Hitler's peace

XIV

When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised to find that Ted Schmidt was already up and gone from the cabin.

After a shower and a shave, I went along to the mess room, expecting to find him enjoying a plate of ham and eggs. I was disquieted for a moment at not finding him there, but told myself it was a big ship and Schmidt was probably up on deck, clearing his head in the fresh air. Disquiet turned to concern when, after a leisurely breakfast and a walk with Harry Hopkins on deck, I returned to the cabin to find Schmidt was still not there. I began a one-man search that included everything from the pilot’s house to the first-aid room and the main deck, fore and aft. Then I went to tell Captain McCrea that Ted Schmidt was missing.

McCrea, a career navy officer from Michigan who had seen action during the First World War, was also a lawyer and possessed of a lawyer’s cool head.

“I ought to add that he’d been drinking, quite heavily. So it’s just possible that he’s sleeping it off in some quiet corner of the ship I don’t know about.”

The captain heard me out with the air of a defense attorney listening to a particularly implausible story offered by his client, and then ordered his executive officer to organize an immediate search of the ship.

“Can I help?” I offered.

Containing his now very evident dislike of me, McCrea shook his head.

“It might be best if you waited in your cabin, just in case he shows up there. Which I’m sure he will. This is a big ship. I get lost myself sometimes.”

I went back to my cabin and lay down on my bunk, trying not to dwell on the thought that was uppermost in my mind: the vague possibility that Schmidt might have committed suicide. On a ship where the men manning the guns carried derringers to avoid being drowned like rats in their gun turrets, love and jealousy might have seemed rather old-fashioned, unmanly reasons for killing yourself. But I could hardly deny their devastating effect on poor Ted Schmidt. And while I had already rejected the idea of self-slaughter for myself, I didn’t know him well enough to assess whether he was the type to kill himself. Assuming that there was such a thing as a type.

Restless, I got up and searched Schmidt’s luggage for a clue as to what might have happened. Some kind of note or letter was usually considered customary. There was a letter. But it wasn’t from Ted. Inside a brown leather address book, I found the letter from Schmidt’s wife, Debbie, telling Ted about her affair with Thornton Cole and informing him that she was leaving him. I pocketed the letter, intending to give it to Captain McCrea if the search failed to find Schmidt on board.

Just before midday, when the search had been going on for almost two hours, there was a knock at the door and a sailor came in and saluted. He looked about twelve years old.

“The captain’s compliments, sir. He’d like you to join him in his cabin.”

“Right away,” I said and, grabbing my coat, followed the young sailor forward. “No sign of Mr. Schmidt, I assume?”

But the boy merely shrugged and said he didn’t know.

I found the captain with the chief petty officer and Agents Qualter, Rowley, Rauff, and Pawlikowski. Their somber expressions told me the worst. McCrea cleared his throat and rose slightly on his well-polished toes as he spoke.

“We’ve searched the Big Stick from bow to stern and there’s no sign of him. It’s even money Schmidt went overboard.”

“Are we stopping the ship? I mean, if he has gone overboard, we ought to search for him, the way we did for the sailor on the Willie D. ”

The captain and the CPO exchange a weary look.

“When did you last see Mr. Schmidt?” asked McCrea.

“Around ten o’clock last night. I turned in immediately after dinner. What with all this sea air, I was bushed. And a little drunk, probably. Schmidt was probably a little drunk, too. I think I heard him go out of the cabin at around eleven. I assumed he’d gone to the head. I didn’t hear him come back.”

McCrea nodded. “That would fit. The chief petty officer here had a conversation with Mr. Schmidt at around 2320 hours.”

“There was alcohol on the gentleman’s breath,” said the CPO. “But he didn’t seem drunk to me. He wanted me to direct him to the Secret Service’s quarters.”

“Only he never arrived,” said Rauff.

“You’re aware that alcohol is forbidden on this vessel,” said McCrea.

“Yes. I think the president is aware of it, too. And I had several drinks with him the night before last.”

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.

“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.