Front Page Affair (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Colorful posters advertising travel to exotic destinations filled the plate-glass windows at the Hamburg-American Line's street-level ticket office, just south of Rector Street at 45 Broadway.
Around the World—110 Days—SS
Victoria Luise
—Departures from New York and San Francisco—$650 and Up. Cruise
to Panama with onboard dance instructors trained by Vernon and Irene
Castle
.

Kitty caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass—and that of two men watching her. She swung around. There was no one there except the usual pedestrians hurrying along. She blinked. Had she imagined it? No matter. She took a deep breath and pushed her way inside via a brass revolving door.

Inside, the single attendant behind a row of black-marble-topped counters stifled a yawn. A plaster cherub gazed down from its perch on a ceiling, surveying the luxurious but empty ticket office. An intricate model of an ocean liner stood in a glass case in the center of the spacious waiting area. Kitty recalled hearing somewhere that most of the Line's sailings had been suspended since the previous autumn.

“
Guten Tag
,” she said. “
Ich bin hier, um Herrn Doktor Albert zu treffen
.” She could easily be mistaken for a native speaker.

The attendant looked up, startled by the newcomer. “
Herr Doktor Albert
?”

“
Ja.
”

The woman shook her head and said that there was no one by that name there.

“
Ich heiße Fräulein Wochs
,” Kitty made up a name for herself on the spur of the moment. She asked whether the attendant was certain that Dr. Albert didn't have an office in the building.

The Hamburg-American employee eyed her up and down, taking in the white dress with the bolero jacket, the silk purse, and the expensive hat. “
Hat Frau Held Sie geschickt
?”

Kitty had no idea who Frau Held might be, but she answered yes, that was indeed who had sent her.

The woman picked up her telephone, waited for a moment, then hung up the line.

No one was answering on the other end, she said, but Fraulein Wochs could go upstairs. She would find Dr. Albert in Room 74, on the seventh floor. She apologized for her caution earlier. One could never be too careful these days.

Kitty took the elevator upstairs, and the operator pointed her in the right direction. The hall was eerily quiet for a commercial building on a weekday afternoon.

She knocked on the door to Room 74. No one replied.

She heard voices within and knocked again. Still, no answer.

Kitty twisted the handle and eased the door open.

Someone was being reprimanded in an inside room. “
I
take the train, Hiliken, and you
take a cab
? Do you want Ambassador von Bernstorff to hear about this? You know a full accounting of all expenses will be sent to Washington and then on to Berlin.”

“
Guten Tag
,” Kitty said loudly. The room before her was evidently a front office and contained nothing more than a desk with a chair and a telephone.

A flustered man in a pince-nez peered out from behind a connecting door. “
Kann ich ihnen behilflich sein
?” Could he help her?

Kitty replied that she had come to see Dr. Albert. Like the attendant downstairs, she allowed him to think she was a fellow countrywoman.

The man inquired whether she had made an appointment.

“
Nein
.” Kitty smiled and dropped a curtsy. Like a coquette, she looked at him from below her lashes.

“
Warten Sie, Bitte.
” He took her name and disappeared inside.

While Kitty waited, she peered at a framed map hanging from the wall. Colored in pink, the tiny island of Großbritannien and its dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, parts of East Asia and Africa—covered most of the habitable world. Giant
Russland
and its territories loomed large over the rest of Europe, while
Deutsches Reich
—the proud state of Imperial Germany—only exerted its influence over a tiny sliver of Asia, a small patch of western Africa, and the island of Madagascar.

With a few simple blocks of color, the map summed up yet another cause for Europe's conflict. Germany hungered for more territory to feel on par with its powerful neighbors.

An aristocratic gentleman emerged from the adjoining chamber, bowed, and introduced himself. “
Ich bin Doktor Heinrich Friedrich Albert
.”

He must have been in his midfifties, Kitty thought. His watchful eyes had a slightly downward cast, and his neatly trimmed gray mustache ended at the sides of his lips. “You wanted to see me?” He radiated quiet confidence.

