Garden Of Beasts

Chapter One

As soon as he stepped into the dim apartment he knew he was dead.

He wiped sweat off his palm, looking around the place, which was quiet as a morgue, except for the faint sounds of Hell’s Kitchen traffic late at night and the ripple of the greasy shade when the swiveling Monkey Ward fan turned its hot breath toward the window.

The whole scene was off.

Out of kilter…

Malone was supposed to be here, smoked on booze, sleeping off a binge. But he wasn’t. No bottles of corn anywhere, not even the smell of bourbon, the punk’s only drink. And it looked like he hadn’t been around for a while. The New York Sun on the table was two days old. It sat next to a cold ashtray and a glass with a blue halo of dried milk halfway up the side.

He clicked the light on.

Well, there was a side door, like he’d noted yesterday from the hallway, looking over the place. But it was nailed shut. And the window that let onto the fire escape? Brother, sealed nice and tight with chicken wire he hadn’t been able to see from the alley. The other window was open but was also forty feet above cobblestones.

No way out…

And where was Malone? Paul Schumann wondered.

Malone was on the lam, Malone was drinking beer in Jersey, Malone was a statue on a concrete base underneath a Red Hook pier.

Didn’t matter.

Whatever’d happened to the boozehound, Paul realized, the punk had been nothing more than bait, and the wire that he’d be here tonight was pure bunk.

In the hallway outside, a scuffle of feet. A clink of metal.

Out of kilter…

Paul set his pistol on the room’s one table, took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. The searing air from the deadly Midwest heat wave had made its way to New York. But a man can’t walk around without a jacket when he’s carrying a 1911 Colt.45 in his back waistband and so Paul was condemned to wear a suit. It was his single-button, single-breasted gray linen. The white-cotton, collar-attached shirt was drenched.

Another shuffle from outside in the hallway, where they’d be getting ready for him. A whisper, another clink.

Paul thought about looking out the window but was afraid he’d get shot in the face. He wanted an open casket at his wake and he didn’t know any morticians good enough to fix bullet or bird-shot damage.

Who was gunning for him?

It wasn’t Luciano, of course, the man who’d hired him to touch off Malone. It wasn’t Meyer Lansky either. They were dangerous, yeah, but not snakes. Paul’d always done top-notch work for them, never leaving a bit of evidence that could link them to the touch-off. Besides, if either of them wanted Paul gone, they wouldn’t need to set him up with a bum job. He’d simply be gone.

So who’d snagged him? If it was O’Banion or Rothstein from Williamsburg or Valenti from Bay Ridge, well, he’d be dead in a few minutes.

If it was dapper Tom Dewey, the death would take a bit longer – whatever time was involved to convict him and get him into the electric chair up in Sing Sing.

More voices in the hall. More clicks, metal seating against metal.

But looking at it one way, he reflected wryly, everything was silk so far; he was still alive.

And thirsty as hell.

He walked to the Kelvinator and opened it. Three bottles of milk – two of them curdled – and a box of Kraft cheese and one of Sunsweet tenderized peaches. Several Royal Crown colas. He found an opener and removed the cap from a bottle of the soft drink.

From somewhere he heard a radio. It was playing “Stormy Weather.”

Sitting down at the table again, he noticed himself in the dusty mirror on the wall above a chipped enamel washbasin. His pale blue eyes weren’t as alarmed as they ought to be, he supposed. His face, though, was weary. He was a large man – over six feet and weighing more than two hundred pounds. His hair was from his mother’s side, reddish brown; his fair complexion from his father’s German ancestors. The skin was a bit marred – not from pox but from knuckles in his younger days and Everlast gloves more recently. Concrete and canvas too.

Sipping the soda pop. Spicier than Coca-Cola. He liked it.

Paul considered his situation. If it was O’Banion or Rothstein or Valenti, well, none of them gave a good goddamn about Malone, a crazy riveter from the shipyards turned punk mobster, who’d killed a beat cop’s wife and done so in a pretty unpleasant way. He’d threatened more of the same to any law that gave him trouble. Every boss in the area, from the Bronx to Jersey, was shocked at what he’d done. So even if one of them wanted to touch off Paul, why not wait until after he’d knocked off Malone?

