He looked up at the ship’s three large funnels, and erupting from each came columns of black smoke that drifted behind the ship like a cloud-trail in the sky.
Stiff and slow, he walked toward the ship’s bow and felt the tightness of his muscles, a heavy pain like a gnawing hangover afflicting his entire body. He stepped to the railing for a moment to rest, and he watched the ocean’s shroud roll around the ship.
A large man pulled to the railing a dozen paces behind him. When Joe took two steps, stopped and looked out over the ocean again, the large man did the same. The man was bull necked, with dark skin and thick black eyebrows like pieces of coal and short-cropped black hair. He wore a black overcoat and kept his hands in his pockets.
Joe’s fingers felt for the grip of his revolver. He held it loosely, resuming his walk and feeling the man trail behind him like a dog on a leash. It was something he could deal with, no obscure playing with words and no darkness, except he wondered about the large man’s intent.
Joe’s shoulders hunched instinctively, as though he were walking down a duckboard trench in the morning light. The first rule his sergeant had told him at the front was to never walk around during the day. The second rule was that if he did walk around in the daylight to never let his head bob above the top of the trench. As he strolled the deck, it took some effort for him to straighten his shoulders and look ahead instead of pulling into himself. He walked casually until he neared a set of closed glass doors entering the ship.
Another man, shorter and slightly stoop-shouldered, hurried past Joe, pushed open the door and walked quickly down the hall. That man’s quick stride had caught Joe’s attention. Joe followed the short man’s path through the doors, seeking the safety of numbers.
The inchoate sense of the prey stopped him short, and Joe turned to see if the large man would follow him inside. Instead the man had leaned back against the railing to light a cigarette in his cupped hands, tossed the spent match over his shoulder, took a long drag, and smiled, staring purposefully at Joe.
He thought back to the list he had written that day and knew that he had accomplished three of his list’s elements but had probably failed at the last, the one with the exclamation.
Rounding a corner, he glimpsed the man ahead of him rounding another corner. He felt as though he was being herded, so instead of following him, Joe turned the opposite direction and walked toward the men’s smoking room, the room that felt of comfort and smelled of rubbed wood and leather and weathered whiskey. Once there, Joe inhaled its air like a curative and felt at ease in its embrace. Most of the tables in the room were empty, chairs pushed out and at angles to tables from the flux of patrons having enjoyed a constitutional. A few men sat reading wire dispatches as they would the Sunday morning newspaper. One table was surrounded by a handful of men playing an early game of cards and a second table seated another group arguing about the riots in Germany and who should be blamed.
He realized as he warmed with the ship’s inner heat how tense his body had become, either from the cold air on the deck or from the sensation of being followed. His body began to loosen and he closed his eyes and breathed purposefully.
Joe ignored the few men there. He sat in a booth by himself and ordered a pint of stout to steady his nerves. He read the wire dispatches to see if there was any word about him, or Gresham. When one man returned a sheaf of dispatches to the reading table, Joe retrieved it and sat at his booth table facing the room’s entrance. He drank from his stout and read only the first few lines of each dispatch.
Joe raised his eyes to study everyone who entered the room, watching to see if they took any note of him. Before long, the large man walked in and took a seat by the door and was soon joined by the smaller, slightly stoop-shouldered, and more smartly dressed man. The two were not in the least discreet in their attention to Joe.
The two huddled together to exchange words, then leaned back and looked at Joe like partners in a chess game they alone recognized. The first man, whom Joe named the Turk for his hulking size and dark olive skin, pointed a steady finger at Joe. The other, Dapper for his better clothes, nodded and smiled. Dapper rubbed the side of his chest and winced, and Joe thought that Dapper was the one in his room he had landed a few punches against.
The Turk rubbed his knuckles lightly as though in confirmation of Joe’s thoughts. The man’s knuckles looked like marbles. His smile was more like a sneer and his eyes were black and lifeless. It was the Turk he studied more closely. A large and swarthy man with heavy eyebrows and coarse black hair cut close and poorly as though he had cut it himself with scissors in front of a mirror. He could have been twenty-five or fifty, Joe could not tell, and his eyes were deep and spaced wide and his five-o’clock shadow had arrived early, the full and continually potential beard of a Mediterranean.
