John Lawton - Riptide

‘I don’t doubt it. But Churchill wants Russia in the war on his side. He wants no loophole that would let Stalin pull off one more deal with Hitler. It may sound heartless, but this way the Russian entry into the war is guaranteed.’

Cal got out of his seat. Ready to leave.

‘Heartless? It’s murder!’

Gelbroaster waved him back down.

‘Sit down and hold your fire, son. There’s more to come.’

Cal stood.

‘Such as? I don’t see what more they can do. Walter Stilton died getting us that information. Stahl died for it, in his own mad way. I damn near got killed myself. And they’re just going to throw it away?’

‘Sit down.’

Cal sat.

‘It’s this. With Stahl dead, your mission in Zurich is over. So we’re flying you back to Washington.’

‘You mean they’re flying me out of here because I know too much?’

‘Churchill insisted on it. He wants nothing to get out. Believe me, son, there’s no disgrace. There’s even a promotion. You’ll go home a major and there’ll be a good job for you at the War Department.’

Gelbroaster paused.

‘And?’

‘This is the hard bit. You know who I mean by Fritz Kuhn?’

‘Sure, everybody’s heard of him. He led the German-American Bund. He got nailed for embezzlement about two years ago.’

‘His successor in the Bund was a guy named Wilhelm Kunze. Kunze fled to Mexico earlier this year and the Bund has kind of fallen apart. It’s no real threat to anyone any more. But-and this is a huge but-there’s no denying that a fifth column back home was a dangerous thing for a while. Mostly assholes who liked fancy uniforms and parading up and down doing idiotic salutes. Get ‘em in every town, particularly when there’s nothing worth hunting and nothing much else to do. What mattered was who they’d got in power. Nobody much cared if a potato farmer from Idaho dressed up like a Nazi at the weekend-what mattered was who mattered. If you catch my drift. Feds have been trying to crack the Bund for a while. Pick up the messy trail Kuhn and Kunze left. Well, they finally got their hands on the Bund’s files. A lot of it’s coded, in a crude kind of way-fake names, that sort of thing, box numbers rather than real addresses, nothing a high school kid couldn’t crack overnight. Mostly it is potato farmers in Idaho-but it also seems fairly certain that they’ve identified Frank Reininger as a member.’

‘Jesus!’ Cal said softly. Then, ‘How long have you known?’

‘Not long.’

‘How long? Long enough to get me here and flush him out for you?’

Gelbroaster drew a deep breath, his pace and his manner altering not one jot.

‘I know this has been a hard time for you. You’ve lost something very precious to you. I don’t doubt that after two years there was some sort of bond between you and Stahl, and it seems from all I’ve heard that you and the English cop were good friends, but the biggest loss is the loss of innocence. I think that’s what you’ve been through. The loss of innocence. But son, the biggest loss of innocence has got to be a refusal ever to believe in coincidence again. I didn’t get you here to flush out Frank. If I’d known or even suspected Frank was working for the Germans I’d’ve busted him myself. Believe me, you did a great job in catching up with him, but neither I nor Deke Shaeffer had any idea that it was Frank you were after.’

Cal felt almost chastened-but not quite.

‘But I’m still being sent home?’

‘Fraid so, and there’s more. We’re fairly certain that your father had links with the Bund too.’

Cal whispered ‘What?’, his voice buried somewhere in the back of his throat.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t mince words, dammit. Son, he was a paid-up member, he donated funds, he fed them information. Now that’s about as plain as I can tell it.’

Cal found it hard to be outraged, but disbelief came readily.

‘My father supports America First, plenty of people do, patriotic people do-and even then he does it low key-he’s never spoken on their platform as far as I know. He writes speeches for Lindbergh. He gives the idiot the facts and the arguments he needs to address an audience and be taken seriously. General, that’s one hell of a way from joining the Bund.’

‘And he thinks there’s a conspiracy between Churchill and Roosevelt to bring America into this war by any reasonable pretext.’

‘By any reasonable pretext.’ The phrasing was too close, too accurate. It had stuck in Cal’s mind too.

‘You’ve been intercepting my mail?’

‘Fraid so. Necessity. But there you are.’

‘Sir, that’s just my father being cranky. He sees conspiracies everywhere. Given his opposition to the war, he’s bound to see one between the Prime Minister and the President.’

‘I agree,’ said Gelbroaster. ‘And he’s absolutely right. There is.’

‘What?’

‘I doubt they call it a conspiracy. Personally… if the cap fits wear it… in effect… what your father perceives is exactly what is happening. Right now we’re looking out for that reasonable pretext.’

‘You mean you want another Lusitania?’

Gelbroaster shrugged. ‘Something quicker, I’d hope. Took two years to get us into the war after the Lusitania. Something less drastic would do. We may not get that lucky of course.’

‘You know,’ said Cal, ‘I was getting ready to write to my father and tell him he’s nuts.’

‘You’ll be able to tell him in person. We can’t use this information publicly, you understand-but privately… well, your father’s career is over. If he so much as mutters that he’s thinking of running for any other office but the one he’s got, then someone will show him an FBI file and he’ll be quietly told to stand down. He’s an ambitious man, but any dreams he might have had of running for president in five or ten years…’

Gelbroaster didn’t bother to end the sentence. They both knew how it ended.

‘Why not?’ said Cal. ‘Why not reveal the names, just publish and be damned?’

‘Son, I was with Joe Kennedy when he picked up a paper knife and broke the lock on the Red Book-now do you know what that is?’

‘No-I don’t.’

‘It’s the membership list of the British Right Club. Bunch of Jew-baiting Anglo-Nazis. We got hold of it last year. The Right Club gave it to Tyler Kent, thinking diplomatic immunity was eternal. When MI5 blew the whistle on Kent we busted him and Joe busted the book. It read like a Who’s Who-members of parliament, dukes and earls-would you believe the Marquis of Graham, Lord Redesdale, the Duke of goddam Wellington? Publish and be damned is just about right. The effects would have been crushing on British morale if we’d let any of that out. Even Kennedy could see that. He threw Kent to the wolves and high-tailed it out of here before the next bomb could fall. The same’s true back home. We have our own morale to sustain. We’re going to war-it might last another two years or another ten. The press would be deadly-better by far to know who’s rotten in the barrel and let ‘em know you know.’

‘And the British still want me to go back to Washington? To the same city my father lives in? And they still expect me to tell no-one?’

‘I expect you to tell no-one. And I didn’t say it was logical. That’s too much to ask of the British at the best of times, and this is one of the worst. Besides, we have our secrets too. The British will never know how far the Bund penetrated into the Army or the Capitol.’

‘It’s still crazy. I’m a safer bet right here. In London.’

‘But you’re going home, all the same. First flight we can get you on.’

Cal knew he had lost. They lapsed into silence. Gelbroaster retrieved his cigar and lit up. For a minute or more all Cal could hear was the puffing and lip-smacking of the smoker’s ritual.