Fear Itself Page 12

  But Uncle Eric’s favourite had fallen from his peak, after an ill-conceived attempt in 1936 to back an independent presidential candidate through his Social Justice newspaper. The campaign had failed pathetically; far from strengthening Coughlin’s National Union movement, it had crippled it. Coughlin was losing his audience – literally, since radio stations across the country were dropping him.

  Threatened with the worst enemy of all – obscurity – the priest had become shriller in his pronouncements. The latently anti-Semitic tirades against the banks were now openly anti-Jew. His hatred of Roosevelt seemed almost pathological. His latest venture, the Christian Front, represented the desperation of a man who had reached out for the chalice of national power only to see it slip through his hands.

  The Bund had also lost much of its membership – the Bureau report had it under 8,000 – even as Nazi Germany went from seeming strength to strength. Perhaps that was the problem, for after 1936, Hitler and his bunch said they wanted nothing to do with German-American imitations, fearing that goose-stepping swastika-wielding burghers on the streets of Baltimore, Chicago, and New York would only drive most Americans into the arms of a war-wishing President, whose sympathies – or antipathies – were all too clear.

  You couldn’t blame the Nazis for stepping away from the Bund, thought Nessheim as the train chugged halfway across Nebraska, since even a cursory inspection of the organisation showed its members to be an unimpressive lot. Some of them were little more than clowns, including their leader, Thomas Kuhn (German-born but like Coughlin living in Detroit), who claimed an intimacy with the Führer based on nothing more than shaking his hand at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

  Guttman greeted him at Grand Central. Even at night the ticketing hall was busy, with late commuters in suits and woman shoppers in heels crossing the marble floor under the vast vault. Guttman led him out a side entrance onto a street hazily lit by sulphur lamps. Along the kerb yellow cabs were lined up, and Nessheim expected they’d take one to the Bureau offices, but Guttman walked right past them. Nessheim followed him uneasily, as they moved north a couple of blocks.

  They turned off Lexington onto a side street, a block of six-storey brick buildings that were a mix of storefront and apartments. Nessheim could see it was not a classy part of town. They came to a small hotel with a tarnished plaque on the wall that said The Stanley. The dowdy ground-floor lounge was deserted except for a clerk with a pencil tie who sat with his eyes half-shut behind the reception desk. Guttman ignored him and walked to the elevator, where he jabbed at its bakelite button. When it arrived they ascended slowly to the fifth floor, and Nessheim followed Guttman down a dusty corridor until the older agent unlocked a door at the end of the hall.

  It was a suite – Nessheim could see a small bedroom through the open doorway on the room’s far side – and the sitting room held two flattened sofas positioned at right angles and a small dining table of badly cut maple, with four chairs around it. Guttman hit a switch, and light the colour of smoky caramel illuminated the dingy quarters. On a bare pine sideboard a black telephone sat like a squat toad. There was no external view – the yellowed blinds on the windows were pulled down. The room smelled stale.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Guttman, as he double-locked the door and sat down himself. ‘It’s not the Waldorf, but relax, it’s only for a night. Was your trip okay?’

  ‘Not bad. Morgan didn’t seem too happy about my leaving.’

  Guttman gave a small smile. ‘Maybe he’s pissed off to lose a good agent.’

  Nessheim nodded perfunctorily at the compliment, unconvinced.

  ‘You hungry?’ asked Guttman and Nessheim shook his head. ‘Then let’s get started. First of all, here’s the new you.’ He flipped a small card at Nessheim. It was a driver’s licence issued by the State of Illinois for James Rossbach, resident at 1472 N. Kedzie Avenue, Chicago Illinois. The small photograph in one corner of the card was of Nessheim.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, pointing to the mugshot.

  ‘The Bureau files.’

  Nessheim looked again at the licence. Something about the address seemed familiar. He looked quizzically at Guttman. ‘What happens if somebody goes and checks out this street number?’

  ‘They’ll be told that a Mrs Ethel Rossbach lived there for the last few years, with her nephew – a nice orphan named Jimmy. When she passed away, this Jimmy fellow moved on. That’s your ID, now let’s talk about your job. Do you know how to canoe?’

