‘We think,’ Welker said, ‘that there is a – what the police would call an “incident” – in progress that involves a bunch of American Nazis, with some help from their overseas brothers. The operation is code-named “Bude”, German for “Booth”. It would seem to be a false-flag operation using a bunch of local Communists as some sort of dupes.’
‘False flag?’
‘Yeah. That’s what we call one group pretending to be another.’
‘I get it. So these Nazis are pretending to be Commies?’
‘We think so. And they’ve got a bunch of actual Commies as cover.’
‘And they’re here in the hotel,’ Geoffrey said, ‘and your President is due sometime soon, and “Booth” is probably John Wilkes – that would be what they’ve been chuckling about in Berlin.’
‘You think they’re going to try to kill the President? But why? I don’t see how having Garner in would do them any good. And why pretend to be Commies?’
‘That is the question,’ Geoffrey agreed.
There was a double knock on the door and it was pushed open and a man and woman entered, each bearing a large tray full of food: assorted ham and cheese and chicken salad sandwiches, French fries, a house salad, a jug of milk, and an urn of coffee. After a couple of minutes of distributing food and pouring drinks the servers left, closing the door behind them.
‘I think,’ Welker said, picking up the conversation, ‘to clarify things for all of us, we should take it from the top, see what the puzzle looks like when we get all the pieces in. There are probably some missing yet, but I think we should see most of the picture. Lord Geoffrey here, who is something-or-other with British Intelligence, has a chunk of it.’
‘What we have from a highly placed informant,’ Geoffrey said, ‘and from Lady Patricia’s larcenous tendencies, is that there is an operation set to happen here in New York in the next couple of days.’
It took about fifteen minutes to go over what they knew and what they could surmise from that.
At the end of which Kearny shrugged. ‘It looks like somebody is going to try something against the President,’ he agreed. ‘But I can’t see how they hope to do it here. The Secret Service isn’t going to let that happen. Not after Florida.’
‘Florida?’ Patricia asked.
‘Yeah. Back in ’33, right before he took office, a nut named Zinger – Zanger? something – took a few shots at Roosevelt in Miami. Hit Cernack – the Mayor of Chicago – and killed him. Since then the Secret Service has been fanatical about not letting anybody near the President who has no business being there. It’s rough in the open – like when he’s in a car. But a place like the Waldorf, they got it sewed up eight ways from Sunday. Nobody’s getting anywhere near the President unless he belongs there.’
‘But if they’ve succeeded in planting a bomb,’ Welker said, ‘then … maybe we should have the President go somewhere else until we get this taken care of.’
‘What size bomb?’ Kearny asked. ‘What are we talking about?’
‘I think they have about six sticks of gelignite,’ Welker told him. ‘It won’t take down the building, but, if used properly, it could do a bit of damage to, say, one corner of one floor.’
‘Shit!’ Kearny said. ‘I’ll get the agent in charge up here, and I suppose we’ll have to tell Wexell, but God knows what he’ll do. Anywhere between ignoring it completely and evacuating the building, and I couldn’t tell you which.’ He reached for the phone on his desk.
Patricia stood up. ‘I’m going upstairs to get a wrap,’ she said. ‘Be back in a minute.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
What it lies in our power to do,
it lies in our power not to do.
– Aristotle
Weiss entered the fire stairs on the ground floor past the bank of elevators and listened for a minute to make sure he wasn’t sharing the stairs with anyone else. Not a sound. He started climbing up. The prospect of action had a curiously calming effect on him, and he found himself marching up the stairs and singing in a lusty undertone. ‘Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen! SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.’ He stomped solidly on each step, swinging his arms to the beat of Horst Wessel’s ‘Lied’. By the time he reached the third floor his feet were tired, his shoulders were sore, but he felt renewed; Fall Bude was finally underway. Berlin would be pleased. By tomorrow Berlin would be very pleased. He stopped on the landing and – for a second – he thought he heard something. Verdammt! Suppose someone had entered the staircase while he was singing? He might have endangered the whole operation. There must be no suggestion, no hint, that anyone but those verdammter Communists were involved. But after a minute and no further sound he decided that everything was silent, secret, and safe.
