‘Man to see you, Miss Catherine,’ Thomas announced later that morning.
Agent Niel entered, his face screwed into a grimace. ‘Could we speak,’ Niel said. ‘In private.’
Catherine caught Thomas’s eye and nodded at him. Niel’s tone made her nervous.
‘What is it, Mr Niel?’ she said as Thomas closed the door. She did not offer him a seat, but he took one anyway, on the chintz couch. He picked up the novel she had been reading, Lawrence’s The Rainbow, examining it as if for clues, then dropped it back casually onto the cushion.
He said nothing for a moment, then suddenly he stood once more, staring straight into her face. He was a couple of inches shorter than Catherine and so had to look upward. Still his presence frightened her. She involuntarily moved backward a step.
‘You had a visitor this morning, didn’t you?’
‘No. Not that I recall.’
‘Come off it, Mrs Fitzgerald. I saw him coming out of here myself. The officer on duty let him go by.’
‘You mean the soldier?’
Niel bared his teeth; he obviously meant it as an ironic grin, but it made him look like a ferret and Catherine felt herself shivering.
‘Yes, the soldier.’ He continued to fix her in his gaze.
‘He came for contributions for the preparedness committees,’ she said.
‘I’m sure he did. And did you contribute?’
‘Nothing. He left before I could speak with him. I was in the dark room.’
‘Are you sure?’ the agent said.
‘I beg your pardon.’
He suddenly drew a notebook out of his pocket. ‘Do you recognize this?’
‘Wherever did you find that? That’s my journal.’
‘I know what it is,’ Niel said. ‘This was found in the room of M, the man who is trying to kill your uncle.’
‘Impossible.’
‘I myself found it under the man’s mattress at the World Peace League house.’
The name stopped her for a moment. ‘The World Peace League?’
Niel smiled, nodding his head.
‘It can’t be.’ She remembered now that the journal had gone missing the day of her attack, the day the man named Maximillian Voetner saved her. And she had been unconscious for several moments.
‘He must have taken it then,’ she said out loud.
‘You’re not making much sense, Mrs Fitzgerald. Do you admit you know the man who had this journal?’
‘Yes. I think I do. I met him quite by accident several days ago while photographing in town. He was … most helpful to me.’ She was damned if she was going to tell this little worm the whole embarrassing tale.
‘How convenient,’ Niel said with a smirk.
‘I tell you the man was a complete stranger to me. His name is, I believe, Maximillian Voetner. He said he was the South African representative to the World Peace League. Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me.’
‘I would ask him if I could, Mrs Fitzgerald. But the man gave us the slip at Union Station.’
‘That was most unfortunate for you, Mr Niel. But I again tell you the man was a total stranger to me.’
‘Then why come here today?’
‘I don’t know. As I said, he did not wait for me. He was gone by the time I got out of the dark room.’
‘I must tell you, Mrs Fitzgerald, I do not like this.’
‘And I do not like your insinuations, Mr Niel. I believe it is time you left.’
‘Not until you tell me your connection to this assassin.’
She felt an uncontrollable rage overcoming her and wanted to physically attack the man. Instead she shouted at him. ‘What right have you to come into my home and accuse me? This is still a free country.’
Again the ferret smile came across Niel’s face, and he shook his head. ‘Oh, no, Mrs Fitzgerald. That’s where you’re wrong. Freedom.’ He suddenly laughed high and quite wildly. ‘There’s a time coming when we won’t be able to afford your sort of freedom and individual privacy anymore. Those concepts will have to go the way of the dinosaur. Our great country is beset upon by enemies from every quarter. We have revolutionaries threatening us on all sides. Negroes, suffragettes, Wobblies and socialists who want to do in our form of government. Free love people, like that filth you’re reading.’ He nodded scornfully at the novel on her couch. ‘Enemies everywhere you look. And we’re building files on all of you, I tell you. On Emma Goldman and the Negro socialist Philip Randolph and Max Eastman and Big Bill Haywood. Files on all of them, including you, Mrs Fitzgerald. And you think you’re so special that we at the Bureau can’t touch you? Think again.’
