Hitler's peace

Feeling the cold now, I went forward to the primary conning tower and met John Weitz coming along the corridor outside my cabin. He was wearing the same Yale bow tie under a pea jacket that looked a size too big for him and carrying a brown paper parcel under his arm. He smiled nervously, and for a moment I thought he would walk by without saying anything. Then he stopped and, moving his weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other, tried to look apologetic, only it came out shifty.

“My laundry,” he said, awkwardly lifting the parcel. “I got kind of lost on my way back to my cabin.”

I nodded. “You certainly did,” I said. “The laundry room is at the back of the ship. I believe the people who know about these things call it the stern.”

“Listen,” continued Weitz, “I’m awfully sorry about what happened to Ted. I feel pretty dreadful about it. Especially in view of what I said.”

“You mean about wanting to kill him?”

Weitz closed his eyes for a moment, and then nodded. “Naturally I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Naturally. All of us say things sometimes we don’t really mean. Cruel things, stupid things, reckless things. Saying things we don’t really mean is one of the things that makes conversation so interesting. Something like this happens, it just reminds us to be more careful the next time we open our big mouths. That’s all.”

Despite what I had said to the Secret Service, John Weitz was near the top of my list of potential murderers. If someone had pushed Ted off the boat, then John Weitz looked as good a suspect as anyone else. The bow tie certainly didn’t help his case in my eyes.

Weitz stretched his lips back from his teeth. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He tried again for a little absolution.

“I feel pretty bad about it, all the same. There was no need for me to say what I said. Calling him a fellow traveler like that.”

“Yes, that was unnecessary,” I said. “It’s a horrible phrase. And under the present circumstances you might just as well call the president a fellow traveler.”

Weitz winced again. “That doesn’t seem so very far-fetched to me,” he said. “I’m a Republican. I didn’t vote for Roosevelt.”

“So you’re the one.”

He would not be drawn into another argument. “The worst part of it is that Captain McCrea has asked me to write to his wife.” He sighed. “Since I’m the only other guy on this ship from State.”

“I see. Did you know him well?”

“That’s the thing. No, I didn’t. We were colleagues, but never close.”

There was no movie theater on the Iowa. There was no radio in my room. And I didn’t much like the book I was reading. I decided to let out some line and play with him a little more.

“I’m not surprised. Since that Sumner Welles business in the summer, it doesn’t pay to be too close to anyone in the State Department. Especially on a crowded ship like this one.”

“Meaning?”

I shook my head. “You were telling me how you and Ted weren’t intimate friends.”

“He was a Russian affairs analyst. And I’m a linguist. As well as Russian, I speak Byelorussian and Georgian.”

“That explains everything.”

“Does it?”

“No. Actually, I’m puzzled. How is it that you don’t actually like Russians and come to speak these languages?”

“My mother is a White Russian emigre,” he explained. “She left St. Petersburg before the revolution and went to live in Berlin, where she met my father, a German-American.”

“Then we have something in common. I’m German-American, too.” I smiled. “We should find some leather shorts and drink some beer sometime.”

Weitz smiled. He must have thought I was joking.

“One of those damned Secret Service men virtually accused me of being a German spy. The Polack.”

“You must mean Pawlikowski.”

“That’s him. Pawlikowksi. Son of a bitch.”

“So that’s what Pawlikowski means. I wondered.” I shook my head. “They’re all kind of jumpy since the Willie D. incident.”

“Oh, that. That’s history. I was just speaking to the guy in the laundry.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder, up the gangway, in the wrong direction. I leaned against the wall and looked over his shoulder as if the laundry really had been where he was pointing. What was he doing so far from his own cabin, up forward, and equally far from the laundry, which was near the stern?

“It seems there’s a German sub operating in this area. Two of our escort destroyers picked up a German broadcast right in this area. At 0200 this morning.”

“That’s curious.”

“Curious? It’s damned alarming, that’s what it is. Apparently they’re going nuts about it up on the bridge.”

“No, I meant in a kind of why-didn’t-the-dog-bark sense.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind. Look, I’ll write to Ted Schmidt’s widow, if you like.”

“Would you? I’d appreciate it. It’s kind of hard to write to a guy’s wife when you never really liked him, you know.”

“Are you married?”

His eyes flickered. “No.”

“Me neither. Ted wasn’t a bad guy, you know.”

“No, I suppose not.”