Amerikan Eagle

Sure, Sam thought. The ones behind Petr Wowenstein’s murder. Eliminating a witness to the death of that mysterious, well-dressed man standing by the Fish Shanty that rainy night.

“Sorry, Sergeant,” he said. “I wish I could help you. Good luck.”

He hung up, sick at what he had done, what he had to do. He got up and left.

* * *

Several hours later, stomach growling and feet hurting, he took a break for lunch at a restaurant by the harbor called, in someone’s fit of imagination, the Harborview. The place was packed with reporters, government officials, shipyard personnel, and military officers, but his identification got him a small table in the corner that was probably used for piling up dirty dishes but on this day was being used to squeeze every dime and dollar from the visitors crowding Portsmouth. As he took his seat, he tried to keep focused on the task at hand and not think of a drowned and tortured Lou Purdue, killed because of one of the oldest stories, seeing something he shouldn’t have seen.

Sam ordered his lunch from a waitress who seemed to chew gum in time with writing down his order; the girl’s young face reminded him of another waitress, his friend Donna Fitzgerald. He hoped she and Larry were keeping low during this circus. For some reason, thinking of that sweet, innocent smile cheered him for a moment. To have a life and love so simple… He looked around at the customers. So many new faces in his little city since that damn summit was announced. He recognized a newsreel reporter, a couple of U.S. senators, and by the windows overlooking the harbor, a cluster of German Wehrmarcht officers, their boots polished, eating and apparently enjoying the view of the Navy Yard.

He wondered what the Germans were thinking. In just under four years, they and their comrades had turned the world upside down. All of Western Europe flew their flag, and their armies patrolled from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean. In the Atlantic Ocean, U-boats still prowled, as did other warships of the Kriegsmarine, while the U.S. Navy tried to maintain some sort of presence. But the Germans—hell, they had even set up a tiny base in a couple of French-owned fishing islands up near Quebec, and they had bases in the Caribbean, in Martinique and Aruba and the British Virgin Isles.

They were in other places as well, in Burdick and other secret camps, helping the Americans with their knowledge of imprisoning, torturing, and exploiting the Jews. A secret deal that was to benefit both countries: one dumping the enemies of their state to a faraway land, said faraway land making a tidy profit from their slave labor. Fascist Germany and fascist America, soon becoming twins themselves, while nearly nothing stood in their way.

Except for Russia. Russia was still hanging on, not buckling under, not giving up.

As for giving up, he’d almost done so it a couple of times today. The whole of Portsmouth had changed, had locked down to a place he barely recognized. Every few city blocks, there were barriers manned by National Guard troops, accompanied by men in suits who were FBI, Department of the Interior, German security. Squads of Long’s Legionnaires slapped up posters with Long’s toothy grin and unruly shock of hair. Sam had begun by checking out the tallest structures in Portsmouth—where better to station a marksman like Tony?—but every building in the city had a security contingent at the door.

Every building!

Even with his own set of passes, he had been scrutinized as he went into the warehouses down by the harbor, just to see how tight the security was, and at the top of each roof, he found U.S. Marines from the barracks at the Navy Yard, keeping watch with binoculars and communicating with one another through handheld radios.

Just walking from block to block, he’d been stopped three times by roaming patrols of National Guardsmen and Interior Department officers, and it was only thanks to his own identification that he wasn’t extensively questioned.

Once he had seen a couple of Long’s Legionnaires arguing with a man in a doorway, poking at him with their fingers, and he had recognized the cowering figure as Clarence Rolston, the police department’s janitor. The Legionnaires had left him alone when Sam had produced his identification, and Sam had told a weepy Clarence, “Better stay inside for the next couple of days until this clears up.”

The janitor had wiped his dripping nose with his hand, complaining, “It’s not fair, Sam, not fair… I just wanted to get some chocolate milk. That’s all. It’s not fair.” Then he had gone back into his walk-up apartment, blowing his nose in a handkerchief.