“Mein Go tt , “he said half aloud. A daring plan. Insane really. And yet. . . it might just work.
The drop was a safe deposit box at the Manhattan National Bank to which both 27 and a courier in New York had access. The courier would leave a message in the box which 27 would then pick up and answer the same day, or vice versa.
Twenty-seven had taken a bus to New York and checked into a modest midtown hotel. He decided to stay in character, although he wore a properly fitting suit. He projected the image of a well-to-do seventy-year-old lawyer or banker when he presented himself to the guard at the deposit box safe. His key to the box had been one of his most closely guarded possessions.
“Box 23476,” he said.
“Name?”
“Swan.” It had been almost six years since he had used that name. This would be the last time.
“Yes, Mr. Swan. Sign the card, please.”
He sat in the small cubbyhole provided for box holders and examined the contents of the small steel container. There was a single eleven-by-fourteen brown envelope inside containing a passport, a driver’s license, a leather packet of business cards and a birth certificate, all identifying him as John Ward Allenbee III. Born: 1895 in Chicago, Ill.; an import broker with an office in San Francisco.
He opened a hand-printed note that accompanied the documents.
“You are John Ward Allenbee III,” it read. “You are a conservative, very proper American import broker, born in Chicago and operating out of San Francisco. You have an office on High Street (cards enclosed) and accounts in two banks with deposits of $20,000 and $30,000, bank books enclosed. You also have an account at the Manhattan National with $50,000 on deposit. You have been traveling all over the world off and on for the past year-and-a-half. Allenbee is quite wealthy, very refined, dresses in the height of fashion. You must sign the enclosed bank signature cards. There is also a new safe deposit box. The key is here and the necessary signature card. Do this upon leaving. This box is no longer active. Get a new passport photo made and leave a copy of it in the new box. If you need a wardrobe you might try Balaban’s on Fifty-third near Park. You will be contacted with further details.”
Twenty-seven immediately vetoed the idea of leaving a photograph of himself in the box. He would turn it around, order the contact to leave his picture, which he would use to identify the contact. He dropped a note back in the box:
“No photograph. Leave yours. Assignment, please.”
He quickly decided that once he learned the nature of the assignment, he would kill the contact. He would not risk being identified by anyone. He signed the new signature card, left it with the guard and went back to the hotel. He took out his makeup box and his blue business suit. He would steam it out in the shower that night.
He removed his makeup and wig and cleaned his face with cold cream, then washed it off and stared at himself in the mirror for several minutes. The bear scars on his face were still quite visible. The scabs were gone; they were now three thin red lines down the right side of his face. Studying that face, he decided what John Allenbee should look like.
Using scissors, he cut his hair back in a sharp widow’s peak then, lathering his shaving brush, he began shaving the widow’s peak clean. He opened the makeup case and took out black and gray hair dye, spirit gum, material for whiskers and pale blue contact lenses. Then he went to work.
The next day, Ward Allenbee, as he decided he would be called, went back to First Manhattan and checked the new box. There was a single slip of paper in it. On it was printed a sentence:
Das Gespenst ist frei.
Was this how the contact would identify himself? With the phrase: “The ghost is free?”
He folded the sheet, put it in his pocket and put the box back. Then he went upstairs and introduced himself to the vice president of the bank, Raymond Denton, a sallow, nervous man in his mid-thirties and a fawner, Allenbee did not like to be fawned over, but it was necessary as he began assuming and establishing his new identity.
Lady Penelope Traynor had just cashed a check when she looked across the marble lobby of the bank and saw the handsome man in Raymond Denton’s office. He was obviously just concluding business with the bank officer. Quite attractive, she thought. And the way Denton was fawning over him, obviously important. As they got up to leave the office she strolled across the bank toward Denton’s office.
Denton saw her and beamed. Such a little sycophant, she thought as she smiled back.
“Raymond,” she said, extending her hand.
“Lady Penelope, how delightful. Lady Penelope Traynor, this is Ward Allenbee. Mr. Allenbee is a new customer of the bank and we’re quite pleased to have him aboard.”
When they left Denton, they strolled toward the entrance together, making small talk.
She smiled up at him. “Are you living in New York?” she asked.
“Yes, I’ve taken an apartment at the Pierre.”
“How lovely. My father and I have adjoining suites at the Waldorf. What do you do, Mr. Allenbee?”
“I’m in importing,” he told her.
“Really?” she said. “Art?”
“Antiques.”
“How interesting.”
“It can be at times. Are you over for long? I assume you’re from England.”
“We have a country house just outside London but we travel quite a bit so we keep a base of operations here, too. Actually I work as a researcher for my father. He writes a syndicated column. Sir Colin Willoughby? The ‘Willow Report?’”
“Of course. I’ve read his articles. Quite perceptive. You were in the Orient recently.”
“Yes.”
“Interesting observation about the political situation in Japan. Does he really think we can avoid war with them?”
“Well, you certainly should try. The situation over there is quite desperate, you know. The emperor doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on. Actually the country is under the control of Tojo and the right-wing military faction. The army and air force are quite strong and they have a very powerful navy.”
