The German Agent

by J Sydney Jones

  ‘Oh, yes. Never two days alike, you know. Just the other day we had a call come all the way from San Francisco.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ Max said. ‘It’s not like a soldier’s life. Mine’s all routine.’ He smiled at her winningly.

  Suddenly the assistant, noticing others in line, became all business. ‘So you placed your call, then. That’ll be fifteen cents.’

  Max dug some change out of the pocket of the unfamiliar and scratchy uniform, still feeling conspicuous in the puttees. He laid the coins on the shiny wooden counter between them.

  ‘You know, I’ve been awfully foolish. I just called my friend and arranged to meet with him, but did not find out where exactly his house is located. It’s in the Capitol prefix area.’

  The assistant had already turned from him to serve a little lady in fur hat and muff. She looked like a forest creature: all that poked out of the fur was her tiny pink nose.

  ‘Sorry?’ the assistant said turning distractedly back to Max.

  ‘The Capitol prefix area. Where exactly is it?’

  ‘Oh, that’s way out of town. Up the Cabin John area just north of the Potomac.’ She turned back to the little lady, completely ignoring Max now.

  That’s it, then, he thought. You’ve got him. Your luck is holding. More than luck though, he knew. You make your own luck; you keep pushing, keep working.

  Max left the phone room and passed into the main hall of the post office building, remembering to use the cane, to keep up the disguise at all times. As he moved toward the entrance, he began figuring out how he would trace Brantley Hall.

  Pity I got rid of my guidebook, he thought to himself. The map in it of suburban Washington would probably have shown him where the house was. It’s sure to be an estate with land around it. The name has most likely not changed from colonial times, regardless of who owns it. He’d have to go to a bookshop and thumb through one of their guides. The Cabin John area, the assistant said. Funny name.

  Out the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a man half hidden behind one of the marble columns. Max did not think anything of it for several steps, until approaching the front entrance he noticed another young hatless man loitering on the steps.

  Alarm bells sounded in his head: the man in the lobby behind the pillar. The loud yellow vest he wore. Where have I seen that before?

  Even as he thought this out, Max abruptly changed directions, turning to his left and heading back into the main lobby toward a wide arc of stairs ascending the upper stories.

  It came to him in a blinding flash of remembrance: the red-haired agent at the New Willard who had been trying to get him in his sights. The one Fitzgerald had been fool enough to get in front of.

  Max casually looked over his shoulder, as if scratching his cheek on the rough wool collar of the tunic. He caught a glimpse of the man in the yellow vest at the front entrance now. Red hair.

  Christ! It is him. Max had to control himself, to stop the feeling of panic overcoming him. He must have followed him from Fitzgerald’s.

  He looked around quickly. The other man at the front entrance: he was with yellow vest. There will most likely be more at the back entrance. Think.

  He kept walking back into the main hall, heading for the stairs as if drawn there. Slowly, he told himself. Just pray they don’t try to take you inside with all these people about. Keep among people; do not give them a clear shot at you.

  The stairs seemed the busiest part of the post office just at this moment; arrow signs pointed upward toward the cafeteria. It was midday, and many of the workers and customers were availing themselves of the food in-house. Max joined these people going up the marble steps, jostling into the midst of a knot of several men and a woman, obviously employees of the post office, who were talking heatedly about a projected pay raise.

  ‘Two cents an hour is nothing, I tell you,’ a hawk-faced young man was saying as Max managed to insert himself within their group. He looked at Max strangely, but Max smiled in return, limping along with them as they mounted the stairs.

  He looked back quickly and now saw yellow vest, along with three other men, entering the main hall and moving to the stairs. Think, he ordered himself again. He could remember from his external view of the place that it was a four-story building, but could not remember seeing emergency exits on the façade of the building. Reaching the first floor, he desperately scanned his visual memory of the building for anything; any means of escape.