He suddenly fell quiet, breathing rapidly. It was as if he realized that he had said too much, and suddenly his menacing grimace was transformed, replaced by the plucky little Irish grin. This transformation chilled her more than his ranting had.
‘Of course,’ he said calmly, ‘if you say you did not see the soldier who came here this morning, I’ll have to take your word for it. Just one thing I would like to know: how did he get the phone number of your country estate, then?’
‘What?’
‘Capitol 2345. That is the number at Brantley Hall, isn’t it?’
She nodded dumbly, her mind racing.
‘And that’s the number our man called from the City post office. He went straight there from here and placed a call. I checked with the clerk afterward and got the number.’
She knew Niel was not lying about this, and suddenly she remembered how she had left her address book out on the table after talking with the young man from the embassy that morning. It was open to the number at Brantley.
‘He must have looked at my address book while waiting for me.’
‘Most unfortunate,’ Niel said. After his outburst, he now was calm again, almost solicitous, as if afraid that he had so overstepped his position that he was in danger.
Catherine was filled with sudden fear. Both Adrian and Edward are at Brantley, she thought. Is this German agent on his way there now?
‘Have you alerted my husband?’ she said.
He nodded though he had not yet. ‘I’ll be leaving then, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ Niel said. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Niel said ironically, as he opened the door. ‘At least we know where our man is headed now, don’t we?’
Max paid the cashier with his last five-dollar bill, and received $4.15 change. He was not concerned about money; after killing Appleby he knew he could somehow make his way back to New York, and from there Manstein would have to see to getting him out of the country. Besides, America was filled with rich people. If I need more money, I will simply rob somebody, he told himself.
Leaving Brentano’s bookstore with the guide to suburban Washington under his arm, he felt powerful and unstoppable. The cold air braced him. Slanting rays of low winter sun filled the street with a rich golden light, throwing massive shadows across the street. Shoppers, busy with their Saturday purchases, did not notice Max as he made his way down the street.
‘What do you mean, at my home?’ Fitzgerald heard his voice thunder in the narrow hallway of Brantley. ‘My God! Catherine.’
‘She’s quite all right,’ Agent Niel said, smiling brightly.
What the hell has the man got to smile about? Fitzgerald wondered.
‘It seems the fellow was posing as a veteran collecting for preparedness committees to gain entrance.’
‘Wasn’t Thomas there? Didn’t anyone get suspicious?’
Niel shrugged. ‘I only know what your wife told me. Luckily, the man was gone by the time she came from the dark room.’
‘But what in God’s name did he hope to achieve by such a stunt?’
Appleby sauntered into the hall now, followed by Chief Inspector Lewis, both curious to see who the visitor was. Lewis sighed with his eyes when he saw Niel; Appleby nodded curtly.
‘What brings you out here, Niel?’ Chief Inspector Lewis said. ‘I thought you were coordinating things in Washington.’
‘He’s spotted the German,’ Fitzgerald blurted out. ‘At Poplars.’
Appleby’s face turned white. ‘Christ! Is Catherine all right?’
‘I was just explaining to Mr Fitzgerald that everything is fine at that end. I tailed the fellow to the City post office where he went directly after leaving Poplars.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘You lost him.’
Niel sucked air between his front teeth making a rather unpleasant sound. ‘Yes. He gave us the slip at Union Station.’
There was a communal groan from the men in the hall.
‘But we did discover something quite important. What he was doing at the City post office at all.’
Niel paused momentarily, seeming to enjoy the attention his pronouncement had made on them.
‘Well, get on with it then, Niel,’ Lewis finally spluttered out. ‘What was he doing at the post office?’
‘Making a call.’ Niel looked at the three each in turn, stopping at Fitzgerald. ‘It seems he had a chance to go through your wife’s address book. It was the number here at Brantley he phoned.’
