Amerikan Eagle

by Alan Glenn

  He knew he should feel remorse at what had happened, regret for the poor man’s wife, who had done so much in vain to free her husband. But as he walked down the bloodstained platform, he didn’t care.

  His family was coming home.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  He spent several hours in Marshal Hanson’s office, telling and retelling his story to Hanson, to the Secret Service, and even to a bandaged and angry Special Agent LaCouture of the FBI. And when it was over, LaCouture said to the Secret Service, “You heard what the man said about Hale and how he got here. I want arrests to start right away. We’ll start with that writer tenant of yours, that Tucker.”

  Sam said, “Walter … he’s just a science professor, a pulp writer, that’s all.”

  LaCouture touched the bandage across his broken nose and snarled, “The hell he is. He’s an accomplice to an assassination attempt.”

  Hanson intervened, “Sam, you know that’s how it’s going to be. I know he’s your neighbor, but he’s got to be brought in.”

  LaCouture glared at him and said, “Just be thankful I ain’t chargin’ you, too, Inspector.”

  Sam said, “You know, Jack, your nose really looks good. It truly does. Do you want me to rearrange it again?”

  LaCouture cursed and moved toward him, but Hanson and two Secret Service agents hauled him back, and Hanson said, “All right, all right. My inspector here has had a long day. I’m sure he can talk to you tomorrow if you’ve got any other questions. Okay?”

  With that, the office emptied until it was just Hanson and Sam.

  “Sam,” Hanson said, going back to his desk. “You did something magnificent today, something historical. You saved the President’s life.”

  “Tell you the truth, I didn’t care about the President,” Sam said bitterly. “I cared about those poor bastards in Burdick and everywhere else. That’s what I was thinking.”

  Hanson took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief. “If you say so. Look, you’re beat. Time for you to go home, take a few days off. Then you come back, and we’ll clear all this up.”

  Sam was too tired to argue. “Sure. That sounds good.”

  As he went to the door, Hanson called out, “One more thing—”

  Sam turned and saw something flying at him. He caught it instinctively with one hand. He looked down at the thick black leather wallet, opened it up. The gold shield of an inspector. Not the silver shield of an acting inspector.

  “Congratulations, Sam,” Hanson said. “Now get the hell out of here.”

  Sam clasped the wallet and shield tightly in his hand and tried to remember when this scrap of leather and metal had once meant so much.

  At his desk, he picked up his coat draped over the chair, the sleeve still damaged where that cig boy had tried to cut him the other day. Poor sweet Sarah. Never did get around to mending that sleeve. By his typewriter was the day’s mail. One envelope stood out—from the state’s division of motor vehicles. He recalled the request he had made so many lifetimes ago. He tore open the envelope, read the listing inside of yellow Ramblers belonging to area residents of Portsmouth.

  There was only one. He read and reread the name and decided it was time to go home.

  * * *

  He pulled the Packard into his driveway, and he saw lights on downstairs. Lots and lots of lights.

  Sam leaped out of the car, raced up the front steps, and opened the door.

  Sarah. His Sarah, standing there, his lovely Sarah, looking at him, staring at him.

  It was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  She was standing there, arms folded. Her face was pale and looked thinner. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while, and her pale blue dress was stained and wrinkled. Her silk stockings looked like they had runs, and her shoes were scuffed and soiled.

  “Sarah,” he said.

  There was a pause. “You got a haircut.”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” he replied, knowing nothing could be said about Burdick, nothing at all; that secret was terrible to keep but too terrible to share.

  A voice from the kitchen, sobbing. “Mommy, look at what happened to my models! They’re all smashed!”

  Sam called out, “Toby! What’s wrong?”

  His son ran in, holding a cardboard box in front of him, the smashed pieces of his models sticking out. Sam’s heart ached at seeing the tears on his boy’s face. He said, “Toby, look, I’m sorry, we’ll get you new ones.”

  “But Dad, these are mine! We built them together!”

  Looking at Sarah stiffly standing there, Sam said carefully, “Bad men came into the house, Toby. Bad men came in and broke your toys. But I promise you, we’ll either fix them or we’ll get new ones.”

  “It won’t be the same! It won’t! Why didn’t you stop them, Daddy? Why didn’t you stop the bad men?”

  “Toby, please …”

  “You promised! You promised! I hate you! I hate you!”

  “Toby, back to your room.” Sarah raised her voice, “Mommy needs to talk to Daddy.”

  Still sobbing, Toby tore from the room, carrying the broken pieces with him, as Sam looked to his wife.

  “How long have you been back?” he asked. I hate you, the little voice had shouted. I hate you …

  “Only a few minutes.”

  “How did you get here?”

  She said, “A Long’s Legionnaire who hadn’t taken a bath in a month drove us back. We got home to this.” Sarah gestured to the broken furniture, the piles of books, the debris of what their life had been.

  Sam said, “Long’s Legionnaires broke in, while I was away on the job.”

  “And you didn’t have time to clean up so Toby and I didn’t have to look at this when we got home?”

  He ran a hand over his hair. “The past couple of days, I haven’t had time to take a breath. I did the best I could.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she said, lips pursed. “You saved the life of the Kingfish. Congratulations, I guess.”

