Fear Itself

by Andrew Rosenheim

  As Nessheim’s might in time – or else get swept out into the mid-Atlantic to serve as fish food. From Schultz’s account, the currents here were capable of anything. Either way, there would be nothing suspicious about his death, just the dark cloud of a tragic accident.

  Nessheim tried to shut down these thoughts and collect himself. His body had become acclimatised to the water, which was not as cold as he had first feared – in the low 60s, he guessed, which meant he could stay alive in it for several hours. But the insistent choppy waves made treading water tiring; he found a gentle breast stroke less fatiguing, and it also gave him some sense of moving to the safety of a shore, however distant. Just as he felt he was getting used to the rhythm of the waves, however, one broke out of nowhere and filled his nose with salt water. He snorted, tried to breathe, then another wave struck. He sputtered and coughed and was almost sick again, then slowly caught his breath, frightened by how much effort it took.

  He had no idea which way to swim. He needed to go north towards Montauk and the chance of meeting a boat, but which direction was it? He tried to look around him, but the bumpy waves blocked his view of anything but the black curtain of sky. Then as a wave receded he glimpsed to his right the faintest chalk-coloured crack in the dark. Maybe morning was not a million miles away. East must be to his right, so he swam, slowly, steadily, straight ahead, hoping he was due south of Montauk so that he would hit it in time. Time? Three days’ worth of swim.

  He refused to think about his chances, and focused instead on who had betrayed him back home. It had to have been Uncle Eric, he thought. Though how he’d known his nephew was an FBI agent was a mystery. And always going to stay that way, Nessheim thought in a sudden spasm of fury, suddenly splashing hard through the waves in a furious crawl stroke. Stop it, he told himself, slowing down. He had to keep his emotions under control.

  From time to time, he rolled over on his back and tried to rest, floating, but the waves would break over his face, so he could only lie undisturbed for the length of a held-in breath. Sometimes he extended his arms straight ahead – in a double Hitler salute he felt Schultz would have appreciated – and floated on his belly, buoyed by a salinity that was novel to him, for he only knew swimming in fresh water. Then a somnolence would set in, and he would lift up in a jerk, frightened that dozing off would lead to death.

  Cramp was developing spasmodically in his feet, then in his hands. He dreaded getting a stitch in his side, since there was nowhere to rest and recover from it. He didn’t know if two hours had passed, or two minutes, but he was alarmed by the tiredness he felt in his limbs – and in his mind. There was something peaceful and alluring about the vast body of ocean around him. Increasingly he was putting his head down into the salt water, where he kept his mouth tightly shut so there was no chance of swallowing the cusp of a wave. Each time he did this he found it harder to lift himself up and swim. Once he almost opened his mouth, then some instinct warned him off – he knew he wouldn’t survive the coughing fit that a large slug of salt water would bring on.

  He felt too tired to fight. If only he could stand on something, just for a minute, he was sure he could go on for the forever it was going to take to save him. He started to dream of a ledge he might find, or a fisherman’s warning buoy; anything that would relieve the pressure, even for a few seconds, of keeping himself afloat.

  Then, as he lay with his head face down, not even bothering to kick, he thought he heard a low throb reverberating in the water. An ocean liner perhaps, on its way into the Manhattan lower docks. Or a freighter delivering God knows what from Europe to a Jersey port. Lifting his head, he tried to look round, but the only sign of daybreak was far east to his right, where in the distant skyline the chalk-coloured crack had expanded into a milky haze on the horizon. There was no other sign of light, and he was growing too tired to generate a fantasy of rescue.

  He heard the throb again when he dipped his head back down into the water. It seemed closer. He stopped swimming, treading water with hands he could no longer feel, and this time there was a pinprick of light in the distance. Or was it an illusion? In any case, it could be many miles away. He realised that the early-morning daylight was creeping in around him, bit by bit, and that the sky ahead was now the colour of smoke, rather than the ebony sheet of an hour before.

