‘For Christ’s sake, you always say that.’
‘Yeah, I know. Old habits I guess. I know better than to ask if you’ve got what I want.’
‘It’s never stopped you before,’ said Ronnie. ‘But yes, the letter and the netbook are both in there.’
The man who had arrived first put his arm out straight along the back of the bench as though relaxing: in reality he was checking for the approach of passers-by, hardly likely on a bitter day like today, but best to be sure. ‘And the old man?’ he asked.
‘Fell down the cellar steps and broke his neck,’ said Ronnie.
His companion nodded. ‘Guess it was inevitable, living in a place like that all alone at his age.’
‘That’s what everyone said.’
‘Good. You got anyone attending the funeral?’
‘No. Didn’t see the need. Why? Do you think we need to send someone?’
‘Nope. Just curious.’
‘What about Hillman?’
He furrowed his brow. ‘I can’t make my mind up. If the girl was from the magazine I think we need to check him out.’
‘And the girl?’
‘Leave her alone for now.’ He got to his feet and gestured to Ronnie. ‘C’mon, let’s walk, I’m freezing my ass off sitting here.’
Each picked up a black briefcase – not the one he’d arrived with – and continued down the footpath that winds along the water’s edge and past the miniature Japanese pagoda.
Turning to Ronnie he said, ‘It’ll be easier to check out Hillman than the girl.’
‘What is there to check that we haven’t done already?’
‘We need to know if the blonde girl he spoke to was from New Horizons.’
Ronnie looked at him accusingly. ‘I thought you were sure that Greenberg was working on her own,’ he said.
‘I was. Still am. I just need to be more than sure.’
At this Ronnie flapped his arms in exasperation. ‘Jeez, I wish you’d make your goddam mind up.’
‘I just have.’
‘Thank Christ for that.’
They crossed the road and walked beside the Potomac towards the Arlington Memorial Bridge. The smaller man made to speak to Ronnie again but the arrival of a jogger coming up behind them made him wait. Once she was safely out of earshot he continued.
‘Yeah, I’ve made my mind up. I want you to send a couple of people to see Hillman.’
‘No fucking way,’ said Ronnie. ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind.’
‘Just hear me out, will you?’
‘If you insist.’
‘It’s not a matter of insisting, it’s whether you want to get paid or not – remember that.’ He paused and his voice took on a more conciliatory tone. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out. You send a couple of your guys – you’ll find two sets of business cards for them in the case – and when they show up to see Hillman they’re from The Washington Post, right? And they’re interested in his allegations of corruption regarding the new mall. What’s more, they tell him that they’ll add another fifty percent to whatever New Horizons have offered him.’
‘Then what?’ Ronnie’s tone made it clear that he didn’t think much of the idea.
‘Depends on how he reacts.’ He shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t be hard to tell whether he’s cut a deal with them or not.’
‘And if he has?’
‘You take care of the girl. Another pay day, that’s all.’
Another shrug of the bear-like shoulders. ‘Suits me,’ said Ronnie.
Three days later, Ronnie called him. It was as he’d hoped. Hillman hadn’t cut a deal with anybody. According to Ronnie’s sanitized version of the brief conversation between the store-keeper and the two bogus reporters, all journalists were two-faced assholes and could go straight to hell while simultaneously committing a series of physically impossible acts upon themselves.
During Hillman’s tirade, which was rapidly followed by the ejection of his two unwelcome visitors onto the street, he was sufficiently distracted not to notice when one of them palmed a business card from the cluttered desk. It bore the name of Catherine Stenmark.
He would make sure that another black briefcase changed hands as reward for Ronnie’s efforts – less cash this time but worth every dime – money well spent.
***
As usual and despite the freezing weather, Vince Novak was in the DC office first. Timing was all: so long as he was first in, even if it was only by a matter of minutes, that was what counted. And he knew better than anyone that perception is reality. Since before Christmas he’d been on the road with Pauli almost non-stop and if he never saw another hotel in Iowa it would be too soon. Four hours’ sleep a night was killing him and the next few months offered more of the same until the nomination was sealed.
