Until the delivery van pulled up at 8:30 on Tuesday morning, Fitzgerald had completely forgotten about the fountain that he and Catherine had purchased several months ago from Paul Davidson, the well known Maine sculptor. It seemed quite inconsequential in light of recent events.
Eight workmen, dressed in dungarees and tweed jackets with wool caps pulled down over their faces, hauled the crated fountain on two timbers: two men in front, two in back, and two on each side. Their rough hands were turning white with the strain. The morning was gray and raw; snow was still frozen underfoot at spots; a cutting wind blew off the river.
The men trudged down the snowy slope to the lower garden, skirting the limestone wall hung with ivy which separated the two levels, and avoiding use of the icy stairs leading down to the lower level. He watched the men gently set the crate down and begin rubbing blood back into their hands.
At that very moment, Appleby, dressed in Norfolk jacket and breeches, a gray worsted coat draped over his shoulders, made his way down the path and Fitzgerald waved at him.
‘That should do it, Mr Fitzgerald,’ the foreman of the crew said. ‘Shall we be unpacking it then?’
‘Not just now,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘It’s a bit cold for that.’
The man nodded. ‘Good enough. We’ll be on our way, then.’
‘You’ll let yourself out,’ Fitzgerald said as he went to meet Appleby whose face was smiling but ashen and drawn.
‘You’re up awfully early, Adrian.’
‘I just received a cable from London,’ Appleby said, reaching into his coat pocket and retrieving a flimsy yellow piece of paper with no watermarks, no engraved address. Its top edge was ruffled where it had been torn from a pad.
Fitzgerald took the message and read it slowly:
London–
Intercepted message this p.m. via German Trade Legation New York. Contents herewith decoded: ‘British target found in Washington STOP Will eliminate him Tuesday evening STOP M.’
Said message routed MI Berlin, Colonel Berthold. Advise personal discretion in matter.
Balfour
Fitzgerald had to read it a second time before he got the full impact of it. Suddenly he felt his stomach churn.
‘Someone means to kill you! Some German agent!’
It was something that happened in thrillers and detective novels, not in real life, Fitzgerald thought. There was a certain absurdity to the situation, yet looking at Appleby, Fitzgerald knew he found nothing absurd in the proposition.
‘That about sums it up, yes,’ Appleby said with forced sang-froid. ‘I do not think I am being immodest if I say that I am the most likely “British target” to be found in Washington. It looks as though this M chappie means to have a go at me tonight at the Belgian do. It was announced in the Post.’
Fitzgerald felt the enormity of what he had read finally sink in: not only that Appleby was a target for a German assassin, but that London had somehow become aware of the fact.
‘Lord knows how he got on to me,’ Appleby was saying, almost to himself. ‘Loose lips in Whitehall. How many ministers know of my mission, I have no idea.’
Things were beginning to come into focus for Fitzgerald: the evil premonition he’d had about the telegram and its provenance.
‘You want to give me the full story now, Adrian?’
Appleby looked at him quizzically for a moment, then gave it up as Fitzgerald continued to fix him with an icy glance.
‘You mean about this intercept?’
Fitzgerald nodded.
A clump of snow fell from a branch of a noble fir in back of them, making a splatting sound as it hit the ground. Appleby visibly jumped at the sound. All around them the world was white and gray. A black crow cawed angrily overhead.
Appleby sighed. ‘Well, Balfour himself advises personal discretion. And you were not deceived with the Mexico City rigmarole.’ For it had been Appleby’s story that the Zimmermann telegram had, in fact, been intercepted by one of their agents in Mexico.
Fitzgerald said nothing, fixing Appleby with a hard stare.
Appleby went on blithely: ‘Well, now I suppose there is no need for subterfuge vis-à-vis that. You see, old boy, we’ve broken the German code. Our Navy Intelligence fellows have this top-secret code-breaking section. Room 40, they call it, under the direction of Admiral Hall. It is all very hush-hush, cloak and dagger stuff. That is how we got this message.’
