too. He’s put everything on the line to do what’s right.”
Then it made sense. The visit to the store days ago from the man called Eric the Red. The encounter at the island: You think you know everything about me, everything about how I think and work. Kid, you know shit.
Sam said, “Your dad is your connection, isn’t he? The one who told you what to do. On the surface, he’s a full-fledged member of the Party. Underneath, he’s something else.”
“Very good, Inspector. You figured that out all on your own.”
With his newly minted inspector’s badge weighing in his coat pocket, he found he could not say a word. And what about Pierce Island, he thought, should he tell her about Pierce Island and her father and the sailor?
No, that would sound like cheap revenge and nothing else.
Again saying words he couldn’t believe he was saying. “So you’re off to be with your father, your resistance leader.”
“For now.”
He could hear the sobs from his son, weeping over his shattered models, crying over the broken dream that his father could protect him. Sorry, kid, he thought, so very sorry.
“Tell Toby… tell him I have to go out on a case, all right? I don’t want to make a scene. Tell him I’ll make it all right.”
Her arms folded tight against her chest, she didn’t reply. He went to the door, stopped. “You’re pretty good at thinking you know what drives me and what I do, but in the past few days, I’ve seen things and done things I can’t tell you about, Sarah. Important things that have made more of a difference than you and your friends could ever dream of.”
“So says you,” she said coldly.
“Yeah, so says me,” he said. “And despite what you think now, we can work this out. It’ll take time, but I know we can work it out.”
“I’m not so sure, Sam. I’m really not. It would take a lot.”
“Okay,” he said. “I get the message. It’ll take a lot, and that’s what I’ll do.”
Outside, the damp air from the harbor chilled him.
The day was cold and windy, and Sam stood by himself on a knoll at the Calvary Cemetery in Portsmouth, near the border of the small town of Greenland. The previous night he had once again slept in Hanson’s office. He drew his coat closer, watching the ceremony finish up. There was a plain wooden casket, and a priest was saying prayers over the mangled body of his brother. Except for two cemetery workers standing by themselves, shovels in hand, this part of the cemetery was empty. The ceremony was supposed to be secret, but somehow the news had gotten out.
On the other side of the iron gates there were newspaper reporters and a couple of newsreel crews, all eager to record the burial of the attempted assassin of Adolf Hitler, but the priest—his parish priest, Father Mullen from St. James Church—had denied them entrance. Sam supposed he should have attempted to tell Sarah about the funeral, but he was going to let that rest for now. Sarah would have to mourn Tony at her own time and pace. And he wasn’t surprised that he was the only mourner present. Being known as an associate of an assassin, someone who almost destroyed the summit that promised so much, was just too dangerous.
The priest finished, made a sign of the cross, and then came over, his vestments flapping in the breeze. Sam shook his hand and said, “Thanks, Father. I appreciate that.”
The priest nodded. “I knew your brother back when he was active in the shipyard, trying to make things better for the workers.”
Sam felt the words stick in his throat, knowing his brother and what he had done. “Excuse me for saying this, Father, but he could be a pain in the ass. But sometimes he was a good man, wasn’t he?”
“We’re all good men, Sam. But these are trying times, and all of us sometimes make compromises, sometimes make decisions… It’s not an easy time.”
Sam watched as the cemetery workers came out and, with a set of straps, lowered his brother’s body into the unmarked grave. He didn’t answer the priest.
He stood there for a while, then started walking to another gate of the cemetery, where he could avoid the crowd of reporters. He saw a man standing near a solitary pine tree. The man was watching him, and Sam changed direction to join him.
“Hello, Doc,” Sam said. “Sorry I’ve been avoiding you. It’s been a shitty few days.”
Dr. William Saunders, the county medical examiner, nodded in reply. “Yeah, it sure has. Sorry about your brother.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, don’t be so smug. I think you did a shitty thing, saving that asshole Long’s life.”
Sam replied evenly, “You and a bunch of others, I’m sure.” The medical examiner kept quiet. Sam said, “Doc, don’t play any goddamn games with me. I’m not in the mood. Why are you here? What’s so important?”
Saunders looked over Sam’s shoulder toward the downtown. “You know, we medical examiners, we sometimes pass along information to one another, little bits of professional knowledge that doesn’t get out to the public. Especially for those of us working in cities that have a large refugee population. You tend to look for odd things you don’t otherwise see in the course of your day-to-day work.”
Sam said, “What did you find? And how did you miss it the first time out?”
Saunders sighed. “I’m old, and I’m tired, and things get missed. I didn’t miss a damn thing on that autopsy. The poor guy’s neck was snapped, he was malnourished, he had that damn tattoo, and oh, by the way, his blood work came back normal. No poisons or toxins in his system. But I did miss something in his clothing…”
He reached into his pocket and took out a metal cylinder, less than an inch wide and perhaps two inches long. Saunders said, “In these troubled times, refugees use these capsules to transport important things. Diamonds, rubies, or a key to a safe deposit box. Women—God bless them, they have two receptacles available to hold such tubes, while we men have to do with just one. Ingenious, isn’t it? And when I was finally sorting through your dead man’s clothing, I found this tucked away in his underwear. When a man—or woman—dies, the sphincter muscles relax, and what’s up there, Inspector, will always come out.”
Sam took the cylinder from the medical examiner, looked at it, and then unscrewed the top. He looked inside. “Was it empty when you opened it?”
“No.”
“What was in it?”
