The Witness Tree

by Brendan Howley

  “It’s like a balalaika, only Ukrainian,” Eleanor replied, glancing at her watch. “They better sing the next one fast—the boat’s due back.”

  The Red Army men began “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary,” belting out the tune Eleanor remembered from the doughboys on spree in Paris in a different war. The hillside listeners sang along, the mood along the water suddenly wistful.

  “I know another version, from France,” she confessed as the four Russians thundered on over the loudspeakers.

  “Oh, sing, Ellie, let’s hear it,” Clover egged her on.

  “That’s the wrong way to tickle Marie,

  That’s the wrong way to kiss!

  Don’t you know that over here, lad,

  They like it best like this!

  Hooray pour le Français!

  Farewell, Angleterre!

  We didn’t know the way to tickle Marie,

  But we learnt how, over there!”

  Eleanor sang along all the way to the finale; several fellow rowboaters applauded her rendition specially. “I’ll bet that’s the one Allen knows too,” Clover said as they each took an oar and made for the boat rental stand.

  “What’s the latest from Bern?”

  “Oh, he never actually says anything in those letters of his except how hard he’s working, but he’s moving from blossom to blossom, I’m sure. He thinks I don’t see through him. Wait’ll he gets the bill from the jewelers.”

  “Clo, dear, you’re fearless.”

  “No, Ellie, if I were fearless I’d’ve stood toe to toe with Allen like you do. I let him know I know by buying a new bracelet or two on the Tiffany account. Easier that way. Oh, Lord love us, look who’s at the dock,” she whispered to Eleanor. “It’s that Prescott Bush, looking overly refreshed.”

  “And one of Foster’s clients, I do believe,” Eleanor noted.

  “Men, Ellie, men. Lately they bring it out in me,” Clover averred. “Oh, here’s a scene.”

  The rowboat bumped against the dock. The boat rentals man, a feisty Italian, stood well shorter than the distinguished fellow with the hangdog face waving a five-dollar bill.

  “I can’t rent you a boat, sir,” the rentals man interrupted. “Company policy.”

  “Here, take the money … that’s what you want, a tip? Make it all right?”

  “You’re pretty loaded, sir. That’s why I can’t rent you a boat. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have these ladies to attend to. Leggo my arm, sir.” The rentals man tied off the rowboat and helped Eleanor out first.

  “Clo, here’s a hand up,” Eleanor ordered, stepping between her and the two men.

  “I’m going to make my escape, darling,” Clover whispered. “I can’t stand a man when he’s pie-eyed.”

  “Bye, dear, and love to the children,” Eleanor replied, kissing Clover goodbye.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” Bush breathed, quite close to Eleanor. He’d followed the rentals man to the edge of the dock, leading with the greenback in his hand.

  “Hello, Pres,” Eleanor said, beaming at Bush. “It’s Eleanor, Eleanor Dulles.”

  “Oh, hullo, Eleanor. Can I have your boat? Fella here seems to think not.”

  “Your money’s no good here,” Eleanor said, hooking her arm into Bush’s, steering him inland, while the rentals man shook his head and busied himself with the next incoming rowboat. “And you know, Pres, the concert’s over. What say we go for a walk, catch up? How’s Dorothy?”

  “Uh, okay. I just wanted to go for a row. Been a helluva day.” Bush towered over Eleanor, dark charm oozing from him. “I’ve had a few,” he admitted, unprompted.

  “Well, there’s a war on, can’t blame a man for seeking a little solace on his day off.” Eleanor guided Bush toward the footpath. “Where are you staying, Pres?”

  “Century Club … wanna come for a drink?”

  “That’s kind of you but no, thanks. Say, you know, Foster hasn’t seen much of you lately.”

  “I’ve been lying low. The papers. The damn papers. They just gutted me. I was only a cog. I’m not a Nazi banker.”

  “Not so loud, Pres, let’s get you into a cab, shall we?”

  “Those goddamn reporters. The Union Bank—the Nazi bank, the newspapers call it? I have one share, for shit’s sake. Harriman and Schippers—don’t see them all over the front page …”

  “Never mind that old thing, Pres. What’s fun these days?” Eleanor asked, jollying him along. They picked their way through the crowd climbing away from the river.

