Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  And suddenly Nessheim understood what was going to happen. He couldn’t believe it at first; it upset everything he and Guttman had agreed the day before, overturned all their carefully deduced conclusions.

  This empty house was perfect for a meeting that wasn’t meant to be observed – like this one. But also for another, more intimate one. They weren’t waiting for Annie, and Plympton wasn’t jealous or angry with him. He had a different agenda.

  ‘I’ve got it, Frank,’ he said abruptly.

  Plympton looked surprised but not discomfited. ‘You do?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the President and his friend Mrs Rutherford.’

  ‘Clever boy.’

  ‘Do you mean to kill them?’ It seemed best to get the cards out on the table.

  ‘I do, Jimmy. Though they won’t ever think it was me. It’s your name that will go down in history.’

  ‘You think I’m going to pull the trigger?’

  ‘Of course not. But it will look that way. Distraught by news of Annie’s engagement, so crazed with jealousy that you’re out of your mind, you commit a double homicide. Then sanity returns and you decide to turn the weapon on yourself. The tragedy of your suicide will be lost in the outpouring of grief about the double murder. I mean, no one remembers that John Wilkes Booth was a pretty good actor, now do they?’

  ‘And where are you meant to have been while all this plays out?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well when I got back from Montana. I overslept and didn’t find Dubinsky’s note. I came here in the hopes of seeing my fiancée, arriving just after the catastrophe.’ Plympton spoke with such sincerity that Nessheim momentarily wondered if he actually believed the scenario was true.

  ‘Is that why you’re using a silencer?’

  Plympton looked down at the extended barrel of his gun. ‘I prefer the European term – suppressor. It’s especially effective with a low-calibre bullet. The neighbours might recall hearing it later, but it won’t be enough to alarm them at the time.’

  ‘And then what happens to you?’

  He paused. ‘Who knows? In the aftermath, I might as well marry Annie. Her aunt’s awfully well-connected, and any scandal attached to her role as the President’s procuress is going to be swept under one hell of a carpet. FBI Man Goes Berserk – that will be the story, and the explanation that becomes common currency in future. You won’t hear much about Lucy Mercer Rutherford.’

  ‘Why are you going to do this? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Plympton seemed to survey Nessheim afresh. ‘Think about it. Belgium’s fallen, Holland’s fallen; any day now, France will surrender. That leaves only the English, who are a tougher nut to crack, and won’t give up right away. The best way forward is to get them to see that their position is hopeless, and let them make peace – on our terms, of course. But as long as they think there’s any chance of America coming in on their side they’ll try and tough it out.

  ‘Six weeks from now the Democrats will nominate their presidential candidate. A movement to draft Roosevelt is gaining momentum; believe me, I know – Hopkins is one of its spearheads. But if Roosevelt isn’t around to be nominated, then Garner will get it, and he’ll keep America out of the war. So will the Republican candidate – Wilkie might make pro-war noises, but I saw a Gallup Poll the other day that only gave him eight per cent of the vote. It doesn’t matter who gets elected in November provided it isn’t Roosevelt.’

  Plympton gave a small smile. ‘At that point even the English will see the writing on the wall. They’re not lunatics, and they’ll sue for peace.’

  ‘Doubtless,’ said Nessheim, but he was thinking of how Plympton had phrased something. ‘You said our terms a minute ago. Are you telling me you’re German?’

  ‘Ja,’ he said with a schoolboy’s grin.

  ‘How did you get to be called Plympton then?’

  ‘My “father”,’ and there was nothing filial in his tone, ‘owned a saloon in California. His real name was “Plumholtz”, but he changed it when he bought the bar during the last war. Better for business not to have a German-sounding name.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Nessheim, suddenly recalling his evening in the same establishment with Mueller and the members of the local Bund. ‘The bar was in Dublin.’

  Plympton looked startled again. ‘Dubinsky mentioned you’d gone to California. You were digging into my past while you were out there?’

  ‘Another agent took me to a German party there a couple of years ago.’

  ‘That must have been Mueller.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I knew anyone who was German and lived near Dublin.’

  ‘So Mueller’s been working with you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Plympton, looking offended by the suggestion. ‘Mueller’s an idiot.’

