Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Tolson laughed, a thin cackle. ‘I’m not surprised. I know what his desk looked like. The thing is, the Director has split Guttman’s reports between the White House detail and Louis B. Nichols. There’s a little confusion about one guy who seems to have fallen through the gap. Do you know this Nessheim character?’

  Marie paused. ‘Is he the young fellow who played football?’

  Tolson said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ He sounded irked.

  ‘You played yourself, didn’t you, Mr Tolson?’ asked Marie with a palpable coo to her voice.

  ‘A bit,’ said Tolson. ‘I was all-Conference my last year.’ Nessheim could almost see the man’s chest puff out.

  ‘Golly,’ gushed Marie.

  ‘Anyway, I need to have a word with this Nessheim guy. Get a hold of him for me tomorrow, will you, Marie?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Tolson,’ she said.

  Nessheim waited, then suddenly the door swung open and Marie was gesturing for him to come out. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘You were terrific.’

  She was literally shaking. ‘I left the FR on top of my desk, with your name and Mr Guttman’s. I thought any minute Mr Tolson would look down and see it. How was I going to explain that away?’

  ‘Thanks a million. I better go and get the file.’ He reached down for the form.

  ‘Not so fast,’ she said. ‘Nichols may be down there – if the reception clerk mentions your FR is from Guttman, he’ll be onto you right away. I better go.’

  ‘I can’t let you take the risk, Marie.’ He knew he was asking too much. If Guttman’s suspension became permanent, she might still survive, but not if she were linked to Guttman’s misdemeanours.

  Marie shook her head. ‘Spare me the Sir Galahad stuff, okay? I’m doing this for Mr G.’ She scooped up the signed form and went out the door.

  She was back ten minutes later, holding a file. ‘No problem – Mr Nichols had gone home, and I know the night clerk. But read it now, will you? I want it back in place before I leave for the night.’

  He took the file and went into Guttman’s office, closing the door behind him. He read quickly, and soon discovered that most of the file concerned Jahnke’s activities during the war, about which the contents were long on speculation and short on facts.

  Kurt Jahnke had been born in Germany in 1882, the son of a wealthy landowner in Pomerania, which stretched across northern Germany and western Poland, just under the Baltic. That much seemed indisputable.

  Then he had emigrated to the States where reports variously suggested he had enlisted in the army, been a policeman, worked for German intelligence, and made a fortune. When war broke out in 1914 he had become a staff member of the German Consulate in San Francisco, though according to the field office’s reports he had travelled extensively – until America’s entry in 1917, when the consulate had closed and he had either disappeared (one report) or resurfaced in Mexico City (another). He had next turned up in Germany after the Armistice, taking over the family estate in Pomerania after the death of his father.

  With Hitler’s rise Jahnke had re-entered the intelligence arena, though the file was unclear whether this was due to ardent Nazism or his friendship with Rudolph Hess. He was currently said to be running a small intelligence-gathering operation on behalf of the Third Reich’s Foreign Office, one subordinate to the Nazi Party’s own espionage and counterespionage organisations.

  That was the bulk of the file, but at its rear there were several typed notes appended to the main account. One was labelled Jahnke: Earlier History, which included a paragraph that made Nessheim sit up:

  Prior to his service at the Consulate, Mr Jahnke established an undertaking business that specialised in the shipment of dead members of the Chinese community in the San Francisco area back to China. Previously the transportation of coffins outside the continental United States had been proscribed on health grounds, but Jahnke provided zinc-lined coffins which met government regulations.

  Jahnke is believed to have sold this business very profitably in 1914 to a local Chinese syndicate.

  One of Nessheim’s early assignments at the Bureau’s San Francisco office had been to investigate this very business, then run by a Chinese family named Wong. He remembered the scam: bodies were duly interred in zinc-lined coffins and shipped westwards for China, but 15 miles out the cargo was intercepted and pine coffins substituted for the far more expensive zinc ones. The latter were then taken 15 miles back and used all over again. It had taken two months to bust the racket, and his colleague in the last three weeks of the investigation had been Jake Mueller.