Saunders looked at him; the scar on his throat was prominent. He said, “Sam… can I really trust you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Shit, I know that’s a tough question to ask, especially these days. What I’m getting at… can I trust you to keep my ass out of a labor camp, and to do something important?”
“You can trust me to keep you out of prison, as long as I have anything to say about it. What’s so important beyond that?”
The medical examiner coughed, a harsh sound coming from deep in his chest. “The last war, I spent months in those godforsaken trenches, trying to save the lives of men being gassed, shattered by shrapnel, and shot… and for what? To make the world safe for democracy. Corny, I know, but we believed it back then, and some of us, even in these worst of times, still believe it.”
“Just tell me, what was in that cylinder?”
Another pause, and the wind seemed to cut at him even deeper. He pushed aside the thought of how cold Tony’s grave must be.
Saunders said, “A special kind of film called microfilm. A process that reduces pages of documents to a single filmstrip.”
“A courier,” Sam said. “I’ll be damned. What kind of documents was he carrying?”
Saunders reached again into his coat pocket, pulled out a business-size envelope. “That’s for you to find out, Inspector. I processed the film, was able to make readable copies for you. I’ve looked at them, and I can’t figure it out. But I’m sure you will.”
“Was it another language?”
Saunders smiled. “Yeah, it was. But you’re an inspector. Just do the right thing, okay?”
Sam held the envelope. Made of paper, it seemed to weigh a ton. “That I’ll do. But Doc, after we talked last, just after that FBI guy and Gestapo guy met you, did you discuss the case with anyone else?”
“Nope. Not a soul.”
Sam lifted the envelope again. “Thanks, Doc. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to you earlier.”
The medical examiner said. “It’s okay, Sam. I’m sure it will work out.”
Sam said, “I’m glad you are. I’m not.”
The day after Tony’s burial, Sam stood in the football field of the Portsmouth High School, watching the FBI and the local contingent of Long’s Legionnaires processing arrested people and conducting interrogations over the assassination attempt on President Long. The matter of the attack on Hitler was over and complete, Tony Miller being the designated patsy. But the investigation into the attempted killing of the President was still going on, and it was a chance for the Legionnaires and the FBI to conduct a nice purge of the surrounding towns, using the assassination as a cover to arrest anyone and everyone who had pissed off the government.
Temporary barbed-wire fencing had been strung around the perimeter of the field, and canvas tents had been set up. The turf had been churned into a muddy mess by all the feet trampling through. Sam used his newly minted ID to gain access to one special prisoner. And as he had walked across the chewed-up field, the finger he had broken back during that championship game started aching again, like a reminder of what had been, what had been lost.
He remembered how, days ago, the night the body was discovered, he’d recalled the sweet memory of winning that game… and immediately that taste of victory being overcome with a taste of ashes, of seeing his dad triumphant over Tony’s acceptance at the Navy Yard, the bad son, the one who was always in trouble, the one always in Dad’s favor. And now Mom at a rest home, Dad and Tony buried, and this field where Sam had first become someone, had done something to be proud of, had now been turned into something else, just another prison. Like this country, he thought, going from a nation of laws to a nation of labor camps. When he had been a senior at this school, it had been a more innocent time. It had all been so black and white. To defeat one’s opponent, that’s all. Just to win.
Black and white. No shades of gray. God, how he missed those days.
A dozen men were being herded along in front of him, their shoes and boots muddy, their eyes downcast, each with one hand on the shoulder of the man in front, as they were prodded along by Long’s Legionnaires carrying pump-action shotguns. At the end of the line, a Legionnaire caught Sam’s eye, and he didn’t look away. He remembered that face. It was the Legionnaire who had strutted into the Fish Shanty so very long ago, the night he had first come across the dead man.
The Legionnaire grabbed the last man in line, brought him over to Sam. The Legionnaire grinned, breathing hard, his face bruised. “You’re that police inspector. The one that saved the President.”
“Yeah, I am,” Sam said, looking at the prisoner. His suit was well cut, and he had a trimmed black mustache and haircut. Sam recognized him as a businessman from the next city up the coast, Dover. Woods, was that his name?
The Legionnaire twisted the man’s arm, and Woods winced. The Legionnaire said, “Yeah, and you’re the inspector that was in that greasy-spoon restaurant the night me and Vern had to get new tires on our car ’cause some asshole knifed ’em. Vern and me, we got ambushed and tuned up a couple of days later.”
Sam said, “Look, I don’t—”
The Legionnaire said, “You may be so high and mighty, boy, but remember this, me and Vern and everyone else like us, we’re runnin’ the show. No matter if you like it or not.”
The young man pushed Woods hard in the small of the back. “Run, you son of a bitch, run,” and Woods, stumbling a bit in the mud, started running after the moving line of prisoners. Sam saw what was going to happen next, started to yell out, “No!” In one smooth and practiced motion, the Legionnaire lifted his shotgun and fired at the back of the running man. The hollow boom tore at Sam’s ears, and Woods crumpled to the muddy earth.
“So maybe you’re a hero today, bud,” the Legionnaire said, “but you and everyone else who don’t fall in line, you’re still shitheads, and you can still get shot while tryin’ to escape, and there’s nothin’ anybody can do about it. Understand?”
Sam felt his face burning. He had just seen a first-degree murder right in front of him, and been powerless to do anything. Not a goddamn thing. He walked away.
He sat in one corner of a small green canvas tent smelling of dampness and mildew. Inside were a table and a couple of wooden chairs sinking into the soil. The flap of the tent opened, and another Long’s Legionnaire peered in. “You Miller?”