Joe did not like the idea that he was caught in some still-hunt with him as the quarry. He pushed the dispatches onto the table and began to rise, his eyes fixed on the two men. They tensed noticeably, not expecting the action being taken to them.
Joe’s movement was arrested by a hand on his shoulder.
“Do you mind?” Huntington asked. He sat across from Joe and took up the dispatches.
Joe looked again at the two men before he eased himself back into his booth. “You need to wear a bell,” he said and took a long and slow pull on his stout.
Huntington laughed. “Or you need to be more observant.”
Joe wondered what other things, things maybe as equally obvious as a man sitting alone in a half-empty room, he had been missing.
Huntington fingered the dispatches. “Looking for something, are we?”
“Just reading the news and enjoying a pint.”
“Why not enjoy another?” Huntington asked and called for a waiter to bring them a round. “Two Scotch, if you please,” he said to the waiter, who bowed and left.
Huntington smiled at Joe, “I served with some officers from a Texas division early in your involvement, jolly good men you colonials are.”
“We try.”
Joe looked again at Dapper and the Turk. They had rested back in their chairs now that Joe was fully seated in his booth. They each drank from a whiskey glass and watched Joe and Huntington like a bored audience at a bad stage play.
Huntington leaned to the side and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled a folded piece of yellow paper from it and pushed the paper across the table between them.
Joe looked at Huntington, who nodded and said, “Interesting reading.”
He removed a cigarette from his silver case and lit it while Joe unfolded the paper.
It was a dispatch dated early that morning that had come over the wire from New York. Joe read it carefully, but after the first line he knew what the dispatch said.
“Was that what you were looking for?” Huntington asked.
Joe refolded the dispatch and handed it back to Huntington.
“No. Keep it, old man,” Huntington said with a dismissive wave. “Our secret,” he smiled. “Lucky for you, though, that I have insomnia and can’t sleep into the morning. I didn’t before, but I do now. I found it first thing today. The ship’s crew is too busy to check these things and would not find out unless someone bothered to inform them. Had another passenger found it and not I, say those two behind me at the door who seem to have taken a great interest in you, well, then, you might presently be in a bit of a boil. Anyway, a sea of troubles, you might say.” He smiled at his own pun.
They sat in silence as the waiter placed their drinks on the table, then each tasted his.
“What do you want?” Joe asked, holding the folded dispatch in the cup of his hand like a weight.
Huntington deadened his cigarette in the glass ashtray and said, “More than you gave me last night.”
Joe glanced toward Dapper and the Turk, thinking that they were with Huntington and had been posted in case of emergency. Huntington followed Joe’s gaze over his shoulder to the men by the door.
“They your watchdogs?” Joe asked.
“My watchdogs?” He laughed. “No. They’re probably the men who attacked you last night. I suppose they work for the Frenchman, Rene Marcel.”
Joe looked at Huntington. “Marcel?”
“You know him?”
“The name.”
“From Gresham, no doubt.”
“Yes, but I don’t know who Marcel is.”
Huntington sat for a moment, his eyes leveled on Joe and his jaw muscles twitching as though he were working over some algebraic formula in his head.
Joe knew what the formula was and offered an answer. “Like you said last night, ‘Tit for tat.’”
“‘I scratch yours and you scratch mine’?”
“That’s right. I answered your questions then; now you can fill in some blanks for me.”
“I suppose it’s fair, but I don’t know how useful it is.”
“We won’t know until you tell me.”
Huntington scratched the scar on his cheek, then began. “My cousin—”
“Thomas Wilde.”
“Yes. Thomas was a business associate with the Marcel family before the war. Import-Export out of Normandy. That may be how Thomas ended up with them in a mixed unit during the war. Two important families integrated by business, then integrated to watch over the other. I don’t know; I’m just speculating. What I know is that they were involved in quite lucrative investments prior to the war, that they were together during the war and together on the 25th of September in Champagne, that my cousin died and that Rene Marcel lived.”
