The Second Assassin

by The Second Assassin (retail) (epub)

  ‘Very thin logic,’ Wolf suggested. ‘Perhaps we simply wanted to find out the extent of your knowledge.’ His lips twitched briefly. ‘And then kill you.’

  ‘I doubt that. I don’t know enough to be worth the trouble.’ She turned and looked Flynn right in the eye. ‘Who tried to have me killed?’

  ‘A group of people.’

  ‘Including a couple of senators and some hitters from New Orleans?’

  ‘A like-minded group of people who would rather Mr Roosevelt not be president any longer than is absolutely necessary. Who would rather Mr Roosevelt didn’t take us into another world war. They have their own programme regarding the United States and its relationship with Mr Hitler.’

  Jane was stunned. ‘They’re going to have Roosevelt assassinated?’

  Flynn shook his head. ‘The president is not the target.’

  ‘Well who the hell is?’ Then Jane saw it, saw how it would work, saw how it would succeed. ‘Jesus!’ she whispered. ‘They’re going to kill the king and queen.’

  ‘That would appear to be a logical assumption,’ said Wolf.

  ‘Appear?’ said Jane. ‘You mean you don’t know for sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So this is all guesswork?’

  ‘Not that either,’ said Wolf. ‘Most of it is fact, some of it is supposition. We know about the assassin. We know about the people in New Orleans.’

  ‘We also know about the sons of bitches in my own party who are up to their ears in this… filth,’ said Flynn, spitting out the last word. ‘Friends of Caesar, conspiring to ruin him!’

  ‘How close are these… friends of Caesar?’ Jane asked.

  ‘As close as I am myself,’ said Flynn bitterly. ‘Some even closer.’ He paused. ‘At least for the moment.’

  Jane ground out her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately lit another one. She puffed on it for a moment, thinking hard, then asked the obvious question. ‘Why are you telling me this? Why don’t you just spill the beans to Roosevelt?’

  Flynn leaned over the desk, his hawk features stark in the light from the goosenecked lamp. ‘Because they didn’t tell me,’ he said quietly. ‘Because they went behind the back of Edward J. Flynn, the bastards, because they knew what I’d do to them, especially that self-serving cocksucker Farley.’ He paused and took a deep, snorting breath. ‘Because they’re cowards without the courage of their own convictions and I want to see them brought down. Do you understand me, Miss Todd? What they intend is not what this country was made for, not what it stands for. And if I told the president he’d cancel the whole royal tour on the spot and how would that look? We’d be shamed. That’s how it would look and there’s a lot more than that at stake, believe me.’

  Jane stared at him. Flynn wasn’t outraged at the thought of the king and queen being murdered. He was pissed because they hadn’t brought him in on it. And he’d just mentioned the name Farley, which had to be James A. Farley, postmaster general, Democratic National as well as State Party Chairman and a rumoured presidential candidate himself. Friends of Caesar indeed – Farley was Roosevelt’s Mark Antony, the man who’d run Roosevelt’s campaigns since the beginning. And Flynn had just called him a cocksucker.

  ‘Given our relative social positions, neither Mr Flynn nor I am in a position to reveal this information,’ said Wolf.

  ‘You want me to blow the whistle on this thing? I’m supposed to be the messenger? Like Howie Raines? No, thanks.’

  ‘It’s the news story of the century, Miss Todd.’

  ‘It’s not a news story,’ said Jane. ‘It’s an axe waiting to fall. They’ve tried to kill me once, they’ll try again.’

  ‘Go to the newspapers then!’ said Flynn angrily. ‘Tell the world.’

  ‘With what evidence?’ Jane asked bluntly. ‘I’d get laughed out of every city room in New York.’

  ‘Go to the authorities,’ said Wolf. ‘We’ll give you what you need to convince them.’

  ‘Which authorities would that be?’ Jane asked sceptically. ‘Not the New York City Police Department.’ She shook her head. ‘And not Dewey. He sure as hell wouldn’t believe anything Mr Wolf had to tell him.’

