Fear Itself Read online

  Not that it would matter any more, thought Schellenberg, looking at Werner’s corpse, propped up like a dummy against a tree. And most crucially, the identity of this ‘Dreiländer’ was safe. Only Schellenberg knew, the man’s ‘real’ American name – no, he corrected himself, strictly speaking that was not the case. Heydrich knew, of course – it was he who originally briefed Schellenberg on his mission, one-to-one, making it clear without actually saying so that he was keeping it from his direct superior, Himmler.

  None of these others knew. Not Himmler or Goering or Goebbels or Bormann. Röhm had known, for it had been Röhm who had drawn in Werner, as an American liaison he thought helpful. Fortunately Röhm was dead. Perhaps that was the reason he had been murdered.

  The thought was chilling. Could not the same thing happen to him?

  No, Schellenberg told himself, not unless he got in so much trouble that it was decided to silence him in case he talked to save his skin. Well, he would just have to make sure that didn’t happen, so that he would still be there to give the signal, when and if the moment came, for ‘Dreiländer’ to act. Hitler himself would give the order; it was Hitler who had already likened the position of the Dreiländer to that of a bat – eine Fledermaus – that had hung unseen for years, unnoticed while people moved around him, until the command came, the bat’s wings stirred, and the creature swooped down to attack.

  2

  March 1937

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  MILWAUKEE HAD NO sky. Nessheim parked on a small side street and got out of the car, searching in vain for stars in the black canopy above him. A pungent aroma filled the air, a rich nutty smell of malt and burnt hops. It was early spring, but the evening held the vestigial chill of winter. When he exhaled, curled feathers of breath hung in the air.

  He took off his suit jacket and swapped it for a dark duffel coat on the back seat, quickly wrapping the coat around him to hide the .38 that hung in a holster from his right shoulder. Smith & Wesson – Model 10, apparently; not that he had any idea of what models 1 to 9 had been like. He unknotted his striped tie and laid it on top of the jacket, then pushed the lock down and closed the door. Turning around, he looked at the two houses on this side of the street. One was boarded up, the other run down and unlit.

  As he went around the corner he saw four grain silos looming like bleached minareted towers a quarter-mile away. The air turned thick and strangely moist, then Nessheim realised it was dispersed steam, floating over from the malt-house chimneys. Across from them was the bottling plant, which had a neon sign – Pabst, it said, glowing like a purple trail of wax above the open iron gates. The second shift had started an hour before. How many factories had a second shift these days? Though if anything sold in the Depression, it was movie tickets and beer.

  It took him ten minutes to cross the vast complex of buildings and traverse an empty lot, where a group of men in one corner were huddled around a small fire. Tramps. Milwaukee was meant to be a red town, a Socialist-leaning city, though it had its share of down-and-outs – but then what city in America didn’t? The only difference was that here the cops didn’t chase them out of town.

  He passed two blocks of brick row houses, the light from their living rooms spilling like yellow gas onto the sidewalk. Then he came to a wider commercial avenue, where cars were parked on both sides of the street, most of them black and old, Model Ts and As. The stores were a smorgasbord of retail business – a pharmacist, a baker, a Chinese laundry, a greasy spoon – but their shop fronts were dingy and worn. Most were now shut for the day, though the drugstore, more in hope than real expectation, was open for any after-work trade.

  Ahead of him a new-model Dodge was parked by the kerb. Passing it, he noticed that the driver was inside, his feet propped on the dashboard with a fedora pulled halfway down his face. An awkward way to snooze. On the corner he saw the flashing sign – Reno’s. Nessheim didn’t know if the bar was named after its owner, or for the city in the one state where you could get a divorce in six weeks. He stopped outside its entrance, and casually looked around. No one along the sidewalk seemed to be paying him attention, so he went into the bar.

  Inside, a group of men in working clothes stood holding bottles of beer while another guy chalked up numbers on a board. The horses? College basketball scores? Nessheim didn’t stop to watch, but walked towards the bar itself, a long worn slab of dark mahogany, fronted by a row of padded bar stools with thin chrome legs. Behind it, the bartender was drying glasses with a cloth; he looked at Nessheim with careful, noncommittal eyes as a bakelite radio played soft swing piano.

