by Sam Bourne
‘OK, that’s good,’ the man said. In the light, James could see he was thick-necked and square-faced, maybe a former boxer. His mouth carried the suggestion of a smile, like a man who enjoys his work. The gun was still hovering; his finger was on the trigger. What’s he waiting for?
The second-long delay provided the answer. In that instant in which he had not squeezed the trigger, James understood how this man wanted him to die. It was like Lund: he wants it to look like a suicide. He was going to try to shove James from the train, so that the police would conclude he had jumped.
The gunman stepped forward, confident that James would step back in terrified retreat, leaving him just inches from the door. James did as he was expected, trying to win himself another second or two in which he could think. He could not take his eye off the revolver. He could be shot right here before he had drawn his next breath, his body then kicked off the train, where it might not be discovered for days, unless the animals got to it first…
As the man took another step, instinct took over. Instead of walking backwards, James leapt forward, deliberately colliding with his attacker, his right hand reaching first for the gun, pushing it away.
The advantage of surprise paid off; the gunman fell back, slamming against the far door. Still gripping the man’s gun-holding hand, James rammed it into the doorframe, hoping to shake the weapon loose. But now the attacker had recovered his strength and his fingers refused to let go.
The train swerved around a bend and, in time with the movement, the gunman pushed back at James, sending him careering into the opposite door. To his horror, James felt it open — the rush of cold air against him, the carriage filling with noise. Only his fingertips, clinging to the wooden surround above the door kept him inside.
He was filled with rage. He would not die like this, not here, not now — not without seeing Harry and Florence one more time. This bastard would not stop him. All the fury and agony he had endured over the last weeks — and years — now flowed through him. Still gripping the doorframe, feeling his jacket billowing in the wind, he swung forward, kicking out with both his legs so that his feet landed directly in the attacker’s face.
The man stumbled backwards and James dived onto him, searching for the gun. The attacker reacted fast, firing a shot, but not fast enough: the bullet went straight into the ceiling. James gripped the man’s wrist and the pair of them wrestled on the floor, the gunman supine, James on top of him and with the advantage. He forced the man’s gun hand to the ground, where it would be useless. It was nearly there…
But the assassin refused to give up, his hand curled around the butt of the revolver ever tighter. And now James’s left shoulder began screaming. The exertion of this struggle was becoming too much.
James shifted his weight, so that his knee landed firmly on the man’s private parts. When he heard the yelp of pain, he did it again, shoving his attacker’s prone body along the floor, his knee pushing upwards against the man’s groin. One more shove and he had rammed the man’s head into the door.
But the gun hand was twisting, the barrel turning to face James, like the head of a snake. No matter that James had moved his left hand onto the assailant’s windpipe, where he hoped to strangle him, one squeeze of the trigger was all it would take…
He had only one option and he would have to rely on his left hand to do it for him. With his right still curbing the attacker’s gun hand, he reached up with his left, found the train door handle, turned it and, with the last of his strength, propelled the man forward, sliding him head-first into the fast, night air.
James remained there, kneeling on the floor of the train, buffeted by the wind coming in from doors open on both sides. He was panting. And, as the adrenalin faded, he became aware of the acute pain in his wrists, his legs and especially his left shoulder. At last he staggered to his feet, closed both doors and slumped onto a seat. His head hurt and he reached up to touch his forehead. When his hand came away there was blood on it. Even in a year of combat in Spain, even when he had seen his friend Harry’s brain shattered before him, he did not believe he had ever come so close to death.
He spent the rest of the journey pacing, like a captive animal that had been dangerously provoked. McAndrew had sent this man, there was no doubt in James’s mind. How had he known where to find him? He considered the possibility that Dorothy had betrayed him yet again, considered it and dismissed it. Her help for him, her feelings for him, had been genuine, he was certain of it. No, McAndrew had relied on more direct means. James remembered the Buick with the white-rimmed tyres. He might have shaken off his watchers for a few hours after Riley released him from jail, but they had clearly caught up with him. The gunman must have been at the station, watching from the shadows, seeing what train James took, then quietly climbing aboard.
