Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

Reno stayed slouched in the chair, feet on the table, boot soles facing Eddie. “How’s it you know I drink fact’ry liquor? College finally teachin’ something that matters?”

  “Harold Culpepper, my college prof. He knew you were the boss here, said you and he go way back in Oklahoma.”

  Reno spit a brown stream sideways without looking. “Harold fucking Culpepper. Dumb as a fuckin’ post, that boy—rich daddy, mostly. What the fuck did he teach that you couldn’t learn on a playground?”

  “Not so much teach as organize. Undergrads could work with him on postgrad projects . . . I had some potential so they let me work on—”

  “Cracking. Army Air Corps contract. That what’s in those papers?”

  Eddie stopped the wince before it showed. “No, not cracking, exactly. Maintenance modifications. I—”

  “I been on a fast train, sonny. Think I don’t know how to build a refinery? Call your modifications whatever the fuck you want, but I know different, and so do you.” Reno took a sip from a dirty glass. “So, you’d be the ‘asylum carpenter’ who did East Chicago?”

  Eddie couldn’t answer and didn’t.

  “Yeah, I heard. Heard the kid who pulled that off was some kinda freak.” Reno waited for a reaction. “Some kinda ‘England savant,’ whatever the fuck that is.” Reno waited again. “You drinking, Mr. Savant?”

  “Ah, one or ten’d be good.”

  Foreman Bill Reno pushed Eddie a glass. Clean didn’t seem to be an issue. Eddie poured a half inch and watched the dust it dampened turn to a light mud. He toasted Foreman Reno. Behind Reno, just outside the canteen tent, guards with bright lights swept them across a makeshift boxing ring, the corner posts set in fifty-five-gallon drums painted the same as the ones Reno had inside. Eddie smiled. “We’re a sporting camp?”

  Reno frowned. “We try to settle the disagreements with hands as opposed to knives or bayonets.” He frowned deeper. “I told you no bullshit with the Irish.”

  “I didn’t start—”

  “Talk to me, Mr. Owen. What the fuck are you doing at my refinery with a Standard Oil high-hat VP’s signature on your papers? And it better not be nothing to do with East Chicago, Indiana.”

  Eddie pulled the papers from his shirt.

  Bill Reno drank the last of his glass and knocked the bottom on the table harder than necessary. “Out here, among the natives, friends are the difference ’tween getting your job done or not, maintainin’ your employment or not. Assuming I’m willing to read that nonsense in your hand, you best get the lay of the land or men like Ryan Pearce will put you under it.”

  “Not sure I follow.”

  “I’d say that’s painfully obvious.” Reno acknowledged Ryan Pearce entering the canteen. “They still teach geography at that fucking college in Norman?” Reno nodded toward the knots of Irishmen, a few still wearing Sinn Féin hardhats. “Know what that means, that writin’ there on their hats?”

  Eddie read Sinn Féin for the second time today. “Nope.”

  Reno glanced at the armed Royal Marines. “Sinn Féin means those boys are no friends of the Brits. Sinn Féin means you’re a republican, the IRA. You’re trading bombs and bullets with the Brits in Ireland for Ireland’s independence . . . and you’re trading blood with ’em here, whenever the sneaky Irish bastards get the chance.” Reno nodded toward the East Indians. “Same for the Indians, they hate the Brits with both hands, death-fightin’ His Majesty’s redcoats from Bombay to Calcutta.”

  Eddie took a new look at his fellow workers. “Ah, not sure I get it, boss. These fellows are working for us, right?”

  “Us?” Reno snorted. “Who’s ‘us’?”

  “Standard Oil, the Texas Company . . .”

  “Brits are the landlord for a quarter of the world, sonny, half a billion people, and not many of ’em like His Majesty’s boot on their necks any more than you would if the sons-a-bitches were running Texas. Used to be the Turks were boss here, but they got their asses pasted twenty years back in the Great War. Standard Oil and the Texas Company have to keep the Brits happy or all of King George’s protection and this oil goes to somebody else.” Reno smiled at his empty glass. “And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “Suppose not. But if we need to keep the Brits happy and they don’t like the Irish, why hire—”

  “Irish don’t like the Brits. But so what? Brits don’t give a fuck who likes ’em as long as it’s the Brits running things and England is making money.” Reno did a bad English accent. “The Empire and all that.”

  “Why not hire someone else?”

  “Brits with the talent and stomach for this kind of work are busy elsewhere . . .” He glanced at the East Indians again. “Colonizing India, the Philippines, Singapore. And the Irish work cheap, real cheap, always have.”

