The Wilson Deception

by David O. Stewart

  Entering the elegant lobby of the Grand Hotel, Fraser caught sight of Cook talking with a small, balding man with a goatee. Holding a cane with a gloved hand, the smaller man looked at home in the deluxe setting. Cook—beefier and nowhere near as well-dressed—did not. The smaller man was doing the talking, gesturing with his cane while Cook glowered.

  Fraser remembered that glower. He decided to wait at the doorway for the disagreement to run its course.

  Cook turned sharply on his heel and came straight at him. Falling into step with him, Fraser asked, “You all right?”

  “Let’s go outside.” Cook slowed when they hit the cold air. At the edge of the hotel’s awning, the steady rain stopped him altogether. The moisture gave density to the powerful smells from the carriage horses drawn up closest to the hotel, and from the motorcars idling in the next lane over.

  Fraser waited without speaking.

  “The great Dr. Du Bois”—Cook waved back at the hotel—“chooses not to understand that people don’t function like machines, whenever he wants them to, however he wants them to.”

  Fraser waited.

  “All right, all right,” Cook finally said. “Sorry. You came here for something, not to watch me throw a tantrum. What’s going on?”

  “Allen Dulles wants to see you.”

  “He’s got another idea?” Cook looked interested.

  “Not one he shared with me. But he wants to meet you tonight at nine.” Fraser allowed himself a small smile. “He said the Eiffel Tower, on the second level.”

  Cook took a moment, then smiled. “You’re kidding. The Eiffel Tower? How young is this guy? He’s been reading too many John Buchan novels.”

  “I’ve never asked about his literary tastes. I figured you’d go to the North Pole to see him.”

  “Damn right. You coming?”

  “Speed, think about it. It’s the second level of the Eiffel Tower.”

  Cook grinned. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Still don’t like high places?”

  “Just the ones that are far off the ground.”

  “He really said the Eiffel Tower?”

  Friday night, February 21, 1919

  Sandbags huddled around the base of the tower, protecting the steelwork from any devious German assault. A few American soldiers wandered around the tower’s base, staring up through the intricate struts.

  Cook’s ears popped as the elevator rose to the second level. Four other sightseers, swaddled in scarves and coats, huddled in the elevator with him. When he stepped out onto the tower platform, he quickly pushed up the collar of his peacoat against the wind. He missed his gloves. He forgot them when he changed clothes in the rented garret Du Bois had arranged for him. At least the rain had stopped.

  Cook showed no reaction when he spotted Dulles, who was lecturing to a large group of people shifting from foot to foot, trying to keep circulation going in the frigid wind. Faces peered out from wool and fur. Some were flushed, others nearly blue with cold.

  Cook walked to the east side of the tower, which had a view across the Seine, then miles of twinkling lights stretching into the inky distance. Without a moon, stars shone diffident light on mist that clung to the river. Past the river, more than a hundred miles away, Joshua sat in the army prison camp. But for how much longer? Cook could feel it all getting away from him. He had to come up with something.

  Joshua had been a gentle boy, fond of every kind of animal. Even squirrels, which Cook considered mostly rat. Little Joshua would spread bread crumbs on the ground and lie down in the grass to wait for the squirrels. They would get closer, run away, get closer, then finally snatch the food and rush off. From a catalog, Aurelia ordered Joshua a book about birds. He learned their names and habits, recited their migration patterns. He never cared much for Speed’s baseball stories, but he listened as if bewitched when Aurelia told him about the time the passenger pigeons roosted for three days in her hometown. Just a few years ago, when the last one of those stupid birds died, Joshua had mourned them.

  Cook had worried that Joshua wouldn’t be tough enough, even encouraged him to go off to war. As soon as Joshua shipped out for Europe, Cook remembered the story of Abraham and Isaac. It wouldn’t let him go. At least Abraham could say that God told him he had to to sacrifice his own son. Who says no to God? What could Cook say—that vanity made him do it? That he was ready to sacrifice his son in pursuit of the mirage that his race would advance?

