Mattie stood up and yawned. “Now, if you‘ll excuse me, I‘m going to the loo and change. That‘s enough theology for tonight. I‘ll wrestle you for the lower bunk when I‘m back,”
Cockran walked down the corridor to the men‘s washroom, changed into a pair of navy blue thin cotton pajamas, and returned to their compartment more quickly than Mattie. Then he stretched out on the lower bunk, his hands behind his head, not quite believing what had just happened. St. Thomas Aquinas explained. She knew more about Aquinas than he did but that didn‘t mean he trusted her. Not until he could figure out her game. But she might well be right about how Nora would feel. If he had a chance alone to think about it, he might well buy it. But he wasn‘t going to do it now. It was late and he was beat. Both Aquinas and his suspicions could take a rest until tomorrow. Green earring or not, he still liked Mattie McGary. A lot.
47.
Better To Be Lucky Than Good
The Empire Builder
Saturday, 17 August, 1929
12:15 a.m.
Swell, McGary, you did it again, Mattie thought as she walked down the corridor. No better aphrodisiac when talking to a man than discussing theology—Thomas Aquinas no less—as interpreted by the dead wife he still loved. At this rate, she would never get Cockran into bed.
Mattie returned to their compartment a few moments later, carrying her clothes stacked in a neat pile and still wearing the cotton slippers she had put on when they returned from dinner. Her emerald green silk robe, knotted tightly at her waist, reached almost to her ankles. She knew it accentuated her figure and it should be clear, even to Cockran, it was all she was wearing, save for her diaphragm. Right, she thought, as if she had ever needed that with him before.
When she opened the compartment door and stepped inside, Cockran was already on the lower berth. “So you‘ve accepted my invitation to wrestle, have you?” Mattie asked.
“No, we Americans are much more civilized than you Scots. I flipped a coin. You lost. “
“I lost?” Mattie asked.
Cockran nodded. “Yep. Fair and square. I called ‘heads‘ and heads it was. Here, want to see the coin?” he said, handing her a gold dollar coin.
Mattie leaned down towards Cockran, placing her hands on the upper bunk, intentionally giving Cockran a better view of what was beneath the silk robe. Not as complete a view as she gave him early Thursday morning, with her foot wrapped in ice, but inviting nonetheless.
“You know what I think, Cockran? You‘re an only child and you didn‘t have any siblings to wrestle with growing up, like I did with my brothers. So you‘re afraid you‘ll lose to a girl. You‘re soft, Cockran. And probably ticklish, too. That was always my secret weapon with my brothers. Are you ticklish?” she asked.
“Not that I know of....” Cockran replied.
Mattie pushed herself back from the top bunk, looked down at Cockran and said, “You know, there‘s only one way to find out.” Then, without any warning, she leaped at Cockran landing with both of her forearms on his chest, momentarily knocking the breath from him. Her knees straddled his waist and the fact that she was wearing nothing underneath should have been obvious to the most insensitive man. She moved her strong hands just below his rib cage and discovered that Cockran was indeed ticklish. Extremely. Cockran roared with helpless laughter, thrashing his legs up and down, unsuccessfully trying to stymie her assault.
“I knew it! You big sissy!” said Mattie. “You Americans are all talk.”
Cockran was finally able to grab each of her arms, just above the elbow and stop her tickling, both of them laughing and out of breath. In pulling her arms away from his abdomen, her robe, which had loosened in the struggle, gaped open so that Cockran found himself suddenly face to face, not six inches away, from the same right breast she had shown him in the hotel room, its pink nipple erect and inviting. His mouth opened in surprise.
“Freckles?”
“Yes, she has freckles. Here, want a closer look?” she asked, pushing its nipple into his open mouth. He responded appropriately with his tongue until she felt a tingle between her legs and she drew back, exposing her other breast.
“I have two,” she said, “and they‘re very jealous if one receives more attention.”
Cockran smiled. “We wouldn‘t want that to happen, now, would we?”
“No, we wouldn‘t,” she replied, moving her other breast slowly forward into his still open mouth, like an airship snuggling up to its mooring mast, gasping as she felt her body react and grow slippery inside, knowing she was ready for him much sooner than she expected.
Mattie had an unvarying routine in taking a new lover. She always liked to be on top for the first time. Like she was now. She thought it helped to set the right tone from the beginning. Besides, with her in control, it was the one way she could ensure, with an unfamiliar lover, that when they were finished, she would be as satisfied as he was. She thought it only fair and no one had ever objected. Neither did Cockran.
His pajamas and her robe were soon on the compartment floor. She straddled his waist, raised her hips directly above him and reached behind her to move him into position between her legs. “Oh my,” she said and thought this was definitely going to be good.
It was. Afterwards, Mattie lay stretched out on top of a softly snoring Cockran, her head on his chest, her robe and his pajamas still on the compartment floor below. Oh yes, she thought, that was so much more than she had been expecting. Nothing average about that boy. Wasn‘t she the lucky one? She smiled. It really was better to be lucky than good. And barely ten minutes ago, she reflected wickedly, no one would have suggested she was being good. She smiled again and snuggled in, pulling the blanket up over them both. And so, she thought, another aventure begins. He had been well worth the wait. She wondered briefly if it would lead anywhere and decided that, for the moment, it really didn‘t matter. She was already looking forward to tomorrow night.
