The Witness Tree

by Brendan Howley

  Guffawing, Foster agreed. “They save the real fights for the Caucus Room, just behind you, Kurt.”

  Looking relieved, Schröder nodded. “Indeed? Perhaps we should return for the afternoon bout, Herr Dulles?”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged, Baron,” Foster said, brandishing a fist. “Blood all over the walls.”

  Eleanor offered her gloved hand to Schröder. “I’m so sorry, Baron, but I must go. Do excuse me.”

  The banker bowed again. “By all means, madame. A pleasure to meet you. It’s been most … what? Memorable?” He kissed her gloved hand. “Auf Wiedersehen.”

  As she turned to leave, Eleanor asked Foster, “Are you at the Hay-Adams?”

  “Yes. Drinks at five-thirty?”

  “See you then. Goodbye, Baron.” Schröder inclined his head and replaced his hat; Eleanor noticed his perfectly manicured fingernails.

  She made her way through the crowd to the street exit, where she met the Capitol policeman. He made a thoughtful face and tucked his thumbs into his Sam Browne. “I hear a lotta hard-luck stories in my job,” he said quietly, glancing at the German couple. “That’s gotta be one of the worst, ma’am, that one.” He nodded and returned to his beat.

  At the top of the broad granite Constitution Avenue stairs, the old couple huddled beneath a single tired umbrella. “I couldn’t help myself,” the woman was saying in refined German.

  “Excuse me,” Eleanor said, her umbrella touching theirs. “Are you all right?”

  The older man smiled an ironic smile, his brown eyes calm and inquiring; they reminded her of David’s. “I am a doctor, madame. Dr. Solomon Neimann. Beate, my wife.” Mrs. Neimann gave a short nod, recovering a little.

  “Do you know who that man is?” Eleanor asked.

  “Forgive my wife,” Dr. Neimann said. “Here, here in your capital—the shock, it was too much.”

  “I hope,” Eleanor said in her schoolgirl German, “that you will soon feel better, Mrs. Neimann.”

  Mrs. Neimann brightened. “Oh, you speak German. He is a friend of yours, Schröder?”

  “No, I’d just met him. My brother is a lawyer. The Baron is one of my brother’s clients.”

  “Mein Gott! He is the SS man, do you know this?” Dr. Neimann declared. “Do you know what this means? Schröder, one of the inner circle, gives the SS the factories the Nazis have stolen—from us, from my wife’s family.”

  Mrs. Neimann had calmed herself. “We paid bribes,” she said patiently. “We obeyed laws. And still they took everything from us. Our factory in Köln, the Nazis threw my uncle, my father, in the street. Schröder and his bank bought the factory for nothing. He is criminal. They are all criminal. The senator, he can do nothing. Nothing.” She began to weep again, disconsolate.

  Eleanor gave Mrs. Neimann her handkerchief.

  “Danke schön,” she said, then switched to her stumbling English. “Today our workers make … SS hats. Understand? For the SS. My family factory. That animal, his hat … can you imagine this?”

  “I have heard a little of such things,” Eleanor admitted.

  “Then you know. Then inform your brother, please,” Dr. Neimann said. “America, so naive.”

  “I’m so sorry, I’m in a hurry, but before I go—one question. Are you related to the economist Gunter Neimann?”

  “But of course,” Dr. Neimann replied. “He is my nephew.”

  “The same Gunter Neimann who married Marta Bravo de Urquía?”

  “Yes, yes, this is the same. They are trying to get out, but it is not so easy, you must understand.”

  “I went to school with Marta. Here,” Eleanor said, “take my card. If you need anything, call. Please call—I want to help Marta and Gunter. I must go. I’m late.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Neimann said.

  “So much,” his wife added, trying bravely to smile.

  Eleanor left them there, comforting one another in the rain. She felt a needle of loneliness, but also something new: a dim sense of new purpose in the harsh shadow of sorrow since David’s death.

  “Of course he’s a client,” Foster said irritably. “So’s his bank. The sugar,” he ordered, “please. This old-fashioned’s got too much damn bitters in it. Schröder’s been a client since the war, run banks in England and here as well. Good solid banks. We’d be fools not to have them as clients. Why?” Foster brooked nothing but the best when he dined, and the Lafayette restaurant at the Hay-Adams was the best, a hushed place, the dull Washington evening full in the room’s perfect windows.