  He had to look it in the eye. He had been a fool, pure and simple, to push his son to fight.

  “Hello.” Dulles had left his group, which was clustered around the elevator, stomping and snorting. “You’re an easy chap to pick out.”

  “All over France.”

  Dulles stood next to him and took in the view. “Sorry for the melodramatic setting, but I’m devilishly busy. Since I was deputed to explain Monsieur Eiffel’s genius to some of the more provincial members of our delegation, I thought to save time by meeting you at this memorable yet easy-to-find spot.” He looked up at the top of the tower. “It’s quite something, you know. This tower caught Mata Hari. Yes, it’s true. Those clever French put a radio antenna way up at the top and used it to intercept her most secret messages. And then they hanged the poor woman.”

  Cook was cold and getting colder. “Why are we here?”

  “Yes, well.” Dulles cleared his throat and resumed his study of the eastern horizon. “I arranged to review the war record of your son, Sergeant Cook. He’s been a brave soldier. The French thought the world of him.”

  Cook nodded but didn’t turn. A few boats plowed through the river in both directions. “Can you help?”

  “I can’t arrange Joshua’s release. The only person with the power to do that is President Wilson, and he’s not even here in France. He’s coming back in a couple weeks, but I just don’t see it as a case that would move him right now.”

  “You mean, Joshua’s colored.”

  “Not solely, but that’s part of this picture.”

  Cook waited. Dulles had to have something on his mind.

  “I do have an alternative. I believe I can arrange for Sergeant Cook to be misplaced.”

  This time Cook turned his head. “Which means?”

  “The army will have to move him from his current . . . location so he can be shipped home. During that process, it might happen that he would be left unsupervised. The army misplaces things constantly. During the fighting, they misplaced entire regiments.”

  “And?”

  “Sergeant Cook need simply absent himself and make his way to a certain address I can provide. It’s in the Montmartre district here in Paris. That area has rather a wide variety of residents. He’s not likely to stand out there.”

  “Sounds dangerous. He could get shot as an escaped prisoner.”

  “I can’t entirely rule that out, of course. You may well prefer that he serve his sentence. I believe it was twenty years? You can see him when it’s over.”

  Dulles turned to leave, but Cook grabbed him by the bicep and squeezed hard. “Tell me the truth. Is it dangerous?”

  Dulles smiled with an unexpected benevolence. “Life, my dear man, is dangerous. Look at poor Monsieur Clemenceau, who was only leaving for work one morning.”

  “What happens when Joshua gets to that address?”

  “He’ll be safe there.” Cook let go of his arm. Dulles took from his pocket a folded paper. “For a time. I expect to make use of him, of course. I cannot yet say how. That part of the plan is not yet ripe. But I will. He must be prepared for that. If he is not”—Dulles assumed a facial expression that apparently was meant to be intimidating—“then the army will find him again, with all of the consequences that would flow from that discovery.”

  “This use you’ll make of him. Does it involve anything dangerous?”

  “Mr. Cook, I just answered that question. You seem to forget that Sergeant Cook—without any assistance from his father—has charged German trenches. I’m sure he’s equal
to any challenges he might confront in peacetime Paris.”

  When Cook accepted the paper, Dulles added, “Get word to me through Dr. Fraser within the next forty-eight hours. He seems a sound fellow. The good doctor can come and go at the Hotel Crillon without drawing the attention that you doubtless would. I can give him the details for the misplacing. Sergeant Cook will be transferred from Chaumont in three days. After that, I can’t help you.”

  Cook watched Dulles cross the platform and press the button to summon the elevator. He hated that young man for his cockiness, his education, his relatives. But he needed him. Lord, Cook thought, Dulles had better know his business.

  The younger man grew impatient waiting for the elevator. He walked over to the metal stairs and began trotting down them. After waiting a decent interval, Speed walked over to the stairs and looked down. They zigzagged back and forth and back and forth as far as he could see. Dulles was already a dozen flights down. Cook’s knees ached at the thought of using them. He moved in front of the elevator doors and settled in to wait.

