She walked up the path alone, suddenly another woman entirely; her dark pullover melted into the gloom of the moonlit trees. Misha couldn’t bear the thought of watching her leave. He stayed there until he heard the sound of Kauffmann’s truck, and even then he didn’t move until he’d smoked a second then a third cigarette. He wondered if Reuven had sent Adela out of sheer perversity, but even as he thought it he discarded the notion. There weren’t enough agents in Europe, never mind America. Adela was closest and the job had fallen to her.
In the span of a week, he’d become a man on ice.
XXIX
LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK
DECEMBER 31, 1938
Fresh snow glazed the narrow road, confetti swirling across the winding black asphalt in the crosswind. The cabbie had the taxi’s feeble heater on full blast, but Grace’s old fur, thrown across Eleanor’s knees, stoutly kept out the draft. The cab windows were completely frosted over. Eleanor could feel the wind roaring right off the Sound, lifting the car with each gust.
“We’ll make ’er there, ma’am. Don’t you worry,” the driver said. “The little girl okay?”
Sophie was asleep under the fur, only her eyes, forehead, and dark hair showing above the hem. Eleanor pulled Sophie’s hat down even farther over her ears. “She’s fine, still sleeping. It’s the fourth laneway on the left, just past a stand of poplars. Another two miles or so.”
The cab swung crazily for an instant over a lick of black ice, but the driver caught it smartly and then they were rumbling axle-deep through the drifts filling in the sea road everywhere the wind ran free.
The lights of Foster’s house barely reached through the fine snow, pinpoints of thin yellow warm against the gathered white. A spiral of snow blew sideways off the roof. The cabbie left the engine running as he opened the taxi door: Eleanor could hear the naked beech and oak clack and clatter as she wrapped Sophie tighter.
Millie and young Iris, Foster’s housemaids, were in the open doorway, wrapped in their best coats, their coat hems and their black service skirts blown sideways in the fierce wind. “That beautiful child—she sleep the whole way, Miss Dulles?” Millie asked.
“The train was an hour late to begin with, Millie. Any word from Mrs. Dulles?”
“Mrs. Foster, you mean? She’s stuck in New York, ma’am. They’re not even going to try until things calm down tomorrow.”
“Mommy, where are we?” Sophie whispered.
“We’re at Uncle Foster’s, darling, safe and sound. I’m going to put you to bed. Millie, if Janet calls, let her know we’re fine and I’ll call her first thing. Is Foster in a meeting?”
Iris took the luggage. “He and Mr. Allen are having dinner with the Baron, ma’am.”
Eleanor plucked the visiting card from the silver tray. “Well, I never …”
“Something wrong, Miss Eleanor?” Millie asked, as Iris wedged the luggage onto the dumbwaiter.
“I’ll put Sophie to bed. Come, darling,” Eleanor said. Her cheeks had gone white. “Millie, I’ll have a whiskey when you’ve a moment.”
Eleanor crossed the big second-floor landing to the bedroom wing, with Sophie safely asleep. At the foot of the stairs the dining room doors swung open, revealing Allen, a drink in one hand and a note in the other, his face glowing from the alcohol and the rich food. He saw her and gave a slow wave. “Why, hello, Ellie, Happy New Year.”
“—the BIS board isn’t a problem,” a German voice observed from within the dining room. “The Swiss know where their next franc is coming from—we’ve got them by the short hairs.”
Allen closed the doors behind him, all innocence.
“And you, Allen.” Eleanor grabbed her brother by the elbow and tugged him toward the library. “That’s Baron Schröder. You could have invited me, you two. You know I wrote the book on the bank. Why didn’t Foster invite me?”
“I thought you were here to visit with Janet. That’s what Foster told me.”
“You’re really a peach, you know that? What’s he now, a general in the SS?”
“He’s got a chestful of medals staring at me across the table. That’s all I know.”
“Am I just the kid sister forever?”
“Wasn’t my idea, the dining arrangements. Foster decided we’d have a long leisurely dinner while you ladies occupied yourselves. Where’s Janet?”
