The Manhattan Deception

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  ‘Scorched earth, eh?’ said James. ‘What do your campaign team think about the idea?’

  Pauli laughed. ‘They think it stinks: sometimes I lie awake wondering whether they’re right. It’s a hand I don’t have to play until I’m elected so for now I just stick to the line that I’m going to do the right things and not necessarily the popular things. I think the electorate get that.’

  ‘So long as they think it’s the other guy who’s going to be worse off,’ said Janet.

  James sat back and enjoyed the back-and-forth being played out in front of him. He could tell that Janet Pauli’s political intuition was every bit as sharp as her husband’s.

  Pauli turned to James. ‘You can see now that if I can’t get an idea past Janet then it ends up in the trash,’ he said with a smile. ‘And you wouldn’t believe the number of media beatings that’s saved me from.’

  They moved through to the dining room, which looked out over the stone terrace and the lawns beyond. Although the back of the house was lit, James could only see about fifty yards down the garden but what he saw would have put even Hammond’s meticulous handiwork to shame.

  During the second course he suddenly realised that neither of them had made anything more than passing reference to the paintings: one joking aside from Pauli about James having pushed him off the front pages when he desperately needed the publicity and that was it. The comment barely had time to register before the conversation swept him along into another of Janet Pauli’s anecdotes about her old job as a foreign correspondent for NBC – another of her exploits that, fortunately for her dignity, had never made it onto the nation’s TV screens.

  Before James had time to notice, it was after ten o’clock. Pauli had said something about an early start so he thanked them profusely for a wonderful evening and began to take his leave of his new friends. Savvy enough to realise that everyone from political foes to visiting tin-pot dignitaries probably got the same treatment, he none the less found himself drawn by their charm: a couple whose undisguised mutual affection stood in sharp contrast to his own brief and rancorous marriage.

  Pauli summoned the driver and, as James stood up to go, said to him. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what, James, and don’t feel you have to say yes, but how’d you fancy coming to West Virginia with me tomorrow? It’s only a short hop to Charleston but it’ll mean an early start from Dulles. You’ll have to fend for yourself with my staff, but if you’re interested in hitching a ride and seeing a primary campaign at first hand, it’d be fun to have you along. There’s a bunch of stuff I meant to ask you but couldn’t get a word in edgeways.’ He winked at Janet.

  ‘Well, yes of course, I mean… well, I’d love to, but wouldn’t I be in the way?’ said James once he had regained the power of speech.

  ‘No, you won’t get in my way. I’ll kick your ass out of it if you do.’ Another wink. ‘Don’t worry, my people will look after you. Now you won’t need an overnight bag because we’re not stopping. My driver will leave your hotel at five thirty tomorrow morning and if you want to come along, just make sure you’re in the car with him.’

  Feeling gritty-eyed and a little hung-over, James stood in the cold outside his hotel. At five twenty-eight, the same black Lincoln, but with a different driver, pulled up beside him. Cocooned in the warmth, James dozed off straight away but woke up with a jolt as they came to a halt outside the executive terminal at the airport. Before he even had time to think, he was standing outside in the cool morning air and the Pauli team’s transport manager was pumping his hand and introducing him to a sea of faces, all of whose names he promptly forgot.

  Inside the terminal he was greeted by Pauli himself who led him up the stairs and along the jetway into the chartered aircraft. James looked around in amazement – no security checks, no queues, no ritual humiliation – air travel just wasn’t like this. Pauli settled him in a seat in a small compartment at the front of the passenger cabin and then went back to talk to his campaign staff who were now filing on to the aircraft, each one treating James to a “hi” and a bright, straight-toothed smile as they passed: he found the effect surreal.

  The cabin staff shut the door and the engines started as Pauli returned to the compartment and sat down beside him. ‘What do you think, James? Pretty good, eh?’

  ‘You’re not joking. I didn’t believe flying could be this painless.’

