Munich Signature (49 page)

No sooner had the birth announcement been wired to Trump than the Coast Guard cutter turned and made course directly toward the
Darien
.

In the distance Shimon and Aaron spotted the huge tower of a naval battleship heading out to sea from Norfolk. The little cutter seemed to be moving much faster than the battleship, and certainly faster than the
Darien
.

Sailors in white uniforms waved and shouted greetings as the cutter crossed the wake just behind the
Darien
. A cheer rose up from the passengers.
So these fellows were human, after all.

The cutter slowed, and half a dozen American sailors held up a crudely painted sign:
WELCOME, BABY ISRAEL!

Tucker translated the meaning as the cutter turned and sped away toward Norfolk. Eyes grew moist at even this small show of kindness. How different than Germany, and yet the infant was not truly welcome anywhere. Cutter 177 had not yet vanished from sight before another Coast Guard cutter was spotted coming out of the channel behind the battleship.

Moments later, it resumed the duty of shadow for the
Darien
, taking a position flanking the
Darien
between ship and shoreline.

“I cannot even swim,” Aaron said unhappily. “And I would not jump for fear they would let me drown.”

32

A Toast to Israel

Thousands upon thousands of Nazi Party members had swarmed to the great field of Nuremberg for the rally. Now where the Great Synagogue had once stood, troops of SS marched with awesome precision. Hour after hour, battalions of young men drilled before the spectators on the platform.

When at last the hazy dusk faded away, 130 searchlights were switched on. These lights, borrowed from a grudging Göring, were placed around the field at forty-foot intervals. Sharply defined beams rose straight up to a height of twenty thousand feet where they merged into a glowing, heavenly canopy. It seemed as though the field was a vast auditorium surrounded by mighty pillars of crystal and ice. Clouds moved like spirits through the wreath of light as a hundred thousand voices joined in songs of praise to the Aryan god who had united them in this fierce pride, and an even fiercer hatred.

Thomas sat among a group of twenty other Abwehr officers along the wall of Nuremberg Castle. The ancient walls of the old city seemed to glow like canvas backdrops in an opera.
Soon,
Thomas thought,
the buildings of Nuremberg will be leveled like the old synagogue
. If the war Hitler desired actually began, there would be ample open space for such hysterical demonstrations. But many from these multitudes would find the words of their evil hymn had come true: “For Hitler we die.”

Spotlights now illuminated the platform as Adolf Hitler emerged from behind a red curtain. The song dissolved into a wild roar of ecstasy that made even the stones of the castle wall tremble. Thomas trembled with them as minutes were consumed by chants of “Heil Hitler!”

In his simple brown uniform, Hitler played out the parody of a modest leader of the plain folk of the Reich. Here was evil in imitation of goodness. Like the occult painting of Franz von Stuck, this new god lowered his chin and glared down upon his hysterical worshipers. He knew well what plans he had laid for Czechoslovakia. Now he would publicly justify his actions and receive the voiced approval of his minyans!

The Führer stepped up to the microphone, and before the listening world, he laid the guilt for his coming trespasses upon the neck of the innocent. The spell was formed and cast upon these who worshiped at his feet and upon those who merely listened: “Prague bears the responsibility foreverything that happened and may happen still in Czechoslovakia!”

A roaring followed.
Y
es!
It is not us but the Czechs who are responsible! One Folk! One Reich! One Führer!

“For every blow in the face of a Sudeten German, for every clubbing, for every bayonet pointed at the breast of a Sudeten German . . .” The voice continued to rise in a frenzied crescendo as the eyes of the audience widened and men swayed in its power. “For every shot fired, for all German tears shed, and for all German blood which has flowed! That is the awful accusation, and the entire German nation raises it!”

Once again the hysterical wave of approval swept the mass. Thomas watched in hopeless terror.
Were they listening in the government of London?
he wondered
, and were they terrified as well?