  The throbbing had stopped, but the light was there – and it didn’t seem miles away, after all. He heard nothing now, but the light galvanised him, and he lifted his head and shouted ‘Help!’ with an energy he didn’t know he had left.

  The throbbing started up again, and he realised it was the engine of a boat. For a moment the light flickered, then it came closer again. Closer, and closer; despite himself, Nessheim felt hope stir. The engine cut out suddenly, and Nessheim realised that was his chance. ‘Help!’ he shouted, sensing it was the last time he would be able to make enough noise. A beam suddenly zipped across the water in front of him, then zipped back again. It was moving side to side, like a scythe whipped against a field of high grass, and finally it reached Nessheim. Terrified it would just keep moving past him, he struggled to lift his arms, and he moved around in the water, trying to make a visible commotion.

  But unbelievably, the light moved on, and then went out, followed by the noise of the engine starting up. Despair engulfed him like flu. He wanted to shout out but simply couldn’t – he was all but done in by his last efforts.

  The noise of the engine was lost in the pounding of his heart and heaving strangled noises he dimly realised were his own sobs. He lay flat on his stomach, floating like a dead man, trying not to think that he would be one soon enough. He only barely took notice of the beam of light when it appeared again, full flush on his turned-down face.

  And then he lifted his head and to his disbelief saw the low curved wooden bow of a boat, not 20 feet away. He thought at first he must be hallucinating.

  A voice said, ‘Hang on, I’m coming.’ And then within seconds he felt two hands gripping him by the shoulders and the same voice said, ‘Can you lift your arms?’

  Somehow he managed to, and found himself hoisted against the gunwales, then pulled an inch at a time, until his weight finally carried him over the side and into the boat.

  He lay there on the rough wet planks, breathing heavily. He could hear footsteps on the planks, and a moment later he sensed the man kneeling down beside him. He carried a blanket and sat Nessheim up as he wrapped it around him.

  So it wasn’t a dream. He looked up and there was now enough daylight for him to see his rescuer. ‘Smitty,’ he whispered in disbelief, his teeth chattering.

  ‘My real name’s Sidney. Sidney Washington,’ said the black cook. His voice was different – there was nothing Step ’N’ Fetchit to it now.

  ‘How did you find me?’ His teeth still chattered, but he had to know.

  ‘Needle in a haystack, really. That boat came past me on its way back to Montauk; I had to duck down pretty quick since those people know me from the camp. But I took a look and there weren’t any sign of you. I had a pretty good idea of where you might be, but we were awful lucky just the same.’

  ‘But what were you doing out here?’

  ‘Following the boat. Mr Guttman told me if anything happened to you, he’d see I’d never drive for Mr Hoover again.’

  ‘He sent you to the camp?’

  ‘That’s right. Made me go learn to cook first at some Jewish place in the Catskills.’

  ‘Was that you at the Apollo the other night?’

  ‘Hope you liked my suit.’ He stood up. ‘We best be going. If I give you a hand, do you think you can walk as far as that?’ He gestured to the dwarf pilot house in the middle of the skiff. ‘I have a little brandy there to keep you warm. We got us a couple of hours’ ride, since the last place we want to pitch up at is Montauk. Far as Schultz is concerned, you’re drowned. We need to keep it that way.’

  ‘I’ve got to get to a phone and call Guttman.’

  ‘We’ve got
time.’ They were moving slowly across the planks, Smitty holding his arm. ‘And Guttman’s not going to be too hard to find – everybody’s working this weekend.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ he said, shivering badly. They had reached the pilot house, where Sidney shifted the captain’s chair from behind the wheel and had Nessheim sit down.

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard,’ said Sidney as he turned the key in the tiny wheelhouse. The engine gave a short cough, then caught. Nessheim looked out to sea, east towards Europe, and saw a raw sun the colour of fire looming just beneath the day’s low cloud. ‘Heard what?’ he asked, suddenly overcome by fatigue.

  ‘The Nazis have invaded Poland. There’s going to be a war now.’

  Part Three

  1940

  17

  January 1940

  Washington D.C.

  THE PHONE RANG three times in the dark before he could find it.

