by John Altman
They bellowed out songs from West Point: ‘I want to be, I want to be, I want to be away on furlough’ to the tune of Dixie; ‘There’s a long long trail awinding, into the land of my dreams’, with a maudlin lilt; ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.’ The fact that these overgrown children had won the war still felt unreal to Elisabeth, like a bad dream. But it had been only a matter of resources, she reminded herself, of America’s great natural bounty, and not an indication of the relative quality of their nation’s menfolk. Besides, the lion’s share of damage to the Reich had been done by the Russians.
The tuneless guitar was played badly by Josette herself, as Elisabeth gathered from Brennan’s teasing whenever she hit a sour note, which was often. The lack of quality of the music didn’t help matters. Compared with the inspiring ‘Horst Wessel Lied’ and the anthemic ‘Deutschland Über Alles’, these songs were grating and shrill. Every so often the singers halted their musical butchery to drink, joke, and gossip. Like all hired men, they mocked their superiors – in this case Miss Dunbarton (you could tell when she spread her legs, opined the one called Skin crassly, because the furnace kicked on) and even President Eisenhower, whose fondness for Western magazines, remarked Brennan, revealed the poor white trash he truly remained inside – the same barefooted boy who had been born in Abilene and worked at a creamery, who in many ways had simply lucked into his current position of power.
The party broke up abruptly when a crackling of walkie-talkies informed Brennan that Dunbarton was on her way back through the security checkpoints. Within ninety seconds, everybody but Josette was gone, trucking loudly down the stairs. For the next few moments came quiet clunking sounds – probably the out-of-tune guitar being hidden away beneath the bed – and then, after a very brief period of silence, the sound of the Philco being switched on.
Exhaling, Elisabeth closed her eyes.
Her mind was spinning. Tomorrow was Tuesday, her first day off. It promised to be busy.
FIVE
Yet for a long time, despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep.
The presence of enemy soldiers next door had stirred up old feelings. Of course the war was ancient history; and while she might take pleasure from avenging her Fuehrer against the cursed architect of D-Day, her motivations now were chiefly mercenary. Only rarely did an opportunity like this come along, offering sufficient recompense to set her up for the rest of her life, enabling an end to running from those who made a career of prosecuting Nazis.
Sleep, she thought, and punched fitfully at her pillow. Tomorrow she needed to be sharp. The past was the past. She must let it go.
Next door, the radio played softly. Farther down the hall someone talked quietly, and then laughed. But in her private quarters, Elisabeth was alone – no deprivations here in post-war America, where even the least of the hired help was given humble billets of her own. By contrast, her countrymen back in Germany were more desperate than ever, even hungrier and colder than they had been in the terrible years following Versailles.
The air in the tiny bedroom felt hot and dry. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the renovated barn, she could hear a furnace kicking and thumping. Windows were fogged with condensation. For a few moments she stared at a small plaque reading JESUS LOVES YOU mounted above the dresser. Then – the clock beside the plaque read 12:40 a.m. – she forced her eyes closed.
GETTYSBURG: NOVEMBER 15
Elisabeth rose early, ate a crust of toast with some butter, and struck off down the long driveway.
Passing near the towering grain silo, she slowed her pace. Up close, an observation she’d made from a distance was confirmed: no ladder ran up the silo’s exterior. Hoops near the base were visibly less weathered than those near the top. A latched double-door in the dome was too far off the ground to be useful. At some point, she surmised, the tower had been shorter, and unloaded from the top by silage fork. It had since been built higher, and an air slide had been installed on the ground for easy mechanical unloading. But there would still be an interior ladder, a souvenir of the original form.
Emerging from the farm’s main gate, she turned left, as if undertaking the four-mile journey into town on foot. After ten minutes, she reached a crossroads. Continuing straight would bring her into Gettysburg; a turn to the north would lead her around the perimeter of the Eisenhower property.
Tossing a glance over her shoulder, ensuring that the guard booth was out of sight, she took the turn. If caught, she would pretend simply to have lost her way – dizzy, simple girl that she was. Thus she managed to accomplish, by rough country road, almost an entire circuit of the Eisenhower farm. At the last moment, nearing the main gate again from the other side, she turned around and retraced her steps rather than be seen by the guard at the booth.
