‘That’s the one. Marion Ream, trust funds and a Pierce Arrow. He wears black uniforms and shaves his head.’
‘People take him seriously?’
‘He’s got a lot of money and she backs him a hundred percent.’
‘You think he’s involved with all these others?’
‘He’s on the boat, isn’t he?’
‘Point.’ Jane nodded. She lit a cigarette. Shivers got up and pulled open the window behind him, letting the fog of smoke dissipate. He sat down again.
‘What do you want us to do for you?’
‘You’re obviously going to get invited on board the Southern Cross. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. I want to know what happens on board.’
‘We have our own allegiances,’ said Black. ‘You aren’t one of them.’
Shivers made a snorting sound. ‘We’re on the same side, pal, and you know it. I don’t want to see England strangle to death and neither do you. The only thing that’s going to save your ass is the Yanks getting into the war.’ He paused. ‘Like last time.’
Morris bristled. ‘I think you’ll have your hands full out here… pal.’
‘Maybe, but Hitler and Tojo are allies. Japs get into a war with us, Adolf’s not going to have much of a choice.’
‘I’m surprised you don’t have someone on board yourself.’
‘I did. He’s disappeared. That’s another reason I want to know what goes on. Harming a federal agent is a top-end crime. I could arrest the whole lot of the bastards and I could guarantee you two get the film.’
Jane stared. ‘You know about the film?’
‘Like I said, more holes than a tea strainer.’
‘Pretty critical for a guy who’s looking for our help,’ said Jane.
‘I’m not looking for help. I’m just looking for information.’
Morris Black stood up, went to the big West Bend urn and drew himself another cup of coffee. He went back to his chair and put the cup down on the edge of Shivers’s desk.
‘Twaddle.’
‘What?’
‘Tonsil varnish.’
‘Why don’t you run that by me again?’ said Shivers.
‘This whole conversation has been a smoke screen, Mr Shivers, and you know it.’ Black took a sip of the excellent coffee. ‘You haven’t told us anything we don’t already know with the exception of the presence of some addle-headed Romanov and an equally odious yobbo who’s playing dilettante Blackshirt on his wife’s tick. You’re trying to impress us with your intelligence-gathering abilities. So what? None of it means a damn thing unless you’ve got the key, which, presumably, you do. What is it, other than trying to show up your opposite numbers in the navy?’
Shivers pulled open the centre drawer of his desk, took out a White Owl and stripped off the cellophane wrapper. He dug around in the drawer and came up with a bright red Ronson and lit the cigar. After taking a few puffs, he placed the cigar into a curved slot on the side of the big ashtray, looking thoughtfully through the trailing smoke at Black and Jane Todd.
‘Okay, he said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ He picked up the cigar again, took one last puff and began to talk. ‘This didn’t come all at once. We’ve been onto this guy since ’36, which is when he came out here. Before that he was in New York and before that he was in Germany.’
‘Who are we talking about?’ asked Jane.
‘Oh, sorry. His name is Julius Rossler. From what we know, he was naval attaché in the German embassy in Tokyo during the first part of the war and he speaks fluent Japanese. He was returning to Germany and his ship was sunk under him on the way back to Kiel. He was interned in England for the rest of the war and he learned how to speak English there.’
‘Convenient,’ Black murmured.
‘He was repatriated in 1919, married a war widow named Anna, who had two children, and then had two more children with Rossler. In 1931 he joined the Nazi party, membership number 504. I’m not sure you understand the significance of that but—’
‘Lower the number the earlier the membership,’ said Black. ‘And the closer you were to the high muckety-mucks, Göring and Hess and all the others.’
‘Right.’ Shivers nodded. ‘Anyway, he was right up there.’
‘Where’s all this going?’ asked Jane impatiently.
‘He joined the Nazis in 1931 and then came to New York in 1935, supposedly because he didn’t like Hitler’s government.’
‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense,’ said Black.
‘It didn’t make much sense to me either. It made more sense when he started making friends with a lot of high-ranking army and navy people here. We put a tail on him for a while last year and he spent a lot of time taking long walks with his son Dieter around Pearl Harbor because Dieter liked sketching seabirds.’ Shivers tried to take a puff on his cigar but it had gone out. He lit it again with the Ronson and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘He was also seen in the company of a man named Tadashi Morimura, who arrived in Honolulu in March, supposedly as a consular officer.’