“Yeah,” he said, not wanting to see again in his mind’s eye a man murdered to prove a point. That was all. A man dragged from his home today, accused of God only knew what, and because he was last in line and easy to grasp, he was shot dead.
“Your prisoner is coming,” the Legionnaire said.
The guard seemed to be in his early twenties, with close-cropped blond hair and Legionnaire’s uniform complete with Confederate-flag pin on the lapel. The look on his face seemed to indicate he would be equally comfortable in the uniform of the SS, just like his shotgun-wielding partner. “You the same Miller who saved the President?”
“I am,” Sam said, looking out at the mass of prisoners.
“Then it’d be an honor for us to buy you a drink or six when the day is through, if you don’t mind.”
Sam fought to keep a friendly smile on his face. “That sounds great, but my schedule’s pretty packed. I tell you what, you tell your friends here that I said hello. Okay?”
“Sure,” the Legionnaire said, and then another arrived, holding a man by the elbow. The man had on a light brown tweed suit but no necktie. His shoes had no laces. His hands were cuffed, and the second Legionnaire said, “The cuffs are comin’ off, boy, but you best behave. You got that?”
The man whispered, “Yes,” and Sam noticed his left eye was bruised and swollen. The prisoner rubbed at his wrists as the cuffs were removed, and both Legionnaires left.
“Hello, Walter,” Sam said.
“Sam, what a pleasant surprise.”
“Have a seat.”
The former science professor sat down in one of the chairs, breathed an apparent sigh of relief. “It feels good to be in a real chair. The interrogations… sometimes they ask you question after question and make you stand for hours… it doesn’t sound like much, but do it for hours, and you’ll see what kind of torture it is.”
“I can imagine,” Sam said.
Walter shook his head. “No, you can’t. Unless you’ve been here or someplace similar, you can’t.”
Sam looked to his wrist, where the hidden numeral was tattooed into his skin, was. “Walter, I’m not here to debate.”
His former tenant smiled wanly. “Of course, yes, of course. How in the world did you get in here? Lawyers and family are all being kept out while we stumble through our version of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives. Remember that, back in the ’30s? It was decided it was time for Hitler to kill or jail all his opponents, and they did. Oh, that was a time—”
“Walter, for once, will you shut the hell up?”
Walter did just that. Sam said, “I got in because I called in a favor from the Secret Service. Told them I needed to see you.”
“I take it you’re not here to free me.”
“Hardly. I’ve got two things I want to talk to you about. Remember the night I was called out for the body by Maplewood Avenue?”
“No, not really.”
“Of course you do. I had to come upstairs and unclog your sink. Who told you to do that, Walter? A couple of weeks earlier you had pulled the same stunt, clogging the sink with potato peels. You’re scatterbrained but not that scatterbrained. So who told you? Was it Sarah?”
Walter blinked. “She asked me to do something to get you upstairs for a while.”
“Did she say why?”
Walter squirmed in his seat, and Sam went on. “Sarah had a guest coming, right? Someone to go in the cellar, someone she didn’t want me to know was there. And she wanted me upstairs at a certain time so she could sneak the man in.”
“That’s what I surmised.” He wiped at his bruised eye with a soiled hand. “She didn’t say it so plainly, but yes, I believe that’s what she wanted. So who was that dead man?”
“Not your place to ask questions,” Sam said curtly. “Only to answer them.”
From his coat pocket he took out the papers the medical examiner had given him. “Take a look these, tell me what they mean.”
Walter looked puzzled, but he did as he was told. He unfolded the sheets and examined each one, sometimes holding them close to his undamaged eye. “There are some serious mathematical formulas in here. Even with my teaching background, I’m not sure I can puzzle them out.”
“You better try. I need for you to look at those equations and tell me what they mean.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” Walter insisted, his voice plaintive.
“Then, dammit, tell me why they’re important. Tell me why someone would be willing to die to protect these pages.”
Walter stared at him a moment. Then he bent again on the pages, pursing his bruised lips. Finally, he gathered the pages together and pushed them back across the table. “Can I ask you where you got these?”
“No.”
“Some research facility? A physics laboratory of some sort?”
“Walter…”
He moved in his chair, winced from something paining him. “A guess, that’s all. An educated guess.”
“I’ll take that. Tell me.”
And Walter told him.
Sam shoved the papers back in his coat, tired and cold and feeling as if he were climbing the slope of a mountain that kept on getting steeper and steeper. Walter put his hands together and said, “What now?”
Sam said, “I go back to work, and I’m sorry, you go back to your interrogators.”
Walter shivered. “They caught me as I was driving up to Maine, Sam, trying to get to the Canadian border. I suppose a brave man would have raced through the roadblock, but I’m not. And later, when they brought me here, I had illusions of trying to resist, trying to be strong, trying to hold out as long as I could… I held out for five minutes before I started crying and answering every question they asked me. Do you want to know how they did it?”
“No, I don’t,” Sam said.
Walter ignored him. “They put you on a board, tie your hands and feet together, and then tip you back, put a wet cloth across your face, and pour water over you. They laugh as you think you’re drowning. A nice little treat they learned from the Nazis. It worked, but still, the questions keep on coming.” Walter cocked his head. “Is it true, what I’ve heard? That you got to Hale before he got to Long? That you shot Hale, and he blew himself up, but not close enough to hurt Long?”
“True enough,” Sam said.
“You son of a whore. Do you have any idea what you did in preventing that monster’s death?”
