The Bomb Squad Read online

  Caitlin’s pink cheeks reddened, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She tried to push the words out in between the heavy sobs. “I’m pregnant, Harold. We’re going to have a baby.”

  CHAPTER THREE—IT’S ALL GONE

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Max said, hanging up the phone, and signaling thumbs-up to Patrick that the New York City Harbor Patrol was good to take them over to Black Tom Island. “Let’s go, they’re waiting for us.”

  The East River dock was only a few blocks from the station house. Along the way down Grand Street, Patrick elbowed Max. “Hey, Max, you want one?” he said pointing to a pushcart selling Bavarian-style pretzels.

  Max could never resist one of those hard pretzels loaded with chunky-crystals of salt. He nodded, and he handed the old German woman two pennies. Max smiled and said, “Ich danke Ihnen.”

  The woman returned a toothless smile, and said, “Bitte.”

  “You still speak the Deutsch?” asked Patrick, the word sounding more like Dutch in his heavy brogue, as they hurried between the horse-drawn wagons, trying not to step into their steamy messes along the cobblestone street.

  “Well, you don’t just forget it, Patrick, and I get to practice it when I go see my parents up in Washington Heights. They still refuse to speak English in the house.”

  *

  The boat ride aboard the police patrol boat offered Max and Patrick welcome relief from the warm, mid-summer day. Max took the opportunity to admire the outboard motor attached to the stern of the police patrol boat.

  “I see you have the new Evinrude,” he said to one of the boat hands, and pointed to the three-horse-powered outboard motor.

  The older seaman smiled, rubbed the rough stubble growing over his cavernous creviced face, nodded and said, “She’s a beauty.”

  As the boat powered around lower Manhattan and out into the harbor, Patrick pointed to a large German merchant ship tied up to one of the piers along the Jersey shore. “You know I was reading in the paper the other day, that it’s been nearly two years since that ship has been in dock.”

  Max nodded. “That’s the Prinz Eitel Friedrich. It was a few days after war was declared in Europe when she arrived here from the Bahamas. There are quite a few German vessels still stuck in dock, unable to sail back in fear of being sunk by the British Navy. They’ve been granted safe-haven by Washington.”

  “Have you been to Hoboken lately? There are so many Germans you would think you’re in the Fatherland,” Patrick said.

  Max nodded and exhaled. He had known all about the thousands of stranded Germans in the cities along the New Jersey side of the river. “My uncle Eugen is one of them,” Max said.

  “Seriously?”

  “He’s a true patriot of the Fatherland, for sure. My parents invited him for Sunday dinner a few times,” Max said, shaking his head and pursing his lips before continuing. “He and my father got into huge arguments. He insists we should be loyal to the country of our birth.”

  “And what does your father say?”

  “He says we live in America now and owe no allegiance to those anti-Semites. Do you know, Patrick, that for a Jewish man to marry in Germany, he must purchase an expensive registration certificate to prove he was in a respectable profession? And on top of that, they tax Jews in certain occupations that compete with the gentiles. They didn’t want us, so we left, as did thousands of fellow—” Max stopped mid-sentence as a sharp smell of burned wood combined with an acrid taste of explosives attacked his senses. He rubbed his watery eyes and realized that they were approaching the site of the blast.

  “Will you look at that,” Patrick said, pointing.

  Max followed the direction Patrick’s outstretched arm was pointed in and saw the Statue of Liberty poised in front of towering plumes of black smoke that swirled and merged into what looked like low hanging storm-clouds, even though the sky beyond the blast site was a smokeless, brilliant blue.

  As the harbor patrol boat made its way around the Liberty Island, Black Tom Island came into full view. Max pulled a hanky from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth.

  “It’s all gone,” Patrick said, searching his pockets for his hanky.

  What was once a sturdy shipyard, big enough to accommodate large merchant ships, storage facilities, and warehouses, was now an eerie array of oversized splinters of shattered and still smoldering boards, seemingly artfully arranged in random geometric patterns that grew out of the blackish, oily waters of the harbor.

  The seaman summoned Max and Patrick port-side and said, “There’s no place to tie up, but I’ll get as close as I can. You’re going to have to jump onto whatever’s left of the dock.”

  Max and Patrick climbed to the narrow edge of the boat’s side deck as the boat captain reversed the engine and shifted it to idle. Once they were close, both men leaped to the tiny remaining portion of the dock and landed on their feet. Max turned and shouted, “Pick us up in two hours. We’ll wait for you here.”

  The boat captain acknowledged Max with a wave and then sped away.

  CHAPTER FOUR—GERMAN SPIES

  Harold reached the Dakota on One West Seventy-second Street, ran through the lobby, offering a quick, “How you doing, Jack?” to the doorman, and bounded up the staircase. He had managed to open the door to his fifth-floor apartment and glance to the west-facing windows, just moments before the sunset.