Weiss cautiously pulled open the door. It was not supposed to open from the stairs side, but two hours before Lehman had thoughtfully broken off a toothpick in the latch so he could bring his crew through. They should all be unconscious now, having partaken of Lehman’s schnapps, and Weiss must now aid in the setting of the scene. The hall was empty.
So no one was to see him enter from the staircase, that was good. Now he would hurry to the … a door was opening ahead of him. A woman was coming out. Too late to re-enter the staircase unobserved. He tipped his hat in a way that effectively concealed his face and passed her by. But there she was, reflected in the mirror by the elevators, three-quarters turned away from him. An attractive woman in a tan dress. If he were a woman he would probably have a better name for the color, but to him it was tan. Brown shoes, a dark brown purse, a white blouse with a wide collar, and an impressive string of pearls around her neck. Very attractive. And then she turned to face the elevator and she could see his face in the mirror. And she was staring curiously at him. He should have hurried along.
And he recognized her. Which meant that she surely recognized him.
He turned.
‘Why, Herr Weiss isn’t it?’ she said smiling at him. ‘We met at the embassy.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Madam, no – Lady Saboy? The mind-reader. I do remember.’ He took two steps toward her, extending his hand and then, before she took it, he had grabbed her by the neck and pulled her toward him, his other hand over her mouth. ‘This is most unfortunate,’ he said.
She clutched at his hand, trying to pry him loose, but he twisted her around and propelled her forward. She kicked back and got him on the calf, which hurt and angered him.
Her hands stayed at her neck holding on to the pearl necklace. Did she think he was a thief? But she was no longer trying to pry his arm away. Instead she suddenly went completely limp, and almost fell through his grasp. He pulled her up, keeping one hand over her mouth. But curiously she did not seem to be fighting him any more. Had she perhaps fainted?
He half tugged and half carried her around the corner of the corridor until he reached the door that said ELECTRIC PANEL on a little brass plaque. It had been left unlocked. He pushed it open. Throwing the woman inside, he stepped in after her and slammed the door behind him.
The woman lay slumped where she had fallen and did not move. Was she knocked out? Was she shamming? It did not matter. He moved aside the sheet metal plate that concealed the carefully chipped-away hole in the wall and called, ‘Lehman!’
A muffled sound from within the hole and then a scrabbling sound and then Lehman’s head appeared. ‘About time,’ he said, peering up at Weiss. ‘I was beginning to—’
‘We have a problem,’ Weiss interrupted.
‘Ah?’
Weiss pulled Patricia’s limp body up to the hole. ‘Here, take her shoulders.’
‘A woman?’ Lehman asked. And then again, this time it was a screech: ‘A woman!’ He pulled himself further out of the hole. ‘What in the name of god are you doing with a gottverdammte woman?’
‘She knows me,’ Weiss told him. ‘She recognized me.’
‘So?’
‘She recognized me here – in the hallway.’ He s
hook his head. ‘It would blow the whole thing if it were known I was here now. Now.’
‘Yes, of course. But what are we to do with her?’
‘Take her down with the others.’
‘Really? And you think the investigators will not question the presence of a random woman with our four Communist bombers?’
‘She is not a random woman. She is Lady Patricia Saboy, wife of the British Cultural Attaché.’
Lehman’s jaw dropped open. Then he gathered himself. ‘Worse. Much worse. Why on earth would she be here?’
‘Just what she is doing here,’ Weiss said. ‘It will appear that she stumbled across one of our Commie crew in the hall and recognized him, so they grabbed her and brought her down to the landing, where they tied her up. And when the device goes off, ah, accidentally, killing the four, it will also take her.’ He nodded, mostly to himself. ‘That’s what it will look like, and therefore that’s what it will be.’
