Authors: David Downing
Kensley was unsympathetic. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
At six the next morning, a blond Englishman named Neil Crabtree picked McColl up at the corner of Fifth and Thirty-second in a rented Model T. He looked as sleep-starved as McColl felt and seemed lamentably short on driving experience. “I’ve only ever driven in the countryside,” Crabtree cheerfully explained, “and until yesterday I had no idea that Americans drive on the wrong side of the road.” When McColl told him to pull over, he managed to leave half the vehicle on the sidewalk.
They swapped seats, and McColl drove them north toward Rieber’s address. It was still dark when they reached Forty-Fourth Street, but lights were already burning in the German’s windows. McColl parked a hundred yards from the apartment building and reminded himself to make time for coffee the next day—the first cigarette didn’t taste the same without it.
Crabtree didn’t smoke and pointedly opened his window. His clothes were smarter than McColl’s, a charcoal ensemble of suit, overcoat, and hat that had probably cost a fortune. The plummy accent added to the impression of inherited privilege, but he seemed friendly enough. As they sat waiting for Rieber to put in an appearance, he brought McColl up to date on all matters English and offered an enthusiast’s preview of the upcoming cricket season.
McColl was on the verge of falling asleep when his companion suddenly interrupted himself. “Here comes our German!”
It was fully light by this time, and there was no mistaking Erich
Rieber as he descended the building’s front steps, briefcase in hand. The German took a cursory look in their direction, and McColl was glad that theirs wasn’t the only automobile on display. He let the man cross Tenth Avenue before starting the engine and easing forward in slow pursuit.
As expected, Rieber strode all the way to the Hudson before turning south on Twelfth, forcing McColl to advance down Forty-Fourth Street in stages, like a player in Creeping Up on Grandma. It was a two-mile walk to the Hoboken Ferry, but as Crabtree bitingly observed, the Germans did love their exercise.
Once certain that Rieber was headed for the ferry and work, McColl drove past him, parked by the terminal, and ordered Crabtree to beat the German aboard. He waited until they were both through the turnstile before leaving the automobile and following them onto the ship. According to Crabtree, Rieber had taken a seat up front, so the two of them stayed by the stern rail until the ferry docked on the New Jersey side and then followed their quarry at a very safe distance to his inevitable destination—his office on the Hamburg America pier. While Crabtree leaned against a convenient wall and kept watch on the shipping office’s entrance, McColl scoured the immediate locality for suitable observation points. He found two cafés, which was better than nothing but not much. Sitting in these for hours on end was likely to attract notice or comment, and they certainly couldn’t afford to loiter outside in view of Rieber’s window. But there was no other choice.
McColl collected Crabtree and led him to the closer of the two. They ordered coffees and established a routine, one reading the
New York Times
that McColl went out and bought while the other kept both eyes on the distant entrance for Rieber’s familiar figure. They were too far away to make out other faces, but Kensley had been sure that Rieber would keep his American contacts far from his place of work.
The newspaper was only slightly more interesting than the
surveillance. Smoking cigarettes, McColl discovered, decreased one’s “power of initiative, of grasp, and of facility of execution”—the smoker thought his mind was working better, when it was actually 10 percent less efficient. On the political front, President Wilson was moving heaven and earth to reinstate one Miss Mattie Tyler as postmistress of Courtland, Virginia. After a “clique of Virginia politicians” had conspired to displace her, she had called on the president for help, and he had taken time off from national and international affairs to sort things out. Mattie was, after all, the granddaughter of a former president.
In France a more dramatic story was unfolding. A woman named Henriette Caillaux had walked into a national newspaper editor’s office and emptied a pistol into his chest. Her reason: that the editor had published a leaked letter damaging to her government-minister husband’s reputation. It looked an open-and-shut case, but the defense lawyers were calling it a crime of passion, as if that were grounds for acquittal. He wondered how Caitlin would see it.
