Hitler's peace

McCrea nodded patiently. “All right. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that he went into the water around midnight. That’s twelve hours ago. Since then we’ve sailed almost three hundred miles. Even if we turned around and went back to look for him, it would be hopeless. There’s no way he would survive in the Atlantic Ocean for twenty-four hours. I’m afraid the man is dead.”

I let out a long sigh. “Poor Ted. His brother was on the Yorktown, you know. He drowned, too.” Even as I spoke, I recalled Schmidt telling me how, as a corollary of his brother’s death, he had a horror of drowning. This hardly seemed to make it likely that Schmidt would have thrown himself overboard. If he had wanted to commit suicide, surely he would have found some other way. He might have taken my pistol, for example, and shot himself. After all, he had seen where I left my gun. “But I don’t think he would have jumped. He was scared of drowning.”

“Have you any idea what Schmidt wanted to speak to the Secret Service about?” asked McCrea.

I was quite sure that Schmidt would never have jumped overboard. And if he wasn’t on the ship, then there were only two other possibilities. That he had fallen overboard while drunk. Or that someone had pushed him, in which case it might be better to say as little as possible, and nothing at all about Schmidt’s wife and Thornton Cole.

“I have no idea,” I said.

“The CPO tells me that there was an altercation in the mess room yesterday. Involving Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Weitz, from the State Department. One of the mess attendants said they came to blows. And that you were there.”

“Yes. They were having a discussion about our relations with the Soviet Union. It turned into an argument, in the way these things do sometimes. Mr. Schmidt spoke in favor of our Russian ally, and Mr. Weitz took the opposite position. But I wouldn’t think it was uncommon for officials from State to hold very different views on that particular subject. Especially now that the president is going to shake Marshal Stalin’s hand at the Big Three.”

“I’m amazed that you say that,” said McCrea. “These men were diplomats. Surely it’s unusual for two diplomats to come to blows over such a thing.”

“In normal circumstances I might agree with you, Captain. But things are perhaps different when you’re on a warship in the middle of the Atlantic. We all have to live cheek by jowl with people whose opinions we can’t get away from. People, I might add, who don’t live their lives according to military discipline.”

McCrea nodded. “That’s true.”

“Let me ask you a straight question, Professor,” said Agent Rauff. “If Schmidt had encountered Mr. Weitz again. Last night, for example. Do you think it’s possible they might have come to blows?”

Clearly Rauff was already thinking that John Weitz was made to order for the rap.

“Yes, it’s possible. But I certainly don’t think John Weitz is the type to throw a man overboard who has disagreed with him about something, if that’s what you were driving at.”

I found myself accompanied back to my cabin by two of the Secret Service agents.

“I take your point about a man who’s frightened of drowning not wanting to throw himself overboard,” Rauff told me. “So maybe someone else did.”

“It crossed my mind,” I admitted.

“In which case, it’s possible the president is also at risk. So I’m afraid we’ll need to take a look through the dead man’s things. Just in case there’s a note, or something.”

“Help yourself.” I opened the door and pointed at Schmidt’s bunk. “That was his bunk. And those are his bags. But I already looked for a note. There isn’t one.”

With little or no space in the cabin, I waited in the doorway while the search proceeded, which gave me an opportunity to take a closer look at the two agents while they went about their business.

“You must have been nice and snug in here,” observed Rauff. He was dark, with hollow, lazy eyes and a rather wolfish grin, and a face that was heavily pockmarked, as if he had once had a bad case of chicken pox.

“We’re in with three other guys,” explained Pawlikowski. “Up forward on the second deck, right underneath one of those sixteen-inch gun turrets. There’s a power handling platform that keeps the turret supplied with shells. And we can hear it pretty much all the time, since they’re always running exercises. Even at night. You wouldn’t believe the noise. But in here, a man can hear himself think.” He looked up from the open bag in front of him and turned to face me. “You must have talked a lot.”

“When we weren’t reading, or asleep.”

Pawlikowski hoisted another bag onto my bunk and began to search it. He looked as if he might have boxed a bit: his jaw was as square as the signet ring on one of his thick fingers. A two-dollar traveling chess set protruded from one of his jacket pockets and he tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn as he went about his business.

“Are you in charge of the White House detail?” I asked Rauff.