Jeffery Deaver: Garden Of Beasts

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He got no further than this.

Heinsler gasped as a hand grabbed his collar from behind and pulled him backward. Off balance, he cried out and fell to the smooth oak deck.

“No, no, don’t hurt me!” He started to rise to his feet but the large, grimfaced man, wearing a boxing outfit, drew back a huge fist and shook his head.

“Don’t move.”

Heinsler sank back to the deck, shivering.

Heinie, Heinie, Heinie the Hun…

The boxer reached forward and ripped the battery wires off the unit. “Downstairs,” he said, gathering up the transmitter. “Now.” And he yanked the A-man to his feet.

“What’re you up to?”

“Go to hell,” the balding man said, though with a quavering voice that belied his words.

They were in Paul’s cabin. The transmitter, battery and the contents of the man’s pockets were strewn on the narrow cot. Paul repeated his question, adding an ominous growl this time. “Tell me-”

A pounding on the cabin door. Paul stepped forward, cocked his fist and opened the door. Vince Manielli pushed inside.

“I got your message. What the hell is-?” He fell silent, staring at their prisoner.

Paul handed him the wallet. “Albert Heinsler, German-American Bund.”

“Oh, Christ… Not the bund.”

“He had that.” A nod at the wireless telegraph.

“He was spying on us? ”

“I don’t know. But he was just about to transmit something.”

“How’d you tip to him?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Paul didn’t tell Manielli that, while he trusted Gordon and his boys up to a point, he didn’t know how careless they might be at this sort of game; they could’ve been leaving behind a trail of clues a mile wide – notes about the ship, careless words about Malone or another touch-off, even references to Paul himself. He hadn’t thought there was much of a risk from the Nazis; he was more concerned that word might get to some of his old enemies in Brooklyn or Jersey that he was on the ship, and he wanted to be prepared. So he’d dipped into his own pocket just after they’d left port and slipped a senior mate a C-note, asking him to find out about any crew members who were strangers to the regular crew, kept to themselves, were asking unusual questions. Any passengers too who seemed suspicious.

A hundred dollars buys a hell of a lot of detective work but throughout the voyage the mate had heard of nothing – until this morning, when he’d interrupted Paul’s sparring match with the Olympian to tell him that some of the crew had been talking about this porter, Heinsler. He was always skulking around, never spent time with fellow crew members and – weirdest of all – would start spouting hooey about the Nazis and Hitler at the drop of a hat.

Alarmed, Paul tracked down Heinsler and found him on the top deck, hunched over his radio.

“Did he send anything?” Manielli now asked.

“Not this morning. I came up the stairs behind him and saw him setting the radio up. He didn’t have time to send more than a few letters. But he might’ve been transmitting all week.”

Manielli glanced down at the radio. “Probably not with that. The range is only a few miles… What does he know?”

“Ask him, ” Paul said.

“So, fella, what’s your game?”

The bald man remained silent.

Paul leaned forward. “Spill.”

Heinsler gave an eerie smile. He turned to Manielli. “I heard you talking. I know what you’re up to. But they’ll stop you.”

“Who put you up to this? The bund?”

Heinsler scoffed. “Nobody put me up to anything.” He was no longer cringing. He said with breathless devotion, “I’m loyal to the New Germany. I love the Führer and I’d do anything for him and the Party. And people like you-”

“Oh, can it,” Manielli muttered. “What do you mean, you heard us?”

Heinsler didn’t answer. He smiled smugly and looked out the porthole.

Paul said, “He heard you and Avery? What were you saying?”

The lieutenant looked down at the floor. “I don’t know. We went over the plan a couple of times. Just talking it through. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Brother, not in your cabin?” Paul snapped. “You should’ve been up on deck where you could see if anybody was around.”

“I didn’t think anybody’d be listening,” the lieutenant said defensively.

A trail of clues a mile wide…

“What’re you going to do with him?”

“I’ll talk to Avery. There’s a brig on board. I guess we’ll stow him there until we figure something out.”

“Could we get him to the consulate in Hamburg?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But…” He fell silent, frowning. “What’s that smell?”

Paul too frowned. A sudden, bittersweet scent filled the cabin.

“No!”

Heinsler was falling back on the pillow, eyes rolling up in his sockets, bits of white foam filling the corner of his mouth. His body was convulsing horribly.

The scent was of almond.

“Cyanide,” Manielli whispered. He ran to the porthole and opened it wide.

Paul took a pillowcase and carefully wiped the man’s mouth, fished inside for the capsule. But he pulled out only a few shards of glass. It had shattered completely. He was dead by the time Paul turned back from the basin with a glass of water to wash the poison out of his mouth.

“He killed himself,” Manielli whispered manically, staring with wide eyes. “Just… Right there. He killed himself.”

Paul thought angrily: And there goes a chance to find out anything more.

The lieutenant stared at the body, shaken. “This’s a jam all right. Oh, brother…”

“Go tell Avery.”

But Manielli seemed paralyzed.

Paul took him firmly by the arm. “Vince… tell Avery. You listening to me?”

“What?… Oh, sure. Andy. I’ll tell him. Yeah.” The lieutenant stepped outside.

A few dumbbells from the gymnasium tied to the waist would be heavy enough to sink the body in the ocean but the porthole here was only eight inches across. And the Manhattan ’s corridors were now filling with passengers getting ready to disembark; there was no way to get him out through the interior of the ship. They’d have to wait. Paul tucked the body under the blankets and turned its head aside, as if Heinsler were asleep, then washed his own hands carefully in the tiny basin to make sure all the traces of poison were off.

Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door and Paul let Manielli back inside.

“Andy’s contacting Gordon. It’s midnight in D.C. but he’ll track him down.” He couldn’t stop staring at the body. Finally the lieutenant asked Paul, “You’re packed? Ready to go?”

“Will be, after I change.” He glanced down at his athletic shirt and shorts.

“Do that. Then go up top. Andy said we don’t want things to look bum, you disappearing and this guy too, then his supervisor can’t find him. We’ll meet you on the port side, main deck, in a half hour.”

With a last glance toward Heinsler’s body, Paul picked up his suitcase and shaving kit and headed down to the shower room.

After washing and shaving he dressed in a white shirt and gray flannel slacks, forgoing his short-brimmed brown Stetson; three or four landlubbers had already lost their straw boaters or trilbies overboard. Ten minutes later he was strolling along the solid oak decks in the pale early morning light. Paul stopped, leaned on the rail and smoked a Chesterfield.

He thought about the man who’d just killed himself. He’d never understood that, suicide. The look in the man’s eyes gave a clue, Paul supposed. That fanatic’s shine. Heinsler reminded him of something he’d read recently, and after a moment he recalled: the people suckered in by the revivalist minister in Elmer Gantry, that popular Sinclair Lewis book.