by Blum, Howard
When the phone finally rang, it was Barnitz, and his news was one more blow. An express wagon had pulled up to the boardinghouse, and a trunk had been loaded into the rear. A couple of detectives had gone off in pursuit, and when the driver stopped to make another pickup, one of the officers vaulted into the back. “There’s a plain calling-card on the trunk,” Barnitz reported. “It reads ‘Walter Scholz.’ ”
Immediately Tom’s low spirits sank deeper. Scholz was Fay’s roommate, the companion they had seen accompany him on two occasions into the woods. If Scholz was packing his belongings and getting ready to move on, then it seemed probable that Fay would be heading off, too. If he hadn’t already fled.
Tom asked where the trunk was delivered.
A storage warehouse in Weehawken, Barnitz said.
Tom had to make a decision. He could grab the trunk. It might, after all, contain a clue to where Fay had gone to ground. For that matter, the twenty-five pounds of TNT could be inside. That would be another reason to take possession; hesitate, and there was always the small chance that the warehouse could be reduced to a smoldering hole in the ground.
Tom told Barnitz that he wanted men outside the warehouse in case Scholz picked up his trunk. He also wanted the watch on the boardinghouse to continue. Round-the-clock, he ordered.
It was a cold, quiet afternoon in Weehawken, and Barnitz’s men cursed the icy weather and the tedium.
IN NEW YORK, THE OTHER team was on the move.
When the clock maker left his office just before noon, he had headed out on a meandering route across lower Manhattan. Kienzle went into one downtown building after another, and two detectives, keeping a careful distance, went in after him each time. But it was all business; in one office, the clocks were running too fast, in another too slow. The old man made the necessary mechanical corrections and then continued on.
As Tom received this discouraging report, he began to wish that he could adjust time too. Instead, he continued to hear it ticking ominously away. How soon, he wondered, before the next fire broke out on a transport ship?
It was after five when the exhausted surveillance team trailed Kienzle into the lobby of the Equitable Building on lower Broadway. Bored after the long, uneventful day, they watched him head toward the elevators. No doubt he’d be going to another office to repair another clock, the team predicted as they waited by the front doors and made a big show of focusing their attention on the building directory.
Kienzle let one elevator pass without boarding. Then another. And in the next wonderful moment the watchers were all at once on full alert: Fay and Scholz, beaming smiles on their faces, had just bounded across the lobby to greet the clock maker.
There was a brief conversation that the detectives could only wish they could hear; and then Fay, after excusing himself, walked to the row of telephone booths on the other side of the lobby. When he closed the door to make a call, Detective Sterett hurried into the next booth.
The partition was thin, and the attentive detective could hear every word. Fay was talking to someone in the garage in Weehawken, asking if a package had been delivered. “It hasn’t, eh?” he heard Fay say before hanging up the receiver.
The next moment Fay was back with his two friends, and the trio went off to a noisy restaurant on Fulton Street for dinner. The detectives took a table far across the room. They watched enviously as plates heaped with steaks and chops were consumed all around them, but they knew Captain Tunney would have their heads if they dared to bill the department for a full dinner. Instead, they spent well over an hour nursing a single mug of beer apiece, at the same time dodging the withering glances the waiter was shooting at them.
After dinner, the clock maker said his good-byes, and the two young men went off for a night on the town. They wound up at the Grand Central Palace, a block-long fortress of a building on Lexington Avenue between Forty-Sixth and Forty-Seventh Streets that had been erected over the New York Central tracks leading into Grand Central Terminal.
The cavernous ground floor of the Palace was jumping; a bar stretched across one wall, and up front on the stage a band was playing. The handsome Fay quickly found a slinky blonde to dance with, and she waved to a friend who seemed happy to be with Scholz.
The detectives crowded around the bar, sticking to nickel beers and keeping their eyes fixed on the dance floor. Fay kept buying the women drinks, and the couples were getting friendly. In a sudden moment of panic, Sterett wondered what they should do if the two Germans split up, each going off with a woman. While the others kept vigil from their seats at the bar, he hurried off to call the captain.
