Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  He went into a drugstore down the street, where he sat at the chrome-lined counter of its soda fountain and ate a hot dog and a pile of Jay’s potato chips, washed down by a Dr Pepper drawn from the soda fountain tap. A few locals sat in the booths – store owners, a trio of farmers in blue jean overalls, and two gossipy-sounding housewives. After an initial inspection of this stranger in their midst they barely looked at him again.

  When he paid the bill he asked the soda jerk how to get to 4th Street, then went out into the hot midday sun and drove along the main drag for a quarter of a mile before turning down a quiet shady street – 4th. This must have been the oldest part of town, for the houses were Victorian, high-gabled constructs of thin white pine, painted pale colours to keep their insides cool.

  The house he was looking for turned out to be the biggest on the block, with three storeys and a big porch that ran along its three front sides. But it was not in good shape: a missing rail in the porch’s balustrade had not been replaced, the daisy-filled grass in its yard needed cutting, and an apple tree had been allowed to grow its own way for years.

  He walked up onto the porch and found lace curtains over the windows which made it difficult to see inside. As he moved towards the door, ready to knock, he looked behind the house, where the lot extended to a shaggy cedar border. A small vegetable plot sat in between with a scarecrow standing in the middle. Then the scarecrow moved.

  It was a woman, raw-boned and skinny, probably in her late fifties. She wore a straw hat, a man’s long-sleeved shirt, and rubbed her back as she stood upright, a wooden trowel in one hand. ‘Help you?’ she called out to Nessheim.

  He came off the porch. ‘I hope so.’ He walked to the edge of the square of overturned soil. ‘I’m looking for a man who used to live here years ago. I think he owned the house, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Jahnke. He’s German.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ she said, with a hint of dryness. She had hazel eyes and must once have been a pretty woman – good bones, as Nessheim’s mother liked to say – but years of sun meant cracks ran like railway lines across her face, and her hands were chafed the colour of strawberries.

  ‘Lot of German folks around here?’ he asked.

  ‘Too many for some,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Nessheim,’ he said, thinking he had better get any awkwardness about that out of the way.

  ‘Mine’s Koehler,’ she said with half a smile. ‘This man you’re looking for, you say he lived here?’

  ‘I think so. It was a long time ago. I believe he left when the last war broke out.’

  She wiped the sweat on her forehead with the back of her wrist. ‘I don’t know about you, mister, but I think it’s pretty darned hot. You want a glass of lemonade?’

  Inside, the house was shabby but clean. The front parlour had been dusted to an inch of its life, but a floorboard was split and the skirting needed realignment. In the kitchen there was a coal stove, dormant this time of year, and a small electric hot plate. No fridge, but when she fetched a pitcher of lemonade from the larder and poured him a jelly glass full, it was refreshingly cool.

  They stood in silence for a minute, drinking, the woman leaning with her back against the sink. ‘I’ve only been here eight years. Me and my husband had a place outside Dublin – apples and asparagus. But you know how it is: two bad years in a row and it’s gone. We came here, but my husband died.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. He would have liked to hear her story, but there simply wasn’t time.

  ‘Me too,’ she said flatly, then drained her glass. Putting it in the sink she said, ‘I think I heard about this fellah you’re looking for.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I didn’t know him, but the people here before me bought the house from him – I don’t own it, you see. I just rent it from them. They said he’d fixed the place up like a palace. Had a player piano in the parlour, and Tiffany glass in the lamps that came all the way from New York. He was the first one in town to have an automobile.’

  ‘Did these people know him well?’

  ‘They must have. They had twin boys of their own, but then they raised the other one too.’

  ‘What other one?’ he asked.

  She looked at him patiently. ‘They adopted Jahnke’s boy when he had to leave.’

  Nessheim almost dropped his glass. ‘Did Jahnke ever come back to see his boy?’ He tried not to sound too interested.