  Yes! It came back to him suddenly. When he had come here on Wednesday morning to find the address of Fitzgerald’s city house, he’d noticed an enclosed overpass for ease of mail transport connecting the City post office and Union Station, crossing over 1st Street. It must be on this floor, Max thought, and he left the group of workers as they reached the shadows of the first-floor corridor.

  Max flung caution aside now, and no longer affected a worse limp than he actually had. The bridge was on the east side of the building, he knew, to his right. He made his way down a corridor in that direction, past private offices. This is a wild gamble, he thought, as he raced down this corridor. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is a blind alley, whether or not the overpass is even accessible, he thought to himself.

  But he moved on, never looking back, reaching the end of the corridor and then looking left and right where a narrow hall continued perpendicular to the main corridor, running along the east side of the building. Which way? he wondered, his heart pounding in his throat. At that moment an employee wheeled an empty mail cart from a room to his left and he raced for the door before it closed.

  ‘Hey! You can’t go in there,’ the man said, startled as Max hurtled past him and into the tunnel overpass.

  Max felt his lungs biting, felt the muscles in his left leg ache and cry out for rest as he raced along the narrow corridor. From in back of him he heard echoing voices. Move! he told himself. Move or you’re a dead man in this tunnel. There’s no cover. You’re a perfect target here. Lights overhead lit the narrow, white-walled passage. No windows gave to the outside.

  Racing along, Max drew his gun out and began leaping up to strike at the naked bulbs, exploding them and leaving the space in back of him in darkness.

  Just as he reached the other end of the overpass a voice rang out behind him: ‘Stop or I shoot!’

  Max did not slow his pace one bit as he hit the door to the station and turned the knob. It opened just as a shot rang out in back. Max was through the door and out onto the concourse, the brakes of a recently arrived train spewing steam at him. He looked around quickly and found an empty porter’s cart, and jammed it against the door, under the knob. That will stop them for a few moments, he thought, as he once again set out at a run down the long concourse toward the main hall.

  Should I jump a departing train? he wondered. I’ve got to cover my tracks quickly, before yellow vest and his men reach the concourse. Ahead of him he suddenly saw his salvation. The train that had just arrived was disgorging a large contingent of soldiers, all dressed in the same khaki color as he was. He looked down and suddenly saw he was holding not only the cane, but also the gun. He quickly slipped the gun inside his shoulder holster as he approached the group of soldiers. He tossed the cane out onto the tracks and melted into the mass of other khaki-clad men as they moved toward the main hall.

  Don’t look back, he commanded himself. Don’t give yourself away. His tunic was soaked with sweat; his stomach turned into a knot. Blood pounded at his temples.

  Soon the soldiers overtook other passengers from the same train, passing porters’ carts piled high with suitcases and overcoats. As they passed one of these, Max picked a likely looking black camel hair overcoat and derby from an unattended pile of leather luggage monogrammed in brass with FDR, and quickly put these on.

  He slowly filtered to the edges of the mass of soldiers pouring into the main station, walking listlessly as if he had not a care in the world. Soon yellow vest and his men came racing past, grabbing first
one, then another of the soldiers as they were just reaching the main hall. There was absolute confusion and pandemonium as the agents were gruffly shoved aside by the soldiers, here in Washington on leave and not wanting to be messed with. An altercation broke out with one of the soldiers, a little man about Max’s size, and yellow vest. Max passed unobserved out of the main hall just as the soldier was threatening to cave in yellow vest’s nose.

  Outside three men similar in appearance to those with yellow vest mounted the steps two at a time right past Max, dashing into the hall.

  Max continued down the steps, climbed calmly into a waiting taxi, and drove away.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Man to see you, Miss Catherine,’ Thomas announced later that morning.

  Agent Niel entered, his face screwed into a grimace. ‘Could we speak,’ Niel said. ‘In private.’

  Catherine caught Thomas’s eye and nodded at him. Niel’s tone made her nervous.

  ‘What is it, Mr Niel?’ she said as Thomas closed the door. She did not offer him a seat, but he took one anyway, on the chintz couch. He picked up the novel she had been reading, Lawrence’s The Rainbow, examining it as if for clues, then dropped it back casually onto the cushion.

