The German Agent

by J Sydney Jones

  Again the man’s eyes narrowed, but more now with self-doubt than suspicion, Max hoped.

  The watcher pushed the swinging door open revealing a white-tiled well lit space with stalls to one side, tall porcelain sinks with brass fittings to the other below a line of mirrors.

  Max waited for the door to close.

  ‘Water’s over here.’ The man began helping Max to the sinks.

  No attendant on duty inside, Max saw. A quick glance under the stall doors: no feet there. They were alone. Max let his coat and hat trail to the floor, careful to cushion the vial of acid in his coat pocket as he did so.

  The rest happened too quickly for the watcher to react. With the man still hovering behind him, Max thrust his elbow into the fellow’s solar plexus. A rush of wind came out of the man as he doubled over from the unexpected blow; Max used the man’s own momentum to propel his head into the edge of the sink with a sickening plonking sound. After the blow, the watcher still stood, doubled over, gasping for breath, his stocky legs trembling. Max grabbed the back of his thick woolen jacket and rammed him head first again into the sink and then a third time. A crimson streak showed on the side of the white porcelain, garish in the harsh electric light of the bathroom. Still the man stood like a stubborn mule, vomiting now, and Max wanted only for this to be over. He pulled out his pistol from his shoulder holster.

  I have no argument with this man, he thought. I have no vendetta against the police, public or private. I want only for this animal to lie down and be quiet. But he’s seen your face, he thought. He was inches from you. He knows you.

  Max held onto the woolen jacket as the man twisted spasmodically, half unconscious already.

  It doesn’t matter now, Max thought. Let him see my face. Any description will come too late to help Appleby. My work in the US will be at an end after Appleby, anyway. It’s Germany for me and the trenches again. Berthold cannot risk keeping me in America after I kill Appleby.

  All this debate was the matter of a few instants in Max’s mind, and he felt a kind of relief after making his decision. He reversed the pistol, holding it by its barrel and brought the butt down onto the back of the man’s head. This did the job, for the man crumpled at Max’s feet, his mouth wide open. Max holstered his pistol, dragged the unconscious man to the stalls, pushed him in and closed the door. A spray of the man’s vomit was on the toe of Max’s shoe, and he opened the stall door again, ripped off a piece of toilet paper, cleaned the shoe, threw the soiled paper into the toilet bowl, and closed the door again.

  Suddenly he felt the exhilaration of battle; the challenge, the life and death gamble of it. And it buoyed him.

  I’m going to bring it off, he told himself. Against all odds, I’ll do it. Me against all of them.

  He quickly picked up both his hat and coat and put them on. Out of the coat pocket he took the lead tube and placed it on the back of the sink. One end of it was plugged already with a lead stopper from the bottom of his suitcase. He pulled out the other lead stopper from his pocket and set it next to the tube.

  From the other coat pocket he brought out the vial of sulfuric acid. He took a long breath, calming himself, then opened the glass stopper and picked up the lead tube in the other hand.

  Let’s hope Dr Scheele in his Hoboken laboratory got the thickness of the copper divider correct, Max thought as he brought the tip of the vial to the lip of the empty half of the tube, ready to pour.

  ‘It is so simple,’ Max remembered Dr Scheele saying as the tiny man pushed wireframe glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  ‘A child’s experiment, really. You put potassium chlorate in one end of a lead tube, stopped off by a lead plug at the end and by a copper disk from the other compartment of the tube. Into this second compartment you put sulfuric acid, plug it with lead, and the acid eats its way through the copper. Once it reaches the potassium chlorate – poof! – you have a nice little explosion. Big enough to kill a man or set off munitions in a ship’s hold at sea. The copper disk functions as the fuse, you see. The thinner it is, the shorter the time it takes the acid to eat through it.’

  Pray that strange little chemist got this copper fuse right, Max thought as he tipped the vial toward the lead tube. He had lost two of his agents in New York over the past year because of faulty copper fuses – the bombs had blown up in their hands as they had poured the acid.

