El Paso: A Novel (8 page)

Seeing Strucker board the
Ajax
brought much of the past back to the Colonel and, as all the guests were aboard, he went up to the ship’s bridge with a cigar and glass of scotch to watch the casting-off operations. The scotch went down smoothly and warm and, for some reason, on the dim outskirts of the conversational buzz below, he began to consider his life and times.

Never mind the chilled relations between them now, Mrs. Shaughnessy had provided the Colonel with two children, the first of whom, Alexa, turned out a disappointment. Now thirty-four, she had never married and led a dissolute life in New York City. The adopted one, Arthur, who had come to them at age nine and was now thirty-two, had married and sired him two grandchildren, which made the Colonel exceedingly pleased.

But Arthur was in many respects all the things the Colonel was not, and it often pained him. What he had hoped for in Arthur was a mirror of himself, but he might have known it wouldn’t happen, since the boy wasn’t his own flesh and blood.

Those things the Colonel enjoyed, Arthur did not, and either buried himself in his collections of stamps, coins, and, yes,
butterflies
, or, more recently, devoted himself to tinkering with the
Grendel
, that infernal flying machine of his. Once, when Arthur was no more than eleven and had lived with the Shaughnessys for two years, the Colonel had tired of his excuses for not wanting to ride or box or shoot or play rough sports and determined to get to the root causes.

Shaughnessy had demanded of the orphanage that they turn over the names of Arthur’s true parents so that he could investigate them himself. The orphanage refused, even in the face of veiled threats to cut off his generous donations, but in the end Shaughnessy was somewhat relieved.

What if he had discovered Arthur was the child of a thief or prostitute or spies or worse?

No, he would work with what he had, and work Arthur he did, trying without success to remold him in his own image. The boy was maddening sometimes; he tried hard to please, yet let you know his heart wasn’t really in it.

It became apparent that Arthur had developed his own personality while in the orphanage and changing it would be difficult, if not impossible. Still, the Colonel had to pay a kind of grudging respect to his adoptive son. Even though he quit Groton, which, for all intents, removed him from consideration for Harvard, he’d worked hard at Boston College (though Beatie went into conniptions because it was a Jesuit school) and slaved at the railroad business until the Colonel began to depend on him for sound decisions and advice. Yet he remained disappointed that Arthur had not turned out to be the companion he needed in his later life, someone to ride and hunt and fish with, someone who shared his views, political, economic, and social.

The mirror, a perfect mirror, of himself.

PRESENTLY, DINNER WAS SERVED.
The well-oiled guests, including Claus Strucker, who had consumed half a dozen glasses of schnapps, trooped into the ship’s dining hall, where a huge feast had been prepared. Strucker took note that the tables were set in the finest Irish linen and the mahogany chairs were covered in salmon and gray velvet with a big
A
for
Ajax
embroidered on the backs. The columns were strung with fresh green smilax and bright drooping ferns.

Following the elegant soups, salads, oysters, scallops, and crab meat, enormous trays of roast venison, partridge, pheasant, duck, hams, Atlantic salmon, mountain trout, halibut, swordfish, and lobster were offered. The wine flowed freely, as usual. At last, when coffee and desserts were being delivered, the Colonel took to a podium and over a newfangled broadcast system opened a speech.

“Gentlemen, we are gathered here this evening for a bit of relaxation,” he began, then hesitated. “While our ladies are at home, devising ways to spend our hard-earned dollars.”

There was much applause and the Colonel continued. “However, we must never forget that the price of liberty to conduct our affairs in such a way to make this great nation prosper is . . . eternal vigilance!”

Strucker, sitting twelve guests away, put down his dessert fork and made a mental note of this remark.

More applause, as the Colonel warmed to his subject. He inveighed against the current horrors that were on everyone’s lips: the infernal federal income tax, Mexico, socialism, unionism, anarchism, trustbustingism, notions of alcohol prohibition and women’s suffrage—but nothing, Strucker observed, about the war in Europe. The speech had gone on for half an hour when the
Ajax
began a low vibration and a deep shudder emanated from far belowdecks. At this, many of the dinner guests seemed alarmed and looked at one another. Signaling a crew officer, the Colonel leaned off the podium for a moment, then addressed his audience.

“Gentlemen,” he said reassuringly, “there is no problem to concern yourselves with. I have just been informed that a severe storm is reported off Nantucket Island, headed this way. I have been advised by the harbormaster to weigh anchor and remove
Ajax
to the open seas so as not to run the danger of grounding. We will put in safely at Boston Harbor first thing in the morning.”

Immediately there began a low mumbling from the guest tables, since many of these men had important duties to attend to at their offices—duties that involved millions of dollars, contracts, mergers, businesses to run. But the Colonel, smiling, waved them silent.

“There are comfortable cabins aboard for all of you, and when we arrive at Boston one of my trains will be on hand to carry you back to Newport, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia—wherever you wish to go. The harbormaster has already notified your drivers ashore of the situation, and any of you wishing to send telegraph messages may use the wireless station on the bridge deck. So please, let us finish with the evening’s program. Have another drink and enjoy a comfortable night on the high seas, courtesy of the New England & Pacific Railroad Company!”