“Fay!” Tom shouted, his voice exploding through the receiver and startling the detective. “He’s our man. You stick with him no matter what.” If they lost Fay again, Tom made it clear, heads would roll.
But it wasn’t long after midnight that both Fay and Scholz, looking a bit worse for wear and with no women in tow, were back at the Weehawken boardinghouse. Barnitz was parked down the block, and when he saw the two Germans going in the front door, he uttered a silent prayer of thanks. The case was finally back on track. Fay hadn’t gone to ground, and everything was once again possible. “I could’ve kissed them both,” he reported to Tom, who was feeling precisely the same way.
“POKING THE BEAR WITH A stick” was what detectives called it. It meant taking the initiative, supplying the stimulus that could push a stalled case forward. If it worked, the suspects would be goaded into action, and then you’d have them cold.
It also was a tactic, Tom had learned firsthand, that had its risks. The “bear” could panic and run. Or, once provoked, he could turn mean, and when that happened there was no telling whom he’d lash out at. But a case where the poking would be done with a stick of TNT gave Tom a whole new set of powerful reasons for reconsidering this strategy.
Still, Fay’s abrupt disappearance had unnerved Tom, and the discovery of Scholz’s packed trunk had only made things worse. He was certain the two men were preparing to leave town. He was not willing to gamble that when they did, his men would be able to find them again. Better to force the issue, he decided, while we still have them close at hand.
Carl Wettig, the war supplies exporter whose conversation with the French military attaché had originally set the entire investigation in motion, was once again recruited to help. Following Tom’s earlier instructions, he had purchased the dynamite that was ultimately delivered to Fay’s boardinghouse. Now for an encore Tom wanted him to play the persistent, hustling businessman.
Wettig telephoned Fay and suggested that they go off together and test the dynamite. Reading the script Tom had written, he promised that if Fay was satisfied, he’d get him all he needed. And at a good price, too, he ad-libbed to Tom’s delight.
When Wettig arrived at the boardinghouse the next afternoon, Tom’s watchers were down the block in a parked sedan, silently cheering him on.
“He’s in,” Barnitz reported to Tom.
Tom said he wanted to be told the moment Wettig left, and then abruptly hung up the phone. He tried to stay calm, but he could not help feeling that it had been a mistake to throw Wettig back into the middle of the operation. This wasn’t a job for an amateur. He’d be skittish. They’d see through him. I should’ve used Barnitz, Tom chided himself.
As soon as he had the thought, Tom realized it was foolishness. One look, and they’d make Barnitz as a copper. Fay already knew Wettig. He trusted him. This will work, Tom decided, desperately trying to convince himself.
But now Wettig was inside the house, and anything could be happening. Tom waited, and waited. Then his phone rang: Fay and Scholz had walked out the front door, and Wettig was trailing right along. “One big happy family,” Barnitz reported gaily.
Fay led the way to the streetcar line. A car passed, but he didn’t signal for it to stop. Then another car, and still no signal.
He’s wary, Barnitz thought as he watched from his sedan. He suspects something.
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nbsp; A third car approached, and Fay gave a small wave of his hand and it stopped. He gestured for Scholz and Wettig to board first, and at the very last moment, as the doors were closing, he jumped inside.
Barnitz cursed. He had promised the captain they’d have a man with Wettig at all times, only he hadn’t counted on this.
Then he saw Detective Pat Walsh. He’d been in an alley behind the boardinghouse, covering a rear door, and he was sprinting up the block like a track star to the next streetcar stop. When the door opened, Walsh climbed aboard and took a seat right behind Wettig.
Barnitz’s black sedan followed the streetcar. As it continued past the shops to the outskirts of town, Barnitz realized Fay was on his way to the now-familiar woods.