  Eddie considered the slow work he’d seen today and wondered.

  Bill Reno poured another drink. “How long you got to get your new component online?”

  “If that’s what I was doing, I’d probably have six months. From what I saw today, it doesn’t look good. What I’m here to do looks like a year, maybe more.”

  Bill Reno straightened in his chair but left his feet crossed on the table. The butt of a revolver protruded from his shirt. “That’s what you think, huh? ’Cause you been buildin’ refineries all your goddamn life?”

  “You asked. That’s what I think.”

  “About right, actually. Fucking micks work hard to be slow . . . it suits ’em.” Reno smiled. “See, we got us a war coming—you probably been told that. A big war: that’s the big picture—you’ll believe it when you start working with the RAF test pilots.” Reno nodded to himself, then cut his eyes to the Irish. “What you ain’t been told about is all the little wars that go on inside the big war. That’s where you find yourself this evening, son, inside two or three of the nasty-ass little ones.”

  Eddie shrugged, not sure how much more he wanted to be told about wars he’d like to avoid. “Mr. Reno, I mean no offense and I sure hope you know that. The last guy in this lovely country I want to insult is you. But I, ah, need to see a fellow working here named D.J. Bennett. Right after you read these papers and Mr. Bennett and I talk, I can answer your questions better.” Eddie added an apologetic grin. One he used to no great effect on girls who often harbored higher hopes for his behavior than he had behavior.

  “Bennett, you say?” Reno eased back an inch, then shook his head. “Hooked up with that bunch ain’t healthy, sonny. Word I hear is Bennett and his kind are walkin’ in the wildfire.” Reno’s eyes lifted toward the bar and two men leaving it, one with a cock in his hip, his head shaved, and a brushy mustache that horseshoed his mouth. The man walked with a tilt, a horseman’s amble, like he carried more weight on his right leg.

  Eddie mumbled, “Holy shit.”

  Reno took time to stare. “D.J. Bennett would be the one who looks like a fucking broke-down bull rider. Broke down he ain’t, but the jarhead, cowboy cocksucker hasn’t worked a lick since your Professor Culpepper put him on this job and that don’t seem to matter to anybody on this side of the ocean but me.”

  D.J. Bennett stopped at the gate, patted the dusty Arab he walked with on the back and away, then turned to Bill Reno and his rope gate separating them. “Come by to see ya, Bill. Seems you and me the only fellas out here know Texas from tarpaper.”

  Reno didn’t speak, the caution evident in his silence and posture.

  Bennett grinned under the mustache. “Who’s your young friend there?”

  Eddie stood, eyes wide, and offered a very confused, tentative hand. “Ah . . . Eddie Owen, we met in . . .”

  Bennett shook hands. His grin quit and he said: “Give the ol’ bastard your papers and answer his questions if he’s dumb enough to press ’em, just don’t do it in here.” Bennett turned and limped back toward the bar, avoiding Irishmen dancing the jig, stumbling drunks, and other workers paying him no mind.

  Eddie glanced at Bill Reno. “That’s my D.J. Bennet
t?”

  Reno nodded. “Need his permission, do you?”

  “Sort of. I think he’s my, ah, company bodyguard.”

  “Well, he might could do that. They say he got that leg in the ‘labor riots’ after the war; I hear he was good at both, the war and the riots.” Reno tipped his glass an inch but kept the caution. “All them trench fighters come back from the Great War, nowhere to go, living in the mud and shit and tarpaper—‘Hoovervilles,’ not much different than you Okies trying for California.” Reno drank the whiskey. “Stood their fucking ground, though, Bennett there one of the leaders, against ever-damn strikebreaker, goon, goddamn marshal law them rich bastards and Herbert Hoover threw at ’em. Gutless sons-a-bitches, them bid’nessmen.” Reno spit on the canteen floor. “And now we’re all working for ’em.”

  Eddie wondered if he was hallucinating. How many guys had pockmarked faces and claw hands? The shaved head was new, but in Chicago, “the major” had worn a hat. But why throw the who’s-who curve? Curve or no, the blackmail/fugitive threats probably still applied.

  Reno interrupted Eddie’s puzzle. “So you and Bennett and your papers got something cooked up for me? Goddamn East Chicago, Indiana? What a fucking surprise. You two taking over?”