Sam got up, thinking of his tattoo and of his nameless camp companions, alive and spread out across the nation, thought about that dead businessman out there, dead on a muddy playing field, all because of him. “Yeah, Walter, I think I do.”
When he left the tent, a young Legionnaire stood waiting, his red hair closely trimmed, patches of wispy orange hair about his chin.
“Mr. Miller?” the Legionnaire asked. “Somebody needs to see you right away.”
The man took Sam’s left arm, and Sam angrily shook it off. He thought about striding out of the camp, ignoring this young punk, but with all the shotgun-toting Legionnaires and angry-looking FBI agents about, how far could he go?
“All right,” Sam said. “Take me there, but keep your damn hand to yourself.”
The Legionnaire glared at Sam but kept quiet, and Sam kept stride with him as they went to a larger tent. “Right in there, sir,” he said. Sam hesitated, then ducked his head and walked in. This tent had a canvas floor, chairs, a dining room table, a wet bar, and a desk with matching chair and a black metal wastebasket. Lights came from overhead lightbulbs, and a small electric heater in one corner of the tent cut the chill. Sitting in the chair was another Long’s Legionnaire, older, his uniform crisp and clean, the leatherwork shiny, and on the collar tabs, the oak leaves of a major.
Sam took the chair across the desk. The Legionnaire said, “Sam. Good to see you.”
“How long?” Sam said.
Clarence Rolston, the janitor and handyman for the Portsmouth Police Department, picked up a file folder and replied, “Years and years, of course. And damn long years at that. Pretending to be brain-soaked, slow and dense, takes a lot of work. Most Legionnaires are happy to do their work in public. It takes a special talent and commitment to spend years underground.”
“Was Hanson in on it?” Sam had to ask.
Clarence’s smile was thin-lipped. “Sort of defeats the purpose of being undercover if your supposed boss knows what’s going on.”
“You were very convincing,” Sam managed to say, thinking of what Clarence must have overheard, must have seen, all the while toiling in the background of the police department. He remembered what the marshal had told him back in Burdick: That’s our world, Sam. Spies and snitches everywhere.
“Thanks, Sam,” Clarence replied, going through the folder. “Only the ones who desire to see the President and the Party succeed can be chosen for such a task. But you know what? I was proud of every second of my job.”
Sam thought, Back there, dammit, should have taken that chance, should have taken off when that kid said somebody wanted to see me. All those important papers he had… and his plans for them… oh, Christ.
He said, “Does your brother know?”
Clarence grimaced. “You mean my older brother, the honorable Robert Rolston, city councillor? He knows how to toss a vote for the right bribe, how to skim a city contract for money, and how to get booze and broads in return for city jobs. Other than that, he knows shit.”
Sam said, “I see.”
Clarence said, “Let’s get right to it, all right?”
Sam was startled at the sound of a shotgun blast coming from outside, but the firearm discharging didn’t bother Clarence a bit. Sam said, “Sure. Let’s get to it.”
The supposed janitor put on a pair of reading glasses and said, “What I have here is a collection of documents, Sam, all implicating you in a variety of anti-Party crimes and activities. For example, I have a denouncement saying that at the last Party meeting, you wrote down the names of Long, Coughlin, and Lindbergh when you were asked to list the names of local undesirables. I also have a canvassing report from two Legionnaires who detected suspicious activity at your house when they arrived for a visit. And I have an interrogation report concerning your brother and other plotters against the President. This report strongly implicates your participation. Finally, I have a request from a facility in Vermont seeking your immediate arrest and internment because of activities threatening national security.”
Sam stayed still, his ears roaring like tidal waves crashing over him, overwhelming him and everything in their path.
Clarence peered at Sam over his reading glasses. “Do you have anything to say about these documents, Sam?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you deny the information contained in these reports?”
“No.”
“Anything to say in your defense?”
Sam said, “Not a goddamn thing.”
Clarence stared, then put the papers down. “Very well, then. I have no other choice, I’m sorry to say.”
The Legionnaire lowered his hand, opened a desk drawer, and Sam watched as Clarence took out a—
Cigarette lighter. Sam was expecting a pistol, or handcuffs, or an arrest warrant.
Clarence took the papers he had read, held them over the wastebasket, and with a flip of the lighter set them ablaze. The flames quickly rolled up the sheets of paper until Clarence was forced to drop them in the wastebasket. Wisps of smoke rose to the peaked green canvas roof of the tent.
Clarence put the cigarette lighter back into the desk drawer, slid it shut. He took his reading glasses off. “Sam, you always treated me well all the years I was undercover. Every single time you saw me. Not like some of your fellow cops, who figured I was just a dummy, a moron they could ignore or tease or rough up… Anyway, how you treated me day after day, month after month, year after year, that tells me what kind of man you are. Not whatever was claimed on those sheets of paper—which, of course, no longer exist.”
The Legionnaire picked up a fountain pen. “You’re a good guy, Sam. But get the hell out of my sight, all right?”
Sam did just that.
Outside of the temporary holding areas on the football field, a small crowd of people had gathered against the fence, looking for friends or family members. A couple of the braver ones were arguing with the Legionnaires keeping guard at the gate. Sam slipped through and thought of the luck that had just graced him.
As he was going to his Packard, there was a touch on his arm and a familiar voice. “Sam? Sam?”
There was Donna Fitzgerald, face drawn, eyes puffy. She had on a shapeless tweed coat. He said, “Donna… what’s wrong?”
“Larry… he’s been rounded up… and all I know is that he’s in there somewhere.”
“What are they charging him with?”
