by Manhattan Mayhem: New Crime Stories From Mystery Writers of America
He pulled the truck up alongside the ship. Kohl handed the pistol to Cracco. It seemed hot, though that would be impossible on a night like this. He looked at it once, then put the weapon in his pocket as well.
“Are you ready?” Kohl asked.
For a moment, he wasn’t. Not at all. He wanted to hurry back home. But then he thought again: Payback.
And Luca Cracco nodded.
They stepped out into the cutting wind and walked to the edge of the pier, watching the crews secure the ship with ropes. A few minutes later the captain hobbled down the gangway.
“Bonsoir!” he called.
As it turned out, the guns were unnecessary. The captain, a grizzled fellow, wrapped in scarves and two jackets and chewing on a pipe, didn’t seem the least suspicious that a man who looked Italian and one who looked German were picking up cargo from war-ravaged Europe. And to the crew, these were just harried workers collecting a mundane shipment for their business.
Cracco spoke only marginal French, so it was Kohl who conversed with the man and pointed to Cracco, the consignee. Stomping his feet against the cold, the captain offered the bill of lading. The baker scrawled his name and took a carbon copy. Kohl paid the man in cash.
Five minutes later, seamen winched a one-by-one-meter crate to the pier and then muscled it into the back of the truck. Kohl tipped them and they hurried back to the warmth of the vessel.
Inside the bread truck, Kohl clicked on a flashlight and the two men examined the crate marked with Etienne et Fils Fabrication on the side. The German said, “Port of entry was New Jersey. Customs cleared it there.”
Cracco imagined a lethargic civil servant glancing into the packing crate at the device and not bothering to inspect further. Perhaps he hadn’t bothered even to look inside. Kohl pried the top off and they looked down at the small bakery oven, painted green. The only difference between this and a real oven was that the one they now examined included a large metal tank, as if for gas, to fire the burners.
Cracco whispered, “That’s it?”
Kohl said nothing but nodded, and his eyes shone as if he were proud of what was contained in the canister. As surely he was.
“I would have expected bigger,” Cracco said.
“Yes, yes. That’s the point, now, isn’t it? Let’s get back. We’ve been here too long as it is.”
Jack Murphy was deciding that shivers were creatures unto themselves. He couldn’t stop them. They roamed his body, from neck to calf. Some playful, some downright sadistic.
His teeth chattered, too.
The OSS agent was hiding behind the switching station where an old Hudson and Manhattan R. R. track split off from the New York Central main line. The spur ended on a shabby pier, about fifty yards south from where the two spies were taking delivery of the shipment that one of his better intelligence contacts had alerted him to. Murphy had been staking out the place since he’d left OSS headquarters that afternoon, battling the tear-inducing cold.
His contact had told him that the shipment was arriving on this dock on this vessel today, the only delivery in Manhattan, but had said nothing more. Hence his long and arduous vigil. Finally, to his relief, he’d watched the bakery truck come into view along Miller Highway and then turn onto the service road and ease carefully over the icy ground to the pier.
Cracco’s Bakery
Luca Cracco, Prop.
Est. 1938
Bakery truck, of course; because the shipment was an oven.
A New York Central locomotive, towing passengers headed home from the day’s work in Lower Manhattan, had just left the Spring Street terminal, south, to his left, and now passed by. The thick perfume of diesel fumes filled the air in its wake.
More shivers, which replicated and sent their brood to muscles he didn’t know he had.
Thunder and lightning, Murphy thought in Gaelic, rocking on his numb feet, clapping his hands together. Let’s get on with it, you damn spies!
How he wanted nothing more than to be back in his two-bedroom apartment on the East Side with his wife, Megan, and son, Padraig. Sitting before the fireplace. Sipping a whisky. And reading the book he’d started last night. A murder mystery—he loved them. It was The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie. Murphy was determined to figure out the villain’s identity before the detective.