  Was Guttman serious? ‘Yes,’ said Nessheim slowly. In fact, he had learned on the pond at home, and on the small lakes that dotted his Wisconsin county like raisins.

  ‘You said you were a good swimmer. That still the case?’

  Nessheim could not suppress a laugh. ‘I don’t think it’s something you lose. It’s like riding a bike.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Can’t swim a lick myself.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘Your new job,’ said Guttman. ‘Ever been a camp counsellor?’

  ‘Nope.’ He’d worked summers closer to home; camp counselling didn’t pay well enough.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything. I’m trying to place you at Camp Schneider. It’s a new Bund camp.’

  Suddenly Nessheim forgot about this grim suite of rooms, the letdown he had been starting to feel after the excitement of his trip across country by train. He knew the camps were indoctrination centres for the Bund, focusing on the military training of young male volunteers. Places like Camp Siegfried in Long Island, Camp Norland in New Jersey – he’d learned about them in the papers he’d read on the trip east. Behind the cheery front of German folk songs, bratwurst, and steins of bock beer, proceeded more sinister training of the thuggish OD – the Bund’s counterpart to the German Nazi Party’s paramilitaries.

  Suddenly Guttman coughed harshly. A cough full of phlegm. He pushed a clenched fist hard against his mouth, as if to stop himself from retching, but coughed again, almost uncontrollably.

  Nessheim looked at him with concern, but Guttman shook his head. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, gasping a little for air. ‘Just a chest cold. Worst thing in the world to have in summer. Anyway, you’re going to need some training of your own first. I know you can swim, but that doesn’t mean you know how to teach other people to swim. So I’ve arranged for you to be taught in the Catskills. You’ll go up by train tomorrow.’

  ‘Not Quantico?’ The training facility outside Washington where all new agents were trained in firearms and self-defence.

  ‘No. We can’t take the risk of a leak. The only people who know where you’re going to be are you and me.’ He paused, seeming to weigh his words. ‘And the Director, of course.’

  This was important then. All the waiting had been worth it.

  Guttman reached for his briefcase, an old beat-up satchel with a leather tongue that wobbled as he lifted its latch. He rummaged for a minute, then brought out a small sheaf of papers, which he placed on the table between them. ‘This is more background stuff on the people you’ll be working for. You can’t take it with you tomorrow, so try and read through it tonight. It shouldn’t take that long.’ He looked at his watch. ‘On the top page there’s a bunch of names. Have a look, will you?’

  Looking at the list, Nessheim recognised one right away. ‘Heydeman. That’s the name of the guy Eddie Le Saux said stored some guns in his fishing shack.’

  ‘That’s right. Recognise any of the others?’

  He looked again, and managed to keep his eyes from widening:

  Adolph Bauer

  Peter Heydeman

  Dieter Fischer

  Konrad Werner

  Henry Koch

  Jerry Eisenlaur

  Bruno Pfeffer

  Bernard Ganz

  Helmut Schwab

  Eric Maier

  ‘I knew a Koch and a Schwab back home. These are all pretty common German names.’

  Guttman sighed. ‘Take one more look, will you?’ />
  ‘Sure,’ he said, trying not to show his anxiety. He pretended to scan the list, thinking hard. It seemed pointless to dissemble. He said, quietly, ‘I’ve got an uncle named Maier. He’s married to my mother’s sister.’

  ‘Eric?’ asked Guttman, but it was friendly enough.

  Nessheim nodded.

  Guttman said mildly, ‘Well, who knows? There may be a lot of Eric Maiers.’

  ‘He’s in the Bund,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘Ah. I see.’ When Nessheim didn’t say anything Guttman sighed again, then clapped his hands and said, ‘I think you better get some sleep. You’ve got a busy time ahead.’

  ‘What about you?’ asked Nessheim, wondering if he was going to have to sleep on the couch. He couldn’t see Guttman letting him have the bed.

  ‘I’ll be back in the morning. I’m staying downtown.’ He pointed to the tiny kitchen at one end of the sitting room. ‘There’s some stuff in the fridge if you get hungry. No booze – I want you clear-eyed tomorrow. I think the bedroom’s got a radio.’