He took the yellow slip of paper back from Fitzgerald, holding it up to the light as if looking for marks of forgery. Then he looked back at Fitzgerald expectantly.
‘And that’s how you got the Zimmermann telegram, as well?’ Fitzgerald asked.
Appleby nodded.
‘And you withheld that vital bit of information from me.’
Another nod from Appleby. ‘Had to, old boy. We could not risk compromising the code.’
Fitzgerald felt his face going red at the implication of Appleby’s last remark. ‘You don’t actually think I would—’
Appleby cut him off: ‘Let me explain, Edward. Room 40 is only part of the problem. There is also the origin of the Zimmermann telegram to consider. In point of fact, it was sent from your embassy in Berlin to your State Department in Washington.’
Fitzgerald could not disguise his surprise. ‘What!’
‘True, I’m afraid. We cut Germany’s undersea cables early in the war, but Wilson and his aides appear to have allowed Germany the use of your own diplomatic cables to help conduct peace negotiations with the Kaiser. Encoded messages to boot.’
‘The fools!’
‘Yes,’ Appleby said.
A further level of understanding was granted Fitzgerald now, like peeling away successive layers of an onion.
‘And you’ve been eavesdropping on our State Department cables, haven’t you? That’s the other difficulty.’
Appleby, to his credit, did not blush. ‘We can hardly go to President Wilson with Zimmermann’s telegram and tell him it came from his very own State Department cable service. Such an admission could very well rankle his sense of decency. Perhaps even give him an excuse to discount the onerous nature of the proposed German alliance with Mexico. In that case, we would not only lose the U.S. as an ally, but also risk compromising the fact of our having broken the German code. And it is absolutely vital to protect the code, Edward. Granted, we have lost thousands upon thousands of tons of shipping already, but we have also saved uncountable tons. Were the Germans to suspect that we are listening in on them at will and thus alter their code, why the effect could be devastating. Devastating.’
The black crow overhead continued circling in the bruised sky, calling out occasionally as the two men looked at each other, saying nothing.
Fitzgerald had suspected chicanery on Appleby’s part. Now that it was exposed, other fears about Appleby’s reliability arose: is the telegram itself authentic? Is this German agent just one more invention to get me and other influential Americans lined up on Adrian’s side?
Fitzgerald now understood why Appleby had not used normal diplomatic channels for the delivery of the telegram: Wilson cannot be allowed to wonder too deeply about the provenance or authenticity of this cable. Yet at the same time, Fitzgerald knew none of this mattered. What did matter was that America get into the war before it was too late. His feelings on that score had not altered in the least: the Zimmermann telegram still had to be gotten to the president.
He broke the silence finally. ‘I don’t envy you your mission, Adrian.’
‘Oh, all in a day’s work,’ Appleby joked rather lamely. ‘And really, were our German friend to succeed, that would eliminate the problem of proof, would it not?’ His voice was heavy with irony as he continued, ‘After all, my assassination would be proof positive to Wilson of the authenticity of the Zimmermann telegram.’
He was joking, Fitzgerald knew, but there was a grain of truth in the quip.
‘Don’t rely on it, Adrian,’ Fitzgerald quickly replied. ‘Dead men are notoriously poor negotiators. Your only value is in remaining alive and vocal.’
‘It looks like I’ll have to cancel my appearance tonight, Edward. We’ll have to make some excuse for Catherine.’
Fitzgerald was not listening to Appleby. His mind instead was calculating, planning, and putting pieces together. Suddenly the solution to their problem was so clear to him, so simple. A bold plan, it came to him all in one piece, entire and rather lovely in its simplicity.
‘I think you’re partially correct about the German assassination plot being your proof. In fact, the Germans are handing you a solution to the problem of protecting the secrecy of Room 40 on a platter. This M has let you know both his mission and his venue. What we have to do is catch him red-handed before he can kill you.’