  Chapter 12

  Monday, February 24, 1919

  French farm life, viewed between boxcar slats on a slow-moving train, charmed Joshua. The land looked soggy, weary of winter. Patches of snow were not yielding to spring. The sun cast long shadows as daylight slipped away.

  The vertical slices of countryside seemed quaintly luxurious, a world without artillery barrages or bayonets, without bullets or barbed wire. People didn’t piss or crap into buckets while others stood nearby, pretending it wasn’t happening. Noise, even in a rattling boxcar, knew its place, never presuming to overpower or terrify. The front lines, more than anything else, had been exhausting. Not just the lack of sleep, the constant digging and rebuilding of trenches, the crawling around on patrol, every sense jangling. It was having to do the opposite of what he wanted to do, what he should do, every moment of the day and night. Even when he wasn’t thinking about it or didn’t know he was thinking about it, some part of his brain was screaming for him to run away, get away from this insane place and never turn back. Controlling that scream, doing what was plainly stupid, wore a man out.

  He thought that was one reason he didn’t react right away when he was convicted. Though he hadn’t deserted, he’d wanted to. Maybe the army should punish him for that, for thinking wrong the whole time he was at war.

  Then again, after the front, prison wasn’t so bad. While under arrest, he no longer lived in an ooze that coated everything, crusted on his clothes and his skin, left him smelling of earth, cordite, excrement, and whatever gas either side most recently released. For the first time in months, he had no lice. The earth didn’t shudder with detonations. The sky didn’t recoil from terrible blasts. He could lie still, feel his muscles and his breathing. During exercise period the sun warmed his face. Breezes came, even to prison yards. After eighteen months of living with dozens of other soldiers, solitude was a joy. He had seen other prisoners reading. Maybe soon his mind would be quiet enough so he could read. Maybe then he’d be able to think, too.

  But when his father visited him, Joshua’s façade of resignation and acceptance crumbled. One look at the old man’s deeply lined face, at his pain and his anger and his disappointment, told Joshua that he’d been spinning lies for himself. The army was turning his life inside out, punishing him, punishing his family, for something he didn’t do. Suddenly, Joshua could feel the hurt because it sat across a wobbly table from him and throbbed. He and his father hadn’t said much. They never did. But that fierce old man brought him back.

  Squealing train brakes made Joshua wince. They were stopping for the eighth or ninth time. He had lost count. Either the French railways were in tatters or a trainload of American soldiers and prisoners commanded very low priority. Joshua watched an old woman walk alongside a cart pulled by a brown donkey. He couldn’t make out the cart’s load, but it seemed almost more than the donkey could manage. Perhaps, he wondered, the donkey used the same struggling stride no matter how heavy the load. A play for sympathy. If your job involved hauling a cart all day, that would be a smart move.

  The train started up with a lurch that seemed too dramatic for the low speeds the engineer favored. After another ten minutes, they pulled in to Troyes, pulling past the passenger platform in the dim twilight.

  The boxcar doors rumbled open, pulled from the outside by two of the three guards responsible for the half-dozen prisoners. They were changing trains, the guards yelled. The prisoners jumped down. The guards lined them up single file and herded them to the train station. Inside the station, Joshua’s shoulders relaxed with the smell of coffee and tobacco and the yeasty funk of people in damp clothes. He took the aromas in through his pores, storing up the sensations.

  A high wall clock with Roman numerals chimed the quarter hour. The civilians in the station were mostly women in faded head scarves. They paid little attention to the American prisoners, who were mushed out a side door of the station, leaving its warmth to the soldiers who entered behind them.

  A guard nudged Joshua and pointed him toward a vile-smelling pissoir. Two years before, he would have shied from pissing in semipublic. Another life. The cold air was sharp as it reached his private parts. He relaxed gradually, felt the warm flow. Standing, lost in his own regrets, he finished and closed his pants, then turned. The guard was gone.

