I turned to Lars. The boy had sunk down to the ground and was hugging his knees. He probably had guessed he was doomed, but Nick’s verbal confirmation of the fact was all too much for him. I looked back at Nick, glared at him. He had planned all along to sink the Athenia with everyone aboard.
“You really are sick,” I said. “You know that?”
“I’ve been watching you a long time, Moseley,” Nick said in a calm, even voice. “Ever since the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. The world felt poor Charles’s agony and cried along with him—especially in Germany—when his infant son was found dead. Then you exposed him as a so-called Nazi sympathizer. Why?”
Nick and I locked eyes. He knew he’d hit me below the belt. I had to admit, for dramatic effect it was a nice touch. If you were into sadistic improvisation, that is. He took out another cigarette and lit it. Took a deep drag and blew a smoke ring toward the porthole over Lars’s head. Caught in the light column, the undulating grey-white ribbon glistened like diamond dust, then dissipated into nothingness.
“You betrayed a great hero and friend of Der Führer’s.” Nick had a penchant for theatricality. He was eating the scenery while playing to an unseen audience. “I ask you again. Why? Was it for money? Fame? A woman? What?”
Yeah, I’d sold out Lindbergh to save my own skin. He was going down in flames with all the pro-Nazi, America First babble anyway. I saw no reason to go down with him. But did I have to be the one to nail him to the wall? Write an exposé in The Journal chronicling his downfall as an American Hero. I had betrayed Lindbergh for money. Told myself that I was a journalist with a responsibility to report the news. Even if it cost me a dear friend.
“Sure,” I said to him. “All of the above. Why do you care?”
“Because,” Nick said in a vacant, expressionless tone, “it proves you’re no better than I am. You see, we’re both opportunists. We make the most of the cards we are dealt.”
Nick dropped his cigarette and extinguished it under the crush of his jackboot. Then he walked to the porthole and stared out. No doubt admiring a scene unfolding of his own creation. Beyond his own sick, greedy imagination.
Then Nick turned back toward me, the purple-reddish glow of a fading sun illuminating one side of his face, the other side hidden in shadow. Reminded me of my own scarred face. Of a two-faced mercenary.
“I just happen to have all the aces,” he said with a burning glare, “and you have nothing.”
“At least,” I said, “let the boy go.”
The faintest glimmer of a smirk formed in the corner of his mouth. He looked down at Lars, seated beneath him.
“But then,” he said, “who would keep you company?”
The look of recognition in Nick’s face gave me shudders. Everything I had experienced in the last seventy-two hours was coming into sharp focus for the first time. Garbo had thought she was going to Germany to kill Hitler. But she was the one being drawn inexorably to the slaughter. After being sold to the highest bidder, like so much chattel.
Nick brought his forearm up to his face and looked at his wristwatch. I could tell he was doing everything for show now, relishing his role. The one he’d written and cast himself in the lead. A film noir where the bad guy wins.
“Look at the time,” he said. “Have to be going.”
Nick turned and made haste for the door. I bit my tongue. Felt my own warm, salty blood flow. What more was there to say? Nick rapped on the door twice with a leather-gloved hand.
“One more thing,” I said in a purposefully loud voice.
Nick turned around. He looked at me with concern. Like I’d strayed off the script that played in his head. I let him stay that way for another beat.
“You owe me a thousand kronor.” I smiled.
Nick’s facial features eased into a shit-eating, toothy grin. “Never let it be said—” the Nazi turned on a dime as Heinrich opened the door—“that I welched on a bet.”
I stared at the back of Nick’s head while he and Heinrich communicated in hushed German. Nick was a smooth operator, all right. He had communicated to me that he was going to hold Garbo for ransom. He also made it known in no uncertain terms that he knew me to be a self-serving newshound, willing to sell out anyone for a story. But he didn’t know everything about me.
“But I’ll take my camera back,” I said. “Instead.”
Both Nick, Lars and even Heinrich looked at me now. I heard the gears in Nick’s head grinding away on that one. Asking for my camera back was like a drowning man asking for a drink of seawater. And I saw by the expression on the faces of the three men surrounding me that they concurred.