  ‘But Jahnke wasn’t, I suppose.’

  Plympton looked stung. ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘I know he brought you over as a boy. I understand Mueller was adopted. Did Jahnke bring him over from Germany too?’

  Plympton nodded. ‘Yes, though not with any specific instructions.’

  ‘So Mueller was just cover for you?’

  ‘Yes. Herr Jahnke never failed to cover all eventualities. He’s a very clever man.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Nessheim. ‘But Mueller wasn’t very discreet. He hung around with the Bund.’

  ‘Big surprise – idiots love idiots.’ Plympton gave a regretful sigh. ‘Sadly, the Bund demonstrates what happens when people are transplanted: they’re inevitably enfeebled by their new environs. That’s the failing of this country – its premise that it’s a melting pot hides a fatal weakness.’

  ‘You’re going back to your Fatherland then?’

  Plympton shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. I honour my country, and do its bidding, but there’s no point pretending I could ever feel at home there. That was all sacrificed when my mother had me sent over here.’

  ‘So this country has weakened you too?’

  Plympton didn’t like that; for the first time his face showed irritation. Nessheim backed off. It was important not to press gratuitously. He’d been taught that during a training session on hostage-taking, an increasing phenomenon in which bank robbers ended up surrounded, but holding a gun to a terrified teller’s head.

  ‘Why the code name?’ Nessheim asked. ‘Why Dreiländer?’

  Again Plympton looked startled. Then he regained his composure. ‘My birth name was Seitz – my parents were Austrian, from Villach. It’s Dreiländer territory – you know what that means?’

  ‘I know German – think of my surname.’

  ‘Pity you don’t honour it more,’ Plympton said lightly.

  Nessheim said, ‘That’s also where Werner was killed. The Nazis shot him in the head at point-blank range.’

  ‘Did they? I can’t say the news comes as a surprise. Werner was something of a loose cannon.’

  Nessheim made a stab in the dark. ‘Like Bock?’

  ‘What do you know about that?’ Plympton seemed happy to tell Nessheim things, less happy to discover Nessheim already knew some of them. It was important to keep him off guard that way; Nessheim sensed his only chance lay in Plympton’s thinking the FBI was on to him.

  ‘I know it wasn’t suicide, though it was meant to look like it. Not everybody at the Bureau is as dumb as you think Mueller is. But why did Bock have to die?’

  ‘He’d served his purpose, by making you think the Bund was full of conspiring masterminds.’ He gave a deprecating laugh. ‘But there was always a chance he knew more than he should. I had standing orders to remove anyone who might know of my background. I’m sorry about the coloured boy, but it seemed the best way to make the suicide look genuine. Thank God they were the only people I had to kill,’ said Plympton, as if he should be the one Nessheim felt sorry for. ‘The ex-Ambassador, Herr Luther, didn’t trust Werner; he thought he might be reading his cables.
And since Luther knew about me from Werner, I was worried I’d have to kill him, too. Fortunately Berlin recalled him first.’

  Nessheim felt like a rat in an experiment on overfeeding, his mind racing to keep up. Plympton said, ‘What else do you know about me?’ He now seemed genuinely curious, student-like, in the same way he had formerly asked Nessheim lots of questions about the Bureau.

  ‘I know that you’re a big feature in the letters of Lady Dove to Mrs Cummings.’

  ‘I bet I am.’ Plympton sounded genuinely pleased.

  ‘Is that why you went to England five years ago?’

  ‘Partly. I wanted to see the Justice too. I don’t share the Party’s hatred of the Jews. If it was up to me, I’d evict them all from Germany – Madagascar seems to be the latest idea. But as long as they’re not in the country I haven’t got a problem with them.’

  ‘That’s big of you. So you got to know Lady Dove when you were there?’

  ‘Of course – Werner told me she would be my contact with Berlin if war broke out. He seemed to know he was being pushed aside, though I doubt he had any idea they were going to kill him.’ He gave a shake of his head and whistled through his teeth. ‘God, she was a lousy lay. I guess I was supposed to think it was a privilege screwing her.’

  ‘Maybe she thought you were bad in bed.’