She wiped at her runny nose. “Who knows? Who cares? He hasn’t done a thing since he’s been back from the camp, just sleeping and catching up on his eating, and now he’s gone again. Oh, Sam,” she sobbed. “Can you help me?”
His chest felt cold and tight. “Donna, I’m sorry, I’m just a local cop, and it’s a federal charge he’s up against. I can’t do anything.”
“But I saw you walk out of the compound with no problem.”
Sam was torn, God, how he was torn. He wanted so much to help his old friend, but he had to keep moving. There were so many important things going on, things he couldn’t talk about or even afford to think about too much.
“That was different, Donna. Police business. I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can do.”
Her hand grabbed his. “Sam. Please… we’ve known each other for years… I thought I could rely on you…”
“Donna—”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t you remember when we were kids, how you saved me?”
He knew the look on his face said it all: He didn’t remember. She went on. “I had. I had started to develop… you know? And a couple of the neighborhood boys, the Taskers, they wanted to see my boobies… they were holding me down, they were trying to pull off my shirt. You were there, and you pulled them off of me, slugged them, and I ran home crying. You saved me, Sam, you saved me…”
She squeezed his hand and went on, faster. “I don’t have much in the way of money, but I can make it worth your while. You know I can. Pay you back… for then and now…”
For the briefest of moments, he closed his eyes. Thought about the other desperate women he had heard of, offering the only thing they had to try to free their men. How had it come to this? He opened his eyes, took his hand back from her, and gently said, “Donna, I can’t.”
By then it made no difference. Donna turned back toward the closed gate, her shoulders slumped against the biting wind, her possible savior no help at all.
Sam spent the night at the station, having no desire to go back to the wood-frame building that had once been a home. He hoped being here would push away the thought of Donna, standing alone, betrayed by her government and by the man who had been a childhood hero. By now the National Guardsmen and the cops not on regular shift had gone home, leaving him alone with a desk sergeant who was content to sit in a wooden swivel chair and read the latest copy of Action Comics. Sam dragged a cot up to his office area and made a bed there. Before stretching out, he read and reread his notes and the medical examiner’s report from those few first days when everything seemed possible, his very first homicide case, one that he would solve and get off probation and make everything safe and secure for his family.
Sarah. Toby.
The pages fluttered as he read them. He supposed he should have fought harder when she left with his son, should have made a scene, but there was too much going on, too much knowledge—his wife a revolutionary, her own father her contact, Toby a courier as well. He had just let her go.
Would Tony have done that? Just let her go?
He doubted it. Tony was a fighter, always a fighter, even going into a suicide mission with his eyes and purpose clear.
And Sam? What was Sam Miller?
He read the report one more time, saw what he had been looking for.
The papers shook in his hands.
Who was Sam Miller?
He was going to find out.
Later that night, he got up from his cot, padded down to the lobby in his stocking feet. As he had hoped, the desk sergeant was still in his swivel chair, but he was snoring, hands clasped across his belly. Even as the department’s janitor, operating in the darkness as a spy, was probably busy signing arrest or execution warrants back at Sam’s high school playing field. Sam went back upstairs, where a desk lamp was on, illuminating both his desk and Mrs. Walton’s.
In his upper drawer he reached to the back. He pulled out a screwdriver that he used now and then to fix his own swivel chair. Not tonight. Hell, he thought, looking up at the clock, not this morning. He went over to Mrs. Walton’s desk, which smelled of her lilac scent. He knelt and jammed the screwdriver into the lower drawer. The wood squealed, and a piece of metal snapped free, and then the drawer came out.
Sitting there in plain sight was the infamous Log, the record of every upper-ranking officer in the Portsmouth Police Department. Luckily, Mrs. Walton had prim schoolteacher handwriting, for everything was as clear as day. When he got to a certain page and a certain date, he stopped, sucking in his breath. He read the entries three more times before he was satisfied, and then he tore out the page, tossed the book back inside, and closed the broken drawer.
The page now folded, he stuck it in his pants pocket and stretched out again on the cot and stared up until the morning light came through the windows. Then he got up and did some work at his desk. After that he went into Marshal Hanson’s office and propped a note on his desk blotter.
As he drove away in the early hours, he looked back one more time at the old brick building and thought, I’m never coming back.
At a small white Cape Cod house at the outskirts of Portsmouth, the county medical examiner answered the door after Sam spent nearly ten minutes banging on it. Saunders’s hair was unkempt, and he had a dull green robe wrapped around him. Saunders looked at Sam and said, “What is it?”
“The other day, at my brother’s burial, you asked me if you could trust me to do the right thing.”
“I remember.”
“The answer is yes,” Sam said. “And now I have a question for you.”
The doctor opened the door wider. “Come in and I’ll give you the answer.”
Resuming his drive just a few minutes later, he checked his watch and knew he was pushing it, since Hanson was always one of the first to arrive every morning. But there was one thing he had to see before he went on.
On State Street, he pulled up across from the brick building. The building had once housed the only synagogue within miles. It was shuttered and closed; the posters of President Long he had seen slapped up the other day were still there. Those who had worshipped here, who had raised their families here as Americans, had fled to other parts of the country during the unsettled months after Long’s election. Self-ghettoization, it had been called. He tried to recall what he had thought about it at the time and remembered hardly a thing. It was just one of those unsettling bits of news that came across, and since you couldn’t do anything about it, you kept quiet and went about your business.