  “I’ll tell you what’s fun,” he growled, all charm dissipated. “Have some of this.” Bush shoved a fifth bottle into Eleanor’s free hand.

  “I’ll join you, then, if that’s fun,” Eleanor announced sunnily. She feigned a great pull at the bottle, then drained it upside down as they walked.

  “You’re a real broad,” Bush mumbled. “Sorry, shouldna said broad. Lady, is what I meant.”

  “I’m touched, Pres, I really am.”

  “I know a secret, just between us pals,” he whispered. “Because you’re a lady. Say, didja finish it?”

  Eleanor showed him the empty bottle and his eyes bulged. “If that doesn’t beat … y’know, you are a broad, Eleanor. I could never figure out what you saw in him.”

  “Who?”

  Bush licked his lips, thoughtful, a sheen of perspiration on his face. “David. Your husband. What you saw in him.”

  Eleanor smothered her surprise, glancing at Bush sidelong. Hailing a taxi, Eleanor waited him out.

  “Did Fos ever … did Foster ever tell you, about the newspapers?” Bush blinked hard, trying to hold his eyes still. “Those damn … newspapers. Had to get the ambassador outta bed, the Paris one … the Paris office … they called Fos …”

  “What Paris office?”

  A cab rolled up and Eleanor eased Bush in. He still had the moist five-dollar bill in his big hand; she passed it to the cabbie. “This gentleman needs to go to the Century Club, please. Keep the change.”

  Bush was glassy-eyed now, fading toward sleep. “Jewish newspaper, in Paris … they called … got the ambassador outta bed … woke ol’ Jess Strauss up … after David, y’know, did what he did. The Jewish newspapers in Paris … knew about David … how could they know that?”

  And that was all. The cab tore off as if gasoline had never been rationed.

  Half an hour later, Eleanor was searching her attic with a will, moving boxes away from the big steamer trunk where she’d stored all her David things from France: the letters, the books, the old maps of Paris, the contents of his desk, which the movers had carefully boxed and tied up with string.

  … the Paris office … they called Fos … newspaper. Prescott’s words muttered to her again as she cut the string. She’d never opened the box, nor the trunk itself, except to retrieve a few photographs for Sophie’s bedroom wall. She’d never wanted to sort through these things, until now.

  Eleanor sat on the dusty beams, the big Coleman pressure lantern puffing away as she searched, the harsh green-blue light etching everything in sharp relief. She held his diplomas, the folio of monographs, still unpublished. How little we actually leave of us, she let herself think, a few pounds, give or take.

  She cut the string with the maid’s fruit knife and spread the box’s contents out on the attic floorboard. She opened all the envelopes and slid the pages into the light. The green U.S. Postal Service flimsies were all there, nine years later, held together with a straight pin. She separated them, cool and ferociously curious all at once.

  She left the trunk open, went downstairs with the receipts, and called the State Department’s night operator. Waiting for the return call took her a long look out the kitchen window. The night operator worked in a hive of thrumming telexes and ringing telephones; she had a prairie-flat Midwest accent and the small-town habit of making of every statement a mild question.

  Eleanor could hear the big pages of the directory fluttering as the operator worked. “Just ch
ecking the gazetteer for you, ma’am. Again, that’s 128 rue Dufau, in Paris?” She made it sound like pears.

  Eleanor said yes it was.

  “You want the number?”

  “No, no, thank you. Just what it—just who the number belongs to.”

  “Well, in 1939, the last record we have, 128 rue Dufau was the office of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. That’s a news service or a newspaper. That help you out?”

  Eleanor thanked and rang off. She cleared her throat and decided on a pot of tea, the ritual of it, to amplify the not giving in.

  But not yet. On her way to the kitchen she went to her bedroom, in shock, the side-stand light glowing, her books and things welcoming but feeling right now like another woman’s. She sat at the foot of her neatly made narrow bed. She sat there, very still, for quite some time, only the muted F Street sounds for company. Her mind threw off shards of memory, lantern slides of her time with David, fracturing as they tumbled past.

  She stood and stripped back comforter and sheets. Very carefully she remade her bed, tightly, smoothing the edges with the flat of her hand the way shopgirls sharpen the wrapping paper seam of a Christmas present. She switched out the light, went to the kitchen, and set about making tea.

