The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘It’s “Fall Bude”,’ Geoffrey explained, spelling it. ‘It translates to Case or Operation Booth, or Stall or Kiosk or Shack or something like that. Felix says Hess and Schellenberg, the SD guy, are name-dropping it and looking smug, but he has no idea of the context except that it is happening here.’

  ‘“Booth”, like telephone booth?’

  ‘Or voting booth. Or—’

  ‘Shit!’ said Welker.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘One of my people overheard the phrase. “Fall Bude”. But, like I said, I heard it as Buddha, B-u-d-d-h-a, like the god, and Fall, like the season. I never got to “Fall Bude”, which I should have. It is, after all, in German. I am officially an idiot.’

  ‘That realization,’ Geoffrey told him, ‘is the first step on the road to knowledge.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Welker explained. ‘Besides, knowing that it’s a telephone booth he’s talking about instead of an Indian god doesn’t really get us any further.’

  ‘Buddha is not a god, you know,’ Geoffrey volunteered. ‘Buddhism is the path to enlightenment and the Buddha was one who was on the path to becoming enlightened. A whole different thing.’

  ‘Big help,’ Welker said.

  ‘There is no useless knowledge,’ Geoffrey told him.

  Welker raised his head to stare at the ceiling. ‘Some knowledge,’ he said, ‘is more useless than others.’

  ‘Aside from verification of the codeword Fall Bude, which perhaps does put us a bit further up the path to enlightenment, do you have anything to bring us forwarder?’ Geoffrey asked.

  Welker lowered his gaze and looked thoughtfully into his glass. ‘Yes,’ he said after a moment. ‘The head – calls himself a Gauleiter – of the local bunch of goose-steppers that calls itself the German-American Bund, a fellow named Frank Gerard, is in on it. He’s the one who was overheard using the term. And he was talking to someone named Weiss, who was probably involved in a murder a couple of months back. But we haven’t located Weiss yet, and all we know about him is his name and that he’s a nasty son of a bitch.’

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘And, unfortunately, it probably does involve the use of explosives, whatever it is. Gauleiter Gerard was very interested to learn that Harry Schnek was an ordnance expert.’

  ‘Who is Harry Schnek?’

  ‘I am. I’m Harry Schnek when I’m talking to Gerard.’

  ‘Ah!’ Geoffrey said.

  There was a bustling at the door and Patricia and Sophie appeared, shedding boxes and packages as they approached. ‘We’ve been shopping,’ Patricia announced.

  ‘Of course you have,’ Geoffrey said, getting up and giving her a hug. ‘We’ve been talking.’

  ‘And?’ Patricia asked, then held up a hand. ‘No, wait a minute until we disembowel ourselves of these packages.’

  Sophie giggled.

  ‘Was that not the right word? No matter. A word should mean what I want it to mean, or what’s a heaven for? Sophie, this is Mr Welker. He is a friend.’

  ‘Hello,’ Sophie said.

  Welker nodded and smiled. ‘Hello, Sophie.’

  ‘We will join the conversation in a minute,’ Patricia said, ‘but first, let’s gather up these packages and get them into the bedroom.’ The two shoppers gathered and hefted and departed through an inner door. When they re-emerged eight minutes later Sophie was carrying a large glass of milk and Patricia a highball glass full of some amber liquid and two ice cubes.

  They settled onto the couch fronting the coffee table and Patricia carefully put her glass down. ‘What,’ she asked, indicating the plate of twisted pastry, ‘are those?’

  ‘Scatapaskootchie,’ Geoffrey told her, ‘I think. Something like that. Ask Garrett.’

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ Patricia said. ‘There’ll be a twenty-minute explanation that I don’t understand and I’ll end up convinced that the pastries were discovered somewhere in the asteroid belt and brought overland from Samarkand on the backs of gnus. I’ll just eat one.’

  ‘Wise,’ Geoffrey agreed.

  ‘They’re very good,’ Sophie offered, waving hers in front of her and then taking another bite.

  ‘Mr Welker has something for you, Sophie,’ Geoffrey told her.

  She turned to face Welker. ‘Mr Welker?’