  ‘Guttman,’ he said, trying to sound awake.

  ‘It’s Kevin Reilly,’ said a raspy voice. ‘Sorry about the hour, Harry, but I’m pretty sure you’ll want in on this.’

  ‘What time is it?’ He couldn’t see the clock, a wind-up job he’d bought at Hecht’s, and he didn’t want to switch the lamp on and wake Isabel. Not that she was still asleep. This had better be good, he thought.

  ‘It’s three-fifteen, Harry, but I’ve got the coroner pushing me. Let me give you the address.’

  Once he’d put down the phone, Guttman got out of bed, and taking his clothes from the bedroom chair went to dress in the bathroom. When he returned to fumble in the dresser drawer for his gun and holster, Isabel said, clear as a bell, ‘Will you be long?’

  ‘Hope not, sweetie. You go back to sleep.’

  Outside it was well below freezing, and he winced as he felt his first breath of icy air fill his lungs. He swung open the garage door and climbed into his six-year-old Buick. In good weather, it still ran okay, but it was so cold out that he was relieved when the engine caught.

  He drove carefully along the icy roads, wishing he had a stronger battery to power his headlights. As he moved onto the bridge over the iced-up Potomac, the car skidded slightly when he touched the brakes. He let the Buick coast the rest of the way across, holding his breath until he reached the Washington side.

  Georgetown was asleep, and the houses stood like empty doll’s houses in the dark. The road was empty as he moved east on M Street, past blocks of restaurants and stores. The air was turning misty in his headlights and Guttman realised his tyres were a little soft, though that seemed to give them added traction on the packed ice and snow of the streets.

  He had never known such a winter in Washington. Usually, snow fell and disappeared within a day; even the largest storms sweeping across the eastern seaboard only made their tail ends felt this far south. But the last snowfall, three days after New Year’s, had lasted, unable to melt in frigid air that never even came close to thawing point. He’d turned the heat up at home and instructed the gal who came in as helper to keep a hot-water bottle tucked under the blanket on his wife’s wheelchair. It was hard to believe that in ten weeks the cherry blossom would be out.

  He turned now onto Pennsylvania Avenue, wide and eerily deserted. As he came to the Eclipse and drove by the White House he looked over at the country’s most famous mansion. In the living quarters upstairs the lights were all out – unsurprising at four in the morning. On the ground floor a corner office glowed from a ceiling light, and at the east entrance the portico was lit up, where he could see a policeman stamping his boots against the cold.

  He had been inside recently, after Hoover had managed to persuade the President that the Bureau should help the Secret Service with its duties protecting him. A small team of Bureau agents had been installed in the Executive Wing, in two rooms at the end of the corridor down from the Oval office itself. They reported to Guttman, who had doubts about their mission since the White House was already teeming with Secret Service men.

  Continuing along Pennsylvania Avenue now, he passed the Justice Department and his office. He knew Hoover wanted the Bureau to have its own building, but Guttman liked being there – rather than in some newly created monument to Hoover’s power. He slid through the intersection with Constitution Avenue, his brakes useless, and he wished that like Hoover he had Sidney Washington chauffeuring him. The Negro was back driving the Director, the latter man none the wiser about Sidney’s adventures during his secondment to Guttman’s department. Guttman was confident Sidney would never spill the beans about his time spent undercover. Without any words exchanged, the driver seemed to understand that if Hoover discovered what he’d been up to, it wouldn’t only be Guttman who’d lose his job.

  It had been worth the risk, Guttman thought, taking satisfaction from the fact that the group Nessheim had infiltrated at Camp Schneider was now safely behind bars. They’d been there ever since their efforts to seize the Park Avenue Armory had been foiled in early September. Once Sidney had telephoned with Nessheim’s warning that the Armory was going to be hit, Guttman had put his preparations into effect, then waited nervously all weekend, praying that nothing would tip off Schultz that Nessheim had survived. The Germans themselves had alerted the Coast Guard late Saturday that ‘Rossbach’ had gone missing, but there was no danger in that, since there were no Rossbach relatives to contact, nothing real behind the bogus identity of Nessheim’s undercover life.