  Something dark flared inside him. “Not guess, Sarah. You should say congratulations. It’s because I saved Long that I was able to get you and Toby out. Nothing else was going to work. I saved his Cajun ass and in return, he got you and the boy out.”

  “Sure, I understand.” Her eyes blazed at him. “Acting like a dictator or a Roman emperor dispensing favors because it suits him. I understand a lot. And I’m sorry about Tony, Sam. I truly am.” Tears glittered in her eyes, and she wiped at them and then refolded her arms.

  He stared at her, wondering what was going on behind those sharp brown eyes, and then he heard himself saying, “Why did you do it, Sarah?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Why did you give yourself up to the FBI?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Toby and I got picked up while we were walking down one of the lake roads to a neighbor’s house.”

  “That doesn’t make sense—you and Toby being picked up like that, just walking along the road. Unless the FBI was following you, which I doubt. With the summit coming here, with all the resources being stretched out, I can’t see why the FBI would spare the agents to tail you almost a hundred miles away.”

  She bit her lower lip again. Sam said, “But after I told you to get out of your dad’s place, you must have made a phone call. You surrendered to the FBI. You wanted to be arrested. Why?”

  Sarah didn’t say a word.

  He pressed on. “Doesn’t make sense. You giving yourself up to the FBI. Unless you did that on purpose so I’d be blackmailed and would have to cooperate with them when they were looking for my brother. Somebody wanted me to look for Tony. Somebody wanted Tony to be found.”

  Her voice quavered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sarah … you can do so many things with ease and grace, from taking care of Toby when he has the flu to cooking a Sunday meal … but you can’t lie worth shit. And another
thing—you lied to me when you said you didn’t know anyone who owned a yellow Rambler. But your friend from school, Mrs. Brownstein. The one who helped you with the Underground Railroad. Your mahjongg partner. She owns a yellow Rambler.”

  “How am I supposed to know who drives what?” she said carelessly. “What difference does it make?”

  “The difference is that a Rambler was used to slow down the train the night that body was dumped. Like it was a setup. And it was. Wasn’t it?”

  Tears came back to her eyes, and Sam knew that the woman in front of him, his wife, his lover, the mother of his child, the high school cheerleader he had wooed for such a delightful time, was a stranger.

  “Who was he?” No reply.

  “Tell me Sarah,” Sam went on. “The man on the train. Oh, I know his real name and where he was coming from. He had escaped from a camp in New Mexico. And what does he do? Does he go south to Mexico, to escape from America, or does he go west to California, where he can disappear in the crowds? No. He makes his way east, heading to the small port city of Portsmouth. Your friend slows the train down enough to jump off, and he ends up here, right? At the city’s Underground Railroad station. A station that—”

  A memory, incomplete but coming clear.

  “This station … your station … gets wanted people up north to Montreal,” Sam said. “That’s the whole point of why he came here. To get to Montreal. And up in Montreal this week is a delegation from the Soviet Union. Not in Vancouver, or Ottawa, the capitol. They were waiting for someone, weren’t they? Why was he so important?”

  “Please …”

  “Sarah, who was he?”

  “I don’t know,” she said urgently. “All I know is that he had to get off that train, get in our basement, and then get out the next morning. He had to be in Montreal. He just had to be. But he was murdered.”

  “And you didn’t tell me any of this that day you knew he was murdered?”

  She said, “Not my place to tell you that.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “How the hell should I know?” she snapped.

  “Because you know more than I ever imagined,” Sam said. “And you surrendered to the FBI, didn’t you? Betrayed me so I’d feel compelled to find Tony, to find him and set him up for his murder.”

  “Sam …”

  “Dammit, that’s what Tony told me just before he was murdered. That there was a grand plan and he and I were part of it. He knew all along he was on a suicide mission. He knew I would play my part as a cop, and you did your part as well.”

  Then something seemed to slam in the back of his head. “You used Toby, didn’t you? My God, Sarah, you used our son!” Her face seemed set in granite. He had to catch his breath before he could go on. “Toby asked a lot of questions about spies. Told me he didn’t like getting in trouble but sometimes he had to. That’s right, had to. He was so scared he started wetting the bed. And when he got in trouble at school, he’d see the principal. Frank Kaminski. You know who his brother is. You used Toby as a courier, didn’t you, Sarah? To pass along messages to Kaminski. And I bet you told him to get into trouble on purpose so he’d be sent to the principal’s office.”

  He kept looking at the woman he once thought had no surprises for him. “Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s ordering you?”

  She stared at him with an expression he had never seen before.

  It was disdain.

  “Sam … Toby’s hero, so true and noble … and you can’t even see what’s going on right in your own house, can you, Sam? The Underground Railroad—you think that got in place by accident? Do you think thousands of us, hell, tens of thousands, aren’t working day and night to defeat Long and crush Hitler? Do you?”

  “Sarah—”

  “Amateur revolutionaries, you called us. It’s always been the amateurs who made things right, who fought against the evil and the powerful. But we’re not amateurs, none of us, and we’re working with our brothers in Moscow, London, and yes, even Berlin, to set things right.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was going to say next, but it was the only thing he could think of. “Who’s we?”