  “Harold, please come sit. We were just about to start without you,” his wife Sophie said, standing before the lit candles on the beautifully arranged table-setting for the Shabbat dinner.

  “Hurry, Papa,” his youngest boy Benjamin added.

  Harold gave Benjamin a kiss on his cheek and turned to kiss his middle child, Walter. As Sophie covered her head with a white lace scarf and placed her palms upon her eyes and began the prayer over the candles, Harold greeted his eldest, Emma with a gentle kiss, and sat himself at the head of the table.

  When Sophie finished the prayer, Harold reached for the bread knife and handed it to Walter. “Why don’t you say the motzi.”

  Walter frowned and said, “Do I have to, Papa?”

  “In two months, you’re going to be a Bar Mitzvah and you must recite it in front of three-hundred people, including your grandfather. It’s a good idea to practice.”

  Walter exhaled, grabbed the loaf of challah bread, and said the Hebrew prayer, pausing and stumbling a bit as he searched for several of the words.

  “Nicely done,” his mother said.

  Harold looked at his wife with a tilt of his head and open palms, then turned back to his son and said, “Think of it as a song, Walter, that will help you memorize it.”

  Later that night, as his wife Sophie slept soundly, Harold thought about when he first learned about his father’s plan to blow up Black Tom Island.

  Black Tom Island was a major munitions depot for the US government. Until early in the previous year, while the United States was neutral in the war, they permitted the sales of arms and explosives to any foreign government. This liberal policy ended after the British Royal Navy installed a sea blockade against its wartime enemy Germany, preventing future arms deliveries. But those weapons were finding their way into the hands of the Central Powers’ enemies like Russia, and that needed to be stopped.

  The planning for the Black Tom Island attack began on a Sunday morning in early May at his father’s Upper Eastside townhome. As the motorcar moved swiftly along the avenue, Harold took a moment to admire the colorful assortments of blooming tulips populating the flower beds that divided the north and southbound lanes. When it reached the corner of Park Avenue and Seventy-second Street, Harold saw Samson, father’s large Negro butler, filling the archway entrance, waiting for him.

  Samson was a man whose legendary biblical name matched his impressive physique. Well over six feet tall, and as muscular as Harold imagined the hero of his childhood stories to be, Samson became a fixture in the Schwartz’s household shortly after their arrival in America. br />
  Before that, his father, Karl Schwartz, served in the German Monarchy as a key advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm. Harold’s first significant memory as a child, was when his father took him on a visit to the court of the Kaiser Wilhelm when he was six years old. The magnificence of the inside of a palace forever etched into Harold’s heart an unflinching devotion to the king. He felt that nothing in life could be more noble than being a part of the royal court. That, along with his father’s close friendship with the Kaiser, encouraged Harold to worship the leader of the German people as a God-like figure.

  But after pressure to remove Jews from the court, Karl and his mother Maria emigrated from the country of their birth to America.

  The Kaiser had a true friendship with Karl and was upset to see him go. He promised Karl that he would offer him exclusive business opportunities in the New World.

  Once the family arrived in America, it didn’t take long for Karl to establish a lucrative arms business, selling advanced German military weapons to governments that could afford them. These included several South American countries who became enamored with the Flammenwerfer—a German flamethrower that attached to a backpack that a soldier could easily maneuver. When the war broke out, it became the first flamethrower ever to be used in combat.

  It wasn’t long before Karl could purchase a magnificent and expensive townhome on Park Avenue.

  The Kaiser’s kindness to the family continued years after his family immigrated to America. When Harold turned twenty-one, he applied to medical school at the prestigious Charité in Berlin. American citizens had almost no chance of being admitted. But of course, with a written recommendation from the Kaiser himself, he had no problem gaining admission.

  *

  “Good morning, Samson,” Harold said, as he exited the motorcar and walked through the grand entrance of the home.

  “Good morning, sir, it’s good to see you,” Samson said clasping his large hand around Harold’s. “Your father is waiting for you in his office.”

  Harold walked through the marble foyer and saw his mother stepping lively down the carpeted staircase from the upper floor. “Harold, come give your mother a kiss,” she said.

  Even at sixty-five years old, his mother, Maria, was still a stunning woman, looking nowhere near her age. She wore a long silk blue housecoat embroidered with poppy-red flowers which highlighted her slender physique. Her brown hair was pulled back and pinned into a bun. Harold marveled at her translucent porcelain-like skin that barely showed any wrinkles or aging.

  Harold embraced her and kissed her on each cheek as was their customary greeting.

  “How are my grandchildren?”

  “They’re fine, Mama.”

  “And how’s Sophie?”

  “She’s fine too. How are you?”

  She flexed her fingers open and closed and said, “Except for a little arthritis, I’m good. Go to your father. He’s eager to see you.”

