Munich Signature

by Bodie Thoene

  Spotlights now illuminated the platform as Adolf Hitler emerged from behind a red curtain. The song dissolved into a wild roar of ecstasy that made even the stones of the castle wall tremble. Thomas trembled with them as minutes were consumed by chants of “Heil Hitler!”

  In his simple brown uniform, Hitler played out the parody of a modest leader of the plain folk of the Reich. Here was evil in imitation of goodness. Like the occult painting of Franz von Stuck, this new god lowered his chin and glared down upon his hysterical worshipers. He knew well what plans he had laid for Czechoslovakia. Now he would publicly justify his actions and receive the voiced approval of his minyans!

  The Führer stepped up to the microphone, and before the listening world, he laid the guilt for his coming trespasses upon the neck of the innocent. The spell was formed and cast upon these who worshiped at his feet and upon those who merely listened: “Prague bears the responsibility foreverything that happened and may happen still in Czechoslovakia!”

  A roaring followed. Yes! It is not us but the Czechs who are responsible! One Folk! One Reich! One Führer!

  “For every blow in the face of a Sudeten German, for every clubbing, for every bayonet pointed at the breast of a Sudeten German . . .” The voice continued to rise in a frenzied crescendo as the eyes of the audience widened and men swayed in its power. “For every shot fired, for all German tears shed, and for all German blood which has flowed! That is the awful accusation, and the entire German nation raises it!”

  Once again the hysterical wave of approval swept the mass. Thomas watched in hopeless terror. Were they listening in the government of London? he wondered, and were they terrified as well?

  “For every blow in the face of a Sudeten German is also a blow in the face of seventy-five million Germans in the Reich of Adolf Hitler! It is a blow in the face of a great, proud nation! It is seventy-five million persons who today accuse Prague before Europe, who once more appeal to the conscience of Europe.” The Führer swept back his forelock and stepped aside.

  Cheers and shouts and screams for revenge against the Czechs filled the crystal auditorium with a more virulent form of hatred.

  How many of these seduced here tonight would still cry out if they could see the future? Thomas wondered. How many of these would soon lie still and cold in some distant field for the sake of this madness tonight in Nuremberg?

  Profane in his glory, Adolf Hitler crossed his arms and paced across the very place where the rabbi of Nuremberg had once recited praise to the one God. The Führer seemed pleased by the adulation. The people of Germany were in his hand. Victory would bring him even greater praise; a failure could be blamed on the people themselves. After all, could he turn his will away from their desires?

  Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!

  ***

  Before news of the birth of Israel Holbein hit the front pages of the newspaper, Mr. Trump wanted to deliver the message to Bubbe Rosenfelt personally.

  He dressed for the occasion, tying his red polka-dot bow tie with great grumbling and choosing a suit that had been pressed only last week.

  From his office high above Times Square, he had a pretty good view of the world. He had kept the electric marquee that ringed the building supplied with small items about the progress of the Darien and the stubborn refusals by the State Department to consider anything until after the Evian Conference. The birth of the Holbein baby—Israel, no less—was going to make for some much-needed human interest.

  He picked up the phone and shouted for his driver. “I have to go to Brooklyn. That’s right, I’m going to Brooklyn.”

  Trump did not approve of flaunting wealth by hiring a chauffeur; but on the other hand, since he could not drive an automobile himself, it seemed sensible. He never admitted the fact that he could not drive. He simply pointed to the chauffeur when asked, and stated that the man had needed a job.

  He gave the bow tie one final tug. “How do I look?” he asked the mirror. Then he answered himself, “Like an old fool.”

  Before he left the building, Trump put the technician to work setting the pattern of lights for the Times Square electric headline that would flash tonight at rush hour:

  “Baby Boy Born to Grieving Darien Family . . . State Department Still Mum on Fate of Desperate Passengers!”

  The story was written for the late edition with the strict orders that not a word of the event was to be breathed outside the building lest the New York Times be scooped by Hearst or Craine.

