The lieutenant saluted smartly and the Sailors returned it. There were no other 'crazies' that evening.
*
This time Siegfried had wound the watch.
The Sequoia was one mile off the coast of Newport News on its journey to Augusta when the two copper wires met and the electrical charge from the dry cell detonated four sticks of black dynamite.
The Sequoia convulsed with the explosion. And while Siegfried had been correct in his estimate that he did not have enough dynamite to destroy the entire ship, he had also been correct that he had enough explosive material to do the intended job. Even the legendary steel and seaworthiness of the Bath ship works of Maine were not enough for four sticks of TNT.
Everything in the President's bedchamber was destroyed. The dynamite blew the metal from the hull of the ship through the outer wall, then through the inner walls of the presidential cabins. A hole twenty feet wide from the waterline upward was gutted into the vessel, those near the explosion were practically deafened, and amid the smoke and shards of metal, the first seamen to make their way to President and Mrs. Roosevelt's suite found nothing but destruction, smoke, and ruin.
U.S. Navy PT 336, the escort vessel to the rear of The Sequoia, threw its throttle forward and was first to reach the scene of the catastrophe. What they saw when they shone their floodlights on the yacht was a pleasure craft that was remarkable in that it was still afloat. The hull was warped upward to a point above the waterline.
Several blackened crew members were picking through the rubble. Some sailors aboard The Sequoia wept openly, this being the last place that President Roosevelt had been seen alive. Others stood in a near-catatonic state, witnesses to this great disaster, unable to move or react: and, for that matter, unable to comprehend:
November 27, 1939. Roosevelt, most assuredly, was dead.
PART SEVEN
1939
FORTY- FOUR
The newspapers called the explosion aboard The Sequoia a 'horrible accident,' but no actual explanation was ever attributed. The Hearst newspapers, which had never in Roosevelt's political lifetime been members of his fan club, hinted broadly at some evil, foreign conspiracy, and the tabloids likened the blast to the one which sunk the United States warship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. But those with a long memory recalled that no evidence was ever offered as to culpability in that blast, either.
At the F.B.I. in Washington, stronger words than 'conspiracy' were used. To the American public, however, jittery enough over the course of world events, nothing was ever stated to confirm that a German spy had planted a bomb against the vacationing President's yacht. The body of Stephen Fowler was returned to Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, for burial in the family churchyard. The official cause of death was listed as a motor vehicle accident.
In the days that followed, as Peter Whiteside recovered in an Alexandria hospital, Dick Wheeler was kept under arrest at an army guardhouse at Fort Meade. This, for the safety of everyone as well as for the convenience of his interrogators from the F.B.I., many of whom he knew personally.
To them, and to the world at large, Dick Wheeler had little to say. A week passed. Then he said that under certain conditions he would speak to Bill Cochrane-and him in only one session. It was Frank Lerrick who conveyed this to Cochrane. The latter said he was getting out of town anyway. Why not invest an afternoon in it? Lerrick asked Cochrane to keep his F.B.I. shield for a few days into the next month.
*
FortMeade was a sorry place on a gray December morning, made even more somber by the presence of truckloads of quaking new Army recruits. Cochrane drove there alone. Along the way, he was reminded of the trip to see Mauer, and he could only hope that the German, reunited with his family and now in Toronto, could find some peace.
Cochrane used his F.B.I. identification at the gates. Two MP's in army khaki and white helmets saluted him smartly after checking his name off a list. His visit was more official than even he had thought. The Bureau was still playing games.
'The guardhouse is along that route, sir,' one of the MP's told him, giving a nod to an asphalt driveway which veered to the left-the opposite direction of the bomb disposal unit. But Cochrane could have picked out the guardhouse with his eyes closed. It was a big, dark granite bunker dating from the grimmest days of the WPA, and when his car reached it there was another team of sentries. The Hudson was to remain outside the inner fence, but he was cleared for admission.
Cochrane found Dick Wheeler on a cot in a six-by-twelve foot cell. The walls were concrete on two sides and barred on the other two. Wheeler was hunched into a corner, a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand, staring off into the distant space across his tiny cell.
'Hello, Dick,' Cochrane said.
Wheeler turned and a smile flashed. Cochrane had a sense of visiting a terminally ill friend in a hospital. There was an ice bag by the cot and Cochrane could see by the large bruise across the side of Wheeler's forehead that Burns and Allen had performed a bit of their act.
A sergeant unlocked the cell. Wheeler stood as Cochrane was admitted. 'I'm sorry I can't offer you more gracious surroundings,' Wheeler began. 'We're not very long on comfort here.'
Cochrane sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair and Wheeler sank back onto the bed. 'They even took my pipe. They had some insane idea that I might fashion a shiv out of it. Imagine.'
A hundred reactions hit Cochrane at once. First, there were the charges against Wheeler. Second, there was the depth to which Bureau activities had been compromised since 1936. Cochrane envisioned the days when he had fled Munich with a Luger tucked into his coat and a Gestapo shield in a sweat-soaked palm. His anger flared. Then, just as quickly, there was little point in rage. Before him was Dick Wheeler. Big Dick. The Bear. And they used to throw junction boxes and catch crooks together in Kansas City.
'They told me you wanted to see me,' Cochrane said. 'Instead of a lawyer.'
'Oh, I'll see a lawyer eventually,' Wheeler answered. 'But I'd rather see a friendly face right now.' Cochrane realized that he must have remained impassive, because, Wheeler studied him for a moment and quickly added, 'You are a friendly face, aren't you?'
'As friendly as you're going to be seeing,' Cochrane allowed.
Wheeler laughed very slightly and seemed to be looking for his pipe out of force of habit, then stopped when he remembered. Cochrane smiled very uneasily.
'They'-meaning the inquisitors who had spent two days 'talking' to him-'seem to think I'm some sort of Nazi,' Wheeler explained. 'I was hoping maybe you would explain things to them.'
'Only if you explain them to me first.'
'You don't understand?' Wheeler was surprised. Cochrane gave a mild shake of the head.
'Doesn't anyone in this country see what's coming?' Wheeler snapped angrily. 'We're about to embark on a second world war. And you know what? We're on the wrong side!'
Thereupon Wheeler launched an account of himself and his politics, harking all the way back, Cochrane suddenly realized, to an impoverished boyhood in the Ozark hills of rural Missouri. The real enemy of America, Wheeler maintained, was the subversion of what he called 'America's national spirit.'
'This is a God-fearing, white Protestant country,' Wheeler explained without remorse or hesitation. 'And may it always remain so!'