Which meant it was probably Dewey.

The idea of being stuck in the caboose till he was executed depressed him. Yet, truth be told, in his heart Paul wasn’t too torn up about getting nabbed. Like when he was a kid and would jump impulsively into fights against two or three kids bigger than he was, sooner or later he’d eventually pick the wrong punks and end up with a broken bone. He’d known the same thing about his present career: that ultimately a Dewey or an O’Banion would bring him down.

Thinking of one of his father’s favorite expressions: “On the best day, on the worst day, the sun finally sets.” The round man would snap his colorful suspenders and add, “Cheer up. Tomorrow’s a whole new horse race.”

He jumped when the phone rang.

Paul looked at the black Bakelite for a long moment. On the seventh ring, or the eighth, he answered. “Yeah?”

“Paul,” a crisp, young voice said. No neighborhood slur.

“You know who it is.”

“I’m up the hall in another apartment. There’re six of us here. Another half dozen on the street.”

Twelve? Paul felt an odd calm. Nothing he could do about twelve. They’d get him one way or the other. He sipped more of the Royal Crown. He was so damn thirsty. The fan wasn’t doing anything but moving the heat from one side of the room to the other. He asked, “You working for the boys from Brooklyn or the West Side? Just curious.”

“Listen to me, Paul. Here’s what you’re going to do. You only have two guns on you, right? The Colt. And that little twenty-two. The others are back in your apartment?”

Paul laughed. “That’s right.”

“You’re going to unload them and lock the slide of the Colt open. Then walk to the window that’s not sealed and pitch them out. Then you’re going to take your jacket off, drop it on the floor, open the door and stand in the middle of the room with your hands up in the air. Stretch ’em way up high.”

“You’ll shoot me,” he said.

“You’re living on borrowed time anyway, Paul. But if you do what I say you might stay alive a little longer.”

The caller hung up.

He dropped the hand piece into the cradle. He sat motionless for a moment, recalling a very pleasant night a few weeks ago. Marion and he had gone to Coney Island for miniature golf and hot dogs and beer, to beat the heat. Laughing, she’d dragged him to a fortune teller at the amusement park. The fake gypsy had read his cards and told him a lot of things. The woman had missed this particular event, though, which you’d think should’ve showed up somewhere in the reading if she was worth her salt.

Marion… He’d never told her what he did for a living. Only that he owned a gym and he did business occasionally with some guys who had questionable pasts. But he’d never told her more. He realized suddenly that he’d been looking forward to some kind of future with her. She was a dime-a-dance girl at a club on the West Side, studying fashion design during the day. She’d be working now; she usually went till 1 or 2 A.M. How would she find out what happened to him?

If it was Dewey he’d probably be able to call her.

If it was the boys from Williamsburg, no call. Nothing.

The phone began ringing again.

Paul ignored it. He slipped the clip from his big gun and unchambered the round that was in the receiver, then he emptied the cartridges out of the revolver. He walked to the window and tossed the pistols out one at a time. He didn’t hear them land.

Finishing the soda pop, he took his jacket off, dropped it on the floor. He started for the door but paused. He went back to the Kelvinator and got another Royal Crown. He drank it down. Then he wiped his face again, opened the front door, stepped back and lifted his arms.

The phone stopped ringing.

“This’s called The Room,” said the gray-haired man in a pressed white uniform, taking a seat on a small couch.

“You were never here,” he added with a cheerful confidence that meant there was no debate. He added, “And you never heard about it.”

It was 11 P.M. They’d brought Paul here directly from Malone’s. It was a private town house on the Upper East Side, though most of the rooms on the ground floor contained desks and telephones and Teletype machines, like in an office. Only in the parlor were there divans and armchairs. On the walls here were pictures of new and old navy ships. A globe sat in the corner. FDR looked down at him from a spot above a marble mantel. The room was wonderfully cold. A private house that had air-conditioning. Imagine.