  She grimaced. ‘I’m not sure. All the boys moved away after their parents died. They were strange people – more German than American, if you ask me. We had a strong chapter of the Bund around here, and the old man was one of its leaders. Swastikas, Nazi salutes – the whole shebang. He liked to boast that one of his cousins in Germany was the head of their secret police.’

  ‘The Gestapo?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right – I forgot the name.’

  ‘Are the sons like their old man?’

  She nodded grimly. ‘Worse by all accounts. One of them’s living over in Yosemite Lakes; I haven’t seen him in five years. I don’t know where his twin is. They make sure I pay the rent, but they send Ed Heiserman to come collect it.’

  ‘What happened to the adopted one?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ed said he was in San Francisco, but Ed’s seventy-three next week, so who knows?’ She took his glass and placed it next to hers in the sink. ‘I better check my lettuces now. Hope I’ve been some help.’

  Out on the porch he thanked her for the lemonade. ‘What’s the name of these people?’ He tried to sound offhand, but one of his knees was trembling.

  ‘It’s German too, naturally.’ She chuckled. ‘They’re called Mueller.’

  He was relieved to know the truth at last, but also frightened – very frightened, and not just for himself. He was carrying a secret which he could trust no one with except Guttman, who was almost 3,000 miles away. If anything happened to Nessheim now the secret would be lost, and the world would be changed. He had seen a newspaper at the hotel that morning. The British Army had been crushed in France, and now huddled forlornly on the beaches of Picardy and Pas-de-Calais. It was hard to see how Britain could stave off the Wehrmacht if it lost half its soldiers. The pressure on the new Prime Minister, Churchill, to negotiate with the Germans would be immense, and if something happened to his one remaining ally – Roosevelt – it would surely be impossible for the British to fight on.

  As he drove back into the main street of Livermore, he tried not to look over his shoulder every other second. He told himself he couldn’t have been followed here; if he started worrying about that, his fears would overwhelm him. He parked outside the drugstore where he’d had lunch, and located a phone booth at the back of the store, near the shelves of Epsom salts, Pepto-Bismol, and other mild medicaments. Shoving a nickel in the slot, he got an operator right away, and waited impatiently as she took her time placing his call.

  There was no answer at the Virginia end. It was late morning on the Eastern Seaboard, and Guttman wasn’t going to work these days, so where was the man?

  Nessheim waited half an hour, buying a pack of Juicy Fruit gum in the store and walking the length of the old-fashioned boardwalk along the main street’s storefronts. When he tried phoning again, he heard the local operator speak and an unfamiliar female voice reply 3,000 miles away.

  The operator came back to Nessheim. ‘They said no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They won’t accept the call.’ Her voice was infuriatingly prim.

  ‘Make it station to station. Tell them it’s urgent.’

  He heard the operator try again; it sounded half-hearted. ‘Sorry,’ she reported back to Nessheim. ‘Still no go.’

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need to cuss,’ the operator said, and cut off the connection.

  Nessheim felt panicky and isolated, like a man visiting a deserted island whose dinghy has been
washed away. Then he thought of Morgan. He wasn’t going to risk another collect call, but he had just enough change for three minutes.

  Fortunately he got the SAC right away.

  ‘Where are you?’ Morgan asked.

  Nessheim ducked the question; he knew too much right now to trust anybody. ‘Coming back to town. Listen, can you send a message to Guttman? Marie, his secretary, can get hold of him.’

  ‘I’ve already had a message from him,’ said Morgan. ‘Harry says Stephenson’s struck gold, whatever that means, and you’re to return to Washington right away. But you’re not to go back the way you came out.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Otherwise you’ll be greeted in Chicago.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He could hear Morgan take a deep breath. ‘They’re on to you, pal. Somehow they know you’re out here.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Whoever’s out to get you. I don’t know more than that, and I’m not sure Harry does either.’