For some reason, he recalled his high school days, a kid on the team named Roger Cohen, who was a halfback. During one of the training sessions, out on the football field that was now a temporary prison, someone had made a crack about Roger being a weak-kneed Jew, and Roger had practically flown across the grass to slug that other kid.
Good ol’ Roger. Not one to take crap from anyone. He wondered where Roger was, if he ever thought of his days back here in Portsmouth, if anyone else even remembered him and his family.
Did anybody remember? When did they all stop caring?
He shifted the car into drive. But before he left, he looked at the shuttered synagogue one more time, and he saw that someone had taken the time to tear away some of the Long posters from the far wall of the synagogue.
That one sight cheered him as he drove away.
At Pierce Island he stood by the shoreline, looking across the harbor to the naval shipyard. The cranes and smokestacks and buildings were still there, as well as the hulls of the submarines under construction. The wind was biting, and his hands were in his coat pockets as he stared out at the shipyard. By the dock where Hitler had landed, the decorative bunting was still up, though parts of it were snapping in the breeze. The circle closes, he thought. This was where he and Tony had played and hidden as children, this was where Tony had come when he had escaped from the labor camp, and this is where he was going to try to make it all right.
The circle closed.
The rumble of a car engine reached him. A black Ford sedan clattered over the bridge and came to the parking area, where it pulled in next to his Packard. The driver’s door opened and Marshal Harold Hanson got out, dressed in his usual suit and tie, his face puzzled.
“Sam… what’s going on?”
He walked over to his boss. “You know,” he said softly, “something I’ve always wondered about this little island.”
“What’s that, Sam?”
He looked around at the flatland and the scrub brush and trees. “This has always been a magnet for illegal activity, hasn’t it? Every few months we get sent here to make some arrests, make some headlines, and after a while, the problems return. But you know what? Why isn’t there a gate over there by the bridge? A simple gate, closed at dusk, opened at dawn, and instantly, you take care of about eighty, ninety percent of the problems.”
Hanson said, “That’s interesting, Sam, but what—”
“But there’s never been a gate, has there?” Sam interrupted. “And you know why? Because this island serves a need; it’s a safety valve. The mayor and the city council and the police commission, they’d rather have this place open so that any undesirables congregate in one place, make it reasonably safe and happy for the rest of the city.”
Hanson didn’t say anything, just stared unhappily at him. Sam said, “That’s all we do, isn’t it? We do the bidding of others, we do things either illegally or not at all, to make those higher up happy and content. Whoever the hell they are.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
Sam reached into his coat, past his shoulder holster, and took out his revolver. He cocked back the hammer—the click sounding very loud in the morning air—and Hanson held up both hands and said, “Whoa, wait a minute, Sam, what do you mean—”
“What I mean is this,” Sam said, raising up his revolver. “Petr Wowenstein escaped from a research facility in New Mexico and made his way to Portsmouth. He was coming here to reach the Underground Railroad, a station that was going to help him get to Montreal, with something very important he was carrying. A station I know you’re familiar with, with all those hints you’ve given me. Wowenstein was a courier with a package that meant the life and death of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. But the package never got delivered. Just as he was coming into Portsmouth, just as he was about to leave the train, he was murdered. His neck was snapped, and he was tossed off the train like a piece of garbage.”
Hanson said, “Well? So what?”
Sam held the revolver level and steady. “What’s what is the truth,” he said. “Harold, you were on the train that night. You were trying to get the package off Petr Wowenstein. And when you couldn’t find it, you killed him.”
He stared at his boss, wanting to see a reaction. Except for a quiver of the lips, there was nothing. Sam said, “No reply, Harold?”
“Sam, you’ve drawn a gun on me. You’re making crazy accusations. What do you want me to say? And what the hell gives you the right to call me by my first name?”
“The right of someone who’s no longer your errand boy. You were on that train, Harold, and you murdered Petr Wowenstein.”
“Sam—”
“Then tell me it’s not true.”
“Of course it’s not true!”
Sam took one hand off the revolver, went back into his coat pocket, and took out two pieces of paper. He tossed them in the direction of Hanson, where they fluttered to the ground. “Pick them up.”
Hanson stared at him for a moment, then squatted down, picked up the slips of paper.
“The one with the blue lines,” Sam went on. “You’ll recognize it, I’m sure. It’s a page taken from Mrs. Walton’s log. You may run the department the way you see fit, but by God, Mrs. Walton demands to know where everyone is. No one dares to cross her by telling a lie. And the night the Boston express train came through, that’s where you were. It says so right there in her writing. How did you get back and forth to Boston? On the train, and with your National Guard and police marshal IDs, you could ride for free, no paperwork. Right? But remember what you told me that morning I came to see you? You said you were in Concord the day of Petr’s murder. Not Boston.”
Hanson crumpled the paper, let it drop back to the dirt. “So?”
“Check out the other paper. It’s a carbon copy of my report on my first homicide. My first homicide, Harold. Read the last two lines, will you.”
Hanson, his voice dripping contempt, said, “Since you’re holding a gun on me, I guess I have no choice.” He brought the piece of paper up and read it: “ ‘According to Dr. Saunders, his autopsy results have not yet been finalized, although he is confident in his finding of homicide. No progress has yet been made on the victim’s identification, although the investigation continues.’ ”
Sam said, “Sound familiar?”
“I guess.”
“I’ve talked to Dr. Saunders. He said he never filed a follow-up report, and he never talked to anyone after he was visited by me, LaCouture, and Groebke. So how did you know Petr’s neck was snapped?”
“What?”