Still handcuffed, Paul had been deposited in a comfortable leather armchair. The two younger men who’d escorted him out of Malone’s apartment, also in white uniforms, sat beside him and slightly behind. The one who’d spoken to him on the phone was named Andrew Avery, a man with rosy cheeks and deliberate, sharp eyes. Eyes of a boxer, though Paul knew he’d never been in a fistfight in his life. The other was Vincent Manielli, dark, with a voice that told Paul they’d probably grown up in the same section of Brooklyn. Manielli and Avery didn’t look much older than the stickball kids in front of Paul’s building, but they were, of all things, lieutenants in the navy. When Paul had been in France the lieutenants he’d served under had been grown men.

Their pistols were in holsters but the leather flaps were undone and they kept their hands near their weapons.

The older officer, sitting across from him on the couch, was pretty high up – a naval commander, if the gingerbread on his uniform was the same as it’d been twenty years ago.

The door opened and an attractive woman in a white navy uniform entered. The name on her blouse was Ruth Willets. She handed him a file. “Everything’s in there.”

“Thank you, Yeoman.”

As she left, without glancing at Paul, the officer opened the file, extracted two pieces of thin paper, read them carefully. When he finished, he looked up. “I’m James Gordon. Office of Naval Intelligence. They call me Bull.”

“This is your headquarters?” Paul asked. “‘The Room’?”

The commander ignored him and glanced at the other two. “You introduced yourselves yet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There was no trouble?”

“None, sir.” Avery was doing the talking.

“Take his cuffs off.”

Avery did so while Manielli stood with his hand near his gun, edgily eyeing Paul’s gnarled knuckles. Manielli had fighter’s hands too. Avery’s were pink as a dry-goods clerk’s.

The door swung open again and another man walked inside. He was in his sixties but as lean and tall as that young actor Marion and Paul had seen in a couple of films, Jimmy Stewart. Paul frowned. He knew the face from articles in the Times and the Herald Tribune. “Senator?”

The man responded, but to Gordon: “You said he was smart. I didn’t know he was well-informed.” As if he wasn’t happy about being recognized. The Senator looked Paul up and down, sat and lit a stubby cigar.

A moment later yet another man entered, about the same age as the Senator, wearing a white linen suit that was savagely wrinkled. The body it encased was large and soft. He carried a walking stick. He glanced once at Paul then, without a word to anyone, he retreated to the corner. He too looked familiar but Paul couldn’t place him.

“Now,” Gordon continued. “Here’s the situation, Paul. We know you’ve worked for Luciano, we know you’ve worked for Lansky, a couple of the others. And we know what you do for them.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You’re a button man, Paul,” Manielli said brightly, as if he’d been looking forward to saying it.

Gordon said, “Last March Jimmy Coughlin saw you…” He frowned. “What do you people say? You don’t say ‘kill.’”

Paul, thinking: Some of us people say “chill off.” Paul himself used “touch off.” It was the phrase that Sergeant Alvin York used to describe killing enemy soldiers during the War. It made Paul feel less like a punk to use the term that a war hero did. But, of course, Paul Schumann didn’t share any of this at the moment.

Gordon continued. “Jimmy saw you kill Arch Dimici on March thirteenth in a warehouse on the Hudson.”

Paul had staked out the place for four hours before Dimici showed up. He’d been positive the man was alone. Jimmy must’ve been sleeping one off behind some crates when Paul arrived.

“Now, from what they tell me, Jimmy isn’t the most reliable witness. But we’ve got some hard evidence. A few revenue boys picked him up for sell ing hooch and he made a deal to rat on you. Seems he’d picked up a shell casing at the scene and was keeping it for insurance. No prints’re on it – you’re too smart for that. But Hoover ’s people ran a test on your Colt. The scratches from the extractor’re the same.”

Hoover? The FBI was involved? And they’d already tested the gun. He’d pitched it out of Malone’s window less than an hour ago.

Paul rocked his upper and lower teeth against each other. He was furious with himself. He’d searched for a half hour to find that damn casing at the Dimici job and had finally concluded it’d fallen through the cracks in the floor into the Hudson.

“So we made inquiries and heard you were being paid five hundred dollars to…” Gordon hesitated.

Touch off.

