“As to the former question, I don‘t know. I saw it last in California when I delivered four million dollars in gold bearer bonds to your man McBride. Here,” Sturm said, “is the receipt he gave me.”
De Valera accepted the sheet of paper and inspected it closely. It was McBride‘s signature.
“But as to your latter question,” Sturm continued smoothly, “I can certainly answer that. It‘s there in the newspaper clipping I laid beside your plate.”
Sturm sat down at the table and looked de Valera in the eye. “Things did not go as well in America as we planned. I‘m here to remind you that my colleagues expect you to keep our business dealings confidential. They would be most disturbed if you discussed them with anyone. Don‘t disappoint them. I‘m on holiday now. You wouldn‘t like me to return here on business.”
De Valera watched as Sturm pushed his chair back and rose from the table, gave him a small salute with two fingers, turned and walked away. He turned his attention to the small newspaper clipping Sturm had placed beside his plate. It was from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner dated 6 September 1929. The headline caught his attention: SHARK ATTACK NEAR SAN DIEGO. He never made it past the article‘s second sentence:The legless torso of a tourist washed ashore near San Diego today, the apparent victim of a shark attack. Authorities identified the victim as an Irish citizen, Thomas F. McBride....
De Valera felt an uncontrollable reaction as his insides heaved and he threw up on the plate the full Irish breakfast his system had barely begun to digest.
He didn‘t finish the scone.
77.
Sand Castles
Barstow, California
Saturday, 28 September 1929
2:00 p.m.
Winston Churchill sat on the railway hotel‘s terrace and squinted out at the early afternoon sun, a glass of champagne beside him.
My darling Clemmie,
We are traveling across the Californian desert in Mr. Schwab’s railway car, & we have stopped for 2 hours at this oasis. We have left the train for a bath in the hotel, & I will write you a few of the things it is wiser not to dictate.
Hearst was most interesting to meet, & I got to like him—a grave simple child—with no doubt a nasty temper—playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always overspent: Ceaseless building & collecting not vy discriminatingly works of art: two magnificent establishments, two charming wives; complete indifference to public opinion, a strong liberal & democratic outlook, a 15 million daily circulation, oriental hospitalities, extreme personal courtesies & the appearance of a Quaker elder-or perhaps Mormon elder.
At Los Angeles (hard g) we passed into the domain of Marion Davies; & were all charmed by her. She is not strikingly beautiful nor impressive in any way. But her personality is most attractive; naive, childlike, bon enfant. She works all day at her films & retires to her palace on the ocean to bathe & entertain in the evenings. She asked us to use her house as if it was our own.
Our little “adventure” of which I have been keeping you posted concluded happily earlier this month. The cargo we were so concerned about met an untimely end in an exceptionally large explosion. And Smythe ended up falling out of an airplane. Imagine that! Otherwise, everything was uneventful. Nice luncheon in Hollywood for those Graf Zeppelin chaps and their passengers. .
I have also made friends with Mr Van Antwerp & his wife. He is a gt friend of England and a reader of all my books—quite an old fashioned figure—He is going to look after some of my money for me. His stockbroking firm have the best information about the American market & I have opened an account with them in wh I have placed £3,000. He will manipulate it with the best possible chances of success. All this looks vy confiding—but I am sure it will prove wise.
Now I have to rush for my train wh is just off.
Goodbye my sweetest Clemmie
With tender love from your devoted
W
£3,000, Churchill thought. A few articles for his new patron, W. R. Hearst. With any luck and if his imagination didn‘t fail him, he could crank out at least five more articles before he returned to England. At this rate, he would soon be the highest paid journalist in the world. There were worse things, he thought, than being out of office. Out of money was far worse.
The Cedars
Sands Point, Long Island
Sunday, 29 September 1929
4:00 p.m.
It was a perfect early autumn afternoon as Mattie McGary sat in a low-slung canvas chair, nursing a gin and tonic, a copy of the September 6 Los Angeles Herald Examiner on the sand beside her, watching Bourke and Paddy Cockran build a sand castle on the beach in front of her.
