The Age of Exodus

by Gavin Scott

  Damn, thought Forrester, this man is smart. Again he took refuge in pomposity.

  “Not believing in long-dead religions doesn’t prevent a person from being a Christian,” he said.

  “Okay,” said O’Connell, “that’s a relief. You had me going there for a minute.” And then he started in on his questions, which made Forrester feel like a stuntman in a movie doing battle with the finest swordsman in France. The NYPD had not sent their most easygoing detective out to the Queen Mary, not by a long chalk. How much time had Forrester spent with Burke during the crossing? Had he had any arguments with him? Had he seen anyone arguing with anybody else? Where had he been when the ship sailed into the fog? How well did he know Sir Jack Casement?

  It was, therefore, with some relief that he finally limped out of the temporary interview room and out onto the deck, where Gillian was waiting for him in the sunshine, and he was in time to see one of the greatest sights of his life.

  Ahead of them was the Statue of Liberty, her torch aloft, an image he had seen so many times in pictures that seeing it in reality was like a hope fulfilled.

  On either side of them, in the harbour, were freighters, battleships, tugboats, ferryboats, fireboats, lighters, launches. Beyond them rose the skyscrapers of New York, glittering with confidence and prosperity, effortlessly proclaiming this narrow island as the new capital of the world. Forrester had left behind a London battered into poverty, a Paris humiliated by defeat and occupation, a Rome discredited by its own foolishness, a Berlin that had been justly smashed to smithereens by those it had tried to destroy. The old order was reeling – here was the new.

  When the great liner sounded her foghorn the sound echoed off miles of waterfront from which the products of American industry poured out into the world, echoed again off Wall Street towers where the world’s most important financial decisions were made, off garment district sweatshops where the world’s fashions were created, and Broadway skyscrapers where the world’s music was plinked and tinkled into being. To Forrester it seemed as if the entire island of Manhattan was surging out of the water like a whale propelled by its own sheer exuberance.

  Gillian squeezed his hand. “This is fun, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m so glad I’m seeing it with you.” And Forrester couldn’t help agreeing. This was one of life’s great moments, and Gillian was the perfect person to share it with. And then the image of Sophie’s face came into his mind, and Barbara’s, and he had to force himself to stay in the moment. And managed it, almost.

  To do otherwise would have been letting the side down.

  * * *

  Engines stilled, the Queen Mary was guided onto Pier 90, the hawsers were secured to the bollards, the gangplanks lowered and people began to stream through passport control towards the customs sheds. As Forrester watched O’Connell leave, he wondered how far his investigation had taken him: between boarding the ship and its arrival in New York he seemed to have interviewed at least twenty people – and from the expression on his face Forrester guessed he hadn’t got anything definitive. Nobody, at any rate, was being detained.

  Ernest Bevin made a brief statement to the press saying how pleased he was to be here and how much he was looking forward to discussing international problems with the whole international community at the United Nations. The statement was punctuated by the crackle of flash bulbs, and followed by a volley of disregarded questions, before a fleet of Town Cars spirited the Foreign Secretary and his team to the Waldorf Astoria. Forrester was staying there too, but knew discretion required he arrived there separately, and concentrated on seeing Gillian onto the bus that was waiting to take her and her fellow translators to the hostel near the General Assembly building on Long Island.

  The tanneries and slaughterhouses of Turtle Bay were already being demolished for the permanent headquarters of the United Nations, but it would be years before that would be completed and in the meantime the organisation designed to secure the peace of the world was housed in an old gyroscope factory at Lake Success and a former ice-skating rink at Flushing Meadows, where the 1939 World’s Fair had taken place. Gillian held him tight before she got onto the bus, and told him to be careful, and he promised to come out to see her as soon as he was able. As he did so he knew he wasn’t just being polite: he needed to see her. He needed to talk to her again. He needed to hold her.

