And it wasn’t as if the windows were caked with dirt, or the size of portholes. An experienced man would have seen everything he needed to see from outside—but this one, it would appear, wasn’t sure enough of himself for that. In his policeman’s arrogance he simply walked through the aisles, assuming, one gathered, that no one would notice. Or perhaps not caring whether they did or not.
In a way, it was almost insulting. Did they suppose they were dealing with a child? Or one of their native cutpurses, perhaps, who could be expected to stay within the rules?
But perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps this one was young enough to have been fooled by a bottle of hair dye and hadn’t noticed him. It would seem so, since he was still looking. Perhaps it would be just as well for von Niehauser to return to his seat and leave things as they were.
The platform was a gloomy, faintly infernal place, illuminated on the one side through the windows of the train and overhead by lamps that threw down narrow yellowish pools of light. The air was warm and stale and smelled of tar and chewing gum and wet winter clothing, and the only sound to be heard above the confused buzzing of people and machines was the occasional sharp gust of steam from the train’s braking system. It was a strangely sinister atmosphere, a passage from light into darkness.
It was a cruel perversity of timing that made the conductor choose that moment to come outside. Von Niehauser had more than half decided that enough was enough, that there was no necessity for him to take any drastic action, that he was safe. He had paused for just a moment and was watching the policeman’s back and thinking that there was no reason why he couldn’t return to his seat and make a start on his crossword puzzle when the conductor leaned out from the walkway between coaches and raised a hand to attract his attention.
“You wanna board, sir? We’re about set to go.”
He was a Negro, with a broad face and very spruce in his dark blue uniform, and in the garish overhead lighting the inside of his hand looked as pink as coral.
The policeman, who was still inside the coach, must have heard him because he turned around to look. There was nothing but a window between him and von Niehauser—they couldn’t have been more than twenty feet apart—and this time a flicker of recognition did appear in his face, a kind of half-formed consciousness that here was someone of interest, a tightening of the eyes that a few years’ more experience might have taught him to suppress. For that instant he and von Niehauser stood studying each other, just as if they were about to be formally introduced.
So—there was not to be any easy way out after all. And there was precious little point in trying to get away either, so once more it came back down to finding a way to silence this one policeman, this boy who carried a pistol and imagined himself the embodiment of the state.
Von Niehauser smiled at him, almost tauntingly, and turned back in the direction from which he had come.
He was astonished and even a little amused at his own calm, as if he were someone else admiring the progress of a protégé. The worst thing that can happen is he will kill me, he thought. The idea was somehow strangely comforting.
The whole secret was to treat each new situation as if it were a training exercise, to judge oneself on performance and concentrate on the form of the thing. Nothing was real; there was no danger. There was nothing at risk beyond one’s self-conceit.
Because, of course, he had formulated a plan. It had come into his mind unbidden, and he was rather pleased with it. Its hazards—its very incompleteness—made him like it all the more.
It all hinged on two facts or, rather, a fact and an assumption. Or perhaps, more accurately, a hopeful guess. The fact was that he could hardly afford to take any sort of action in full view of a trainload of people. Except if he was to be dragged away in chains, any resolution would require privacy.
The guess was that his young friend would have the full confidence of youth.
And would it be fair to add as well that possibly this paladin of the law wasn’t overly bright? It seemed likely—it was a good fifteen or twenty seconds before von Niehauser heard the faint noises of a commotion behind him and he knew that the policeman had at last made the connection. He turned around to look. He wasn’t being coy about it; he wanted the other man to see.
They were both out on the platform now, separated by a little less than the length of two cars. It was a calculated distance, far enough to put von Niehauser out of effective pistol range—his adversary would have to be more than just a simpleton to try a shot under these circumstances—but close enough to constitute a provocation. Because this was the moment of decision. The policeman could either go for help, risking the possibility that von Niehauser might escape him, or he could have faith in his own powers and attempt to make the arrest on his own. It was a choice upon which more depended than he realized.
“Hey, YOU!”
Apparently he hadn’t made up his mind. His arm shot up, as if that would be enough by itself, and he put one foot out in front of the other in what seemed like a threat of pursuit. He was just on the edge. All he needed was a little encouragement.
Von Niehauser took a step backward, and then another. Yes, it was working. He turned around and continued toward the head of the train, listening for the footsteps behind him.
As he walked he counted. There were four more passenger coaches, and then what looked like a freight car—at any rate, the windows were dark—and then the engine. The thing was to reach at least the middle of the freight car. They would be out of sight there; the light was poor, and with the train almost underway that end of the platform was deserted. They would be quite alone.
In the confusion of sound it was difficult to sort out the footsteps of one man—and, of course, there was no question of looking back—but he had the impression that he wasn’t as yet being chased. A running man makes a good deal of noise on a concrete surface, and there was none of that yet.
And there wouldn’t be. There would be no wild pursuit—not just at first—and there would be no shooting. Because this policeman couldn’t be sure; it might be anyone, this figure with the wrong color hair, who might or might not resemble a drawing on a handbill. And he would have no more than that, merely a description. Germany would have been another matter, but in the West they wouldn’t begin to shoot on so little as that.