Up at the house, Cockran‘s mother-in-law, Mary Morrisey, was setting the table on the patio which looked out over Long Island Sound. Bill Donovan and his wife, Ruth, were coming to dinner and Cockran was going to grill steaks.
“It‘s the least you can do, you ungrateful bastard,” Mattie had heard Donovan say when Cockran had extended the invitation over the phone, his voice easily carrying to where Mattie stood behind Cockran. “Do you know how many favors I had to call in to get that arrest warrant lifted? It was all I could do to keep a straight face when I gave them that bogus affidavit from McBride confessing to Devoy‘s murder. Not all Irish cops are as dumb as their reputation.”
Cockran had laughed. “I know I owe you more than a steak dinner, Bill, but it will have to do for now. Besides, I want Mattie to meet your Ruth. Mattie should see it‘s possible for a Protestant girl to fall in love with a Catholic boy.”
Mattie smiled. She watched as Bourke used a shovel to build up a large pile of sand, three feet wide and three feet high. Paddy then walked a few yards into the surf, filled a pail of water and returned it to his father, who poured it onto the sand pile. The process was repeated until the pile had received four full buckets of water. The two boys--and yes, Mattie thought to herself, Bourke really was a big Irish boy, too, just like his son--proceeded to pat the pile with their hands, firming it up. After that, Bourke used a straight edge to level off the top of the sand pile, leaving a flat surface. He twice made a trip to the surf where he filled a pail with wet sand, tightly packed. He twice brought the pail back to the sand pile and placed the pail upside down on the pile‘s level surface and carefully removed the pail, each time leaving a thick cylinder of sand behind. Using the straight edge, he converted the two squat cylinders into square towers. He used a bread knife to make indentations for the narrow windows. Using a large funnel which he filled with wet sand, Paddy then placed cupolas on top of each tower.
“You don‘t actually build sand castles,” Bourke had explained to her before they started. “Mostly, you carve them.” She watched as Bourke and Paddy set to work on either side of the pile, each using a straight edge and a spatula to carve terraces and stairways leading down from the twin towers. They took their time, clearly enjoying themselves, each pausing occasionally to ask the other to come over to his side of the castle and admire the curving staircase here, an elaborate balcony there.
Mattie smiled again and sighed. She missed her family. Two brothers lost in the war. Then Eric. Her parents soon after. She had kept the family estate near Skye but rarely went there. She had made no home elsewhere, a small one-bedroom apartment in Edinburgh the only place from which her mail was received and forwarded. She knew she could love this man. It wouldn‘t be that difficult. But to do so, she had to let down the defenses she had so carefully built up, brick by brick, over the years. Could she do that? Could she be content with the same man and stop moving, in one sense at least, from one aventure to another? And if she could do that, would Bourke accept a woman whose work took her all over the world, often without much notice? A woman who could scarcely bear not being in control? Who valued deeply her freedom, her independence, her privacy? Who despised boredom and secretly thrilled each time an assignment exposed her to danger? She honestly didn‘t know. But she would think about it.
“Mattie, come on d
own and help us finish,” she heard Cockran call to her.
“Yes, Mattie, please come,” Paddy said, now standing beside her chair, holding out his hand. “We finished two sides of the castle. And we‘ve got two more to go. You can help me do one side while Dad finishes the other. Ours will be a lot better than his.”
Mattie smiled as she took the young boy’s hand and rose from her chair and followed him down to the sand castle. Cockran’s good points were beginning to outweigh his bad. Yes, she would definitely think about it.
Epilogue
Munich, 1930
Hitler offered something to almost every German voter in 1930—the farmer, the worker, the student, the patriot, the racist and the middle-class burgher. The common denominator of his wide appeal was the world depression which had followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 and abruptly ended Germany’s remarkable recovery.
John Toland,
Adolf Hitler
In the most remarkable result in German parliamentary history, the NSDAP advanced at one stroke from the twelve seats and mere 2.6 per cent of the vote gained in the 1928 Reichstag election, to 107 seats at 18.3 per cent, making it the second largest party in the Reichstag. Almost 6.5 million Germans now voted for Hitler’s party—eight times as many as two years earlier. The Nazi bandwagon was rolling.