  “The woman said he was in the SS, Foster,” Eleanor said, holding her ground. “That he’d stolen their family factory in Köln.”

  “Let’s make a few things clear, shall we?” Foster said, chewing thoughtfully on a bread stick. “First, I’ve had—what?—a dozen Jewish clients in Germany since Hitler came to power. Eight of them, I got almost all their assets out. Want the names? Happy to give ’em to you.”

  “These people are called Neimann.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have a client by that name. No,” he said, his habitual finger in his old-fashioned, stirring. “It’s a revolution, Eleanor. You know—you’ve been to Germany. Revolutions aren’t clean. It’s not so easy to see things in black and white. They walk through the door. I help them. That’s what I do. I get them the best deal I can, if they’re in a situation like the Neidermanns.”

  “Neimann. Their name is Neimann. They’re the aunt and uncle of an old classmate of mine.” She waited, her Riesling warming in her hand, but Foster said nothing. “They’ve lost everything. They were talking to Senator Dunaway, on the Finance Committee, to see if there was something he could do.”

  “Look, Eleanor, you’ve been around the block,” Foster said, chewing a stray pebble of ice. “Find yourself on the wrong side of history and it runs right over you. We can’t save the world, Ellie. That’s not our brief.”

  Eleanor winced and put her glass aside. “I’ll be frank. I was surprised your client was in the SS.”

  “Well, don’t be. The SS is an important factor in German business these days. It’s mainly lawyers and aristocrats trying to be good Nazis without mixing with the revolutionaries and bullyboys in the Brownshirts.”

  “Not much left of the Brownshirts,” Eleanor observed.

  “All the more reason to do business with a man like Baron von Schröder. Better class of people,” Foster replied. A waiter passed and nodded at Foster’s drink: they knew him here. “No, take it, I’m finished with it. And bring me the oldest bourbon you’ve got. Where was I? Revolutions. I’m thinking of giving a speech. Revolutions and Self-Improvement.” He reached for a note in his pocket. “Something like this: ‘Communism and Fascism have changed—almost overnight—the characteristics of entire peoples. Millions of individuals have been made into different and, on the whole, finer people; personal pride replaced by self-sacrifice and discipline. There is a conscious subordination of self to the end that some great objective may be furthered.’” Foster folded his notes and returned them thoughtfully to his pocket. “What do you think?”

  “The Neimanns would beg to differ, I’m sure. You can’t just ignore the victims.” Something always held her back when debating Foster. Eleanor shifted her cutlery about on the crisp white tablecloth, thinking. “I know you think I’m a socialist—”

  “You are. Too much theoretical flimflammery pounded into you at Bryn Mawr.”

  Eleanor frowned and leant over her drink. “Don’t be such a stuffed shirt, Foster. You know these economies are in dire, dire shape. Keynes is right: there’s nowhere else to turn but the government’s ability to borrow. We need pensions, guaranteed pensions. Not just military pensions. It shouldn’t take three depressions to teach us that. Half our old people are penniless, through no fault of their own. That’s a travesty. The Germans knew that fifty years ago. So do the French, the British.”

  The waiter brought a double bourbon and departed. Foster sniffed it approvingly and to
ok a long sip. “What properly is my role, Eleanor?”

  “You tell me. What have the Neimanns or their children done wrong? What did they do to deserve losing everything? No more than these unfortunate people without pensions or a doctor in Texas or West Virginia or Oklahoma.”

  “I’d represent the Neimanns if they came to me. That’s what a good lawyer does.”

  “Foster.” She paused and took a breath. “They called me at the office two hours ago, asking if Social Security could help them. They can’t afford a lawyer like you. They’ve lost everything.”

  Foster rolled his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like La Grande Bouche.”

  “Pardon?”

  Foster stared at her. “I thought you’d know that one. Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  “That’s not the point and you know it, Foster. Talk to Schröder. Ask him why his bank bought their hat factory for eighteen percent of its real value.”

