The Saboteurs

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I traveled extensively in Europe before the war,” Stevens went on, smugly. “England, France, Austria, Germany. I know a few things about your country, including its brands.”

  Koch said nothing, just jerked the pack upward so that a single cigarette appeared in the small hole torn in the top of the pack. Stevens reached for it with his left hand—and Koch tossed the pack hard into his face.

  There was a sharp crack as Stevens’s .38 fired. Koch felt a burning sensation in his left thigh but ignored it as he grabbed the revolver while thrusting his right knee into Stevens’s groin. Stevens groaned and doubled over, and Koch forced the muzzle of the revolver behind Stevens’s left ear—and squeezed the trigger.

  Instantly, a small geyser of blood and gray matter erupted from the exit wound atop Stevens’s skull and he collapsed to the floor, blood from the wound pooling on the India rug.

  “…And I grabbed the keys to the truck, and came right here,” Koch said to Cremer, Grossman, and Bayer at the cottage.

  He chose not to mention the three bricks of cash collected from the bedroom safe when he went for the truck key—twelve thousand dollars of J. Whit Stevens’s rainy-day fund kept separate from the rest that was kept in the safe embedded in the concrete floor of the bar.

  “Scheist!” Cremer said. “We have not been ashore a full day and already we have a trail of a missing coastguardsman and a dead pub owner!”

  “We have to move!” Grossman said excitedly, and got down on his knees and started repacking one of the soft black bags.

  Koch shrugged.

  “No argument,” he said. “Give me a minute to clean this scratch and we go.”

  Ten minutes later, after carefully packing all the bags and making sure that they had left no sign of their presence in the cottage, the four men went down the wooden steps and headed toward the parking pad of crushed oyster shells beneath the cottage.

  “What the hell?” Cremer said when he saw the horrid yellow-and-black plumber’s pickup. “When you said ‘truck’…” His voice trailed off.

  Koch shrugged, then wordlessly put his bag in the back and got behind the wheel.

  Cremer exchanged glances of disgust with Grossman, then they put their bags in the back and climbed in with them, trying to arrange themselves so that they would be inconspicuous to passersby.

  As the truck starter ground and the engine caught with a cough, Bayer came running up, tossed his bag in the back—hitting Grossman in the head in the process—then got in the passenger’s seat and slammed the yellow door shut.

  The truck’s tires began to crunch on the shells.

  [ ONE ]

  Q Street, NW

  Washington, D.C.

  1850 5 March 1943

  “Luciano is a curious study in contrasts,” Gurfein said right before slicing more beef tenderloin and putting it in his mouth.

  Canidy, Gurfein, and Donovan, well into their meal, were seated in the small private breakfast area that was off of the mansion’s main kitchen.

  The huge table in the main dining room was for some reason being used as a conference table—with papers and maps spread all over it—and therefore unavailable.

  The private breakfast area’s outer wall was a large bay window that overlooked a moonlit open area of the estate that went back an acre or so to where a row of tall evergreen trees heavy with snow masked a section of the stone wall that ringed the property and was patrolled at irregular times by armed guards.

  Covered with a cloth of white linen, the rectangular table was somewhat small, about three by four, and intended to comfortably seat two. It was now set for three, using what was considered to be the “everyday” china, leaving little empty space between the nice but simple heavy white plates and the water and wine glasses.

  Donovan sat at one end of the table, Canidy at the other, and Gurfein was seated between them, opposite the bay window.

  Behind Gurfein—very close behind him—was a narrow ten-foot-long shelf running the length of the wall. It now held half-empty platters of sliced beef tenderloin, garlic-roasted red potatoes, steamed asparagus with a lemon-cream sauce, as well as a glass pitcher of ice water and a half-dozen bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon, one of them empty and another open and “breathing.”

  At the start, Donovan had excused the staff, saying that he felt sure that he and his guests could serve themselves without risk of starving or other calamity, but if anything should arise to prove him wrong—“And I have been wrong before,” he said. “I believe it was a summer day in 1888…when I was five”—he would immediately summon them by pressing the floor-mounted service call button beneath him.