“Millie says she’s stuck in Manhattan for the night.” She pulled at his dinner jacket sleeve again. “Get back in here, I’m not through with you.”
“Eleanor, I have to get—”
Eleanor closed the library door. “Allen Welsh Dulles, don’t you move until I’m through with you.” But just as she began to speak, Millie opened the thick library door, bearing drinks.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I’m sure,” Millie said, slipping away backwards with her tray, drawing the door shut behind.
“Two words. Grace Dunlop.” Eleanor stood between Allen and the door, jaw high, hands in midair, awkward in her fury. “You …” she hissed. “I was at school with Grace Dunlop. She must have told you that. It wasn’t enough that you cheat on your wonderful wife, you had to throw yourself at my best friend and then …”
Allen swirled his drink in its tumbler, not moving.
“You are a complete and utter bastard,” she said, her voice low and cutting. “Do you know how you break your wife’s heart? Clover knows, every step of the way, she knows. How can she not? You choose her friends and wives of her friends. You don’t give a damn. You don’t give a damn. You’re unspeakable.”
Allen lowered his voice, choosing a plausible tone. “Terrible thing, her death. Terrible.”
“You spoke with her—you broke off an affair with her, didn’t you?”
“I have to get back to Schröder.”
“Leave him to Foster. Face it, it’s Foster’s ear he wants anyway.” She put her back to the door. “I’ve known Grace for twenty-five years. I never confronted her. I should have, but I didn’t. Do you know how hard that was?” She looked at the note in his hand.
Allen’s face had gone blank, carnivorous. “We all have our little secrets, don’t we? Let him—let her—who is without sin cast the first stone. Isn’t that what Father would have said?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Grace told me. About you. She wasn’t very discreet with her pillow talk.” He stepped past her, opening the thick door. “But then, I expect you know all about that. Excuse me. See you at breakfast.”
Eleanor stood in the library, utterly alone. She looked down at her hands: they trembled, ready to fly away. She found herself staring into one of Janet’s beautiful antique mirrors, vestige of a shopping trip to Paris they’d shared, in more peaceable days.
XXX
HAVANA
NOVEMBER 1939
The only thing moving more slowly than the ceiling fan carving a wobbly whoop-whoop through the still heat was Misha’s conversation with Leonel Santos. Santos, a fine-boned Spanish Cuban, pale and languorous, played the role of a deputy minister much given to fussing with the papers on his desk while he shrugged within his white linen and feinted around Misha’s questions.
The Hamburg America ship had been in quarantine in Havana harbor for two full days in the broiling sun; already several Jews had tried to swim to shore after a perilous leap from the deck to the filthy waters below. After returning the fugitives to the ship, the Cubans had sealed the vessel off, already having declared the tourist visas invalid without landing documents. Misha hadn’t a hope in hell of getting aboard. He had in his lap a short list of three dozen passengers who had valid American entry visas from the Stuttgart consulate; for them, he thought he had a slim chance. They were men under forty, well educated, single. If he could get them past the Cubans, he thought he could get them into America. That, at any rate, was the plan.
“Let’s cut to the bone, all right, Leonel? Who will decide if the visas are valid?”
“The minister, of course,” Santos
replied. “He has the final say in these matters. Unless the president decides in lieu. Then that is final too.”
“Then why is your senate immigration committee up in arms? I saw Senator Delgado this morning—”
“A good man, an honest politician,” Santos added, admiring his manicured fingernails.
“I’m sure,” Misha agreed, inching the conversation along. “That’s why I went to see him, Leonel. I wanted a straight answer. He sent me back to you.”
“Information is difficult for me. The people who know, know who I am.” Santos had an actor’s way with the inflections of a frown; this one was pitched somewhere between regret and resignation.
“Leonel, a thousand of my brethren are on that ship, and I’m not going to give up until I get the minister’s version of events.”
