The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘You tell me,’ Blake said. ‘What Lehman went on about, and he seemed pretty pleased with himself, was that the Action Group would go down in history as the leading edge – the, ah, “pin that pricked the bubble of capitalism”.’

  ‘The pin?’

  ‘I know. It sounds like bullshit to me too. What he said was that they were going to indulge in a practical application of Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism.’

  ‘A practical application?’

  ‘That’s what he said. And power to the proletariat, which he says a lot. I’m not sure he really understands half of that Commie crap he says, and I’m damn sure most of the group doesn’t understand it either. But it sounds – you know – strong. And then he said all would be explained, but only to the Group, ’cause it had to be kept secret for the time. But the world would know when the moment came. And then they went off by themselves. But first he took me aside and told me to rent the room at the Waldorf. Gave me a hundred dollars in cash. Just in case, he said. But I gotta return the extra.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s a sign he trusts you.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I trust me with a hundred dollars in cash. And what’s happening – it’s getting weird. Here we got a real Nazi who’s a phony Commie giving money to a phony Commie who’s also a phony Nazi to rent a room for a bunch of Commie toughs who don’t know he’s a Nazi. It’s like a Charlie Chan movie where nobody is what he seems to be. And somebody always gets killed along about this point in the movie, and I’d just as soon if it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Well, keep doing what you’re doing and keep your head down, and if you hear anything else of interest call my office. Don’t use the phone at work – find a payphone.’

  ‘I always carry a couple of nickels with me just in case,’ Blake told him.

  ‘One last thing,’ Welker said. ‘What’s the room number in the Waldorf?’

  ‘Four sixteen,’ Blake told him. ‘It’s on the fourth floor.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Blake said. ‘Whatever you’re going to do, be careful.’

  ‘You too,’ Welker said.

  Blake smiled and then frowned. ‘You’d better believe it,’ he said.

  Three hours later Welker was at his desk in his tiny office, one of the five rooms the OSI had managed to acquire on the sixth floor of the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House at 1 Bowling Green, a stone’s throw from the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Four of the rooms formed an office suite and the fifth, down the hall, would be filled with filing cabinets as soon as the requisition went through, in which to keep their records as soon as they had any records. The OSI was not listed on the call board in the lobby, and the name on the outer door said STATISTICAL MANAGEMENT GROUP, so if one didn’t know where one was going, one would have a hard time arriving.

  He was staring out the window across Battery Park watching a ferry swinging around for its trip to Staten Island when Rebecca, his secretary – well, actually she was the group secretary and receptionist and would do the filing when they had anything to file – peered around the office door. ‘A lord,’ she said. ‘A real British lord.’

  He turned his gaze away from the harbor. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘And a lady,’ she added. ‘A lord and a lady. You should tell me when you’re expecting a lord and a lady.’

  ‘Sorry, Becky,’ he said. ‘what are you talking about?’

  ‘Saboy. Lord and Lady Saboy. That’s them.’

  ‘Ah. They’re here?’

  ‘How would I know about it if they weren’t?’ she asked. ‘Since you didn’t tell me they were coming. They said they were expected. They are expected, aren’t they?’

  ‘Lord and Lady Saboy?’ he asked. ‘They are sort of expected, but I didn’t know when. Show them in.’

  ‘How do I address them?’ she asked. ‘I mean, like, “your lordship” or what? I’ll do that, but I’ll be darned if I’ll curtsey or anything. We fought a revolution so I wouldn’t have to curtsey.’

  ‘I will defend with my life your right not to curtsey,’ he told her. ‘Call him “Captain Saboy”, he’ll like that. And call the lady “Lady Patricia” or “Ma’am”, as you like. You’ll like them – they’re nice people. They’re hoity but they’re not toity.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Just show them in.’

  ‘Does your mind ever know what your mouth is saying?’ she asked, and then disappeared out the door.