  “Contrasts?” Canidy repeated, carefully cutting his last stalk of asparagus. “How so?”

  Gurfein hurried the chewing of his beef, and swallowed quickly with some effort.

  He said, “Although he’s rough and squat and dumpy—looks like a dumb Guinea thug, especially with that droopy eyelid and the neck scar he got from knife cuts—he is actually a cool operator who could run a corporation, if he wanted. A legal one, I mean, because he’s clearly running an illicit one. Another example is that there is absolutely no doubt that he is a ruthless killer, more than comfortable with getting his hands dirty, yet he has been a model prisoner. Not one problem since he went in the slam this time. And he’s not eligible for parole for another thirteen or so years—1956.”

  “Will he get it?” Canidy asked.

  “Not even likely,” Gurfein said. “Not with his history. When he first went up—he was sent to Sing Sing—the prison psychiatrist there diagnosed him as dangerous, and added that, due to his drug addiction, Luciano should be transferred to Dannemora. And he was. He was confined to his cell for sixteen hours a day, the remainder of the time spent working in the laundry, with an hour every other day allowed for some type of exercise.”

  The state prison Sing Sing was at Ossining, near New York City. Dannemora, the state’s third-oldest prison and maximum-security facility—and, accordingly, a cold, miserable place to spend a night, let alone to languish a lifetime—was in upstate New York, about sixty miles from Albany.

  Canidy reached for the open bottle of Cabernet. When he held it up, Donovan said, “Please,” and Gurfein nodded enthusiastically. Canidy poured a little more wine into their glasses, then into his.

  “If I may,” Gurfein said to Donovan, “let me begin with a quick history of Luciano, then we can get into recent events. Because of the latter, I had to deeply invest myself in the former, and that in and of itself was a formidable task.”

  “Of course,” Donovan said.

  Gurfein looked to Canidy.

  “Please,” Canidy added.

  Gurfein cut a piece of meat and put it in his mouth, clearly gathering his thoughts as he chewed and looked out the window. After he swallowed, he took two healthy sips of wine, then dabbed at his lips with his linen napkin.

  “First off,” the former assistant district attorney for New York County began, “he is not a citizen of the United States, which is what most assume he is. He was born Salvatore Lucania on November 24, 1897, in Sicily, the third son of five children. When Salvatore was seven, his father, a steam-boiler mechanic by the name of Anthony Lucania, immigrated to the United States and found work in Brooklyn at a brass-bed factory. The following year, Luciano came to the U.S. with his mother and siblings. The family worked hard, stayed out of trouble—everyone except Luciano. He was a tough guy from the start. Before he dropped out of school, in fifth grade, he was already roughing up the little Jewish kids, saying he would protect them from being beaten up in the neighborhood, at school—wherever—if they paid him—”

  “And if they didn’t,” Canidy put in, “then he beat them up until they did?”

  Gurfein nodded.

  “Classic thuggery,” Canidy said.

  “Interestingly,” Gurfein said between sips of wine, “one skinny Polish Jew fought back. His name was Maier Suchowljansky—”

  “Later, one
Meyer Lansky?” Canidy said.

  “One and the same,” Donovan acknowledged.

  Gurfein stared at his wineglass a moment, collecting his next thoughts as he methodically worked his thumb and forefinger on the stem, slowly spinning the wine. He continued:

  “Even though Meyer ‘Little Man’ Lansky was five years younger than Luciano, Luciano liked him, respected him, learned to listen to him. They were running rackets in no time. Luciano got busted dealing drugs in his late teens, and spent months in the slam at Blackwell’s Island. Despite all that—or, rather, perhaps because of it—Luciano rose quickly in the underworld. He joined gangs, then ran them, running with some important Italian mob guys. Quote Italian unquote is key, because when Luciano wound up working with Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria, it wasn’t long before it got bloody.”

  Gurfein noticed that Canidy and Donovan had pushed back from their empty plates and so he turned his attention to what little remained of his meal. After a long moment, his plate clean, he picked up his wineglass and went on:

  “As capo di tutti capi—boss of all bosses—Masseria made a lot of money, and Luciano, now his number two, made him even more. At one point, thinking he was doing what his boss expected him to do, Luciano suggested that they diversify—get bigger and more powerful beyond their already formidable wealth and influence—by doing business with gangs that weren’t Italian.”