“Sure,” Nick said. “I’m no kibitzer. I’ll make sure you get your precious property back.”
And then he was gone, the door locked and bolted behind him. Just me and Lars remained. The young porter looked over at me, incredulous.
“What was that all about?” he said.
“We’re going to get out of this, Lars,” I said. “And when we do, I want proof of what happened here.”
I could tell Lars thought I was nuts just by the look of renewed disgust on his face. He lowered his head again, shook it back and forth silently. I didn’t blame him. I probably was nuts. But I was a nutcase on a mission.
Garbo was terra incognita—unknown territory—for me. But once having discovered her, I found I was no longer a man without a country. I belonged to her, much like a subject belonged to his Queen. But when push came to shove, could I be counted on to make the ultimate sacrifice for crown and country?
I prayed I’d become a man willing to die to protect her sovereignty. No longer the mouse that had betrayed Lindbergh, a friend who had trusted me. Nick seemed to know. Me, I wasn’t sure.
23. BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN SETH
Lindbergh had been a hero by twenty feet. That’s by how much The Spirit of Saint Louis cleared telephone wires as the plane lifted off the end of the runway at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York at 7:52 a.m. on Monday, May 20, 1927. Just two hundred and forty inches shorter on liftoff, and Charles Augustus Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight would have ended in instant incineration on the tarmac with him trapped within an exploding fuselage jam packed with 450 gallons of fuel.
“It shouldn’t have worked,” Lucky Lindy had told me years after. “By rights I should have been blown to smithereens.”
Instead, Lindbergh attained instant immortality exactly thirty-three hours, thirty minutes and 29.8 seconds later, when his plane touched down at Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris, France. Time and space had been on Lindbergh’s side. In return, he won the admiration of the entire world. Even the nascent Nazi party and their young fuckup of a leader, Adolf Hitler, had taken notice.
Since Nick had left us alone, Lars had told me about the contraption I had been tied to was a catapult. An overgrown slingshot for launching a small plane with pontoons into the air. I had seen one taxiing up the Narrows back in the port of New York and yet another suspended from a hoist, waiting to be loaded back onto … the Athenia. The very same one that must have been suspended above us now.
While Lars helped me free myself from my bonds, I told myself that nothing was a coincidence anymore. Me being on the Athenia, meeting Ingrid, Garbo, and now Lars. Somehow the fates had decreed that I was the right man for the moment. But right for exactly what, I still had no idea.
Hitler’s obsession with the occult was common knowledge. What was news, however, was the connection to Garbo. Even in my own scandal sheet, The Journal, we had reported that all the occult leaders of the world were in agreement: Garbo’s attraction was supernatural. Now the leader of the Fifth Column had chimed in. Hitler the madman wanted Garbo the Goddess for her otherworldly power. Did he intend on somehow turning her into a secret weapon? Hadn’t the Allies, if in fact they were the ones behind her mission, tried the same thing? Sent her to mesmerize and kill him?
I stood in the middle of the metal room and stretched my wings over my head. I was fr
ee. Free, yet bound in the knowledge that time was almost up. I crossed my arms, shook with a shiver. Garbo’s life was more in peril than ever, and I was stuck down here, helpless to aid her.
Nick had been good to his word. Heinrich had entered the metal room and shut the door behind him. At first he gave me and Lars a wide berth. Then he produced my camera case and held it out to me. Heinrich hesitated before passing the camera into my hands. I could tell by looking in the big galoot’s eyes he wasn’t entirely on board with his boss’ instructions. He handed me the camera case like he was handing over a loaded gun. The case that I’d last seen in Ingrid’s suite when she was still alive. Still in the game. Then the big ape left without saying a word.
I opened the case, took out the camera, grabbed the flash, attached it to the side of the camera’s housing and snapped it into place. Everything seemed to be in working order. I only had seven flashbulbs left. Too bad about the bulbs I’d blown shooting Harriet Brown, the Garbo alias who had turned out to be a fat woman in a tub. Back then things had been simpler. Back then Ingrid was still alive.