Allenbee smiled. It was refreshing to meet a woman as intelligent and perceptive as she was.
“I have my car,” she said. “May we drop you somewhere?”
“May I be presumptuous and offer you a drink? The new bar at the Empire State Building is right up the street. I hear it’s quite exquisite.”
She hedged a bit, looked at her watch, then finally shrugged.
“Sounds charming,” she said. “But I only have an hour.”
The car was a chauffeur-driven Packard. Obviously, Sir Colin did rather well with his column. The bar was brass and enamel, its style ultra deco. They sat in a corner booth and sipped martinis. She studied him carefully. Ward Allenbee was a handsome man with pale blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. His thin black hair was graying and archly widow- peaked and he wore a meticulously trimmed Prince Albert beard. His clothes were expensive and stylish, his speech perfect, his voice resonant. And he was intelligent and well informed. Quite interesting, she thought.
Twenty-seven saw a woman in her late thirties, handsome, well groomed, yet oddly cold and detached. Her posture was a little too correct, her classic features a little too perfect, from the angular nose and pale green eyes to the petulant mouth, her red hair a little too tightly combed, her eyes a little too cold and suspicious. A snob who covered priggishness with a veneer of sophistication. She was awesomely well informed and outrageously opinionated and she was a casual name dropper. Some men might have found her intimidating. Twenty-seven saw in her a frustrated and repressed woman of high caste, ripe for the picking, a widow whose husband had been dead for years. A wonderful diversion while he awaited the next step in the mission.
One drink became two drinks and then a third. The first hour passed and they were deep into the second when he suggested dinner at Delmonico’s. She eyed him momentarily, her eyes softened by vermouth and gin, then she smiled.
“Why no
t,” she said. “But we must stop by my place, first. I really must change clothes.”
She had an ample one-bedroom suite adjoining her father’s larger quarters in the Waldorf North Tower. It was pleasantly furnished but hotel furniture was hotel furniture no matter what one did with it.
“I won’t take long, I promise,” she said. “I’ll make you a drink before I change.” She went to the bar in the corner and stirred him another martini.
He sipped the drink and nodded emphatically.
“Excellent,” he said. “You are really something. You’re a walking journal of events, you’re quite beautiful and you make a great martini. You’re full of surprises, Lady Penelope.”
He reached out, very lightly stroked her hair, then her throat. Stepping closer, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. She responded hungrily, a woman who had been chaste, untrusting of men, for years.
She wanted him desperately, feeling he was a safe port in her otherwise stormy life. But that could wait. As he wrapped his arms around her, she buried her face in his neck, then raising her lips slightly, she whispered in his ear:
“Das Gespenst ist frei .”
Twenty-seven was astonished when he heard her whisper the code phrase. Was she really his contact, this rich, tided Englishwoman whose father, the internationally famous journalist, had taken so many pot shots at Hitler through the years? Taken completely unaware, he stood flabbergasted as Lady Penelope walked across the room and opened the door to her father’s suite.
“Daddy,” she said.
The tall, trim, impeccable Englishman strode into the room. He wore a red velvet smoking jacket and a blue ascot. He was a handsome man, his mustache trimmed and waxed, his fingers manicured, his silver hair perfectly trimmed, his posture military. There was about him a cool, tailored, untouchable air. So this was the author of the famous “Willow Report.” Looking at them together, Allenbee saw the family resemblance in the painfully correct posture, the classic features, the snobbish air.
Willoughby thrust his hand out.
“Well, well,” he said. “At last we meet. We’ve waited a long time for this moment.”
“Sir Colin,” Allenbee said cautiously. The Britisher leaned toward him and spoke a simple code phrase, “Wilikommen Siebenundzwanzig, der Gespenstschauspieler.”
They shook hands.
“So.. . time to make our contribution to the Third Reich, eh?” Willoughby said with a smile.
“How did you recognize me in the bank?” Allenbee asked Lady Penelope.
“Since you wouldn’t leave a picture, I watched who went to the safe deposit room. You picked up your credentials yesterday so I had a rough idea what you would look like as John Allenbee, although I must admit, the beard threw me. Actually, it was just luck. I was looking for a man I might feel comfortable engaged to.
“Engaged?”
“We’ll get to that,” Willoughby said. “You know, old man, you gave us a start when we saw the personal in the paper and knew you were on the run. What happened?”
“Somebody got on to me.”
Willoughby turned ashen for a moment but quickly regained his composure.
“Who?” he asked, his eyebrows arching with the question.
“Someone at a government department called White House Security.”
Willoughby shrugged. “Probably something to do with the guards on the gates and halls . .
“I don’t think so,” Allenbee said. “They knew my name, address, occupation. They asked for the sheriff first, then a park ranger to go with them to my place.”
“Where was this?”
“Aspen, Colorado.”
“What did you do?”
“I helped set up ski lodges there, Mapped out trails, set up base camps, ran avalanche patrols. It was a good job until these two showed up from Washington.”
“How did you get away?” Lady Penelope asked.
Allenbee stared at her for a moment, then smiled.
“With great difficulty.”