  “Why not?” Canidy said. “Lansky, Luciano’s most trusted friend, was a Polish Jew.”

  “True. No doubt that’s what Luciano was thinking. But Luciano’s idea was to expand not only with gangs that weren’t just Italian—but with gangs that weren’t just in New York. He was already envisioning a nationwide syndicate. Whether he shared all of this with Masseria is unclear. But Masseria would have nothing of the idea of working with non-Italians. Luciano was persistent but ultimately frustrated. He got nowhere.”

  Gurfein drained his glass, then slid it toward Canidy’s wine bottle. “If you would, please?”

  As Canidy poured, Gurfein said, “Masseria, however, was beginning to fear Luciano—as any wise boss would with nowhere to go but down. So one night in October of ’29 a car pulled up to the curb where Luciano stood on the sidewalk on Broadway and Fifth Avenue, right there in front of the Flatiron Building, which he’d just come out of, and some guys jumped out and forced him into the backseat. They bound and gagged him and drove him out to Staten Island. They beat the living shit out of him, pistol-whipping and stabbing him, then strung him up in a warehouse by his wrists. Before they left him to hang there till dead, they also cut his throat.”

  “Apparently, not good enough,” Canidy said with a grin. He knew how easy it was for someone not properly trained to try to slit a throat—and fail. It was harder, and a helluva lot messier, than the movies made it look.

  Gurfein nodded. “That’s what makes him one tough Guinea sonofabitch. Beaten and bloody, he still somehow managed to work free of the rope that tied his hands, then he crawled out of the warehouse and wound up getting picked up by NYPD’s 123rd Precinct. The cops grilled him, but Luciano, true to omertà, said nothing, and they ran him to the hospital, where the cops had no choice but to let him go.”

  “It’s easy not to snitch if you don’t know who tried to kill you. Did he?”

  “Keep quiet? Yeah, he was faithful to the code—wiseguys don’t speak out, especially to cops, about the mob. Did he know who did it? No. Not at first. But over time, his counsel—Lansky—figured it out for him.”

  “Masseria.”

  Gurfein nodded. “And Lansky helped his pal plot revenge. So one day Luciano secretly approached Salvatore ‘Little Caesar’ Maranzano—”

  “This is where it turned really bloody,” Donovan interrupted. “Masseria and Maranzano were bitter competitors and even more bitter enemies. And so began what became called the Castellammarese War. Many of the immigrants fighting this mob war, including Maranzano, had come from the western Sicilian town of Castellammare del Golf, hence the name.” He looked at Gurfein. “Sorry. Please continue.”

  “Over the next couple of years,” Gurfein went on, “it was a real underworld bloodbath. Countless gangsters got gunned down. Masseria had been right to be fearful, because everyone was fearful. And it was in this crazed environment that Luciano set him up. He arranged to meet him at a restaurant in Coney Island, and the hit men were waiting.”

  He sipped from his wine, then grinned. “So Luciano got revenge on Masseria for his attempted whacking. And Maranzano, who now called himself capo di tutti capi, rewarded Luciano by making him his number two.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Canidy said. “Same song, different verse.”

  “Yes and no. As with Masseria, you had Luciano playing second fiddle to the ruthless big boss. But with one difference: Maranzano embraced Luciano’s idea of a nationwide syndicate. He wanted to be capo di tutti capi of the United States. And in order to accomplish this, he felt he had to take out two obstacles: a gangster in Chicago named Al Capone—”

  Canidy finished it: “—and a gangster in New York named Charlie Lucky.”

  “As you say, ‘same song.’ And Luciano had played this tune before. So, with Meyer ‘Little Man’ Lansky’s help, he got Maranzano before Maranzano got him.”

  Canidy sighed. “Is there any end to all this?”

  Donovan said, “Oh, it just gets better.” He looked at Gurfein. “Pick up with Dewey.”

