Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  * * *

  I didn’t know myself, thought Guttman now, looking out the window as the first streetlamp lit up on Pennsylvania Avenue. Having turned the German, he’d found himself at a loss how best to run him, especially when the information Bock began to provide at their monthly meetings seemed so low-grade. Either the Ambassador’s activities were as humdrum as Bock’s reports suggested, or the Principal Secretary was holding out on Guttman.

  Assuming the latter, Guttman decided he had better turn the screws. ‘I think we have a pretty good idea of what the Führer thinks about your kind of man,’ he’d said menacingly. ‘Remember what happened to Röhm and his Brownshirts. I’d hate to see your career ruined by one indiscretion, you know. But you’re not giving me much choice – who knows, it might be more than your career that’s in jeopardy if we deport you to Germany. People there don’t seem very tolerant about that sort of thing – my own superiors wanted me to have the book thrown at you. You’ve got to give me something to keep my bosses off my back, or it’s back to Berlin for you, my boy.’

  And it worked – at their next meeting, in a remote park near the Potomac, Bock had given him several pages of handwritten notes.

  ‘They’re in my handwriting,’ he explained, ‘but I have copied down the drafts the Ambassador makes for his weekly cables.’

  ‘Cables?’

  ‘Yes, to the Ministry in Berlin. He reports every week. He writes them out, then has them encoded by one of the cipher clerks first thing Monday morning. He has the clerk come to his office to transcribe them, on secur-ity grounds.’ He smirked slightly. ‘I meet with him Monday afternoon, and he’s always late. Often the papers are still sitting on the table in his office where the clerk comes in to work.’

  Most weeks in fact the notes were still there for Bock to read – and memorise. Consequently Guttman was meeting with Bock most weeks as well, at rendezvous arranged in the city’s suburbs for safety’s sake. But the information remained uninspiring. After a while Guttman had started to feel he knew Ambassador Luther personally – a vain peacock of a man, intent on magnifying his own importance by inflating the most casual gossip into reports from ‘high-placed’ sources. A few words with an Argentinian chargé d’affaires at a reception were transformed for his superiors’ benefit into a fabricated report on South American views of neutrality. An invitation to a Rotary Club lunch in Virginia led the Ambassador to claim half the businessmen in Alexandria would have voted for the Führer if somehow he could have run against Roosevelt the year before.

  Again, Guttman grew impatient. The time his meetings with Bock took up was not being justified by the results. ‘Jesus, Emil,’ he had finally said, ‘does the son of a bitch have to embellish everything? I’d fall over if just once the Ambassador said he’d had a corned beef sandwich at his local lunch counter, or stayed home with the missus and listened to the radio.’

  But it was not actually the inflation of the Ambassador’s reports that was the real problem; it was that nothing he did seemed worrying. And that was worrying in turn for Guttman. But then maybe the Nazis didn’t really trust the Ambassador, Guttman mused, since Luther had been Chancellor long before Adolph Hitler showed up on the scene. Perhaps America was too unimportant for the Nazi regime to require an ambassador they could trust.

  It occurred to Guttman, who had learned to keep all options open in his head, that maybe Bock was still holding out on him, hoping to string the FBI man along and thus keep his forays to the likes of Big Ma’s house and the world of coloured busboys secret from his own superiors, without doing anything to betray them either. It didn’t work that way, however, so Guttman had pushed him again, this time harder.

  ‘You got to do better than this,’ he’d told Bock angrily, waving a valueless sheaf of transcript notes in front of the startled German’s nose, as they sat on a park bench in Arlington, Virginia, while rain dribbled down. ‘Otherwise this time I will leak word of your little misdemeanours to Ambassador Luther.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Bock had protested.

  ‘Try me,’ said Guttman.

  And whether through coincidence or this coercion, suddenly something had come up.

  Where is Werner?

  And then just a week later:

  I repeat: Where is Werner? He was due back in this country two months ago.

  It was the first time Guttman could remember the Ambassador asking anything. Where is Werner? It piqued his curiosity, but Guttman didn’t get carried away. Werner might be Luther’s valet for all he knew, and the Ambassador was merely lamenting his absence.