“… eliminate Malone tonight.”

“Like hell I was,” Paul said, laughing. “You got yourself some bum wire. I just went to visit him. Where is he, by the way?”

Gordon paused. “Mr. Malone will no longer be a threat to the constabulary or the citizens of New York City.”

“Sounds like somebody owes you five C-notes.”

Bull Gordon didn’t laugh. “You’re in Dutch, Paul, and you can’t beat the rap. So here’s what we’re offering. Like they say in those used-Studebaker ads: this’s a one-time-only offer. Take it or leave it. We don’t negotiate.”

The Senator finally spoke. “Tom Dewey wants you as bad as he wants the rest of the scum on his list.”

The special prosecutor was on a divine mission to clean up organized crime in New York. Crime boss Lucky Luciano, the Italian Five Families in the city and the Jewish syndicate of Meyer Lansky were his main targets. Dewey was dogged and smart and he was winning conviction after conviction.

“But he’s agreed to give us first dibs on you.”

“Forget it. I’m not a stool pigeon.”

Gordon said, “We’re not asking you to be one. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

A pause for a moment. The Senator nodded toward Gordon, who said, “You’re a button man, Paul. What do you think? We want you to kill somebody.”

Chapter Two

He held Gordon’s eyes for a moment then he looked at the pictures of the ships on the wall. The Room… It had a military feel to it. Like an officers’ club. Paul had liked his time in the army. He’d felt at home there, had friends, had a purpose. That was a good time for him, a simple time – before he came back home and life got complicated. When life gets complicated, bad things can happen.

“You’re being square with me?”

“Oh, you bet.”

With Manielli squinting out a warning to move slowly, Paul reached into his pocket and took out a pack of Chesterfields. He lit one. “Go on.”

Gordon said, “You’ve got that gym over on Ninth Avenue. Not much of a place, is it?” He asked this of Avery.

“You been there?” Paul asked.

Avery said, “Not so swank.”

Manielli laughed. “Real dive, I’d say.”

The commander continued, “But you used to be a printer before you got into this line of work. You liked the printing business, Paul?”

Cautiously Paul said, “Yeah.”

“Were you good at it?”

“Yeah, I was good. What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”

“How’d you like to make your whole past go away. Start over. Be a printer again. We can fix it so nobody can prosecute you for anything you’ve done in the past.”

“And,” the Senator added, “we’ll cough up some bucks too. Five thousand. You can get a new life.”

Five thousand? Paul blinked. It took most joes two years to earn that kind of money. He asked, “How can you clean up my record?”

The Senator laughed. “You know that new game, Monopoly? You ever play it?”

“My nephews have it. I never played.”

The Senator continued. “Sometimes when you roll the dice you end up in prison. But there’s this card that says ‘Get Out of Jail Free.’ Well, we’ll give you one for real. That’s all you need to know.”

“You want me to kill somebody? That’s queer. Dewey’d never agree to it.”

The Senator said, “The special prosecutor hasn’t been informed about why we want you.”

After a pause he asked, “Who? Siegel?” Of all the current mobsters Bugsy Siegel was the most dangerous. Psychotic, really. Paul had seen the bloody results of the man’s brutality. His tantrums were legendary.

“Now, Paul,” Gordon said, disdain on his face, “it’d be illegal for you to kill a U.S. citizen. We’d never ask you to do anything like that.”

“Then I don’t get the angle.”

The Senator said, “This is more like a wartime situation. You were a soldier…” A glance at Avery, who recited, “First Infantry Division, First American Army, AEF. St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne. You did some serious fighting. Got yourself some medals for marksmanship in the field. Did some hand-to-hand too, right?”

Paul shrugged. The fat man in the wrinkled white suit sat silently in his corner, hands clasped on the gold handle of his walking stick. Paul held his eye for a minute. Then turned back to the commander. “What’re the odds I’ll survive long enough to use my get-out-of-jail card?”

“Reasonable,” the commander said. “Not great but reasonable.”

