Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  April, 1936

  Indiana’s spring had broken but turned cold as winter. Eddie had spent his first thirty-three nights sleeping on clean sheets at Chicago’s Allerton Hotel and fourteen-hour days at the Standard Oil/Royal Shell refinery in East Chicago, Indiana. The men and bosses Eddie worked with were hard, serious fellows who kept their hands busy, their mouths shut, and their political opinions to themselves. Only the three foremen knew what they were building and testing, the secret structural modifications that Eddie’d helped invent. Eddie kept that pride to himself, but it was there. He’d found a key others couldn’t and he’d muddled through theoretical designs that could make his key work, or so he hoped. Eddie’s modifications were dangerous and had never been attempted outside a laboratory. Modifying a facility of this scale was testimony to someone’s urgency. It was an engineering leap from a circus cannon to Jules Verne’s Moon Gun.

  June, 1936

  Eddie arrived at Standard of Indiana’s downtown Chicago offices straight from the work deck of his two-hundred-foot cracking tower. In twenty-four hours the tower would go online. Seated at the long table in Standard Oil’s boardroom were ten somber men in dark blue and dark gray suits. The man at the head of the table was Standard Oil’s senior vice president and responsible for the refinery that housed Eddie’s modifications. It was one of the largest refineries in the world. The men continued their discussion without acknowledging Eddie’s arrival. Eddie’s fingernails were dirty, his work pants stained, his stack of papers and folders wrinkled. He dropped his papers on the table in front of the chair where the secretary pointed him and sat down.

  A gray-suited and silent Harold Culpepper sat alone at the table’s far end. Eddie recognized three others. Two of them were Engineering Fellows from Johns Hopkins University. Their 1933 textbook on petroleum engineering was considered the industry bible. The most important of the three was Conrad R.L. Chenoweth, the Babe Ruth of mechanical engineering. Large in size and bearing, Mr. Chenoweth pointed down the table at Eddie. Eddie scrambled for a fountain pen to get his first autograph.

  Mr. Chenoweth said, “Mr. Owen’s collegiate spirit and accolades have their place, as does his pursuit of gainful employment. That place is not here. Mr. Owen’s calculations are flawed or they are outright fabrications. Your East Chicago refinery will be a ball of fire. There are no circumstances where I, or my colleagues”—Chenoweth gestured across the table—“will sign off on anything other than a complete halt to the Culpepper/Army Air Corps project.”

  Harold Culpepper exhaled but offered no rebuttal. One Johns Hopkins Fellow turned his slide rule toward the senior vice president and two corporate oilmen at the table. “Simply put, the ‘controlled’ reaction in Mr. Owen’s tower cannot produce the desired catalytic alkylation and isomerization result . . . other than on paper, and even there, it is sufficiently questionable as to imply dishonesty.”

  The senior vice president kept his hands folded in front of him and shifted just his eyes to Eddie for his answer. Eddie looked at the best minds in engineering, then his stained papers stacked between his dirty hands, then his hands. “Um . . . ah, with all due respect.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Mr. Chenoweth and his esteemed colleagues”—cringe, dry swallow—“are wrong.”

  Chenoweth sipped coffee, set the cup down, and turned to excuse himself. The vice president said to Eddie, “And your proof, Mr. Owen? These notable men in your field do not see it. They see naiveté or worse, and grave, grave consequences.”

  Eddie dry swallowed again. He would have eaten live centipedes to work for any of the three engineers at this table. Eddie inhaled and said, “The best men Standard Oil has built these modifications. We ran all these tests.” Eddie tapped his folders. “Ran them live, not on paper. The welds are perfect. They will hold; the vessel is tuned. The project is complete. It will work. The slide rules are wrong.”

  The Johns Hopkins Fellow shook his head and lowered his slide rule. He said, “Gentlemen. Sadly, the stunning lack of competence demonstrated here is why the USA is still lost in the Great Depression while Germany has risen from the rubble of the Great War.”

  The senior vice president thanked Eddie and dismissed him. Harold Culpepper was asked/told to stay. On his way out, Eddie stopped at the door, turned to the men at the table, and said, “I can see the reaction inside the tower, inside the chamber—the heat, the colors—I can smell it. The modifications will work. No one else has to be there; I’ll throw the switch myself.”