  Behind him the unconscious watcher in the stall made thick snoring sounds, reminding Max that there was more than one fuse to worry about. Soon the doorman might raise an alarm. With this many watchers about, surely something is amiss. Some warning may even have reached Appleby.

  But again, he had no time to think of this, for the clear liquid from the vial began to dribble into the lead tube and Max held his breath. What if the disk had not been inserted properly? What if there were a leak between compartments?

  Nothing happened. The acid poured into the compartment and stayed. He breathed more easily and continued pouring, feeling sweat at his lower back, and finally filled the lead tube. It began to feel warm in his hand.

  ‘The acid would like to eat the lead,’ Scheele had instructed, speaking to him like a primary school teacher to a first grader. ‘But it can’t. The lead also works to impact the explosion. You must plug both ends securely after adding the sulfuric acid so to build pressure for the explosion.’

  Max filled half of the tube with the acid, then set the vial down and inserted the lead plug tightly.

  He now had a quite lethal and loud bomb in hand, and the fuse, the copper disk, was burning. He had only a matter of minutes.

  Out in the corridor once again, he placed the bomb under the counter of the cloakroom. The attendant had gone in with the audience and would not be injured by the blast, but the counter would provide an echo effect to the blast as well as shield any accidental passerby from the direct effect of it.

  I’m not out to kill any innocent people, he told himself, moving slowly away from the cloakroom. I’m not like Appleby, trying to bring innocents into the carnage of war. I’m above that. It’s that which separates me from them.

  The old guard last night at the medical laboratory: that was different. He had to die. He could have set the police on me before I had a chance to get to Appleby. It’s the luck of bad timing that cost the old man his life. I had no choice; he gave me no choice.

  Max took the stairs slowly down to the second floor. There was still the matter of watchers to deal with there, and once again he began to wonder about all the protection for Appleby. There was no way the authorities could be on to his plan, he knew. Perhaps it’s only my imagination. Was the man upstairs plain-clothes at all? Perhaps he was just another innocent caught up in the maelstrom.

  You are going soft in the head, he told himself. Of course he’s a watcher. And the others, as well. Now shut your mind down; finish with this stupid moralizing, and concentrate on one thing: killing the Englishman.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and heard the muffled sound of applause from inside the auditorium. Two men were walking up and down the hallway with that absolute look of boredom about them that Max knew so well.

  Watchers on duty.

  He kept himself concealed at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor behind a massive plaster of Paris Corinthian-style column, and began counting. He reached three hundred and began to worry. By four hundred he knew that Scheele had messed up. The damn copper fuse was not working. He could not wait all night.

  Soon enough one of the watchers will discover me, or the colored doorman will come looking for me, or my friend in the lavatory will wake up with a headache and vengeance on his mind. All of whom have seen me, can describe me minutely.

  The blast when it came surprised Max as much as the watchers patrolling the second floor. A rumbling concussion trembled the column he was hiding behind and a rush of air warmed the back of his neck.

  He was instantly in action, though, dashing out into the corridor and shouting: ‘Fire! Fire!�
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  Bulging-eyed watchers moved past him toward the sound of the blast. From inside the auditorium came the sounds of women screaming and of startled cries for the lights to be put on. Max raced along the corridor as doors to the boxes opened. He gave no more thought to appearing calm; no one in the entire National Theater at this moment was acting calmly. People were dashing out of their boxes in a panic. He had to get to Appleby’s box before the fellow left; had to catch him at close range.

  The door to 23 was still closed, he saw, as he turned the top arc of the half-circle corridor. And outside stood the same bulky guard as before, not moving.

  ‘Fire! Fire!’ Max shouted as he ran, and now more women were screaming, hands to their mouths. The guard, however, did not budge and turned to Max as he kept running toward him.

  Max was unsure what to do at this point. The simplest would be to shoot the man as he ran toward him, but that would warn those inside box 23.