Barnitz hung back; there was no rush. He let three or four vehicles get between him and the streetcar.
He pulled up across from the woods just in time to see the three men walking through the underbrush and heading into the deep forest. This was how he’d lost Fay the last time, and Tom had given precise instructions so it wouldn’t happen again.
Barnitz ordered the team to move in. There were six detectives and two Weehawken cops. Cautiously, each step a careful, stealthy undertaking, the officers slowly spread out across the woods in a wide circle. The three Germans were trapped in the middle. Using the trees for cover, the officers held their positions.
Fay emerged from a ramshackle wooden shed. He had a package in one hand, and a hammer in the other. He took a short brown stick of TNT out of the package and broke off a small fragment, about the size of a coin, with his fingers. He placed the piece of explosive on the surface of a broad, flat rock.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said to the two other men. They immediately started backing away.
In one quick move, Fay raised the hammer high above his head and brought it crashing down against the tiny chunk of TNT.
Bang! The noise echoed through the woods like a gunshot. The handle of the hammer snapped off in Fay’s hand.
Barnitz had seen enough. He charged out of the trees, his revolver raised. The other officers followed. “You’re under arrest!” Barnitz shouted.
“Who is in charge of you all?” Fay asked. He had recovered from the initial surprise with impressive speed.
“I am,” Barnitz answered.
“Well, I will tell you I am not going to be put under arrest,” Fay said defiantly.
Barnitz stared at him with stony indifference. He wanted to see where this would go.
“If I am, great people will suffer!” Fay insisted, his voice suddenly rising. “You will surely have war. It cannot be—it is impossible,” he announced with genuine indignation.
“I will give you any amount of money if you will let me go,” Fay continued. He spoke grudgingly, as if his offer were a great kindness.
“How much will you give me?” Barnitz asked. He was eager to play along. Up to now, they’d had a lot of suspicions but little hard evidence. And a shrewd lawyer could probably make the charge for illegal possession of explosives disappear.
“All you want—any amount!”
“Fifty thousand?”
“Yes, fifty thousand, if you want it.”
“Got it with you?” Barnitz challenged.
“No, I haven’t got it all, but I can get it. I’ll pay you a hundred dollars now as a guarantee, and I’ll give you the balance at noon tomorrow.”
Barnitz called over two of his detectives. He wanted witnesses.
“All right, where’s your money?” he demanded.
Fay took some bills from his pocket, counted out a hundred dollars, and handed the money to Barnitz.
Barnitz took the money, and made a big show of recounting it in front of the men. Then he put the bills in his suit pocket, and slapped handcuffs on Fay’s wrists.
Twenty minutes later, Fay was being booked at the Weehawken police station. The charge—attempted bribery.
Chapter 40
The interrogation room at headquarters had once been a subbasement supply closet, and the long walk downstairs felt like a descent into the dark depths of hell itself. Two officers led the handcuffed Fay down the flights of stairs and roughly seated him on a stool in the middle of the room. Then they left, slamming the steel door behind them.
Tom waited outside, purposely letting the minutes slowly pass. He wanted Fay to see the dried streaks of blood on the walls, and give them some thought. Threats weren’t always necessary; imagination, he had learned, could often be a much more persuasive weapon.
There were other, more tangible arguments available to Tom, too. In the days following the arrest for bribery, his men had searched Fay’s room at the boardinghouse and torn apart the garage.
In addition to Wettig’s TNT, they found another 25 sticks of the explosive, 450 pounds of chlorate of potash, 400 percussion caps, and 200 bomb cylinders. Nailed above Fay’s desk at the boardinghouse was a detailed chart of New York Harbor, and in the top drawer of his dresser were the ownership papers for a motorboat that they traced to a slip opposite West Forty-Second Street. Tom felt pretty sure he was finally on the right path. And the regulation German army pistol hidden beneath the bed had left Tom convinced he knew whom Fay was working for.