And even though he felt no pity for the dead man, even though James believed he had every justification — in law and in morality — for what he had done, he could not shake the image of the man sliding off the train to a painful death. Back in Spain, James had shot at the enemy many times. Statistical probability alone meant he had surely killed at least one man, if not several. And yet he had never done it like this: he had never seen the face of a man he had killed. James thought of his parents and their lifelong vow of non-violence. What prayer would they utter after committing such an act?
To dispel the thought, he checked his watch. It would be hours before he reached Washington. He still had no clear plan how he was going to find McAndrew once he got there. He desperately needed help.
Twenty minutes passed and at last he saw lights in the distance, not just a few but whole constellations of them. The train was approaching New York.
Slowly, the suburbs gave way to busier, city streets. Billboards began to appear: for Dairy Queen ice cream, for Time magazine, for Peter Pan Peanut Butter. James watched them go by, clasping his aching shoulder.
Suddenly an image floated before James’s eyes: Time magazine, the edition he had read while watching and waiting outside the Wolf’s Head tomb, the page opposite the article on Lord Beaverbrook. He had scarcely registered it at the time, but now the whole double-page spread appeared to him — including the name, middle initial and all, waiting to be found. The only man James knew in Washington; probably the only man he knew in the whole of America.
He jumped onto the platform while the train was still moving, not wanting to waste a second. The station was deserted except for two men with brooms and an older man with a nest of a beard, peering into the dustbins looking for food. Remembering their location from his first visit here, he sprinted over to the phone booths, entering the first and nearest one.
He lifted the handset and was glad to hear the dial tone. He waited for the voice of the operator, nasal and metallic, yet still female: ‘Local or long distance?’
‘Long distance, please.’
‘What city?’
‘Washington, DC.’
‘What name?’
‘The name is Edward P Harrison.’
There was a long delay. James pictured a woman, middle-aged and bespectacled, leafing through a fat directory of thin pages, listing name after name. H for Hammond, Hanson, Harris…
‘There are two Harrisons, Edward P in the DC area, sir. I have a Dr Edward P Harrison?’
James wanted to smile. ‘No, the man I’m looking for is not a doctor.’
‘Connecting you now, sir.’
He heard a series of clicks, then a long ringing tone and then another. Damn it all, he wasn’t there. Damn, damn, da ‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice, sleepy.
‘Hello. I’m sorry to call so late. I need to speak-’
A man’s voice now, taking the phone. ‘Who the hell is this? What’s the idea, calling after midnight?’
‘Ed, is that you? It’s James, James Zennor. From Barcelona. I mean, we were in Spain together, remember, when you were covering the People’s Olympiad?’
There was a pause, into which James spo
ke again. ‘You took a letter for me, do you remember? When you went back home, through London?’
‘OK, now I remember. Zennor. You were writing your girl who’d left you for Hitler, wasn’t that it?’
‘She’d gone to Berlin, that’s right. You’ve got a good memory.’
‘Jeez, you sound terrible. You OK?’
‘Just ran into a spot of… bother, that’s all.’ He could feel the ache in his jaw, where he had slammed into the train door.
‘The thing is, I don’t know what time it is where you are, James, but it’s real late here. So if-’
‘My train’s just made a stop in New York, Ed. And I need your help.’
‘Call me in the morning and I’ll arrange for Western Union-’
‘I don’t need your money!’ The words came out faster and angrier than James intended. He cursed himself. He had only a minute or two before he had to get back on the train. ‘I mean, that is very kind of you, but I’m not asking for that sort of help.’ He was getting this all wrong. He thought of Dorothy Lake and the ambitious young staff of the Yale Daily News and hoped the same urges drove seasoned reporters as motivated new ones. He took a different tack: ‘I may have a very important story for you.’