  ‘Perks of the job – my old job I should say. The use of this baby costs my campaign precisely zip and it’s all legal.’

  ‘I thought you were supposed to pay the full cost of transport and stuff like that,’ said James, perplexed.

  ‘Nope, our dear friends at the Federal Election Commission wanted to change the law, but for now, aircraft owned by companies in which the candidate or a family member has a controlling interest – Pinewood Investments in our case – are exempt. Murphy bitches about it, the Republicans bitch about it but that’s only because they can’t join in. Screw ’em.’

  After take-off they were joined by Pauli’s media manager, but by the time they reached cruising altitude, the two men were alone. James thanked him once again for his hospitality the night before, but Pauli’s reply seemed a little odd. ‘Yeah, very interesting evening, I learned a lot.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked James.

  ‘That you’ve been spinning a line from the moment you set foot in this country and I’m interested to find out why.’ The friendly, bantering Eric Pauli of the night before had gone and in its place, James saw something far harder.

  ‘I’m still not with you,’ he said, reeling from the sudden change.

  ‘OK, play dumb if you like. If you want me to spell it out for you then I will.’

  ‘I think you better had, Eric,’ he said with more confidence than he felt.

  ‘You know where your uncle found those paintings, don’t you?’ said Pauli.

  ‘Sure. In Germany when he was serving as an ALO with the US Army.’

  ‘Ah, but where in Germany?’

  James began to bluster. ‘How should I know? I only found the stuff after he died.’

  Pauli rested his elbows on the table in front of them and pushed his fingertips together, deep in thought. ‘OK, that’s possible, I grant you. We’ll come on to how he got a haul of that size back to the UK without anyone asking awkward questions in a bit. But before we do, you need to understand that I know you’ve been sitting tight about the other stuff he found. That’s what I meant when I said you were spinning a line.’

  James felt almost physically sick as the realisation sank in. He tried one last line of defence. ‘Eric, I promise you, that’s all there was.’

  Pauli slowly shook his head. ‘OK, if you want to lie to me, go ahead. I sure as hell can’t stop you, but let me tell you something. What you found at your uncle’s place, as well as the paintings, was twenty-five kilos of gold and four letters of transit, validated by the Red Cross and signed in March 1945 by FDR and Churchill. Now, d’you want to modify what you just said or shall I pick up the phone and have the police arrest you when we land?’ Pauli paused for a moment to let his words take full effect. The look on James’s face told him all he needed to know and he continued. ‘You know as well as I do that even if you run away home, all it’ll take is a word in the right quarters and your government will extradite you in a heartbeat. If you want to spend the next fifty years in an orange jump-suit, well hey, it’s a free country. Your call. Personally I don’t give a shit.’

  James felt a bead of sweat trickle down his spine. The man beside him had gone from hard-nosed to terrifying and the glare that Pauli turned on him was one of undiluted malice. ‘Interesting conjecture, Eric. So where’s your proof?’ The words rang hollow in his ears.

  ‘You think I need proof, boy?’ The gruff voice became a snarl. ‘I know for a fact your uncle found letters of transit for my father, Anton Pauli, born Breslau, September 5th 1889; my mother, Emma Pauli, née Richter, also born Breslau December 11th 1912; Max Standfluss, nuclear w
eapons trigger specialist, born Kiel, October 2nd 1904 and Georg Reiss, inventor of the Reiss gas centrifuge, born February 10th 1917. My parents, James, my goddam parents. Now do you understand how I know what your uncle found?’

  ‘There were alloy tubes with paintings in them. That’s all, Eric, I swear to you…’ He was interrupted by the cabin crew bustling round and telling everybody to sit back down because it was ten minutes to landing.

  ‘OK. Have it your own way. I can have you put under lock and key the moment we land – I’m assuming the gold was also stolen from Jewish families which, by the way, will do wonders for your new-found popularity with the media – and then when the British police take your place in England apart and they find it piled up next to the letters, then what? You’ve got until the wheels hit the ground to make your mind up.’ He folded his arms and looked straight ahead.

