Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  The agent screwed his eyes into confusion. “Did I miss something in my presentation?” The agent turned to his partner, who shook an athlete’s blockish head, then back to Eddie. “Crossing state lines in flight makes your Texas offense federal. That makes you ours. Pack your bags; we’re leaving.”

  Eddie said, “We’re in the Canary Islands—if I had a map I’d show you. So far these belong to General Franco, so you’ll need a note or something from him.”

  Hard frown and squared jaw, just like in the newsreels. “You won’t go willingly?”

  “My people are in the hospital. Remember?” Eddie worked on a civil tone he didn’t find. “You don’t pay their bills; this job does. I intend to keep it.”

  “Erich Schroeder. German national. You know him?”

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  “And what is your association?”

  “He saved me from some Brits who thought drowning me would help save the Empire.”

  Both agents waited, the athlete with his pen near a pad.

  “I ran into him in Iran last year; our plane crashed coming from Bahrain. Then I ran into him here after Haifa. Far as I know, he’s gone.”

  “That it?” The athlete made notes.

  Eddie didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Schroeder is Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s man in America. Hermann Göring runs the Nazi Luftwaffe. To start a war and win it, Göring’s Luftwaffe requires aviation gas.” The agent chinned at the refinery’s cracking tower Eddie was retrofitting to safe and productive. “Aviation gas is what you do.”

  “Classified, sorry.”

  The agent reddened. “Should there be a war, anyone dealing with Mr. Schroeder—aiding and assisting the enemy—would be an act of sedition, treason. That’s the death penalty, Mr. Owen. Here, Texas, or anywhere we can find you.”

  “Good to know you speak for President Roosevelt, that we’re not neutral anymore. We’ve sided with the Russian Communists against the Nazis. Do I have that right? When does the war actually start? Mr. Hoover knows, right? He told you?”

  The agent rolled another page. “What is your association with Floyd Merewether and Lester Benny Binion?”

  Shrug. “I write them a letter once a month, but you probably know that, the mail being federal and all.”

  “Mr. Merewether is the prime suspect in nine gangland shootings. Mr. Binion is a bootlegger and a gambler, but they both seem to maintain a continuing interest in you. How could that be, Mr. Owen? Could it be that you are selling Texas oilfield information that they gather to the Nazis?”

  “You read my letters. You know what’s in them.”

  “Are you a Communist, Mr. Owen?”

  “Are you a Fascist?”

  The agent’s frown flattened and he removed an envelope from his jacket. Eddie recognized his mother’s handwriting. The agent riffled it through his fingers the way card players at Pappy Kirkwood’s did poker chips. The letter had been opened. The agent folded it back into his pocket and smiled.

  Eddie glared. “Ever been in Oklahoma? Got any goddamn idea what the Dust Bowl’s like?”

  “Have you ever been to prison, Mr. Owen? The Luftwaffe just test flew their Messerschmitt Bf 109 with ‘Grade C3’ fuel. Dark green, 100 octane. Their plane ran four-hundred-plus miles per hour armed heavy, and four hundred miles before it blew up. I guess the gas you’re making here is just about ready?”

  Eddie said, “Maybe Bahrain gas runs dark green; you’re FBI–know-every-goddamn-thing; maybe somebody stole some; you should ask. Whatever we’re doing here, we’re still testing. We haven’t made a drop. And for the record, this plant belongs to CEPSA, Standard Oil, and others. If you don’t like what they’re doing, or who they’re doing it with, talk to them.”

  “The owners of this plant’s problems are theirs. Yours and mine, Mr. Owen, are ours, and they require your attention. Now.”

  Eddie nodded at the submariners. “You won’t be doing the Lindbergh baby. I’ve been through that with your good guys, the Brits. They grabbed me right where we’re sitting. I can assure you that won’t happen again.”

  “Mr. Owen, you are going to the embassy in Morocco, then to Washington to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The dissenting southern senators will put you under oath. If you do not cooperate fully, the FBI will deliver you to Texas to stand trial for unlawful flight and felony manslaughter.” The agent closed the folder. “Your physical condition when you begin your trip to Washington is up to you.”