  ‘Hiya,’ said Nessheim, as he stood and propped a foot against the low brass rail of the bar. On the bar top a pig’s foot sat on a plate in a congealed pool of jellied fat, a leftover from lunch, part of the nickel Beer & Eats offered by a sign on the wall behind the bar.

  The bartender nodded grudgingly. The music stopped, and the announcer’s voice declared, ‘That was Count Basie, live from the Grand Terrace Ballroom in Chicago.’ Nessheim gave a small smile; he had heard Basie play there three weeks before.

  ‘Eddie Le Saux around?’ he asked.

  The bartender gave a quick jerk of his head towards the rear. Wooden booths ran along one side wall in the back area of the bar, which was suffused by smoke and the dim light of a single ceiling bulb. Through the gloom Nessheim could just make out a solitary figure sitting in the last of the line of booths.

  ‘What’s he drinking?’

  ‘Beer and a shot.’

  ‘Give me another round for him, and a regular coffee for me.’

  The bartender filled a mug from a tin coffee pot and added a slurp of cream. Then he poured a big shot of whiskey and put it, the coffee, and a bottle of Pabst on a small tin tray. ‘Forty cents,’ he said.

  Nessheim put two quarters on the bar, then took the tray and walked to the last booth. He set the drinks down on the table, and sat across from the man already sitting there.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Christmas come early,’ said Eddie Le Saux, and he lifted the fresh bottle of beer in greeting. ‘My thanks to the FBI.’

  ‘We missed your birthday and wanted to make up for it.’ Nessheim had half a dozen informants in Chicago, but he didn’t trade banter with any of them – probably because they were too frightened of the Bureau. Le Saux, by contrast, didn’t seem scared of anything.

  He was in his late forties, more than twenty years older than Nessheim. His hair, black and straight and shiny, was long in front, and he flicked it back now with his hand when it tumbled over his mahogany face – he could have passed for an Indian, or a man with Mexican blood. In fact he was French Canadian, and though only average height, he cut a powerful figure, bulked out by years of pulling hand saws through timber – he had worked as a lumberjack through pine plantations from Halifax to Seattle, before arriving (he never said how or why) in Milwaukee, where he’d met his wife, taken a job in the brewery, and settled down.

  Le Saux was a Party member, and had been since the mid-1920s. He was quick and quick-tongued, and a natural leader of men. He was too savvy, sometimes even cynical, about human nature to be fanatical, and though his politics were always reflexively on the side of ‘the workers’, his attitude towards them was benign rather than expectant, as if he’d learned that high hopes suffer the biggest bump on landing. Still, Nessheim felt confident that if push ever came to shove, Eddie Le Saux would always storm the Bastille rather than defend it, and however friendly he may have acted, would if ordered happily put Nessheim up against the wall with the other counter-revolutionaries to be shot.

  Which made the man’s willingness to inform on his ‘comrades’ mystifying to Nessheim – Le Saux was paid to do so, but not that well, and he had never asked to be paid more, a diffidence not shared by any other of Nessheim’s informants.

  ‘Have you got the minutes?’ asked Nessheim, trying to keep to business. Never easy with Eddie Le Saux, who would prefer to yack about anything under the sun rat
her than deal directly with what Nessheim was there for.

  ‘Not yet.’

  Nessheim stirred uneasily – Ferguson, his boss, had been showing signs of impatience with Le Saux’s failure to deliver. Or rather, Nessheim’s failure to deliver info from Le Saux.

  ‘I thought you were the branch secretary – can’t you even get the minutes out on time?’

  Le Saux just grinned. ‘Too busy. Minutes can wait; it’s money we’re trying to raise. I’ve been selling raffle tickets until they come out of my ass.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I told you we had a guy head for Spain at Christmas with the first bunch of volunteers. Now we got two more trying to go over there and help defend Madrid.’

  ‘They can’t get there on their own steam?’

  ‘Even a steerage ticket to Europe costs more than a wort master’s pay runs to. Or do you think they’ve got first-class cabin tickets courtesy of Moscow Central?’ Le Saux gave a weary shake to his head. ‘I’ve told you, you’ve got it all wrong. There isn’t any pipeline from the Soviet.’