Paul was a friend of the sports journalist and writer Damon Runyon. They’d drink together some in the dives near Broadway, go to fights and ball games. A couple of years ago Runyon had invited Paul to a party after the New York opening of his movie Little Miss Marker, which Paul thought was a pretty good flick. At the party afterward, where he got a kick out of meeting Shirley Temple, he’d asked Runyon to autograph a book. The writer had inscribed it, To my pal, Paul – Remember, all of life is six to five against.

Avery said, “How ’bout we just say your chances’re a lot better than if you go to Sing Sing.”

After a moment Paul asked, “Why me? You’ve got dozens of button men in New York ’d be willing to do it for that kind of scratch.”

“Ah, but you’re different, Paul. You’re not a two-bit punk. You’re good. Hoover and Dewey say you’ve killed seventeen men.”

Paul scoffed. “Bum wire, I keep saying.”

In fact, the number was thirteen.

“What we’ve heard about you is that you check everything two, three times before the job. You make sure your guns’re in perfect shape, you read up about your victims, you look over their places ahead of time, you find their schedule and you make sure they stick to it, you know when they’ll be alone, when they make phone calls, where they eat.”

The Senator added, “And you’re smart. Like I was saying. We need smart for this.”

“Smart?”

Manielli said, “We been to your place, Paul. You got books. Damn, you got a lot of books. You’re even in the Book of the Month Club.”

“They’re not smart books. Not all of ’em.”

“But they are books,” Avery pointed out. “And I’m betting a lot of people in your business don’t read much.”

“Or can’t read,” Manielli said and laughed at his own joke.

Paul looked over at the man in the wrinkled white suit. “Who’re you?”

“You don’t need to worry-” Gordon began.

“I’m asking him.”

“Listen,” the Senator grumbled, “we’re calling the shots, my friend.”

But the fat man waved his hand and then replied to Paul, “You know the comics? Little Orphan Annie, the girl without the pupils in her eyes?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Well, think of me as Daddy Warbucks.”

“What’s that mean?”

But he just laughed and turned to the Senator. “Keep pitching your case. I like him.”

The rail-thin politician said to Paul, “Most important, you don’t kill anybody innocent.”

Gordon added, “Jimmy Coughlin told us you said one time that you only kill other killers. What’d you say? That you only ‘correct God’s mistakes’? That’s what we need.”

“God’s mistakes,” the Senator repeated, smiling in lip but not in spirit.

“Well, who is it?”

Gordon looked at the Senator, who deflected the question. “You have relatives in Germany still?”

“Nobody close. My family came over here a long time ago.”

The Senator asked, “What do you know about the Nazis?”

“Adolf Hitler’s running the country. Sounds like nobody’s really crazy about it. There was this big rally against him at Madison Square Garden in March, two, three years ago. Traffic was a swell mess, I’ll tell you. I missed the first three rounds of a fight up in the Bronx. Got under my skin… That’s about it.”

“Did you know, Paul,” the Senator said slowly, “that Hitler’s planning another war?”

That brought him up short.

“Our sources’ve been giving us information from Germany since Hitler came to power in thirty-three. Last year, our man in Berlin got his hands on a draft of this letter. It was written by one of their senior men, General Beck.”

The commander handed him a typed sheet. It was in German. Paul read it. The author of the letter called for a slow but steady rearmament of the German armed forces to protect and expand what Paul translated as “living area.” The nation had to be ready for war in a few years.

Frowning, he put the sheet down. “And they’re going ahead with this?”

“Last year,” Gordon said, “Hitler started a draft and since then he’s building up the troops to even higher levels than that letter recommends. Then four months ago German troops took over the Rhineland – the demilitarized zone bordering France.”

“I read about that.”

“They’re building submarines at Helgoland and’re taking back control of the Wilhelm Canal to move warships from the North Sea to the Baltic. The man running the finances over there has a new title. He’s head of the ‘war economy.’ And Spain, their civil war? Hitler’s sending troops and equipment supposedly to help Franco. Actually he’s using the war to train his soldiers.”

“You want me… you want a button man to kill Hitler?”

“Lord, no,” the Senator said. “Hitler’s just a crank. Funny in the head. He wants the country to rearm but he doesn’t have a clue how to do it.”