  ‘Miss Hertzel.’

  ‘Sophie. I’m just Sophie.’

  ‘And you must call me Jake,’ Welker said. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a long envelope. ‘This is for you.’

  She took it cautiously. ‘What …?’

  ‘Open it.’

  She carefully peeled the flap back and removed the two papers within. ‘A check,’ she said, holding it up. ‘This is a check, yes? And a … a letter.’

  ‘So I believe,’ said Welker.

  She held the check up and peered at it. ‘Ohmygod!’ she said, and slowly and carefully put the check down on the glass table top as though it might burst into flame at any second. ‘Oh my god!’

  ‘What is it?’ Patricia asked, picking up the check and holding it up to the light. After a second she put it back down. ‘Oh. My. God.’ She turned to Welker. ‘The stamps?’

  ‘Yes,’ Welker told her. ‘Fair market value, apparently. Notice the signature.’

  ‘Well?’ Geoffrey asked as she held the check up again. ‘Share the, apparently, good news. What is it?’

  ‘Four thousand two hundred dollars,’ Patricia said. ‘It’s a check for four thousand two hundred dollars. It’s made out to me but it says “for Sophie Hertzel, whose father was a great man” on the bottom. And it’s signed – I can’t make it out.’

  ‘Franklin Delano Roosevelt,’ Welker translated.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Patricia said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Mister President Roosevelt himself?’ Sophie asked, her hand covering her mouth. ‘He purchased my father’s stamps? Four thousand and two hundred dollars?’

  ‘I told Mr Roosevelt about you and your recent, ah, life and who your father was. He said that he never had the pleasure of hearing the great Aaron Hertzel conduct in person, but his wife may have when she was in England. And he has the RCA Red Seal recordings of him conducting Milhaud in, I believe Paris. He is particularly fond of Le Boeuf sur le Toit and La Création du Monde. Or so he said.

  ‘Then he took the stamps out of their little packet and looked them over and arranged them this way and then that way on his desk and said, “Hmmm.” Then he pulled a magnifying glass – like Sherlock Holmes – out of a drawer and looked at them through that. Then he pulled out a loupe – one of those things like an upside-down egg cup with a lens that watchmakers use to peer into watches and, apparently, stamp collectors use to peer into stamps – and said “hmmm” again, and “interesting” and “It could be – yes, it could be!” and called for an aide to bring him a big fat book from another room and peered into that for a while. Then he closed the book and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then he said, “German colonial overprints. Nice and clean. A hitherto unknown issue. And they won’t make any more of them.”’

  ‘They won’t?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ Welker told her.

  ‘Highly unlikely,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘Germany lost its colonies after the World War.’

  ‘Then the president made a phone call and talked for a few minutes using the mystical language of stamp collectors. Then he pulled out a checkbook and we decided that Sophie certainly didn’t have a bank account and probably didn’t have any documentation that a bank would accept to prove who she was. So he made the check out to Lady Patricia.’

  ‘We shall put it in the bank right away,’ Patricia said, patting Sophie on the knee. ‘Open a savings account in your name.’

  ‘I’m not used to, you know, dollars, but it seems like an awful lot of money,’ Sophie said.

  ‘It is,’ Welker agreed. ‘It’s almost three years’ salary for the average working man.’

  P
atricia smiled at him. ‘Something over four years’ salary for the average working woman,’ she added.

  ‘For sixteen little pieces of paper?’ Sophie wondered. ‘It seems strange.’

  ‘The oddness of collectors is without limits,’ Welker volunteered. ‘There are those who collect cigar bands, baseball cards …’ At Sophie’s puzzled look he explained, ‘Cards the size of playing cards with pictures of baseball players on them.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking only slightly less puzzled.

  ‘Some of our wealthier brethren collect art work—’

  ‘Well,’ Sophie said, ‘that seems …’

  ‘Automobiles,’ Welker went on, ‘articles of clothing, usually but not necessarily those worn by famous people …’

  ‘Death masks,’ Geoffrey offered. ‘Which seems to me to be unusually grotesque.’