  Why doesn’t the fool go toward the blast like the rest of his colleagues? But Max knew: orders. The man only knows his orders. In his mind Max could see the tall white-haired fellow earlier tapping his forearm for emphasis: ‘You are not to move from here, no matter what.’

  The man’s orders were apparently to stay with Appleby.

  A sudden inspiration struck Max. Orders.

  ‘They want you upstairs, officer,’ Max said as he ran up to the man. ‘A bomb has gone off. They need you there.’ His voice blended into the general pandemonium in the corridor so that Max was sure they would not hear him inside the box.

  The watcher chewed on his lower lip, looking from the door to Max.

  ‘Now!’ Max ordered, using his best military voice.

  The man heard the tone and obeyed, loping off along the corridor to the stairs.

  Max waited for him to get out of sight, for the corridor to be flooded with screaming women and bustling men, then pulled his hat low over his eyes, drew the pistol out, and flicked off its safety. From inside the box he heard muffled voices, but could make nothing intelligible out. They’re still in there, he thought. As if waiting for me.

  He took a deep breath, turned the door handle, and suddenly threw the door open.

  FIVE

  Max could see three of them seated in the box. Appleby was between the white-haired man and a woman with short black hair, their backs to him. He aimed the revolver at the back of Appleby’s head just as the other two were turning around.

  ‘What is it?’ the man began saying, peering into the shadows. ‘Have they caught the fellow …?’ Then his voice trailed off as he saw the gun.

  Max took in the woman’s features all at once, just as she began screaming. He saw the wide-flared nose, the high cheeks, the hint of bosom at the top of her cornflower blue evening gown. The absolute look of horror on her face made him hesitate.

  At the sound of the scream, the figure of Appleby suddenly crumpled to the floor; Max had no clear shot now. He was vaguely aware of movement from his left, from the white-haired man. Shifting his attention in that direction, Max saw that he had drawn an abnormally large pistol from inside his evening coat and Max jumped backward just as the boom of its discharge reverberated in his eardrums, just as a bullet thudded into the door jamb in back of him, splintering wood.

  More screams came from the corridor at the sound of the shot, and Max bolted from the box, stumbling into the crowd of theatergoers, knocking down a buxom matron in his panic, her long necklace breaking and pearls scattering across the floor.

  He jumped over the fallen woman, landed on some of the pearls strewn across the ground and stumbled for a moment, then righted himself and continued running through the crowd. He looked over his shoulder as he rushed along the corridor, and the white-haired man was still following him, trying to take aim once more, but the crowd prevented him from shooting.

  ‘Stop him!’ the man shouted from in back. ‘He’s an assassin!’

  The word galvanized the crowd, Max noticed. Men and women stared with frightened eyes as he lunged past them, seeing the gun in his hand and making way for him. No one laid a hand on him as he reached the stairs and leaped two steps at a time to the ground floor foyer. His left leg almost gave way under him as he took the last step, and he grimaced with pain.

  The audience here was in the same sort of panic as those upstairs. Max added to it by yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’ as he raced toward the front doors.

  A trap. They have laid a trap for me, he thought. He looked left and right as he neared the front doors. Would there be more men waiting for me out here? But he had no time to worry about this, for he was swept along in a flood of people rushing from the theater for their lives. Others had taken up his chant: ‘Fire! Open the doors!’

  In back of him, towering above the others coming down the stairs, the white-haired man was still in pursuit.

  Max held his pistol under his coat as the crowd pushed through the street doors and onto the sidewalk under the marquee. He caught a glimpse of the old colored doorman and the fellow seemed to recognize him, but then Max began running east down E Street, and then out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. He looked back once, and the man following him had got bottlenecked at the street door to the theater. Max ran one block, the night-time strollers looking at him suspiciously; then glancing back and seeing no one following him, he deftly holstered his pistol and slowed his pace. A streetcar passed, jangling its bell, and halted at a stop half a block away. He raced to it, jumping on the back platform just as it was pulling away from the stop.