‘No.’ Appleby said it with a rasping moan at the end.
‘Afraid so, Sir Adrian,’ Niel said.
Fitzgerald felt his heart sink, remembering having heard the phone ring earlier. How could Monroe have been so stupid as to give the man any information? Couldn’t he hear the accent? But even as he thought this, he knew it was pointless to blame Monroe. After all, the man had signed on as a caretaker, not a warder.
‘Why the hell didn’t you alert us by phone?’ Lewis demanded. ‘The bastard could already be here by now.’
‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much worry on that score,’ Niel said, again smiling.
The smile was beginning to irritate Fitzgerald. It was the sort of cockiness he did not at all like. His thoughts went momentarily to Catherine. A sudden and paralyzing fear overcame him. What if the fellow had harmed her? Kidnapped her? Attempted to force the whereabouts of Appleby from her? How ignorant I’ve been, leaving her virtually unguarded in Washington while we sit here at Brantley surrounded and protected by over a hundred police and soldiers.
‘What’s not to worry about?’ Lewis said.
‘I mean simply, Inspector Lewis, that I have seen to laying roadblocks on every conceivable entry route to Brantley. The local constabulary here on the grounds have been alerted as to a new description: our man is possibly wearing an army uniform.’
‘Won’t that be a bit confusing?’ Fitzgerald said, stirring himself from his evil thoughts. ‘Seeing as how we have a unit of the home guard here as well?’
‘What would you have me do, Mr Fitzgerald? Tell the men to strip down to their skivvies? It may be warming up outside, but underwear is still far from seasonable attire.’
Fitzgerald noticed only now that in fact it had been getting warmer outside. The dripping sound he’d been subliminally hearing this afternoon was obviously the melt from the roof.
‘We’ve got to move Adrian again,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘We can hardly risk staying here now that M knows our location.’ He found himself discussing Adrian as if he were not present; in fact Adrian was only marginally there, standing apart from Lewis, Niel and himself almost in a daze. The news had sent a film over his eyes; his jaw was slack.
‘Hold on now, Mr Fitzgerald,’ Lewis said. ‘We don’t want to go off half-cocked scurrying for a safe house about the countryside. That’s exactly what M would want. Give him the opportunity that he needs. We keep Sir Adrian under wraps and inside the house with all these men outside and inside, and there’s no way the German is going to get to him.’
‘Unless he torches the house,’ Niel said.
‘My God!’ Fitzgerald said.
‘Or bombs it,’ Niel added cheerily. ‘Though there is really little likelihood for either of those circumstances. After all, the man would have to gain proximity for either maneuver. And if our men posted outside remain alert—’
‘If?’
‘They’re only human, Mr Fitzgerald,’ Niel said.
‘We’re not talking about an eternity of vigilance. All we need is one night! I say we move Adrian. Now.’
‘It’s just not on, Fitzgerald,’ Lewis said, obviously warming to his argument.
‘Stop!’
The three turned to Appleby.
‘I believe I have some say in these matters,’ he said, regaining his poise. ‘And I have had enough of running. I’m damned if I will allow one German to send me scurrying any longer. Here I make my stand. I want a gun, Edward.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Do you think that wise, Sir Adrian,’ Niel said.
‘I was handling a shotgun while you were still at your mother’s teat.’
Which was patently a lie, Fitzgerald knew, but it was good to see Appleby regain his bluff façade.
‘I take it you have a root cellar in this old house, Edward.’
‘Yes, but I hardly see—’
‘Fine,’ Appleby went on blithely. ‘I shall make my bed down there tonight. Let the rotter burn us or bomb us. I shall be below ground impervious to his assaults, like my fellow countrymen when the Zeppelins fly over London. Here I am and here I shall remain. Besides, we have to finish our rubber. Are you a bridge man, Niel?’
‘Afraid not, Sir Adrian. I have my work cut out for me outside, anyway.’ He looked meaningfully at Lewis.