  He watched the bus for a long time as it was swallowed up by the city and then saw, among the crowds, Theresa Palmer getting into a limousine. As if sensing he was looking at her, she raised her head and looked directly into his eyes before the car door closed behind her. There was a voice behind him.

  “I’m staying at the Paramount Hotel on Broadway. Come and have a drink if you get a chance.” It was Aubrey Eban. “Or catch up with me at the UN. If you have time from your archaeology conference, it should be worth a visit.” Then a man in a leather windcheater came towards them and guided Eban towards a waiting van. As the van pulled away, and Forrester was walking towards the ranks of exuberant yellow taxis, a Cadillac cruised up beside him.

  “Want a lift?”

  He glanced into the dimness. It was Jack Casement. For a moment he hesitated, and then knew that, whatever the risks, this was an invitation he had to accept.

  “Thanks,” he said, and got in.

  * * *

  Forrester glanced across the car towards the industrialist, his face light and dark as shafts of sunlight slanted down through the girders of the elevated railway above their heads. “ROOMS, $1.50” said a sign on a building amidst a dense tangle of fire escape ladders. “BUDWEISER PREFERRED EVERYWHERE.” “ADMIRAL TELEVISION APPLIANCES.” “GIANT TWO-TROUSER SUIT SALE.”

  “This is very kind of you,” said Forrester.

  “It’s not kind at all,” said Casement. “It’s the perfect opportunity to tell you to get out of my hair.”

  Forrester blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t appreciate being followed, Forrester,” said Casement. “I didn’t appreciate it in London, I didn’t appreciate it on the Queen Mary, and by God I won’t put up with it in New York.”

  “I wasn’t following you in London, and the only reason I was on the boat is that was how I was getting here for the archaeology conference.”

  “Travelling first class? I know academic budgets. It’s not your college picking up the tab, is it?” It was a shrewd thrust, and Forrester knew he had to take control of the conversation.

  “So who do you imagine is paying for it, Sir Jack? Somebody who believes you killed Charles Templar?”

  Casement looked genuinely surprised. “Who says I killed Charles Templar? Why would I kill Charles Templar?”

  “Perhaps because you wanted to marry his wife.”

  “I was making love to his wife. That doesn’t mean I want to marry her.”

  “So who did kill him?”

  “I’ve no idea. Any more than I know who killed Billy Burke.” Forrester saw the tiny flicker of uncertainty in Casement’s eyes as he realised those last words had been a mistake.

  “I thought he was supposed to have fallen off the back of the boat,” said Forrester.

  “He probably did, judging from the amount he drank.”

  “But you just said he had been killed. And there was bad blood between you, wasn’t there? He told me you’d tricked him into investing in an aviation company you were planning to abandon. Nearly ruined him, he said. Did you have an argument? Did he slip and fall?”

  Suddenly Casement was angry, his hands clenched into fists.

  “I didn’t kill Billy Burke and I didn’t kill Charles Templar, but I bloody well will kill you if you don’t tell me who put you up to this.”

  Through the window behind Casement, Forrester saw they did not seem to be driving direct to the centre of the city but were going through a part of town which seemed to consist of nothing but abattoirs. There were carcasses hanging in the wide openings, carts full of offal, blood in the gutters and the stench of death. His
eyes flickered towards the bullet-headed chauffeur driving the car: this was shaping up to be an ambush.

  “Nobody ‘put me up to this’,” said Forrester. “But somebody tried to kill me on the Queen Mary and damn near succeeded. From the way you’re talking now I’m beginning to wonder if it was you.”

  The industrialist tapped on the glass and the car stopped. Two men pushing a cart loaded with carcasses paused beside them, the shrouded bodies of the gutted beasts effectively hiding the car from view.

  “Well, Dr. Forrester, it wasn’t,” said Casement. “And I suspect there are a lot of people who want you out of their hair even more than I do. I want to know who’s paying you, and we’re not leaving here till you’ve told me.”