  Sunset was flattening Lake Michigan to dark. Harold Culpepper’s secretary showed Eddie into her boss’s office. Culpepper sat behind his desk wearing the same somber gray suit from earlier in the afternoon. There was no jazzy patter, no argyle socks. Culpepper said, “Do you know the term ‘savant.’”

  Eddie shook his head.

  “Two of the plant’s three foremen were called in after you were dismissed. The foremen think that’s what you are. A version of James Pullen, the asylum carpenter who builds the impossible.”

  Eddie declined a compliment he didn’t deserve. “The foremen are your ‘savants.’ They built it; they oughta know.”

  “The VPs grilled both foremen, as did Chenoweth. Credentials were challenged. Dire consequences were, and are, predicted.” Culpepper stared. “Are you sure, Eddie?”

  “Sure enough I’ll throw the switch myself.”

  Culpepper swallowed, looked around the room, then at the document on his desk. He looked like a man in a corner, exhaled deeply, and sighed. “If you fail, they will own all my stock in Culpepper Oil Products Company, all my rights to all our patents. I will have nothing.”

  Eddie shut his eyes, said a silent, Thanks, I think, and nodded with all the confidence he had. “It’ll work, Mr. Culpepper. I need this job and the next one. And I can’t afford to die.”

  Tonight was Eddie’s last Tuesday in the USA. Earlier this morning a jubilant, sweaty, relieved Standard Oil senior vice president had told Eddie, “pack for Bahrain.” The SVP and the two foremen had dutifully witnessed Eddie’s two-hundred-foot cracking tower go online, not explode, and produce Standard Oil’s first gallon of 100-octane aviation gasoline.

  While the crews were still cheering from the far fences, Harold Culpepper whisked Eddie to the Culpeper office, presented him with a multi-page employment contract, then shared a glass of bourbon and pointed at a globe next to his desk. Culpepper told Eddie his first stop would be ten thousand miles east in Bahrain. “Bahrain is a group of thirty-three desert islands on the western edge of the Arabian Gulf. Standard Oil of California and the Texas Company are building a refinery there after signing a ‘need to know’ agreement with ‘someone.’ This agreement allows for a portion of the refinery’s design to be modified so AvGas can be produced by 1937. And no, Eddie, you don’t need to know who or why to do this job. Oaky-Smokey? A twenty-four-hour bodyguard will be at your side. Just be glad you’re the cat’s pajamas, the first person on planet Earth who the moolah men believe can make these modifications without incinerating their very expensive refineries. Or crashing all the test pilots who’ll test the gas.”

  Eddie balked big. “Pilots will fly my gas before I know it’s consistently good?”

  Culpepper shrugged. “We live in troubled times, Eddie. Your green light to throw the switch this morning was all the proof you’ll ever need.” Culpepper wiped theatrical sweat from his brow.

  The news abroad was bad. Unfortunately, Eddie’s family in Oklahoma had no hope but him. And if the Texas Rangers working Montague County decided to track Eddie Owen outside of Texas, Bahrain would be a long, long way to reach. The incredibly good news was Eddie was about to be given the keys to the kingdom, not the keys to a jobsite latrine to clean. Eddie signed the contract, drank the bourbon, and called his folks. God bless Standard Oil, the Owen family had a job, a job his parents could know about.

  Ten hours later, Eddie was in the Allerton Hotel’s plush elevator, awash in equal parts success, relief, and trepidation, a guest of Haro
ld Culpepper for Eddie’s bon voyage dinner in the Allerton’s world-famous Tip Top Tap. The saloon and its intimate tables were on the twenty-third floor, crowded with swooning Northwestern coeds and their trust-fund dates. Perry Como sat a stagy barstool crooning “Lazy Weather,” the pin spot tight on his extra-large head and pink V-neck sweater.

  From the table to his left, Eddie heard, “German-American Bund,” and, “We must stand together against the Communist Internationale.” He turned to three men and a woman deep in discussion instead of swooning. The woman’s glance landed, then lingered, unruffled and smoky. Her hair was tight dishwater blond above Joan Crawford shoulders. A gold ring circled a long finger sheathed in a black velvet glove. The finger slowly traced a high cheekbone; she looked like she might purr but didn’t.