48.
A Message To Hearst?
Miles City, Montana
Saturday, 17 August 1929
7:30 a.m.
Cockran awoke before Mattie. They were arranged like spoons, Mattie in front, Cockran behind, both comfortably fitting into the small lower bunk. He carefully slipped out and replaced the covers over her naked body. He checked his briefcase where he kept the journals. It was undisturbed. He searched for his pajamas, placed them in the suitcase and dressed for the day.
When the train stopped at 7:30 in Miles City, Montana for ten minutes, Cockran debarked and attempted to place a phone call to Churchill‘s hotel in Vancouver. There was no answer.
Mattie was still sleeping when Cockran returned to their compartment with two steaming mugs of coffee from the dining car. He placed a saucer on top of hers to keep it warm and sat down to leaf through the leather portfolio of her photographs which she had promised to show him earlier, before their tickling match. The ones she was most proud of. “No death or destruction,” she had explained. Cockran was impressed. The composition, the contrasts, the angular lines. Striking images all. Mines. Skyscrapers. Assembly lines. Steel mills. Warehouses. Romanticized but timeless. Cockran had just placed the last photograph down when he saw it. A copy of a telegram. He knew gentlemen didn‘t read other people‘s mail but Mattie had invited him to look at her photographs and she must have known that the telegram copy was in there. It was probably nothing, he told himself, as he pulled it out of the pocket, unfolded it and saw the message advising “H” of their new route to California via Spokane and Portland and the cryptic message “Travel plans changed. Mission in danger.” First she had searched his room. Now this. Why was she sending this message to Hearst? Cockran understood their plans had changed but what mission was she talking about and how did Hearst fit in?
Cockran still hoped for innocent explanations, both for the telegram and her search of his hotel room but whether she could be trusted or not really didn‘t matter. Sleeping with her had been a mistake. Enjoyable to be sure but still a
mistake. Once they had stopped the IRA and he had put Tommy McBride in the ground, he and Mattie were finished. He knew now he couldn‘t safely see her just a few times each year. If nothing else, their talk last night had proven to him he could seriously fall for this woman. She was that special. He wasn‘t going to let that happen. Under normal circumstances, it would be time to break it off. And if the two of them weren‘t up to their necks in this IRA business, that‘s exactly what he would do right now. Before it went any further. He didn‘t think he was a cad now but that‘s exactly what he would become if he didn‘t do something soon. Except he couldn‘t. Not now. He had to stop the IRA first and, if he were lucky, find McBride. Like it or not, Mattie was a part of that but, once it was over, he would end things between them as gently as possible. Would that make him a cad? He thought not but others might very well think so and there was nothing he could do about it.
Part III
California, 1929
I am very much obliged to you for your kind cables and invitation. I look forward greatly to my visit to you in California... We must discuss the future of the world, even if we cannot decide it.
Winston Churchill to William Randolph Hearst, 29 July 1929
Hoover does not run away from his troubles. He feels competent to solve them, and acts in most cases with a promptness and decision which have not been seen in the White House since Mr. Wilson’s early days.
The New Republic
June, 1929
49.
Whose Side Was Mattie On?
Oakland, California
Monday, 19 August 1929
6:30 a.m.
A summer thunderstorm was raging outside the windows of their Pullman compartment as the Empire Builder pulled into Union Station on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. The building was all stone with two sprawling three-story wings radiating out from a central clock tower over twice as high.
Grateful for the size of his tip, the Pullman porter carried both Bourke and Mattie‘s suitcases into the shelter of the slate roof‘s overhang before returning with a large umbrella to escort them to their bags. Cockran was wearing his trench coat now and Mattie a dark green oilcloth hooded slicker which, from its weathered appearance, had seen much duty in the field. Cockran put his equally battered briefcase, which had once belonged to his father, beside the two suitcases. “You find a red cap to take our bags,” he said, “while I rustle us up a taxi.”
Having secured a taxi, Cockran made his way back to the middle of the terminal where he found an elderly Negro redcap standing guard over his suitcase and briefcase. “What happened to the lady‘s bag?”
“The lady went off with two friends, sir,” the redcap said. “She said that she‘d meet you at the hotel.”
Cockran was puzzled. Friends? Maybe some of Hearst‘s people had met her. Or possibly Winston had sent someone. But why would she leave without him? What was so urgent that she couldn‘t wait a few minutes and explain? Something didn‘t add up
“Which way did they go?”
“That way, Sir. Toward the ferry,” the redcap replied, pointing in the opposite direction.
“What did the friends look like?” Cockran asked.
“They were both tall and blond, Sir. They spoke English with a foreign accent and then the lady began speaking in a foreign language and so did they. Sounded like German to me, Sir.”