Ian Kershaw,
Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris
Munich
Thursday, 16 September 1930
2:00 p.m.
Kurt von Sturm was the first there. He made his way to the rear of the heavily-timbered old coffee house, the smoke-filled Café Heck, and took his seat at the familiar scarred wooden table. A year had passed since his return from America. Much had happened. More was to come. Now, they would begin to change history. Germany would soon have its revenge..
On the surface, many things remained the same. He was still Fritz von Thyssen‘s chief assistant at the United Steel Works; he still served as the Executive Director of the Geneva Group; and a special committee appointed by Zurich had absolved him of any personal responsibility for his failure to recover Geneva‘s $4 million from the IRA.
In other respects, everything was different. The invasion of Poland was dead, consigned to the ash heap of history. The Geneva Group had been of two minds, debating the wisdom of proceeding in the face of the failure of the Free State coup d’etat. Then Stalin made the decision for them. An inherently conservative man, Stalin was also a patient one. He would take no risks with Poland. If Marx and Lenin were right, capitalist democracy was doomed anyway and Poland, no longer a democracy herself, would eventually drop into their hands like a ripe fruit.
When the Reichstag was dissolved in mid-July, von Thyssen-- Berlin--had given Sturm a fully paid eight-week leave of absence to work in the national election campaign which ended yesterday. Berlin had assured him that both he and Munich had given their blessing and that no one from Geneva would know. So now Sturm waited, eager for the future to begin.
He heard the applause first, from the front of the coffee house, followed by the cries and shouts of encouragement. It was time. Sturm rose to his feet as the noise continued to grow.
Adolf Hitler had arrived.
The usual entourage was with him—Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Rudolph Hess, Ernst Hanfstaengl—but Sturm ignored them, greeting only Hitler, captured once again by the piercing blue eyes which held his gaze, making him feel as if he were the most important person in the world to this man. And, on this day, perhaps he was.
“Good to see you, Kurt,” Hitler said, extending a pasty white hand, his piercing blue eyes focused on Sturm. “Have you recovered from your celebration last night? You should follow my example. No alcohol. You won’t be young forever.”
Sturm smiled. “Yes, my Führer. But it was a special time. We had reason to celebrate.”
Hitler chuckled. “I agree. There was much to celebrate. And you deserve more of the credit than most. Before you, nothing seemed possible. After you, everything came our way. You‘re exactly what Putzi needed. A real German to keep the foreign journalists under control.”
“Thank you, my Führer,” Sturm said.
Hitler went on as if Sturm had not spoken, his voice rising above the din created by the other patrons, his tone euphoric. “Think of it. We held 34,000 meetings all over Germany in the last four weeks. I gave twenty speeches myself. 16,000 in Berlin. 30,000 in Breslau.”
Hitler paused, wiped a trickle of spittle from the corner of his mouth, and resumed his monologue. “Money. All we needed was money to get my message to the people. And the people did the rest. An eightfold increase in our vote from 1929. Think of it. 6.5 million Germans voted for me. Only 12 seats before and now we have 107 seats in the Reichstag!”
Hitler looked over at his small Propaganda Chief. “Even Goebbels was surprised, weren‘t you Joseph? Last April he thought he was an optimist when he predicted 40 seats. Not me. I knew better. I told you so.”
Hitler turned to Ernst Hanfstaengl, the tall American-born, Harvard-educated Foreign Press Chief of the National Socialist German Workers‘ Party, “Isn‘t that true, Putzi? Didn‘t I say 100 seats in my speech on 20 August?”
“Yes, Herr Hitler,” Hanfstaengl responded.
Not really, Sturm thought to himself. With his command of English solidified by his sojourn last year in America, Sturm had been appointed Putzi‘s assistant during the eight-week campaign. Privately, Hitler had told Hanfstaengl and Sturm he only expected 30 to 40 seats.