‘I don’t know …’ Lehman said.
‘You don’t have to,’ Weiss told him. ‘Help me get her through the hole and down into the space.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
For all we have and are,
For all our children’s fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
– Rudyard Kipling
Special Agent Michael Reilly, in charge of the President’s Secret Service detail, slammed down the phone and grunted, a sound, Welker thought, much like that of an angry bear. ‘Morons!’ he growled.
‘They won’t do anything?’ Kearny asked.
‘They won’t believe me,’ Reilly said. ‘“How do we know you are who you are? How do we know this isn’t some sort of practical joke?” I’ll practical joke them!’
‘Damn!’ Welker said. ‘Can’t stop the train?’
‘Couldn’t anyway, according to this guy,’ Reilly told him. ‘The President’s private car is already in the switching … something … and can’t be reached until it gets to Track 61 – which is here.’
‘What more can we do?’ asked Kearny.
‘I can’t think of a thing. We have men on the platform, men in the elevator – hell, even put a guy on top of the elevator.’ He looked at Welker. ‘Anything we’ve missed?’
‘Dropping something from a higher floor?’ Welker suggested.
‘There is no higher floor,’ Kearny told them. ‘The car elevator goes from Track 61 up to the street level and that’s it. Lets out right in the garage. There aren’t even any cables – the thing works on a hydraulic lift from below.’
‘So we can’t find them?’ Reilly said. ‘And we don’t know what they’re up to for sure except that they’re probably trying to kill the President. Ain’t that a state of things?’ He turned to Kearny. ‘Any movement around that hotel room?’
Kearny shook his head. ‘Not since the last time you asked. And nothing in the room but a hat, a man’s undershirt, a tube of toothpaste with most of it squeezed out, and a bunch of Commie pamphlets. We got it staked out. Anyone goes near it, you’ll know.’
‘Yeah,’ Reilly said. He gulped at a cup of long-cold coffee. ‘It’s the waiting, you know. The not knowing what the hell they have in mind.’
Geoffrey stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and see what’s keeping my wife.’
The phone rang and Kearny picked it up. ‘Yes? Who?’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Welker: ‘Some guy named Blake wants to see you.’
‘Ah!’ Welker said. ‘I wonder what … Bring him in.’
‘OK,’ Kearny said into the phone, ‘send him along.’
‘Wait for a minute,’ Welker told Geoffrey, waving him back into his chair, ‘let’s hear what Blake has to say.’
Geoffrey sat back down. It was about twenty seconds later that Blake opened the door and started in. When he saw all the people he stopped and blinked. ‘Um,’ he said, ‘Agent Welker, could I speak with you?’
‘It’s OK,’ Welker told him. ‘They’re with me. You can talk.’
‘If you say so,’ Blake said, coming into the room. ‘I called your office and they said you were here, so I came over. Although here is not my preferred place to be right now. Is the President coming here this evening? When is he due?’
‘Say,’ Kearny said, rising to his feet behind his desk. ‘Who is this guy and what does he know?’
‘Blake is an informant who has managed to work his way into the group that’s probably responsible for this. He is a brave and resourceful young man.’
Blake took a deep breath and fell into a wooden chair by the door. ‘I don’t feel any of those things,’ he said.
‘Why did you call me?’ Welker asked.
‘Oh, yeah. Two things – there’s a wooden box of, it says, gelignite, in Gerard’s office, under his desk, with two sticks missing.’
‘How do you know?’
‘That’s the other thing. I heard them talking. In that office.’
‘That office?’
‘Yeah, the one on twelfth. I went up to give Gerard the money from the book sale from last night’s rally. He left before I could give it to him and I don’t want them thinking I’m holding out money. So I went up there. Only the door was locked. So I went around to the other door – the one that goes right into the inner office – and they was in there talking. So I listened.’
‘You listened at the door?’