  On Labor Day Monday at exactly one p.m. a dozen of the Bund O.D., led by Schultz and armed with a motley collection of shotguns, pistols, and two deer rifles, entered the Armory building, overpowering the sole, senescent guard left in place, then moving rapidly across the interior parade ground towards the locked arms stores in the rear of the building. Halfway across the packed-dirt ground a voice had erupted through a bullhorn – it was an FBI agent, announcing to the O.D. men that they were surrounded. Immediately from both ends of the parade half a regiment of National Guardsmen emerged, loaded rifles at the ready and bayonets fixed. Unsurprisingly, in the face of such firepower, the O.D. rebels and their leader Schultz had surrendered without a fight.

  Outside, Guttman had stationed a dozen agents armed with Thompson sub-machine guns in buildings within a hundred yards of the Armory. When two trucks had pulled up, waiting to be loaded with stolen weapons, the FBI agents had surrounded both vehicles, seized the drivers and carted them off to jail. Simultaneously, Beringer had been arrested on 2nd Avenue leaving Schultz’s house.

  No one – from the Bund or the Bureau – had been hurt. As Guttman reflected on the events of 4 September, he realised that the only victim had been Jimmy Nessheim.

  Plucked out of the water off Long Island by Sidney, he had at first seemed to have survived his immersion unscathed, and was keen to join the other agents when they busted Schultz on Monday. But by Sunday, the day before the assault on the Armory, Nessheim had complained of chills, and spiked a high fever. Occupied with planning the details of Monday’s operation, Guttman hadn’t paid much attention; when the kid’s temperature had reached 105, however, Guttman had phoned a doctor, who in turn promptly called an ambulance and had Nessheim taken to Lenox Hill Hospital. A good thing, too, since within twenty-four hours Nessheim had developed pneumonia.

  It had been touch and go after that, the illness developing with an alacrity that made Guttman rue his previous inattention. There had been two days when Nessheim might have died, and it was on the first of them that Guttman had sent a telegram to Nessheim’s parents, summoning them east. He wasn’t sure whether he was asking them to come and watch their son recover, or to bury him. Nessheim did recover, thank God, and after a week his parents had gone back to Wisconsin, confident their boy was on the mend.

  Then Nessheim had a fall. The nurse said he’d been walking the ward as instructed, gathering his strength, when for no apparent reason he’d keeled over. That’s when his history of dizziness had come out, admitted by Nessheim while he was still dazed. The hospital consultant insisted Guttman
pull Nessheim’s medical file from the Bureau, and dissatisfied by its meagreness, the doc had checked out Nessheim’s medical history on his own – calling Northwestern University and speaking with the football coach, then contacting the doctor at Michael Rees Hospital in Chicago who’d seen Nessheim after his knock in a football game. None of this was in Nessheim’s file at the Bureau.

  ‘This guy should never have passed your medical,’ the New York doc had declared.

  Guttman had had to break the news to Nessheim: the days of chasing Danny Ho, planting wiretaps in the attic of a Vermont camp lodge, and defying death in the ice-cold Atlantic were all over.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ he’d told Nessheim at his hospital bed. ‘You’ve seen more action in your twenties than most agents get to see in a thirty-year career. Why, I’ve known plenty of agents who’ve never pulled their gun except in front of the mirror.’

  He offered Nessheim a desk job, saying he could put in a word at any field office the young agent fancied. Morgan in San Francisco was coming east soon (Guttman had wangled Morgan the SAC position in the Newark office) but Guttman was confident he could get Nessheim a position out there again.

  Nessheim wasn’t interested. He’d gone home to Wisconsin before Christmas to recuperate, then wrote in January to say he was planning to head for California to pack up his belongings and drive his pickup truck back to the Midwest. He didn’t say what his future plans were, except that they didn’t include the FBI. And Nessheim’s termination papers were sitting on Guttman’s desk, awaiting his signature. One of these days Guttman would get around to signing them.