Kitty forced a smile. “
Ja, gerne.
” Now that she had succeeded in meeting him, it was time to come clean and tell him exactly who she was and why she had come to see him. She sensed that he'd be able to detect a liar.

He invited her into his office and took his seat behind a fine mahogany desk. “
Sie heißen Wochs
?” He sounded skeptical.

Behind him, in a stiff, high-collared military uniform, Kaiser Wilhelm II gazed toward the heavens, his waxed mustaches also pointing upward.

“I'm Miss Weeks, actually,” Kitty replied, switching to English. “I work for the
New York Sentinel
.”

“You are American?”

“Yes.”

“You speak my language without any accent.” His face betrayed no emotion.

“I studied in Switzerland for ten years,” Kitty said. “Afterward, I traveled through Europe for several months in the company of a chaperone from Karlsruhe.”

“I see.” He sat back in his chair. “And is Weeks a common name?”

The question puzzled Kitty, but she replied, “It's not an uncommon name, but I wouldn't say that it is too common either.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “So how can I help you? And why the subterfuge?”

Kitty blushed. “I wasn't sure whether they'd let me in… I have a bit of an odd question.” He didn't flinch, so she continued. “I wonder—may I ask whether by any chance the name Hunter Cole means something to you?”

The diplomat sniffed. He removed his hands from the desk, his actions unhurried and measured. He opened his mouth to speak when his secretary knocked on the door and looked in to say that they should leave for his next appointment.

Dr. Albert rose to his feet. “You will excuse me, please.”

“This is very important,” Kitty said. “Could you please give me just one more moment?”

The diplomat checked his pocket watch. “Very well, you can walk with me.” He reassured his secretary: “
Das geht in Ordnung, Hiliken.
”

The secretary glared at Kitty as they rode downstairs in the elevator. They walked out on the street, crossed Broadway, and continued westward on foot.

Kitty struggled to keep pace with Dr. Albert's long strides; other pedestrians swerved to make way for him since the diplomat didn't deviate from his course.

“Who is this Mr. Cole?” he asked once they'd reached a quieter corner and waited for a break in the traffic to cross. “And why do you think he has anything to do with me?”

“Hunter Cole was shot last week at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, sir,” Kitty replied. “One of his friends said that he spoke about knowing a Dr. Albert, which is why we're making inquiries.”

“There must be plenty of Dr. Alberts in this great city,” the German remarked and stepped into the street. Kitty and Hiliken followed.

“I've called every Dr. Albert in the telephone book,” Kitty said, “but none of them knew Mr. Cole. Then my colleague mentioned you, and I thought I would come and check in person. We don't want to print anything inaccurate.”

“That is commendable. Much better than most of the other newspapers. I must assure you though: I have nothing to do with this Hunter Cole. I've never heard of him.”

Kitty told herself she had done her best and she wouldn't learn anything else from a man whose profession it was to manage relationships and keep secrets. She ought to get back to the office and try to patch things up with Miss Busby.

“Allow me to show you something,” the diplomat said. Seagulls circled the blue skies overhead; a flea-bitten dog strolled past them. They had reached the docks.

“Herr Doktor.” A well-built Negro ran over to the diplomat.

“Not now.” Hiliken steered him away.

With almost a thousand miles of waterfront as measured around the piers, New York's ports surpassed those of London, Hamburg, and Liverpool in foreign trade. Kitty had read in
King's Views of New York
, a popular photographic guide to the city, that almost six thousand crafts traversed these waters each day, and three thousand immigrants daily landed at the barge office.

She followed the attaché past sailors and stevedores. Foremen barked orders in all languages and accents that made it hard to detect whether they were speaking English. Men of every color—white, black, and the shades in between—loaded and unloaded massive pallets, hauled carts, or lounged in the shade smoking cigarettes.