  ‘Antique tools,’ Welker added. ‘I know a man who has over sixty screwdrivers.’

  ‘Just screwdrivers?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘He concentrates on screwdrivers, but he has a few hammers and hatchets and a wrench or two. And icepicks. He’d actually like to make a collection of old wrenches, he told me once, but nobody seems willing to give them up.’

  ‘I,’ Geoffrey announced, ‘collect oddities and quiddities.’

  ‘We knew that, my dear,’ Patricia told him.

  Welker turned back to Sophie. ‘Why don’t you read the letter.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sophie said. She picked the letter up from the table and unfolded it. ‘It has a … what do you say? A letterhead,’ she said. ‘It’s from President – no, it says “Mrs Franklin Roosevelt”. His wife?’

  ‘Eleanor,’ Patricia told her. ‘Eleanor Roosevelt. Curiously that was also her name before she got married. She and the president are cousins, I believe.’

  ‘Fifth cousins once removed,’ Welker said. ‘Whatever that means.’

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ Geoffrey told him. ‘You see—’

  ‘Please,’ Patricia said. ‘Not now.’ She turned to Sophie. ‘The letter,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ Sophie sat down and began silently reading.’

  ‘You don’t have to read it aloud if you don’t want to,’ Patricia said. ‘If it’s personal or anything.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Sophie said. ‘I do not read aloud very well. I will read it one time first and then I will tell it to you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Patricia agreed, looking embarrassed for the first time that that Geoffrey could remember in many years. ‘And if it’s personal, why then—’

  ‘She is very nice,’ Sophie said after a minute, ‘this Mrs Roosevelt. Very good.’

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia said.

  Welker nodded. ‘She has that reputation,’ he said. ‘And, from what I’ve seen, she earns it daily.’

  Sophie read silently for a few minutes, and then she looked up. ‘She wants to meet me,’ she said. ‘She wants me to come to the White House, and I should call for an appointment because she isn’t there all the time.’

  ‘We’ll have to get you a new dress,’ Patricia said. ‘A White House dress.’

  ‘She says the indignities being per– perpetrated against my people are unspeakable and that what happened to my father was horrible. She says she saw him in London and he was a great conductor, especially of the later Romantic composers, and that she wants – no needs – to help me. That what she says, “wants – no needs”.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Patricia said.

  ‘It doesn’t seem somehow fair,’ Sophie said. ‘I mean, there are so many in need, so many hurt by these – these – monsters. And I am a lucky one. I have been rescued. My father … my father …’ She fell silent for a moment and then she went on. ‘My father was killed, but I survived, and now I am safe. And I am with friends.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘New friends. And I’m so lucky. But there are so many others who are desperate—’

  ‘You think she should help everyone in need?’ Welker asked. ‘So does she, but obviously she can’t. So she helps who she can.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sophie said. ‘Of course.’ She looked back down at the letter. ‘She is going to arrange a meeting for me with the headmistress of Briarleigh School to see what form I should be put in,’ she said, and looked up. ‘This Mrs Roosevelt, she takes a lot for granted.’

  ‘Yes,’ Welker agreed. ‘She does.’

  THIRTY

  Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing,

  but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

  Ye shall know them by their fruits.

  – Matthew 7:15–16, King James Bible

  Since it first opened in 1906, the massive red-brick armory which takes up most of the block on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th streets has been known as ‘the Armory’, although there are actually six others in Manhattan. It is home to the 69th Infantry Regiment, the famed ‘Fighting Irish’, a moniker they first earned during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. In 1913 the Armory was host to the International Exhibition of Modern Art, which became known as the Armory Show, and introduced cubism to America and America to Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh.

  This fine Saturday evening in June 1938 it was hosting the seventeenth annual fund-raiser for the Disabled Veterans of the World War, and four hundred of New York’s elite – well, three hundred eighty-seven by actual count – were gathered around the thirty-five tables in the Great Hall. The turnout included Governor Lehman, Senator Wagner, Mayor LaGuardia, three US representatives, and a swaggle of city councilmen, who were proud – proud – to be seen with the line of wheelchair-bound veterans eating at their own tables along the far wall.