  He had not called ahead to the Brooklyn home of Bubbe Rosenfelt. He did not want to get her hopes up about the U.S. visas, and he also did not want to scare her to death. She was, after all, probably almost as old as he was and had undergone quite enough grief and worries these past weeks.

  As the sleek black car drove across the Brooklyn Bridge, Trump now was sorry he had not called. Suppose the appearance of a black limousine at her doorstep in Brooklyn shocked her? “Pull over at a public phone,” Trump ordered his driver. He would call her—warn her that he was in Brooklyn and just wanted to stop by and see Charles.

  This seemed a sensible plan. The limousine of Harold Trump glided down into the flat, vast immensity of Brooklyn. It elicited respectful stares from the Italians, who assumed a gangland meeting was scheduled; from the Irish, who assumed a bishop was traveling to visit a local parish; and finally from the Jews, who could only assume that someone had died and the mortician was on its way to make arrangements.

  When at last Trump decided on an appropriate filling station from which to make his call, he found that he was in the heart of the Jewish district and merely a block away from Bubbe Rosenfelt’s box-like brownstone.

  He called her. A young woman answered. There were squeals of laughter in the background. Children. Lots of them.

  “Oy! Such a racket! I can’t hear you!”

  “Mr. Trump calling for Mrs. Rosenfelt, please!” he replied loudly since the din of traffic and street vendors was also deafening on his end of things.

  “Children! Oy! Quiet! Somebody for Bubbe, I think! You want Mrs. Trudence Rosenfelt? Who are you?”

  “Harold Trump. Publisher of the . . .”

  “Oy vey! Mr. Trump! Why didn’t you say so? She’s out at the bakery. Just down the street from here. Can you call back in a few minutes? It’s Friday, and we’re getting ready for Shabbat, so—”

  Trump looked out through the glass of the phone booth. There was a bakery across the street, crowded with women. Trump recognized the black dress. The cane slung over the arm. The ramrod straight back. Bubbe Rosenfelt was in front of the bakery with six other women. Her arms were full of bags. She was admiring a baby in a black pram. “Thank you,” Trump said to the young woman on the phone. “I found her.” He hung up the receiver and stepped out. He called her name across the clamor of cars and buses between them.

  “Mrs. Rosenfelt! Mrs. Rosenfelt!”

  Some of the women had seen the black limousine and were wondering who had died. Then Bubbe Rosenfelt spotted Mr. Trump in his semi-rumpled suit and crooked red polka-dot bow tie. Such a fine looking man! Her eyes widened. She raised her pince-nez up to be sure. Then she smiled and waved and cupped her hand, “Are you lost?” she called, and then again, “Are you lost, Mr. Trump?”

  This was not as he had planned it. “It’s a boy!” he shouted back. “Maria has a baby boy! Named Israel!”

  ***

  Like an elephant calling for her mate, the whistles of the Queen bellowed her arrival to all of Southampton and beyond. Murphy could picture the men of southern England gathered in their little pubs tonight. No doubt they paused at the deep vibration of the ship’s horn and remarked with an air of proprietorship, “Well, the ol’ garl’s come home.”

  There were lights everywhere in the harbor. Lights on tugs. Lights on the docks. Lights leading up to High Street. The liner floated on a dark pool reflecting the stars, and the shoreline was a galaxy of stars where sky and water met. Murphy enjoyed the sense of magic the l
ate evening arrival provided. Somewhere in all that galaxy Elisa was no doubt watching this bright island gliding toward its berth. Again the ship’s horn bellowed. Murphy turned away from the rail now and moved through the press of passengers and the wood-paneled shopping deck of Picadilly Circus and out to where the boarding ramp would soon be locked into place. The galaxy now consisted of streetlamps and windows and shiny asphalt. Murphy wanted to be the first man off the ship, the first through customs, and the first out through the gates to where a crowd of two thousand well-wishers waited. Elisa would be there, where he had last seen her on the quay, and they would start all over again tonight.