“For every blow in the face of a Sudeten German is also a blow in the face of seventy-five million Germans in the Reich of Adolf Hitler! It is a blow in the face of a great, proud nation! It is seventy-five million persons who today accuse Prague before Europe, who once more appeal to the conscience of Europe.” The Führer swept back his forelock and stepped aside.

Cheers and shouts and screams for revenge against the Czechs filled the crystal auditorium with a more virulent form of hatred.

How many of these seduced here tonight would still cry out if they could see the future?
Thomas wondered. How many of these would soon lie still and cold in some distant field for the sake of this madness tonight in Nuremberg?

Profane in his glory, Adolf Hitler crossed his arms and paced across the very place where the rabbi of Nuremberg had once recited praise to the one God. The Führer seemed pleased by the adulation. The people of Germany were in his hand. Victory would bring him even greater praise; a failure could be blamed on the people themselves. After all, could he turn his will away from their desires?

Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!

***

Before news of the birth of Israel Holbein hit the front pages of the newspaper, Mr. Trump wanted to deliver the message to Bubbe Rosenfelt personally.

He dressed for the occasion, tying his red polka-dot bow tie with great grumbling and choosing a suit that had been pressed only last week.

From his office high above Times Square, he had a pretty good view of the world. He had kept the electric marquee that ringed the building supplied with small items about the progress of the
Darien
and the stubborn refusals by the State Department to consider anything until after the Evian Conference. The birth of the Holbein baby—Israel, no less—was going to make for some much-needed human interest.

He picked up the phone and shouted for his driver. “I have to go to Brooklyn. That’s right, I’m going to Brooklyn.”

Trump did not approve of flaunting wealth by hiring a chauffeur; but on the other hand, since he could not drive an automobile himself, it seemed sensible. He never admitted the fact that he could not drive. He simply pointed to the chauffeur when asked, and stated that the man had needed a job.

He gave the bow tie one final tug. “How do I look?” he asked the mirror. Then he answered himself, “Like an old fool.”

Before he left the building, Trump put the technician to work setting the pattern of lights for the Times Square electric headline that would flash tonight at rush hour:

“Baby Boy Born to Grieving
Darien
Family . . . State Department Still Mum on Fate of Desperate Passengers!”

The story was written for the late edition with the strict orders that not a word of the event was to be breathed outside the building lest the
New York Times
be scooped by Hearst or Craine.

He had not called ahead to the Brooklyn home of Bubbe Rosenfelt. He did not want to get her hopes up about the U.S. visas, and he also did not want to scare her to death. She was, after all, probably almost as old as he was and had undergone quite enough grief and worries these past weeks.

As the sleek black car drove across the Brooklyn Bridge, Trump now was sorry he had not called. Suppose the appearance of a black limousine at her doorstep in Brooklyn shocked her? “Pull over at a public phone,” Trump ordered his driver. He would call her—warn her that he was in Brooklyn and just wanted to stop by and see Charles.

This seemed a sensible plan. The limousine of Harold Trump glided down into the flat, vast immensity of Brooklyn. It elicited respectful stares from the Italians, who assumed a gangland meeting was scheduled; from the Irish, who assumed a bishop was traveling to visit a local parish; and finally from the Jews, who could only assume that someone had died and the mortician was on its way to make arrangements.

When at last Trump decided on an appropriate filling station from which to make his call, he found that he was in the heart of the Jewish district and merely a block away from Bubbe Rosenfelt’s box-like brownstone.

He called her. A young woman answered. There were squeals of laughter in the background. Children. Lots of them.

“
Oy
! Such a racket! I can’t hear you!”

“Mr. Trump calling for Mrs. Rosenfelt, please!” he replied loudly since the din of traffic and street vendors was also deafening on his end of things.

“Children!
Oy
! Quiet! Somebody for Bubbe, I think! You want Mrs. Trudence Rosenfelt?
Who
are you?”

“Harold Trump. Publisher of the . . .”