His hands grew even more numb. If it came down to it—and he knew it would—could he pull out the .45 and shoot accurately? Yeah, he could. He’d master any muscle spasms. Traitors to their country had to pay.
Finally, at long last, the spies were now leaving with the oh-so-precious cargo.
Murphy couldn’t move in yet, though. He needed to find if they had accomplices. He staggered back to where his Ford Super Deluxe, dark red, was parked. It was the latest model available, ’42. Ford had stopped production of consumer cars that year, shifting to military vehicles, but had produced a few Super Deluxes. Murphy had managed to find one of the elegant coupes.
He climbed in and started the engine, which purred. He engaged the three-speed transmission and clicked on the radio. It was set to Mutual Broadcasting, one of his favorite stations—he and the family would tune in regularly to listen to The Adventures of Superman, The Return of Nick Carter, and his favorite, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. But now he wanted to hear the news about the war, so as he eased forward he used the car’s floor button to change the channels to find a station he wanted.
As Detroit’s diligent heater poured blessed warm air over him, Murphy crept along, several car lengths behind the truck as it made its way into the heart of Greenwich Village. Finally, it turned onto Bleecker Street, then into an alley behind Cracco’s Bakery.
Murphy continued past the alley and around the corner. He parked the Ford down the street and slipped into the alley behind the bakery, where the truck was idling.
The tall blond man—German, of course—stepped out and took a look around. A shorter round man—Italian, Cracco undoubtedly—joined him. With much effort they managed to unload the crate and get it through the back door of the shop. The German stepped out, holding a pistol, and regarded the alley closely. Murphy backed out of sight. Then the OSS agent heard the doors slam and the truck’s gears engage. A fast glance and he watched the Chevrolet leave. Murphy wasn’t concerned; he doubted the two men were going far. Probably just to park the truck.
He waited several minutes, then looked again. The alley was empty. He slipped to the back door of the bakery. Peering through the window, he could see the kitchen. It was dark, as was the rest of the place. He picked the lock and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He squinted against the dimness, noting the ovens, the trays, the pots. And he inhaled the comforting smell of yeast and fresh bread (thinking again of his wife, who baked every Sunday). The front of the shop was empty and dark, too.
Who are you, Signor Cracco? And why are you doing this? Is it patriotism, is it money, is it revenge?
No matter. Motives were irrelevant to Jack Murphy. If you were an enemy, for whatever reason, you had to pay the price.
He walked silently over the concrete floor to the crate. The top had been pried open and he lifted it, shone the flashlight inside. Well, yes, it was what he’d expected: quite a special delivery, indeed.
Saints preserve us!
He looked around and found a chair in the corner of the kitchen. He sat down and drew the pistol from his pocket. Sooner or later, the German and the Italian would return, possibly with accomplices. And Jack Murphy would be ready for them. The smell of yeast wafted over him once more. He was hungry. Soon he’d be back with Megan and Paddy and they—
“You!”
Murphy gasped as the voice hissed from behind him, close to his ear: “You, don’t move!” Italian accent. It would be Cracco. The man had been hiding in a pantry. A pantry Murphy hadn’t bothered to check. A gun barrel tapped the back of his head.
Murphy’s heart slamming fiercely, breathing fast. So both men hadn’t left. Only the Germa
n. Perhaps they suspected they’d been followed and had arranged this trap.
Jesus and Mary, he thought.
Cracco snatched the Colt from Murphy’s hand.
He started to turn, but the Italian ordered, “No.”
Murphy thought: He doesn’t want to watch my face when he shoots me. He heard the pistol in the spy’s hand click twice as he cocked it.
The OSS agent closed his eyes and chose the Lord’s Prayer for his last.
His posture ramrod straight, as always, Geller strode into the back of the bakery. The liver spots on his balding pate looked particularly prominent in the low yellow light. Luca Cracco was forever putting dimmer and dimmer bulbs into the kitchen’s fixtures. Electricity, like all else during wartime, had grown increasingly dear.