After a couple of hours, he and Crabtree began to feel like they’d outstayed their welcome and moved to the second café. He could barely imagine a more boring job, and McColl soon found his attention beginning to wander. It was hard to keep your eyes focused on the one spot, particularly when you knew that the chance of anything happening was remote. The river was so much more interesting, the ferries weaving their way between tugs and other small craft, the occasional liner almost filling the view as it headed for a quay or the open sea.
At two o’clock Crabtree walked over to the passenger terminal and used one of the public telephones to tell Kensley where they were. He arrived to relieve them at three, along with a dark-haired boy of not much more than twenty. Peter Gladwell, as Crabtree told McColl on their ferry ride back to the automobile, was a decent enough sort but not the brightest star in the sky. He had been seasick for most of their Atlantic crossing and
blushed whenever a woman came near him. His father was an admiral.
Crabtree, as McColl discovered the following day, had been to Winchester and Cambridge before spending a few years in the diplomatic corps. He had become friendly with one of Cumming’s people while stationed in Cairo, and when a “misunderstanding” had forced his resignation from the corps, he had wangled his way into the Service. Serving one’s country was what mattered, not how or where one did it. Crabtree was keen to see the world, and particularly its women. He had always heard that American women were “fast,” but none had so far confirmed it.
These confidences were shared in the familiar cafés. Rieber showed no signs of changing his routine, and the only differences from the day before were an obstructed view—courtesy of the huge and newly docked
Europa
—and utterly miserable weather, with cold wind and rain sweeping across the puddle-strewn quays and turbulent river. And it was probably all for nothing, McColl thought. Rieber could be doing his clandestine business by telephone. Or mail.
Kensley and Gladwell arrived at three, looking like they’d swum across the Hudson. Rieber had gone straight home the previous evening and not gone out again before turning off his lights.
“Does he have a telephone at home?” McColl asked Kensley.
“Not anymore. I persuaded the BOI to disconnect him for a couple of weeks. He thinks there’s a fault at the local exchange.”
“He could be using the one in his office.”
“He could, but I don’t think he’d risk it. It’s a German company line, after all. He’d be afraid the Americans were listening in, either for themselves or on our behalf.”
Kensley looked at them all, like a teacher addressing his pupils. “I know this is really boring, but it’ll pay off. Believe me.”
It did, and sooner than McColl expected. Soon after noon on the Thursday, Rieber emerged from the shipping office,
briefcase in hand, and set off in the usual direction. “Half day off?” Crabtree wondered out loud.
“We’ll soon know. Why don’t you get ahead of him?”
Crabtree did so, hurrying down the other side of the street toward the Hoboken terminal. McColl kept about fifty yards adrift of Rieber, collar up and hat pulled down lest the German decide to look back. Away to their left, a French liner was gliding majestically up the river.
As they approached the terminal, McColl closed the gap and was rewarded for his foresight. Rieber walked straight past the gate to the Twenty-Third Street Ferry and on through the one signed
BARCLAY STREET
. McColl joined the queue two places behind him and looked back in the hope of seeing Crabtree. Though he’d boarded the other ferry, his partner should have realized by now that Rieber had not.
McColl passed through the turnstile, walked aboard, and waited by the rail, hoping that Crabtree would appear. There was a dull clang as the gate shut, a blast on the ferry’s horn, and a churning of water as the wheels began to turn. He was on his own.
The German was at the head of the disembarkation line as they approached the Barclay Street pier, consulting his pocket watch with the air of someone who had an appointment to keep. He ignored the queue of waiting cabs, though, and strode off down West Street at a remarkably brisk pace. There was no doubt about it—the man loved walking. He probably hiked around the Alps on his holidays.
There were a lot of people on the sidewalk, so it was easy for McColl to keep bodies between himself and Rieber. He tried to avoid looking at the man’s back for more than a few seconds at a time, as experience had taught him that many people sensed another’s stare.
The German crossed Battery Place and entered the park of the same name, McColl still fifty yards adrift. The trees were
springing into bloom, the benches full of giggling secretaries enjoying the sunshine and devouring their packed lunches. Out in the bay, two Staten Island ferries were crossing, a sight that caused Rieber to consult his watch and lengthen his already impressive stride.