  “Weren’t they compensated? Didn’t they agree? They’re here, aren’t they? Steamship tickets don’t grow on trees.”

  “They had a gun to their head, Foster. Herr Neimann was worth more than all your partners put together.”

  “I represent my clients, not the whole suffering world. That’s why we have religion, I thought. To keep suffering in perspective.” He ran his fingernails up and down the cut glass grooves of his tumbler.

  “Religion won’t pay an old widow’s bills,” Eleanor replied. “Try telling that to the mortgage manager down at the savings and loan sometime.”

  “And just what are you doing to help, madame?”

  Eleanor took another deep breath. “I’m doing my damnedest to make sure we don’t have a revolution of the unemployed here. Social Security means dignity and peace of mind for people who have worked all their lives and have nothing.”

  Foster recoiled. “How can you work all your life and have nothing? That makes no sense.”

  “It makes no sense to you, Foster. You haven’t known a day’s want in your life. Give me twenty dollars. Right now.”

  “Is this a holdup?” Foster looked bemused.

  “Angry widows are on the march, Foster, right here in the Lafayette Room of the Hay-Adams Hotel. You give me the twenty dollars. You’re giving the Neimanns a down payment towards their fare to Palestine. That’s where they want to go, and I mean to see they get there. I’m passing the hat at the office.”

  “Our conversation today is all about hats.” He opened his wallet, bemused, and offered her a crisp bill. “Here. That was a joke, Eleanor. A joke. I haven’t totally lost my sense of humor.”

  “Give me another twenty dollars.”

  “What’s this twenty for?”

  “Baron von Schröder’s contribution. You can collect it from his next billing statement. ‘For services rendered.’”

  Foster laughed to himself, prizing open his wallet again. “You’re a treat, Eleanor. A real treat. Here.”

  “That was a joke, Foster, a joke.”

  “No, it wasn’t. You just took forty dollars off me.”

  Eleanor cracked a grin. “You’re right, it wasn’t. Neither was losing their factory to the Neimanns. Now, what’s Schröder doing at the BIS?”

  Foster swirled the ice around his bourbon, weighing whether or not to order another. “Seeing that Hitler and Schacht make as few debt payments as possible on the Young Plan, is my guess. There’s going to be a lot of German bonds papering walls, I’m guessing.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Well, I’d better answer seriously, hadn’t I? The Schröder branches here and in England help underwrite some pretty big deals. I want Allen on the board of the New York branch. Keep an eye on the London financing deals that way. You know as well as I do, Ellie, Germany’s got the most vertically integrated economy in Europe right now, and it’s roaring along. Hitler seems to have found the key to getting unemployment down and factories humming in a hurry. I have a lot of American banking clients looking for a juicy German deal to back. We’re dying here in comparison.”

  “Come on. You can’t get your money out, can you, Foster?”

  “Oh, there’s ways and there’s ways. The classic neutral banking countries—Switzerland, Sweden—they have their uses, especially for the German branch plants. We look after our clients. They come back for more, believe you me.”

  “Hitler likes this?”

  “That’s why I have my friend the Baron. Baron von Schröder knows which way is up in the inner sanctum. He’s on the board of ITT, close to Heinrich Himmler—”

  “Himmler? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Nobody has,” Foster said, raising his glass in mock salute. “He’s their J. Edgar Hoover. Runs Hitler’s personal bodyguard. Good name to know. Point is, Schröder tells me he and his bank board members keep Himmler in clover—a million marks at a time.”

  “It’s a good business, being Himmler.”

  Foster laughed again, hard. “I like you much better when you make me laugh.”

  “And I like you much better when I have your forty dollars. I must be going. I don’t want to miss Sophie’s bedtime.”

  “Can I borrow twenty dollars?” Foster asked. “I’m a little shy of the bill.”

  Eleanor stood and kissed him, briefly. “No. And you were never shy. Goodbye, Foster. Love to Janet. Thanks for the drink.” “And love to little Sophie. One last thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Make sure your friends the Neimanns get wherever they’re going. They’re short, you let me know.”

  At the cloakroom counter, Eleanor waited for a moment while the girl retrieved her coat. She looked back: Foster, buried in his newspaper, was scribbling on his yellow legal pad, his broad back to her, working, ever the mule.