  ‘I might take a walk round.’ He had seen nothing of Manhattan, and tomorrow he was leaving.

  But Guttman shook his head. ‘Not a good idea. Lot of bums in this area.’

  ‘You think I’d get rolled?’ demanded Nessheim, confident he could look after himself.

  ‘A powerful all-American like you?’ said Guttman with amusement. ‘Of course not. But I don’t want you hurting anybody and ending up in the papers. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  After Guttman left, Nessheim sat in the soft armchair, with the window open as high as it would go. It was as hot as Chicago here. Turning on the radio in the bedroom, he listened to a live broadcast of the Harry James swing band from Radio City Music Hall, only blocks away. He went into the living room and put the blinds up, but the view was uninspiring – in an apartment across the alley a bald man in boxer shorts sat in front of a fan, reading the paper and scratching his arms. Nessheim envied him the fan. Down the street a neon sign on a bar at the corner started to flicker, throwing blue light in melancholic streaks across the windowsill.

  He was starting to feel melancholic himself, reading the material Guttman had given him. But he was satisfied he was doing the right thing infiltrating the Bund. Any qualms had been dispelled by Guttman’s dossier and by his own growing sense that Hitler was a menace – not a buffoon, not a lunatic who could be ignored, and certainly not the admirable leader of a reinvigorated nation.

  He poked around the icebox, hoping for a beer, but could find only a ham roll with a browning lettuce leaf and a bottle of soda. He tried the soda, then made a face. Looking at the label he saw it was something called Dr Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda. Celery? Probably some New York invention. Yuck.

  He poured himself a glass of water from the sink and decided to go to bed. There he discovered that the walls’ gimcrack construction meant he could hear every footstep in the corridor outside. He was nonetheless just managing to doze off when he heard more steps in the hallway, muted ones, which paradoxically called them to his attention. They stopped just outside his door. Nessheim listened carefully; there was another step and a key jingled, then a lock turned, and a door opened and shut. Was it his front door? He sat up, listening tensely, wishing he had his gun with him. Then there were more steps, and he realised they came from the apartment next door.

  After a moment he heard a man speaking in low tones, the voice coming through the thin walls. The man sounded calm, almost soothing, and Nessheim gradually relaxed. He must be speaking to a woman, he thought, though he could not hear another voice. Then he realised the man was talking on the phone.

  The man coughed, and Nessheim froze. He sat up again, listening hard. A minute later came more coughing. Its timbre was very familiar.

  So Guttman was next door. But he had said he was staying downtown. Why had he lied?

  It was only as he lay down again and pulled the pillow under his head that the answer came. Because he doesn’t trust you.

  In the morning, Guttman led him the few blocks to Grand Central, where Nessheim would take the next train north into upstate New York. As they walked, Guttman reviewed their communication procedures. ‘You memorised the number, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nessheim, and said it out loud.

  ‘That’s only in emergencies. How about the names? You know those too?’

  ‘Adolph Bauer,’ he said. ‘Peter Heydeman, Dieter Fischer …’

  ‘Okay, that’ll do. I’ll call you.’

  Mesinger Brothers, where he went for ‘training’, wasn’t an FBI facility at all, but a resort – famous on the east coast, Nessheim soon learned. Five miles from the nearest town, it sat on over 500 acres of mixed woodland and pasture. Wealthy New Yorkers came here to enjoy themselves, sometimes for weeks at a time, and give their families a vacation away from the city. They paid a lot to stay at Mesinger’s, and expected a lot in return. Besides entertainment, recreation of all kinds was on offer – with good reason, since the dining room’s buffet was open from breakfast until midnight. There was a championship golf course, a roller-skating rink (frozen over for ice skating in the winter months), seven handball courts, twelve tennis courts and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

  It was in this last, vast basin that Nessheim spent most of his working day. He’d been met at the station by Sammy Mesinger himself, a mirthless fat little man who seemed to take against Nessheim at once. ‘Welcome to Sullivan County,’ he said sourly, throwing down his cigar. He muttered, ‘Christ. Harry didn’t say he was sending me goyim.’