  Patricia came in two strides ahead of Geoffrey and folded herself into the hard wooden chair in front of the desk, making the chair look like its one purpose in life was to embrace this woman. ‘Something is going to happen,’ she said. ‘Did you get the decrypt? Is that the word – decrypt? It sounds right.’

  Welker stood up. ‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘yes I did,’ and then sat back down and stared at them for a long moment. ‘As President Roosevelt told me a few weeks ago,’ he said, ‘there’s this old Chinese curse—’

  ‘I imagine there is,’ Geoffrey agreed, pulling a chair over from the corner and settling into it.

  ‘“May you live in interesting times,”’ Welker explained. ‘That’s the curse: “May you live in interesting times.” We got it. And I think they’re about to become even more interesting.’

  ‘We, my lovely wife and I, have come to the same conclusion. And we came to offer our assistance,’ Geoffrey told him. ‘Our advice and our assistance. Without which you clearly cannot proceed. Do we have any idea in which direction we are to proceed?’

  ‘I think,’ Welker said soberly, ‘I think we may.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Things have been moving,’ Welker told them. ‘Coming together.’

  ‘I thought perhaps,’ Patricia said, ‘if we are to believe the Italians, something, apparently, is happening in New York sometime in the next two weeks.’

  ‘At,’ Welker told her, ‘the Waldorf Astoria. Probably. And probably this very week.’

  ‘Really?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘The Waldorf? How do you know that and why the Waldorf?’

  ‘Our friends have taken a room there.’

  ‘Ça marche,’ Patricia said. ‘Now we have the probable where, all we need is the possible what.’

  Geoffrey looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps someone is coming to visit. Someone important, and they’re putting him up at the Waldorf.’

  ‘Someone whose identity they don’t want anyone to know, since they’re renting it under the name “Booth”,’ Welker offered.

  ‘Booth?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Ça marche indeed,’ Patricia said.

  Rebecca appeared at the door with a tray. ‘I thought you might like some coffee,’ she said, setting the tray down on a corner of the desk. ‘And some pastries. And Ogden would like to speak to you for a second,’ she added to Welker, gesturing behind her.

  ‘Thanks, Becky,’ Welker said. ‘If you guys will excuse me for a moment.’

  ‘We will partake of your largesse in your absence,’ Geoffrey said.

  Patricia shook her head. ‘Now why can’t I think of clever repartee like that?’

  Welker was gone for about four minutes. He returned shaking his head. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Patricia agreed. ‘What don’t we like?’

  ‘According to one of my men who has a contact in the Bureau, they are looking into the theft of a box of high explosives from an uptown armory.’

  ‘The Bureau?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘That’s the FBI?’

  ‘Right. God forbid we should just share information, but it doesn’t work that way. The theft happened the day before yesterday at a gala dinner. Apparently several men disguised as waiters came in and made off with the stuff.’

  Geoffrey put down his coffee cup. ‘That can’t be good.’

  ‘It isn’t. Hoover sees Reds under every bed – has for years. So he’s going ho
t and heavy after local Commies now, trying to locate one of the thieves who conveniently dropped his membership card at the scene.’

  ‘Really? Dropped his card?’

  ‘Right. That’s all he dropped, just his membership card. Must of just somehow fluttered out of his wallet, I’d imagine.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound likely,’ Patricia commented. ‘Even Mr Hoover must see that.’

  ‘It is a sometimes unfortunate trait of human nature,’ said Geoffrey, raising one finger professorially, ‘that one tends to accept more easily those things that reinforce what one already believes.’

  Welker grinned. ‘I find that easy to believe,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ Patricia said, ‘what are we to make of this, free of Mr Hoover’s Red bias?’

  ‘This gets a little complicated,’ Welker said. ‘We have a man …’ And he went on to explain Andrew Blake’s connection to the local Nazis and how it grew.

  ‘That poor man,’ said Patricia, shaking her head. ‘He should get a medal.’

  ‘And he never will,’ Welker said. ‘Not only that, the notion would terrify him. His greatest desire is not to be noticed.’

