How to Find Your Way in the Dark

by Derek B. Miller

  “A ruse.”

  “We know because Major Whittlesey survived and told the story. So, we know exactly what happened,” Mirabelle had explained.

  “Right, yeah, OK, after the fact. But in the middle of the shelling? How could the Americans know the message came from the other Americans and not from the Germans?”

  “Well, how would they know Major Whittlesey was in command? Maybe Lieutenant Bob Billingham or someone else might have been in charge. The Germans wouldn’t have known the name of the commanding officer.”

  Sheldon had nodded, but this hadn’t felt like a complete answer.

  “And besides,” she said, on a roll. “Where would they have gotten the stationery?”

  * * *

  In November of 1938, soon after Mirabelle had learned the story of Cher Ami from Mr. Knightly, Hitler passed a law forbidding Jews from owning carrier pigeons.

  * * *

  Sheldon walked out of the lake and left the man with the mustache in peace with his lemonade. Mr. Knightly and Major Whittlesey, Mirabelle and Hitler, Cher Ami and Miriam at the reception desk had crashed into one another to give Sheldon his idea.

  He now had pigeons to free and messages to send.

  * * *

  Back in his room, he removed the stolen Grossinger’s stationery from his pocket. He had no typewriter like Abe had had, so handwriting would have to do. He wrote two letters. The first was to Lorenzo from Thaleman. The other was from Thaleman to Lorenzo. They weren’t supposed to know each other, and both of them were waiting on Sir-Lies-a-Lot to serve as the broker—the middleman. On the other hand, they were both resourceful, and it wasn’t impossible that they could find each other. So, if they got letters from each other, it would be strange but not impossible. Lorenzo would know the jewels were missing and Thaleman—if he was still in the hotel—would know that Miriam’s boyfriend hadn’t shown up yet.

  * * *

  Lorenzo to Thaleman: “Meet me at the Lansman’s Hotel and Country Club at nine p.m. A kid named Sheldon Horowitz will be onstage doing a comedy thing. De Marco’s missing and the stuff is too. We need to talk. We know you didn’t take it. I have a mustache and a ring. Find me at the bar.”

  * * *

  Thaleman to Lorenzo, sent at the same time: “I’m the buyer. De Marco hasn’t shown up. My people don’t like problems. Meet me at the Lansman’s Hotel and Country Club at nine p.m. A kid named Sheldon Horowitz will be onstage doing a comedy thing. Go to the bar. I know who you are; I’ll explain how later. I’ll find you.”

  * * *

  Sheldon put the two fake messages into Grossinger’s envelopes, sealed them, and placed them inside the jacket pocket of his bellhop uniform with his gun—just in case. He’d swing by the buffet for a bite and a glass of water, and then resume his station at reception as he was supposed to. He already knew the room numbers of his two marks. When he could be the most inconspicuous, Sheldon would slip the envelopes into their respective mail slots; the men would collect them during the day or else another bellhop would deliver them by hand. At that point, the men would become stool pigeons—decoys to get them out of their rooms so Sheldon could carry out the material segment of his master plan.

  Sheldon Horowitz: Live

  IT WAS TUESDAY, JULY 8, OF 1941 and almost 8:30 at night. Lenny was long gone for his gig at Lansman’s, and Sheldon was sitting near reception. He wanted to see Lorenzo leave for Lansman’s and he did. He even tipped his hat and wished him a good evening to see whether Lorenzo might recognize him, but there was no indication of it.

  Sheldon didn’t know what Thaleman looked like. Until Thaleman left, however, there was nothing Sheldon could do. He wanted it all done in one smooth gesture. The letter in the pigeonhole was gone so Sheldon surmised that he, like Lorenzo, had the invitation to the club. Until Thaleman showed up, though, Sheldon had nothing to do.