  Fortunately Nessheim wasn’t there to work under him, labouring instead under the veteran eye of the swimming director, an ageing Swede named Alvo Svenson who claimed to have been a stand-in for Johnny Weissmuller in a Tarzan movie.

  At ten o’clock kids appeared at the poolside, and Alvo taught classes until lunchtime. In the afternoon he gave private lessons. He soon had Nessheim helping with both. Alvo would stand by the poolside in a terry-cloth robe he wore over his old-fashioned striped swimsuit, with straps like suspenders on his lope-shouldered frame, trying to soak up the weak spring sun; all the while giving encouragement as Nessheim held the kids one at a time in the shallow end of the pool, centring their little frames like Archimedes’s levers, putting one hand on top and one hand on the bottom of their stomachs, while they kicked and moved their arms simultaneously. Then he’d let go, with an encouraging push through the water, while Alvo boomed a mantra Chug! Chug! Chug! Soon Nessheim found himself shouting Chug! Chug! Chug! as well.

  Mesinger discouraged Nessheim from contact with the paying guests, and the staff kept their distance when they learned he had a room in the main resort, not in the barracks they inhabited tucked behind the tennis courts. The exception was a waitress named Peggy Rourke, with shoulder-length auburn hair and a gutsy laugh, who paid deference to nobody. She started talking to Nessheim during one of her cigarette breaks underneath the big spruce trees behind the kitchens. Soon he found himself looking forward to their daily conversation. Ten years older than Nessheim, she had been married three times and worked most of the year in New York city hash joints; every summer she came up to Mesinger’s.

  On the one day off Nessheim was allowed by Alvo, she drove him round the Catskills, then stopped at a tourist court, where she took a room, and took Nessheim to bed.

  Later as she lay smoking, half-covered by a sheet, he said, ‘I hear you come to Mesinger’s every year.’

  ‘That’s right. The Jewish Alps,’ she said, blowing a smoke ring.

  ‘You must like it.’

  ‘I do. I love the Yids. They make me laugh,’ she said with a fond smile. Then she looked at him, curious. ‘But I wouldn’t have made you as a friend of Mesinger.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. I can’t stand him myself.’

  ‘He’s doing a friend of mine a favour, letting me stay and help Alvo.’

  ‘But why—?’ she started to ask, then seemed to catch herse
lf. She reached out and lay a calloused finger on his stomach. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she said. Her hand moved slowly down. ‘I’ll take you as you are, Rossbach. Or whatever your name is.’

  Three days later, Mesinger came to his room. ‘Harry phoned me. He says it’s time for you to go.’ Mesinger looked pleased. ‘I’ve got instructions in my office.’

  He’d left early the next morning, now knowing where he was going next. He went to say goodbye to Peggy and found her putting down a breakfast tray of dishes in the kitchens. She touched his cheek with her hand. ‘You’re a sweetheart, kid. Look me up if you ever get to the city. I’m in the book – West 37th. The only P. Rourke there.’

  12

  FRANCES JABBED HIM sharply in the ribs. ‘Two bits for what you’re thinking.’

  ‘That’s a lot of dough considering I wasn’t thinking much at all.’ He let Peggy Rourke recede from his thoughts as the bus turned off Route 12 and rattled up the gravel road to Camp Schneider. They were in forest now, a mix of thrusting maples and thinner birch. Then they bucketed over a disused cattle grille, and the trees stopped. The bus pulled up to the lodge, Emmet braked sharply on the gravel, then pulled the lever for the door. Once outside the girls scampered off like mice.

  ‘I’m going back to my cabin,’ said Frances, and he wondered if he was supposed to walk with her.

  ‘See you later,’ he said, and went into the lodge.

  It sat on the crest of a hill overlooking the camp’s small lake. As Nessheim walked inside, he saw through a long line of windows the view of the mowed grass that ran on a gentle slope down towards the water. On the far side of the lake the woods stretched to the base of Coolidge Hill, over a mile away. Above the lodge there was another field, farmed only for its hay, and an ageing apple orchard with gnarled, spidery trees. Otherwise the camp was surrounded by woods.