‘Which means he’s a spy,’ said Black.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Shivers bitterly. ‘I reported back to Washington and I was told to back off and let Naval Intelligence handle it.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not a chance.’ Shivers smiled. ‘We kept a loose tail on him, tapped his phone and went after his cable messages.’ The special agent in charge reached into his trouser pocket, took out a small key and opened one of the side drawers in his desk. He took out three onionskin flimsies and handed them across the desk. ‘We got the first one on Tuesday, the second one the day after, the third one today.’
NO CHANGES OBSERVED AFTERNOON 2 DECEMBER. SO FAR THEY DO NOT SEEM TO HAVE BEEN ALERTED, SHORE LEAVE AS USUAL.
BURN YOUR CODE BOOKS EXCEPT FOR ‘OITE.’ WHEN DESTRUCTION IS COMPLETE WIRE US THE CODE WORD HARUNA.
THERE ARE NO BARRAGE BALLOONS UP. THERE IS A CONSIDERABLE OPPORTUNITY FOR SURPRISE ATTACK AGAINST THESE PLACES.
‘Who knows about these?’ said Black.
‘I sent copies to Hoover, State, ONI and Justice.’
‘What were the replies?’
‘There weren’t any,’ said Shivers, letting out a long breath. Black handed the translated cablegrams to Jane. She read through them quickly.
‘Jesus! It sounds like the Japs really are going to make a sneak attack on Hawaii.’
‘Specifically Pearl Harbor.’ Shivers nodded. ‘And no one seems to give a good goddamn.’ His face screwed up. ‘The sons of bitches are ignoring me.’
‘Where’s this Morimura character now?’
‘He was last seen early this morning with Rossler sitting in Rossler’s car parked on Neho Street by the Punchbowl.’
‘Punchbowl?’ asked Black.
‘Old volcano crater,’ said Jane. ‘Didn’t you read your brochure?’
‘Our guys lost them,’ Shivers continued. ‘We found the car an hour ago, abandoned on Pacific Street in the industrial district.’
‘What’s there?’ Jane asked.
‘Nothing. We talked to a longshoreman. He said he saw two men get into a powerboat at pier twenty-nine and head up the Kapalama Channel. One of the two men was Japanese, so presumably it was Rossler and Morimura.’
‘That’s it?’ asked Jane.
‘Not quite. The name on the transom of the powerboat was Southern Cross.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Saturday, December 6, 1941
Waikiki, Territory of Hawaii
Ala Moana Park was completely artificial, having been created with landfill dredged from the construction of the Ala-Wai Canal ten years previously. The park was donated as a ‘gift’ to Honolulu County by the dredging company and no one mentioned the fact that the easy disposal of the landfill so close to the site of the canal saved the dredging company several hundred thousand dollars and a great deal of time. The company was Hawaiian Dredging, owned by the Dillingham family, which in turn had once used the building Shivers was in
as their headquarters. The Dillinghams had made their gift a very plain and dusty one and Honolulu had then had to spend an enormous amount of money landscaping it with koa trees and palms, grass, gardens, a running track, several baseball diamonds, a football field and several thousand tons of sand to create beaches where none had existed before. In all the park comprised approximately fifty acres, including a small municipal yacht basin where the Southern Cross was berthed.
The yacht was enormous, with extraordinarily good lines, bright white and brass to the Plimsoll fine, light blue down to the water. She was three hundred and twenty feet long, gaining an extra twenty feet by way of her old-fashioned, solid mahogany bowsprit. She had two decks of superstructure, one cabin deck and a midships engine room below. She had a single funnel, a varnished mahogany deckhouse and twin masts, one foreward and one aft, both mainly for decoration but also utilised as long-distance radio antennae.
On the slightly raised forecastle deck just behind the bowsprit was a pair of lowering davits and a twenty-two-foot-long wooden powerboat in a secure steel cradle. On the cabin deck there were ten staterooms in the aft section, a two-bedroom owner’s suite forward that went from one side of the yacht to the other, as well as a fully equipped gymnasium and accommodations and facilities for the twenty-two-man crew. At full steam her twin turbines could make twenty-one knots, which was faster than the Queen Mary or any other ocean liner that plied the seven seas.
