Michael jumped off the couch, dumping Leslie on the floor, and grabbed the newspaper from Earl’s hand:
GERMAN ADMIRAL VISITS NEW YORK
Newly appointed West German Rear Admiral Eric Bruckner begins a seven-day visit to the US Tuesday with a tour of the ports of Boston, New York, New Jersey, and several US Navy bases. This is the first such official visit by a top ranking German naval officer since the early 1930s. Bruckner is widely hailed as an outspoken anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. The one-time U-boat captain and German war hero spent four years in a brutal Soviet labor camp after his U-boat was sunk in the Baltic, and has frequently called on the Russians to dismantle them. Untainted by any ties to the Nazi Party, Bruckner will soon head a key NATO naval intelligence and war planning staff section upon the retirement of…
Michael read the story a second time, and a third, with Leslie standing on her toes, reading it over his shoulder. “This can’t be!” he said. “Bruckner? An Admiral? I saw that boat go down, him with it. He’s dead. They’re all dead!”
“Well, maybe he figures you are, too,” Earl speculated.
“I’ve got to go to New York,” Michael said, still staring at the newspaper story. “I’ve got to see him.”
“I’m going with you,” Leslie said.
“I’ll only be a day or two and your daddy needs you here, Les.”
“I don’t need nobody here,” Earl interjected.
“No, it’s something I have to do myself,” he told them, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll be back in a couple of days, Les. Honest.”
Earl looked at them. “There’s an afternoon train comes through Beaufort that’ll get you up there tomorrow morning.”
While he packed, Leslie made him some sandwiches, then drove him to the train station in their old truck. Before he could get out of the car, she leaned across the seat, put both hands on his face, and kissed him hard on the lips. He did nothing to fight her off.
“I wish you hadn’t done that, Les,” he told her.
“And I wish I’d done it a long time ago.”
“We’ll talk about it when I get back.”
“I guess we will! I don’t know what you and Daddy have been talking about. I expect it was me, but I’m not a child. When you get back, we’re going to talk about this whether you want to talk about it or not.”
PART FIVE
NEW YORK CITY
NEW YORK
JULY 1951
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
New York City, July, 1951
In 1951, New York was a gray-flannel, button down town. Everything had its place, especially in a world-renowned hotel like The Plaza. She was the queen of 59th Street, a gray granite fortress that took up most of a city block on 5th Avenue directly across from Central Park in one of the city’s most fashionable areas. Like the Waldorf Astoria and the St. Regis, she reeked of class, order, and pampered care. When you climbed those front steps and passed through her tall revolving doors, you entered an impeccable world of brass, marble, overstuffed leather, polished wood, and money.
That morning, everything in the Plaza’s ornate lobby was in its proper place except for Mike Randall. He sat in a tall, oversized armchair directly across from the hotel’s gleaming brass elevator doors. He wore a plaid flannel shirt, green and blue, and it clashed badly with the chair’s plush red brocade, as did his well-worn blue jeans with the chair’s gilt legs. To the hotel staff, what he looked like was a big hick from the Great Outback, which was somewhere south and west of New Jersey. He definitely didn’t belong in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel.
Michael didn’t care about the red brocade or the gilt paint. To him, any chair was a marked improvement over the hard seat on the train from South Carolina where he’d spent the previous night. For the past hour, he’d ignored the harsh looks from the hotel staff. His shirt hadn’t been ironed but, like the blue jeans, it was clean. He was freshly shaven. And from the expression on his face, it was clear he wasn’t loitering or panhandling. He was there for a reason.
Michael arrived in the city before dawn. He had shaved in the restroom of Pennsylvania Station and left his suitcase in a rental locker. After scouring the New York newspapers for any stories about the Admiral and his schedule, he started walking up Broadway around 7:00 AM. The newspapers didn’t add much to what he already knew but the Times article had a photo of a thin man in uniform whom they identified as Admiral Bruckner coming through the revolving door of what the caption said was the Plaza Hotel. He wore a dark blue naval officer’s hat and was surrounded by a knot of uniformed Navy officers. Michael stared at the photo, but it was grainy and he couldn’t tell if it was him or not. Well, at least he knew where the Admiral was staying.