  He asked Bock, but the German shook his head.

  ‘I know no one of that name,’ he said. ‘He is not with the embassy.’

  ‘Could he be with one of the consulates? Like a trade officer or something?’

  Bock drew himself up to his full height. ‘Absolutely not. I know them all. I would recognise the name.’

  ‘Okay. But do me a favour – check the staffing lists, will you?’

  And reluctantly, Bock had. There was no Werner on any of them.

  So who was the guy? Guttman had plenty else to think about, but the miniature mystery wouldn’t leave him alone. He consulted the original notes Bock had made of the same cable, and realised they had been focused on the German-American Bund. Ambassador Luther had wanted to attend a rally in Baltimore the month before, but it seemed he had been told by Berlin not to. And his query about Werner had immediately followed. Could Werner be American then?

  He ordered a search through the files he had compiled on the German-American Bund. When the results came in a day later, he had asked for an urgent meeting with the Director and his associate director.

  ‘I think you’re getting a little overexcited,’ Tolson told him in his flat Missouri voice. Trust Hoover to pick a number two who acted even less human than he did. Tolson was a well-built, handsome man, a smart dresser (tie pin, starched collar; Guttman had felt even more slobby than usual) and former college athlete who had parlayed his friendship with the Director into a small FBI fiefdom of his own. There was something curiously bloodless about him, a coldness Tolson seemed to pride himself on but which Guttman found creepy. Even Hoover got excited at times.

  ‘We’re not at war with Germany,’ Tolson had added, to which Guttman had wanted to say, not yet. ‘After the last one, it’s hardly surprising that German-Americans don’t want a repeat performance. They’re entitled to their views. I know the Nazis are giving your people a hard time, but this is America.’

  ‘Your people’ – how Guttman hated that phrase. No one had to tell Harry Guttman that Hoover didn’t like the Jews, but Guttman wasn’t at the FBI to be a Jew, he was there because he was an American. And it didn’t matter a jot to him if people were German-Americans or Eskimos; if they were bad guys, he’d go after them.

  They were in the Director’s office, a large corner room on the fifth floor of the Justice Building, site of the Bureau’s headquarters. It would have had a fine view down Pennsylvania Avenue, but the drapes were almost fully drawn – as usual, ever since an anonymous postcard had arrived the year before, suggesting Hoover might find himself in a sniper’s sights. In a corner away from the windows, the three men convened around a round maple table which the Director used for small meetings. A chandelier of candle-shaped bulbs cast a thin synthetic glow over the room. Tolson and Guttman sat across from each other, while Hoover occupied a high-seated padded leather chair at one end. He had no papers with him, and Guttman snuck a look over at his desk, bare except for an ink blotter, a miniature American flag on a stick, and a file.

  And then Hoover spoke. His lower lip pushed up when he talked, reinforcing the bulldog image cartoonists liked to sketch. He wore a crisp white shirt and a blue suit, double-breasted and buttoned, which reinforced his squat fireplug build. A silver tie ballooned like a snake between his lapels, and from his jacket’s breast pocket a paisley handkerchief peeked out.

  ‘Agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation,’ he declared, letting the words roll sonorously, ‘represent the American people. They have to maintain the highest possible standards – in dress, demeanour, and personal conduct. You know that, Assistant Director. It would be damaging to have them scurrying around like rats under the floorboards.’

  Damaging to what? Guttman thought, but he knew enough not to argue. You could sometimes get the Director to change his mind, when the benefits of doing so were overwhelming, and when he could take credit for your idea. Otherwise, it was pointless arguing, unless you thought a spell in the Wichita Bureau a reasonable price to pay for speaking your mind.

  ‘Informants are necessary,’ Hoover went on, his eyes moving back and forth between Guttman and Tolson. ‘Even if their motivation is sometimes questionable. Your handling of this fellow Bock, for example, has been exemplary. I can tell you the President himself is aware that we have suborned a man in the German Embassy – I’ve shown him some of the transcripts myself.’