  ‘The FBI,’ Wolf answered calmly.

  ‘You said it yourself. Hoover doesn’t even think you people exist. He thinks Winchell made the Mob up on a napkin at the Stork. Not to mention the fact that he likes working women less than you do.’

  Wolf smiled thinly again. ‘Mr Hoover is well aware that we exist,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s just nothing he can do about it.’ He paused. ‘And I wasn’t thinking about Mr Hoover anyway.’ Wolf reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out his wallet and removed a business card from it. He flipped it over, took out a pen and scribbled a few words on the blank side. He handed the card to Jane. The photographer flipped it over:

  Sam Foxworth

  Believe what she says.

  G.W.

  ‘The head of the FBI New York office isn’t Sam Foxworth. It’s Percy,’ said Jane.

  ‘His friends call him Sam.’ The implication was clear. Wolf leaned forward. ‘Hurry, Miss Todd. I don’t think we have very much time left.’

  * * *

  At nine thirty that evening, after an informal dinner at the Brantford Hotel on the Canadian side of the border at Niagara Falls, the king and queen rejoined the royal train, which then moved slowly and majestically across the International Bridge and into the United States of America, the first English monarchs ever to enter that great nation.

  Joining the train on the American side was a welcoming delegation from Washington that included Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British ambassador, and Mr Cordell Hull, the tall, silver-haired U.S. secretary of state.

  Security provided by the RCMP was now no longer in evidence; the four-man contingent that had accompanied the royals ever since arriving in Quebec had been left behind in Canada and was now replaced by a much larger group of New York state troopers, an even dozen plain-clothes Secret Service agents and, at least between Niagara Falls and Buffalo, troops spaced at hundred-yard intervals along both sides of the track, bayonets fixed.

  Although nothing was said, it was clear that the special security was a response to the arrest of Sean Russell the previous day. For the first time weapons were in evidence on the train, which made some of the attending staff extremely nervous. The four-man group of Special Branch officers as well as both the king and the queen’s policemen had always been coy when asked questions concerning their own weapons, but if they were armed, at least they were discreet about it. The Americans seemed to take the opposite approach, assuming that a show of power and strength would provide a deterrence against violence.

  The train arrived in Buffalo shortly after eleven p.m. and after the king and queen made a brief appearance on the observation platform the train moved off again. The queen retired for the night, as did the rest of the welcoming delegation, with the exception of Lindsay, the British ambassador, Cordell Hull and Tommy Lascelles, who adjourned to the lounge area of the royal rail car. It was here, after some brief, relaxing conversation and a cigar that the king, using a ceremonial sword and with Lindsay and Hull as witnesses, tapped Lascelles on each shoulder and bid him rise as Sir Alan Lascelles, Knight Commander of the Victorian Order.

  An hour later, as the train thundered through the dark forests and river valleys of upstate New York, the newly invested knight retired to his own bedroom, changed into his favourite grey silk pyjamas and poured himself a small celebratory tot of single malt from his private flask. He lit a cigarette, took out his pen and began to write in his green morocco-bound diary.

  With Russell in jail the immediate danger to Their Majesties had been dealt with but Lascelles was haunted by the possibility that over the next few days something would happen to destroy what he had worked so hard to achieve – the forging of a bond between England and the United States strong enough to withstand the coming war. He was well aware that any perceived slight or minor indiscr
etion might turn everything into a shambles.

  Lascelles had already had a brief, private conversation with Lindsay, who confirmed that both FDR and Hull agreed that war was now almost a certainty. On the other hand, this was most certainly not a belief held by the majority of Americans, who were deeply sceptical of British motives.

  Two days before the New York Times had run an editorial with the comment: ‘The British are never polite to us except when they want something.’ The general sense in America was that they were safely insulated from any European war by the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean; clearly they knew very little of the range of German U-boats.