  ‘I don’t get complaints,’ Plympton said.

  It was the first sign of vanity in the man, and Nessheim wondered what Annie made of Plympton’s prowess. As if reading his thoughts, Plympton said with a wry smile, ‘Cheer up, fellah. I never had Annie, if that’s what you’re wondering. Not my type.’

  ‘How romantic.’

  Plympton laughed. It was the same easy laugh as before. He said, ‘She’s a good girl and I’ll do my duty. We may even have kids. But that was not the attraction, if you get my drift.’

  ‘What was the lure then?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Plympton, as if he were disappointed in Nessheim. ‘How else could I get close to him?’ He shook his head. ‘I know you didn’t finish college, Jimmy, but I figured you to be a little brighter. I mean, you had the answer sitting in your hands – Annie told me you forced her to show you the letters Lady Dove wrote to Sally. But you didn’t get it – you thought they were just about putting me and Annie together.’

  ‘Weren’t they?’ It didn’t matter in the slightest now, but he still wanted to know.

  ‘Of course not. They told me how the order would come. Then all I had to do was listen to the short-wave radio.’

  Nessheim remembered now. Lady Dove had mentioned listening to the propaganda broadcasts from Berlin – how they had amused her and her friend. That must have been the tip-off to Frank that the order to strike would come over the air. He said firmly, ‘It seems a pretty roundabout way to give you orders.’

  ‘Intentionally so; it was safer that way. With Werner gone, there was no one else to give me away. Though as it turned out, you could have got there if you were a bit sharper. Thank God you’re not.’

  But Nessheim ignored him, thinking what this meant. ‘So Sally was the conduit. Does that mean she knew all about this … this plot?’

  ‘Well,’ Plympton began, but stopped when there was the sound of a car in the drive. Nessheim glanced out the window and saw a large Plymouth pull into the turnaround between the kitchen door and the garage. He looked back at Plympton, whose voice for the first time betrayed his tension. ‘Don’t even think of shouting for help, or I’ll shoot you right away.’

  They didn’t have long to wait. There was the noise of steps in the kitchen below, then in the hall on the stairs. Then the sound of the door closing in the room next to them.

  They sat in silence, as Nessheim tried to imagine the scene in the adjacent room. Did Lucy Rutherford sit patiently waiting or would she be nervous, pat her hair as she looked in the mirror, and reapply her lipstick?

  Only moments later there was the sound of another car out back. A door slammed, but when Nessheim saw the tension in Plympton’s face he didn’t dare take another look out the window. This time it took longer, and he thought he even heard voices downstairs – perhaps the President had his chauffeur wheel him in. A light hydraulic whine filled the air; the elevator was moving. The elevator door emitted its faint hiss and then Nessheim heard what he knew must be a wheelchair move across the hallway carpet. There was no knock on the door, just the noise of it opening and clunking shut.

  It won’t be much longer now, Nessheim thought, and he watched as Plympton stood listening intently, his back to the door to the hall. Presumably he would give the lovers time to get undressed; that way they would be even more vulnerable when he came through the door. He would have shot Nessheim by then, through the temple probably. Then he’d come back after killing Roosevelt and his mistress, remove the silencer, wipe the gun clean and wrap Nessheim’s inert hand around it, then let the gun fall to the floor next to Nessheim’s body. The set of fingerprints would tell an irrefutable story.

  Nessheim had been here before: he remembered the cold water of the Atlantic as The Braunau had motored away. He felt the same impotence now, and he had no doubts about Plympton’s determination. If he tried to do anything, he would merely accelerate the disaster that was about to happen.

  Suddenly he noticed a shadow on the carpet in the hallway. Had it been there before? Could someone be lurking in the hall? The President’s chauffeur, perhaps, though why would he be standing just outside the room of the illicit lovers? Anyway, thought Nessheim gloomily, the chauffeur wouldn’t be armed. Plympton would shoot him too before he opened the connecting door and went into the next room.

  Then he saw the toe of a shoe edge an inch or so into the open doorway. He averted his eyes, and made a point of returning Plympton’s gaze. Though he resisted the temptation to glance past him, he was gradually aware of a figure coming into view.