I caught Lars eyeballing my camera with an infantile curiosity. He was just a kid after all. Maybe nobody had played with him as a child. I whipped the lens cap off my camera with a dramatic flip of my hand. The porter was instantly amused.
“This is a seventy millimeter lens.” I pointed to it for added effect.
I put my hand around the lens shaft and racked focus. I pointed it directly at Lars so he could see inside the mechanism. I slowly rotated the outside of the lens to open the aperture inside. Lars’s face lit up like a kid with his very own box of jawbreakers.
“Do you see?” I said. “Opens up like a metal tulip.”
Lars caught sight of his own reflection in the lens. Smiled and let out a snort of amusement, fogged my lens.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.” I produced a cloth from the case to wipe the lens clean. “No harm done.”
We exchanged a quick glance. Then I turned and headed for the porthole. Lars came in tow like a little obedient circus animal trained to walk on its hind legs. The kid was definitely growing on me while we both walked into the light.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here.” I turned my lens out the opened porthole.
The deep red sun hung low against the darkly purple sky, and bright blue Venus had begun its rise. I lowered my eyes. The Nazi pocket battleship was less than a quarter-mile off the Athenia’s port bow. Black as tar, the ominous vessel had the word Vaterland emblazoned in white lettering on her port bow. She was small for a battleship—fast, lean and lethal-looking, cutting through the surface of the water like a knife or a dark dorsal fin.
The warship’s full complement had turned out to enjoy the show. Some two hundred Nazi seaman dotted her top deck, standing shoulder to shoulder. Turned out to see Garbo? Were they all Nick’s accomplices? Or were they simply clueless tin soldiers along for the ride, taking the sea air?
I felt completely impotent for the first time in my professional career. For the first time, I didn’t want to know what was going to happen next. Worse, I wanted to get involved and change the game. I needed to make a move, but what?
I leaned in closer to the porthole and forced myself to look down at the Lido Deck, located directly beneath me. I spied Captain Cook, Master of the Athenia, and Colonel Nick, my pal. They were standing amid a contingency of Cook’s officers dressed in their formal white uniforms, surrounded by a much larger armed contingent of Nick’s Nazi soldiers, wearing black.
I wore Nick’s borrowed black suit. To look at me, I was in league with the bad guys. Yet white or black, things got harder and darker the deeper you went. The same was true for black and white film. I knew the truth of the scene being played out before my camera would never be captured. I’d only capture the light reflected on the surface. But the truth was much farther down, where light couldn’t penetrate. Played out in the darkest depths of men’s hearts. Men like Nick. And men like me who allowed it to be.
I raised my camera, looked through the viewfinder and zoomed in on both Captain Cook and Nick. The Captain didn’t look pleased. He stood stone-faced as Nick addressed him. I was out of earshot, but I imagined Nick gave the orders. Was Captain Cook upset by The Piano Man’s sudden rise in ranking? To the Captain, Nick must have represented an affront to his supreme authority on the sea. To me, Nick was an affront to humanity.
I caught Nick in the crosshairs of my viewfinder. Stuck my lens out the porthole as far as I could, opened the aperture to let in as much light as possible—too far away to use a precious flash—and snapped the Captain and Nick’s portrait. The requisite mechanical click of the camera used to be music to my ears. The sound of history, captured forever. Not now. Now the sound was as hollow and empty as if I had pulled the trigger of a gun.
The mass of black and white uniformed men on the Lido deck parted like the Red Sea. I could tell by the look on their faces just who they were making room for. A visual wave ran through the crowd as every officer snapped to attention. Even Captain Cook and Nick. Garbo was making her grand entrance.
Lars was right beside me. He must have sensed he was missing the show. I graciously moved aside and let him take a look-see through my camera’s viewfinder. Without a word, he accepted my offer and gingerly held the Bell & Howell in his hands.
I knew Lars was fascinated watching Garbo, along with everyone else. For even with the power of the sun waning, she shone bright. She stepped onto the deck like it was a stage, glowed self-illuminated under the ever-darkening skies. I could swear I heard thunder off in the distance.