  From Misha Resnikoff’s microfilm archive: diary 1942–44

  Typed file card: Kronthal, James

  Schorr’s files on Kronthal make for interesting reading. The son of a wealthy Jewish Philadelphia family, Kronthal and his father never got on. Kronthal’s love of art and the art world didn’t meet his father’s expectations: that his son would help seal the relationship between the Sperrlerbank, the Privatbank run by their German relations, the Sperrlers, and the American Kronthals.

  Kronthal, as I reported, did auction looted Jewish art for the Sperrlerbank: I confirmed this with a Zürich art dealer who was involved in the 1941 auctions here, which Goebbels himself sponsored. Kronthal supplied artworks to the very cream of Nazi society.

  Even more interesting are Kronthal’s connections to Allen Dulles’s brother, Foster. Foster’s German municipal and power/water bond placements went through the Sperrlerbank. The Sperrlerbank manages the private accounts of several leading Nazi personalities, including Kammerer, the plenipotentiary for industrial development, whom Foster knows personally. What’s not known is whether these people were Foster/Allen’s clients before the war.

  I suspect some of them were. Schorr certainly does. Schorr’s convinced the client connections explain Allen’s enthusiasm for German commercial travelers here in Bern. It can’t be their politics, because the Nazis don’t allow suspect politicals to travel. Anyone who travels to Davos or transacts business at a Swiss bank is certainly a Party member; the really sensitive transactions appear to be handled by SS lawyers.

  From Misha Resnikoff’s microfilm archive: diary 1942–44

  August 19 1943

  New face around the premises. Dulles has a fixer, Hungarian-American named von Gaevernitz. They’re inseparable. Von G does the running while Dulles does the string pulling. Von G worth watching: Schorr’s opened a file on him. Close to Hungarian bankers keen to move capital out as Soviets move west.

  Schorr has had me write a memorandum regarding the sudden spike in transmissions from the American legation. His theory is that Dulles has a very good German source, but Schorr cannot convince any of the MI6 people of this, so much do they distrust Dulles’s judgment. Nonetheless, the radiotelephone traffic to Washington has nearly trebled in the past few weeks.

  The British dismiss it all—whenever asked—as “provocation.” Schorr thinks Dulles is running a double agent, likely diplomatic, but no one believes him. MI6 underestimate Dulles, Schorr thinks.

  I do too.

  ACT FIVE

  Espionage is not a game for bishops.

  ALLEN DULLES

  XLII

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  MARCH 1944

  There are meetings from which there is no escape: Eleanor had a grim feeling from the agenda alone. That and the way Max Puddicombe’s long thin mandarin’s fingers stroked the papers he moved from blotter to folder to tabletop and back. Eleanor had known a fellow at Social Security who made pipe cleaner animals; to enliven a really dry meeting, he’d raise a pipe cleaner hind leg.

  “Moving along to the next item,” Max prompted, “top of page three, banking practices in Lisbon with respect to rubber production. Arnie, you have the floor.”

  Puddicombe was a State Department fixture, a towering gentleman with a basset hound’s face, a veiny nose, and strangler’s hands, twice passed over for an ambassadorship, with moods to match. He was waiting to hear the results of his third go-round: rumor had it Lisbon was to be his in the new year. And bon voyage, Eleanor prayed: she was State’s foreign exchange specialist in a room full of policy sharks. Anything, some days, for peace. Puddicombe rode shotgun on the Friday sessions. It was a small room, Eleanor reflected, but felt like a phone booth whenever Treasury and State convened.

  To her right was Joe Dufour, a pliable Treasury man obsessed with oil; the high-strung Arnie Schulman, Dufour’s partner, ate, smoked, and drank rubber production. Arnie Schulman was a pit bull: if there was rubber moving around the globe illegally or to enemy benefit, Arnie was there, figures spilling out of him. Opposite Eleanor was the darkly groomed “Baking Bob” Baker, the FBI’s eye on this economic warfare sweatshop.

  Eleanor’s specialty was, she preferred to think, a little less pedestrian: she wanted to rule the postwar German economy, the very heart of the rebuilding. After a late lunch she’d fought off the torpor that only State Department wartime “mystery meat” could induce, and culinary metaphors were much on her mind. That’s the hors d’oeuvres, she reckoned, having seen a few of the wars between Puddicombe and Schulman, here comes the meat and potatoes. Schulman wound up his pitch for an interdiction order to halt a rubber shipment out of Lisbon with commendable dispatch and handed off the baton to Dufour.

