The German Agent Read online

  For a moment Max was back at Ypres, the smell of gunpowder in his nostrils, the stench of rotting corpses all about him. It was the closest thing to hell a man could experience in life.

  And the Englishman meant to prolong it by bringing America into the war.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he had said. ‘I volunteer to kill the Englishman.’

  Max saw a smile form on Manstein’s lips.

  ‘But don’t think I’ve been fooled. You’re not allowing me to volunteer for my own good, but for yours. I’m not the most qualified agent in North America for this mission, am I? Only the one, who, if caught, might have a plausible story. The pacifist Volkman, representative of the World Peace League, not the German agent Volkman.’

  For that had been his cover in the United States for over two years now.

  ‘In case things go wrong,’ Max went on, ‘Germany had no part in the assassination.’

  ‘Excellent, Volkman. I always credit your kind with a certain cunning. A fine sensitivity to innuendo.’

  Your kind.

  Max wanted to throttle the cocky Prussian there and then. Instead he picked his mind for the rest of the ferry ride, learning as much as he could about his quarry, and examined the photograph of the diplomat that Manstein carried with him: a newspaper clipping showing the British prime minister, Lloyd George, next to a roly-poly comical looking little man with a bald pate and an umbrella.

  Brought out of this reverie by an approaching car, Max readied himself for the deed. But it was only a delivery van approaching the embassy, the name ‘Wortham and Son’ stenciled on the sides of the vehicle around the picture of a giant bottle of port. Wine merchants come to refill his majesty’s cellar.

  He focused again on his target.

  Most probably the man has a country house in England, Max thought, trying to steel himself to what he must do. An estate where he rides to the hounds with other powerful men who drink their sherry while young boys die in the trenches. All so as to keep their world of privilege afloat.

  Max had seen enough of death for several lifetimes; he had done enough killing to sicken him, yet he knew that he would kill one more time.

  The Englishman, Adrian Appleby will die, he promised himself.

  Finally Max simply called the embassy from a phone at a nearby cafe.

  A young man answered on the fourth ring. His high, nasal voice grated in Max’s ear.

  Max politely and with a minimum of words asked for Sir Adrian Appleby.

  ‘Sir Adrian?’ The young man repeated the name with some familiarity, and Max’s hopes rose. Then there was a momentary silence.

  Probably a footman, Max thought, or some under-butler who is standing in on Sundays. This could mean good luck for me: perhaps he won’t know proper form.

  After a brief delay the young man answered, ‘Yes … I mean no, sir. He is in Washington, but he isn’t here. I believe he arrived last night.’

  Max felt his entire body tingle with excitement.

  ‘Do you have his Washington address? It is most urgent I contact him. I’m a relation of his from South Africa.’

  He hoped that would explain his accent to the young servant, and also hoped the young servant was none too bright.

  ‘Well, we’re not supposed to, sir …’

  ‘Be a good chap.’

  ‘Let me just give a look at our registry.’

  Max waited for what seemed ages, his heart racing at the expectation of tracking Appleby with such ease. So he is here in Washington. And he just arrived last night. Which means that he could not have possibly gotten to Wilson yet.

  I still have time to kill him.

  There was crackling in the earpiece as the other line was picked up again.

  ‘Young Jenkins tells me you wish to contact Sir Adrian Appleby.’ The voice this time was older, deeper, and suspicious. ‘What relation are you, sir, if I may ask?’

  Max hung up, cursing the fact that the young servant had not simply looked up Appleby’s residence in Washington. Had to go checking with his master, didn’t he?

  But he kept an even expression on his face as he paid for the call, and then left the cafe, greeted outside on the sidewalk by a blast of cold air that smelled heavily of snow. It’s useless hanging about the embassy any longer, Max decided. Appleby could be anywhere in the city: staying at one of the fine hotels, probably, or with friends in some mansion. Trudging through the snow toward his lodging in Foggy Bottom, Max pulled his collar up against the wind, wondering what his ‘master’ in Berlin would say to this first day of work. Would Berthold be laughing if he knew I had stood outside the British Embassy for three miserable hours before having enough sense to simply call the place and ask for Appleby? Probably.