  Guttman tensed, since praise from Hoover was usually a prelude for bad news. ‘But the agent has to stand aloof from criminal elements; he has to keep his hands clean, be whiter than white. He can’t lower himself to the criminal’s level. And for that reason, I cannot agree to your recommendation that we place a man surreptitiously in the …’ He seemed unsure of his words for the first time.

  ‘The Bund.’ Tolson supplied the word, like an assistant handing his boss his glasses.

  Hoover was displeased. ‘I was going to say, the German-American community. And I emphasise American. We have no reason to suspect their fundamental loyalty to this country. Though of course we are alert to the dangers extremist movements pose to this country.’

  ‘Well,’ said Guttman sceptically, for he had supplied along with his request a full dossier on the activities of the Bund, and their increasingly vociferous support for Hitler. There had been several recent ugly incidents: gangs in Baltimore and New York had set upon innocent passers by – Jews in two cases, Negroes in another. There had been an FBI investigation of the Bund the year before, instigated by the President himself, but it had been cursory, crippled from the start by Hoover’s manifest lack of interest.

  But Hoover was not in the mood for demurrals from Guttman. ‘Our priority in detecting subversion is the Communists. I have the President’s full backing on that,’ he added.

  ‘I know, sir,’ said Guttman.

  Hoover looked ostentatiously at his fob watch, which hung from a small chain pinned to his suit jacket. ‘Clyde, seems to me we’re running a little behind.’

  Was that it then? Guttman saw Tolson raise his eyes, and reluctantly he took the cue and rose. As he made to go, Tolson whispered something and Hoover gave a little laugh. When Guttman looked puzzled, Hoover said, ‘You could always use Sidney.’

  ‘Sidney, sir?’

  Tolson was struggling to keep a straight face. He said, ‘Sidney had himself a snortful at some roadhouse on Saturday night and managed to flip over his car. He’s lost his licence for a year. He’s not going to be driving for a while, so there’s a guy you could send undercover.’

  Hoover laughed more loudly, a high cackle at odds with his husky voice. As he left the room, Guttman didn’t know which was more unpleasant – Hoover’s laugh, or what he was laughing about.

  As the Negro struggle for equality advanced, Hoover had taken to proclaiming that he was happy to employ people of colour in the Bureau. And true enough, there were Negro agents in the FBI – three of them to be precise.

  One, Nathaniel Davis, was strictly a ‘field operator’ – he was Hoover’s gardener. The second, Anita Gibbons, had the unusual distinction of being both coloured and a woman. She was Hoover’s cook. Finally, Agent Sidney Washington was an expert in evasive driving techniques, having been extensively trained at the FBI school at Quantico. Until he’d had his ‘snortful’ on Saturday night, he had been Hoover’s chauffeur. Easy to sneak him into the Bund, thought Guttman bitterly. He turned away from the window now, having made up his mind. He knew what he’d be in for if he got caught, but it was worth the risk. Back at his desk, he turned to the files again, this time with a different objective. Flipping through them, their contents awfully thin, he decided to start with the reports from the Midwest.

  7

  THREE DAYS LATER Guttman was in the Bureau’s Chicago office talking to the SAC, a man named Ferguson he’d never met before. Guttman had arrived in the nick of time at the tail end of a purge of former SAC Purvis’s appointments. Not content with driving out Purvis, Hoover was clearing out his protégés too, posting them to the remotest offices of the FBI. Many had resigned instead, which was the intention.

  Guttman didn’t cotton to Ferguson, a buttoned-up yes-man who wouldn’t have had a choice but to follow Hoover’s orders – not unless he wanted to move to Butte Montana too – but who seemed unduly eager to carry them out. And now Ferguson wasn’t happy about the exception being made for one name on the purge’s list.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, pulling at a starched white cuff. ‘All these guys getting sent to the back of beyond, and you want this kid to live the life of Riley out in Frisco.’

  ‘We’ve got plans for the guy,’ said Guttman, without elaborating. He was happy for Ferguson to think he was just the messenger for Hoover himself.

  Ferguson shook his head and looked out the office’s glass panel fronting onto the hall. ‘There he is now.’