  The whole thing, Lascelles knew, was a very tricky and delicate business. Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and the America Firsters talked long and loud about isolationism but in the end it was the perception of the average American that held the key. Thus the foreign secretary had not accompanied the king and queen and even the redcoat RCMP had been left behind for the sake of appearances. That was only the tip of the iceberg.

  Lascelles was well aware that a great many Americans still considered the Duke of Windsor the rightful owner of the British throne and that George, if the Americans thought about him at all, thought of him as a stuttering, colourless, weak personality, in thrall to an overbearing, plump little commoner. The king’s assistant private secretary sighed over the words he’d just written, knowing how accurate they were. He poured himself another finger of Scotch and lit another cigarette.

  Even though the American part of the tour was supposed to be a side excursion, it was far and away the most important few days of the entire trip. If anything, the Canadian portion had been a tedious beard to cover the real meaning of events. If the king and queen, with Roosevelt’s help, could convince the American public that the royals were friendly folk, just like them, they might be worthy of their sympathy, their financial support and, if necessary, their arms.

  A careful balance had to be struck between dignified regal reserve and democratic friendliness – not the easiest thing to do after Chamberlain’s grovelling at Munich, not to mention the matter of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson. The Americans had always liked Edward and to abdicate the throne of England for the love of a woman, and an American woman at that, struck a popular, romantic chord. And Wallis Simpson had a much better figure than Her Royal Plumpness.

  Lascelles sighed again, stroked out the last three words he’d written and replaced it with the single word Elizabeth. He screwed the top back on his pen and closed his diary and his eyes, leaning back against the seat, listening to the constant hammer of the steel wheels on the endless rails. This was not the world he’d been born into and not one that he really understood.

  In his time the royal family had been sacrosanct, the image of vast power and the perfect symbol of an empire that spanned the globe. Over the years he’d watched the family and indeed the empire steadily decline following the death of Victoria, until it reached its present, sad state.

  His Highness at least had been coached for weeks before the tour began concerning his possible conversations with Roosevelt and the other notables he would find himself being introduced to. Elizabeth, on the other hand, would have to rely on the endless frocks she’d brought with her.

  Lascelles, using every diplomatic skill he’d acquired over his career, had managed it so that she never gave a single speech, addressed no crowds, and God forbid, never talked to the reporters of the press corps that travelled with them. Lascelles had cared for kings and queens before and knew just how easily a small gaffe could become a crumbling disaster or how one simple, innocent mistake could be transformed into outright catastrophe.

  Sir Alan Lascelles, newly minted knight, opened his eyes and looked at the etched silver flask and its companion cup on the small table in front of him. Just one more tot to help him sleep and then he’d go to bed. A good night’s rest to gird his loins and then tomorrow – Washington and heartfelt prayers that this time the invading English would be welcomed there.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Wednesday, June 7, 1939

  New York City

  Shortly before noon John Bone left the Gramercy Park Hotel and walked to a public telephone booth on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Once inside the booth he placed a telephone call to the contact number he had been given at Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter by the man he knew only as Uncle Charles. After speaking to the voice on the other end of the line for a few moments Bone left the booth and walked to the Twenty-third Street subway entrance, where he took a downtown Lexington Avenue local south to Canal Street. He climbed up into the bright, hot sunlight, putting on his Cool Rays against the glare.

  Bone walked west for several blocks, pausing to look in shop windows, ignoring the hum and rush of traffic heading for the Holland Tunnel and Jersey in one direction and the Manhattan Bridge in the other. He also checked for any kind of surveillance and found none. Eventually he reached Mott Street and turned north, strolling into Little Italy and feeling very much at home there among the pushcarts selling olives and artichokes and goat cheese and sweet-smelling finochio.