An instant change in tone, sharper and more alert. ‘What kind of story?’
James had to think quickly. ‘One that could affect whether or not America enters the war.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It involves the Dean of Yale University. He’s in Washington. I have reason to believe he is involved in a secret campaign to keep the United States out of the war. He told his niece that he was about to have the most important meeting of his life.’ James heard himself. He sounded like a lunatic. In a moment, Edward Harrison, Time journalist and James’s only hope in Washington, would surely hang up, explaining to his wife that it had been ‘some British guy’ he knew back in Spain who had clearly lost his marbles during the war.
But Harrison said something else. ‘A meeting? I’ve been hearing rumblings about this. I thought it was all happening in Chicago. They’re calling it the America First movement. Or America First Committee. Committee, I think. So what’s the secret plan?’
James heard a whistle, coming from his platform. ‘There’s more I can tell you. I’m on the slow train to Washington, it gets in at seven fifteen. Meet me at the station.’
‘But-’
‘Please, Ed. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.’
Ed Harrison acknowledged James not with a wave, but by holding up a brown paper bag, as he greeted the train that had just pulled under the shelter of the vast, arced roof of Union Station. The bag was soon revealed to contain two doughnuts, both for James.
‘I figured you’d be hungry,’ he said, looking hardly a day older than when the pair had met amid the sunshine, high hopes and infinite bottles of Sangre de Toro in Barcelona in 1936. Even unshaven, ten years older than James and with a head of unruly hair, he was still craggily handsome.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here,’ James said between mouthfuls.
‘What, and have you call again first thing in the morning? No thanks.’
‘I’m sorry about that. Will you apologize to your wife for me, for ringing so late?’
‘Who said anything about a wife?’
James saw the familiar wicked sparkle in Ed’s eye and remembered how women had flocked around Harrison the famous reporter, playing in the jazz band, drinking the men under the table and still staying sober. That type didn’t tend to get married.
‘So,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s been a long time. Four years, almost to the day, I’d say. What you been up to, James?’
The words that comprised the question were inoffensive enough, but in between them James detected a comment on the state he was in. He had tried to clean up after the battle on the train, but his jacket was ripped, his trousers stained and his face bruised, with dried blood along his jaw and in his scalp. Even before, his face had become thin and drawn, his shattered shoulder distorting the shape beneath his shirt. To Harrison, who had last seen James fit, tanned and youthful in the heady summer of thirty-six, he must have looked a wreck — a premonition of James’s future, aged self.
‘It’s not been an easy time, to be truthful. I stayed on in Spain; fought with the International Brigade.’
‘I remember.’
‘And I was wounded.’
Harrison nodded.
‘Shot in the shoulder. Took a long time to recover.’
‘And your buddy, what was he called? Fine man.’
‘Harry. Harry Knox. Killed, I’m afraid.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Same incident.’ James tapped his shoulder in a gesture that cursed the sheer dumb luck of it.
‘I’m real sorry. I went back, you know. To Spain. To cover the war. Several times, even at the end.’
‘I was back in England by then. Oxford.’
‘I thought I was doing my bit for the cause by reporting the war, “telling the world” and all that. But you guys, taking up arms — you’re all heroes, you know that.’
‘I didn’t feel much like a hero.’
‘You were taking a stand against fascism, that’s the point. Not many ready to do that. Especially not here.’
‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘My magazine’s on the right side: the boss would have Roosevelt declare war tonight if he could. But you know public opinion, it’s… Well, put it this way, not many Americans have seen what I’ve seen.’
‘In Spain, you mean?’
‘Spain, Germany, Poland. I’ve been covering this story as best as I can, telling it like it is, but-’
‘People don’t want to know.’
‘People don’t like war, James.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ed. Some people like war very much. In fact, some people want to see this war run its course, unimpeded, till Britain is reduced to ashes.’