  ‘Bravery,’ Geoffrey said, ‘does not consist of not being afraid. It consists of doing something despite the fact that you’re terrified.’

  ‘Who said that?’ Welker asked.

  ‘As far as I know,’ Geoffrey told him, ‘I did.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Welker.’

  Patricia smiled. ‘For how many thousands of years,’ she asked, ‘have women listened to men brag about their bravery and how well they withstand pain without instantly thinking that no man has ever borne a child?’

  Welker regarded her for a moment and said: ‘Almost every woman is braver than almost any man for so many reasons, but is careful not to tell him.’

  Her smile widened. ‘I knew I liked you,’ she said.

  ‘My lovely wife is so brave it approaches the foolhardy at times,’ Geoffrey said. ‘So far she has managed to avoid any lasting injuries or periods of incarceration.’

  Patricia wrinkled her nose at him and then turned back to Welker. ‘So Herr Otto Lehman, who is a high thingamajig in the local Communist gathering, is not really Otto Lehman but a substitute provided by the Nazis.’

  ‘Yes,’ Welker agreed.

  ‘And he has formed an “action group” of party members to do we know not what, but it’s going to happen in the next week with the aid of someone coming to stay at the Waldorf.’

  ‘Or it’s going to happen at or around the Waldorf,’ suggested Geoffrey. ‘And it involves gelignite.’

  ‘Which is not good,’ Geoffrey said. ‘So what do we do – inform them at the Waldorf? Search the place from top to bottom?’

  ‘Did you know that the Waldorf has over a thousand rooms?’ Welker asked rhetorically. ‘It would take a while and we’re not sure what we’re looking for. We’d have to go through all the luggage in all those rooms, check all the closets and—’

  ‘All right,’ Geoffrey said. ‘So … what?’

  ‘So I guess we go to the Waldorf and nose around to see what we can see. And there’s a Brooklyn detective who also knows what the pseudo Otto Lehman looks like. I’ll see if I can get him on some kind of temporary assignment to join us.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  One who deceives will always find

  those who allow themselves to be deceived.

  – Niccolo Machiavelli

  The man who called himself Otto Lehman paced back and forth silently for a minute in front of his four picked men. All ardent Communists. That could be checked, and assuredly would be after today. Three of them ranged about the hotel room, on the bed, on the ridiculously overstuffed chair, on the carpeted floor, attentively looking up. What had brought them here? Ken; small, wiry, with fierce eyes, from a patrician Boston family. Perhaps he felt guilty about his family’s wealth when so many around him were suffering. Patrick, short but solid with a gently broken nose and callused fists; first generation Irish-American and proud of it. Believed the rich should be taken down a peg or six. Moses, the Jew, did something in the Garment Workers’ Union. Lehman had picked him partly for the very Jewish name. The Communists were to be blamed, but if one of them were also a Jew it could help spread the acid of discord. A Negro would have been a welcome addition, but even though the CPUSA talked a lot about the Brotherhood of All Men, there weren’t any blacks in the local group.

  And the fourth, Tom, of course Tom, leaning against the wall and staring solemnly at him. Tom the known agitator, Tom the trouble-maker. Hard to control even in his chosen group – Tom would be the convincer.

  Lehman turned to face them. ‘It is simple,’ he said. ‘We will go over it one more time and then one more time again to assure complete understanding, and then tonight we will start silently, carefully, knocking through the wall, creating the hole through to the platform. And then covering it up with a metal plate so it will not be accidentally discovered. It should take no more than a few hours. And then we will be ready. And then, sometime in the next day or two, three on the outside, he will arrive and we will strike. And we will go, disappear back into the crowded city, but they will know who did this and why. And the world will understand what we are capable of.’

  Tom, big and slow-moving, who had a surprisingly fast brain under his bulk, stirred and cocked his head preparing to speak. He always did that bit of head motion, Lehman had noticed. It was as though his vocal cords would only operate at the one angle. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Why what, Tom?’