“Take a shot,” I whispered and startled Lars.
I took his right paw and put it up to the shutter release. He turned and looked at me with uncertainty. I gave him a reassuring nod. He looked back through the viewfinder, giddy with anticipation.
“Get her in the crosshairs,” I instructed and watched him steady himself. “Ready. Aim. And fire.”
Lars depressed the shutter release like a dutiful camera assistant. That metallic CLICK came again, and by the expression on Lars’s face, he may as well have been in porter heaven. A bitter taste formed again in my mouth. The same one I had had when Nick had been in the room.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.
Lars looked at me with genuine surprise. Then he looked down at the camera in his hands, fiddled with the aperture.
“I was angry at first,” he admitted. “But now I know you were only trying to protect Garbo.”
Lars gave me back my camera. I looked through the viewfinder but only made a show of trying to get another shot. Instead, I concentrated on Lars next to me. The little guy was acting brave, even though I knew he was scared shitless.
“Why are you here, Lars?” I took another snapshot out the porthole. “Working on the Athenia?”
I turned and looked him straight in the eyes. Lars looked quizzically at me. He motioned back to the porthole, pantomiming with his mitts to turn the attention back outside. Not inside on him.
“My mother and father are both dead,” he said. “I joined the merchant marine. The Athenia has been my home ever since.”
I put a hand up on Lars’s shoulder. The kid was all alone. This ship was his entire world, the crew his entire family. And then I stepped on board and all hell broke loose, or so it must have seemed to him.
“You’re a good porter,” I said. “The best.”
Lars blushed as he characteristically lowered his head to avoid my stare. I glanced up behind him, and that’s when I spied a hatch in the upper-most corner of the metal room.
“What’s that?” I said.
“What?” Lars said and looked up at me.
“It’s a hatch,” I said, excited. “A door out of here.”
I put the strap of my camera over my shoulder and ran over to stand just underneath the hatch. The ceiling was easily twelve feet off the ground.
“Help me fashion a makeshift ladde
r,” I said.
I started to stack crates, boxes, whatever I could find underneath the hatch. Then I realized Lars wasn’t helping me. I turned around and saw him frozen with fear in front of the porthole.
“Lars,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to die,” he said.
“I don’t want to die, either,” I said.
“If they see us up there,” he said, “they’ll shoot us.”
I took a step toward Lars. He backed away from me and stepped out of the light. I smiled and shrugged at him.
“Listen, kid,” I said. “All I know is that I can’t let them take Garbo without doing something. Anything. But that’s me. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Okay?”
Lars was silent for a moment. Then a muscle in his jaw clenched, and he nodded. He walked toward me, grabbing a box on his way.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said and helped me stack boxes higher and higher toward the metal hatch.
24. DRAWING DOWN THE GODDESS SETH
Lars and I emerged onto an open deck between the Athenia’s two smokestacks, and I saw a set of stairs leading up immediately to the right. I took the stairs in twos. Lars followed close behind. The night air was chilly and darkening with every passing moment.
The voice I’d heard in my head, the one that had told me to kiss Garbo back in her suite, now told me I had to pull out all the stops. And boy, was I listening. I turned and bounded up those stairs in a flash. Came to a stop at the top in front of a chain strung across the handrails with a sign hanging from it that read Stay Out!
I knew what the sign meant. I was entering forbidden territory. But I had to move on. I was out of my depth. Dealing with forces way beyond my control. There was nothing I could hope to do now but antagonize Nick and his mission to abscond with Hitler’s coveted prize. But that was good enough for me now.
I climbed over the chain and the warning sign. Stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs. My head spun, and I quickly assessed the situation. A large white tarp spanned the fifty-foot transom between the Athenia’s two smoke stacks. I looked underneath the canvas and found what I was looking for—a small, two-seat, fixed-wing seaplane with pontoons resting in a slingshot catapult. My heart jumped several beats. The point of no return. I was going to have to fly.
Looking for Garbo Page 20