“
Oy vey
! Mr.
Trump
! Why didn’t you say so? She’s out at the bakery. Just down the street from here. Can you call back in a few minutes? It’s Friday, and we’re getting ready for Shabbat, so—”

Trump looked out through the glass of the phone booth. There was a bakery across the street, crowded with women. Trump recognized the black dress. The cane slung over the arm. The ramrod straight back. Bubbe Rosenfelt was in front of the bakery with six other women. Her arms were full of bags. She was admiring a baby in a black pram. “Thank you,” Trump said to the young woman on the phone. “I found her.” He hung up the receiver and stepped out. He called her name across the clamor of cars and buses between them.

“Mrs. Rosenfelt! Mrs. Rosenfelt!”

Some of the women had seen the black limousine and were wondering who had died. Then Bubbe Rosenfelt spotted Mr. Trump in his semi-rumpled suit and crooked red polka-dot bow tie.
Such a fine looking man!
Her eyes widened. She raised her pince-nez up to be sure. Then she smiled and waved and cupped her hand, “Are you lost?” she called, and then again, “Are you lost, Mr. Trump?”

This was not as he had planned it. “It’s a boy!” he shouted back. “Maria has a baby boy! Named
Israel
!”

***

Like an elephant calling for her mate, the whistles of the
Queen
bellowed her arrival to all of Southampton and beyond. Murphy could picture the men of southern England gathered in their little pubs tonight. No doubt they paused at the deep vibration of the ship’s horn and remarked with an air of proprietorship, “Well, the ol’ garl’s come home.”

There were lights everywhere in the harbor. Lights on tugs. Lights on the docks. Lights leading up to High Street. The liner floated on a dark pool reflecting the stars, and the shoreline was a galaxy of stars where sky and water met. Murphy enjoyed the sense of magic the late evening arrival provided. Somewhere in all that galaxy Elisa was no doubt watching this bright island gliding toward its berth. Again the ship’s horn bellowed. Murphy turned away from the rail now and moved through the press of passengers and the wood-paneled shopping deck of Picadilly Circus and out to where the boarding ramp would soon be locked into place. The galaxy now consisted of streetlamps and windows and shiny asphalt. Murphy wanted to be the first man off the ship, the first through customs, and the first out through the gates to where a crowd of two thousand well-wishers waited. Elisa would be there, where he had last seen her on the quay, and they would start all over again tonight.

***

“Jonathan Edward Murphy?” The sour-looking man in the ill-fitting pin-striped suit flipped open his badge folder. He had the look of a plain-clothes policeman; Murphy would have guessed his occupation even without the badge. There were two other men flanking him. All three were thick-soled stereotypes right out of a bad Dashiell Hammett story.

“Jonathan Edward Murphy?” the big man in the center asked again.

“Only to my mother. When she’s unhappy with me.” He managed a grin. The men did not smile back. The small fellow nearest the counter nodded to the customs officer who stamped Murphy’s passport and waved him through without bothering to inspect his tan pigskin suitcase or Elisa’s steamer trunk.

“Come with us, please.” The big man in the center ordered curtly.
The Marx brothers in pin-striped suits
, Murphy thought as he was surrounded and led off toward a door marked
Cunard Lines Information
.

“What is this?” Murphy asked, suddenly fearful that something terrible had happened to Elisa. Maybe these men had been sent to tell him.
One to give him the bad news and two to hold him down?

The door of the office closed behind them before the big man answered. “We are quite certain you have been followed.”

Instinctively Murphy put a hand to his taped nose. He had thought the Fritz Kuhn gang had finished with him in New York. “Where’s Elisa?” he asked. A real sense of dread settled upon him.

“Your Mr. Trump has paid quite handsomely for bodyguards for her. You certainly cannot imagine we would have allowed her to come
here
?”

Murphy simply blinked at them, then sighed. These guys had taken his beating on the roof of the Woolworth seriously. He was grateful. “Then she’s okay?” he responded with relief, then frowned. “And you think the heat is still on? I was tailed on the ship?”