‘That would be nice,’ Adrian said.
‘And catch him alive, as proof to the president of just how important it is to Germany to stop your mission. Wilson will have to listen to reason then, and without being over-curious as to the origin of the Zimmermann telegram.’
The blood was slowly coming back into Appleby’s cheeks as he considered this. ‘It may work, Edward.’
Fitzgerald had to smile at the typical understated nature of his friend. ‘Yes, Adrian. You might be able to both win an ally and keep your life.’ He clapped him on the back.
‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘We have some planning to do. We can hardly call the police in on this. They’d want to know how we found out about the assassination plot, which would bring us right back to square one at your Room 40. I think we may have to bring in some Pinkerton agents to lay this little trap.’
With that, Fitzgerald took the slippery steps two at a time back to the house; Appleby followed behind him more cautiously.
The first few strokes of the oars came with difficulty. Catherine had not worked out in several days and it was always the same after a period of inactivity, she knew. The body was reluctant; it took time to warm up. She stuck with it and soon her muscles began to loosen, to feel the rhythm, and sweat began to form on her upper lip. She was dressed in a heavy white linen gym suit: tunic, pantaloons and canvas rubber-soled shoes. Even with the room unheated as she demanded it be, she was warm from the exertion. One thing she did not have to be concerned with was her hair: she had cut her long tresses several months before so to keep them out of her face while exercising. It had made her feel boyish at first and had brought stares from people in the street, but now many other women were beginning to ‘bob’ their hair, as the salons called the cut.
Suddenly the image of the poor woman in the alley dwelling came back into her mind; the pitiful cries of the big-eyed baby rang in her ears.
After another twenty minutes of exercise, Catherine’s heart was pounding and sweat was dripping off the tip of her nose. She felt clean and vital and ready to get on with the day.
Yesterday she had gone to Brentano’s bookshop, and with the help of a friendly shop assistant had purchased a bag full of books in an attempt to understand what she had seen. There were books by Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis, and of special interest were two photographic books: one by Jacob Riis and the other by Lewis Hine, both clearly men with heart and vision who portrayed the poor and the dispossessed of America in a way that Catherine had never before experienced. Their photographs made you feel the squalor, the hunger, the thwarted ambition without turning the people depicted into either objects of pity or disgust. The child at work on the loom, the immigrants sleeping ten to a room caught in the phosphorescent glare of Riis’s flash still had their dignity, their humanity.
These were angry photographs, a call to action. And seeing them, Catherine knew at once her vocation. She would photograph the poor of Washington; she would capture the injustice of such poverty in the very shadows of the White House and the Capitol; she would raise a clarion call for change and reform.
While at Brentano’s she had also come across a lovely blank book bound in green Moroccan leather with Italian endpapers. In it she had begun to keep a journal of her photography: the lens setting used at various times of the day and the locations photographed. She also reserved a back section of the journal for jotting down her thoughts, something she had not done in far too long. Personal and private thoughts about everything from her life with Edward to impingements of the bigger world, as with the visit of her Uncle Adrian and what it might mean for the United States.
It seemed suddenly ridiculous to her that there should be all this rubbish of talk about the US going to war to save Europe while thousands of its own citizens lived worse than the most oppressed people in the world.
Catherine left her exercise room and went down the hall to her bath, appointed with modern built-in enameled tub and brightly colored tiles from Italy. Edward’s bathroom next door was like some hospital room by comparison: all sterile white tiles and a monstrous tub that sat on paws.
She let the water fill her tub before sliding into the warmth. This was a sensuous pay-off to her exercise routine.
How far apart Edward and I have grown, Catherine thought as she allowed the heat to steal into her body. But whose fault is that? There was a time when we truly were together, when we felt like becoming partners.
Wasn’t there the initial enthusiasm of the honeymoon months? The love-making deep into the night; the one lovely time Edward and I even made love in a bathtub in Venice and were bruised for days afterward. She felt a tingling in her loins from this remembrance.