German? What the hell?! Alarmed, Cockran shouted over his shoulder to the redcap to guard his bags as he headed toward the exit and sprinted for the ferry. He made it just in time to see the Southern Pacific ferry pull away and head for San Francisco across the choppy bay. Barely twenty yards away but it could have been a hundred yards for all the good it did him. And right there at the stern, calmly standing between two blond-haired men, he could see Mattie McGary under no apparent duress as she turned from one man to the other, talking to each as if they were old friends.
Cockran‘s shoulders slumped as he walked slowly over to the taxi stands which waited patiently for debarking ferry passengers. He didn‘t know what to think. Germans? What the hell was going on? Whose side was Mattie on?
50.
Jack Manion
San Francisco
Monday, 19 August 1929
1:30 p.m.
Cockran had to assume the worst even though his last glimpse of Mattie talking easily and animatedly to the two blond Germans in the bow of the Oakland Ferry belied that notion. She certainly didn‘t look like a kidnapped woman. Besides, what the hell could he do about it even if she were? Go to the San Francisco police? And tell them what exactly? “I skipped bond on an arrest warrant in New York in connection with a homicide investigation and now my girlfriend—well, not exactly my girlfriend, but a woman I‘ve slept with twice—is missing, possibly kidnapped. Can you help me?” Right. They would help him. To a one-way ticket for Manhattan once a burly NYPD homicide detective arrived to escort him back.
Once he had checked into his room at the Fairmont Hotel, where Sergeant Rankin was also staying, Cockran called the Scotland Yard detective but no one picked up the phone. He left a terse message with the hotel operator. “Urgent, call me re: M. Room 815. BC”. Cockran next arranged a meeting for 6:00 p.m. that evening at his hotel with John Devoy‘s San Francisco contact, Jack Manion, who hadn‘t been home when he called. His wife promised to get the message to him. Finally, Cockran placed a long-distance call to Bill Donovan in New York where it was still the middle of the afternoon and told him about Mattie.
“Those boys play rough,” Donovan said. “You could use some official help. You should have let me arrange for you to see the FBI in Chicago. They could have cleared you. Then you‘d be in a position to go to the authorities in San Francisco to report the kidnapping. There‘s no way you can do it now.”
“Why‘s that?” Cockran asked.
“Whoever you pissed off has more power than I thought.” Donovan replied. “Someone did an end run on me and the NYPD issued another warrant for your arrest this afternoon.”
“What‘s the charge?”
“John Devoy‘s murder. Keep lying low or you‘ll be facing extradition to New York.”
This was not good but he had to play it out. Cockran knew from combat that rest could be a weapon so he decided to take a short nap. He left a wake-up call for 5:30 p.m. but an insistent knocking on his door woke him earlier. The clock on the nightstand read 4:30 p.m. Shaking away the cobwebs, he shouted, “Hold on, I‘m coming.” It couldn‘t be Manion yet. Who was it?
He walked over to the closet, retrieved the Webley revolver and carefully opened the door to see the grimy face of a street urchin with shiny black hair and bold blue eyes.
“Good afternoon, Sir,” he said, pressing an envelope at him. “A gentleman paid me to deliver this to you,” the boy said, handing Cockran an envelope with his name and room number.
“How much did the gentleman pay you?” Cockran asked.
“Fifty cents, Sir.”
“Wait right here,” Cockran said. “And I‘ll pay you also.”
Cockran was back in a moment holding a silver dollar in his hands while watching the urchin‘s eyes grow wide. “It‘s yours if you describe the gentleman who gave you this envelope.”
The boy was more than happy to oblige. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes and broken nose. It fit to a tee the good Samaritan who had killed Sean Russell and the Commerce Department agent that night in Cleveland. Cockran thanked the boy, gave him the silver dollar and closed the door.
The message inside the envelope was terse and written in the same Spenserian script which had characterized his father‘s handwriting.
Mr. Cockran, the IRA have taken Miss McGary. The map shows where. Please help her. A friend.
First the Germans and now the IRA? The second sheet of the message was a map. Dunsmuir, California, the McCloud River, Mount Shasta and William Randolph Hearst‘s country estate “Wyntoon” were all clearly marked. As was the rail line running north from San Francisco with the writt
en note alongside the rail line “SF to Dunsmuir equals three hours ten minutes.”
Cockran‘s instincts had been correct in assuming the worst but how did these Germans fit in with the IRA? He placed a call to the concierge who promptly got back to him. The first train to Dunsmuir left from Union Terminal at 10:00 the next morning. Cockran promptly purchased two tickets hoping that, when he talked to Rankin, he could persuade him to help rescue Mattie.
Cockran sat down and stared out the window at San Francisco Bay. The Concierge had confirmed that Wyntoon was William Randolph Hearst‘s northern California country home. Which only proved to Cockran that Hearst was in this conspiracy up to his neck. That bastard was up to his old tricks. Cockran had always been skeptical of his father‘s claim that Hearst had delivered the Spanish-American war. But he was a skeptic no more. Still, if Hearst was financing all this, why would he have the IRA kidnap his own reporter? Something didn‘t add up.
6:00 p.m.
The DeValera Deception Page 24