Amerikan Eagle

Sam thought of his visit that morning to Dr. Saunders, where the rest of the papers resided and where other agreements had been reached. “You think I was going to give it all up just like that? Not likely, Harold. I gave you half of the equations, enough to show those calculations are for real. And once I see the progress being made in Burdick and other camps, the more of the other pages you’ll get. My schedule, not yours. Any delays, any foulups, I get arrested or a rock falls on my head, the rest of the papers get destroyed.”

Hanson kept on staring at the papers.

“Oh—and to use a favorite phrase of yours—one more thing,” Sam said. “I’ve typed up a narrative of your involvement in the murder of that courier. So after you and your friends have all of the calculations, if you’re tempted to have me run down by a truck, forget it. Anything bad happens to me, Harold, those papers I prepared go straight to the mayor. Just think of all the fun my father-in-law would have with you if that were to happen. My guess is, you’d be acquainted real quick with the inside of a boxcar heading to Utah.”

Hanson carefully folded the sheets and tucked them in his coat. “You drive a hell of a bargain. And you didn’t have to. You could have given me all of the papers, Sam. You could trust me and trust the President to do the right thing. This is America, you know.”

Sam looked out to the harbor. Thought about the camps, the arrests, the censorship, the torture, the day-to-day humiliations, the mothers and fathers and sons and daughters hungry or homeless, his dead brother, the alliance with Hitler…

He turned back to his boss. “No,” he said. “No, this isn’t America. And it hasn’t been, not for a very long time.”

He walked back to his car, and Hanson called to him, but he didn’t bother to listen. There was so much to do, so much to hope for, and he didn’t know how much time he had left.

He got into the Packard, one hand on the steering wheel, saw the numeral three on his wrist. Three. Sarah and Toby and him. A lifelong reminder of what was important, what counted.

He started up the Packard and headed home.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to express his deep thanks and appreciation to Chief Lou Ferland and Deputy Chief Stephen DuBois of the Portsmouth, N.H., Police Department for their assistance in the research of this novel. Thanks as well to the library staffs in Portsmouth, Exeter, at the Phillips Exeter Academy, and at the University of New Hampshire.

Thanks as well to my agent, Nat Sobel, and his associates, for their extraordinary devotion and advice, and to my editor, Kate Miciak, for her sharp eye and unflagging enthusiasm for this novel, as well as to Randall Klein. I would also like to thank Hilary Hale, Donald Maass, Freddie Catalfo, and Liza Dawson for their thoughtful and helpful suggestions.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

On February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara, a thirty-two-year-old Italian anarchist, was at Bayfront Park in Miami, where he opened fire with a .32-caliber revolver at President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whether because of the unsteady chair that he was standing on or because a woman nudged his arm, his shots missed Roosevelt and instead struck Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who later died from his wounds.

Zangara was promptly charged with Cermak’s death, put on trial, and executed just over a month later.

At the time of this assassination attempt, the Vice President–elect was John Nance Garner of Texas, Speaker of the House of Representatives, an opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and an isolationist. Most historians find it doubtful that he could have provided the leadership the nation so desperately needed at the height of the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate soared to 25 percent and public commentators such as Walter Lippmann called openly for the new President to assume dictatorial powers.

Huey Long, governor and then senator from the state of Louisiana during Roosevelt’s first term, made no secret of his desire to become President of the United States. In fact, he outlined his plans in the novel My First Days in the White House, published in 1935. Long was also an isolationist, and he often boasted that he never traveled abroad and did not care about the fate of other nations.

The novel was published posthumously, as Senator Long was shot on September 8, 1935, in the statehouse in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and died two days later. At the time of Senator Long’s death, President Roosevelt considered him one of the most dangerous men in America.

The public statements made herein by Huey Long, Winston Churchill, Charles Lindbergh, and Father Charles Coughlin are factual. Only the time and place of their comments have been fictionalized.

Walter Tucker’s recollection of the visit to Harvard in 1934 of its alumnus, Ernst Hanfstaengl, Nazi Party member and head of the foreign press operations for the Third Reich, is based on a true event.