  The nose of the aircraft pitched down almost imperceptibly as the pilot lowered another fifteen degrees of flap and at five miles on finals a mechanical clatter and aerodynamic buffet announced that the undercarriage was on its way down. ‘OK,’ said James. ‘There were four letters but they’re not at the house. They’re in my solicitor’s safe,’ he lied.

  ‘And the gold?’ asked Pauli, still focussed straight ahead, a look of cold fury on his face.

  ‘Only a few bars left. My uncle sold the rest over the years. And it wasn’t looted from individuals: according to the markings it was stolen from the German Treasury.’ With a delicate squeeze of right rudder and a small input of left aileron to keep the wings level, the pilot took out the compensation for the cross-wind coming from the south and the aircraft settled onto Yeager Airport’s runway 23.

  ‘Wise decision, James: orange isn’t your colour. Now keep the fuck out of my way: we’ll talk on the flight back.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Success! I can barely believe our luck. The stupid Higgs woman believes I have a lover in Germany and has agreed to send and receive letters for me so that A. won’t know. A. delighted. Says I am a genius. Now we can contact CH. Maybe get them to send us money so we can escape this Jew-infested country.

  *

  James did as he was told and kept out of Pauli’s way for the rest of the day in Charleston. Utterly dejected, he sat in the back of the campaign bus, occasionally exchanging pleasantries with Pauli’s team and doing his best to feign interest in what was going on. First stop was a campaign breakfast at a downtown hotel and when the senator emerged at nine o’clock, he cut James dead. By ten o’clock they were at a fire station on the outskirts of town, with Pauli standing on a hydraulic lift and addressing an enthusiastic crowd who were packed into the building to keep out of the torrential rain. The speech was subtly crafted to appeal to the fears and aspirations of small town West Virginia and received exactly the response Pauli had hoped it would. Inside the Beltway it would’ve bombed.

  James watched Pauli carefully and after the third performance, he began to see the pattern. The skill with which the man worked an audience was evident but what counted wasn’t just keeping his core blue-collar supporters on board but keeping the press happy. The more he watched, the more the mechanics of Pauli’s charm became clear. At the end of each speech he’d announce five minutes for questions from the floor and then after ten, he’d suddenly look at his watch and discover to his surprise that he was running late: such was his pleasure at being in Hicksville (or wherever) that time had just flown by. This, noted James, achieved two things. First it drove home the message that unlike his rival, he loved being with these people, his people, and secondly, it gave him a perfect lead-in to the next part of the act. On the way out of the venue, the local press would inevitably corner him. He would explain that he was running late but hey, what the hell, he would always find time for the Hicksville Clarion, or whatever the local paper was called. Then, after no more than two minutes, a staffer would appear at his shoulder to remind him they were running late but Pauli would send him packing – couldn’t he see that this was an important conversation? Then a minute later, the charade would be repeated and at last, Pauli would be dragged away protesting, leaving the local reporters feeling like the most important members of the fourth estate. Whether he tried it with the national or the local media, they all fell for it because he was careful never to repeat the same trick in front of the same reporter. It was cynical, but the glowing coverage on the front pages showed that it worked. James was impressed.

  Next stop was a school gymnasium, then a church hall, then another gymnasium or was it a leisure centre? James was past caring, and hearing the same speech at each venue became a torment: how the staffers put up with it, let alone manage to keep smiling, he couldn’t imagine.

  The rain had eased to a steady downpour and shortly after midday, the bus eased to a halt. James wiped the condensation from the window with his sleeve and saw they had parked outside a fast-food joint. Right on cue, a team of adolescents, all dressed in identical green and white uniforms dashed out through the rain bearing cardboard boxes full of burgers and soft drinks. In a matter of seconds, everyone had been served and the bus was on its way again. Even with the bus’s air-conditioning going flat out, the smell of fast food, wet clothing and soggy humanity combined to make James feel as though he was undergoing a strange and terrible form of punishment, and hanging over his head was the prospect of having to share the flight back with Pauli.