‘I guess I might as well join you,’ the inspector said to Niel. Then turning, he called down the hall, ‘Scott, Paxton.’
Two blue-uniformed policemen who had been designated personal bodyguards to Appleby came out into the hall from the sitting room doorway where they had been respectfully waiting.
‘I’ll be in the grounds for a time,’ Lewis said. ‘What are your orders?’
‘To stick with Mr Appleby here like glue,’ said Scott, the shorter, thicker of the two, who was built like a wrestler with a neck stouter than Fitzgerald’s thigh muscle.
‘And where have you been for the past few minutes, then?’ he demanded, and Scott’s face went red.
‘We were just by the door, sir,’ the other policeman, Paxton, protested. His voice was surprisingly high for a man so large; everything about him was massive, even his fingers which now played nervously on the leather twine around his neck holding his whistle.
‘From now on there are no private moments. Even at the toilet, I want one of you inside with Sir Adrian, the other stationed at the door outside. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the two said in almost exact unison.
‘If anybody you have not been introduced to thus far attempts to approach Appleby, you two shoot first and ask questions after. And that is not just Wild West hyperbole, but an order.’
Lewis turned abruptly from the two to glare down on Niel. ‘Shall we be going? I want to double check our men before nightfall.’
‘Not to worry, Lewis,’ Niel said in his most ingratiating faux Irish brogue. ‘We’re after having this under control.’ Then his roguish smile vanished suddenly, replaced by a determined and menacing squint. ‘Let the fool come near here tonight. It’ll be the end of him.’
Fitzgerald watched the two bundle up and go outdoors to check on the deployment, and as the door closed in back of them he looked at Appleby. It was as if his old friend were someplace else once more; his unfocussed gaze drifted out through the narrow hall window to a strip of crimson light low on the western horizon. Sunset.
Max waited patiently outside the offices of Western Union Telegraph Company at 1401 F Street in Washington.
He knew that having tracked him to the City post office, yellow vest most likely knew Max had discovered Brantley.
So what? he thought. They won’t move Appleby, not at this late date, and they won’t risk moving him at night, not if they fear I may be lurking about in the bushes with a sniper’s rifle.
The worst that has happened because of yellow vest is that they will be expecting me, but then they have always been expecting me. I’ll have to be careful on approach roads, but I’ll get through whatever obstacle they put in my way. After all, this is now a matter of wills. Mine against theirs. So they have a cartload of police out there at the estate: how many of those will be willing to lay down their lives to save Appleby? That’s the real algebra involved here: not a hundred of them against one of me, but my will and willingness to die to accomplish this mission, against theirs to simply do their job and live to put their feet up on the hob at the end of the day.
A shiver passed through him; he had never made this ultimate calculation before, but knew now that he was willing to give up his life in order to stop Appleby from getting to Wilson with the Zimmermann telegram; in order to stop further carnage in Flanders and all up and down the eastern and western fronts.
He watched a motorcyclist in leather helmet, uniform, and goggles pull up outside the telegraph company, dismount like an equestrian, pull the motorcycle up onto its stand, and dash into the office. Lights were coming on now throughout downtown Washington and the streets, wet from thaw, shone translucently with the incandescent light cast through hundreds of windows. Max watched through this particular window as the young leather-clad messenger went to the back desk of the telegraph office and talked to an older clerk there wearing wire-frame glasses and a black suit.
The messenger’s motorcycle coughed in the evening air, running ragged. In his haste he had left it going, something Max had been waiting the last hour for. He quickly moved to the motorcycle, mounted it and pushed forward off the stand. Revving the engine once with the hand throttle, he quickly took stock of the configuration of brake and clutch. The machine throbbed between his legs like a living thing. He stepped the gear into first, slowly fed the throttle and sped off down F Street to the west, toward the strip of sunset glimmering like a streak of blood on the horizon.
Step one accomplished, he thought, smiling at the ease of it all.