  ‘Listen, can you please call Harry and tell him—’

  Morgan interrupted him immediately. ‘Not on your life. I took Harry’s call, and now I’ve taken yours. That’s all I can do.’ He waited a second for this to sink in, then added, ‘Tolson also called. He wanted to know where you were. I said I hadn’t seen you – in fact, I barely remembered you ever worked in the Bureau here. I can’t do more than that.’

  ‘But I know who—’ he said, trying again.

  ‘Save it for Guttman,’ ordered Morgan. ‘I can’t do anything more. You understand?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Harry expects to see you tomorrow.’

  It was the 28th of May. If he caught that evening’s train it wouldn’t get in until the 30th – Decoration Day. And since he couldn’t go via Chicago he might not get back until the 31st.

  Nessheim said, ‘Sure he does. And pigs will fly.’

  There was a long pause, then Morgan said, ‘People already do.’

  34

  THE FIRST TIME Nessheim saw an aeroplane had been at the county fair in Green Lake, Wisconsin. It had been parked outside the vast oval dirt track where the trotters ran; you could see it from the grandstand where he’d sat with his father, waiting for the first race. A biplane, it started from a grass strip a farmer had cut, racing away in the distance until by some miracle it had left the ground. It climbed to a few hundred feet, then banked and turned back to pass over the grandstand. It was then that Nessheim saw a man standing on the top wing, waving. He’d never forgotten the thrill of that sight, but although Nessheim had seen plenty of planes since then, he had never flown in one himself.

  Leaving Livermore, he knew he had until seven p.m., and he just made it. He left the Bureau car in the airport parking lot, with the keys shoved under the front seat, and ran to the terminal, a new stucco building painted a bilious green. Finding the ticket counter for United Airlines he was glad he had kept his local chequing account, since there was no way he had cash for the $137 his ticket was going to cost.

  There was just one problem: United Airlines flight number 4 was full.

  He listened with disbelief as the woman behind the counter, whose name tag said Maureen, told him he could always fly down to Burbank and hope there’d be a seat going for the east coast on the day’s last flight. She didn’t sound optimistic. Otherwise, he would have to wait until the next day.

  He looked at his watch: it was six forty-five. The flight was leaving in fifteen minutes, and unless he acted fast it would be leaving without him. He didn’t know what Stephenson could have discovered that made Guttman want Nessheim back in D.C. so fast, but he couldn’t reach Guttman to argue.

  He considered his options. He could show his FBI ID and try to bluster his way on, hoping to occupy an empty air hostess’s seat or the jump seat in the cockpit. But he would need to invoke higher authority – SAC Morgan at the very least, who had made it clear he was heartily sick of helping Nessheim.

  But then he found an easier solution. Seventy-five bucks persuaded a young lawyer for a shipping company, half-cut from waiting at the terminal’s bar, that he would be happy to stay an extra day in the city of fog. There was a slight hiccup when Nessheim offered a cheque in payment, but here his FBI identification card did come in helpful, convincing the lawyer that his cheque wouldn’t bounce.

  Five minutes later, holding his small canvas bag, Nessheim went outside in the early-evening breeze and crossed the tarmac, eyeing the plane apprehensively, ducking as the propellers started up and whipped the air around his head. The plane seemed big enough – maybe too big when he thought of what it had to do to get off the ground. As he climbed the steps to its open door, he only hoped that Guttman’s sense of urgency was not misplaced.

  The plane was a new model DC-3, a sleeper service, and inside he found it shaped like a giant cigar tube, with facing pairs of seats, four rows on the left side and three on the right, where the galley occupied the missing space. A pretty gal in a blue jacket and matching skirt led him to his seat and asked him if he’d like something to drink.

  At take-off, he looked out the window as they accelerated down the runway, hoping they weren’t about to end in the Bay. It seemed to go on for ever, the aeroplane straining to gain speed, until its nose lifted and the wings shuddered, and he could feel the wheels leave the ground. They hovered for a minute, dangerously low, then soared quite sharply upwards. Any parallels with the Pullman he’d normally take stopped when he thought of how this ‘train’ was airborne, floating through air with none of the reassuring connection of rails.