“And this man you’re talking about does?”

“Oh, you bet he does,” the Senator offered. “His name’s Reinhard Ernst. He was a colonel during the War but he’s civilian now. Title’s a mouthful: plenipotentiary for domestic stability. But that’s hooey. He’s the brains behind rearmament. He’s got his finger in everything: financing with Schacht, army with Blomberg, navy with Raeder, air force with Göring, munitions with Krupp.”

“What about the treaty? Versailles? They can’t have an army, I thought.”

“Not a big one. Same with the navy… and no air force at all,” the Senator said. “But our man tells us that soldiers and sailors’re popping up all over Germany like wine at Cana ’s wedding.”

“So can’t the Allies just stop them? I mean, we won the War.”

“Nobody in Europe ’s doing a thing. The French could’ve stopped Hitler cold last March, at the Rhineland. But they didn’t. The Brits? All they did was scold a dog that’d pissed on the carpet.”

After a moment Paul asked, “And what’ve we done to stop them?”

Gordon’s subtle glance was one of deference. The Senator shrugged. “In America all we want is peace. The isolationists’re running the show. They don’t want to be involved in European politics. Men want jobs, and mothers don’t want to lose their sons in Flanders Fields again.”

“And the president wants to get elected again this November,” Paul said, feeling FDR’s eyes peering down on him from above the ornate mantelpiece.

Awkward silence for a moment. Gordon laughed. The Senator did not.

Paul stubbed out his cigarette. “Okay. Sure. It’s making sense now. If I get caught there’s nothing to lead them back to you. Or to him. ” A nod toward Roosevelt ’s picture. “Hell, I’m just a crazy civilian, not a soldier like these kids here.” A glance at the two junior officers. Avery smiled; Manielli did too but his was a very different smile.

The Senator said, “That’s right, Paul. That’s exactly right.”

“And I speak German.”

“We heard you’re fluent.”

Paul’s grandfather was proud of his country of ancestry, as was Paul’s father, who insisted the children study German and speak their native language in the house. He recalled absurd moments when his mother would shout in Gaelic and his father in German when they fought. Paul had also worked in his grandfather’s plant, setting type and proofreading German-language printing jobs during the summers when he was in high school.

“How would it work? I’m not saying yes. I’m just curious. How would it work?”

“There’s a ship taking the Olympic team, families and press over to Germany. It leaves day after tomorrow. You’d be on it.”

“The Olympic team?”

“We’ve decided it’s the best way. There’ll be thousands of foreigners in town. Berlin ’ll be packed. Their army and police’ll have their hands full.”

Avery said, “You won’t have anything to do with the Olympics officially – the games don’t start till August first. The Olympic Committee only knows you’re a writer.”

“A sports journalist,” Gordon added. “That’s your cover. But basically you just play dumb and make yourself invisible. Go to the Olympic Village with everybody else and spend a day or two there then slip into the city. A hotel’s no good; the Nazis monitor all the guests and record passports. Our man’s getting a room in a private boardinghouse for you.”

Like any craftsman, certain questions about the job slipped into his mind. “Would I use my name?”

“Yes, you’ll be yourself. But we’ll also get you an escape passport – with your picture but a different name. Issued by some other country.”

The Senator said, “You look Russian. You’re big and solid.” He nodded. “Sure, you’ll be the ‘man from Russia.’”

“I don’t speak Russian.”

“Nobody there does either. Besides, you’ll probably never need the passport. It’s just to get you out of the country in an emergency.”

“And,” Paul added quickly, “to make sure nobody traces me to you if I don’t make it out, right?”

The Senator’s hesitation, followed by a glance at Gordon, said he was on the money.

Paul continued. “Who’m I supposed to be working for? All the papers’ll have stringers there. They’d know I wasn’t a reporter.”

“We thought of that. You’ll be writing freelance stories and trying to sell ’em to some of the sports rags when you get back.”

Paul asked, “Who’s your man over there?”

Gordon said, “No names just now.”

“I don’t need a name. Do you trust him? And why?”

The Senator said, “He’s been living there for a couple of years and getting us quality information. He served under me in the War. I know him personally.”