Sam stepped closer, his revolver inches from his boss’s chest, knowing he was taking a path that he could never, ever retrace.
“Back in Burdick, you told me to ignore the case, that it was just one refugee who had his neck snapped and got dumped off the train. But I never told you his neck was snapped. Dr. Saunders never told you his neck was snapped. None of my reports ever mention his neck. Nobody ever told you his fucking neck was snapped. So how did you know?”
Now he saw a reaction in Hanson’s face. It was as if he had aged ten years from the time he’d stepped out of his car.
Sam knelt down, picked up a rock with his free hand, and tossed it at Hanson’s head. The marshal ducked and brought up his left hand to block the flying stone. Sam stood up, breathing hard. “And another thing. The killer was left-handed. Just like you. So. How and why was the courier killed?”
The air was cold, still, and heavy, and then Hanson nervously cleared his throat. “It was an accident.”
“How was killing him an accident?”
Hanson spat on the ground. “Because it was, dammit! The son of a bitch wouldn’t give it up!”
“Give what up?”
“Whatever he was carrying, the skinny bastard,” Hanson fumed. “I was just told to get on that train, find him, and get any documents he had. Whatever he had was vital. But he didn’t have anything on him, nothing. I dragged him into the baggage car, started working him over, looking for a suitcase, a valise, anything, and he still wouldn’t give it up. Then the train started slowing down. I thought we were stopping because someone saw me drag the bastard to the rear. I held him tight, told him to give it up, and shit, he was so sick, so skinny. Damn neck just broke in my hands. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“After you dumped him, what did you do?”
“Got off a few yards down, by the Fish Shanty lot. And that was that.”
“Where my witness, Lou Purdue, spotted you. A fine-dressed man standing in the rain. Lou Purdue, murdered up in Dover. Another loose end tidied up.”
Hanson said, “I know nothing about that.”
“So you say,” Sam said. “Who told you to go to Boston and grab those documents?”
“What difference does it make? Someone from the Party in D.C.”
“The Party, the Party… which faction, Nat or Statie? Who needed those plans?”
Hanson said, “There are factions, there are differences, but that didn’t come into account here. I was given an order by the Party, and I followed it. That’s what happened.”
“You did all of this?” Sam’s voice was shaking with rage. “And you threw this case at me, knowing right from the start what was going on?”
“What else was I going to do?” Hanson yelled back. “I was trying to protect you, you stubborn bastard. You could have just given it up after a day or two, filed it away, and you would have been fine. But no—you had to prove how noble and upright you were.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “If I had been a lousy cop, I would have been fine. But guess what, Harold? I wasn’t a lousy cop. I was a good cop. And for the past several days, I’ve been a lousy man and a lousy husband, but that’s all going to change.” He unfolded the pages and held them up. “Here. Here, you Party whore. This is what you were looking for. Was it worth it, murdering an innocent refugee? Lying to me and everyone else in the department? Covering up everything connected with the case?”
Hanson’s eyes seemed frozen on the handful of papers. Sam had a strange feeling, knowing what he was holding, knowing it all would come down to the next few seconds.
“How… where did you get those?”
“Got them off that poor bastard’s body, that’s where. You didn’t look far enough, Harold. Refugees, they’re experts at hiding things. These papers were produced from microfilm, hidden up in his butt.”
“How long have you had them?”
“Not long enough, and that’s why my place was trashed. Those Legionnaires weren’t tossing my house just for the hell of it. They were looking for these. Want to know what they are?”
Hanson said, “What do you want for them?”
“That’s for later. Right now these papers are what count. They’re calculations, figures, plans for building a bomb. A super bomb that comes from splitting the atom. An atomic bomb. Here we are, just you and me, and we’re going to decide where it goes.”
“I don’t believe it.” Hanson’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“I’m told that a bomb like this, something not so big at all, can destroy a harbor. A small city. A division of panzer tanks. And it was Jewish refugees, smart fellows from Europe, professors and scientists, half starved and beaten but still alive in an American research facility out west, who came up with these plans, these figures. It’s not the whole package, I’m sure. There’s so much more work to be done. But they have the outline, the blueprints. And once they came up with it, who would they give it to? Long and his thugs? Or the Soviets? The Reds are the only ones left fighting the Nazis, who are busily killing their families and neighbors. They contacted people on the outside, people like my wife, who could get this refugee with the plans to the Soviets.”
“Please, Sam, give me those papers.”
“Why should I?”
“How can you ask that? We’re going to need those calculations, so we can get ready when Hitler decides to take us on. You know damn well we’re outnumbered and outgunned. If those papers are for real, that bomb can be an equalizer when the time comes. And you can believe Hitler’s going to take us on one of these days, no matter how many trade agreements Long signs with him, no matter how chummy they get. Hitler had a whole bunch of trade and peace agreements with Stalin. Those agreements didn’t mean shit when Hitler invaded in ’41. Long may like all these new jobs, but he doesn’t trust Hitler. Nobody does. They’re not going to—”
“Oh, shut the hell up. The papers belong to me, and I’ll decide what to do with them. Why shouldn’t I give them to the Soviets? That’s where they were intended to go. That’s where the refugee scientists wanted them to end up. So why not the Russians?”
“But Sam—”
“Hell, maybe I’ll screw everyone up and sell them to the Nazis. I’ll get ahold of my new best friend, Groebke, and tell him what I have. Don’t you think I could get a pretty price for these papers? Retire with my family to some sunny city in South America and watch the rest of the world go to hell?”