  He said nothing for a moment, then suddenly he stood once more, staring straight into her face. He was a couple of inches shorter than Catherine and so had to look upward. Still his presence frightened her. She involuntarily moved backward a step.

  ‘You had a visitor this morning, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. Not that I recall.’

  ‘Come off it, Mrs Fitzgerald. I saw him coming out of here myself. The officer on duty let him go by.’

  ‘You mean the soldier?’

  Niel bared his teeth; he obviously meant it as an ironic grin, but it made him look like a ferret and Catherine felt herself shivering.

  ‘Yes, the soldier.’ He continued to fix her in his gaze.

  ‘He came for contributions for the preparedness committees,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure he did. And did you contribute?’

  ‘Nothing. He left before I could speak with him. I was in the dark room.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the agent said.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  He suddenly drew a notebook out of his pocket. ‘Do you recognize this?’

  ‘Wherever did you find that? That’s my journal.’

  ‘I know what it is,’ Niel said. ‘This was found in the room of M, the man who is trying to kill your uncle.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘I myself found it under the man’s mattress at the World Peace League house.’

  The name stopped her for a moment. ‘The World Peace League?’

  Niel smiled, nodding his head.

  ‘It can’t be.’ She remembered now that the journal had gone missing the day of her attack, the day the man named Maximillian Voetner saved her. And she had been unconscious for several moments.

  ‘He must have taken it then,’ she said out loud.

  ‘You’re not making much sense, Mrs Fitzgerald. Do you admit you know the man who had this journal?’

  ‘Yes. I think I do. I met him quite by accident several days ago while photographing in town. He was … most helpful to me.’ She was damned if she was going to tell this little worm the whole embarrassing tale.

  ‘How convenient,’ Niel said with a smirk.

  ‘I tell you the man was a complete stranger to me. His name is, I believe, Maximillian Voetner. He said he was the South African representative to the World Peace League. Ask him yourself, if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I would ask him if I could, Mrs Fitzgerald. But the man gave us the slip at Union Station.’

  ‘That was most unfortunate for you, Mr Niel. But I again tell you the man was a total stranger to me.’

  ‘Then why come here today?’

  ‘I don’t know. As I said, he did not wait for me. He was gone by the time I got out of the dark room.’

  ‘I must tell you, Mrs Fitzgerald, I do not like this.’

  ‘And I do not like your insinuations, Mr Niel. I believe it is time you left.’

  ‘Not until you tell me your connection to this assassin.’

  She felt an uncontrollable rage overcoming her and wanted to physically attack the man. Instead she shouted at him. ‘What right have you to come into my home and accuse me? This is still a free country.’

  Again the ferret smile came across Niel’s face, and he shook his head. ‘Oh, no, Mrs Fitzgerald. That’s where you’re wrong. Freedom.’ He suddenly laughed high and quite wildly. ‘There’s a time coming when we won’t be able to afford your sort of freedom and individual privacy anymore. Those concepts will have to go the way of the dinosaur. Our great country is beset upon by enemies from every quarter. We have revolutionaries threatening us on all sides. Negroes, suffragettes, Wobblies and socialists who want to do in our form of government. Free love people, like that filth you’re reading.’ He nodded scornfully at the novel on her couch. ‘Enemies everywhere you look. And we’re building files on all of you, I tell you. On Emma Goldman and the Negro socialist Philip Randolph and Max Eastman and Big Bill Haywood. Files on all of them, including you, Mrs Fitzgerald. And you think you’re so special that we at the Bureau can’t touch you? Think again.’

  He suddenly fell quiet, breathing rapidly. It was as if he realized that he had said too much, and suddenly his menacing grimace was transformed, replaced by the plucky little Irish grin. This transformation chilled her more than his ranting had.