The phone rang, a twittery pealing ring. Santos picked up the receiver with an immaculately kept hand. He spoke the impenetrable “mashed potatoes” Cuban Spanish, very fast, larded with slang. Misha caught “tomorrow” and “difficult to say” and “he’s with the president now” and not much else in a conversation that lasted over five minutes. Santos kept his end up, muttering consoling sounds into the handpiece as he swayed his thin body from side to side. He looks like a kid in a man’s suit, Misha reckoned. Santos was in fact reliable, one of the few Cubans Misha’d come to trust in his year as the Joint Distribution Committee’s Havana representative without portfolio. Shiloah’s stipend meant Misha’s days were spent trailing from one visa section to the next of every embassy that might entertain an exiled Jewish family’s application.
On the side, Misha, known in Havana as Señor Karl Halvorsen, commercial traveler from Göteborg, ran a useful string of informants on the Havana waterfront and in two or three of the lesser ministries. Problem was, in the vortex of corruption that was the capital’s bureaucracy, the Joint didn’t have the cash to pay off the big boys in the police and the military. Misha had learnt the game: show up early, listen a very long time, and then be prepared to wait, really wait—days sometimes for the simple things, weeks for paperwork, often months—unless the right palm was greased. The graft became as formalized as Versailles etiquette, theater with money, observing the expected dead politeness, with only an ashy taste of moral defeat in the hallway afterwards. Cuba ran on its own byzantine commerce—the devil take the creature foolish enough to curry hope.
Santos had drifted off into a cloud of affirmatives, his eyes glazing over with the effort. “Fine, yes, I’ll tell him. Oh, yes, yes. Absolutely. Yes. Good.”
And then, spent, Santos hung up. Misha tried the tack he saved for last: “You have a thankless job, Leonel.”
Santos shrugged from the depths of his suit. “There is something I must tell you. In confidence. As one gentleman to another, dear Karl.”
“All right,” Misha said, readying his papers to leave and knowing full well the real deal making had just begun.
“I have made an important discovery.” Santos wore the poker face of a man who’d seen a run of cards take a sudden turn for the better but then thought better of revealing his luck.
Misha grunted. “All right. Who?”
The Cuban lowered his hands, palms down. “Slowly, slowly. My friend works in the president’s office. He will get you in.”
“Perez-Crespo?”
Santos nodded and waited a moment before speaking, weighing Misha’s response. “There is a precondition. Perez-Crespo is a good man. He married a Jew from Argentina. He has to protect himself.”
“Yes?”
“He cannot get you on the San Luis. No one I know can. He can get you into the president’s house on Saturday—”
“That’s four days from now. Come on, Leonel, the ship might sail any minute.”
“I am so sorry. It’s the very best I can do.” Santos ran his tapering fingers once over his brilliantined hair. “I tell you this as a friend: the rumors about the bribes to land your clients are true. The immigration director did not share the bribes out. He withheld, played favorites. Important senators were cut out, only two of the big generals were paid. That’s the truth. Nothing will happen, my friend, unless you can persuade the president to intervene.”
“Was he in on the payoffs?”
Who can say? said the eloquent expression on Santos’s face. “This I do not know. In truth. Perez-Crespo was offered no money.”
“How do you know?”
The question amused Santos. “Because he’s my wife’s cousin, dear Karl, come on. He would never lie to me. Never.”
“Then I’ll just have to believe him, won’t I?”
Santos thought for a moment, readying his last card. “Perez-Crespo says the other ministers have threatened the president already, to ensure their cut. That is the news as of an hour ago.”
“What’s the immigration minister doing right now?”
“Right now? He’s in Miami for the weekend. Probably in his father-in-law’s VIP box at Hialeah, getting ready for the big race.”
“The big race?”
“The minister is at Hialeah, watching the horses run. He likes the horses.” Santos nodded to emphasize this important fact.
“Cuba,” was all Misha could think to say. A thousand doomed Jews in Havana harbor and the one man who can save them? He’s at the track in Florida.
“Cuba, sí,” Santos agreed.
For a time only the fan blades spoke. Finally, Misha cleared his throat. “Then there’s our other business, Leonel. How’s your cousin Alfonso?”