  Nessheim tried to work it out. If Jahnke had come back to America in 1915, any boy he brought with him then would now be well over thirty years old. That was plausible; what didn’t make sense was the idea that in 1915, when Adolph Hitler was an unknown corporal on the Western Front, Jahnke would have been part of a conspiracy to plant an agent who could be counted on to do the Nazi’s bidding twenty-five years later.

  Nessheim felt deflated. How could there be a plot if there was no one to enact it? He glanced idly at the other notes. Most speculated on the supposed targets of Jahnke’s sabotage efforts during the last war: an explosion in Philadelphia and another on Black Tom Island in New York Harbour, a counterfeiting scheme in Baltimore that would have swamped the Eastern Seaboard with phoney dollar bills, even a plan to start a bordello near Capitol Hill where clients including congressmen would be secretly photographed and blackmailed. Whatever the truth of any of these schemes, Jahnke remained an elusive figure.

  There was only more item, a handwritten note in ink and the last page of the file:

  After his departure from San Francisco in 1917, Subject was reportedly spotted twice in the city in subsequent years – in 1924 and then in 1928. Both sightings were reported by Huan Deng Lee, member of one of the famous Six Families that effectively run Chinatown, and an occasional Bureau informant.

  Another hand, this time writing in pencil, had added in brackets after Deng Lee’s name: Reliable? Nessheim hoped so.

  31

  MOST DAYS, WHEN Nessheim came back to the House of Youth after work, he changed clothes, switching his suit for khaki trousers or even jeans and a V-neck sweater, and taking off the holstered .38 he wore each day. He would put the pistol in his second drawer, under the stack of Chinese-laundered shirts, and hang his jacket in the closet.

  But this evening he kept his suit on, and his gun. He was getting used to being surprised about people he had thought he understood, and he wanted to be prepared for the worst.

  Dubinsky’s room was down the hall; it overlooked the street in front, and was furnished for a long-term inhabitant – a comfortable sofa, a big bed, watercolours on the wall. Nessheim had only been in it once before, to return Dubinsky’s copy of The Grapes of Wrath.

  He knocked, then entered when he heard a mild ‘Come in.’ Dubinsky was at his desk, positioned by the window. Dusk was falling, the shadows long, but Nessheim could see a woman outside, walking on the sidewalk in a short-sleeved shirt. May already felt like summer in this heat-drenched town.

  The law clerk seemed surprised to see him. ‘Hi, Jimmy, what’s up?’

  ‘I wanted a word.’

  Dubinsky’s expression remained friendly, but now was curious too. ‘Sure thing. Take a pew. I’d offer you a drink, but my house is dry.’

  Nessheim didn’t smile. Dubinsky said, ‘Hey, what are you doing Decoration Day weekend?’

  Nessheim shrugged, not wanting to be distracted. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Sally’s going to have a big shindig out in Virginia on the day. You want to come along?’

  ‘Can I use my real name?’

  There was an almost imperceptible pause, then Dubinsky laughed. ‘Why, isn’t “Nessheim” legit?’

  ‘It is. But actually that’s what I wanted to ask you. Is “Dubinsky”?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Colour wa
s draining from his cheeks.

  ‘Immigration have examined their records thoroughly but can’t seem to find you. The English authorities have checked for the last twenty years, and your parents couldn’t have gone there from Germany, not with you in tow. There’s no record of it.’ Stephenson’s people had done a lot of work.

  Dubinsky bristled. ‘Why are you poking into my life like this, Jimmy? Who do you think you are?’

  ‘A friend. But also an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Doobs, you can get mad as you like, but I’m trying to do this the easy way. Otherwise, three agents will come out to the house tomorrow at sunrise, pull you out of bed, and take you to Bureau HQ in your pyjamas. It’s your choice.’

  Dubinsky’s eyes were moving around the room, almost dancing. The relentless affability was gone, and he looked for a moment as if he would explode.

  Then he sighed, almost in relief, and said, ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

  ‘What’s not?’ Nessheim wasn’t going to try guessing.