  A wet, miserable afternoon ensued: the same round of municipal architecture, the same whooping and cheering in response to the same speech from Pauli. Finally they stopped outside another downtown hotel where Pauli and a small group of insiders who would be on show with him that evening went inside to take a shower and change their clothes.

  James was left to his own devices with the rest of the team and when they finally arrived at the fundraising dinner, those not on duty were grouped around two tables as far away as possible from the rostrum. The food was cold and bland, no alcohol was available – James would have killed for a glass of wine to help him make his way through the plate of tepid rubber chicken that was the only item on the evening’s menu. Then the speeches started. He took a surreptitious peek at the running order and saw to his dismay that there were five speakers lined up before Pauli provided the finale, and the large, perspiring man at the rostrum who’d already been going for twenty minutes was showing no signs of winding up, or better still, dying, as James hoped uncharitably. He turned to the staffer next to him who hadn’t taken his eyes off the speaker since he’d started: gazing at the man with the look of a faithful acolyte in the presence of his deity.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ James asked him.

  ‘No. You’ve been lucky. Today’s been just great. Eric went down a storm.’ James noticed that even when speaking, his eyes never left the rostrum.

  ‘So you enjoy it then?’

  This time the young staffer did turn away, but merely to stare at James incredulously. ‘Enjoy it? Are you kidding? People will be talking and writing about this for years to come and I can tell my grandchildren that I was part of it.’

  Grandchildren? You’d have to start by finding a girlfriend first, thought James but kept it to himself.

  He continued. ‘You know, it doesn’t get any better than this – how often do you get to see history being made, let alone be part of it?’

  ‘True,’ said James. So far as participating in history being made was concerned, he’d sooner have been on the Titanic than sit through this.

  He made his excuses and slipped out through a back door which he propped open with a fire extinguisher. After a day in the company of Pauli’s campaign clones, the need to talk to someone normal was overwhelming so he stood under an awning to keep out of the rain and dialled Cathy’s number. It bounced to voicemail and then he remembered that she was covering a Republican Party event back in DC that evening. After leaving a brief message, he hung up. The day he’d so looked forward to had become a nightmare but his options for escape were limited.
He considered getting a cab to the airport and trying to get a flight to DC, or maybe he could check into a hotel in Charleston and head back tomorrow. He was about to make his way to the front of the building when the thought of Pauli’s likely reaction to his disappearance brought him up short. He’d threatened him with the police and the prospect of being held in an American jail while the Devon Police turned The Lodge upside-down wasn’t appealing, nor was the likely aftermath.

  He leant with his back against the wall, gazing listlessly out over the glistening, wet car roofs in the parking lot and wishing he was anywhere else but here. He looked at his watch: 8 PM: in England it would be 3 o’clock. Struck by a pang of homesickness, his thoughts drifted to The Lodge: of Hammond pottering in the garden and Mrs H tutting and dusting her way around the house. What he wouldn’t give just to sit in a deckchair with a cup of tea, enjoying the view over Slapton Ley and Start Point.

  For the first time, bitter regrets that he had ever agreed to this junket crowded in on him. What were his real motives for doing this? So that the hospice could have more money? Or was it simply a means to justify his jumping feet-first into the limelight for all the wrong, narcissistic reasons. Pauli wasn’t the only hypocrite at the event that evening, he mused bitterly. His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden burst of whooping and foot stamping. Evidently, superdelegate and good-ole-boy Bubba – or whatever his name was – had run out of platitudes which meant that there were only four more speakers to go.

  Closing the door on the humid night air, he replaced the fire extinguisher in the rack and returned to the table. His dinner companions looked at him questioningly.