  Forrester made a mental picture of the position of the car in the street, the position of the two men with the cart, and the extent to which they were cut off from the outside world. He also calculated how he could immobilise Casement, neutralise whatever intervention the driver planned and get himself out of there in one piece.

  He also calculated that there was really no point in doing that. He had been trained to endure pain to avoid giving up vital information to the enemy for as long as possible, and on more than one occasion had actually done it – but the real trick was in deciding what was vital information and what wasn’t. He smiled, let out a long breath, and met Casement’s eyes.

  “Casement,” he said gently. “You’re making something of a fool of yourself here. You’re right about someone else picking up the bill for this trip, but it’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Then who the hell is it?” said Casement.

  “I’m even prepared to tell you that,” said Forrester, “if you give me your word you’ll keep the information to yourself.”

  Casement glared at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “All right,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “Ernest Bevin,” said Forrester, and explained why. He could almost see the wheels turning in Casement’s head as he absorbed the information. Finally, he looked back at Forrester.

  “And Bevin said nothing about me?”

  “Not a word. In fact the only conversations I’ve had with Foreign Office officials in which you were mentioned concerned the fact that they hope you’ll do significant business here that will help the balance of payments.”

  “Which I fully intend to,” said Casement. “If no interfering fool gets in my way.” He gave Forrester another long, hard look, as though convincing himself he had made the right decision, and then tapped on the glass again. The car moved off smoothly.

  “Do you know how many aircraft manufacturers there are in Britain these days?” he said, almost conversationally, as the Meatpacking District slid away behind them.

  “I have no idea,” said Forrester.

  “Fifty,” said Casement. “It’s not surprising, after the war, but it’s a ridiculous number. They need to be culled.”

  “That makes sense,” said Forrester, neutrally. “I assume you’ll be the one doing the culling.”

  “Possibly. But we also need to stop thinking about fighters and bombers and start thinking about passenger transport. I mean, we’ve just taken five days to cross the Atlantic. If we had the proper planes we could have done it in eight hours.”

  “Jet-powered planes, I assume,” said Forrester. If Casement was going to start behaving like a civilised person again, Forrester was perfectly happy to follow suit.

  “Of course jet planes,” said Casement. “That’s where the future is.”

  This time when Forrester glanced out of the window he saw they were approaching Midtown, the twenty or thirty blocks around Fifth Avenue and 50th Street crammed with the smartest shops, the best theatres, the grandest hotels, the plushest offices, the most expensive apartment blocks. Here, creating another alternating pattern of light and shade, were the great interwar skyscrapers, seething with decorative motifs, built to entertain as well as amaze, vying with each other for mythical, indeed religious status, as if Manhattan was the headquarters of an immense cult. There was the Empire State Building, the highest on earth, with its own airship mast on its summit and owners who referred to it as the Cathedral of the Skies. The Chrysler Building with its atavistic bird-of-prey cornices that would not have looked out of place on a ziggurat. Forrester glanced up at the vast billboard of the Camel Cigarettes man, bigger than Zeus ever was, blowing his proud smoke rings out into Times Square. If the ancient Greeks had ever stumbled across this place, they might well have believed it was Olympus.

  The streets were solid with well-dressed men and women in smart hats, marching purposefully upright, arms swinging and faces shining with confidence. The car glided past one famous hotel after another until it reached the Savoy.

  “I get out here,” said Casement. “My driver’ll take you on to your hotel.” Seconds later, Casement was gone, and Forrester watched a black bellman in a uniform that would have done credit to one of Napoleon’s generals take the suitcases out of the trunk, before the bullet-headed driver pulled back out into the traffic.

  And then one of the city’s distinctive rounded blue and yellow taxis pulled in front of them, and the car was suddenly trapped. Even that would not have made any difference, had not two would-be passengers descended on the cab and begun arguing with each other over who had precedence.

  As the altercation proceeded, Forrester glanced idly out of the window where Casement’s progress towards the front entrance of the Savoy had been held up by a man in a leather windcheater who was gesturing at him importunely.