  Miriam had the night off, and since no one was checking in at 8:30 on a Tuesday, it was a slow evening. Sheldon snagged a newspaper to keep himself company. The only one he could find in the lobby was the two-cent Daily News. It had the largest headline Sheldon had ever seen: U.S. OCCUPIES ICELAND; MARINES LAND. The photo below showed British troops in Bren gun carriers carrying out maneuvers in the shadow of Iceland’s snowcapped mountains. Iceland was a possible roost for Hitler’s bombers, and a week earlier, the secretary of the navy, William Franklin Knox, had said that “the time to use the navy to clear the Atlantic of the German menace is now.” Congress hadn’t agreed to deploying troops outside the Western Hemisphere so Roosevelt did it anyway, claiming Iceland was part of the Western Hemisphere because it was west of the prime meridian. He broke the news to Congress after the fact and announced that marines had landed in Iceland a full 2,488 air miles away from New York in order to gradually replace the Commonwealth troops—mostly Canadian—who had occupied Iceland when Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway in April of 1940.

  Roosevelt argued that a Nazi seizure of Iceland, which was now inside the German blockade zone, would be a threat to America’s national security. Sheldon read the president’s announcement to Congress: “As Commander-in-Chief, I have consequently issued orders to the Navy that all necessary steps be taken to insure the safety of communications and approaches between Iceland and the United States, as well as on the seas between the United States and all other strategic outposts.”

  Congress was furious. The isolationists in both parties said that since Roosevelt couldn’t secure a declaration of war from Congress he was therefore “trying back-door methods” and trying to “trick people into war.”

  Sheldon read that there were fifty to sixty thousand Canadian and British troops on Iceland.

  Abe was one of them.

  Sheldon couldn’t picture Iceland. The only land Sheldon could imagine without trees was a desert and he knew that Iceland wasn’t a desert. He imagined blondes on camels crossing snow in the presence of volcanos. He’d never seen any pictures in the newspapers, and since he didn’t go to the movies, he’d never seen any newsreels. From looking at maps, he knew it was small, and Abe had written once saying that Iceland was rugged and beautiful and strange like the moon. “A place with a midnight sun in the summer and no trees anywhere.”

  The Germans were moving west. Abe was moving east to meet them.

  * * *

  Abe’s last letter to Sheldon, back in March of 1941, had said that he was going to Iceland because it was closer to the action and that he and his buddy Louis Bouchard were prepared for it, because up until then, it had been boring as hell in Halifax.

  Abe had met Louis Bouchard during their air force training in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in late 1939—soon after he had left Hartford behind, unable to contain himself and what he had done any longer. Louis was a Québécois from Montreal and was the calmest, quietest, most relaxed individual Abe had ever met. Nothing rattled him, annoyed him, angered him, or otherwise made him scream out of frustration or fear. Twenty-two at the time, he was six foot two and broad but not massive. Louis’s physical ability to look over the entire world seemed to Abe like a metaphor for his disposition. During their intensive period of air training, Abe gravitated to Louis’s demeanor the way a swimmer reaches for a raft.

  Abe struggled with basic training. The problems were not physical. Abe was fit, fast, aggressive, and determined. He was the only Jew he knew who was preparing for combat, and while no one else there knew or—if they did—cared, this felt significant to Abe; he needed to be living proof that everything Goebbels said about Jews being weak and soft and evolutionarily inferior was a lie.

  Because it was a lie. But truth wasn’t enough. Truth needed to be demonstrated.

  The problem for Abe with basic training was obeying orders and being respectful of authority. This is where Louis’s calm demeanor and temperate attitude were a godsend to Abe.

  Their first day of training was on a blustery Canadian November day that was as gray as the skies in the newsreels. It was damp and cold too, a damp th
at settled on Abe’s face like a mask and seemed to be willing itself into his wool sweater and thin jacket.