The contents of Robert Fay’s suitcases included two maps of the harbor, rudder bomb components, a wig, two false mustaches, and an atlas.
(Thomas J. Tunney, Throttled!)
But what tied all the evidence together into one tight, incriminating knot was the discovery of dozens of intricate mechanisms for bombs. The devices were unlike any Tom had ever seen. They were sophisticated pieces of engineering, significantly more advanced in both workmanship and design than the cigar bombs.
Were the new devices to be used by the same group that had planted the bombs on the Kirkoswald? Or were they the weapons of a separate network planning its own, independent attacks? And how did they plan to smuggle them onto the targeted boats? No less a puzzle, how did the bombs even work? Tom had studied the mechanisms for hours and still could not figure out how the explosive charge would be detonated.
He had many questions, and after giving Fay some time alone with his thoughts, he entered the interrogation room. Tom loomed above Fay like a colossus; and the resigned look set firmly on his face announced that he was determined to get the answers he wanted, one way or another.
THE THIRD DEGREE WAS NOT necessary. Tom asked one question, and Fay’s confession came pouring out. He spoke as easily as if he were sharing the story of his life with a stranger he’d just met in a bar.
A year ago, Fay began, he’d been a German army lieutenant fighting in the muddy trenches in France when he had an epiphany. What if, it occurred to him as shells rained down, the French seventy-fives and the British eighteen-pounders ran out of ammunition? What if the enemy artillery batteries couldn’t obtain more shells from America? What if the flotilla of munitions boats heading out from New York never arrived in France?
Once these sudden, unexpected speculations had popped into his head, he found he couldn’t let them go. Before the war, he had been an engineer. A rather accomplished one, he told Tom as if simply stating a fact. He’d always loved tinkering, coming up with new inventions. Now, he realized, he needed to invent a machine that could save his life. He was in the middle of a roaring battlefield, yet he knew his future, his very survival, depended upon his immersing himself in the task. He went to work.
Fay’s commander was impressed enough with the drawings he made to summon the battalion intelligence officer. When this officer learned that Fay had lived in America before the war and spoke fluent English, he sent a cable to the headquarters on Königsplatz.
A week later, Fay was in Berlin. One team of Abteilung IIIB officers studied his drawings, while another, English-speaking contingent tried to trip him up with questions about finding certain addresses in New York and whether he could name the branches of the federal government.
When the spymasters were satisfied, Fay joked to
Tom, “they told me to ‘Go west, young man.’ ” A boat from Norway, a phony passport stamped by the U.S. immigration authorities, and Fay was walking the streets of New York, rejoicing that he’d outsmarted fate. His life would never be crushed out by an Allied shell. He’d escaped the front line and become a spy.
His first operational decision was to recruit his brother-in-law. Walter Scholz had been working as a gardener on a Connecticut estate, and after Fay flashed the thick roll of dollars they’d given him in Berlin, it didn’t take much discussion to persuade Scholz that planting bombs was a lot more lucrative than planting flowers.
As for Dr. Kienzle, at the start of the war the clock maker had written to the Foreign Office to volunteer his services in America. Before Fay had left Berlin, his Abteilung IIIB handlers had provided the old man’s name as a reliable contact.
When Fay informed Kienzle at their initial meeting that he needed explosives, the clock maker started making inquiries. He first approached his friend Max Breitung, and from there the request for dynamite was passed dutifully along among a shady entourage of German sympathizers until it finally reached Wettig.
“The next thing I knew,” a crestfallen Fay concluded his tale, “I was standing in the woods and an army of detectives came charging from out of nowhere, waving their revolvers, and shouting that I was under arrest.”
BUT IT WAS A DIFFERENT Fay who told Tom about his invention. He was proud of his work, and he spoke with the confident authority of a man who knew he’d created a unique and effective weapon.
The core of the bomb, he said, was a clockwork mechanism designed to fire two rifle cartridges into a chamber filled with ninety pounds of TNT.