This information seemed to calm the guests as the
Ajax
steamed past the rock-perched beacons guarding Newport Harbor and out toward the dark Atlantic Ocean. The guests relit their cigars, drained their brandy glasses, called for more, and settled back for the remainder of the voyage and the Colonel’s address. A little past midnight Shaughnessy finally wound up to thundering applause from the dining room coterie, which to a man agreed with everything he said—even the German spy Strucker, who, in his drunkenness, had dropped his monocle into a dish of custard.

Before the Colonel closed the ceremonies he asked that certain members of the guest party remain behind. He ticked off their names: Whitney, Hearst, Harriman, Guggenheim, Buckley, and others. They were singled out for this distinction because, like the Colonel, they had a vested interest—a very large vested interest—in the present goings-on in Mexico.

These families and a few more owned practically the entire northern part of that country that adjoined the United States—millions and millions of acres that, for a quarter century and more, they exploited for ranching, farming, mining, railroads, and the like. Now the Colonel had some news he wished to give them.

Shaughnessy led the way to a smaller parlor in which a fireplace had been lit, and more brandy was poured. The Colonel had the select group seated when, just before the doors closed, Strucker appeared in the companionway and lurched in without asking if he could join them. “I am always interested in Mexico,” the German said, “and perhaps I can be enlightened by your information. I have thought of buying a house there somewhere, perhaps on the Pacific Coast.” This seemed harmless enough, and Colonel Shaughnessy showed him to a seat, into which he plopped unceremoniously. Then he noticed on a small bar several bottles of whiskey and liquor. He began to rise toward them but his arms failed him and he sank back resignedly into the deep leather chair.

“Something is happening down in the state of Chihuahua,” the Colonel told them in slow, measured words. “My reports are not precisely clear, but I have a man—a nameless man, mind you—who has access to the office of Mr. Bryan,” the Colonel said, referring to the U.S. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan. “And he tells me there is going to be a shift in our Mexico policy.

“As you know,” the Colonel continued, “we have all tried to get along with this fellow Pancho Villa. We have arranged for shipments to be made to him for his military operations. We have repaired his railroad trains in our yards at a discount and with credit. We have freighted him millions of tons of coal for his engines. We have loaned him money for medical supplies. We have paid taxes and duties to him—bribed him, if you will—for the oil and minerals and timber and cattle we raise down there . . . and we all know that in exchange for this, he and his men have left our interests in Mexico alone. So far . . .”

The Colonel looked at a scrap of paper in his hands and cleared his voice. “Now, however, because some military reverses have befallen General Villa, it seems as if President Wilson—our
schoolteacher
in the White House—may have decided to recognize General Carranza as the legitimate president of Mexico. What will happen now?” the Colonel asked. A grumbling of disbelief filled the room as this news sank in.

The Colonel answered his own question. “I fear,” he said, “that Villa may no longer be willing to respect our position vis-à-vis our property. We all know he is a bandit at heart, even though the press portrays him as a great revolutionary savior, or some such nonsense. Now, I have met Mr. Villa personally on several occasions and our discourse was always pleasant and conciliatory. And yet I ask myself, what is to stop him from looting our interests? He still commands an army of some sort. I tell you, gentlemen, I own nearly one million acres of ranchland down there, upon which there are some hundred thousands head of cattle, and I shudder—
shudder
—at the idea that Pancho Villa and his people have had their eyes on them for quite a while now. My word, gentlemen, this calls for action.”

In other, less auspicious gatherings, this news might have provoked a panic of sorts, but these were cool men. The captains—no, admirals—of industry in the greatest industrial nation on earth, and they did the only sensible thing that might have been expected of them. To a man, they got up and ran to the bar for another drink.

Herr Strucker was astonished by their reaction, these so-called American tycoons who went for whiskey at the first sign of trouble. Strucker had known some of these men socially, but this was his first inside glance at how they behaved when the chips were down. What, he thought, would they do when the helm was hard down and water coming in over the lee rail—scramble down to the cabin like scaredy-cats and take a drink? He knew what his own countrymen would do in similar circumstances. They would immediately demand war! And have this Mexican’s head on a pike at the end of a week.

When some attitude of calm had been restored, the Colonel continued his address.

“I think we all understand what the destiny of Northern Mexico finally must be,” he told them. “We must bring it into American hands. Why, my word, we own most of it by deed already, but we’re constantly frustrated and even threatened by some tinhorn dictator-of-the-moment down in Mexico City. This is no way to run a business enterprise, is it?

“Naturally,” Colonel Shaughnessy continued, “the left-wing press will scream that we’re just a bunch of jingoistic imperialists. Well, let them—they’re right! We proved that when the great Texas patriot Sam Houston kicked the bloodthirsty dictator Santa Anna back to where he came from, and again seventeen years later when we had to send our army to capture Mexico City. What would be the fate of Texas now, or for that matter Arizona, New Mexico, and California, if the Mexicans were still in charge of it? Same as the fate of the rest of Mexico, which is a state of eternal war! We must stand together in this, no matter what it takes, no matter what the sacrifice, personal or financial. What is at stake here, gentlemen, is nation-building!” the Colonel thundered. “And nation-building is what America is about!”

These remarks by Colonel Shaughnessy were much more to Strucker’s liking, though he noticed that most of the others did not applaud, and some seemed to look dismayed, but even through the haze of smoke and gin at least he thought he’d found in the Colonel a man of action, a man who might be useful—to the
German
cause.