He took off his coat and began working through the e-mails that had come in overnight: most of them he’d previewed on his Blackberry, but on his desktop he could get a better look at the attachments. The news was all good. Eric Pauli had walked the Iowa Caucus and would never know, would never need to know, what strings Novak had pulled to ensure maximum participation of his man’s supporters. The same went for what deals and promises had been made, and how he’d managed the crucial last-minute upswing in the number of registered Democrats, many of whom only signed on the dotted line at the caucus venue. Novak had stopped just short of buying votes and none of the accusations of bringing in out-of-state volunteers and field-office staff had stuck, but his front wheels were well over the edge of the drop. In electoral terms, Iowa is a small state with only forty delegates – California has over four-hundred – but it was the media exposure that counted and with it, the chance to implant the subliminal message in the public’s mind that the Pauli juggernaut was on a roll.
He picked up the phone to talk to the campaign media office. From the time it took her to answer, he guessed that Pauli’s press secretary had just come through the door. That she sounded out of breath only confirmed it. He smiled to himself. ‘Good morning, good morning,’ he said. The press secretary was not by nature an early riser and he knew his jollity would annoy her.
‘Good morning, Vince,’ she replied, still trying to get her breath after dashing for the phone.
‘Did you see the breakfast news this morning?’ He asked.
‘Sure. Iowa’s wrapped up. I’m going to be putting out a release this morning and Eric’s got a slot with CNN at ten.’
‘So you haven’t seen the Republicans’ attempt at a spoiler?’
‘Sorry, must’ve been while I was on my way in.’
More likely while you were still getting your fat ass out of bed thought Novak. ‘Quite possibly,’ he said tactfully. ‘They’re trying to pin the out-of-state voters scam on us and they’ve done us the great favour of giving out names and places.’
‘And all those voters were legit? Could we be that lucky?’
‘Yes we could. They’re all students who spend most of the year in Iowa. And each one has a legitimate address there.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ she said.
‘I’ll send you the details and you can stick it to ‘em on camera.’
‘Thanks, Vince. Good job – you’re a star.’
Novak put down the phone and smiled. He knew the coup would make its way back to Pauli and he’d go up yet another notch in the senator’s estimation as a result; all the more so given that the story would come from someone else on the team. What only he knew was that the out-of-state voters story had been deliberately leaked to a member of the Republican team who’d swallowed it hook, line and sinker – Christ, they’d damn nearly eaten the boat.
***
Pauli was still only in his late thirties when he sold his law firm in Worcester, Massachusetts. He passed up the opportunity to stay with the major Boston outfit that had hired him as an associate straight out of law school. Then, when he hit thirty-two, and despite his wife’s misgivings, he turned his back on the open door that led to the secret ga
rden of partnership. He took a risk, moved away from Boston and struck out on his own.
At the beginning there were two other associates and a spectacularly rude but highly efficient secretary-cum-receptionist who knew more about securities law than most attorneys, all four of them crammed into a set of badly-lit offices in a decaying 1960s block on the outskirts of town. Then two more lawyers joined him and in the second year of Pauli Associates’ existence a couple of high-profile wins allowed him to hire two more, always pushing the cashflow to the absolute limit, never borrowing and some months paying the salaries and the rent out of his own pocket when times got tight.
Within five years Pauli Associates was a money-making machine, spread across the top five floors of a gleaming, brand-new glass and concrete tower in the centre of town. But as soon as he was able to leave it on cruise-control and watch the cash roll in he found that the fun and the challenge had disappeared, so he put the company up for sale and started looking around for another turn-around project.