  Dubinsky gave a sigh. ‘My passport’s in a different name. It’s in the name of von Leyser. My father’s name.’

  ‘That’s a long way from Dubinsky,’ said Nessheim, recognising the aristocratic significance of the ‘von’.

  ‘My mother and Ernst von Leyser divorced in 1920 – I was only eight years old. I was raised by her and my stepfather in England.’

  ‘Your stepfather was called Dubinsky?’

  ‘No. His name was Rosenberg. A Jew. As was my mother.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘She died in 1926.’

  Nessheim was unswayed. ‘But when did you decide to go under her name?’

  ‘I wanted nothing to do with my father once the Nazis came to power. He’s a general in the Wehrmacht. I called myself by my mother’s maiden name when I came to America eight years ago. It seemed the right thing to do.’

  Nessheim ran a hand through his hair, thinking. Then he said, ‘How do I know all this is true? With the war on in Europe, it’s not as if I can prove it either way.’

  Dubinsky lifted both hands and Nessheim realised he wasn’t going to learn anything more by asking questions. It was time to go and see Guttman. ‘All right,’ he said, standing up. ‘That’s it for now. We’ll need to talk again.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth, Jimmy. Honest.’

  Nessheim shrugged, which Dubinsky seemed to take as a positive sign. ‘Are you going to Sally’s tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said Nessheim, relieved that Dubinsky didn’t seem to know about his conversation with Annie. ‘I’ve got to pack. I’m going to be out of town for a few days.’

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. Much as Nessheim liked the place, right now California was not his idea of nice.

  He drove carefully through Georgetown and over the bridge into Virginia. At this time of night there were almost no cars on the road, and he was certain he wasn’t being followed. But he was mindful of Mueller’s words – I’m keeping an eye on you – and he realised the surveillance might be at the other end, waiting at the hive instead of following the bee. So he went past the street where Guttman lived, and turned onto a parallel road in the development. Cutting the engine and lights, he sat in his car for a good five minutes. Nothing moved on the street.

  The night was cloudless, and a silver moon hung like a lamp in the sky, casting too-revealing light. He got out and put on his overcoat, not because it was cold – the late spring air was like a warm bath – but because his coat was dark. He walked along the line of low brick houses, trying to gauge the distance down the street. Then behind one house he saw a light in the distance – at two in the morning, the only light on in the neighbourhood.

  Moving off the sidewalk, he walked along the side of a two-storey house with a brick porch in front. He entered the back yard, praying no dog would bark. Almost stumbling over a tricycle on the lawn, he made his way to the rear of the lot, where a low chain-link fence separated the property from Guttman’s.

  He hopped the fence. In the moonlight Guttman’s yard looked meagre, a square of lawn that needed mowing, and an apple tree which looked starved of water. He made his way to a back deck of pine planks, one of them loose. In the shadows he felt around for the handle to the back door. He had to give it a good yank, but then he was in the house.

  He stopped, listening carefully. The air was filled with a rhythmic rumble. Thunder? There had been no sign of rain. The light he’d seen was in the dining alcove, and through the doorway he could make out the figure of Guttman in the living room. He was dressed in shirtsleeves, reclining against the chartreuse sofa’s cushions, and snoring to an orchestra of his own.

  Nessheim walked through the alcove to the living room. When Guttman didn’t stir he tapped him on the shoulder. Guttman took several seconds to respond. Then his big sloping shoulders jerked and his eyes opened in alarm. ‘You scared me, kid,’ he said, looking embarrassed.

  ‘I didn’t want to wake your wife by knocking.’ Nor alert anyone watching the house.

  Guttman stood up, tucking his shirt in. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen.’

  There he took a big bottle of fizzy-looking water out of the fridge. He found two jelly glasses and filled them, then handed one to Nessheim, who took a swig and made a face.

  ‘You don’t like celery soda?’

  ‘Not much. Must be an acquired taste,’ he said, handing back the glass.

  They returned to the living room, Guttman clutching his glass. He reached down onto the coffee table, then handed Nessheim a phone number written on it.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘My new number – I had another line installed this afternoon. I may be paranoid, but I can’t take a chance on the old one’s being tapped. You have to be able to call me and talk securely.’