  TWO

  For some very few men, war is a blessing. Max Volkman was one of those.

  It was in the war, in the forced intimacy of the mess and barracks, that Max finally found his home. Finally found where he belonged. Drafted into the infantry, he discovered the harsh regime suited him; he felt anonymous, absorbed in this body of men, and the men in turn trusted him. He was a natural for the military.

  At Ypres in late 1914 he distinguished himself. That is what the generals said, at any rate.

  What really happened was that he lost his mind for a time. A sergeant and ranking officer for his unit at the Kindermord bei Ypern – the Massacre of the Innocents at Ypres – Max lost twenty men one wet gray morning charging an enemy machine-gun nest.

  Seeing one of those men shot to a bloody pulp just next to him, Max suddenly went beyond fear and caring. He charged on, despite a shrapnel wound to his left leg, single-handedly storming the machine-gun nest and killing the two astonished British soldiers there. Then he turned the machine gun on the other British soldiers spread out over a low and muddy slope.

  By the time his own troops finally reached him, Max was calmly surveying his killing ground. The bodies of Allied soldiers lay heaped about the bloody slope. A leg jerked in a death spasm; he rattled off more rounds until the leg was no longer there.

  Later, in the hospital, he learned that he had killed 123 of the enemy, badly burning his hands on the smoking barrel of the gun in the process.

  They called him a hero; Max knew better.

  Twenty of his own men dead; 123 of the enemy. That was six British for each of his comrades. Three left over.

  An advance payment for my own death, he told himself.

  Four months later, his leg still in a cast and the bandages just off his hands, Max was visited at a field hospital in western Germany by Colonel Reinhard Berthold. The Iron Cross Max had been awarded lay on the table next to his cot. Colonel Berthold, famed head of Military Intelligence and famed also for his odd recruitments, picked it up, fingering it reverently. Then he looked down at Max, who immediately despised the man’s absurd dueling scar high on the left cheek, the blue eyes so light that they seemed to have no substance and no core to them, the cruel beak-like nose, and the long upper lip.

  Berthold continued to turn the medal over in his fingers; Max noticed his nails were bit to the quick. Max refused to show surprise at this visit.

  ‘They say you’re not healing as fast as you should,’ Berthold finally said in his high-pitched voice.

  Max stared straight ahead of him, taking his eyes off the man. It was March; the first of the bluebottle flies were plaguing the hospital. A fly landed on Berthold’s sleeve and he dropped the medal with a clink onto the metal night stand, calmly cupping the fly with his left hand and crushing it. The movement had been as swift as it was sure, as if the fly had been mesmerized by Berthold.

  Max sympathized with the insect.

  The colonel stood rigid at the side of the bed, a man forever at attention. His brown boots were polished to a fine reflective surface. From beyond their corridor, in the operating theater, came a scream that was strangled off abruptly. Berthold’s eyes blinked once at the sound.

  ‘So you lost your men. Is that what this pantomime i
s about? Or are you plain shit-pants scared to return to the front? Have you become a malingerer to avoid that?’

  Max felt the muscle in his jaw flex involuntarily; his eyes squinted, but he remained silent.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose that’s it. Not a problem of fear for you.’

  Colonel Berthold now sat cautiously on the edge of the cot, holding his weight with his legs to make sure he did not tip it over.

  ‘So you’ve lain here four months grieving for those men while thousands more have followed them to the grave. Yet you don’t really give a damn for those particular men. You know that, and I know that. You probably didn’t even have time to learn their names. What galls you is that your heroic antics made no difference at Ypres.’

  Max tried not to listen to his words, but knew that Berthold was telling him an elemental truth about himself that he would not otherwise admit to. The forward post that he had taken had been lost later that same day. The stalemate dragged on in spite of his sacrifice.