  ‘They’re happy enough to send instructions.’

  Le Saux shrugged. ‘Instructions are free.’

  ‘Sure. And Zinoviev and his friends got a fair trial.’

  ‘They were traitors to the state,’ Le Saux said, but the ironic tilt to his lips hinted at a lack of conviction. ‘Don’t pretend you’re some kind of Trotskyite – I know you played football at college.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘But what’s the point of my arguing? You probably think it’s right that your countrymen are helping Franco.’

  It took him a second to realise Le Saux meant the Germans. ‘They’re not my countrymen.’

  ‘Nessheim? Don’t try and tell me it’s a Norwegian name.’

  ‘I’d like to think it was American. And actually, I think we should stay out of it. That’s what Roosevelt says.’

  ‘You and your Roosevelt. Can’t you see he’s as bad as the rest? I wouldn’t mind his wanting to sit it out if Germany and Italy were doing the same. But they’re not.’

  ‘Russia’s helping on the other side,’ Nessheim said. When Le Saux started to lecture him, he felt compelled to argue back. He knew it was unprofessional, but he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Why shouldn’t they – when the Fascists are intervening on the side of the Falange? Britain and us should be doing the same. Don’t forget, the Spanish government was elected.’ Le Saux shook his head, as if stuck with a recalcitrant child. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Jimmy? We can’t stay on the sidelines for ever.’

  He picked up the fresh shot glass of whiskey and drank it down in one fierce gulp, wincing slightly from the harshness of the cheap booze. He wiped his mouth with one hand, then said, ‘There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Nessheim, wary of more runaround.

  Le Saux leaned forward confidentially, even though they had the row of booths to themselves. ‘I’ve got a boat. Nothing fancy, just a little skiff, hardly bigger than a row boat, though when I stick the outboard on it I can get around just fine on the big lake. I keep it down on the shore, just outside the downtown harbour; there’s a little hut I built where I can store it during winter. A couple more weeks and I’ll bring it out.’

  Nessheim wondered what this had to do with the Communist Party’s branch in Milwaukee.

  ‘There’re other guys down there – a few from the brewery. By and large I keep to myself, but you can’t help getting to know each other.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nessheim, thinking only of the missing minutes he knew Special Agent in Charge Ferguson was going to chew his ass out for not obtaining.

  ‘One of these guys was named Heydeman. Big fellah, with buck teeth. Blonde as sauerkraut, and Perch-crazy like me – that’s how I got to know him. Heydeman was a newcomer. He said he was born upstate somewhere – maybe Fond Du Lac.’ He spoke as if the town were five thousand miles from Milwaukee instead of a hundred.

  ‘We never talked politics; it was fishing we had in common. To cut a long story short and keep you from asking me to get to the point’ – Le Saux gave a knowing smirk – ‘Heydeman hasn’t been around for a couple of months. Nobody seemed to know where he’d gone. But then last week there’s a knock on my door; this was Thursday night. Must have been ten o’clock – I was about to go to bed. When I opened it there was Heydeman. He’d never been to my house, I wouldn’t have bet he even knew where I lived, but he says he’s got a favour to ask – could he store some stuff for a couple of days in my hut by the harbour? He says he’s got no place else – he’s moved away, and he’s only back for a day or two.

  ‘I was a little surprised to see him, but I said sure – why not? No skin off my nose. I wasn’t gonna be around – my wife and kids and me were going to Racine for the weekend to see my old lady’s parents. So I gave Heydeman my spare key to the hut.

  ‘But we didn’t go to Racine after all – one of the kids got sick. That Sunday I went down to the harbour like I always do. When I opened the hut I got one hell of a surprise. This “stuff” of Heydeman’s turned out to be guns.’

  Nessheim stiffened. ‘What kind of guns?’

  ‘That’s the thing. It wasn’t a couple of shotguns, or a pair of deer rifles. These were sub-machine guns. Thompson submachine guns.’

  ‘How did you know they were Thompsons?’

  Le Saux gave him a look. ‘Come the revolution we’ll need to know our weaponry.’