“What did they want, the two from Washington?” Lady Penelope asked.
“I have no idea. I didn’t wait to find out.”
“Well, never mind,” Willoughby said with a grin. “You made it. You are here. The time is now. Ready to go to work, Herr Swan?”
“Not Swan, Willoughby,” he said sternly. “My name is Allenbee. Erase Swan from your mind. He no longer exists. And can the German expressions. You’re English, I’m American.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said a flustered Willoughby. “I’ll be more careful in the future.”
“See to it,” Allenbee said. “So ... what is this plan that we’ve waited six years to implement?”
“Shall we go to my suite? Everything is there. Actually, the whole gambit is quite simple to explain.”
Allenbee followed them both into Sir Colin’s suite. Unlike Lady Penelope’s hotel decor, his living room had obviously been redecorated in oak paneling and leather furniture. One wall was dominated by an enormous Degas painting. Allenbee stared at it for several moments.
“Early Degas,” he said.
“You know your art, John,” Sir Colin said.
“It’s Ward. I prefer to be called Ward. John is too common.”
“Very good, Ward.”
“I once had a Degas,” Allenbee said. “That was years ago. Willie Vierhaus has it now.”
“Help me, would you, please?” Willoughby said, walking over to the painting. With Allenbee’s help, he took the painting down, turned it around and leaned it against the wall. Brown wrapping paper was stretched across the back. Willoughby took a sharp letter opener, scored the edges of the paper and tore it off. Beneath it, glued to the back of the painting, were two maps and a detailed blueprint. One of the maps was the eastern seacoast of the United States; the other was a blowup of a small section of the larger map, with an arrow pointing to a spot on the Georgia coast near the Florida border.
“This is where we are going,” Willoughby said, tracing his finger down the larger of the two maps to the town of Brunswick, Georgia. “About fifty miles north of the Florida line there is an island called Jekyll Island. This smaller map is a close-up of it. It’s just across the marsh from the mainland. Actually, a very short boat ride. The island just to the north of it is St. Simons Island. They are separated by a sound—probably a quarter of a mile wide.
“Jekyll has a somewhat checkered history. Among other things, the last slave ship to come to this country unloaded its unfortunate cargo on the island. I won’t bore you with history for the moment except to tell you it is now the richest, most exclusive private club in the world. In 1885, a group of America’s richest men bought the island and established it as a private playground. J. P. Morgan, Marshall Field, the Vanderbilts, George Pullman, James Hill, Richard Crane, the Goodyears, the Astors, the Rockefellers, Joseph Pulitzer . . you understand what I am saying? The richest, most powerful men in the United States. The list goes on and on.”
He paused for effect. Allenbee leaned closer, studying its location among a string of other islands that dotted the southern coast.
“Through the years, they have built a rather splendid clubhouse, two apartment buildings and several what we jokingly call ‘cottages.’ The first ones were relatively modest. But as time went on and their egos began to clash, these so-called cottages got more and more lavish.
“Since the early thirties, a group of regulars consisting of twenty-seven families have been going every year for Thanksgiving and returning just before Easter. Penny and I first started going down as a guest of the Vanderbilts. We’ve been going on this jaunt off and on since then. The first trip, the very first time, it occurred to me that it would be a relatively simple thing to lift one or two of them. Then I thought more about it, Why not get them all? I took the idea to Vierhaus and he took it to the Führer who was fascinated with the idea.”
He turned to Allenbee.
“These men are the fatted pigs of A
merican industry and society,” he said, his eyes aglow with excitement. “Think of it, Ward . . . the captains of America’s ships of state, some of the richest and most influential families in America with billions in foreign banks . . . all together at one time in one place, isolated from the mainland, literally unprotected. As the Yankees say, sitting ducks.
“Oil, steel, coal, transportation, the press, shipping, arms, munitions, automobiles, banking. The stock market! The heads of two of the biggest brokerage firms in America. My God, these are the men, Allenbee, who will create America’s arsenal if it goes to war with us. In fact, they are already providing England with the tools to fight us.”
Allenbee lit a small cigar with his gold lighter. He stared at the map without speaking, his face an unemotional mask.
“The plan is simple,” Willoughby continued. “We have been invited down for the first three weeks of the season. A U-boat is at this moment sequestered on Grand Bahama Island, approximately two hundred miles to the south. She will come up the coast on the night of November 23rd
“Thanksgiving?” Allenbee asked.
“Precisely. The U-boat will dock at the yacht pier and we will then take twenty-seven of the richest men in this country hostage, remove them from the island and take them back to Grand Bahama. We will negotiate with Roosevelt. If the U.S. remains completely neutral, when the war is over they will be released.”
“How do we get them off this island?”
“Another U-boat will meet us in Andros. The hostages will be split into two groups, to reduce crowding on the submarines. They will be transported to a mother ship in the mid-Atlantic and from there a clipper can take them to Spain. We can have them on our soil in . . . seven days.”
“And this was your idea?” he said finally.
Willoughby nodded, waiting for his reaction. None came. The man who was now Allenbee stood up and walked to the desk, studying the papers and documents and then the map on the wall.
The Hunt Page 53