  ‘Why do we have to wait until the last minute to place the explosive?’

  Because you are not actually to place the explosives, you have yet another function, is what Lehman thought, but not what he said. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘they sweep the tracks and the station area just before the train is due. So our only window is after the final inspection and before the train arrives, a period of perhaps an hour – two at the outside.’

  The others nodded, but Tom, his head still tilted, asked, ‘Why do we not so disguise the bundle that it will not be noticed? Then we can plant it before. Then we would only need one person in hiding nearby to set it off.’

  And the one person, Lehman thought, would of course be me. And that wouldn’t do. Not at all.

  ‘Because the Secret Service guards have done this before and they know what the area is supposed to look like, and we have not devised a suitable way to disguise the package,’ Lehman told him. ‘Not for certain. And we will assuredly only get one opportunity. And before you ask, we cannot place it further down on the tracks themselves because the car goes through a shunting yard and we have no way of knowing which tracks it will be on before it reaches track 61. And at any rate, the explosive going off beneath the car, which is certainly armored, would almost certainly fail to do sufficient damage.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tom, thinking it over.

  ‘Our advantage,’ Lehman went on, ‘what makes this possible, is the unused platform by the elevator shaft that we have discovered. So we can enter after the area has been swept and place the charge atop the elevator.’

  ‘And get out?’ It was Tom.

  ‘Of course, and get out.’

  ‘Oh-kay,’ Tom agreed. ‘If that’s the way it is.’

  ‘Now we will run through the procedure so each knows what he is supposed to do. We will go through the wall just so, at just such a height, and we will do it silently so as not to attract attention. After that you will all stay in the suite to be ready. Food will be sent in. This evening our watcher in Washington will begin, ah, watching. As soon as we get his phone call we will go to the electric panel room and create the breach through to the elevator access platform where we will await the arrival of the special car. We will have perhaps two hours. Now, come with me and I will show you the procedure!’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  To some generations much is given.

  Of other generations much is expected.
/>   This generation of Americans

  has a rendezvous with destiny.

  – Franklin D. Roosevelt

  The Waldorf Astoria was the second hotel of that name. Built a bit uptown from the original, which had been deconstructed in 1929 to make way for the Empire State Building, it was designed to impress. Opened in October 1931, it was the largest and tallest hotel in the world, taking up the whole block on the East side of Park Avenue from 49th to 50th Streets. At the top were the Waldorf Towers, holding one hundred luxurious suites with their own street entrance, and at the bottom, under the second cellar, lurked track 61, a private siding of the New York Central Railroad that connected with both the Waldorf and the New York City subway system. The great and the near great, the famous and the wannabe famous made the Waldorf their home when in New York.

  ‘I think it’s the title that does it,’ Patricia said. ‘Senators poo, movie stars pah, seen them all. But a British Peer of the Realm, that’s the real stuff.’

  ‘You don’t think I laid it on a bit thick?’ Geoffrey asked.

  ‘Not a bit!’ Patricia told him, holding his arm as the manager, with one last bow, exited 301, their newly acquired suite, and closed the door behind him. ‘How dare they question your identity!’

  ‘Well. We did arrive without prior notice and without a retinue as befitting a – what did he say? – “peer of the realm”. Which as it happens, I’m not, actually.’

  ‘Your father is,’ Patricia said.

  ‘Yes, but “Second Son of a Peer of the Realm” rather sounds more like a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song rather than a title to impress, don’t you know.’

  ‘But when you produced your diplomatic passport and they saw “Lord Geoffrey Saboy, Viscount McComb”, an accredited representative of His Majesty’s Government, they became all over – something – something gelatinous,’ Patricia said. ‘Though I think what really did it was when you said that your man was going to arrive shortly with the luggage. Americans, even rich Americans, don’t have a “man”.’ She went through into the bedroom and bounced tentatively up and down on the nearest bed. ‘Soft,’ she decided.