  Looking out the back window, Max saw the white-haired man and three other burly fellows turn the corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue. They looked up and down the busy street once, twice, then shrugged resignedly, turning to go back to the theater. All except the white-haired man who continued staring, it seemed to Max, straight at the streetcar carrying him, but then he too finally turned and headed back to the theater.

  Max breathed deeply. His depth of focus suddenly shifted so that he was now looking at his own reflection in the window of the streetcar.

  Smiling, he thought. I’m damn well smiling. I’ve made a botch up of the Appleby job, nearly got myself killed or at least captured, and I’m smiling.

  But he kept his mind off that one for a bit longer, closely inspecting the busy avenue outside of the streetcar for any signs of being followed. The streetcar lurched along the rails; gaslights mingled with newer electric streetlights; commoners and moneyed members of the American aristocracy rubbed shoulders, as well. Oyster shops and elegant restaurants, light spilling onto the sidewalk from their windows, were side by side; horse-drawn cabs and honking Model T Fords shared the road. But no sign of anyone following him. Yet.

  The conductor, a small man in a blue uniform and cap came up to him, and Max almost jumped at the sight of the uniform, then calmed himself, taking his hand off the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster, and fetching his change purse instead.

  Got to figure this out, he thought as the conductor left him, a censorious look on his face for the unorthodox manner in which Max had caught the streetcar. The watchers, the dummy in the box where Appleby should have been – for it was now clear to Max that the figure of Adrian Appleby had been a mannequin, which explained why it toppled over the way it did. And the question the white-haired man asked when he thought Max was the guard: ‘Have they caught the fellow?’

  All of this made it obvious. They expected me, Max thought.

  Had Appleby been at the theater at all? I saw him come, pull up in the Cadillac, get out amid the crowd of reporters, and bustle into the theater.

  Correction: I saw some short round man with a top hat rushing into the theater. Had it been Appleby at all? he now wondered.

  But in the final analysis it’s not important whether Appleby actually arrived or not. What is important is the fact of the dummy in the box. That means they knew of my plan beforehand. Which means that they – I don’t even know who they are – have somehow tumbled to my mission and t
hat it will be much more difficult to get to Appleby now.

  He had no doubt that he could still get to the Englishman; gave no thought to calling off his mission. He knew only that the job would be more difficult now.

  Damage assessment: Appleby knows that he’s being hunted and will be on his guard now. There may be a description of me as a result of this fiasco. May be, he thought ironically as the streetcar slowed to another stop. Hell, the pork-faced watcher I left breathing spit bubbles in the men’s toilet will damn well remember me. The doorman also got a fine look at my face. I might just as well have posed at a photographer’s studio.

  He thought for one bad moment of the old night watchman at the medical building whom he had killed to prevent just such an eventuality.

  One saving grace, he thought, is that when attempting to make the kill I had my hat pulled down low over my eyes and my coat on. The white-haired one won’t have gotten a good look at me, nor did the others in the box.

  Several people got off at the next stop, two more got on; older men in evening dress chattering about a musical evening they had just been to.

  Not like the one I attended, he thought, edging farther away from the new arrivals, continuing to stare out into the night as the streetcar started up again with a lurch.

  I’ll alter my appearance, he thought. Shave my beard for one. That should be simple enough. I need to get rid of this fedora; substitute it for a cap. And again the thought came up: how did they get on to me? Max was certain it had something to do with Manstein in New York. Either the fool had been talking to the wrong people, or else the message to Berthold had been intercepted. Whichever, it meant that Max had to go it alone from here on out. No more communicating with Manstein or Berthold.

  That decision made, Max began to almost relax. The rest fit together easily after that: first a lodging needed to be found for the night. Some cheap accommodation, and he knew the spot for that: in the area between the Capitol and Union Station, the very direction in which the streetcar was now headed. A place where no one would be overly concerned that he had no luggage; he could say he left it at the station.