It was a long walk from Penn Station to 59th Street, but not even a New York City mugger was dumb enough to go after a big “lumberjack” with something in his hands. With that determined stride, the scars on his face, and his grim, purposeful expression, everything about him said, “Don’t screw with this one.” When he reached the Plaza, he saw the same revolving doors he saw in the newspaper story. Unfortunately, he also saw a cordon of uniformed doormen, bellmen, parking valets, and hotel security standing at the top of the stairs. The odds of his getting past them and into the hotel lobby without being stopped were about zero.
Michael backed away, found a pay phone in a small coffee shop around the corner, and dialed the Plaza’s front desk. It was only 7:25 AM, but he knew his best chance to get an appointment was to catch Bruckner early, before he went out. “Can you put me through to Kapitan Bruckner’s room, please, I mean Admiral Bruckner’s room,” he asked.
“I’m sorry. The Admiral is in meetings all day. If you wish to speak to him or one of his aides, you’ll have to go through the Navy’s press office.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“Of course you’re not, honey.”
“Really, I’m not; and I really need to talk to him.”
“Then leave a message.”
“All right, all right. Would you please tell him Sergeant Randall called, Sergeant Randall from the U-boat. I’ll call back. He’ll know who I am.”
“Randall, right. Thanks.” Click.
He waited in the coffee shop for fifteen minutes before he called again, and then fifteen minutes after that, but he could quickly see this was getting him nowhere so he went back to the hotel. After circling the block twice, he saw a tiny chink in their impressive armor. The service door on the rear alley was propped open for the fast-moving queue of morning deliverymen and he was able to walk right in. The hotel’s service wing was a maze, but he knew if you walk quickly and appear to have a purpose, you can go almost anywhere and get away with anything.
That was how he snuck inside and how he found himself in that brocade armchair in front of the elevator doors. He had hoped for something more discreet, but the lobby was already filling with people and the chair was the only one that put him near the elevators. So he opened the newspaper and sat as quietly as he could, hoping to blend into the woodwork.
These were good years to be a cop in New York City. Manny Eismer had put in twenty-seven years as a Detective Sergeant in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and some of the city’s other “garden spots.” In all those years, he never had to pay for a meal or a doughnut. One look at Manny, and you knew he never passed one by, either. The cops were the good guys back then. Anybody who didn’t think so got his head busted, and the big boys downtown never looked over a detective’s shoulder or second-guessed why he cracked some mope’s head to make a point.
Manny had paid his dues and he had the scars from two bullets and a knife to prove it. The previous year, Manny had retired. He was building a little cabin on a clear blue lake up in the Catskills, where he could fish, lie in a hammock, and do a whole lot of nothing. Retirement pay was okay, but to finish the cabin the way he wanted, he needed a few extra bucks. Bad cops got it put in their pockets by pimps, bookies, or some Gumbah who wanted a cop who would look the other
way. Good cops, like Manny, did it the old-fashioned way; they moonlighted and did some high-dollar, “off the books,” all-cash, private security work. That was why Manny was in the lobby of the Plaza that morning, because a few days’ work were all he needed to add a dock and a bass boat up on the lake.
Friends counted. So did blood. For the past year, it was Manny’s rabbi who came up with easy money, asking him to run an errand or two for the Israeli Consulate downtown. It was always something harmless and discreet, followed by a plain white envelope. Not that the Israelis couldn’t get all the “official” help they wanted if they just phoned City Hall. But the State of Israel was barely three years old, and after a bloody war and a million threats, who could blame them for wanting to have “one of their own” to check on the checkers. So, when they wanted an extra set of eyes and maybe an extra fist, Manny got the call. At five foot eight and two hundred sixty pounds, every cop in town knew him. More to the point for the Consulate, he was Jewish, albeit non-practicing, and very loyal to the new State. He’d seen enough tattoos on extermination camp survivors on 47th Street to know that if his own people didn’t deserve a homeland, who did?