The German disappeared through the maw of the terminal building, and McColl slowed his own pace, confident that the incoming ferry was several minutes away from loading. He almost miscalculated; lacking the requisite change and having to procure it, he ended up being one of the last to beat the gate. Having done so, he walked aboard with his hat tipped even lower over his face. He might be mistaken for a criminal on the run, but at least Rieber wouldn’t recognize him.
A cautious tour of the boat found the German close to the stern on the upper deck, alone and looking out across the sunlit bay at the smoke-raddled New Jersey shoreline. McColl worked his way up the other side toward the bow and found a spot on the crowded rail from which he could keep watch with only a minimal chance of being spotted. But no one approached the German, who seemed, for all of the twenty-minute journey, fully engaged by the panoramic view.
As they docked at the Staten Island terminal, Rieber made no move to disembark, and McColl took his eyes off the German for a few moments to scan the people who were streaming aboard below. And there was Seán Tiernan, lifting his head to survey the upper deck as McColl stepped hurriedly back out of sight. He thought he had moved quickly enough, but he couldn’t be sure.
The ferry suddenly seemed a very small place. One of the toilets, he decided; he would lock himself away until Tiernan and Rieber had convened their conspirators’ meeting. Because that was what it had to be. Anything else would be far too much of a coincidence.
The toilet stank, but he stuck it out for several minutes, until the ferry was under way once more and someone started
hammering on the door. He first thought it must be Rieber or Tiernan but immediately realized he was being ridiculous—they were hardly likely to simply confront him, and if they wanted to kill him, they would choose a more private location.
It was a young boy, holding himself with panic-filled eyes. As the door slammed behind him, McColl hoped he’d made it.
Rieber and Tiernan were side by side on the upper-deck rail, deep in conversation. Neither man was casting glances over his shoulder, which surely must mean that McColl hadn’t been seen. And there was no point in watching them further and risking one of them spotting him. He moved back out of sight and descended the stairs to the lower deck.
If Tiernan had seen him, it would have been a disaster in so many ways. Another group of Germans would be after his blood and might prove more successful than the last lot. In the fight to prevent whatever it was that Rieber and Tiernan were planning, the Service would lose Cumming’s “knowing what they don’t know you know” advantage. And most importantly to McColl, as he realized with no little shame, Caitlin would find out. Tiernan would tell Colm, and he would tell his sister. It would be over.
How had he gotten into this mess? A piece of worldly wisdom from an Englishman he’d met in India came back to him. “Some men follow their hearts,” the drunken sage had told him, “and some go where their minds take them. Most of course just follow their cocks. Any one of the three can lead you to happiness, but only if you stick to that one alone.”
He seemed to be following all three.
There was no point in agonizing about it. Across the bay the sun was shining on the Statue of Liberty, and McColl found himself seeing it through Tiernan’s eyes. He didn’t like the man but could understand his hunger for Irish independence and see the logic of seeking German help to achieve it. The notion of “joint action on enemy soil” might be treasonous in law, but no doubt Tiernan saw it as a patriot’s duty. That wouldn’t stop McColl
from doing all he could to foil any such endeavor, but he felt no sense of outrage.
Was that was why von Schön had been opposed to his being killed? A belief that men pursuing their own country’s interest in good faith should be thwarted rather than punished?
The whole business suddenly seemed unreal. A German, an Irishman, and an Englishman, playing deadly games in the middle of New York Bay, while ordinary American life went on all around them.
Real or not, he was one of the players. He hung back in the stern when the ferry docked, giving Rieber and Tiernan plenty of time to disembark and go their separate ways. It was almost three, so his colleagues would be waiting for him at the Twenty-Third Street terminal, the meeting place Kensley had chosen for such a contingency.
He took the elevated and then walked down to the river, feeling depressed by what he had to report. If Tiernan was involved, then so were the Hanleys, and any hope of McColl’s disentangling his new work from his love life seemed to be receding. He was meeting her after work that evening.