“Ah, this is where you work your magic,” said Geller, the man who’d set today’s events in motion with the note wrapped in a one-dollar bill.
Cracco said nothing.
“In the months we’ve been working together,” the man continued, walking up to an oven and peering into the open door, “I don’t believe I’ve ever complimented you on your bread, Luca.”
“I know I bake good bread. I don’t need praise.”
Words are never arrogant if they’re true.
Geller continued, “The wife and I like it very much. She makes French toast sometimes. You know what French toast is?”
“Of course.”
Heinrich Kohl, standing nearby, however, didn’t. Cracco explained about the egg-infused bread dish. Then added firmly, “But you must make it with butter. Not lard. If all you have is lard, do not bother.”
Geller nodded to the crate. “Let me see.”
Kohl opened the lid. The men looked down at the canister attached to the oven. All three men were somber, as if they were looking at a body in a casket.
Cracco said, “Uranium. That small amount will do what you say?”
“Yes, yes. There is enough there to turn New York City into a smoldering crater.”
I would have expected bigger …
This material, Cracco had learned, would be turned into what was called an atomic bomb, and it seemed like something out of the science-fiction fumetti comic books that were so popular in Italy. Kohl had been working on it in Heidelberg for several years, seven days a week, ever since the directive from the führer was handed down to construct such a weapon.
Cracco patted his pockets and then stopped abruptly. “Is it, I mean, can I smoke?”
Kohl laughed. “Yes.”
He handed out Camels and the men lit up.
Cracco inhaled deeply.
Quarto …
At that moment another man appeared in the doorway of the bakery’s kitchen. A trim man, with a military bearing like Geller’s. He looked around, mystified.
“General,” said the new arrival respectfully. He was speaking to Geller, whom everyone referred to that way, though he was retired from his job as the U.S. army chief of staff in Washington. Presently he was a civilian—second in command of the Office of Strategic Services. Wild Bill Donovan’s right-hand man.
“Sir. I—”
“At ease, Tom. It’ll all get explained.” Geller then asked Kohl, “Do we need to do anything with it?” Nodding at the canister in the crate.
“No, no, it’s perfectly safe. Well, if you open the lead casing, you’d die of radiation poisoning in a day or two, and, I promise you, that would not be a pleasant way to die.”
“But it won’t blow up, will it?”
“No. The uranium must be shaped carefully and machined to within micromillimeters and the vectors arranged in such a way that critical mass—”
“Fine, fine,” Geller muttered. “Just need to know if our boys drop it, we don’t incinerate the Western Hemisphere.”
“Nein. That won’t happen.”
“Sir?” Brandon asked again.
“Okay. Here’s the scoop, Tom. Luca Cracco and Heinrich Kohl. This is Tom Brandon. Head of the OSS office here in New York. Even though we don’t technically have an office here in New York.”
Cracco had no idea what this meant.
Geller continued, “Colonel Kohl, of the Abwehr, formerly with the Abwehr, was a professor of physics at the university in Heidelberg before the war. He’s spent the last four years working with a team there to make one of these atomic bomb things. We knew Hitler wanted one, but we weren’t too worried. Everybody in Washington thought the crazy bastard’d shot himself in the foot with his Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. You know, the law that kicked all non-Aryan professors out of colleges in Germany. Including most of their top atomic physicists. Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, and—”
Kohl said with a wry grin, “Yes, yes, how ironic it was! Hitler lost the very men who could determine the precise measure of mass to turn uranium 235 into a fissile material. And that is—”
Geller cut him off before the professor/colonel got technical again. “And they fled to the West. But der Führer insisted the work go on—with people like Heinrich here. Of course, he happened to have a conscience, unlike some of his colleagues. His goal all along was to keep working on this … what do you call it again?”
“Fissile material.”
“Yeah, that. But smuggle it to us, through the underground.” Geller glanced at Cracco. “Enter our amateur spy, here. About two months ago, Luca’s brother, Vincenzo, a soldier with the Italian army, was captured by the Nazis and thrown in a POW camp.”