Hitler took a sip of mineral water and continued. “We are the second largest party in Germany. Even the foreign press pays attention to us. Here, Kurt”, Hitler said, “read to us from this English paper. Putzi says it is favorable but you can‘t always trust a half-American.”
All but Hanfstaengl joined in the laughter as Hitler passed over to Sturm yesterday‘s edition of London‘s Daily Mail and he began reading the article to the group, translating to German as he read. “The article is by Rothay Reynolds. It says that ‘Hitler spoke with great simplicity and with great earnestness. There was not a trace in his manner of those arts which political leaders are apt to employ when they wish to impress. I was conscious that I was talking to a man whose power lies not, as many still think, in his eloquence and in his ability to hold the attention of the mob, but in his conviction.‘”
Sturm paused but, before he could resume reading, Hitler interrupted and started to speak again in a rising, compelling voice. All at the table turned their heads away from Sturm and back to Hitler. Others in the coffee house stopped their conversation and strained to hear.
“Yes, conviction,” Hitler said. “Conviction. He understands. I am not a politician who makes empty campaign promises to entice people with their own selfish interests. I offer a program, a gigantic new program behind which must stand not a new government but a new German people. No longer a mixture of classes and professions but a community of people who will overcome their differences and rescue the common strength of the nation.”
An attractive, blonde-haired waitress approached the table and offered to clear but, with a smile, Hitler gently turned her away. “What we promise,” Hitler continued, “is not material improvement for the individual but an increase in the strength of the nation, because only this shows the way to power and with it the liberation of the entire German people.”
Hitler paused. He locked eyes with everyone at the table, going from face to face. Goebbels. Goering. Hanfstaengl. Hess. And, finally, Sturm. “It‘s true,” Hitler said. “It‘s true. We are less than three years away. Three years. Does anyone doubt?”
The entire coffee house was silent. Hitler had been speaking in a conversational tone but his words carried to adjacent tables. A few started to applaud and soon the entire room was on its feet cheering the man of the moment. Hitler acknowledged their applause with a modest wave of his hand. His chair scraped the wooden floor as Hitler rose to leave, motioned the others at the table to stay seated and invited Kurt to join him. H
e slowly made his way to the front of the restaurant pausing at tables, shaking hands, signing autographs, accepting well wishes.
Outside, the afternoon sun had broken through the dark clouds of an approaching storm. Hitler paused and pulled the brim of his soft felt hat lower on his head. “I was too pessimistic this time,” Hitler said in a quiet voice. “I set my sights too low. You know I thought 30 seats were the most we could hope for.” Hitler tightened the belt on his trench coat and walked down the tree-lined street, his bodyguards in front of him, Sturm beside him and the rest of his entourage now bringing up the rear.
“For the first time, Kurt, I truly can see success within our grasp,” Hitler said. They reached Hitler‘s Mercedes. His chauffeur held the rear door open as Hitler turned to Sturm and and spoke in a surprisingly quiet voice. “We will achieve our aim with constitutional means. We shall gain decisive majorities in the legislative bodies at all levels so that the moment we succeed, we can give the state the form that corresponds to our ideas.”
“That is all I ever wanted, my Führer. To atone for the shame of those terrible days after the war,” Sturm said.
“You have nothing to atone for, Kurt. You were one of our heroes then. More of a hero than even our Hermann with his Blue Max because you had your own. But now, you are so much more. Once we succeed—and we will succeed—you will be hailed as a savior.”
Hitler sat back in the open motorcar‘s back seat and smiled. “Von Sturm the savior. Or, very soon, von Strasser the savior. The others can‘t be told now. Your current position is too critical. But the day we take power, all will know. The four million dollars in gold bearer bonds you brought us from America made all the difference. I shall never forget. And that means Germany will never forget.”
Hitler reached out, grasped Sturm‘s hand in his, pulled the younger man close, and whispered in his ear. “It won‘t take us three years,” said Hitler. “Only two. Be prepared, Kurt. In two years‘ time, Germany will come to me. The people shall once again know your name and we shall do great things together.”
The DeValera Deception Page 40