This was the third day Manny had camped out in the lobby. The hotel was hosting a delegation of West German naval officers headed by a tall, distinguished admiral named Bruckner. Not that Manny gave a crap about a Kraut, but the Nazis didn’t kill too many Jews with a U-boat. As Manny watched Bruckner come and go the past few days, he concluded the good Admiral didn’t look too happy to be here. Why should he? New York was home to a million Jews, Greeks, Poles, and Ukrainians, and none of them were keen to see some Kraut bastard strolling down 5th Avenue, whether he used to goose-step or not. No, there were still too many old grudges and open wounds for that. Too many men had sailed out of New York harbor on merchant ships that were now on the bottom of the North Atlantic, so the Israeli Consul asked Manny to keep an extra set of eyes on him. If anybody took a shot at the Kraut, the Israelis didn’t want to be blamed.
So far, it had been a piece of cake, if you liked reporters, which Manny didn’t. Freakin’ big mouths, troublemakers, and slobs! It was a nice hotel, and the lobby was filled with dozens of reporters arguing, lying around with their feet on the chairs and tables, and littering the place with newspapers, coffee cups, and cigarette butts. And it was still early. Bruckner and his entourage remained closeted in a closely-guarded fifth-floor conference room, leaving the reporters in the lobby below with deadlines and empty note pads. As the morning wore on, they grew more and more desperate for a story, any story, even if it was only a rumor or a little tidbit, anything they could twist and stretch into a column or two and get their editors off their backs for one more day. Manny smiled. Serves the bastards right; they’d all crapped out.
Manny yawned and took another slow look around the lobby. Everything looked normal, predictable, and boring. Everything except that big hick in the plaid shirt sitting near the elevators. Funny, Manny got here early, but he couldn’t remember seeing him arrive. One minute the chair was empty; the next, he was sitting there behind a newspaper. Well, at least he didn’t look Jewish, Manny snorted. Jews didn’t wear flannel and denim. The head desk clerk also noticed the guy and strolled over to ask Manny, "Whatdaya think? Should we shoo the big goober out the door?" Normally, the hotel would have done that without asking, but with all those damned reporters milling around, nobody wanted an incident — not today. Manny gave the big hick another long look.
“Nah, leave him be. I’ll keep an eye on him.” Besides, the hick didn’t look like he’d be all that easy to shoo without a fuss, not if he didn’t want to be shooed.
Manny took another look. Hard to tell how old he was. Thirty? Maybe older. Tall and rough-hewn, he was perched on the edge of the wingback chair as if he was waiting for something. Waiting? Expecting? Or intending? A man’s hands often said volumes about him. This guy’s were big and gnarled, wrapped around a rolled-up section of newspaper, twisting it back and forth, like it was the neck of the Sunday chicken on Saturday night. And his eyes. They were dark and haunted, with more than a few white scars on his eyebrows and cheeks. Construction? Boxing? Whatever, he’d been somewhere doing things he shouldn’t have been doing. Maybe, but the eyes themselves were sharp, alert, and they never stopped moving. First, they’d glance at the big clock on the far wall, then they’d swing to the hotel’s revolving doors, and finally back to the gleaming brass elevator doors again. Like two radar dishes, they circled back and forth, not missing a beat. Manny waited for the hick to do something, but he sat there like a rock with those dark eyes and those big freakin’ hands.
Ah, shit, Manny grumbled. Why couldn’t he go someplace else, like back to the farm, or the north woods, or wherever the hell he came from. Besides, who gave a crap about some damned Kraut admiral? That war was over a long time ago. So Manny scrunched his 260 pounds deeper into the overstuffed chair and opened the morning’s Racing Form, figuring nothing was going to happen today anyway.
Unfortunately, on the stroke of 10:00, something did.