By the time she truly embarked on her four-mile hike to town, the sun was high in the sky and a few truant birds chorused merrily from the woods. Her flat heels thumped steadily against the uneven road, sometimes gritting on broken glass or discarded bottle caps or pieces of quartz. The day was one to encourage perambulation; she lifted her face to catch the fine morning sun. The forest around her reminded her of the glorious woods of home – although in comparison to the magnificent Black Forest, these trees were puny, and the colors washed-out. But, of course, she didn’t think about home any more. Never look back, her father had once taught her – just about the only worthwhile lesson, when all was said and done, that she had ever taken from him.
The walk into town took almost seventy minutes, down a road arrow-straight except for a single hooking detour around a massive oak. During this time, only four vehicles passed. One was dusty, sideboards and windows caked with mud; she decided it probably belonged to a traveling salesman. The others held teenagers and tourists driving out to rubberneck at the Eisenhower farm, little realizing they had no chance of glimpsing the commander-in-chief.
Entering a residential neighborhood, she noticed a second-hand Oldsmobile parked on a front lawn, battered FOR SALE sign propped behind the windshield. Coming to a stop, she ruffled her brow. After a moment’s deliberation, she moved up the front walk.
The young man who answered her knock would later tell investigators that he had initially been taken aback by this attractive young lady asking to purchase the Olds Rocket. The car was irrefutably a beast, appealing mostly to soldiers back from the war who had grown accustomed overseas to operating powerful military equipment. But as the young lady told her story, he began to understand the situation. She was buying the car at the instruction of her employer, a widowed German Jew named Josephine Booth who had fled the Nazis in the late 1930s, financed by the portable wealth of diamonds, and established herself in America. Having survived the Third Reich, Mrs Booth wanted an escape plan in place should history repeat itself. Seen through this lens, the young lady’s interest in the second-hand Rocket – which with its 303-cubic-inch V8 engine and Hydra-Matic transmission certainly qualified as a fine escape vehicle – made perfect sense. And the diamonds she proposed to barter for the Olds were of the highest quality. When she agreed to leave one as a sample he might show a jeweler, his last doubts vanished. She suggested meeting again one week from that day, and if he found the diamonds acceptable, to go ahead then with the trade – conditions to which he readily consented.
Elisabeth proceeded toward the center of Gettysburg. The plaza in which she paused to orient herself – Lincoln Square, named after the author of the famous address given there ninety-some years earlier – divided the main street into two tributaries, York on the east and Chambersburg on the west. In the years since Lincoln’s speech, the square had actually developed to become a circle surrounding a pavilion. Drugstores, movie theaters, bars, shops, and hotels crowded cheek-to-jowl around the perimeter. Occupying a position of honor in the center, beside an American flag and a large clock mounted on a wrought-iron post, stood an inhuman-looking bronze statue of Honest Abe himself, with beard and stovepipe hat. Strange,
thought Elisabeth, that they chose to honor this man who had done so much to spoil the purity of their bloodlines. Americans had everything backwards.
After identifying the bench in front of the Plaza Restaurant where she would meet her contact, she went shopping. To justify her day to anyone paying close enough attention, she bought a few personal items – a four-dollar skirt, an inexpensive box of chocolates, some toiletries and sundries, and a commemorative copy of Lincoln’s speech. (‘We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground; the brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.’) Then she ventured farther afield, seeking pawn shops and five-and-dimes. From neighborhoods designed to appeal to tourists, she reached districts catering to students and factory workers; since the early nineteenth century, Gettysburg College and the Lutheran Seminary had operated in town, as had carriage manufacturers, shoemakers, and tanneries.
GOLD AND SILVER PAWN offered three used guitars for sale. For ten dollars and seventy-five cents, Elisabeth made a steel-string Gibson with a battered tweed carrying case her own. Inside a neighboring five-and-dime, she browsed shelves stocked with cosmetics, selecting items – make-up, false eyelashes, stockings, dark wig, spirit gum, rubbing alcohol, and a small jar of greasepaint – which she brought to the register. Ringing her up, the girl behind the counter whistled absently: ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?’