  In his place stood a tall, fair-haired fellow with a trim mustache, hands in his pockets. He looked to be on his way to a cocktail party. “Sergeant Cook, walk a few steps with me.” He nodded away from the train station. When Joshua turned that way, the man added, “Don’t run. That would ruin a good deal of very careful planning.”

  They walked a few hundred feet, side by side, when the man slowed. A squared-off truck stood near the curb. In no hurry, the man opened the rear door and indicated Joshua should climb up.

  The truck fell dark when the door closed behind him, Joshua still on his knees on the truck bed. Hands thrust a bundle into his arms. A familiar deep voice told him to be quiet and listen.

  His father spoke, his voice tense and urgent in the darkness.

  “You have to make a decision, son, that will define your life. There’s only a minute to get you back onto the train, if that’s your choice. Then you go back to America like this, go to some military prison. They won’t tell me which. If that’s your choice, your mother and I’ll keep fighting for you, trying to get a pardon or a new trial or anything else that might help. But I’ve failed at everything so far. I have no idea if there’s anything left that would work.”

  “What’s this now?” Joshua held up the bundle in his arms. His eyes were adjusting to the dark. He could make out his father’s hunched form.

  “That’s the uniform of a Senegalese regiment of the French Army. You can put it on and board the next train from Troyes to Paris. There’s a ticket in the breast pocket. That young fellow who walked you over here would meet you at the Paris station and take you to a place. It’s supposed to be a safe place. I’ll be there. We’d wait there, wait for further instructions from that same man.”

  “Who’s he? He’s my age.”

  “Don’t be fooled. He’s some big shot in the government. Some say he’s a spy. He must be to make this happen. If you do this, if you put that uniform on, that man will have complete power over you. He’s going to ask you to do something for him. He won’t tell me what it is. It has to be dangerous or wrong or both. Nobody takes a colored soldier out of prison to do something that’s on the up-and-up. Doesn’t happen. So that’s your choice. And your time to decide is pretty much up.”

  Joshua sat back and started to unbutton his trousers. “Daddy, that’s not hardly a decision. Give me some room.” As he struggled in the dark with the buttons of the Senegalese soldier, he finally placed the smell in the truck. It was chocolate. It was a chocolate truck. He started laughing.

  Fraser leaned over the seated patient and placed the stethoscope against his chest. He didn’t usually see pati
ents this late at night.

  “Deep breath.” He listened. “Again.” He pulled the earpieces out and draped the instrument over his shoulders. “You were gassed.”

  “Just a trace, really. Not like others. I was slow putting the mask on, but those masks were bad. You couldn’t see anything.”

  “I’ve heard. That shrapnel wound give you trouble? Any infection?” Fraser pointed to the patient’s calf.

  “No. They sent me right back to the line with it. I think I got six hours off, most of it waiting to see the doc.”

  “Have you had the flu?”

  “Back last spring. Before we went into the line. Wasn’t bad. Not like it was later.”

  “Good. That may give you some immunity. It’s come back, here in Paris. Not as bad so far.”

  “No kidding?”

  Fraser looked down at his clipboard. “Do you have the dreams?”

  “The dreams?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Joshua took a breath. “Yeah, some nights.”

  “Do they keep you from sleeping?”

  “Some nights.”

  Fraser figured that meant most nights. He patted Joshua on the knee. “Considering what you’ve been through, Sergeant, you’re remarkably sound. Please dress and step into the office.”

  Speed stood by the office window, looking out at another dirty night, sleet making the streets gleam. He looked the question at Fraser.

  “He’s okay. Breathed some gas somewhere, but the symptoms may subside over time. Otherwise healthy, though not very well nourished.”

  Cook slapped his own flank. It made a solid thwack. “His father more than makes up for that.”

  Fraser smiled. “Good to see you joking, but his weight loss also matches him not sleeping so well. It happens with lots of them, but you should keep an eye on it. None come back like they were.”

  “He’s not shell-shocked?”

  “No, not like that. But he’s not like you and me, either. They’ve been through hell. Keep an eye on him.”