‘You talking about the Yale guy?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Before we get to that, what about the girl?’ the American asked, as they walked out of Union Station, the dome of the US Capitol visible and bright in the early morning sunshine. James had seen it in paintings; maybe the odd news photograph. It was like a pristine version of St Paul’s.
‘What girl?’ For a brief, guilty moment James thought he meant Dorothy Lake.
‘The girl I had to get the letter to? The one in England?’
A shot of pain went through James, as he thought of Florence and Harry at Hope Farm, wherever that might be. Were they still there? Or had they already left? The thought that they might have been spirited away once their location had been discovered, that James had forfeited his one chance to see them again, did not go through his brain, but his flesh, like an electric current of sadness.
‘I’m proud to say Florence Walsingham is now my wife. And the mother of my child.’
Harrison slapped him on the back. ‘Well done, old man. Well done! You couldn’t have married a more beautiful girl. They back home in England?’
James took that as his cue to fill Ed Harrison in — as briefly as he could — on what he knew and how he had come to know it. He did not linger on the disappearance of Florence or Harry, instead focusing narrowly on the Dean’s ‘Cleansing Fire’ lecture and the mysterious death of a subordinate who had apparently stumbled across his plans.
‘You mean to say that one of the country’s most senior scholars actually wants the British to lose the war, just so he can see what happens? Like, for an experiment?’
‘Yes, but also as an end in itself. He’s simply taking eugenic theory to its logical conclusion: we want more of the strong and less of the weak, so why not let war do what it does best?’
‘And eliminate those too weak to survive.’ Harrison shook his head. ‘You’ve had quite a month, haven’t you, my friend? No wonder you look like duck crap.’
‘Thanks.’
‘No offence
. But, Jesus. And you think this is why he’s come here?’
‘Based on what he told his niece, yes.’
‘Well, you may be right. Look what’s on page sixteen.’ Ed handed him a newspaper. ‘That’s what I love about the Washington Post: you never know where you’re gonna find a front-page story.’
James read the headline. ‘Demanding “No foreign entanglements,” anti-war campaigners plan next move.’ He skimmed the details: business leaders and politicians coming together… promise to build mass opposition to intervention in the war in Europe… no shortage of funding, several millionaires… political backing in both Senate and the House… strongest support in Chicago and Illinois… lead spokesman the illustrious aviator, Charles H Lindbergh… socialist allies in the Keep America out of War Committee… prime mover Yale Law School student, P Alexander Tudor, who hopes to launch a formal anti-interventionist movement in September, likely to be called the America First Committee…
One word stopped him: Yale. As if reading his mind, Harrison leaned over, pen in hand, and circled the same word. He then said, ‘I’ve asked around. Turns out they’re meeting today, trying to secure some big names on the Hill in time for launch in September.’
James felt a tremor of anticipation run through him. ‘Where?’
‘Willard Hotel. Right by the White House. Sending a message to FDR, nice and direct.’
‘Can we go there now?’
‘I’m ahead of you, Dr Zee.’ As he spoke, Harrison gestured for them to turn right down Constitution Avenue, as wide and grand as a boulevard in Paris. James shot a glance over his shoulder, to check that no one was following. Soon, if not by now, McAndrew would learn that the killer he had hired had failed to complete his mission — and he would surely send another in his place.
‘The meeting’s closed to the public, of course,’ said Ed.
‘Damn.’
‘Worry not, Jimbo. When I say closed to the public, I mean closed to the public. Not the press.’
‘So you’ll be allowed in?’
‘As will you.’ And, with a flourish, Harrison reached into his bag, a deep satchel slung over his shoulder that James remembered from Spain, and produced a camera. Bigger than an encyclopaedia and twice as heavy, with a flashbulb post doubling as a grip for the right hand, it was the object James had seen in a hundred newsreels, but never up close. ‘Congratulations, Jim Zennor, newest addition to Time ’s legendary team of photographers.’