Kitty ignored a couple of low whistles. She sensed the eyes staring at her. Even in the diplomat's company and the bright light of a Monday afternoon in summer, she began to feel afraid.

Dr. Albert came to a halt. He stood in the shadow of a vessel taller than a four-story building. “What you should know as a reporter is that there are sixty-six ships of German and Austrian registry valued at over thirty-three million dollars currently being held in American ports. All these craft have been forbidden from sailing since the war broke out last August. My country has a problem: if the United States enters the war on the side of the Allies, not only do all sixty-six vessels automatically become American property, but they can be converted into warships and used against us.”

“But that won't happen, will it?” Kitty said, wondering what grounded ships had to do with Hunter Cole. “We're neutral.”

“For the moment, yes. But pressure to enter the war is mounting.” The diplomat gave a short laugh. “Your press has incited the feelings of the public against Germany. Especially in the wake of the
Lusitania
sinking, they don't shy away from hurling the most foul insults. They call us beasts, baby killers, barbarians.”

He tapped his cane on the ground for emphasis. “None of this is true. Germany has given the world Bach and Beethoven, Kant and Goethe. We are the most civilized nation on earth. Right now, however, we are simply fighting for our survival.”

Kitty looked up at the gigantic black hull looming over them. When she first heard the news about the
Lusitania
sinking, she had tried to imagine the experience of the passengers as their ship went under, but her mind hadn't been able to comprehend it. For her, boarding a boat to cross the Atlantic was an act of faith in itself. Once she took that step and believed that such a huge hunk of metal could cross the ocean, then it seemed perfectly normal to be one of two or three thousand people dining and dancing above water a mile or two deep.

To have that security ripped from you in a mere eighteen minutes, to have the world under your feet tilt by a full ninety degrees, to have the china fall from your hands and chandeliers crash and slide down the floor, to have water fill your lungs—if that didn't constitute terror, she didn't know what did.

“Were you aware that my embassy printed a warning in the papers right before the
Lusitania
sailed?” Dr. Albert asked. “We reminded travelers that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies, and that the zone of war includes the water around the British Isles. We clearly stated that anyone sailing in a British vessel through the war zone does so at his own risk. The
Lusitania
was secretly loaded with ammunition for the British, which is why she sank so quickly after a single torpedo hit.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Kitty said. “I came to you to inquire about Mr. Cole.”

“A third of Americans, a good thirty-two million citizens, are in fact born in other nations,” Dr. Albert went on. “Nearly ten million of those come from Germany and the countries of the Central Powers. Millions more Irish support us because of their grievances against England. The president is correct to espouse neutrality: the United States will be ripped apart along ethnic lines if it takes sides. Your streets will erupt in riots. But your country's desire to remain neutral is matched neither by its trade practices nor its domestic actions.”

“Dr. Albert,” Kitty interrupted. She didn't want to hear any more. All she wanted was to return to the
Sentinel
.

“Still,” he continued, “they're shutting down German papers, closing our churches, harassing our leader, and it is not wise to speak my language in public. A certain politician has even gone so far as to suggest that German reservists will hang from every lamppost in America if we attempt to bring them home to fight on behalf of the Fatherland.” He thought for a moment.

“To return to your question: Have I met this man Hunter Cole? Upon further consideration, I realize that I have. Mr. Cole came to me with a business proposition—as do many others—and I turned it down. I don't believe we met again. If you like, you may check the date book at the office in which Hiliken records each and every meeting I attend, no matter how insignificant.”

“Thank you, Dr. Albert,” Kitty said, astounded by his candor.

“But would I wish you to report even that single encounter in your paper?” he continued. “Never. Because I know that what will happen next is that some scoundrel—not you, I can tell that you mean well—who catches hold of the story will find a way to insinuate that my government had a hand in Mr. Cole's murder. Everything that goes wrong these days”—he fixed Kitty with a steady gaze—“seems to be our fault, laid at our doorstep.”