  ‘Your great attempt at proving yourself, at fitting in, came to naught.’ Berthold picked up the Iron Cross again. ‘Sure, they gave you a scrap of metal to tell you how much they appreciate you, but you and I know there should have been at least oak leaves with this. There should have been stories about you in the press at home. But you don’t really fit the profile of hero, now do you, Volkman? Not the bright-eyed blond Germanic youth that one expects from one’s heroes.’

  Max finally spoke: ‘What is it you want, Colonel?’

  Humor showed in Berthold’s eyes. ‘To use you, Volkman. You and your keen desire to prove yourself. I need a man who has nothing to lose, who has gone beyond fear. I want a man who has already lived one death. I want to make you famous, Volkman. You’ll be our master spy in the US.’

  Max had laughed at the idea that afternoon.

  Two weeks later he was out of the hospital and in training at the army intelligence school in Marburg, learning the trade of espionage: bomb and incendiary making; English language training; secret codes; sabotaging maneuvers; self-defense and killing techniques. In another two months he had been infiltrated, via a Swedish ship, to New York to take up cover as a representative of the World Peace League, and to be fed orders vis-à-vis sabotage in the US from Manstein in New York.

  Max got his first break on Monday morning. Seated in a reading room just off Dupont Circle, he was thumbing through the Post when suddenly he saw a familiar name in the ‘Personalities’ section, toward the end of the paper:

  Sir Adrian Appleby, Great Britain’s ambassador-at-large, is among the list of prominent sponsors of tomorrow night’s Belgian Relief Concert to be held at the National Theater.

  Sir Adrian, a well known and honored personality in the world of international diplomacy, will present a brief invocation and tribute to Belgium at 8 p.m., to be followed by the scheduled program: tenor Alberto Ganetti and soprano Maria Melini.

  The event should prove to be one of the most spectacular evenings of the newly opened 1917 season. All proceeds go directly to the Belgian Refugee Relief Fund.

  Max felt a quickening of his pulse as he read this announcement: he would take Appleby at the theater and have done with it.

  If an earlier opportunity presents itself, fine, he thought, but for now I’ll plan on Tuesday night for my mission. And pray that the Englishman does not get to Wilson in the meantime.

  He closed the paper, got up from the comfortable corner of the warm reading room and crossed to the newspaper rack by the entrance, putting the paper he’d been reading back in its place. He nodded politely to the pleasant white-haired woman, a cameo at her throat, who acted as librarian cum hostess in the reading room, then walked out into the cold air and bustle of traffic on Dupont Circle.

  His mind quickly took in the scene, freed now from worrying about Appleby’s whereabouts. A woman bundled in heavy furs and a scarf hurried past him on the sidewalk, smiling at him as she passed. Her cheeks were apple red in the cold and he turned appreciatively to watch her pass.

  Max suddenly felt happy simply to be alive, and realized he too was smiling. It had stopped snowing for a time, and the city was mantled in a thick crust that crunched underfoot as he walked along the sidewalk. Even the diesel from passing buses smelled good to Max. Suddenly the world was a fresh place for him, full of opportunity.

  He headed southwest on Massachusetts Avenue from Dupont Circle in search of a public telephone.

  I’ll need to report in to Berlin as Berthold ordered, he figured.

  Already the rudiments of a plan were forming in his mind, and he began composing a coded message for Manstein to relay to Berlin.

  Later that morning, after phoning Manstein, Max headed back to his lodgings in Foggy Bottom to begin preparations for tomorrow night. He got off the streetcar at the intersection of New Hampshire and Virginia Avenues. The wind was raw and chill off the Potomac and the low gray sky looked as if it held more snow. He hurried along the sordid street toward the waterfront.

  Once at the rooming house, Max began climbing the rickety stairs. Meyer sat reading a German newspaper in his cubbyhole office, and looked up surreptitiously to spy at Max through his window which gave off onto the stairs.

  Max waved at him, but Meyer, surprised to be caught spying, acted as if he did not see him.

  Up on the third floor, Max put an oversized key into the lock of his door, turned it once, then attempted to turn it a second time but could not.