Precisely as the wrought-iron clock in the center of Lincoln Square ticked to twelve noon, Elisabeth settled down on the prearranged bench. She had waited no more than thirty seconds before a presence sat beside her. Although she didn’t know her contact’s name, she recognized him immediately based on the description – with his unusually tall frame, he was difficult to miss. After glancing at him briefly, she looked away, waiting to hear the identifying code phrase.
He looked over at her indifferently. ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘can you recommend a place for lunch?’
‘What are you in the mood for?’
‘I’ll defer to you.’
‘I need a rifle,’ she said, without glancing toward him again. ‘Telescopic sight. Range at least three hundred yards. I won’t be able to zero the scope, so it must shoot straight the first time.’
Very slightly, Richard Hart nodded.
‘Now, the rub.’ Speaking in a low voice, she explained exactly what she wanted – and then stood, leaving the guitar behind, and walked off without looking back.
In a small diner on a side street, she found a single-occupancy restroom with a door that locked. Inside, working carefully but quickly, she tested the disguise she had bought at the five-and-dime. Full at the sides and flat at the top, with the hairline far back, the wig lent a new width and roundness to her face. The effect was accentuated by subtle lines of spirit gum applied across the brow and around the mouth. Greasepaint circles beneath the eyes added another few years; smudges below the chin suggested jowls; false eyelashes and cheap stockings provided tackiness. When she had finished, the woman looking back from the mirror was familiar only in a strange, elusive way. Minutes before, an attractive blonde in her mid-twenties had entered the restroom. Now a brunette, puffy and middle-aged, turned her face this way and that, considering her reflection. The illusion might not pass close inspection, but once she was behind the wheel of a moving car, it would suffice.
One hour later, having removed the disguise, she entered a car dealership across town: ‘RENN/KIRBY, LICENSED SINCE 1933, GUARANTEES YOU WILL RIDE AWAY HAPPY!’ Mr Kirby himself listened attentively as she gave her name – Jennie Tucker – and expressed her desire to buy an inexpensive motorbike for transport between Holland House, where, she explained, she was employed as a waitress, and Gettysburg College, where she was taking classes. As it happened, she was in luck; he just happened to have out back the perfect vehicle, which had belonged to his own daughter. And so Jennie Tucker rode away happy that very afternoon atop a used Huffy Whizzer Model 90, a motorized bicycle originally sold as a kit, for which she paid thirty dollars in cash. Feeling magnanimous, Kirby threw in a full tank of gas for the small engine mounted between seat and handlebars.
By half-past four, Elisabeth Grant had stowed her disguise and motorized bicycle in the woods to the east of the Eisenhower farm. She then commenced walking back around the perimeter to the west, so that upon arriving again at the gate, she seemed to be coming on foot from town.
Keeping vigil from his bedroom window, Francis Isherwood absently watched the girl walk up the long driveway.
Chaining his next cigarette from the butt of the last, he returned his attention to the porch on which Eisenhower stood painting. Moments later, a peremptory knock rattled the door in its frame. ‘No smoking in the house,’ called Miss Dunbarton.
Sighing, Isherwood pushed out of his chair. He opened the door to find the house matron standing in the hallway, glaring at him accusatorily. ‘A special allowance has been made,’ he lied. ‘To facilitate effective surveillance.’
‘Even if that were true, Mister Isherwood, it would not stand. My house, my rules. Take it outside.’
He gave her a crooked grin, which left her unmoved. She pointed stiffly down the hall. ‘Outside.’
And so Isherwood took his cigarettes and his fedora and his cluttered thoughts out into the afternoon, where the breeze was cool and crisp. The fresh air turned out to be a blessing; he supposed he owed Dunbarton some thanks. Walking the firm ground, he wandered toward Farm One – Secret Service agents he passed along the way conscientiously reporting his every move via walkie-talkie – where he could keep monitoring Eisenhower.
Drawing near the screened-in porch, he changed his course a moment too late to avoid being seen. ‘You there,’ Eisenhower called. Standing behind his easel, the man again wore his red bathrobe, now with a military greatcoat draped over his shoulders.