  The two FBI men shared a cell in the Santa Cruz jail. Eddie went to see them on the third evening of their incarceration. Two PJs and two German submariners followed Eddie inside. Eddie spoke through the bars. “I warned you not to grab me. You’re lucky the submariners put you on the ground. The PJs would’ve killed you. May still, since all they got to do was kick on you some.”

  The tall one looked thinner already but no friendlier.

  “Food’s good, huh?” Eddie pushed two pounds of wrapped beef and peppers through the bars. “From the canteen.”

  The agents accepted without saying thanks. Eddie pushed an opened bottle of Madeira wine through. The tall one shook his head; his athlete sidekick grabbed it.

  “Show me my mom’s letter and you can ask me the rest of your questions.” Eddie pulled a stool close to the bars so the Armada jailers he’d bribed couldn’t listen.

  The FBI agents checked the same two German submariners who had protected Eddie in the canteen. The tall agent held up a piece of beef. “Not bad.” His sidekick nodded agreement. “How much are those Nazis paying you?”

  “Show me the letter.”

  The agent pushed it through the bars. The letter was dated a week after his father’s surgery and written with the lightest touch of his mother’s hand Eddie had yet seen. Newt had survived thanks to Mr. Schroeder’s doctor and friends. Eddie’s mother added that she was in “quarantine” because of the consumption and about to have her lung deflated so it could heal, and that the Germans seemed to be really fine fellows who couldn’t be who the government men said they were. She guessed these government men might be working for the bank even though their wallets said FBI. She’d heard about the FBI, of course, some years back chasing and killing the Floyds’ boy, Charley, all the way from Oklahoma to Ohio for burning bank mortgages and running wild with John Dillinger.

  Eddie heard his mother’s soft voice in the weak handwriting, her need to see hope and goodness in almost everyone. Her letter went on to say that the weather was still killing everything; God had moved to somewhere else who needed Him more, God bless those poor souls. But even the tractor cotton on the bank farms here was going black. A few folks had straggled back from California saying they was the meanest people God had ever made. Bitter mean like February, called everybody “Okie” or “Red,” paid almost nothing, and burned you out or beat you senseless if you complained.

  Praise God and Eddie’s hard work that they’d held on in Oklahoma and that the federal bank hadn’t been able to run the family out. Eddie’s mom didn’t mention Howard or Lois, who at that time were lost in the orphanage system as wards of the state. She thanked Eddie again for his paycheck and the German’s help; asked about the islands, volcanoes, and the desert, and his great friend D.J. Bennett; told Eddie she loved D.J. like D.J. was rain and to be good as he could.

  The agent snatched the letter. “How much are the Nazis paying you?”

  Eddie waved the agent to return his mom’s letter and all it didn’t say.

  The agent slid the letter into his pocket. “Aid and assistance, Mr. Owen. Mama does like her Germans.”

  “Yeah? Did you offer to help save her husband or children? Her farm? Her life?”

  The agent winced sympathy. “Treason is treason, old woman or young . . .”

  Eddie leaned back, the violence in him less a surprise now than three years ago. “You, ah, may not want these fellas to let you out.”

  “Why, Mr. Owen, are you considering an
assault on a federal agent?”

  “No, I’m thinking about killing the coward motherfucker and his partner. That’s how we Nazis do it out here in the bush.”

  “How much are your new friends paying you to sell out your country?”

  Eddie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes hard and narrow, thinking very bad thoughts. “I. Didn’t. Sell. Anyone. Anything.”

  The agent shook his head. “Two problems with that. First, the Nazis gave you at least two thousand dollars. Second, Göring had enough AvGas to test his planes—set a speed record, by the way.”

  “So goddamn what? Why’s that illegal?”

  “Eddie Owen is a very special petroleum engineer. As I informed you, it is against federal law to provide aid and assistance to the enemy.”

  “Did the FBI somehow miss Standard Oil and Vacuum Oil?” Eddie pointed out the small cell window toward the refinery. “They own the goddamn place and the formulas.”

  “Mr. Hoover is aware of that. William E. Dodd, the US ambassador to Germany, recommended Roosevelt try them for treason. Ambassador Dodd is that dead-sure we are going to war.”

  Eddie jolted. That was news.