Many people thought the Italians and Allies were enemies throughout the war. But that wasn’t the case. Mussolini was deposed in 1943, and the king of Italy and the new prime minister signed a secret armistice. Many Italians then began fighting alongside the American, English, and Indian forces against the Germans in Italy.
“Vincenzo escaped from the Nazi camp and headed to Germany to fight with the underground. When they learned about Luca, they put Vincenzo in touch with Heinrich, and they came up with a plan to smuggle this fashionable material—”
“Fissile.”
“—to America. Luca jumped at the chance to help. So they disguised the … material as part of an oven. And had it shipped to his bakery.”
Brandon said, “But, all respect, sir, why didn’t I hear about it? We could have …” The agent’s voice faded. He scowled. “You couldn’t tell me because you suspected the double agent we’ve been worried about might’ve been in our office here.”
Geller nodded. “German intelligence learned what Heinrich had done and that the shipment was on its way, when and where it would arrive. They alerted their agent in place. But we didn’t know who it was. It looked like the traitor could also be in your office here, Tom. So Luca and Heinrich were the bait. The double agent followed them—and they caught him.”
Brandon snapped, “It’s Jack Murphy, isn’t it? Jesus. Hell. I should’ve guessed. He never told me where his leads came from, how he knew about the operation. And he wanted to run it alone. So he could kill the two of them and ship the stuff back to Germany.”
Cracco said softly, “I wanted to shoot him. I nearly did. But that is what the Nazis would do. Americans would give him a fair trial. So, I spared him, tied him up.” He smiled. “I was rough with him, however, I have to say that.”
Brandon added, “I always wondered why Jack had a two-bedroom apartment.”
General Geller laughed harshly. “In Manhattan? On an OSS agent’s pay?”
“And had a fancy pocket watch. Oh, and he drove a ’42 Ford Deluxe.”
Cracco felt wounded. “You mean he did this for money?”
“Looks that way,” Geller said.
“Where is he?” Brandon’s voice was thick with pain.
“Paddy wagon’s taking him to federal lockup.” Geller offered a smile, which Cracco had learned was a rare occurrence. “Bill Donovan’s talked to Attorney General Biddle. We’re keeping Hoover in the dark. He’ll find out about Murphy’s indictment when he reads it in the Times
. If he reads the Times.”
“What are you going to do with this?” Brandon indicated the canister in the crate.
“You didn’t hear this from me, but it’s going out west. New Mexico. There’s a project going on that’s pretty hush-hush. There’ve been some setbacks, and they need more of this fissile stuff. That’s it? Fissile?”
“That’s right.”
Brandon was looking at Kohl when he asked with a frown, “They’re going to use it, that bomb, against Germany?”
Geller said, “Naw. I told Heinrich and Luca right up front: It won’t be dropped in Europe. No need, for one thing. Hitler’s done for. The Bulge was his last gasp. Germany’ll fall by May, at the latest. It’s the Japs that’re the problem. The Pacific Theater could go on for another year, we don’t stop ’em. This will.” A nod at the crate.
“Sir?” a crisp voice called from the doorway. “The team’s here.”
Geller said, “Inside, boys.”
Three large men in overcoats stepped into the kitchen.
Geller said, “All right, get this to Fort Dix, over in New Jersey. We’ve got a special train headed to New Mexico tonight. Colonel Kohl will go with you. There are some scientists there who can use his help. Oh, and whatever the colonel says, I’ll have the stripes of anybody who drops it.”
“Yes, sir!”
Cracco watched three soldiers lift the crate off the floor and stagger outside with it.
Kohl turned to Cracco. “Well, my friend, it’s been a short acquaintance, though a productive one. I think I am going to like this country. The politics, the freedom, the culture … And, more important,” the man said with a serious frown that soon blossomed into a smile, “restaurants where you can find an entire meal behind little glass windows. This clearly is a paradise on earth!”