  Plympton suddenly spoke, in the tones of a vet proposing to put down a client’s dog. ‘This will be painless, Jimmy, if you let it be. You won’t feel a thing. I’m going to come closer now, and then I’m going to tell you to shut your eyes.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said a woman’s voice.

  Nessheim looked behind Plympton and saw Annie standing in the doorway. She had picked up Nessheim’s .38 and was pointing it at Plympton’s back.

  ‘Don’t turn around, Frank. I’ve got the gun.’

  ‘Darling, it’s not what it seems. I found Jimmy here. That’s his gun, and I took it off him. I think he means to shoot the President.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I heard what you were saying, Frank.’ There was a slight waver in Annie’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you heard, darling; I was telling Jimmy here what I thought he planned to do.’

  Nessheim noticed Plympton was moving each shoulder. It was distracting, which must have been the point. Fortunately Annie understood this. ‘Stop moving,’ she said sharply, and Nessheim saw she had a firm grip on the gun.

  ‘Sure,’ said Plympton, suddenly standing still. ‘Whatever you say.’ His gun was still pointed right at Nessheim’s forehead, and he said with the same easy insouciant voice, ‘You’ve got me covered, Annie, but I’ve got lover boy here covered as well. If I hear your trigger starting to move I’m going to make sure Jimmy goes first.’

  The lines were drawn. Annie seemed to hesitate, and for a moment Nessheim thought she was going to lower her weapon. He had to take the risk and speak. ‘Annie, if he’s going to shoot me, then let him – just be sure you shoot him too. Otherwise, he’s going into the room next door to kill the President. Do you understand?’ She looked stunned. ‘Do you understand?’ he repeated sternly, trying to administer a verbal slap in the face.

  She nodded and he was glad to see her tighten her grip on his gun.

  ‘Annie,’ said Plympton, and he was rolling his shoulders again. ‘Why on earth did you come back?’

  She hesitated before speaking, and her voice was brittle. ‘I was w
orried you wouldn’t have found Doob’s note; I was going to come round the house. I wanted to make sure you were coming to Five Forks.’ She added, suddenly forlorn, ‘I didn’t expect this.’

  ‘I bet you didn’t,’ said Plympton, and now each time he moved a shoulder he was turning slightly, so that he was no longer standing with his back facing Annie but at an angle that was gradually widening. Nessheim saw that Plympton was using the cover of talk to disguise the fact that he was moving. It was Danny Ho all over again, but Nessheim was watching the re-enactment without a gun in his hand. He felt paralysed, like a mouse cowering beneath a reared-up snake.

  Plympton was saying, ‘You’ve managed to stop whatever you think was going on.’

  Annie looked mystified and Nessheim realised Plympton was about to make his move.

  ‘Shoot him!’ Nessheim shouted and he jumped straight out of his chair at Plympton, hurtling into him just as he fired. There was a muffled bang and Nessheim’s head hit Plympton in the stomach. As he threw his arms around the man to bring him down there was another explosion, much louder. Plympton fell down with Nessheim on top of him, dropping his gun. When Nessheim lifted up his head to throw a punch at Plympton’s jaw he realised there was no point. Plympton wasn’t moving. His mouth was open, lips pronouncing an unspoken Oh of surprise. It was the startled look of a dead man, and when Nessheim pulled his arm free from underneath Plympton’s back, he found blood running all over his hand.

  Annie was standing stock-still, staring in disbelief at the gun she still held. Nessheim got up slowly, feeling inexplicable pain in one side. It was then that he realised Plympton had fired too, and that blood was seeping through his shirt, low down, just above his pelvic bone.

  Then all hell broke loose. He heard a door smashed open downstairs and people shouting in the kitchen.

  ‘Give me the gun!’ he shouted at Annie. The pain in his side was becoming intense.

  She looked at him as if she had never seen him before.

  ‘Quick,’ he insisted. ‘Give it to me.’

  She handed it over. He held the pistol by the barrel and winced – the barrel was hot. He put his hand on its grip and moved it around, trying to make sure his prints obscured any of hers. Then he remembered the trigger and put his finger carefully inside the guard, placing it on the thin slip of metal.