And it was still good those first years together in London, she remembered. Exciting and new. It was only when we returned to America, when Edward’s political career floundered, that the marriage began to flounder, as well. It can’t be easy for him, she suddenly realized. He writes his books and articles, his voice is influential and powerful, but his loss of office when Wilson came to the White House must still hurt him. She felt sudden pangs of guilt at having grown so far apart from her husband.
She scrubbed her back and legs vigorously with the boar bristle brush as a sort of penance and got out of the bath, her fair skin pink from the heat and the rubbing, and wiped herself dry with a large soft ivory-colored bath towel.
Catherine was suddenly filled with the same sense of purpose toward Edward that she was about photographing the Washington slums. There is still time, she thought: time to make our marriage work, time perhaps even for children. I know Edward would love an heir, and a daughter to raise for me could be a fulfillment. What things I could share with her!
She threw on a bathrobe and went quickly to her room, dressing in a simple mauve-colored woolen skirt and long matching cardigan top. She did not bother with any make-up, merely combed her short hair out in the mirror.
Perhaps I’ll let it grow out again; Edward loved it when it was long.
White stockings and brown half-boots completed her outfit, and then she went downstairs to the music room where she knew Edward and Uncle Adrian would be ensconced.
As she entered the room, her husband was just finishing a phone conversation, his back turned toward her so that he did not see her enter. Adrian was seated, rather white-faced, in one of the armchairs by the fire.
‘Yes,’ Fitzgerald was saying into the mouthpiece. ‘We’ll need perhaps twenty men, fully armed … No, not over the phone. We’ll gather here and I’ll explain the situation. Fine. Two o’clock then.’
He hung up, turned and saw her. She stared at him, unable to grasp why they would need twenty armed men here this afternoon.
‘What is it, Edward? What’s wrong?’
Fitzgerald looked from his wife to Appleby as if trying to make up his mind how much to tell.
‘You two can’t go on prevaricating forever, Edward. What’s happening? Tell me.’
Appleby spoke for him. ‘My dear, it seems some fanatic is after me. Means to kill me, in point of fact.’
She rushed to Appleby’s side, kneeling beside his chair. ‘But that’s awful, Uncle Adrian.’
‘It’s Adrian’s mission,’ Fitzgerald said, coming to join them by the fire. ‘Someone does not want Adrian talking to President Wilson.’
She knew they would keep her out of the full truth, but suddenly that did not matter. It was Uncle Adrian who mattered.
‘What are we going to do about it?’ she demanded of her husband.
‘We have evidence to show that he means to attack tonight at the benefit performance at the New National Theater,’ he said.
‘Then we’ll cancel it,’ she said, standing now and facing her husband.
He smiled at her; she knew the meaning of it. His resolute persona.
‘Just the opposite, dear. We will go on with it as if no one is the wiser, and when our man attempts to get to Adrian, we’ll spring a handful of Pinkerton agents onto him. What is important is that the performance goes ahead as scheduled with no fuss so that our man is not scared off. It’s the best and safest way to protect Adrian’s life in the long run.’
She looked into her husband’s eyes for a moment, liking the strength and resolve she saw there. For an instant she felt like a heroine in one of the cheap romance novels she occasionally indulged in, swept away by the power of her man. And it was a good plan, it seemed to her after giving it a moment’s thought. Better to lay a trap for someone stalking you than to be forever looking over your shoulder. She kept her curiosity at bay about the who and why of the killer. This was not a time for questions, but for action.
‘That’s settled, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll all go together, as arranged.’
Fitzgerald made to argue with her, but she simply held up a hand to him. ‘You said it yourself: nothing should happen before the performance to scare off this man. I shall accompany you as planned. Now …’ She rubbed her hands briskly together. ‘How about some coffee? It looks like being a long and busy day.’