  There were twenty young men on the tarmac of the airfield. The officer who stood in front of them was barely older than Abe and looked younger on account of his fair skin and slender shoulders. He was effete in the way that enlisted men always thought officers were. Unlike them, he stood in a thick bomber jacket with a fleece collar. His legs were apart in a vain attempt to project authority. To his right was a giant of a man, a towering oaf who cast a shadow with his brow. They learned that the giant’s name was Gallagher. He was a staff sergeant with dead eyes and black hair who wore the same outfit as the recruits. The differences between them were the chevrons on his arm and the fifteen years spent earning them.

  “This is Sergeant Gallagher,” said the lieutenant, whose last name turned out to be Clive. “Sergeant Gallagher has served in the RCAF for fourteen years starting in 1927. He has flown over the Arctic, the Atlantic, and survived not one but two crashes—one of them at sea off Labrador, where he was in near-freezing water for more than four hours, during which time he kept warm enough to stay alive by using wreckage from the craft and techniques we will be teaching you. His search-and-rescue flight teams have saved twenty-seven American, Canadian, and British sailors and aviators. He is our rock.

  “I, on the other hand, was commissioned as a second lieutenant three weeks ago. I have never been stationed anywhere but here, and I have a total of six hours of flight training. I have never seen combat. I have never rescued anyone, killed anyone, or been wet for a sustained period of time. I will soon be coordinating troop arrangements with Britain’s Royal Air Force Coastal Command, which means it is unlikely I will ever save or rescue or kill anyone. I am also short and weak. I have nothing on Sergeant Gallagher except rank, youth, and beauty. Sergeant,” he said, turning to the expressionless mass on his right, “drop and give me twenty.”

  The old aviator dropped to the ground and counted off twenty push-ups.

  Sheldon read how Abe stared at Gallagher’s hands that dug into the pebbles on the asphalt, all of that upper body mass now being used against him as he had to fight gravity and the sharp edges of stones. Drizzle collected on the thick strands of his black hair as he shouted out the reps. When he was done, he rose, breathing only slightly harder, and said nothing.

  “Rank outranks experience,” said Lieutenant Clive. “We follow the chain of command. No one knows this better than men with experience. We do it because people above us know the big picture. Not because they’re smarter or better than we are, although they might be. We all play our parts to make the machine work, and if we don’t, it isn’t a machine. Sergeant Gallagher will now lead you on a ten-kilometer run after which you will be assigned to paint the latrines. Fall out.”

  Abe found the honesty of all this clarifying. It also worked on his brain in a way he could understand. If Gallagher could take it, so could Abe. If Gallagher could run it, climb it, suffer it, so could Abe. He might never be as big and strong but that wasn’t the point. The point was acting the man.

  That night and every night after—with Louis always on hand to listen to a confidential complaint or a rant about military logic—Abe collapsed into an exhausted heap and caught moments of sleep throughout the day when it was possible. He shot a few guns, parachuted from a few planes, and spent a surprising amount of time wet given that this was supposed to be the air force. If this was what it took to be able to fight, though, he was prepared to do it.

  When basic was over, they trained on aircraft. That was when everyone specialized. That was also when Abe’s struggle ended and the fun began.

  The sorties that the Canadians flew out of Halifax weren’t finding or sinking many German ships or U-boats. It happened periodically, but so far it hadn’t happened to his crew, and Abe was itching to drop bombs. “The Nazi swastika really makes the perfect bull’s-eye, don’t you think?” Abe had asked Louis. “And they helpfully put it everywhere!”

  If Abe was in Iceland and American forces were going to replace him, Sheldon wondered where Abe might go next. Was it too late for him to come home and join the U.S. military? Sheldon didn’t know how all that worked. He liked the idea, though, that Abe was the first American there—that he was leading the charge.

  * * *

  Sheldon sat at Grossinger’s and thought again of joining Abe, perhaps after killing Lorenzo or getting him locked up.

  But he couldn’t because America was still not in the war.

  * * *

  Six children ran out of the dining room and started playing tag in the lobby. It was a good space for this but probably not an appropriate one. Sheldon looked around and noticed he was the only one who might pass for an adult and decided to ignore them.