  Gurfein nodded, then raised an eyebrow. “Colonel, you know it—and him—better than I do, sir. I suggest you pick up that part.”

  It was no secret that Donovan had close connections in New York—he had been a United States Attorney in New York, a very successful one in seeing to the enforcement of Prohibition laws, before settling into a highly lucrative private practice on Wall Street.

  “There’s an interesting twist here,” Donovan said to Canidy, rising to the story, but then had second thoughts and turned to Gurfein. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear your take on it again, Murray.”

  Gurfein nodded.

  “Very well, sir.” He looked at Canidy. “You’re familiar with Tom Dewey?”

  “Just what I read in the papers,” Canidy said. “Good-looking, bright guy, fearless. Ran for governor of New York—and lost—in ’38 at age thirty-five, thirty-six, prosecuted big-time mobsters and other high-profile bad guys, like the leader of the American Nazis, whatshisname—”

  “Fritz Kuhn,” Gurfein supplied.

  “—Fritz Kuhn,” Canidy repeated. “Dewey is running for governor again, and will probably go from there to run for President.”

  “Simply put, in a short time he’s cut a very wide path that’s shut down a lot of people,” Gurfein said. “You’d think the mob would want to rub him out—”

  “Sure,” Canidy said.

  “—and you’d be right.”

  “And therein lies the twist,” Donovan said.

  Gurfein nodded slowly. “With Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria and Salvatore ‘Little Caesar’ Maranzano dead and gone, Luciano and Lansky knew this was their chance to pull together the various factions of the underworld. If they didn’t, well, what goes around comes around, right? So with some great dealing and convincing they managed to set up what was called ‘the Commission.’”

  The director of the Office of Strategic Services said: “Dutch Schultz, Lansky, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, and of course Luciano as its chairman.” He looked at Gurfein. “You tell it.”

  “It was, I think, 1935—”

  “Right,” Donovan said. “’Thirty-five.”

  “—and Dewey was investigating Dutch Schultz. When Dutch went into hiding, Mayor La Guardia started to really put the screws to Schultz’s slot-machine racket. Needless to say, Dutch didn’t like it, and proposed to the Commission that Dewey be taken out. Jonnie Torrio told him, ‘You don’t go whacking guys that high,’ or words to that effect—”

  “That’s right,” Donovan said. “I’d forgotten Torrio was also on the Commission. An
d no wonder. It was his gang that a young Luciano first joined.”

  Gurfein waited to see if Donovan was finished, and when the head of the OSS waved his hand in a Go ahead gesture, Gurfein continued:

  “See, the Commission was really afraid of their own rackets taking heat—even getting shut down—after the public reacted badly to the news of the immensely popular D.A. being killed by the same scum he was trying to clean up. So when Dutch was told no, he was, shall we say, less than thrilled about not getting his way, and became so pissed that he decided that he was going to do the job himself. That is, have his goons kill Dewey. Word spread among the gangs, and when Luciano and his buddy Lansky got wind of it they knew that they had to stop Dutch Schultz.”

  “And the only way to do that,” Canidy said, remembering the news stories, “was for Schultz to get whacked.”

  Gurfein took a sip of water and nodded at the same time, spilling water on the table and in his lap.

  “Shit!” he said softly, then “Excuse me,” and quickly patted at the wet spots with his napkin.

  “So, Schultz,” he went on, “real name Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, aka the notorious Beer Baron, age thirty-three, got shot in the Palace Chop House in Newark and days later died of wounds suffered.”

  “And Dewey lived to see another day,” Donovan said, “saved, oddly enough, by the mob.”

  “Fascinating,” Canidy said. “But what—”

  “Not that that made any difference to Dewey,” Gurfein interrupted, adding, “because while Luciano may have directly or indirectly kept Dewey from being killed, Luciano was far from being home free. In fact, quite the opposite. The relentless prosecutor got him good: His team of racket busters raided scores of brothels and brought in some one hundred hookers and madams. After a couple weeks in the city’s Women’s House of Detention, enough of them talked so that Dewey could bring charges that would stick. And, in the end, Luciano was found guilty of running prostitution rings and sentenced to a record term of thirty to fifty.”