  The agent ate a bite of beef and chinned toward the refinery. “What do Binion and Merewether have to do with Tenerife?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Merewether got you out of Texas. He works for Binion in Fort Worth, just like you did. The southern senators on the House Un-American Activities Committee tie all of you in with Representative Dies, all of you from Texas. Dies is directing the Committee exclusively at Communists. Not a single substantive investigation of the Fascists. Harold Culpepper is on the record as favoring the Fascists. Erich Schroeder is a Fascist, and you’re taking money from both Culpepper and Schroeder.”

  “Floyd Merewether and Mr. Binion have nothing to do with whatever it is I’ve stumbled into back home and over here. Floyd and Mr. Binion put gas in their cars, that’s it.”

  “Is Binion taking money from Culpepper and Schroeder, too?”

  “No. I mean—”

  “You mean you are and Binion isn’t.” The agent continued. “Your family in Oklahoma isn’t the only one suffering. So when you take the Nazi blood money, think about the planes, the bombs they’ll carry, how many are going to die to keep your people healthy and happy.” The agent stood to the bars to back Eddie away. “The US ambassador will have us out shortly and your Spanish Fascist friends will put us on the ferry. But forty-eight hours after that, you can count on us being back and we won’t be talking then.”

  Eddie hadn’t moved. “I didn’t tell or sell anyone anything.”

  “The Nazis gave you money because you’re pretty? Or was it the Communists, Mr. Owen, the International Brigades favored by your dead friend D.J. Bennett and his Zionists?”

  “See what I mean? You guys are doing Abbott and Costello’s routine, Who’s on First? How am I supposed to know the difference between the Nazis, Communists, and run-of-the-mill Fascists? How would I know if you experts can’t tell?”

  Eddie leaned into the bars, his teeth bared.

  “I’ve been over here three years—Bahrain, Iran, Palestine, Tenerife—I can’t tell the teams, let alone the players.” Eddie jerked the wine bottle back through the bars and smashed it on the floor. “And neither can your fucking boss, J. Edgar.” Eddie jammed his face into the bars. “And know this, motherfucker: you come after my family and I’ll make a deal with whomever I have to. You’ll be dead the same goddamn week.”

  Eddie stormed out of the Santa Cruz jail into one of the two PJs and knocked him down. His partner drew. The German submariners charged. Eddie bolted into a side street and ran till he hit Calle San Jose. Les Demoiselles was across the street. He started to cross, intending to kick in the alley door and demand a goddamn answer about D.J.—

  A man huffing and puffing stepped in front of him. Between breaths, the man said, “Tom Mendelssohn”—huff, puff—“you must talk to me.”

  “Me? I’m not Tom Mendelssohn.”

  “Dinah Rosen, you, Tom Mendelssohn. Standard Oil.”

  Eddie pulled him into the alley and looked both ways. “You gotta be careful. I have PJs all over me.”

  “Our papers. You have them ready to use?”

  “No. I hid them. They’re gone.”

  “Gone?” The man straightened into Eddie’s face. “This cannot be. No, you have them.”

  Eddie stepped back and looked both ways again. “Man, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t keep them on me forever. I had to hide them and—”

  The man aimed a gun at Eddie’s chest. He was no longer panting or challenged in any way. “You will give me the papers.”

  “You’re right, I would, but I don’t have them.”

  “Who, then? Who has our papers?”

  “Maybe my foreman’s assistant. I hid them in the office. I think he found them and . . . Shit, I don’t know what he did with them, if he’s the one.”

  The man wagged the pistol. “Come with me.”

  “No. If I go anywhere with you, you’re dead.”

  “Doubtful. But you will be dead here if you do not come.”

  The two German submariners sprinted into the street. Behind them, two of the PJs struggled to keep pace. Eddie turned back to the man with the gun and he was gone.

  An hour after Edie’s return to the refinery, Foreman Paulsen told Eddie that if he left the refinery again, for any reason, he would be docked two days’ pay and upon his return he would be held under house arrest.

  Schroeder and I.G. Farben’s president boarded the New York Central’s Twilight Limited together. Schmitz remained aloof, livid over Schroeder’s presence in the banker meetings, chose to dine alone, and retired to his Pullman sleeper compartment immediately after dinner. It was not surprising that Herr Schmitz was troubled. The bankers for the Ruhr Valley Capitalists had not been “pacified.” The bankers suspected what Reichsmarschall Göring suspected and made it clear that no more capital would be advanced for factories and infrastructure until I.G. Farben could produce all the agreements for the promised aluminum, synthetic rubber, and high-octane gasoline. “Germany,” it was said in the meeting, “will not survive the spring thaw of the coming Russian winter. Germany’s only defense against Stalin’s three-million-man army is Hitler’s blitzkrieg offense, an offense that cannot be sustained without proper materiel.”