  He bought himself a piping-hot wedge of pizza topped with thinly sliced tomatoes and a sprinkling of cheese then continued on. Around him the neighbourhood was brilliantly alive, the streets crowded, every fire escape landing and windowsill filled with pots of flowers or herbs, the sound of music everywhere, either sung aloud in the streets or rising from crackling gramophones within the gloomy tenement rooms. Bone had spent a fair bit of time in Italy over the years and had always enjoyed himself there but Little Italy in New York was a nation of its own, more vibrant and full of energetic life than anything he’d ever seen in Milan or Florence or even Rome.

  At Grand Street he turned west again, crossing Mulberry and Baxter and then Centre Street, passing the baroque bulk of police headquarters at No 240. From his reading Bone knew that the present commissioner of police, Lewis Valentine, commanded twenty thousand police officers in eighty-three precinct houses operating out of all five boroughs. Detectives, patrolmen, an enormous fleet of radio cars controlled by three shortwave radio stations, three motorcycle divisions, twenty emergency squads, two mounted squads, fifteen traffic units including two bridge units and a fleet of river launches – it was a colossal force, all connected by an intricate system of telephone, telegraph, teletype and radio. In a few days that force would be fully focused on him.

  He crossed Centre, then Lafayette, finally turning up Crosby Street and reaching the address he was looking for. Suspended over the front door on a steel strut was a giant revolver, carved in some soft wood, the barrel and the brightwork painted grey, the grip, chequered like the real thing, painted glossy black. Hanging below the barrel was a smaller sign that said: FRANZ LAVAN, GUNSMITH. To the left there was a company that made willow-strip furniture, while to the right there was a National Beauty Parlor outlet, complete with the familiar sign of two naked women holding up a large clock, the words LADY BE BEAUTIFUL flowing in red neon beneath the women’s feet.

  Bone stepped into Lavan’s shop, taking off the sunglasses as he entered, the movement of the door ringing a clattering little brass bell on the frame. The store was long and narrow, the floor surfaced in broad unvarnished planks, scuffed to dirty grey and lit by three pan lights dangling overhead. The walls were racked with rifles and shotguns in glass-front cases. Long glass-topped counters ran around three sides of the room displaying dozens of revolvers and automatic pistols.

  Lavan appeared, coming out from behind a curtain at the far end of the store. He was wearing dark trousers held up by leather braces over a slightly grimy, short-sleeved white shirt. Instead of shoes he was wearing slippers that made a swishing sound as he shuffled down the narrow aisle that ran behind the display counters.

  He reached the brown enamelled cash register at the front of the store and stood behind it as though it was a shield. The gunsmith was in his sixties with a round face, small wet
lips and thinning white hair, with small pale eyes blinking out from behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He was pot-bellied and on the short side. There were perspiration stains in the armpits of his shirt and he smelled faintly of garlic and cigars.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he said.

  ‘You are Franz Lavan?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a faint accent even in the single word – European, but not German. He looked at Bone closely. ‘I have seen you before, yes?’

  ‘No,’ Bone lied. He had been in the shop almost two weeks before, looking quite different than he did now.

  ‘I could have sworn,’ said Lavan, shaking his head. ‘I am good with faces.’

  Bone ignored the comment. ‘I understand that you are a quality gunsmith.’

  ‘How do you understand that?’

  ‘You have a reputation.’

  ‘With some people I do.’

  ‘I require a rifle.’

  Lavan waved a hand around the walls. ‘Take your choice.’

  ‘Show me that one,’ said Bone, pointing to the racked item he had seen on his first visit.

  ‘Show me two hundred dollars,’ said Lavan, his small pouched lips turning up wetly in what for him was probably a smile.

  Bone took out his wallet and did just that, placing four fifty-dollar bills on the glass counter. Beneath the bills in the cabinet was a trio of well-worn Spanish Astra automatic pistols, tagged at five dollars each. ‘Well?’ Bone asked. Lavan peered myopically down at the bills then turned and shuffled off down the aisle, pausing in front of one of the tall cabinets. He brought a long chain key ring out of his pocket, unlocked the cabinet and eased the weapon down. He brought it back to where Bone was still standing. Bone took it out of Lavan’s hands.