delusions of grandeur. What a shame that Berlin was actually dealing with him.
*
'Where is your husband?' Peter Whiteside inquired on Wednesday.
Laura, seated on the sofa in her own living room, cocked her head. 'So this is a business call, isn't it, Peter?' she snapped. Whiteside lowered his eyes and set aside the cup of tea she had brewed for him. She folded her arms and glared indignantly at him.
The two tall, sturdy men who had accompanied Whiteside found subjects to amuse them outside of the room. One sat on the front doorstep and Laura assumed he was a guard. The other was in the kitchen, and she knew he was covering the rear access to the house. Whiteside had introduced them as his associates, Andrew McPherson and Mick Fussel. It had not taken inspiration to peg them as M.I. 6, like Peter.
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter Whiteside,' she said sternly. 'Coming into my home, pretending you're glad to see me, asking your idiotic, insinuating questions.'
'I am ashamed, Laura,' he attempted, 'but not for coming here today. I lied to you last time we spoke. And I let you remain in considerable danger.'
'You're trying to change your story now? Is that it?'
'After a fashion, yes.'
'Well, I don't believe you! I don't want to hear your new account of things, Peter. Can you understand that?'
'I can understand how you feel, but you must listen to me.'
'I should never have listened to you!' she snapped, getting hotter.
Fussel appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, and disappeared again.
Now Whiteside was angering. 'No, Laura, perhaps you shouldn't have. But you did. So you made an error, too, did you not? So now you have to listen to the truth. For your sake, for your father's sake, for England's sake-'
'And for the sake of yourself and all those who sail with you.' She glanced at her watch, a black-faced oval Tiffany timepiece with Roman numerals, a wedding gift from Stephen's parents. 'You have five minutes to set the accounts straight, Peter Whiteside,' she said sternly. 'After that, I will thank you to leave my home.'
'I shall need more than five minutes, Laura,' he warned.
She looked back to the watch. 'I'm counting already,' she said.
*
Siegfried was counting, also. Or, taking inventory, actually, in the apartment in Alexandria. His wet suit was in perfect order and packed within a locked suitcase. He had U.S. currency, Mexican currency, a small amount of gold, and some Third Reich currency. He turned his attention to the explosives. He still had enough TNT to sink a ship, but now there would be a change of plans. He hated changes, but sometimes last-minute quirks could not be avoided.
He drew all the window shades in the small apartment, then carefully threw the extra bolt on his door. He loaded his Luger, just in case he was disturbed. He liked the feel of the weapon in his hand. For the Third Reich, he would not hesitate to fire it.
He laid the Luger at the right side of a desk that he had converted to a work space. He then went to his mattress, undid part of the seam, and withdrew one stick of dynamite.
Intent on his work now, he conjured up plans for a second bomb. Four sticks of dynamite should pierce the hull of the Sequoia and do away with Roosevelt. But first there was this meddlesome F.B.I. agent to address.
Siegfried sat down at his desk and worked meticulously. He opened one stick of dynamite and poured out an ounce of TNT. He removed from a paper bag one of two inexpensive watches he had purchased at Grand Central Station in New York. With the help of a knife, he removed the crystal from the watch, then used a pair of tweezers to snap off the minute hand. Next Siegfried laid out a large section of iron pipe, three inches in diameter and seven inches in length. He unfolded a thick black woolen sock, acquired in New Hampshire, the type used by lumberjacks on winter work details, and cut two six-inch lengths of copper wire. Then he withdrew from his pocket a nine-volt radio battery.
Foolish F.B.I. agent, Siegfried thought. Who did he think he was going to stop? The early word on the F.B.I. had been correct, he mused to himself: a bunch of amateurs, led by that incompetent vainglorious effete Hoover.
Siegfried used surgical rubber gloves. He held to his ear the watch with only the hour hand. It was not ticking. Perfect. Not yet time to wind it. He set it aside.
The thought came back: Cochrane. The F.B.I. agent deserved what he was going to get. Fowler did not like the way Cochrane looked at Laura. Laura was his, to do with, to use, and to dispose of at times suiting his benefit and convenience.
Siegfried was angry. He set to work with unusual vengeance.
*
Whiteside held Laura's attention for a full twenty- two minutes. He watched her face as he spoke and he laid before her every bit of evidence. The Birmingham May Day bombing. The circumstantial notion that Fowler could have acquired knowledge of explosives from German agents in America and further could have been the saboteur who sunk the Wolfe and the Adriana.
Whiteside felt he was winning, but toward the conclusion, he saw skepticism growing again. She refolded her arms. And by the end, she was studying the floor, not looking at Peter Whiteside.
Fussel and McPherson were still at their sentry posts. It was five in the afternoon. There was a long silence as Whiteside finished.
'Well?' he asked.
'Every bit as fatuous and disreputable as your previous tale, Peter,' she said. Her tone wasn't hostile now. It was simply disappointed. Before her eyes, Peter Whiteside had shrunk to something small, mean, and mendacious, and petulant.
'Laura, please…”
'I'm sorry, Peter,' she said. 'You'd better go.' Her eyes flashed. 'Now!' She was furious. 'I mean it. I don't want you in my home and I don't want to hear any more of these stories. Please leave before I call the police!'
Whiteside puckered his lips, then let slip a long sigh of resolution. He nodded to Fussel, who was watching, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen.
'If you should change your mind, Laura,' Whiteside tried, 'I-'
'I shall not.'
'I can be reached,' he spoke through her, 'through the British Consulate in Washington. It's on Connecticut Avenue. Ask for me by name. I'm ready to arrange for your protection at any time. Please remember that.'
'Go!' she demanded, not looking at him.
Whiteside gave Fussel a slight nod of the head. And he went, no further word spoken, taking McPherson from the front door with him.
THIRTY-ONE
Bill Cochrane lay on the bed in the house on Twenty- sixth Street. He stared at the ceiling. It was a Sunday night, Fibber McGee was on the radio, but Cochrane wasn't listening. There was something tangibly wrong at Liberty Circle. The Lutheran minister and his English wife. There was something within Stephen Fowler that Cochrane couldn't place, something hard and secretive. And how had an Englishwoman of Laura Fowler's rank landed in a quiet American whistle stop?
Then Cochrane piled on the coincidences that he had been trained to believe did not exist. St. Paul's was in the center of the Bluebirds' triangulation pattern. Siegfried unmistakably had passed through the town. But had he ever left?
Then there was his own attraction to Laura Fowler. Combined with his long pursuit of Siegfried and his worn-down nerves, was he now seeing shadows where there was no sun to cast them?