  Nessheim let this pass. ‘So how many guns are we talking about exactly?’

  ‘There were eight of them.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m too old to get killed out of curiosity. I locked up and went on my way.’

  ‘You could have called the cops.’

  Le Saux looked at him scornfully. ‘Of course I could have. I’m sure they’d have been pleased as punch to see me – five gets you three they’d have my confession by now, too. Think of the headline – ‘Guns Found in Red Subversion Plot.’ He shook his head disgustedly.

  ‘Okay,’ said Nessheim. ‘I get it. But are the guns still there?’

  ‘No. I went back to the hut on Monday morning before work. They were gone.’

  ‘Did you hear from Heydeman again?’

  Le Saux shook his head. ‘Not a peep. He left the key for me at the brewery. But no note with them, nothing.’ He added wryly, ‘Not even thanks.’

  ‘So where do we find him?’

  Le Saux shrugged. Nessheim asked impatiently, ‘Did he give any idea where he’d moved to?’

  Le Saux shook his head, but there was a knowing look to his eyes. He asked, ‘Ever heard of the Friends of New Germany?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Nessheim. In fact Nessheim’s uncle Eric, husband of his mother’s sister Greta, was a member. A social thing mainly, full of recent immigrants from Germany. They spoke German, sang songs of the old country, played pinochle and strange card games using wooden boards carved in Bavaria. It all seemed harmless enough, though Nessheim had wondered why these people had not embraced their new country uninhibitedly. That was the point of America, wasn’t it? To join in the great adventure.

  Le Saux said, ‘The Bund is the new name for it. They’ve renamed themselves – I guess to sound even more like Krauts. No offence, Jimmy. And most of them are Nazis – sympathisers anyway. They’d like to spread the word over here.’

  Nessheim nodded curtly; he wasn’t there for Le Saux’s views on Hitler, he wanted to know about these guns. Le Saux saw his impatience and bristled slightly. ‘They have camps now – like the ones in Germany.’

  ‘So? Kids go to them. They swim and play ball and do all the things kids do – just with a German-American coating.’

  Le Saux ignored him. ‘There’s one ten miles north of here, another in Michigan and I think there’s one in New York. For the little kids it’s harmless, I agree, if a little weird – yodelling away, wearing those funny shorts and hats. But they’re not all
kids. And the older ones aren’t spending their time singing Christmas carols. More like Deutschland Über Alles.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with Heydeman?’

  ‘I asked around the harbour. Nobody seemed to know for sure where he was, but one guy said he thought Heydeman’s gone to Michigan, to do training in a camp over there.’

  ‘Training for what?’

  ‘Whatever you need a tommy gun for, I guess.’

  This could be serious, thought Nessheim, or it could be malarkey intended to compensate for the missing Party meeting minutes. He looked hard at Le Saux, searching for any sign that he had made this up. But the French-Canadian returned his stare with unwavering eyes. Nessheim asked, ‘Can you find out anything more specific?’

  ‘I can ask, though I can’t promise I’ll get anywhere. Heydeman kept to himself pretty much. I seem to have been his only friend, which isn’t saying much – I don’t know anything about the guy.’

  ‘Do your best.’ There was a Pabst beer mat next to the ashtray on the table and Nessheim picked it up and turned it over on its blank side, taking a pencil from the inner pocket of his duffel coat. He wrote a number down – the phone in the hallway of his boarding house. ‘You’ve got my office number in Chicago. This will get me after work. Phone me if you learn anything, okay? And even if you don’t, I want to talk again. Say a week from today, same time.’ He looked around the empty back of the bar. ‘This place will do.’

  ‘I get extra for the extra meeting?’ asked Le Saux flatly.

  This was unlike Le Saux. ‘I guess so,’ Nessheim said slowly.

  Le Saux nodded, then drained his beer and stood up. ‘See you in a week then. I’ll go first.’

  Nessheim nursed his coffee for ten minutes before leaving the bar. When he came out he saw a new car parked across the street, its back half lit up by a streetlamp. Another Dodge, or was it the same car he’d seen before? He stood and studied it for a moment – it was unoccupied, but he saw a fedora on the dashboard, sitting like a marker left to keep the driver’s place.