  And suddenly Forrester realised it was the same man who had been waiting to meet Aubrey Eban at Pier 90.

  From the language of his slightly bent-forward body, Forrester knew the man was asking for something, and Casement then replied with words that clearly brought the conversation to an end. As he brushed past the man into the hotel, Forrester came to an instant decision.

  “Take my case to the Waldorf Astoria, please,” he said. “I’m going to walk.” And before the driver could object, he slipped out of the car, closed the door behind him and set off after the man who had accosted Casement.

  * * *

  Suddenly, from being a spectator, Forrester was in the midst of the two hundred thousand denizens of Manhattan, walking fast after his quarry down the magnificent avenues and through the honky-tonk tawdriness of Times Square, packed with shooting galleries, flea circuses and peepshows. Despite them, the place felt oddly innocent; more like Norman Rockwell’s America than New York. One burlesque house even sported a sign reading politely HI FOLKS, WELCOME ONE AND ALL. He passed a building site where convenient viewing holes had been cut in the fencing, under the legend Sidewalk Superintendents Club, Your Chairman John D. Rockefeller, and as he glanced at it the man in the windcheater dodged into the Automat next to a Western Union office which offered to send a facsimile-gram of your own handwriting anywhere in the world.

  The Automat was clean and bright and quintessentially American. Forrester watched as people put nickels in the slots, opening little glass doors in the food wall and taking out plates of meat loaf and lemon meringue pie before filling their coffee cups from gleaming urns with brass spouts moulded in the shape of dolphins.

  He saw the windcheater man at a corner table. He was dark-haired, in his early thirties, his face lean and intense. Once, when Forrester had visited an American airbase in Norfolk, he had spent an evening with men who looked like this: the pilots of the Flying Fortresses who were steadily reducing Berlin to rubble. He had liked them, enjoyed their company and knew that many of them would be dead within days. He pulled up a chair and sat down opposite. Windcheater man glanced briefly at him and went on eating.

  “Mr. Casement can be a little short at times,” said Forrester.

  The man looked up at him sharply. “Say what?” he said.

  “Jack Casement. I know he gave you short shrift.”

  “Short shrift?” said the man, and then laughed. “I know what that means. I�
��ve been in England.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you?” Forrester had no idea how to answer this question, so he just said what came into his head.

  “He couldn’t be seen speaking to you. He was being watched.”

  “That makes sense. So he sent you after me?”

  “Lay it out for me the way you wanted to lay it out for him,” said Forrester, avoiding a direct reply.

  “Well, like I said, we need a staging post in Italy. We need that strip in the Abruzzi and we need the equipment to recondition the engines. It’s getting too hot for us here.”

  “How do you mean?” The puzzlement in Forrester’s voice was genuine. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “The Feds are right behind us. They know what Feigleman’s doing with the machine parts. We’ve been trying to recondition the kites here but they’re closing in on us. If we don’t get them out of the country soon they’ll move in and take them.”

  “And why should Sir Jack help you?”

  Suddenly the man looked suspicious. “Why do you need to ask that? If he sent you, you already know.”

  Forrester kept his cool. If he gave way now, the illusion would be shattered.

  “He wants you to make your case,” he said. “You couldn’t make it to him, make it to me.”

  The man shrugged. “Remind him about Matt Hausen,” he said simply. “And what he said the night I flew him from Bristol to Liverpool, after the factory was hit. I don’t think he’ll have forgotten what we talked about then.” He finished the last of his food and stood up. “I gotta go,” he said. “Tell him I understand the way he acted. Tell him I’ll be back in touch.”

  And with that he was gone.

  Forrester sat staring after him for a long time, rearranging the fragments of the pilot’s replies in his mind. Because he was certain he was a pilot, had been one of the thousands of young Americans who had flooded into England during the war. And on the basis of seeing him greet Aubrey Eban at Pier 90, he assumed that Hausen was Jewish.