  They climbed through cloud just as he spied the peaks of the High Sierra in the distance, reddish crags highlighted by the setting sun and topped by snow. The plane shuddered and shook, then the turbulence subsided and they levelled off. A few minutes later, the pilot came back and shook hands with everyone, announcing that they were flying at 23,000 feet.

  ‘Is the co-pilot flying the plane?’ a woman passenger asked nervously.

  ‘What co-pilot?’ he said, and everybody laughed.

  Nessheim had a bourbon and ginger ale with his meal, which was served on china with silver cutlery and a linen napkin. He ate chicken fricassee and potato croquettes and string beans, all served hot. There was even strawberry pie with ice cream for dessert.

  When the hostess took away his tray, she explained that the seats would be turned into beds after dinner, and that Nessheim had the upper bunk, which unfolded from the ceiling. He decided that if he were going to die on his way east, at least he would do so in comfort.

  But he could not relax, because he was angry with himself. He should have seen it before – it was obvious now, looking back: Mueller’s connections with the Bund chapter out in Livermore, and his casual reference to growing up ‘down the road’ in Dublin; his prejudices – how he hated Guttman the Heeb, with no time for the Chinese or Negroes either. Plus the fact that he had listened to short-wave broadcasts from Germany.

  Mueller must have killed Bock, probably because Bock’s friendship with Beringer linked him to Werner – who would have been Mueller’s contact with the Nazis once Jahnke had left America. In Austria Werner had been murdered as well – another man who had knowledge of the Dreiländer’s identity.

  He was surprised that as a boy ‘Mueller’ had been allowed by the Nazis to adopt his new family’s German-sounding name, and surprised too by the way the grown Mueller had felt free to spout vehement anti-Roosevelt views. But in Washington, of course, Mueller had the best kind of cover, working for the FBI. And it had got him to the White House, within striking distance of the President. No wonder Mueller had been happy to take a job most senior agents wouldn’t touch.

  After dinner the hostess drew the curtains around each set of bunk beds. Nessheim stripped to his skivvies and climbed up. He found it impossible to sleep and was wide awake when they hit the runway with an enormous thump at Salt Lake City. No one got off, no one got on; twenty minut
es later, refuelled, they were again rolling down a runway and, as Nessheim held his breath, implausibly rising into the air.

  He must have dozed off, for when they came over the east side of the Front Range in Colorado they encountered sudden turbulence that made him sit up with a start, convinced the plane had crashed. Up and down they went. Each time they achieved some equilibrium, the plane would shake and drop and bump, and Nessheim would be convinced they were falling out of the sky again.

  He hated being so scared. He knew how unlikely it was that they would crash, and he had never had a fear of heights. What was the problem? Then he realised: if he did go down Mueller’s secret would go down with him. Why hadn’t Guttman answered the phone? And why hadn’t Nessheim thought to write the answer to the question on a postcard and mail it to Guttman?

  He fell asleep at last. He was only dimly awake at their next stop. ‘We’re in North Platte,’ he heard a hostess tell someone in another bunk. Refuelling only, so he couldn’t get off. He remembered the town from his jaunt west along the Lincoln Highway. He wondered if the surly farmer was still on the land west of there, and the girl – Ain’t you gonna kiss me? It seemed another lifetime now.

  He woke when morning came and they drifted through Iowa, descending slowly towards Chicago. He got dressed and did a basin wash in the bathroom at the rear of the plane. When he returned the bed had been put back in the ceiling and he sat down again. There was nothing to do but wait, and in Chicago they weren’t allowed off even to stretch their legs.

  At Cleveland he had to change planes, to a daytime version that was seats only. He had almost an hour and tried calling Guttman again, but there was no answer. This time he took the precaution before boarding of mailing a note to Guttman at his home. He wrote elliptically in case Guttman’s mail was being opened on Hoover’s orders.