Hitler's peace

“Only on board this ship. The man in charge the rest of the time is Mike Reilly. Only he’s in North Africa right now, awaiting our arrival on Saturday.”

“So, what’s it like, guarding the president?” I asked Pawlikowski.

Pawlikowski shrugged. “Me, I’m new at this. I was guarding someone else before the boss. John McCloy at the War Department.” He nodded his head at Rauff. “Ask him.”

“It’s not like anything I know,” said Rauff. “And I’ve been on the job since before the war. Back in 1935 we had nine men guarding FDR. Today it’s more like seventy. You see, the boss is extra vulnerable, him being in a chair and all. He just can’t duck like any normal person. One time, in Erie, Pennsylvania, someone threw a rubber knife at him. We didn’t know it was rubber at the time, of course. Anyway it hit the boss square on the chest. Now if that had been a real knife, it might have killed him. And none of us saw it coming. Except the boss. But he couldn’t get out of the way.”

“You need eyes in the back of your head in this job,” added Pawlikowski. “That’s for sure. Even on a United States warship. Can you believe those pricks on the Willie D.?”

“Yes, what was the story?” I said. “I never did hear a proper explanation of what happened there.”

Pawlikowski snorted with laughter. “Goddamned idiot captain decided to take advantage of the president’s little fireworks display to use the Iowa as the target in a training exercise. The torpedo firing was only supposed to be simulated but someone managed to shoot off a live one. King is furious about it. Apparently it’s the first time in naval history that an entire ship and its crew have been placed under arrest.” Pawlikowski removed two bottles of Mount Vernon rye from the bottom of Schmidt’s bag and shook his head. “This fellow came well prepared, didn’t he?”

“Maybe that’s why he was looking for me last night,” laughed Rauff. “To invite me for a drink.”

Pawlikowski started to replace the dead man’s things, including the two bottles, in his bag. “There’s nothing in here to give us any clues,” he said. I stepped out of the doorway to let him pass and saw that the chess set was in his hand. Seeing my eyes on it, he said, “Do you play?”

“Not really,” I lied.

“Good. Then I stand half a chance of beating you.”

“All right. But later on, okay?”

“Sure. Whenever you say.”

“John Weitz,” said Rauff. “How well do you know him?”

“I don’t know him at all,” I said.

“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, you were kind of quick to defend him, weren’t you? I mean, we both heard Mr. Weitz say he was going to kill Schmidt.”

“I think that was just heat of the moment, don’t you?”

“Maybe so. But I’m kind of curious to know why you chose to defend him like that. Is it an Ivy League thing, do you think?”

“I suppose I did answer a bit automatically.” I shrugged. “It might have been an Ivy League thing, as you call it. I’m sorry.”

“He probably had nothing to do with it,” said Pawlikowski. “But we do have to ask, you know? If someone did kill Mr. Schmidt, then that someone could kill again, you know?”

“On the other hand,” said Agent Rauff, “maybe it was just an accident. Maybe Mr. Schmidt went up on the main deck and got hit by a freak wave, you know? It gets kind of rough up there sometimes.” He shrugged. “Drunk. Up on the bows in a strong sea. At night. Who knows what might have happened?”

I nodded, anxious to be rid of them now. I was still thinking about Ted Schmidt. I stayed in my cabin and thought about him for the rest of the day. Nobody knocked on my door. Nobody told me he had been found in some forgotten corner of the ship.

XV

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943,

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

Below Turret One, with its triple 16-inch battery, I stood on the main deck watching the bows of the Big Stick’s hull slip through the white-capped sea. I turned my back on the freshening breeze for a moment, placed a cigarette between lips rimed with ocean salt, and, behind the windbreak of my coat collar, took a light from the Dunhill.

Paying little or no attention to me, sailors worked steadily on the slowly moving deck, swabbing its sun-bleached wooden planks, setting antiaircraft batteries, stowing ropes, shifting ordnance, or just sitting on the pelican hook stoppers that secured the anchor chain, enjoying their smokes and bottles of Coca-Cola from the soda fountain in the enlisted mess. At a mile or two’s distance, the destroyer escort broke the horizon, while high above me, atop the main conning tower, the air-search radar antenna kept on turning in a monotonous circle.

Somewhere a bell rang and several smaller gun turrets turned to starboard, lethally erect, like the gum-chewing, wisecracking, sex-starved sailors that manned them, reminding me that this was a place bereft of females. And one female in particular. For a moment I wondered what she was doing, and then I remembered what I had seen through the window of her living room.