  A moment later Nessheim walked in. He looked start-lingly young, with the easy gait of an athlete but – Guttman was glad to note – none of the usual cockiness. His face had good features, just this side of handsome, and Guttman sensed women would like him without other men getting jealous. Some guys made enemies without opening their mouths; this guy would have to do a lot before pissing anybody off.

  Yet the young man looked wary now. ‘I’m Agent Nessheim, sir. SAC said you wanted to speak to me.’ It was a quiet voice, deep and resonantly Midwestern.

  ‘Close the door and take a seat,’ said Guttman. He wanted to put the guy at his ease. ‘Smoke?’ he said, holding out a pack of Lucky Strikes.

  Nessheim shook his head. ‘I don’t, thanks.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Guttman, with the trace of a smile. ‘I carry them to break the ice. It can help in an interrogation.’

  Nessheim seemed to stiffen at the word.

  Guttman said, ‘You seem a little nervous, Agent Nessheim.’

  ‘I guess I am,’ he said, glancing at the clock on the wall behind Guttman’s head.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Maybe I’m for it. Like the other guys.’

  ‘Why, because Purvis hired you?’ He gave a wry smile. ‘That could happen to anybody. Relax – you’re not in trouble.’ Guttman put his hand on the desk with finality, asking, ‘Tell me, can you swim?’

  ‘Yeah, I can swim.’ Nessheim looked puzzled.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  Guttman gave a small chuckle. ‘I mean, do you swim well?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, sir. I’ve got a Senior Lifesaver’s badge.’

  ‘Excellent. And you can run?’

  ‘Like the wind.’

  Guttman laughed out loud. ‘I forgot, you were a football star.’ He reached for the file on the desk. ‘You didn’t finish college, I see.’

  ‘I dropped out when I lost my scholarship. I got hurt and couldn’t play ball any more. It was an athletic scholarship.’ He shrugged.

  ‘You couldn’t work your way through?’ asked Guttman.

  Nessheim looked a little piqued. ‘I was already working – I bussed tables, waited tables, cleaned tables, washed dishes and delivered laundry for the cleaning service. But it wasn’t enough to cover tuition and room and board. I got offered a job so I took it.’

  ‘I suppose the salary was tempting,’ said Guttman.

  Nessheim flushed. ‘I had to help my parents out. My dad had lost his store, and his farm.’

  Guttman nodded indifferently
, but he liked this kid’s answers. ‘You ever going to finish?’

  ‘I’ve thought of law school,’ he ventured. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t you need a BA first?’

  ‘At Northwestern you do,’ he conceded. ‘But not at the University of Chicago.’

  Guttman raised an eyebrow. ‘Good school. If a little bit Pinko, eh?’

  Nessheim shrugged, but his expression looked uneasy again. Guttman watched him for a moment, then said, ‘What about politics? Do they interest you?’

  ‘I was a Politics and Economics major.’

  ‘Have you got views of your own?’

  Nessheim didn’t blink. ‘None that I bring to the office. Sir.’

  Guttman gave a half-smile. ‘You think there’s going to be a war?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Who would want a war?’ he replied, sounding perplexed.

  ‘The Nazis are itching for a fight – to fulfil their destiny, I guess. The Russians – well, they see it as a function of historical inevitability.’

  For the first time Nessheim smiled. ‘I’d say a plague on both their houses.’

  ‘So you didn’t mind when the Nationalists rebelled?’

  ‘Well, the government there was elected – I’m not sure Franco has any right to overthrow it. But I figure that’s up to the Spanish.’

  Guttman looked down at the file on his desk. Suddenly he asked quietly, ‘If you were hurt badly enough to lose your scholarship, then how’d you pass the Bureau medical?’

  Nessheim sat frozen in his chair. He wouldn’t look Guttman in the eye. At last he said, ‘I guess I recovered.’

  Guttman stared at him, then fiddled with a pencil in his left hand, looking down at the yellow stick as if it were a barometer. Or a lie detector – they were now using the gizmos at the Bureau headquarters in Washington. Not that he needed it now, for his own internal lie detectors – his gut instincts – were swinging wildly. He’d remember this moment, but moved on. ‘So tell me, who’s your hero?’