  The Twilight Limited arrived Detroit on time. Schroeder and Schmitz stepped off the train; Hermann Schmitz was received with great veneration. Erich Schroeder was not. Unknown to Schroeder, he had been deemed an attaché by Schmitz. Schroeder was forced to demand a seat at the meetings, announcing that he was a direct emissary of the Third Reich and Reichsmarschall Göring. Schroeder’s treatment improved to a quiet, if distant, respect. A greater, somewhat personal surprise was that he was not lauded nor welcomed by Irénée DuPont’s representatives from Adam Opel.

  For two days, Hermann Schmitz argued, cajoled, threatened, and bribed and finally secured the agreements for aluminum supply, synthetic rubber formulas, and “war volume” production quotas for truck and Panzer equipment. During the heated exchanges, there had been open criticism of Hitler’s rhetoric, a demand that Hitler tone down relative to the Jews and remain focused on the Communists. A demand? Schroeder was shocked but hid it. These industrialists were not fools—And then he saw it. Hubris. These captains of industry believed their corporations would still hold power when the Nazis completed their rise. So, in the end, the industrialists were fools. Men like Göring and Himmler were the new gods, men who could march armies and incinerate races.

  The final components and formulas for AvGas production were an unknown. Schroeder conveyed this to Reichsmarschall Göring by diplomatic courier, and that as Göring’s direct representative, he had been excluded from a private meeting last night where AvGas and its ramifications had been discussed. Schroeder also conveyed that when confronted, I.G. Farben’s president had denied any such meetings had tak
en place, and he refused to discuss AvGas further. Schroeder quoted Schmitz as saying, “You are an emissary, Herr Schroeder, a placeholder for Göring, not a decision maker. You have no seat at the table with the true hierarchy of the Reich.”

  Schroeder had masked his anger and deep offense at the rebukes. “Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German people, sees the world’s future in the same clear light as Reichsmarschall Göring and those of us who have spilled and shed blood for the Fatherland. Blood that you and your partners now wade in to reap your rewards.”

  Schmitz’s answer was sharp and remedial. “Hitler’s tone must be muted or the Jews in America will continue to gain ground, slandering Germany, robbing the Reich’s industrial partners of the will required to . . .” Schmitz had stopped short of discussing the assassination of Roosevelt and the crematoria plans. Plans that Schroeder knew firsthand to be the International Jew’s future.

  The Twilight Limited trudged east toward New York through the first blizzard of 1938. In the dining car, Schroeder read Detroit newspapers and sipped cognac, watching America silenced in white. The newspapers reported that Franco’s war with Spain’s crumbling government was proceeding well, although the reporters were confused by the Red Cross charge that Tenerife held none of the Republican (Communist) prisoners and dissidents the Fascists had sent there. The Red Cross charge estimated more than 100,000 prisoners were missing.

  Fritz Kuhn and his disastrous Bund rally were no longer on page one, at least in Detroit where the International Jew was less popular and powerful. The wayward Herr Kuhn would be dealt with after Eddie Owen and Berlin were called from the German embassy in New York. Reichsmarschall Göring would be pleased with the three contracts from Alcoa, Standard Oil, and Opel. But gauging the Reichsmarschall’s reaction to the AvGas status would hinge on what had actually transpired in the secret meeting. Schroeder’s supreme and divine hope was that the final AvGas elements had been withheld by Standard Oil, making the Mendelssohn papers and Schroeder’s hold on Eddie Owen valuable beyond calculation.

  Schroeder unfolded a copy of the Dearborn Independent procured while in Detroit, Henry Ford’s “private” weekly suspended in 1927. A shame the Jews had forced the newspaper out of publication. The Jews’ response to Ford’s exposure of the worldwide Jew conspiracy had reduced Ford car sales in many US cities. Schroeder ordered another cognac; no doubt that would change shortly. Being a Jew inside and outside Germany was about to become a liability on par with having leprosy.