Huntington paused to drink, and even though Joe had questions to ask he remained silent. Huntington was giving voice to the backstory that Joe needed and Joe did not want to break the thin line that Huntington was drawing.
Huntington scratched at his eyelid before continuing. “Marcel was wounded badly enough that he was sent to convalesce and lucky enough not to be returned to the front. Maybe wealthy enough as well. He returned to his business, his patriotic duty fulfilled, and with the war and the necessity for war materials, he increased his wealth.”
Huntington took a lingering sip of his whiskey before continuing his story. “You see,” he said to Joe. “I have spent some time studying him. I have my own money and am comfortable enough that I can spend the necessary time and funds to discover the truth as to what took place that morning near Lausanne.”
“So you’ve talked with Marcel,” Joe asked.
“No,” Huntington said. “That’s an interesting part of the story. Marcel never seems to have returned to Normandy. He established his business empire in Paris, even though the workings were being done in Normandy. Now he has auxiliaries throughout France and Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Austria. An amazing expansion of his business empire in such a short time. But,” he said, leaning forward and pointing his finger. “And here’s the rub. Few have seen him since the war. It seems that everyone who worked for the family before the war were either too old to serve during the war and have since been replaced in the business or died during the war. It seems that nobody who was in service to the Marcel family has remained.”
“And Marcel?”
Huntington huffed. “He has secluded himself in various villas and homes—Paris, Berlin, Marseilles, maybe others. He refuses all contact, and he has the money to ensure his seclusion.”
“Claiming that his war wounds—”
“Yes,” Huntington said before Joe had completed his thought. “He uses his wounds as an excuse to remain far from the public eye, and people can communicate with him only through a maze of intermediaries. As something of a war hero, he is allowed his eccentricities.”
“And now?”
“My guess,” Huntington said, holding his glass in the air peering into the amber liquid. “My guess is that Marcel had Gresham killed. We can speculate as to why. Now I will have to talk with Marcel,” he said with introspection.
“You think Marcel was the traitor?”
Huntington sipped at his drink, savoring the taste of whiskey as the ice began to reveal its flavor. He put the glass down and folded his hands together, fingers entwined, on the table. He looked at Joe, but his eyes were vacant. “Someone sold out the advance. Probably Marcel, I don’t know but I suspect, but someone betrayed them and Gresham found out who. Now that traitor is looking to silence Gresham—You.”
Joe leaned forward. “What do you know about the battle?”
Huntington nodded his head but took a long time to answer. His face darkened. His jaw muscles moved as though he were in debate with himself. He licked his lips and said, “Good men were fed full to the many guns of that war, but in Champagne the triggers were readied by a traitorous act. My cousin—Thomas Wilde—was with Gresham and Marcel, as I said, and some others—an Englishman named Gadwa and Rene’s brother, Jean—in a combined detachment of French and English. They were reconnaissance—spies and spotters. One of them, maybe more, was also in the employ of the Huns. Gadwa is dead as well as my cousin and Jean Marcel. Until recently, I thought that Gresham had also died that day.”
Huntington paused and unlaced his fingers. He traced a circle on the wood of the table. He tilted his head, “They are Marcel’s men.”
Joe sat back and took a moment to weigh the information. There was another name on the list: Dillard. He was about to ask Huntington what he knew about him when Dapper and the Turk stood. His finger reached into the pocket of his coat folded on the bench next to him, finding the revolver. The two men left the room, walking nonchalantly, just two chums enjoying a drink and a smoke in the company of other gentlemen. The Turk smiled at Joe as he turned to walk out, not a congenial smile at all.
Huntington stood. He was not a large man, but well-built and cut an impressive presence if someone were impressed with that sort of man—spit-and-polish, ribboned, titled. Joe was not.