Screened by a group of koa trees and a large bed of shrubs at the western end of Ala Moana Park, Jane Todd and Morris Black – now in civilian clothes – and FBI Special Agent Richard Shivers had been watching the ship, Black and Shivers taking turns with a powerful pair of Leica 10x50 Artillery binoculars while Jane used one of Shivers’s Bell and Howell cartridge autoload film cameras to record any activity of note. It was now just past noon and so far there hadn’t been any activity at all, noteworthy or otherwise. No one had boarded the yacht or gotten off, and no one had appeared on deck except obvious crew members dressed in striped French- style matelot jerseys and bell-bottom white ducks. From what Jane could see, about half of the crew were black, probably Bahamian given the yacht’s home port. So far she had seen two officers, both white and both wearing Wenner-Gren’s version of a German Kriegsmarine uniform, black blazer and trousers, the fittings and rank insignia in silver.
‘This could be a complete waste of time,’ said Morris Black, lowering the binoculars.
‘Something will turn up eventually.’
‘Umm.’ Black lifted the binoculars again. ‘Perhaps when hell freezes over and we’ve missed our own invitation to the ball. Those two yobs on the aeroplane are almost certainly Wenner-Gren’s if they weren’t yours and they undoubtedly know where we’re staying.’
‘Could everyone already be on board?’ Jane asked.
‘Doubtful,’ answered Shivers. He nodded towards the fisherman’s wharf, where there were half a dozen brightly painted equipment shacks and a weather-beaten cottage-like office with a pair of rusty old-fashioned dial-front Sinclair Oil pumps out front, one for gasoline, the other for kerosene. ‘We put a couple of guys in the office last night. So far nothing. Your friend the countess came out for a tour around the deck along with Der Vacuum Cleaner Meister and the powerboat had already been brought in and tied down like it is now, which means that Rossler and Morimura are already aboard but I think that’s it. ‘
Black adjusted the focus wheel on the binoculars. ‘Motor car coming.’
Jane picked up the Bell and Howell, twisted the turret mount to the telescopic lens and swung the camera around to the right. A big dusty wood-sided Mercury station wagon turned off Ala Moana Boulevard. The car rattled its way down the steep, unpaved track, sending up a cloud of coral dust, then pulled onto the pier, stopping in front of the gangway that had been let down midships on the starboard side of the yacht. From their vantage point they could just see the bottom of the gangway.
‘Three passengers and a driver,’ said Black.
‘Screw the driver. Who are the passengers?’
‘You tell me,’ said Black, handing the big black binoculars to the FBI special agent. Black turned to Jane. ‘You filming this?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Jane, keeping the eyepiece glued to the sight. The clockwork spring motor that powered the camera made a barely audible whirring sound. She adjusted the focus slightly, her fingers delicate on the camera’s controls, balancing the camera itself securely in her palms.
‘You were right,’ she murmured, still concentrating on the eyepiece. ‘Three passengers. The driver’s taking their baggage out of the back.’
Shivers spoke. ‘The tall guy in the black suit with the bald head is our pal Vonsiatsky, the Connecticut Blackshirt. The shorter, chubby-faced one is his old pal Feodor Romanov, son of the Grand Duchess Zenia and the late tsar’s nephew.’ He paused. ‘I think that’s how it goes, anyway.’
‘Who’s number three?’ Jane asked. ‘Sad-looking guy with a slouch hat.’
Shivers put the binoculars to his eyes and followed the slight, bland-looking man as he trudged up the gangway, a heavy-looking briefcase under his arm. The FBI man lowered the glasses. ‘Your new piece on the board is a man named Emil Haas,’ said Shivers, sounding surprised. ‘Our dossier indicates that he works for Admiral Canaris at the Abwehr but according to our Secret Intelligence Service he is also something of a freelancer. I had no idea he was in the U.S., let alone Hawaii.’
‘You think he’s here to buy the film for Canaris?’ Jane asked. ‘It makes sense if you think about it; throwing shit like that at the Windsor family, some of it would be sure to stick. A propaganda coup if nothing else.’