Isherwood pointed at his own chest, raising his eyebrows: Me?
‘Yes, you. Come here.’
So Isherwood moved closer to the sun porch, with the Chief’s words beating through the back of his mind: We’re under specific orders from the doctors not to rile the President during his convalescence. He needs not only rest, but relaxation: everything sunshine and roses.
‘Afternoon, sir.’ Suddenly, Isherwood was aware of two agents standing just around the corner of the house – Brennan and Skinnerton? – ready to intervene at the drop of a hat.
‘Maybe from where you’re standing, soldier. But from in here, it’s a goddamned crap afternoon.’
Diplomatically, Isherwood said nothing.
‘I’m a captive in my own goddamned home. And I don’t take kindly to it. You want to give me one of those cigarettes?’
Isherwood hesitated. ‘I thought you’d quit.’
‘I did,’ said Eisenhower archly. ‘But good Christ, man, something’s got to give.’ With a dramatic sigh, he planted hands on hips and looked off to the west, where black birds wheeled restlessly. ‘Do you know: the bloodiest battle in the bloodiest war in our nation’s history was fought right over that ridge. Brother against brother, father against son. A travesty before the eyes of God, no doubt. But nevertheless, honorable deaths. Those men went out the way they’d lived, fighting for what they believed in. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.’
Again, Isherwood held his tongue. When he looked around these gentle hills, he saw men being led like sheep to the slaughter; he saw pride and folly, vengeful ghosts, grieving widows, orphaned children. But Eisenhower evidently took a pleasant reminder of past glories, of flags being planted and medals pinned to chests. Somehow this man who had witnessed untold bloodshed on European beaches and fields still clung to his military values.
Or was the truth more complex? Of course Ike, the Supreme Allied Commander who had led America to victory during World War II, was and would always remain a soldier. And the President’s fascination with Gettysburg’s bloody history was infamous; he had eagerly talked the ear off many
a captive audience while relating details of old melees. But the man’s battle-ready image served a purpose, thought Isherwood: keeping the Soviets in line, allowing the President to engage in a game of nuclear brinksmanship which otherwise would have been impossible. As a lifelong poker player, Ike knew the importance of a good bluff. And some agents who had worked closely beside the man portrayed another Eisenhower, kept carefully out of the public eye, who had seen enough devastation in Europe and Japan to fully appreciate the value of peace. There was no denying that in his foreign policy he had certainly proven himself to be a great compromiser – and to his critics, a willing appeaser.
‘Soon enough,’ said Isherwood lamely, ‘you’ll be out and about.’
‘Now you sound like the goddamned doctors.’ But a flash of the famous grin crossed Eisenhower’s face, just briefly. ‘It’s all bunk, son, if you ask me. A leader’s got to lead by example. If that means putting himself at risk, so be it. Just think of Winfield Hancock. Stood and fought at Cemetery Hill, right over yonder, in the face of overwhelming odds, until Meade arrived to relieve him. Single-handedly held the high ground. His courage that day might well have won the battle, you know. And therefore, arguably, the entire war. In battle, high ground counts for everything.’
Isherwood nodded, thinking suddenly of Farm Two’s grain silo, towering over the property like one of H.G. Wells’ Martian Tripods. From such a perch, a shooter would have a clear line of sight of most of the farm, including the very sun porch on which Eisenhower now stood. A hunter could devise no better blind.
‘Plenty of heroes made on this ground, son, and mark my words, they didn’t get there by playing it safe. Why, Chamberlain’s charge with the Twentieth Maine – that was as close to madness as a sane man can get. Yet there he went, giving the command: fix bayonets, he said, and put himself and his own brother right out front, too. Man realized that the left flank ended with him. Lose Little Round Top and they put the entire Union army at risk. Low on ammunition, high on casualties, with Rebs coming at him, wave after wave – but he rose to the challenge. Won himself a Medal of Honor, while he was at it. But do you want to know the truth? In tactical terms, it was a mistake. Man just didn’t know any better. He was a professor of rhetoric, not a professional soldier. But sometimes that’s what it takes to strike a vital blow – not knowing any better. And, what the hell, it worked.’