The center elevator door opened and the lean, handsome figure of West German Rear Admiral Eric Bruckner strode confidently into the hotel lobby. Behind him marched a tight queue of blue-jacketed German and American naval officers. Dressed in blue and gold with close-cropped gray hair and the eyes of a hunting hawk, the Admiral looked the part. That was, until the “good” Admiral turned the corner and ran into a solid wall of American reporters and photographers who had been lying in ambush in the lobby. Manny chuckled. The poor bastard! He might have faced down every destroyer in the North Atlantic, swatting aside bombs and bullets with his bare hands, but he’d never met an enemy as savage or bent on his total destruction as the American press corps.
The mob leaped over couches and tipped over chairs as they deftly cut him off from the lobby doors. Next came a barrage of popping flashbulbs and a hundred screaming questions. Finally, the wall formed and surged forward in a direct frontal assault. Wide-eyed, Bruckner looked longingly at the hotel’s front doors, but they might as well be a hundred miles away. “Admiral! Admiral!” the reporters screamed as he stopped and took a step back. Too late, the elevator doors had already closed behind him. He was trapped.
“Goddamnit!” Manny grumbled. “There goes the morning, shot in the ass.” He pried himself out of the velvet grip of the over-stuffed armchair, threw his Racing Form on the end table, and lumbered to the rescue. Why couldn’t those dumb Navy schmucks take him down the back stairs like they were supposed to? He grabbed the two closest reporters by the seats of their pants, pulled, and opened a hole in the solid wall of flesh. The Admiral had steadily given ground until he was now pinned against the gleaming elevator doors, surrounded by a pack of hungry reporters shouting questions at him. Serves him right! The dumb putz never should have come down the elevator to begin with!
Then, just when it looked like it would become a total fiasco, the Kraut rallied. He threw his chin in the air and forced a game smile, regaining at least a modicum of confidence as he took his first tentative step forward and waved the reporters aside. He almost pulled it off, too, until a loud, desperate voice called to him over the din of the crowd, stopping him dead in his tracks.
Randall looked up, saw the elevator door open, and saw Bruckner’s uniformed entourage step out into the lobby. "Kapitan!" he called out, but no one heard him. Before he could step closer, the horde of reporters had surged forward and blocked his way. “Kapitan Bruckner,” he pleaded, louder. “It’s me, Randall, Sergeant Randall, the American who stowed away on your U-boat. Don’t you remember?”
There was a wall of screaming reporters three deep between Michael and Bruckner. The closer ones turned their heads, curious at first, then they fell silent as they understood the odd words the guy in the plaid shirt was saying.
“Kapitan!” he tried again. “Remember, the night your boat sank? I left you some messages but the hotel wouldn’t put me through." Bruckner’s head turned. The Admi
ral had heard him all right, and he had seen him. He stopped, frozen to the spot as this big maniac tried to push through the crowd and get closer, but the reporters had the path blocked. Then Bruckner’s eyes locked on his.
Michael raised the rolled-up section of newspaper and waved. “You put me in the life raft, just before the bombs hit. My God! I thought you were dead. All the explosions, the flames, and the smoke — I thought you were dead.” Michael’s emotions got the best of him. His voice cracked and his eyes filled with tears, but from the Admiral’s expression of surprise and confusion, it was obvious he had no idea what Michael was talking about.
"I’m the American you found in the torpedo room with all those crates. Don’t you remember, Kapitan?” he screamed in desperation. He couldn’t have been more than a few feet away now, staring straight into the man’s eyes. “The night the U-boat sank, when you put me ashore off Sweden.”
The Admiral’s eyes suddenly grew wide. He heard him all right, so Michael reached out even farther, stretching his arm until his fingertips touched the Admiral’s shoulder.
That did it! The Admiral jumped back as if he’d brushed a high-power line. "Get away! Get away from me," he screamed as his expression changed from surprise and confusion to outright fear. That was when Michael knew. The face, the expression and most importantly the eyes; this man was not Eric Bruckner!
Cold War Trilogy - A Three Book Boxed Set: of Historical Spy Versus Spy Action Adventure Thrillers Page 46