  “Who cares? Its just labels, that’s all. Progressive, liberal, Communist, socialist, even Republican … labels. Call us the resistance, if you like. But what counts is the fight, what people bring to the fight, and I’ve been in the fight for years. Sam, do you know what it’s like to see children at your school, children in what’s supposed to be the richest and safest nation in the world, wearing scraps of blankets? To see brothers and sisters take turns eating breakfast because there’s not enough food at home? And who’s helping them? Nobody, that’s who! If that makes me a bad woman, someone who uses her family to help, then damn it all to hell, I’m proud to be a bad woman, a bad wife, a bad mother—”

  “But what—”

  She shook her head, furious. “So when I’m told to prepare for a guest from that scheduled train, I do just that. And when I’m told to give myself up to the FBI so that you do what has to be done for the greater good, whatever that is, then I do it. I’m sorry, and maybe you don’t believe me, but I didn’t know it was going to end with Tony being killed. And I didn’t know Tony was going to try to shoot Hitler. I just knew he was in terrible danger, that he was part of something I belonged to as well.”

  “And what about Toby?”

  She looked toward the boy’s bedroom, and her sharp voice faltered. “He’s a brave boy. A very brave boy … He did what I asked him to do, whether it was delivering messages or trusting his mother, and I wish he had a brave father to look up to.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Her sad eyes pierced him. “What do you think? From what you’ve told me, what I’ve seen in the papers, Tony was ready to sacrifice all to get himself killed in an attempt to assassinate Hitler to draw attention from what was being planned for that bastard Long, and there you are, protecting both Hitler and Long. Two fascists destroying what’s left of civilization. I secretly saw Tony a few days ago. He said he was doing it all for Toby and what kind of life our son was going to have. Can you say the same thing?”

  “I was doing my job,” he countered, knowing how weak it sounded.

  “That’s some job you’ve got there, Sam Miller.” She walked away from him, then turned, eyes wet with tears. “I’m going to my dad’s place, Sam. And I’m taking Toby with me.”

  He was chilled, as if his blood had been replaced by salt water from the harbor. “For how long?”

  “However long it takes for me to think things through. I need to be with someone committed to our fight, someone who wants to change things, to make things better. You’re just part of the system, and … and I’m not sure if I can live with someone like that. Over the years, you’ve done some things here and there—giving money to refugee kids, looking the other way at our basement station, ignoring some of the stupid laws from D.C.—but I need more.”

  “Sarah, you’ve got to—”

  “Sam, please,” she interrupted. “I feel guilty about a lot of things, and one of those things is your brother. Right now I want Toby to be proud of his dead uncle, a man who sacrificed himself for everything, and I’m not sure what Toby has to be proud of when he sees you. And I don’t like feeling that way.”

  “So your dad’s place is the answer?”

  Again a sad look that went right through him. “I don’t see why not. I’ve always trusted Dad even when you’ve had nothing but contempt for him. I admire him, too. He’s put everything on the line to do what’s right.”

  Then it made sense. The visit to the store days ago from the man called Eric the Red. The encounter at the island: You think you know everything about me, everything about how I think and work. Kid, you know shit.

  Sam said, “Your dad is your connection, isn’t he? The one who told you what to do. On the surface, he’s a full-fledged member of the Party. Underneath, he’s something else.”

  “Very good, Inspec
tor. You figured that out all on your own.”

  With his newly minted inspector’s badge weighing in his coat pocket, he found he could not say a word. And what about Pierce Island, he thought, should he tell her about Pierce Island and her father and the sailor?

  No, that would sound like cheap revenge and nothing else.

  Again saying words he couldn’t believe he was saying. “So you’re off to be with your father, your resistance leader.”

  “For now.”

  He could hear the sobs from his son, weeping over his shattered models, crying over the broken dream that his father could protect him. Sorry, kid, he thought, so very sorry.

  “Tell Toby … tell him I have to go out on a case, all right? I don’t want to make a scene. Tell him I’ll make it all right.”

  Her arms folded tight against her chest, she didn’t reply. He went to the door, stopped. “You’re pretty good at thinking you know what drives me and what I do, but in the past few days, I’ve seen things and done things I can’t tell you about, Sarah. Important things that have made more of a difference than you and your friends could ever dream of.”

  “So says you,” she said coldly.

  “Yeah, so says me,” he said. “And despite what you think now, we can work this out. It’ll take time, but I know we can work it out.”

  “I’m not so sure, Sam. I’m really not. It would take a lot.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I get the message. It’ll take a lot, and that’s what I’ll do.”

  Outside, the damp air from the harbor chilled him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  The day was cold and windy, and Sam stood by himself on a knoll at the Calvary Cemetery in Portsmouth, near the border of the small town of Greenland. The previous night he had once again slept in Hanson’s office. He drew his coat closer, watching the ceremony finish up. There was a plain wooden casket, and a priest was saying prayers over the mangled body of his brother. Except for two cemetery workers standing by themselves, shovels in hand, this part of the cemetery was empty. The ceremony was supposed to be secret, but somehow the news had gotten out.