  Outside, the sun was down, the April evening cooling, life opening up on the quiet Washington streets. I’d like to be utterly lazy just for once, Eleanor thought. Sail to Nova Scotia, anchor the boat in a quiet cove, tuck Sophie in for a nap, sit there in the cockpit, read, forget the world … Perhaps in another life. At home, the door would open and there would be Sophie: her life. On the bus to F Street, in her customary seat up top, at the head of the double-decker’s stairs, she tried to imagine where Gunter and Marta Neimann were, and how a hat factory came to break hearts.

  XIX

  NEW YORK

  MAY 1936

  The topic was Germany; the entire board showed up. Allen, yet to appear, had called the meeting on barely a day’s notice, but there they were, all the Sullivan and Cromwell kingpins, ringing the boardroom table over breakfast: managing partner Foster, Joe Seligman, Arthur Dean, the Seabrooks—father and son—and Norrell Dunfield from the Berlin office. The coffee cart had just departed when Seabrook senior put down his newspaper and scanned the faces around the table.

  “Gentlemen,” he intoned, “court and the markets open in an hour, so we’ll cut it off at quarter to. Foster, as we agreed, I’ll steer this. We all know why we’re here.”

  “Agreed, Phil,” Foster said, twitching. Seabrook caught Foster fussing with his thin hair.

  Seabrook made a face. “I take it we’ve all read this morning’s Journal editorial, have we?” He took in the others over his spectacles. “No? Then I’ll parse for you illiterates. After a few pointed questions about brother Allen’s Friday evening lecture at Town Hall about our German bond difficulties, there follows a few choice words about whether or not Sullivan and Cromwell has gone and shot ourselves in the foot—both feet—for all the world to see. Here’s a choice quote: ‘The emphasis, it would appear, in the legal work done promoting the German bond issues was hardly the well-being of the bondholders. No: the deals were designed to spring the richest fees and commissions for the lawyers who promoted the deals for the banks and the bond houses. They sowed the wind—they reap the whirlwind.’ In short, we got rich and our clients are going to take a very cold German bath.” Seabrook slapped the paper shut. “We’re all in favor of free speech around here, and gentlemen a
ll … but Gabriel and all the angels, seems Allen’s invited our friends at the Securities and Exchange Commission to come after us full tilt. And that’s not the half of it. Dunfield?”

  A thin, tense Dunfield scanned the faces around the table. He seemed hunted, smaller, diminished, since the last time he’d visited head office, his fingers limned with nicotine stains. “Gentlemen, the firm sent me to Berlin four years ago now. It’s good to be home, I tell you. I’ve taken more than a few lumps, trying to make the office pay its way. Twice I’ve been caught in street fights or Nazi rallies that got out of control.” No one said a word. “Got the stitches to prove it. Here’s what’s going on now, right up front. One: The law courts are completely in the hands of the Nazi party, which gets its way by decree if not by judgment. Two: Property issues, especially Aryanization of Jewish property after the Nuremberg laws, now hinge entirely on political connections. If you’re Jewish, you’re a nonperson, at the mercy of a government that at best wants you out of the country, at worst dead, and your property confiscated in any case. Three: Torts? Meaningless. It’s a police state—there are no remedies for the enemies of the state. Four: Any dissent is crushed by arrest and transport to one of those new political prison camps. People disappear or are murdered on the slightest pretext, so the professions have been gutted. Five: The economy is driven by the military’s needs. Nothing else matters. It’s almost impossible to do legitimate business in Berlin. That’s the long and short of it.”

  Seabrook junior, barely five years out of law school and there as an observer, slowly turned his coffee cup between his fingertips. “We making money in Berlin?”

  A moment’s silence followed, broken by Seligman. “We haven’t done an important deal in Berlin in almost a year. Most of our billings for ’36 are fees for cloaking German offshore holdings, Sweden and Switzerland mostly, but we’ve got a couple of Standard Oil contracts to work out that have German implications.”

  “Right. You figure it’s worth the candle, Dunfield, keeping the Berlin shop open?” inquired Seabrook senior, his spectacles now perched atop his head.