  He had double-locked it earlier this morning.

  On his person, Max carried a .38-caliber Harrington and Richardson revolver in a leather shoulder holster. With a blue finish and a rubberized stock, the self-cocking model had been purchased from Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $5.95. There were about three million similar weapons on the streets of America; it used Smith and Wesson type ammunition available at any sporting goods store. It was not considered suspicious behavior in the US to carry such a weapon – a situation Max still found strange in a supposedly civilized nation – and that is why Max, the most cautious of operatives, felt no compunction in carrying his revolver at all times.

  But the lead tube divided into two compartments by a wafer-thin copper plug: that was a different matter. Caught with that bomb casing in his possession and he could be hung as a spy, a saboteur.

  Entering his room, Max could see his guidebook to Washington on the bedside table. He had left it open this morning, and open it still was. Crossing to the night table now, however, he noticed that the hair he had placed crosswise on the page was gone.

  Max forced himself to control his rage and slowly bent down to the floor and reached under the bed, pulling out the suitcase he had left there. Rolls of dust accompanied it. He hoisted the suitcase atop the bed, but did not bother opening it. There was no false bottom inside for Meyer to discover. The lead tube was hidden in the handle. He closely examined this, and it appeared no one had tampered with the leather folded into the ends of the tube.

  Meyer, you are a lucky man, Max thought. Perhaps you will not need to die, after all.

  From his trouser pocket Max extracted a penknife. Opening the blade, he pried the puckered leather at one end of the suitcase handle open, and then pushed from the other end. The edge of a metal tube began to appear and he gripped it between thumb and forefinger, pulling it from the leather handle.

  Completely free of the handle, the tube was round and made of lead eight inches long and one and a half in diameter. Max carefully examined the seam going round the tube at the middle to ensure it had not been weakened by its use as the grip for his suitcase. It was as strong as before he had concealed it there in New York, the copper plug dividing the tube apparently still securely in place.

  Now he turned the bottom of the suitcase toward him and using the penknife once again, pried off two of the small metal coasters on the bottom of the bag, one from each end. These exactly fitted the ends of the lead tube.

  With these components, Max had the casing for a quite deadly bomb, t
he type German agents had been using in the US for the past two years. He had fetched this one just last week from Dr Scheele’s Hoboken factory – the German agents’ arsenal in the US – and all that was missing now was the chemicals. He did not carry these with him, for if they were discovered by some fluke, they would surely condemn him. The tube might be missed – as it had been by Meyer – the end plugs as well, but the chemicals? No; they were far too dangerous to carry.

  However, he knew where he could get them in Washington.

  He picked up his New Standard Guide to Washington for 1916 and leafed through the index until he found what he was looking for. He turned to page 149 in the guide and read the description of a building on H Street between 9th and 10th Streets. Then he consulted the downtown map on page 112 to find its exact location.

  He stuck the guide into one of the outside pockets of his overcoat, and then left the room, not bothering to lock it this time.

  Meyer was snoring in his chair as Max went down the stairs and slipped out unnoticed.

  President Woodrow Wilson stroked the ball poorly, missing the easy bank shot.

  ‘Confound it,’ he muttered, adjusting his pince-nez glasses.

  ‘Off your game today, Governor.’ It was an affectation of Colonel House’s to refer to Wilson by an earlier political title, to show that he, House, was part of the old-time staff and inner circle of friends.

  Thin and dapper with gray hair and full moustache, Colonel House diplomatically missed his shot, and President Wilson went on the attack once more. House looked at the coal fire smoldering in the corner of the Presidential Library. A pleasant room, he thought. Neither ostentatious nor overly clubby. Just a comfortable book-lined study with a felt-topped billiard table in the center.

  Wilson missed another easy shot and stood, cue in hand, for a moment eyeing the ball as he might have a truant scholar at Princeton where he was once president of the college.

  ‘Sorry,’ Wilson said, putting the cue on the wall rack. ‘I’m not much competition for you today, I’m afraid.’