  ‘Of course,’ he said calmly, ‘if you say you did not see the soldier who came here this morning, I’ll have to take your word for it. Just one thing I would like to know: how did he get the phone number of your country estate, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Capitol 2345. That is the number at Brantley Hall, isn’t it?’

  She nodded dumbly, her mind racing.

  ‘And that’s the number our man called from the City post office. He went straight there from here and placed a call. I checked with the clerk afterward and got the number.’

  She knew Niel was not lying about this, and suddenly she remembered how she had left her address book out on the table after talking with the young man from the embassy that morning. It was open to the number at Brantley.

  ‘He must have looked at my address book while waiting for me.’

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ Niel said. After his outburst, he now was calm again, almost solicitous, as if afraid that he had so overstepped his position that he was in danger.

  Catherine was filled with sudden fear. Both Adrian and Edward are at Brantley, she thought. Is this German agent on his way there now?

  ‘Have you alerted my husband?’ she said.

  He nodded though he had not yet. ‘I’ll be leaving then, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ Niel said. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Niel said ironically, as he opened the door. ‘At least we know where our man is headed now, don’t we?’

  Max paid the cashier with his last five-dollar bill, and received $4.15 change. He was not concerned about money; after killing Appleby he knew he could somehow make his way back to New York, and from there Manstein would have to see to getting him out of the country. Besides, America was filled with rich people. If I need more money, I will simply rob somebody, he told himself.

  Leaving Brentano’s bookstore with the guide to suburban Washington under his arm, he felt powerful and unstoppable. The cold air braced him. Slanting rays of low winter sun filled the street with a rich golden light, throwing massive shadows across the street. Shoppers, busy with their Saturday purchases, did not notice Max as he made his way down the street.

  ‘What do you mean, at my home?’ Fitzgerald heard his voice thunder in the narrow hallway of Brantley. ‘My God! Catherine.’

  ‘She’s quite all right,’ Agent Niel said, smiling brightly.

  What the hell has the man got to smile about? Fitzgerald wondered.

  ‘It seems the
fellow was posing as a veteran collecting for preparedness committees to gain entrance.’

  ‘Wasn’t Thomas there? Didn’t anyone get suspicious?’

  Niel shrugged. ‘I only know what your wife told me. Luckily, the man was gone by the time she came from the dark room.’

  ‘But what in God’s name did he hope to achieve by such a stunt?’

  Appleby sauntered into the hall now, followed by Chief Inspector Lewis, both curious to see who the visitor was. Lewis sighed with his eyes when he saw Niel; Appleby nodded curtly.

  ‘What brings you out here, Niel?’ Chief Inspector Lewis said. ‘I thought you were coordinating things in Washington.’

  ‘He’s spotted the German,’ Fitzgerald blurted out. ‘At Poplars.’

  Appleby’s face turned white. ‘Christ! Is Catherine all right?’

  ‘I was just explaining to Mr Fitzgerald that everything is fine at that end. I tailed the fellow to the City post office where he went directly after leaving Poplars.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘You lost him.’

  Niel sucked air between his front teeth making a rather unpleasant sound. ‘Yes. He gave us the slip at Union Station.’

  There was a communal groan from the men in the hall.

  ‘But we did discover something quite important. What he was doing at the City post office at all.’

  Niel paused momentarily, seeming to enjoy the attention his pronouncement had made on them.

  ‘Well, get on with it then, Niel,’ Lewis finally spluttered out. ‘What was he doing at the post office?’

  ‘Making a call.’ Niel looked at the three each in turn, stopping at Fitzgerald. ‘It seems he had a chance to go through your wife’s address book. It was the number here at Brantley he phoned.’

  ‘No.’ Appleby said it with a rasping moan at the end.

  ‘Afraid so, Sir Adrian,’ Niel said.

  Fitzgerald felt his heart sink, remembering having heard the phone ring earlier. How could Monroe have been so stupid as to give the man any information? Couldn’t he hear the accent? But even as he thought this, he knew it was pointless to blame Monroe. After all, the man had signed on as a caretaker, not a warder.