Then she made a point of examining a billboard for the new movie, Gone With the Wind .
She looked back a moment later. Maybe he had noticed her, maybe not. He would have to have excellent vision to recognize her from that distance beneath her hat, she told herself. She saw him getting onto a train. Less than thirty seconds later, the conductor standing at the rear signaled up the track to the flagman. The train gave a slight lurch. Charlotte made a split-second decision. She bolted for the rear of the train.
'Hey, lady!' the conductor barked. 'Make up your mind!' He almost had the doors closed when she hopped on.
'Oh, I…' She admitted breathlessly, 'I wasn't sure whether this was my train.'
'Where you going?' he asked.
She had no idea. 'Um… end of the line,' she decided.
'That's Liberty Circle.'
'Can you sell me a ticket?'
The conductor was a white-haired man named Jeffrey, who looked at Charlotte very strangely. She was heavily perfumed and very overdone. Perhaps, he sensed what she was. He sold her a ticket, breaking a five-dollar bill. 'You're very kind,' she said.
Charlotte found a seat in the rear car. She knew Mr. Bolton was three cars up. The train was only five cars. She wondered what to do.
Mr. Bolton solved her problem for her. He did something strange again. Ten minutes into the trip she saw him slowly walking down the aisle of the next car. Then he entered her car. Charlotte borrowed a Newark Star from the man sitting next to her. She buried her face in it as Mr. Bolton walked to the rear and stared out over the tracks. Then he returned up the aisle. What was he doing? Looking to see if he knew anyone? Or just getting a walk?
He left the car. Then a few minutes later, he returned carrying his shopping bag. He sat a few rows in front of her on the opposite side of the aisle. Was he trying to tell her something? There would be no mystery at all where he got off.
The train stopped in Newark and East Orange. Then Madison, New Providence, and Far Hills. Only one stop left. There were only a handful of passengers left. Mr. Bolton was one of them. Charlotte was another.
At Liberty Circle, Mr. Bolton rose. He went to the exit and descended the steps onto the railroad platform. Charlotte followed. Mr. Bolton pulled his coat close to him against the rain, then quickly paced down a flight of steps that led to an underpass. Charlotte pulled her own hat and coat tightly to her body. It was teeming. She followed him.
And suddenly the idiocy of it all struck her. What in hell had propelled her so blindly onward? He had been right when he had slapped her. She was a whore! And he was, like most of her customers, a family man. How dare she follow him to his home! What on earth did she think she was doing?
Charlotte slowed her pace and a wave of desolation was upon her. The underpass was starting to flood and her shoes were being ruined. She knew, because she was looking downward and crying.
Mr. Bolton, any man like Mr. Bolton, was the unattainable for Charlotte. She could only be his whore. She could never be a wife or the mother of such a man's children. She ascended the steps on the other side of the tracks. She walked very slowly, the chase finished. All she wanted now was the next train back to the city.
She stood in the rain. At the far end of the platform was a small building where the tickets had to be sold. She walked in that direction, hoping to find a timetable.
She opened the door and there he was. Standing behind the door, holding his shopping bag, gazing into her eyes from six feet away.
'Charlotte?' he said softly.
She was speechless. She stammered for words.
'I can't believe this,' Mr. Bolton said. He seemed genuinely glad to see her. 'I thought it was you on the train. So I came back.' He reached to her. 'I'm sorry I hit you,' he said. 'I never should have.'
She could hardly believe it. Away from the tensions of the city, he was a different man. So friendly. So relaxed. He took her in his arms.
'My wife is away for a week,' he whispered. 'Come to my house. Come right now. We can make dinner and make love all night.'
It sounded so wonderful. It was almost dark outside now and the rain was torrential.
'Do you have a car?' she asked.
'No need,' he said. 'I live near here. I always walk to the station. There's a short cut.'
'You must get soaked,' she said.
'We'll get toweled off together,' he said. He took her arm. 'Of course,' he added suggestively, 'it will take some time for your clothes to dry out. You won't be getting dressed again right away.'
Charlotte was thrilled. And his wife was away. Maybe the Boltons were separating. Maybe the world wasn't so cruel after all.
He led her down a quiet country lane where there were no houses. Then he motioned to a pathway just off from the road.
'I'm sorry about this part,' he said. 'The path cuts through a few feet of woods. We're behind an old churchyard. But this saves us about a quarter mile of hiking.'
Like a gentleman, he offered her his hand. There was just enough daylight left to see. 'Watch your step, Charlotte,' he said, leading her. 'Don't twist an ankle.'
It hardly seemed like a path at all. The footing was treacherous, filled with twigs and stones. Suddenly her man was very quiet. Seconds earlier it had all been a thrill. But now she felt herself turning against this. This was no path at all. And now he was stopping. Why? He turned. They were far from a road and she saw no church and no churchyard. There was just a man standing before her, his hands on her shoulders. And suddenly she was very cold and very wet. She was very aware of the rain and very frightened. There was something horrible in his eyes…
'Fred…?' she asked. She was aware of his size; His strength. His hands. He was touching her differently now. There was a scream brewing if only she could summon up the courage to-
'You should never have come here, Charlotte,' he said in perfect English. 'I don't know what possessed you to follow me. All the way from Thirty-fourth Street. Foolish bitch!'
The scream was in her throat now but hardly any of it rose beyond her lips. His hands were beneath her jaw, and it felt as if someone were wrapping a steel pipe around her neck.
She scratched at his face but he pulled back a hand, formed a fist, and punched her directly in the face. The pain was excruciating. She felt something warm and wet dripping to her mouth. Her whole head throbbed.
But all that was secondary. No air! He is killing me! The horror of it wrenched hersoul and for a moment she saw her girlhood again. She imagined the family that she would never have, and then a vile vision was upon her of Brooklyn, alcohol, and a thousand ugly, dirty men defiling her.
And this man, she thought as she died, was the ugliest and dirtiest of them all.
*
The orders for arrests were issued above J. Edgar Hoover's signature, though drawn by Frank Lerrick. They were confined to the East: Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and the occasional freight stop in between.
Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation struck in the early morning while their targets slept. In Boston, the owner of a small bakery was taken into custody, as was his wife and younger brother. They protested that they knew nothing about Bund activities. Their warrant said otherwise.
Similarly, a mechanic in Philadelphia, a film importer and distributor in New York, and the owner of a small foreign-language bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut were all arrested for espionage-related activities.
There were others, too. But the only one of significance was arrested two days later when the SS Panama docked at Pier Thirty-four on the Hudson River. He was the chief butcher on the ship and had long been suspected of being a Gestapo courier. His name was Wilhelm Hunsicker.
He was on the deck at the time of his arrest, speaking to a South African who had been born with the name of Fritz Duquaine but who had been through various aliases since.
Duquaine stepped away when he saw the federal agents approach. And when Hunsicker put up a vicious fistfight, Duquaine valiantly offered to call the city police. The city police never received the call, and Duquaine, unrecognized by the agents to whom he had spoken, drifted into the pedestrians on Twelfth Avenue and disappeared.
A team of four special agents drove Hunsicker by armored van from New York to Washington. Cochrane was