  “Thanks,” Dufour said, head bobbing as he made sure everyone was ready. “In the red-tagged file marked ‘petroleum surveillance slash Caribbean,’ this month’s, you’ll see things are moving along much faster communications-wise. Maxwell, thanks for the lead there. Now, the oil situation is, as always, delicate.”

  Max snorted. “Are we to fight this blasted battle all over again, Joe? I mean, really, every other week? We haven’t the resources to search and track and surveil and seize.”

  “Side issue, Max, side issue. We can get the money if you people at State go to bat for it. You’re the arch deal makers,” Dufour said, pouring it on. “You’re the professionals. We need you to lead for us.”

  Dufour was digging in for a long siege, Eleanor could tell. She nudged the slick Baker, but he only winked back: he reserved his brand of emollient for later. Meantime, Puddicombe was immobile. His Mount Rushmore look, Eleanor thought, the blocked statesman rising in him. She waded in herself.

  “Point of order on the intelligence side, please,” Eleanor said. “We’re concerned about the postwar implications of outright seizures too, Maxwell, but the fact is that Treasury has been turning up excellent intelligence from the Brits. We’re asking for additional Coast Guard cutters and B-24 surveillance of the Lisbon–Azores–Caracas oil route.”

  “We go further, Max,” Dufour added, wading knee-deep in Eleanor’s slipstream. “We want inspectors on the Standard Oil tankers on that route. We know from naval intelligence there are German oil brokers on those tankers, right now, in port, in Caracas and the Azores, never mind dockside in Lisbon.”

  “We’ve been over this and over this,” Max rejoined. “Why badger me? Go straight to Hoover and have his piranhas take a bite out of these Nazi operatives. You tell Hoover that, Mr. Baker: let him earn his keep. You know I can’t play both sides of the fence and still keep my people on the ground—”

  “And not on their feet,” Schulman threw in sotto voce.

  “Lisbon’s damn sensitive right now,” Puddicombe thun
dered.

  Schulman plunged on. “Let’s make a direct representation to the Portuguese government that we know they’re transiting oil on Standard tankers under false flag. Those tankers are effectively under German control from the moment they reach harbor. It’s a mockery of neutrality. Standard knows it, the Portuguese know it, and the Germans know we know it.”

  Eleanor bought Max a moment to recoup: “What do the lawyers say, Joe?”

  “The lawyers say we can take them off at the knees,” promised Dufour in his compressed Boston accent. “You know the lay of the land in Lisbon, Max. What’s possible?”

  If Puddicombe was basking in the glow of Dufour’s warm words, he gave nothing away. “I will undertake to approach the secretary tomorrow afternoon. No promises. I can’t”—he paused here, a moment of delicacy for the coming verb—“anticipate things. But I will make the pitch. Motion to approve?”

  “So moved,” said Eleanor.

  “Second?” Puddicombe asked.

  “I second,” Joe Dufour said, looking around to see if anyone was as surprised as he was at this outburst of consensus. Baker just stared at Max, marveling.

  “It’s unanimous, then,” Puddicombe said, joyless as ever. “Coffee and a break for fifteen?” Puddicombe hauled his huge frame out of the chairman’s seat and lumbered out of the room.

  Eleanor caught Dufour’s eye and winked. “That was easy,” she stage-whispered.

  “Better this week than two weeks from now,” Dufour observed.

  “Yeah,” Baker added from the sidelines, grinning, his hat already on. “Once the posting comes through, he’ll be insufferable. Till next time, all.”

  “Better than that: he’ll be in Lisbon,” Schulman rejoiced. They all smiled and gathered their papers before the security people swept the room.

  In the stairwell, with Schulman and Dufour occupied with an agitated naval officer and Baker departed for the FBI, Puddicombe lurked. He’d bought a cheap cigar from the blind tobacconist down the hall, was lingering for a moment with the second edition of the Post, his oversize body bent over the broadsheet. He caught Eleanor’s eye, snapping the paper shut, and nodded toward a nearby bench. He sat first, heavily, splaying his knees wide the way old men do and clearing his throat with a tremendous grinding exhalation.