Chapter Thirteen
10 August 1945. The Americans must be delighted with what R. and S. have done for them. Newspapers reporting uranium bomb dropped on Japan Monday. If only we had been able to produce it first. Thousands dead. A. inconsolable that we couldn’t do same to Moscow but hopes Truman will act soon. Americans don’t seem to understand the threat – Stalin holds them mesmerised. One day they will find out the truth but it will be too late for them.
*
Novak checked the spreadsheets for the last time just to make sure the numbers weren’t lying to him and then forwarded the mails to the Pauli campaign’s data team. The data team had been Novak’s idea too, something he’d picked during the early days when he’d first started working for Pauli. One of the most over-used clichés is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure and every third-rate manager trots it out at regular intervals. Novak had heard it more times than he cared to remember and he’d also lost count of the times where he’d seen managers try and achieve it by grabbing every single piece of badly-formatted data in sight and jamming it into the same hopper which they then proudly christened their “data warehouse”: “junk-in-the-basement” would’ve been a better name for most of them.
On Novak’s watch, things were done differently. In his previous job at Pinewood County Investments he’d worked with some of the financial sector’s finest data analysts and a small group of them had answered his call when he became head of the senator’s campaign team. The ability to summon facts and figures from the ether and get them into the candidate’s earpiece in a matter of seconds made the Pauli for President rebuttal team a formidable weapon. None of their Democrat rivals had a similar real-time capability and even the mighty electoral machine supporting the Republican incumbent was trailing in the wake of the monster that Novak had created.
Pinewood County Investments was another Pauli success story and it was there that a young Vince Novak had met the man who would take him way further than he could ever go were he to rely on his own abilities.
Pinewood’s success brought Pauli the same sense of achievement he got from starting up Pauli Associates and seeing it grow into a feared and respected name – above all it brought him, at last, the confidence and self-belief that his hand-me-down upbringing had beaten out of him. Finally he was safe. It had taken a long time but the fear that had haunted and driven him, a terror that he admitted to no one, not even himself most of the time, was finally dispelled: he wasn’t going to be poor again.
By Pauli’s side was the ever-faithful Vince Novak. What he didn’t know was that Novak’s fidelity to his master was that of a hyena – just so long as Pauli remained the alpha male, and not a second longer, Novak would fight to the death for him.
***
Cathy Stenmark’s public sacking of the feckless Steve had drawn more than awed admiration from her colleagues. A few days later while heading for the Metro at the end of another busy day, she turned in response to someone calling her name. It was Dave Newman whose desk faced hers. ‘Hey, Cathy, how’s things going with Pauli?’
‘Oh, you know, keeping me on my toes.’
He nodded towards the briefcase in her hand. ‘Still taking work home I see. They’re not paying you enough.’
She laughed. ‘No. For once this isn’t work, just taking a bunch of personal stuff home – you know tax stuff and payslips that were cluttering up the desk. Figured it was time for the annual clear-out.’
Newman stopped and said casually, ‘Look, Cathy, if you’re not working tonight, I’ve got a couple of angles on Pauli’s law and order policy I’d like to run past you. Fancy doing it over a drink?’
‘Well, since you put it like that, how can I refuse? Where d’you want to go?’
‘There’s a place I know a couple of blocks away.’
‘OK,’ she said, pulling up her collar against the cold. ‘But just one, I don’t want a late night.’
To keep warm they walked quickly, chatting about Pauli and the campaign race. After about ten minutes, Newman led her down the steps to the bar where they took a corner table, out of sight of the main entrance. For a few minutes he continued his probing questions about Pauli and his likely policy directions and then, putting down his glass, stopped in mid-sentence.
‘What’s up, Dave?’ asked Cathy. ‘Seen a ghost?’
‘No there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time,’ he said, the words coming out in a blurted rush. ‘I’m in love with you.’
Cathy nearly fell off her seat. ‘Dave, c’mon, don’t fool around like that,’ she said. And then her smile faded: he wasn’t joking.
‘I don’t expect you to feel the same straight away,’ he said, ‘Not right now, at least. But ever since I first met you I’ve adored you and I know we’d be great together. I just never had the courage to tell you.’