‘Yeah. I put my ear up – you know – against the door. I could hear real good.’
Welker looked at him with something approaching amazement. ‘Weren’t you afraid they’d catch you?’
Blake thought about that for a moment. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t, not at all, right then. But after, what I thought about what I’d done, I started shaking all over. I had to sit down.’
‘I believe it,’ Welker said.
‘Who’s this Gerard?’ Special Agent Reilly asked.
‘He’s head of the local German-American Bund,’ Welker told him.
‘Nazis? I thought these guys were Communists,’ Reilly said.
‘They are, the ones here, mostly. It’s complicated,’ Welker told him. He turned back to Blake. ‘What did you hear?’
‘They’re here,’ Blake said, ‘Weiss and Lehman. They’re doing whatever they’re doing right now, and they’re going to be on a ship for Hamburg tomorrow. And he told the other guy, whoever he was, not to worry because it was going to be a small explosion so the evidence wouldn’t be destroyed.’
‘The evidence of what?’ Reilly demanded.
‘He didn’t say.’
Welker grimaced. ‘And I’m sure he didn’t say where the explosion was going to be.’
‘Or when,’ Geoffrey added. ‘Although I imagine it’s going to be any time now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Speaking of which, I’m really wondering what’s keeping Patricia. If you’ll excuse me …’ He stood up again and went to the door. ‘Back in a flash!’
‘So what now?’ Kearny asked.
‘If you have an idea, I’m listening,’ Welker said.
THIRTY-NINE
Pass not beneath, O Caravan,
or pass not singing. Have you heard
that silence where the birds are dead
yet something pipeth like a bird?
– James Elroy Flecker
The space was perhaps ten feet by six feet. The floor was rough concrete; uncarpeted, unboarded, untiled. It had been a work area, enclosed by happenstance when the car elevator shaft was inserted into the almost-finished Waldorf Astoria as an afterthought, to connect Track 61 through the hotel to the street above. Only a thin beaver-board partition separated it from the elevator shaft, as Lehman had verified with the small hole he had poked through the board.
Four men were tumbled about the floor of the room in unconscious abandon, and one woman, hands tied behind her, feet bound, was sitting propped up in the corner and held captive by a rope looped around her neck and fastened to a pipe jutting o
ut of the wall. In the opposite corner up against the beaver board was a black-leather satchel about the size of the proverbial breadbox.
Two other men were making their final preparations for quitting the room and leaving the others to their fate, a fate they were in the last stages of preparing.
‘It takes some fifteen minutes for the President’s limousine to be driven onto the elevator and for him to get in it and be taken up,’ Lehman told Weiss, ‘so as we hear the train pull onto the siding we set the fuse for twelve minutes and we depart.’
‘It seems a bit chancy,’ Weiss said. ‘Suppose it takes longer? We will have blown up an elevator to what end? Roosevelt will escape.’
‘If you wish to stay around until the last possible second you have my permission,’ Lehman told him. ‘We will have, nonetheless, accomplished our mission whether Roosevelt lives or dies.’
There was a stirring from the corner, and the men looked over. The woman had sat up, as much as her bonds would allow. ‘You’re going to kill the President,’ she said staring up at them, her voice strangely calm given the circumstances.
‘Perhaps,’ Weiss said, with what he probably thought was a smile. ‘Yes, perhaps. We are setting off a bomb which, if the timing works just so, may well kill your President Rosenfeld. But,’ he added, indicating the unconscious men on the floor, ‘it will most assuredly kill these unfortunate gentlemen. And, I am afraid, you.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘What can you possibly gain?’
‘We?’ Weiss shook his head. ‘We will gain nothing – not directly. But these men here will certainly gain a bit of notoriety. Yes, I think so.’
She leaned back and stared at them. ‘I have no words.’
‘Good,’ Weiss said. ‘Then—’
‘I hear something,’ Lehman interrupted. ‘Yes! Listen!’
The Bells of Hell Page 27