“What’s his cover there?”

“Businessman, facilitator, that sort of thing. Works for himself.”

Gordon continued. “He’ll get you a weapon and whatever you need to know about your target.”

“I don’t have a real passport. In my name, I mean.”

“We know, Paul. We’ll get you one.”

“Can I have my guns back?”

“No,” Gordon said and that was the end of the matter. “So that’s our general plan, my friend. And, I should tell you, if you’re thinking of hopping a freight and laying low in some Hooverville out west?…”

Paul sure as hell had been. But he frowned and shook his head.

“Well, these fine young men’ll be sticking to you like limpets until the ship docks in Hamburg. And if you should get the same hankering to slip out of Berlin, our contact’s going to be keeping an eye on you. If you disappear, he calls us and we call the Nazis to tell them an escaped American killer’s at large in Berlin. And we’ll give them your name and picture.” Gordon held his eye. “If you think we were good at tracking you down, Paul, you ain’t seen nothing like the Nazis. And from what we hear they don’t bother with trials and writs of execution. Now, we clear on that?”

“As a bell.”

“Good.” The commander glanced at Avery. “Now, tell him what happens after he finishes the job.”

The lieutenant said, “We’ll have a plane and a crew waiting in Holland. There’s an old aerodrome outside of Berlin. After you’ve finished we’ll fly you out from there.”

“Fly me out?” Paul asked, intrigued. Flying fascinated him. When he was nine he broke his arm – the first of more times than he wanted to count – when he built a glider and launched himself off the roof of his father’s printing plant, crash-landing on the filthy cobblestones two stories below.

“That’s right, Paul,” Gordon said.

Avery offered, “You like airplanes, don’t you? You’ve got all those airplane magazines in your apartment. Books too. And pictures of planes. Some models too. You make those yourself?”

Paul felt embarrassed. It made him angry that they’d found his toys.

“You a pilot?” the Senator asked.

“Never even been in a plane before.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.” This whole thing was absolutely nuts. Silence filled the room.

It was broken by the man in the wrinkled white suit. “I was a colonel in the War too. Just like Reinhard Ernst. And I was at Argonne Woods. Just like you. ”

Paul nodded.

“You know the total?”

“Of what?”

“How many we lost?”

Paul remembered a sea of bodies, American, French and German. The wounded were in some ways more horrible. They cried and wailed and moaned and called for their mothers and fathers and you never forgot that sound. Ever.

The older man said in a reverent voice, “The AEF lost more than twenty-five thousand. Almost a hundred wounded. Half the boys under my command died. In a month we advanced seven miles against the enemy. Every day of my life I’ve thought about those numbers. Half my soldiers, seven miles. And Meuse-Argonne was our most spectacular victory in the War… I do not want that to happen again.”

Paul regarded him. “Who are you?” he asked again.

The Senator stirred and began to speak but the other man replied, “I’m Cyrus Clayborn.”

Yeah, that was it. Brother… The old guy was the head of Continental Telephone and Telegraph – a real honest-to-God millionaire, even now, in the shadow of the Depression.

The man continued. “Daddy Warbucks, like I was saying. I’m the banker. For, let’s say, projects like this it’s usually better for the money not to come out of public troughs. I’m too old to fight for my country. But I do what I can. That satisfy your itch, boy?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Good.” Clayborn looked him over. “Well, I’ve got one more thing to say. The money they mentioned before? The amount?”

Paul nodded.

“Double it.”

Paul felt his skin crackle. Ten thousand dollars? He couldn’t imagine it.

Gordon’s head slowly turned toward the Senator. This, Paul understood, wasn’t part of the script.

“Would you give me cash? Not a check.”

For some reason the Senator and Clayborn laughed hard at this. “What-ever you want, sure,” the industrialist said.

The Senator pulled a phone closer to him and tapped the hand piece. “So, what’s it going to be, son? We get on the horn to Dewey, or not?”

The rasp of a match broke the silence as Gordon lit a cigarette. “Think about it, Paul. We’re giving you the chance to erase the past. Start all over again. What kind of button man gets that kind of deal?”