Her first reaction was to laugh, but she checked herself in time. Stretching out across the table she took his hands in hers. ‘Dave, I love you as a dear friend and a brilliant journalist, one of the best there is, but I just can’t feel the same.’
‘Oh but you would in time.’
‘No Dave, it doesn’t work like that. There has to be a spark.’
He looked to Cathy like a beaten puppy. ‘And you mean there isn’t?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you by leading you on. I have to be honest – no there isn’t.’
‘Maybe if we went out on a couple of dates…’
‘It wouldn’t work, Dave. Please believe me.’
‘Is it because I’m Jewish?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘No, it’s not. I’ve dated Jewish guys before.’
He let go her hand and looked down, blinking rapidly. She thought for one terrible moment he was going to cry. ‘I’ve behaved like a jerk, haven’t I?’ he said at last. ‘I’m so sorry, but I had to tell you.’
Cathy smiled. ‘Dave, you’re not a jerk and there’s nothing to be sorry for. What you did took a lot of guts. You told me how you feel and I’m deeply flattered.’
‘And you won’t tell anybody and laugh at me behind my back?’
‘No, silly, of course not. Now, this time it’s my round.’
At work the following day and for next couple of weeks, Cathy did her best to be friendly and chatty towards him and eventually he seemed less nervous in her company with things returning pretty much to normal between them. Often she would catch him casting longing glances her way but their conversation in the bar was never mentioned.
Chapter Fourteen
5 April 1946. Worried. A’s health getting worse from living in this dreadful shack and says doctor (Jew of course) is trying to poison him. Afternoon: terrible news. Police or US Gestapo (not sure which – plain clothes) came with interpreter. Hours of questioning for both A. and me. S. has been murdered and R. is missing. Fully expected them to kill us both on the spot but A. jubilant when they left – says while R. alive, they dare not harm us. Still no news from CH. Very worried, am
convinced everything stolen but A. says not
.
*
For the FBI, the process was long and the investigation littered with blind alleys. None the less, the net closed in on Standfluss’s killers. Fuchs claimed ill-health and fled to Britain in June 1946, three months after the murder. Hall was questioned at length but there was never enough evidence to arrest him. He died of cancer, also in England, at the age of 74.
In 1953, Robert Oppenheimer, always careless in his choice of enemies, clashed with his former supporter, Lewis Strauss. In a hearing organised under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission, Oppie was subjected to an extra-judicial witch-trial that out-McCarthyed McCarthy. The extent to which Edward Teller’s testimony was a betrayal of his former boss would be a matter for debate for years to come, and the outcome of the hearing was a body blow to the man who’d given America The Bomb. In 1954 despite his innocence on all the charges cooked up against him, his security clearance was removed, thus cutting him off from any meaningful government work. It was never reinstated.
Unable to stay idle for more than five minutes, Oppenheimer threw himself into lecturing, writing and research, and when an opportunity for a paid lecture tour in Europe came up, he grabbed it with both hands.
At the University of Vienna, he addressed a packed lecture hall. For two hours he spoke, without the aid of notes, and in fluent German. The power and charisma of his words held the audience spellbound as he wove the story of physics from its birth in medieval alchemy to his personal speculations on what science in a nuclear age might hold for future generations. The hall was set out in the shape of an amphitheatre, with semi-circular rows of desks and fold-down seats, rising high above the lecture stage. Its dark, wood-panelled walls were hung with oil paintings of the eminent men whose learning had graced the ancient university since the fourteenth century.
Two hours without a cigarette was a lifetime for Oppie and by the time the hall had emptied and he’d shaken so many hands that his own was sore and bruised, his craving for nicotine was reaching crisis levels. He was about to light up when a familiar voice addressed him: the lilting Austrian accent was unmistakable. ‘Grüß Gott, Oppie. Wie geht’s?’
The Manhattan Deception Page 11