Out on the harbor, a whistle blew at the shipyard. Hanson’s eyes were locked on the sheets of paper in Sam’s hand. “I could also dump these in the harbor, Harold. So your murder would be for nothing. All that work—for nothing.”
“Sam, don’t—”
“So tell me this,” Sam demanded. “Am I talking to the right person? Are you able to make a deal? Or do I need to talk to somebody else?”
“I can make a deal.”
“Talk to me, then.”
“How much money do you want?”
“Not a fucking dime.” And Sam smiled.
“But there’s still a price to be paid,” Sam went on. “Do you understand?”
A pause. “Yes… I understand.”
“Good,” he said, taking a breath. “The camp at Burdick and the rest of them, all across the country. The conditions improve. Better food, fewer hours, clean quarters. The fucking Nazis, they get kicked out. And the Jews, they get paid a living wage. Everything can still be kept secret, that doesn’t have to change. Long keeps on admitting them. And their family members.”
Hanson said, “That’s… that’s impossible.”
“Best deal you’re going to get. Oh, and one more thing. My wife. Tomorrow you’re going to take the two of us on a trip to Burdick. I want Sarah to see it, and I want you to explain to her why it’s there, why Long is the key to keeping all those Jews alive, and what I’ve done here today.”
“This is important? For your wife to see Burdick?”
The other day, the sadness in her eyes, the disdain in her voice, wondering where it had all gone wrong… It would take a lot, she had said, to make it all right. He was certain now that this would do it. The look in her eyes had tormented him. To see them shine again with happiness and love meant everything to him.
“More important than you know,” Sam said. “I’ve lost her. And I’m going to get her back.”
“Can I put my arms down?”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Some calls have to be made. You know what that’s like.”
He held the papers up, motioned to throw them into the choppy waters of the harbor. “Wrong answer.”
Hanson spoke hastily, “Yes, Sam. We have a deal.”
Sam kept the revolver pointed at him. “Believe me when I say this, Harold. If the deal doesn’t go through, if there’re changes, if it doesn’t happen the way I want it, then I won’t complain. I won’t make a fuss. I’ll just find you and kill you.”
Hanson spat out, “A hell of a thing to say to your boss!”
“Boss?” Sam laughed. “You’re not my boss anymore. Our relationship has changed. We’re partners now, bound together for life. And here’s a news flash for you and my father-in-law, your Party rival. You’ve all been pushing me to become more active in the Party, for all your different reasons, and guess what, that’s exactly what I’m going to do starting this week. But like they say, be careful what you wish for.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Sam offered a nasty smile. “Like I said—partners. I’m going to become active in the Party. You’re going to be there, greasing the wheels, seeing that I become powerful and prominent. Maybe my father-in-law will help. Hell, being the official savior of the President won’t hurt, either. And once I’m inside, in a position of power and influence, you’re going to see some changes there, too. Just you watch. You know, a couple of guys these past few days”—he thought of his brother and his upstairs neighbor—“said to me that sometimes one man can make a difference. I plan to be that man, Harold. There are changes coming, positive changes, and I’m going to be leading that charge. No more hiding, no more sitting on the sidelines.”
“Sam, please, can I put my arms down?”
“Go right ahead.”
Hanson lowered his arms, then rubbed his hands together. “All right… the papers?”
Sam passed them over, and Hanson grabbed them like a child opening his first gift on Christmas morning. He flipped through the pages, then looked up. “This math is gibberish. How in hell did you figure out what it all means?”
“Had someone help me out.” Poor Walter Tucker, not knowing how the plot and conspiracy had eventually paid off.
“These papers… they’re numbered from one to fifty.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But I only have twenty-five pages.”
Sam uncocked the revolver, put it back into his shoulder holster, pulled his coat close. “Consider it a down payment.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
Sam thought of his visit that morning to Dr. Saunders, where the rest of the papers resided and where other agreements had been reached. “You think I was going to give it all up just like that? Not likely, Harold. I gave you half of the equations, enough to show those calculations are for real. And once I see the progress being made in Burdick and other camps, the more of the other pages you’ll get. My schedule, not yours. Any delays, any foulups, I get arrested or a rock falls on my head, the rest of the papers get destroyed.”
Hanson kept on staring at the papers.
“Oh—and to use a favorite phrase of yours—one more thing,” Sam said. “I’ve typed up a narrative of your involvement in the murder of that courier. So after you and your friends have all of the calculations, if you’re tempted to have me run down by a truck, forget it. Anything bad happens to me, Harold, those papers I prepared go straight to the mayor. Just think of all the fun my father-in-law would have with you if that were to happen. My guess is, you’d be acquainted real quick with the inside of a boxcar heading to Utah.”
Hanson carefully folded the sheets and tucked them in his coat. “You drive a hell of a bargain. And you didn’t have to. You could have given me all of the papers, Sam. You could trust me and trust the President to do the right thing. This is America, you know.”
Sam looked out to the harbor. Thought about the camps, the arrests, the censorship, the torture, the day-to-day humiliations, the mothers and fathers and sons and daughters hungry or homeless, his dead brother, the alliance with Hitler…
He turned back to his boss. “No,” he said. “No, this isn’t America. And it hasn’t been, not for a very long time.”
He walked back to his car, and Hanson called to him, but he didn’t bother to listen. There was so much to do, so much to hope for, and he didn’t know how much time he had left.
He got into the Packard, one hand on the steering wheel, saw the numeral three on his wrist. Three. Sarah and Toby and him. A lifelong reminder of what was important, what counted.
He started up the Packard and headed home.