Santos creased his perfect skin with an ambiguous smile. “He checked his bank account yesterday.”
“Everything satisfactory, I take it?”
“Eminently,” Santos agreed. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a slim manila envelope. “As usual?”
Misha nodded. It was a precaution they observed carefully: Misha never took anything from Santos’s office.
“It is wise,” Santos replied. “I will begin.” He opened the envelope and slipped out a page of typescript, reading in slow schoolboy English, clipping the short vowels as he worked his way through the letter, translating as he went.
“Cousin Alfonso wishes you and your family well. Concerning the matter of the refinery at Regla and the visit of Señor Nelson Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company—Alfonso, as the number four man at the refinery, was responsible for taking Señor Rockefeller on a tour of the plant and sharing with him a working lunch with Señors Ramos and Cruz-Castillo, the refinery’s managers. Alfonso is of course a trained accountant.”
“Of course,” Misha said, for Alfonso’s accreditation had been a factor in negotiating the amount of the bribe.
“We come to it now,” Santos reported. “This is verbatim: ‘Rockefeller tells Alfonso at the lunch he will be made a big new job in the State Department of America, commanding all secret political and diplomatic operations from Mexico south, including all the Caribbean.’ There’s more here about the English blockade and the German U-boats refueling offshore with Standard’s diesel fuel, but you—”
“—have already paid for that, thank you,” Misha said, smiling. “Go on.”
“This is interesting, though,” Santos went on. “‘The refinery at Regla, the Betol facility, is majority owned by Standard. Señor Rockefeller has ordered an immediate expansion of refinery renovations, to accommodate yet more oil from Standard’s South American drill fields.’”
“Why, if there’s a British blockade, does Rockefeller want to increase production? Where’s Standard going to sell the oil?”
“You see things immediately,” Santos noted cheerfully. “Sí. Well, my friend, he’s going to sell it to the Germans. Any fool can see that.”
“This fool wants to see proof.”
Santos detached a yellow carbon copy from the letter and showed it to Misha, indicating the customs and excise rubber stamps in sticky maroon ink. “It’s a Betol waybill from last week. You see the amount? Eighty-six hundred kilos of maritime diesel. T
hat shipment of oil was sold in international waters the next day to the waiting U-boats, very thirsty U-boats. It’s really quite simple—Alfonso himself made the deposit in Swiss francs on Friday. And make no mistake, my friend, the U-boats never sink a Standard Oil tanker. Oh, no. I would say,” Santos concluded, “that if Señor Rockefeller gets his new job, there will be many happy German faces and many sad English faces. I finish now. ‘The increased capacity of the refinery is directed almost entirely towards marine diesel suitable for U-boat use. Also custom refining runs would then be possible, processing overages from the Standard refineries at Maracaibo.’”
“All for the U-boats?”
“That’s what Alfonso says … and he does the books.”
“And if the war comes to Cuba? What then?”
Santos shrugged. “It’s Rockefeller’s oil. He can do with it what he wants.”
“Evidently. It’s a good business, selling to both sides.”
“The best,” Santos agreed. He paused. “One can only admire such a business.” He folded the paper from Alfonso and dropped it in his ashtray. They both watched it burn for a long moment.
“You want some coffee?” Santos asked. “I need a coffee.” He pressed the buzzer underneath his desk and a feminine voice called out “Momentito” from down the hall.
“I should go, thanks,” Misha answered. “Tell Perez-Crespo I’ll be there on Saturday. Noon?”
Santos shook his head at this. “No. After lunch. I’ll get you in. You should stay. You should see Zeida. She’s new.” He beamed. “She brings the coffee.”
“Some other time, Leonel. Buen.’”
In the hallway, Zeida and her coffee cart passed. Misha turned to watch Zeida and her freewheeling hips sweep into Santos’s office, her heels squeaking on the parquet floor. It’s good to be deputy minister, Misha thought, wondering just how much the Joint would have to pay next time.
The Witness Tree Page 24