Joe was, however, impressed with the fact that Huntington was more than the façade. The man was not a counterfeit. Joe saw it in Huntington’s eyes and in his movements. He was impressed with Huntington’s service in the trenches as well as with Huntington’s allegiance to his fallen cousin. The man had earned his honors. Joe thought that with time, the two of them might become friends.
Huntington took a step away, but before he could leave, Joe asked, “How can I meet Marcel?”
Huntington scratched the scar across his nose and smiled. “I doubt if that will be a problem, old man. The question is ‘When?’”
“Okay,” Joe said, “When?”
“When he wants you to.”
Before Joe could respond, a steward approached their table. “Colonel Huntington?” The steward stood erect, his right hand loose at his side and his left arm cocked at a right angle, fingers holding a folded piece of white paper for Huntington.
“Yes,” Huntington replied, looking first at the steward and then at the piece of paper as the steward handed it to him.
“Begging your pardon, Colonel,” the steward said. “This is for you.”
“From whom?”
“He did not say, sir.”
Huntington cocked an eyebrow and took the paper. The steward nodded and left, a man who knew his position.
Huntington opened and read the note and excused himself, “A meeting. We shall talk again.”
Huntington left without offering his hand or waiting for Joe’s reply, and Joe ordered another whiskey to drink in the comfortable absence of the prying. He could not see the arrangement yet, but he could see that pieces to his puzzle were falling as though on a plank table. All he needed to do was place them in order. The blank spots still outnumbered those filled and he remained lost in another man’s fog, but for the first time he began to see the possibility for understanding his dilemma. With luck he might be able to offer someone as the murderer of Gresham to the police in France. That would pose some problems concerning the legality of his trip, but he would deal wit
h that when it came. Proving his innocence would be worth deportation.
He finished his whiskey while studying the wire that Huntington had given him, but there was nothing in it that he did not already know. The police in Greenwich wanted him for the murder of Wynton Gresham. The police believed that he had acted in union with two Frenchmen, the two from the automobile wreck, for they had a pistol matching the caliber of bullets found in Gresham’s body. No motive was known, but one officer suggested that Joe’s flight was certain proof of his guilt. Joe could guess which police officer had suggested that. The sheriff had spent a night in the hospital from a struggle with Joe in his apartment. Joe smiled at the description of his single sucker punch being characterized as a struggle.
The wire did not mention Joe’s Hudson in New York, and the police speculated that he had left for Colorado where he had grown up. That thought pleased him. The police had no reason to search abroad for him. If that held for another day, he would be lost in Paris, just another American expat wandering the City of Light.
He considered ordering another but decided not. He asked a steward to send his dinner to his cabin as well as take a message to Huntington’s cabin asking to meet that evening. Huntington might answer some of Joe’s lingering questions, shed light on some of the dark spots in the events that led to the murder of Gresham.
He looked at his watch, a pocket Seth Thomas that was the only thing of his father’s that he had kept with him following his father’s death and then through the war and then the years since. The time was nearing three in the afternoon. The ship was set to dock in Cherbourg the next day, almost twenty-four hours to the minute from then. Joe wanted to work through a few things before that time.
After washing his face and hands in his cabin, Joe placed the photograph and list of names on the room’s writing table and sat back, crossed his arms and looked at the men almost grammured in the shadow-like image. He compared the list of men with the photograph of men in a trench, men who knew for certain they would soon die. Gresham he knew and recognized, even though the Gresham in the photograph was leaner and stooped like a beggar on a city street. He stood farthest from the camera, not smiling, eyes shaded by a pitted and dirty helmet, the strap worn loose under his chin, a weather-worn and ragged overcoat with torn cuffs, left hand outstretched and holding the top row of withy branches used to shore up the trench, the other hand holding a canteen cup, a wisp of steam above the cup marking its contents as either coffee or tea, binoculars hung around his neck and unboxed against his chest, a satchel strung across his chest to rest on his right hip facing the camera, legs and feet in the morning shadow of the trench. There might be a look of concern on his face, but every morning in the trench had begun as though one had hoped to wake from a nightmare instead of waking into a nightmare.
Death of a Century Page 10