  Cab Calloway and his Orchestra played on the improvised bandstand, thus establishing the hip credentials of the gathering. Rosenbaum & Daughters Caterers were supplying food and waitstaff at a hefty discount, happy to support the worthy cause. The bill of fare included canapés and champagne cocktails before dinner, a crisp lettuce salad, roast chicken Provençal, pommes Anna, and early peas for the entree, with strawberry shortcake for dessert. The wines a sprightly Chablis and a more somber Pinot. The waitstaff unobtrusive and professional.

  Among the twenty regular waiters lay a trio of wolves in waiters’ clothing. Seventeen of the waiters were as they seemed but three – as it turned out later three of the regular waiters – had been paid $20 each to allow someone to take their place. Some sort of practical joke, they were given to understand.

  The three practical jokers faded from view one at a time after the entrees were served. Their leader, a stocky man with close-cropped hair and a face like a bulldog, went first, pushing a service cart ahead of him, then half a minute later the second man, tall, thin, and bald as a bright pink cue ball, followed. The third, a short man wearing an oversized apron that gave the impression he was hiding behind it, came a half-minute after, following the others down a corridor lined with plaques, medals, aging photographs, and bits of obsolete military gear. The first was waiting by a door labeled ‘Authorized Personnel Only’. ‘For this one we supposedly have the key,’ the leader said and, after fiddling with the lock for a few seconds, pushed it open. The three went through to what proved to be a staircase landing, pushing the cart in and closing the door behind them.

  The stairs going up led to the offices of the Regimental Commander, the Procurement Officer, the Officer of the Mess, the Training Officer, the Band Director, and the Sergeant Major. The three jokesters went down. The door to the basement was solid wood, with a steel band around the edge, an oversized serious-looking lock, and a small thick glass window. A handprinted sign below the window read: No Admission Without a Signed Order from the CO or the Watch Commander – No Exceptions.

  They gathered in front of the door peering through the window as though searching for a hidden truth. The room inside was dark and nothing could be seen through the window. ‘Now comes the difficulty,’ the leader said. ‘For this door we have not the
key. Parker?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Weiss.’ The short man stepped forward and examined the lock. ‘Yale,’ he said. ‘Nothing to it.’ He took out a leather drawstring pouch and selected one tool from what looked like a set of dental picks, along with a short, flat ribbon of steel bent into a zigzag, and set to work. The others were silent, unconsciously holding their breaths, as a minute passed, and then another, and then – with a muted click the lock turned and the door opened. He put the tools away. ‘We’re in,’ he said, but the other two had already pushed the door open and gone inside.

  After a brief search the light switch was found and a double row of ceiling lights worked at illuminating the large room. The ceilings were high and there were occasional small heavily barred windows high along the wall to the right of the door. A long row of swivel-stacked M1903 Springfield rifles ran alongside the wall. Tacked to the wall behind the rifles was a typewritten sign:

  THERE ARE MANY OTHERS JUST LIKE IT BUT ONE OF THESE RIFLES IS YOURS. TAKE YOUR RIFLE ONLY. TAKE GOOD CARE OF IT – IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

  The room was filled with the necessities of a peacetime army: boxes and cartons of supplies stacked in orderly piles behind eight-foot partitions and crisscrossed by meticulously straight aisles which met at precise right angles. From where they stood they could see what was probably a completely disassembled field kitchen, a ten-foot cube of boxes of iron rations, and racks holding carefully maintained harnesses and saddles for pack horses.

  ‘So, Schutzmann, what are we looking for?’ Weiss asked.

  The tall man thought for a moment. ‘As I have said, it will be, almost certainly, in a strong wooden box about thirty centimeters by perhaps forty. Possibly banded with iron bands. There may, of course, be many such boxes; in which case they will either be widely separated or in some sort of strong room. My assumption would be the strong room. In addition to the danger posed by the explosive – which is actually very slight as gelignite does not explode unless set off by a detonator – there is the question of petty pilferage.’

  ‘Who would steal explosives?’ Parker asked.

  Weiss looked at him. ‘We,’ he reminded him. ‘We would steal explosives.’