  “Huh? No, not hardly. I’m in and out. Have zero to say about how you do things, Mr. Reno, or who you do ’em to. I need help to do my job and my folks in Oklahoma need the money. Need it in the worst way.” Eddie’s eyes were steady on Reno, not begging him and not bullshitting; Eddie had come to work and expected to earn his wages.

  “Imagine that. A college boy listening to reason.” Bill Reno poured Eddie a drink. “Tell me it ain’t your East Chicago aviation gas; I got a wife and a kid. Wanna live to see ’em both.”

  Eddie faked a smile.

  Reno sighed, finished a drink he didn’t appear to need, palmed both J.T.S. Brown bottles, and walked Eddie out of the canteen to the trailer. They passed Royal Marines and BAPCO guards and shadows that drew Reno’s attention more than once.

  Inside his trailer, Reno bent just one light closer to his drafting table and flipped it on. Somehow he didn’t seem as bourboned as he had in the canteen. “Show me the goddamn papers.”

  Eddie did. Reno read them twice, wrote down the vice president’s telephone number in Chicago, then burned all but the signature page with his lighter. “About what I figured.” He exhaled, walked to a small concave sofa, and sat in the deep shadows. Elbows on his knees, Reno’s rough hands massaged both temples, then patted his thin hair back into a semblance of place. Reno told the floor between his shoes: “You and Bennett bein’ together don’t fit. Harold Culpepper’s dumb, that’s a natural fact, but he don’t choose Bennett to be your chaperone.”

  Eddie’s face soured. “Not sure Harold ‘chose’ Bennett.”

  Reno looked up. “This ain’t a game, sonny. Put the wrong people in it, none of us finish.” Reno nodded out the trailer’s small window toward his refinery. “Once we modify, be easy to change the entire production run to AvGas. Pump 100 octane into the right kinda airplane and . . . change the balance of just about every-fucking-thing in this neighborhood.” Reno cocked an ear to a noise outside. “There’re people on this job—Irish, Indian, even some Arabs—who ain’t gonna like that. Not even a little.”

  CHAPTER 6

  April, 1937

  When in America, Nazi Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant Erich Schroeder enjoyed baseball; the American stadiums possessed an operatic elegance that a well-born German could appreciate. When not supporting America’s pastime, Erich Schroeder was a criminal, a killer, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s man in the field if the business involved aviation gasoline, Capitalists, or violence for profit.

  Schroeder was seated among the baseball memorabilia at Al Schacht’s Restaurant on Manhattan’s 52nd Street. Midway through a delightful roast beef lunch and the Mutual Broadcasting System’s World Events radio show, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, announced to the restaurant and the world’s press: “Tonight, Germany will own the skies of Europe.”

  Schroeder pushed back blond hair that had fallen over his right eye and checked his watch; the Junkers Ju 52s would already be in the sky. In approximately thirty-seven minutes, three Nazi Luftwaffe bomber squadrons would incinerate Guernica, Spain. Basque Nationalists (who the world press would undoubtedly label as “defenseless civilians”) were the target. Schroeder finished his lunch, complimented the waiter, and paid the bill. As Schroeder moved through the bar, he thanked the grinning former-baseball-player owner, Al Schacht. Behind Mr. Schacht, the RCA radio on the bar broadcast a second announcement from Reich Minister Goebbels: “Adolf Hitler has this hour come to the aid of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in his courageous fight against the Communists.”

  Al Schacht lost his grin.

  Schroeder walked out onto Park Avenue and turned north. Al Schacht was a Jew whose parents had fled Russia on the eve of Emperor Alexander II’s assassination. Schacht’s reaction to the Guernica bombing did not surprise Schroeder. Jews had odd antennae, both predator and prey. Their union with their surroundings was primal, as if parts of the Jew had not evolved as homo sapiens.

  In the lobby of Schroeder’s hotel, the very same model of RCA radio that graced Al Schacht’s bar was already broadcasting France’s outrage at Germany’s actions, accusing Nazi Germany of battle testing illegal Nazi warplanes outlawed by international law. This was as expected. Schroeder knew Goebbels would soon answer through diplomatic channels, stating in Hitler’s name that the devastating raid was notice to the Old World Order: Germany, with or without international blessing, owned the sky.

  Ten days later, the Hindenburg exploded.