  She said, “Guten Abend.”

  Before Eddie could answer, she was tugged politely back into her companions’ discussion. Eddie felt the room temperature rise and grinned to ask the woman to dance—

  A man eased into the empty seat across from Eddie that Harold Culpepper had just vacated. Three months ago, Eddie had seen the man in Harold Culpepper’s office. Now the major was sans his Army Air Corps uniform and summoning a waiter to their table. The major leaned into Eddie’s face, forcing Eddie back in the previously comfortable chair. “You’re shipping out under contract tomorrow, New York, London, Istanbul, Baghdad, then Bahrain. Don’t contact your family in Oklahoma; I’ll handle that.”

  The major nodded Eddie at an oblivious, half-drunk Harold Culpepper buying tobacco he didn’t smoke from an almost-dressed cigarette girl. “Actually, Harold will. Forty a week of your check goes direct to Oklahoma like you been doing.”

  Eddie glanced back to the table on his left. The German woman was no longer smiling at him; she was staring at the major, her mouth a tight line. Eddie followed her eyes to him. “How’s it you and the Army Air Corps know when and where I’m going? Or where my family lives?” Eddie leaned forward. “With all due respect, Major, my family and where they get their money are none of your concern.”

  A hint of North Texas drawl came with the major’s answer. “I know a lot about you and your family, Mr. Owen. And Harold’s. In fact, I know enough about Harold and Oklahoma that he made this job for me. Pays well and requires so little effort I can spend my nights in places like this.”

  That sounded like blackmail. Of Harold Culpepper for sure. Eddie tensed for the consequences that might come with the North Texas drawl. The major’s other hand rose to the table. The hand was a claw, the first three fingers missing at the second knuckle. USMC was tattooed small on the inside of his wrist. The waiter the major had summoned arrived and bent at the waist. The major stared at the blond woman while he whispered to the waiter’s ear.

  The waiter stiffened so quickly it flapped the towel covering his silver tray. He located Harold Culpepper’s shape in the crowd, mouthed, Yes sir, to the major, and heel-turned in Harold’s direction.

  The major pointed Eddie toward the elevators. “Harold’s gonna be busy with our waiter. Let’s you and I take a walk. See what part of your life I can concern myself with and what I can’t.”

  Eddie checked the blonde, then Perry Como, then the least pleasant of his new companions and his claw hand. Their walk finished in the front seat of the major’s coupe, stopped and parked just shy of the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue, the now infamous theater where John Dillinger had been shot dead by the FBI two years ago. Nothing had been said about Eddie being a fugitive, but the major’s chosen parking space couldn’t have been an accident. Eddie read the marquee backlit in black: Frankie and Johnny. Under the bright lights, fur-collared swells huddled out of the drizzle and away from the less fortunate.

  The major lit a Chesterfield using the mangled hand as if it weren’t. “Three years ago, gangsters from here—‘the Italian Mafia’ as we call ’em—assassinated Chicago’s mayor Anton Cermak in Miami.”

  Eddie had read about the assassination in the Oklahoma City papers. Big news because Cermak had been standing next to President-elect Roosevelt.

  “The Miami police said the gunman ‘confessed,’ said he was paid to kill Cermak by Al Capone. That confession never happened. Cermak was window-dressing and Capone had nothing to do with it. The real target was President-elect Roosevelt. It was a coup d’état.”

  Eddie turned back from his window. “What?”

  “The assassin wasn’t supposed to survive the attempt. When they got him to Washington, he told a different story, said he was there to kill Roosevelt. Elements inside our federal government were pressured to sequester him, which they did. They held his trial, convicted him of first-degree murder, and executed him . . . all in thirty-three days.”

  The major’s eyes moved across the couples under the marquee, his tone deteriorating.

  “Four months later President Roosevelt rescinded the gold standard as part of his ‘New Deal’ promises and began printing money to kill the Depression and help the little man. The same conspirators tried again that November and they’ll keep trying till our president is dead and their man’s in office.”

  Eddie wide-eyed the revelation.

  “But Eddie Owen and I aren’t gonna let that happen.”

  “Me?”