There were two short blasts from the train whistle—von Niehauser was close enough to the front now that he experienced the sound as an almost physical pressure—and a kind of shudder passed along the line of carriages. Very slowly, the thing had begun to move.
Von Niehauser risked a glance over his shoulder. He was very near the freight car, and as if on signal the policeman broke into a loping run. His hand was thrust into the pocket of his tan overcoat, which flapped around his body like a pair of clumsy, strengthless wings. Von Niehauser quickened his pace.
He stopped just a few steps ahead of the engine and turned. They were facing each other again, and the other man began to slow. The train was crawling forward, seemingly by inches, and von Niehauser allowed himself a pace backward, and then another and another. There was so little time now.
“You—I want to talk to you.” The policeman was coming, closer, drawn along the darkened platform by von Niehauser’s receding figure. His hand was still in his pocket, the elbow slightly bent, as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind to show the pistol. Only a few feet separated them now. “I want to. . .”
It was over in an instant. Von Niehauser stopped—for a minute particle of a second the other man stopped too; he seemed paralyzed, as if suddenly everything had changed. And then, as von Niehauser took a step forward, he regained possession of himself and his hand began to slide out of his pocket. They were so close to the edge of the platform that the train, as it slowly drew forward, seemed ready to brush against them.
But it was too late. He knew he was too late; you could read it in his eyes as he realized the dimensions of his error. Von Niehauser’s left hand darted out, ca
tching him by the wrist, and then, taking full advantage of the surprise, the fingers of his right closed into a hard mass and snapped forward into the policeman’s throat.
A man can hang between life and death, powerless as he watches the world darken and fade before him. He stands straight, struggling to remain alive, but the force has gone out of him.
In this man’s face there was only the one, inevitable, incredulous question. How could this have happened to me? How?
In what amounted to a spasm of revulsion, von Niehauser grabbed him by the shoulder, throwing his weight against him so that the policeman toppled backward. Von Niehauser released his grip and, like a dead tree in the wind, the man began to fall. His foot slipped on the edge of the platform and he seemed to turn, as if he were trying to see into the gulf opening beneath him—but perhaps he was already beyond that, already dead. He just sank through the air, down onto the tracks below, and the train, still dragging itself forward, covered him with its weight.
. . . . .
From the threadbare luxury of the lounge car it was possible at certain moments to make out the lights of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, glittering softly in the distance. The train would sway gently around a curve and there they would be, a vague smear of white in the early morning darkness, far, far ahead, something to disappear again when the tracks began to straighten out. At least, the porter had said it was Harrisburg. It might have been anywhere—anything. It might have been a military installation, or a tourist camp, or the Second Coming of the Redeemer for all von Niehauser would have been able to recognize the difference.
He could not adjust himself to this spectacle of brightly lit cities. It seemed unnatural. After sunset the whole landscape of Europe was plunged into blackness—it had been that way now for years, and bombing raids had come to seem as essential a hazard as the winter frost. Except that, finally, the winter went away, and the Allied planes never did. In the East it was the Russians, in the West the Americans and the British. But they never went away, and to show a light after dark was to invite annihilation.
But here he was, safe and sound in the bosom of America. And whom should Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fear after dark?
In the end, his escape had been so easy. He had merely to walk away, to wait with the milling crowds for the departure of the next train—to anywhere, since destination didn’t really matter—and to step aboard as it pulled out, exactly according to plan. If there had been any more police, this time they had missed him. This time.
Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regumque turris. It was one of the fugitive lines that had stuck in his head from schoolboy Latin: Pale Death strikes with an impartial foot the hovels of the poor and the palaces of kings. Pale Death.
He had seen enough of that—the gray, frozen corpses of his soldiers lying in the snow around Morozovsk. It had been the beginning of the great Russian counteroffensive, and they had received one of those mad orders to hold at all costs. It went on for eleven days, eleven days during which he and his men never even closed their eyes, but they held. Seventy per cent of the battalion had been killed or wounded—and on that front the one usually amounted to the other—but they held. And when the order finally came to evacuate, General Manstein had been reduced to tears of impotent rage when he saw the condition of his army as they marched back behind the lines. He had stood there and wept.
But von Niehauser had not wept. His mind had been too stunned for that, and when the Führer had hung the Ritterkreuz around his neck all he had been able to feel was contempt for this flabby little Austrian corporal who really seemed to believe that there was something glorious and ennobling about men blowing each other to pieces.
And for himself as well, because after all it was a base thing to survive where so many others had died.
But he had kept the medal. And even now, in the midst of the enemy, he held it in the palm of his hand, its black ribbon wound through his fingers, and he turned it this way and that so the shiny enameled surfaces could catch the light. It was madness to carry it with him like this, but some things were impossible to surrender. He was a soldier after all, even now. His father and brothers had been soldiers, and they, like him, had been members of the Order of the Iron Cross. No one could abandon everything.
Pallida Mors.