  Seven million cubic feet of hydrogen illuminated most of Lakehurst, New Jersey, in volcanic white light. The massive red swastikas adorning the tail fins burned last. Schroeder watched without comment, then woke Reichsmarschall Göring with the Hindenburg news before the fire was out. Göring was a loud and vocal champion of the Zeppelins. As the president of the Reichstag and the minister of Aviation, Göring believed the Zeppelins to be priceless Nazi propaganda and a reasonable addition to an air force that “did not exist” but could already threaten all of Europe and half the Soviet Union. Schroeder thought the Zeppelin airships more theater than weapon. But theater had its place, and Reichsmarschall Göring was not frivolous in his endeavors, nor in the friendships he cultivated in America to make those endeavors successful.

  Schroder spent the evening on station, then drove across the George Washington Bridge into New York City the following morning, stopped at his hotel for a clean suit, then on to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. By late afternoon, Schroeder’s beloved Dodgers had won their contest. From box seats behind home plate, four of Reichsmarschall Göring’s “cultivated friendships” had watched the Dodgers’ catcher Babe Phelps go four-for-four, before being chauffeured to dinner in the Cloud Club high atop the Chrysler Building. The radio announced that DiMaggio and the Yankees were now twelve games into the Yankee Clipper’s second season and had just lost to the Detroit Tigers, 12–6. Schroeder was a Dodgers fan and any pain to the Yankees was to be applauded.

  As part of Schroeder’s mission in America, he had accompanied Reichsmarschall Göring’s friends to Ebbets Field, maintaining a respectful distance, as he was doing now inside the Cloud Club. Two of the four friends were Americans; one was a German national, the other an Englishman. All were seated at the window table overlooking a troubled Manhattan and the choppy gray Atlantic beyond.

  These men had invested heavily in President Roosevelt’s defeat, but Roosevelt had been reelected, crushing Republican candidate Alf Landon in a populist landslide. It seemed the battered population of America so desperately wanted to believe Roosevelt could end their eight years of despair and 25 percent unemployment that all common sense and clear thinking had been lost, replaced by an ever-growing blend of utopian socialism and Communist dogma.

  There was no mistaking it for S
chroeder or for the four men at the table—Roosevelt was a dangerous man in dangerous times. America’s president was a charismatic liar whose constant rhetoric unfairly blamed greed and America’s industrialists—many of whom were also seated in the Cloud Club’s comfortable leather chairs—for the failures of his New Deal government. At heart, Roosevelt was a Communist, on this Schroeder would wager all the gold in the Reichsbank. Roosevelt’s policies threatened the United States of America’s very survival as a capitalist democracy. And therefore threatened Germany.

  The four diners Schroeder had accompanied to Ebbets Field were not delicate flowers. They held strong opinions on the lie of communism and labor unions, and it was clear to Schroeder they intended to see their opinions acted upon. The largest of the four was an American, bombastic, well over six feet and two hundred pounds. He smoked a Havana cigar in a pretentious amber holder. The man on his left was the German whom Schroeder watched over in America—Teutonic, stubby, and dour, as if unhappy with the meal or the company. He was neither. The third was so obviously British that the Savile Row suit, mutton-chop sideburns, and banker’s bearing seemed a caricature. The fourth diner was the other American, younger, Midwestern, and spindly, and a touch aloof. His eyes wandered to the towering art deco murals while the much larger American pontificated, waving the cigar and holder in a striking mimic of President Roosevelt’s theatrical gestures.

  The four men could have been discussing yesterday’s Zeppelin crash or the Yankees’ fourth loss of the season, but they were not. They were discussing the world’s future, because they held a very direct say in it.

  Erich Schroeder watched Reichsmarschall Göring’s friends finish their meal while he sipped a cosmopolitan at the Cloud Club’s gleaming Bavarian oak bar. His manicured nails on the glass’s stem a sharp contrast to his large scarred knuckles and the starched French-cuff shirt. The foursome dined in unhurried comfort, unusually comfortable for men whose governments privately planned the other’s destruction. Erich Schroeder saw no incongruity with the rapport; at this level, men made decisions based upon relationships more important and long lasting than government. Schroeder smiled at his civility, a quality he believed as useful as violence when in the hands of a professional. And he was a professional. Unfortunately, the newer members of the Reich’s junior officer corps were not. Feral cunning seemed their dominant quality. These new aspirants to power saw his civility and restraint as weakness, an unnecessary humanity. Schroeder widened his smile. Misjudging his “humanity” would be costly. His was feigned, practiced—the professional’s failsafe between emotion and action. He understood torture, as well as murder’s decisive punctuation, and used both when appropriate. A loved one hung from a lamppost was a tool, no different than a fountain pen or a shovel.