  He checked the watch Mirabelle had given him. It was 8:43. Thaleman’s key still wasn’t there and that worried Sheldon. It was true that guests often forgot and kept their keys in their bags when they left, but they were discouraged from doing so, and they were told there was a significant fine for losing them. In this case, though, it occurred to him that Thaleman might not want to leave his key at the desk on account of having the wads of cash in his room that he was going to use to buy the stolen jewels. He’d know the hotel staff would be able to get in there, but why would the staff go in there at night? Grossinger’s didn’t offer a turndown service, and if he put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle, his room was about as safe as it could be.

  Ben Adelman walked into the lobby and waved the children out. He sat down on a tall stool beside Sheldon.

  “Quiet night?” he asked.

  Sheldon was sure Ben or his team had already searched his room. The question was whether Ben had searched the empty room across the hallway from Mrs. Ullman’s room too. If he had, Sheldon’s plan wasn’t going to work out so well.

  “Except for the kids,” Sheldon said.

  “Where’s your friend Lenny?”

  “He has the night off. He wants to be the next Jack Benny or George Burns or whatever.”

  “Where’s he performing?” Ben asked.

  “I forget the name,” Sheldon lied.

  “Not you? You don’t want to tickle everyone’s funny bones?”

  Sheldon wasn’t sure if Ben was only toying with him or not. He glanced at the doors to see if any police were rolling up.

  “I don’t think the world’s very funny right now,” Sheldon said.

  “No,” Ben said, slightly taken aback. “You a reader?”

  “You mean the papers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess I am, yeah. I got an older cousin in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He writes me letters. I like to keep up.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Do you think we should fight the Nazis? Most people don’t.”

  “Of course we should.”

  “Why don’t we say so?”

  “Who?”

  “Jews.”

  “Ah.”

  The annoying children came back. They were chasing a barefoot eight-year-old in a blue sundress with thin straps at the shoulders. She ran flat-out through the hallway faster than the speed of sound if Ben’s efforts to yell after her were any measure. Four seconds later, the entire posse blurred past them. Ben didn’t bother this time.

  Sheldon continued to look at him for an answer.

  “If the Jews spoke up, what would we ask for? A resolution? A law? A strongly worded letter to Hitler? Of course not. We’d ask for war. There’s no half measure with those people. If we asked for war, it would look like the Jews were trying to push America into an unpopular war, which is exactly what the Nazis are saying and it isn’t true. It could be made to look like we’re trying to do it for other Jews, that we’re putting Jews before America.”

  “But it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the right thing for America too. And we’re Americans. Why are we the only Americans not allowed to have an opinion?”

  “It won’t sound like
we’re Americans with opinions. It might sound like Jews plan to make money from the war, or else we’re closer to the people in Europe than our neighbors. Or else it’ll reinforce what Hitler’s saying, that all of this was a Jewish plot, or . . . whatever. I don’t know. I’m not Goebbels. If we speak, though, he’ll say something and it’ll look bad.”

  “So . . . Jews are getting murdered by the tens or hundreds of thousands and our best move is to shut up?”

  Ben didn’t have an answer for that.

  “This Goebbels guy. He’s smarter than all of us?”

  “He’s got a better seat at the table. I was studying to be a lawyer once . . .” He faded off and then changed the subject. “How old are you?”

  “Almost fifteen.”

  “Why are you thinking about this so much?”

  “I walk around here and my only thought is, Why isn’t everyone talking about it? It’s all comedy, music, food, and sex. It’s weird.”

  “It is weird,” Ben admitted.

  Sheldon let out a long exhale. “How’s it going with the investigation?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Me in particular or—anyone?”

  “Is there a reason I wouldn’t tell you in particular?”

  That had been a bad, bad question. Why had he asked that question? Because he wanted to know the answer, that’s why. But that is not a good enough reason to ask a question.

  “I’m just kidding,” Ben said with a chuckle, to Sheldon’s eternal relief. “But really, I can’t tell you.”

  “That’s fine,” Sheldon said, no longer interested.