The Hunt

“You’re not going to believe it,” Rudman said when they met for dinner. He was brimming with excitement. “I was just offered chief of The New York Times bureau here.”

“You’re kidding! Will you take it?”

“Take it! Hell, it’s the plum job in Europe. Goebbels has been threatening to lift my visa, now I’ll be too important for the Nazis to throw out.”

“Be careful, buddy,” Keegan said, and he was obviously concerned. “These bastards’ll kill you.”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Rudman said with a grin.

He went off to the States for a month of indoctrination and returned looking fit with the latest news and gossip from home. He was full of enthusiasm for Roosevelt and the future of America and had glowing reports on the Broadway season, babbling on about the new dancer, Fred Astaire, the star of Cole Porter’s new show; about James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizons, which he had read on the boat over; and Andre Mairaux’s Man’s Fate, which he read on the way back; about a movie called King Kong, about an ape that attacks the Empire State Building; and an animated cartoon based on the “Three Little Pigs.” He had also fallen madly in love with Greta Garbo after seeing her in two movies. For the first time since leaving, Keegan felt a tinge of homesickness. But the excitement of the coming racing season at Longchamp and Rudman’s return soon dispelled that. His horse, Rave On, was looking good and timing well. Rudman would not start the new job until midsummer, so they would have two months to pal around.

“Ever feel like going home for good?” Keegan asked.

“1 can’t, my future’s here,” Rudman said. “You know what my editor at the Times said? He said I have a keener perception of the political dynamics of Europe than any other reporter alive.”

“Good. Can we have that for dinner?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Well, hell, you ought to. You have politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You’ve let your social life go to hell.”

“I see things keep getting worse here. Now they’re boycotting Jewish stores,” said Rudman. “Did you know Jews have been banned from business? Even from schools”

“It’s no secret, they brag about what they’re doing every day in that Nazi rag, The People’s Observer.

“Know what I heard today that they’re not bragging about?”

“Hitler’s a transvestite,” Keegan said.

“Probably, but that’s not it. I hear they built a prison camp outside Munich for political prisoners and they’re building twenty more—twenty—just for Jews. I got a source who says they’ve arrested more than a hundred thousand people and shipped them to these camps without a trial or anything. They’re starving prisoners, beating them.”

“You better make sure about that,” Keegan advised. “Seeing’s believing.”

“They don’t conduct tours for the press.”

“I’m just saying you’ve got great credibility. Don’t give Goebbels a chance to shoot you down.”

“What’s to doubt anyway? We’re talking about a whole country that doesn’t have a moral bone in its collective body. It isn’t politics, anymore. It’s gone beyond that. I’m sure you’re sick of all this anyway, you’ve been living with it every day. What’s been happening with you? Still mooning over that singer?”

“Who says I’m mooning over anybody?” Keegan demanded.

“C’mon, Kee, you’ve been dragging your tail for a year over that girl. Hell, she’s probably got a beau, maybe she’s even married by now.”

“She’s not married and she doesn’t have a beau,” he said, mocking Rudman’s use of the antiquated term.

“So—you have been keeping track of her?”

“I heard it somewhere.”

“Uh huh.”

“Get off the singer, okay?”

“Sure. I just never saw you knuckle under like this before.”

“Knuckle under?”

“You send her flowers for a week, she brushes you off, you give up.”

“I didn’t give up.”

“What would you call it?”

“I lost interest.”

“Francis, this is your old pal, remember? You act like a lovesick drugstore cowboy.”

“Damn it!”

“Okay, okay. But if it were me and I was swooning over this dame . .

“She’s not a dame—and drop it!”

“Hey, it’s dropped.” They sat in silence for a moment, then Bert said, “But, you know, if she started getting the