‘There’s only one flaw in your analysis,’ said Shivers.
‘Oh, what would that be?’
‘Our sad-looking friend in the slouch hat doesn’t buy things – he kills them. Usually with a little Mauser m1910 .25 calibre vest pocket pistol, which I assume he was carrying in that briefcase.’
‘Jesus,’ Jane muttered. ‘You need a goddamn scorecard to keep track of the players.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Black. ‘It’s doing us no bloody good at all. You want this Julius Rossler fellow and his friend the Jappo but I’m afraid we’ve got rather a different agenda. We’re supposed to be on that boat and if we’re not back at our hotel fairly soon we’re going to miss it.’
‘I’ll drive you back,’ said Shivers. ‘We’ve got our two men in the office over there. Should be enough for now.’
‘Just take us to one of the trolley stops on Ala-Wai Boulevard,’ said Jane. ‘Wouldn’t do to be seen in the company of the local head of the FBI.’
They went back to Shivers’s car, an old Dodge, and drove up the unpaved road that ran the length of the park and came up on Ala Moana Boulevard. After a few more turns they arrived at Kalakaua Avenue, Waikiki’s main drag.
‘The buses come every few minutes. The Silver Service trolleys are more expensive than the little yellow jitneys run by the Rosecrans Taxi people but I suppose the difference between a nickel and a dime doesn’t mean much any more.’
‘As soon as we find out what’s going on we’ll give you a ring,’ said Black.
‘I’ll be in the office until late,’ Shivers replied. He put the Dodge in gear and drove off.
Jane and Black walked up to the corner. A tin bus-stop sign had been tacked onto a telephone pole just down from the corner. They went and stood by the sign and Jane rummaged in her bag, digging out a pair of dimes and a pair of nickels to cover all the bases. The night before they had walked up and down the mile-long section of Kalakaua that ran through Waikiki. To Jane it was a lot like Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles; to Morris Black it was like nothing he’d ever seen before, an almost continuous strip of huge hotels like the luxurious Royal Hawaiian, cheek by jowl with a pair of guest cottages named Bide-A-Wee and Rest-A-While, complete with their own miniature gardens and lawns, coconut palms and gorgeous shrubbery, followed by any number of ho
t-dog stands, outdoor cafes, ice cream parlours and the garish, wildly rococo marquee of the Waikiki Movie House, which featured a beautiful woman dressed in a feather cloak and helmet worn by the Kamehameha kings and chieftains, her only function to guide patrons to their appropriate aisles.
They waited at the bus stop for no more than a minute or two before a bright yellow wood-sided Rosecrans jitney appeared, a truck-sized big-wheeled Dodge station wagon with six doors, in this case all of them except the driver’s side removed. Jane put out her hand and the jitney pulled over. She dropped the two nickels into a glass fare box beside the driver and they climbed on, taking the bench seat directly behind the driver. The bus pulled away, cutting off a much larger Silver Service trolley bus, and roared off down the boulevard.
‘You know something about Haas that you didn’t tell Shivers?’ Jane asked. ‘He didn’t look very dangerous to me. He looked like a policy man to me.’
‘Policy man?’
‘The kind of person who goes door to door trying to sell funeral insurance policies on a time-payment plan.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Black, smiling. ‘I’ve never heard of such an occupation.’
‘Haas,’ Jane reminded him.
‘He’s an assassin,’ Black responded. ‘Also a blackmailer. Very efficient, according to his file. Before Hitler took power he was a Berlin detective.’
‘You don’t think he’s here to bid on the film?’
‘I wouldn’t say it’s the kind of thing Canaris would send him off to do, no.’
‘Then why is he here?’
‘That’s what bothers me,’ answered Morris Black. ‘I don’t have the foggiest idea.’
The jitney roared in and out of traffic down the length of Kalakaua Boulevard, until Jane pulled the bell cord and the jitney pulled over, letting them off at the corner. They crossed the wide boulevard, careful not to get run over by the traffic that was roaring in either direction, and reached the safety of the other side. They headed into the cooling shade of the sidewalks along Kaiulani Avenue and headed for the quieter, northern environs of Waikiki and the streets that led away from the sea and the beaches and the blazing sun.
The House of Special Purpose Page 31