  ‘How do you know they won’t tap the new line as well?’

  ‘Because they don’t know the new one’s there. I had it installed in my wife’s maiden name. The phone company won’t alert them about some unknown installation out in Virginia. Believe me, I know the competence limits of our organisation. Now, did you see Stephenson?’

  ‘I did. I told him about Dreiländer and Jahnke, but he wasn’t able to help us much. But he did give me a file. It was about Dubinsky, one of the lodgers in my house.’ Nessheim told how he had then tackled Dubinsky about his name change, and related Dubinsky’s explanation. ‘If he’s lying then he knows his cover is blown. We need to act fast.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Guttman said quietly.

  ‘What do you mean? I’m not sure I believe him.’

  ‘I would.’

  He watched Guttman, and gradually understood. ‘You don’t say,’ Nessheim remarked drily at last. ‘So how long have you known Dubinsky?’

  Guttman tried out a look of wide-eyed innocence, but seeing Nessheim’s cold stare, he relented. ‘I should have told you. Sorry.’

  There was a pattern here, of activity behind the scenes when Nessheim got sent on stage. He was getting awfully tired of not knowing who was working the props behind him. ‘What was Dubinsky supposed to do?’

  Guttman shrugged. ‘Make you feel welcome in the House of Youth.’

  ‘Is that all?’ He recalled how Dubinsky had suddenly stopped coming on the weekend walks with Annie to fetch her son Jeff; the law clerk had pleaded demands of work. It now looked very convenient.

  ‘Yeah. I didn’t actually do the asking. The Justice did.’

  Nessheim tried to keep his cool. ‘Does Dubinsky work for the Bureau?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Guttman, still looking sheepish. ‘He just wants to. Justice Frankfurter keeps recommending him. And he knew about the name change – he said it’s one of the first things Dubinsky told him, back when they met at Oxford.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he should believe him.’

  Guttman was more confident now. ‘The Justice knows plenty of people in Germany. The story’s solid.’

 
; ‘Had you met Frankfurter before we went to his house?’

  Guttman nodded. ‘Something wrong with that?’

  ‘No, I guess you Jews stick together. I shouldn’t be surprised – everybody else does: the Italians, the Irish, the German-Americans in the Bund—’

  ‘What did you say?’ Guttman looked furious. Nessheim raised a hand to calm him down, but Guttman was not appeased. ‘Listen, schmuck. Jews aren’t trying to kill Nazis, and Jews aren’t after German-Americans, and Nazis aren’t the refugees. If Jews stick together at a time like this, there’s a reason.’ His eyes blazed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ said Nessheim.

  Guttman exhaled, and an awkward silence ensued. At last Guttman broke it.

  ‘Okay, now – did you talk to the girl?’

  ‘I’ve seen the letters,’ Nessheim said without enthusiasm. He explained what he’d found.

  ‘You mean it was all about plotting their engagement? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s disappointing, I know,’ Nessheim said. ‘But there’s some good news. I found the Jahnke file. He had a business in California shipping back the coffins of dead Chinese to China. Then during the war he was a spy for the Germans – that’s how he came to the Bureau’s attention. He returned to Germany, but the file said he was spotted two different times in San Francisco in the twenties.’

  ‘Where does that get us?’ asked Guttman.

  ‘If he brought a boy over and kept an eye on him, then it must have been out there. He never stayed anywhere else long enough.’

  ‘It seems a little thin to me.’

  ‘I think I should follow it up.’ Guttman frowned, but Nessheim persisted. ‘We don’t have much choice – now that you’ve vouched for Dubinsky and we know Sally Cummings is nothing more than a matchmaker.’

  ‘I’d still rather you stuck around,’ said Guttman. But he didn’t even pretend it was an order. When Nessheim didn’t reply, Guttman leaned back against the sofa with his mouth open, looking exhausted. He’s going to start snoring again any second now, thought Nessheim. But then the open mouth started moving. ‘I better make a long-distance call.’