  ***

  “Jonathan Edward Murphy?” The sour-looking man in the ill-fitting pin-striped suit flipped open his badge folder. He had the look of a plain-clothes policeman; Murphy would have guessed his occupation even without the badge. There were two other men flanking him. All three were thick-soled stereotypes right out of a bad Dashiell Hammett story.

  “Jonathan Edward Murphy?” the big man in the center asked again.

  “Only to my mother. When she’s unhappy with me.” He managed a grin. The men did not smile back. The small fellow nearest the counter nodded to the customs officer who stamped Murphy’s passport and waved him through without bothering to inspect his tan pigskin suitcase or Elisa’s steamer trunk.

  “Come with us, please.” The big man in the center ordered curtly. The Marx brothers in pin-striped suits, Murphy thought as he was surrounded and led off toward a door marked Cunard Lines Information.

  “What is this?” Murphy asked, suddenly fearful that something terrible had happened to Elisa. Maybe these men had been sent to tell him. One to give him the bad news and two to hold him down?

  The door of the office closed behind them before the big man answered. “We are quite certain you have been followed.”

  Instinctively Murphy put a hand to his taped nose. He had thought the Fritz Kuhn gang had finished with him in New York. “Where’s Elisa?” he asked. A real sense of dread settled upon him.

  “Your Mr. Trump has paid quite handsomely for bodyguards for her. You certainly cannot imagine we would have allowed her to come here?”

  Murphy simply blinked at them, then sighed. These guys had taken his beating on the roof of the Woolworth seriously. He was grateful. “Then she’s okay?” he responded with relief, then frowned. “And you think the heat is still on? I was tailed on the ship?”

  The three exchanged looks. Americans! Will they never learn to talk? “We thought it best to make certain of her safety because of your involvement with the Jewish refugees and her involvement with the Czech government. Especially at this moment in world affairs. There is no way to accurately gauge her vulnerability. We take matters of protection seriously.”

  Murphy felt overwhelmed with gratitude. These fellas had really taken care of Elisa—made sure she was okay, not taken any chances with her. He couldn’t have done any better himself, he mused. Their measure of concern probably far outweighed the possible threat. So she had been in good hands, after all.

  “Where is she now?” he asked.

  “An hour’s drive from here.” The big man stepped back and opened a door that led to a long corridor with rooms opening off either side. At the far end he warned Murphy. “In, and then out the other side—”

  No time to question. The door opened to the honking of horns and voices of passengers screaming for cabs. A long black Rolls Royce waited three steps away with the door open. The big man preceded Murphy and then a little shove moved Murphy into the car. The door slammed behind him at the same instant the big man opened the opposite door and stepped out into yet another black automobile pointed the opposite way. Murphy slipped into the second car and closed the door behind him. The first Rolls sped away to the east as Murphy’s car slipped out into the westbound traffic.

  The windows were curtained with green velvet. Murphy resisted the urge to look out. He grinned at the unsmiling big man who seemed irritated by the very presence of Murphy.

  “Quite a little shell game you’ve got here,” Murphy said as the traffic thinned and the car bumped over a series of railroad tracks. “You know—hide the pea under the walnut shell and move the shells around—”

  The big man cleared his throat and ignored the comment. He removed a pipe from his vest pocket. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he filled his pipe and lit it.

  An hour in the back of this curtained car with this surly grouch? Murphy tried again. “I appreciate the way you fellas have taken care of Elisa. I don’t think I caught your name.” Murphy extended his hand.

  “Tedrick. Amos Tedrick” came the reply and the handshake. This was better. A bit more human. “Quite all right. That’s our job, making certain a woman of your wife’s notoriety remains safe.”

  “Notoriety?” Murphy repeated. “Not a word I would have chosen for Elisa.”

  Tedrick shrugged. “Shall I say fame, then? Of course, you must have known that a woman could not foil an assassination plot against the president of Czechoslovakia and not arouse curiosity, at least, on the part of the Gestapo.” Tedrick puffed his pipe, filling the interior of the car with smoke. “I am surprised you did not arrange for this sort of protection for her before you were attacked in New York.” He frowned. “Certainly you are not considering taking her with you when you go on to—”

  “Evian,” Murphy replied, suddenly feeling the weight of a veiled accusation from Tedrick. “I had thought . . . if her schedule—”

  Tedrick’s eyebrows went up in astonishment. Then he let them slide back down in thought and cocked one in a gesture that said, What an absolute lunatic! This man must want his wife dead or maimed . . . or kidnapped and taken to Germany to prison! “Well, well,” Tedrick said at last.