So, when the policeman had gone under the train’s wheels and been ground to bloody atoms, von Niehauser had merely looked away for an instant and then walked off. He had refused to hurry, and the blood hadn’t drummed in his ears. He had merely left the platform, as calmly as if nothing had happened, and no one had thought to interfere with him. Nothing had happened. He had killed men before—as a soldier it was his profession to kill men—and he was haunted by enough terrible memories that one more couldn’t matter.
9
Sam Fraser ran a hand across the top of his bare skull, wishing the heat in his office weren’t turned so high. The whole floor was regulated by some guy down in the basement who seemed to have his own ideas about comfort, and he wasn’t very amenable to reason.
It was hot for everybody, apparently. Across the desk from him, leaning his chair back against the wall, George Havens sat with his fists lying in his lap like hunks of mangled iron, his face a tragic mask as he stared down at the floor. He hadn’t moved or said a word in ten minutes.
“It wasn’t your fault, George.”
“The hell it wasn’t.” Havens continued his gloomy inspection of the linoleum as the furrows in his brow deepened. “There’s a German spy running around somewhere because I didn’t catch him when I had the chance. I blew it.”
“You didn’t blow it. The NYPD blew it—it was their show.”
“But he was my spy!” He jerked forward in his chair, excited and flushed, as if he were about to get it all off his chest. But then words seemed to fail him and he lapsed back into silence.
“He was my spy,” he continued finally, his voice little more than a whisper. “I should have declared von Niehauser a federal fugitive and run the dragnet myself. I fucked it, and that’s why Mr. Hoover’s going to ship me off to Kansas City to polish the filing cabinets. And damn right too.”
Fraser wiped his skull again, all the time watching the radiator with distaste and wishing to God he could just get through life without the enthusiasts. People like George Havens, with their ups and their downs, with their goddamned earnestness, were the ruination of police work. It was a nice job as long as you didn’t let it get to you, but some people. . .
“Mr. Hoover’s not going to do that,” he said soothingly. “He’s just glad it wasn’t one of our people your boy pushed under that train—it would have looked so bad.”
“It didn’t look very good anyway. I watched them hosing down the tracks after the Fire Department finally got the poor sucker out of there—Jesus. He must have been ground to jelly.”
“Don’t tell me about it.” Fraser winced suddenly, almost as if someone had struck him. “Just be glad it wasn’t you.”
Fraser’s office door was closed, but outside you could hear the secretaries returning from their three o’clock coffee break. The two men sat quietly, as if listening to the clicking of the high-heel shoes and the sounds of voices and, occasionally, laughter. Havens, slouching forward in his chair, seemed to regard the unseen parade with fierce, sullen resentment, but in fact he was merely tired.
He had stayed in New York until eight-thirty in the morning, long enough for the coroner to confirm from as much of him as was left that Detective Abner Gorley had probably had his larynx broken before the 12:05 to Washington finished him off—what more did anyone need to confirm that von Niehauser had made good his escape?—and then he had phoned in his preliminary report and been ordered back to Seat of Government for a 4:00 P.M. appointment with Mr. Hoover himself. It had been a long drive. There had been time upon arrival for a shave and a shower and a change of clothes, but no sleep.
“You really look beat, George. You better watch yourself in there—do
n’t get careless. You don’t want to throw your career away, not for a few ill-chosen words, and if there’s anything Mr. Hoover can’t stand it’s a bad mouth.”
Havens only smiled. A few minutes later he lifted himself slowly out of his chair and brushed off his trousers.
“He doesn’t like to be kept waiting either,” he said calmly, as if he were stating some law of nature. “And neither do I. But don’t despair, Sam. Maybe if I play my cards right I can goad him into firing me. I don’t suppose the Army would much mind my leaving here under a cloud.”
“Are we back to that again?” Sam Fraser shook his head. “Is that what you’re after, the chance to get killed in this precious war of yours? You really are deranged.”
“Maybe so, Sam. My love to Ida.”
. . . . .
The waiting room to Mr. Hoover’s office had obviously been designed with certain specific psychological effects in mind. It was a large, square space, lined on three walls with leather sofas. The walls were a blank yellow and covered with framed photographs: Mr. Hoover with President Roosevelt, Mr. Hoover testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Mr. Hoover receiving various unidentified foreign military dignitaries. There was nowhere the eye could turn without encountering massive evidence of the importance, the power, the virtually inhuman rectitude of J. Edgar Hoover—even Shirley Temple was up there, shaking Mr. Hoover’s hand and gazing up into his amused, benevolent smile.
The point of the huge room, of course, was to emphasize for you your own insignificance; and just as obviously the point of everything else was to impress upon you that in ten or fifteen or thirty minutes—or after whatever interval of time happened to strike his fancy—you were going to be ushered into the presence of the Living God. Presidents and all the rest of us might come and go, but the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was there eternally.
And most of the time it worked, especially with Bureau personnel. Agents summoned in from the provinces had been known to faint dead away in this room—one poor sucker even had a coronary. Almost no one was immune.
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