  “World’s nothing like you think, Mr. Owen. It’s crumbling again, coming apart, worse than what makes the radio and the papers.” The major drew a triangle on his windshield and pointed at the corners. “Pay attention. This information is gonna keep you alive or kill you: Present day, 1936, there are three major powers—us; the Russians; and the big dog, England. Real soon there’ll be two more—Germany and Japan—five total by 1937 or ’38.”

  Eddie imagined the five-sided triangle. He’d listened to the radio and read the Chicago papers all spring like anybody would—from an interested distance. That distance had just been shrunk to zero. Eddie did the math: AvGas. The major continued.

  “Three months ago the Jap military attempted a coup d’état. They killed a bunch of politicians but didn’t get the prime minister. Didn’t matter. What the Jap army did get was lots more power. If you’re a Russian Communist, a militarized Japan is not a comforting thought. Why? Japan has close ties to Germany. Germany is rearming fast and furious, massing an illegal, mechanized, Fascist army that ain’t a fan of Joe Stalin, either. Hitler says Stalin and his Red Army plan to invade Europe, colonize it into their ‘Communist workers collective.’ Hitler plans to be ready.”

  Eddie could guess what “plans to be ready” meant.

  The major confirmed Eddie’s guess before he could finish the thought. “War’s coming . . . on a scale a college boy can’t imagine. The stakes are who rules the world—the Capitalists, the Fascists, or the Communists. The Capitalists are the swing vote. If they side with the Fascists and win, the world gets one system of interconnected strongmen. If the Capitalists go with the Communists and win, the world gets border and trade fences and an uneasy truce that won’t last. Whoever wins, the strong will eat the weak ’cause they always do. But you know all about that, don’t you.”

  Smeary headlights half lit the major’s thick horseshoe mustache and the pockmarks that marred his face. When the lights passed, he continued.

  “Powerful interests in this country are picking sides in the coming fight and you best understand they ain’t picking the same ones. That is a serious goddamn problem . . . a problem that kills presidents, builds factories, and marches armies.”

  The major dragged on the Chesterfield, then cut his eyes to Eddie and added a small, unpleasant smile.

  “Not much different than the Jacksboro Highway. Put a federal revenuer warrant on somebody and a sharecropper’s dead nine-year-old.” The major shook his head at bad luck. “That’d be a serious goddamn problem, too. And tough to explain to a fellow’s family, them takin’ blood money and all.”

  Eddie flushed. His eyes narrowed.

  The major nodded to himself. “Heard an escapee can do twenty years on a road
gang in Montague County . . . or hang, depending on the mood of the day. Suppose a fellow’d be lucky if the nine-year-old were a Jew, although I can’t see how that should matter.”

  The money Eddie had sent for the sharecropper farmer and his family was all Eddie had that didn’t go to Cushing, and not much considering their loss. Floyd Merewether had sent the money back with a note saying to move on, that Benny had taken care of it. Eddie did get the boy’s name and where he was buried. Franklin Nadler, age nine.

  “We understand each other, convict?”

  The major pulled a Colt .45 from his belt and pushed it at Eddie. “They say you boxed light-heavy in college and know how to use one of these. You’d better where you’re going.” The major checked another set of headlights, these in his rearview mirror, and waited until the glare and car passed. “In Bahrain you’ll meet a Brownsville cowboy named D.J. Bennett. He’ll work with you on the refinery, although he couldn’t pump gas if you gave him the handle. Bennett will see to your protection when your ass is in the fire. And it will be.”

  Rain rivered on the coupe’s windows and Eddie heard Benny Binion in his ear whispering, No point in being somebody’s sucker. The short money’s always that, and usually expensive.

  Eddie said, “Why do I need an army-issue Colt and a bodyguard to be a petroleum engineer? Didn’t when I graduated.”

  The major frowned. “Your problems in Texas are serious, Mr. Owen, as are Mr. Culpepper’s in Oklahoma. Very serious. Worse, as I explained, I know all about ’em. Worse, still, I know men in authority who’d be eternally grateful if I handed your asses to them.”

  Eddie kept the Colt in his lap.

  “Technically speaking you’re working for Harold Culpepper’s company, but all his money comes from another company in that Carbon and Carbide Building that I don’t care for much, either.”

  “Standard Oil? What’s wrong with Standard Oil?”