  Everything Murphy had decided about never letting her out of his sight now seemed foolish. How could she go with him to Evian with this Czech crisis in the headlines every day? Might the Gestapo still consider her to be some sort of link, just as Beneš had warned him in Prague? At least here she was under the watchful eye of professionals; under the care of the BBC, no less. Murphy coughed from the smoke. “Evian will probably be crawling with Gestapo agents,” he said. “I . . . think you’re right about that. She’s better off in England. Under protection.”

  Tedrick nodded once. He smiled from behind his pipe. “Now here’s a sensible man.” He congratulated Murphy, even as he inwardly congratulated himself in the handling of this inconvenience.

  ***

  That evening at the Shabbat meal, Trump sat wedged tightly between Charles and Bubbe Rosenfelt. There were fourteen all together around the table. A big family. Nieces and nephews, the youngest of whom was two-year-old Franklin Delano Rosenfelt.

  “A pistol,” Trump declared upon meeting the child.

  “Our little kochleffl,” declared his young mother with a laugh.

  “Like a cooking spoon,” explained Bubbe, “always stirring things up, nu?”

  The entire joyous evening was spent in translation and counter-translation of the Yiddish. Occasionally Charles tested the sounds against his lovely new mouth. Nothing yet seemed to come out quite right; it would be a long time, Bubbe warned, before Charles was speaking perfect Yiddish.

  Here in Brooklyn and beneath the electric headlines in Times Square, toasts were raised to the birth of baby Israel. Bubbe Rosenfelt expressed only one regret. “If only I cold see the berith milah of my great-grandson.”

  “Circumcision,” explained a niece. “For Jewish baby boys this is a ceremony on the eighth day, which is very important.”

  This wish, expressed after one of the finest meals Trump had ever eaten in his life, was a request that he considered seriously. Within thirty seconds after the words had fallen from Bubbe’s mouth, Mr. Trump had already written the headlines:

  “Great-Grandmother Travels by Fishing Vessel to Witness Dedication of Infant to God!”

  Ah, yes. This mig
ht be too good to pass up. A few photos, plus a story about the ceremony, and within the time it took to read the article, this little boy would belong to all of America!

  Trump narrowed his eyes in thought as he remembered the Coast Guard cutter assigned to keep all other vessels away from the little freighter. Might he take Bubbe Rosenfelt with him to Cuba? Out of the authority of the Americans?

  Trump dabbed his lips on the white linen napkin and addressed Bubbe over the racket of fourteen voices that all seemed to be talking at once. “Well, I’m no fairy godfather, but if you’d like to go to Cuba—”

  “Cuba?”

  “We have arranged for the ship to be resupplied there. We are also attempting to acquire temporary landing certificates for the passengers—”

  “Cuba?” Bubbe Rosenfelt raised her pince-nez to her nose in disbelief. “Could I see them there? The baby?”

  All conversation stopped mid-sentence. Thirteen sets of eyes locked on Trump. He could do that? He could take Bubbe to Cuba to be with Klaus and Maria and the children?

  “We are still negotiating with the Cubans—a little awkward, since all the immigration big shots are in Evian. But we can do our best, if you’d like.”

  Bubbe’s eyes shone brightly in the Shabbat candles. “The Lord is good,” she whispered. “I’ll pack. Right after I help with the dishes.”

  33

  Snow White’s Cottage

  The Rolls Royce crept slowly over the rutted land. They had, in fact, traveled much longer than the promised hour—not because they had covered a great distance, but because of the condition of the roads. At last Tedrick pulled back the green velvet curtain on his side of the car and opened the window slightly. Murphy followed suit, grateful to be able to breathe fresh air at last.