  Samson held open the closet door in the foyer as Harold slipped in between several winter coats hanging as camouflage to a secret doorway. He pressed against a wooden panel that responded by springing open. A lone lamp flickered at the bottom of the narrow staircase, providing just enough light to find his way down the twenty steps to the basement.

  At the bottom of the narrow staircase stood a thick oak door. Harold knocked upon it in the tradition of a schulkopfer, a Yiddish term meaning synagogue knocker, who was a person who walked door to door knocking as a call for the Jewish community to make their way to the local synagogue for prayers. In their hometown, the schulkopfer would knock several times in a certain pattern, such as knock—pause—knock—knock—pause—knock.

  Harold tapped out the pattern-of-the-month with his knuckles, and a moment later, a small opening in the door slid open, and an eyeball peered out. The panel slid shut and he heard the sounds of the tumblers coming from a series of locks. The door opened, and Harold stepped inside.

  “Ah, Harold, come,” his father said waving his hand.

  Harold entered as two men rose.

  “Let me introduce you. This is Kurt Janke and Lothar Witzke. They have just arrived from Germany.”

  Harold shook the men’s hands and looked at his father. “What’s this all about?”

  That was when Harold learned of the two-million pounds of small arms and artillery ammunition being stored at the Black Tom Island depot in freight cars and on barges, including over one-hundred thousand pounds of TNT waiting to be shipped to Russia.

  “We can’t allow this shipment of weapons to leave port, Harold. That’s why I want you to help coordinate the attack by giving these men the support required to carry it through,” his father said, and took a puff on his cigar.

  Harold looked at his father. The decades of smoking cigars had not only yellowed his teeth but also the bushy mustache covering his upper lip, yet he was still a powerful figure who Harold had never mustered the courage to say no to.

  *

  Restless for what was yet to come, Harold got out of bed, careful not to wake Sophie, and walked over to the bedroom window facing the park, and recalled the meeting the previous Sunday night with Kurt and Lothar.

  They had met in the park underneath a pedestrian bridge that connected a pair of rocky outcroppings.

  “Hello, Doctor, it’s good to see you again,” said Kurt.

  Harold raised his finger to his lips and whispered, “Keep your voices down.”

  Lothar looked over Harold’s shoulder before saying, “It’s going down tomorrow—at midnight.”

  “Excellent,” Harold said, waved a finger, and added, “you’ll both need to disappear for a while. Get yourselves lost on the other side of the river and especially do not contact me. I’ll reach out to you when I need to.”

  Kurt and Lothar nodded, shook Harold’s hand and disappeared into the darkness of Central Park.

  Harold heard the clock in the living room strike the bells showing the midnight hour. He took a breath. Then it happened. He didn’t think he would feel the explosion, but the windows rattled and the chandelier hanging in the dining room gently swayed, and he knew the deed was done.

  CHAPTER FIVE—THE HARMONIE CLUB

  “How can you say we had a good year? We came in last place,” said Murray Goodman, Max’s friend and bowling teammate.

  “I know, but we finished strong. Don’t forget it was my first year of bowling. It took me a while to get the hang of it.”

  Murray patted Max on his shoulder and raised his hand, summoning the waiter over. “You want one more?”

  Max nodded. “Sure, why not?”

  “Hey, Irving, another round, please.”

  The men were sitting in the lounge of the Harmonie Club, a private social club established in 1852 for German Jews who could not join the other social clubs in the city. Situated on Four East Sixtieth Street, the club was designed by the illustrious architect, Stanford White.

  Along with elegant facilities for social gatherings, the club also featured bowling lanes in the basement. The Harmonie Club Bowling League was a popular pastime, and each year teams were formed and competed for the prestigious title of Club Champion.

  “We need to practice, Max. I’ve reserved an hour of lane-time tomorrow night,” Murray said, blowing a healthy stream of cigar smoke into the coffered wood ceiling where it mingled with the mixture of other cigar smoke from the dozens of men lounging nearby.

  Max shook his head and said, “I can’t tomorrow. I’m bogged down with this investigation. We’re still trying to track down leads to the Black Tom Island explosion.”

  Murray leaned back in the soft upholstery and said, “Right, how’s that going? I heard windows were blown out all over the city from the blast.”

  Max exhaled a long stream of cigar smoke and shook his head. “I’ve never seen such devastation. Besides the dock, railway and buildings on the island being destroyed, shrapnel lodged itself into the Statue of Liberty. I heard that damage was reported as far as the Jersey
Journal’s clock tower, which is over a mile away. They moved immigrants at Ellis Island to lower Manhattan because the hospital had nearly every window shattered. They’re estimating the damage will be over twenty-million dollars.”

  “Is it true what I heard—that Germans did this?”

  Max wagged his finger and said, “It’s an active investigation. You know I can’t discuss it, Murray.”

  Just then, an employee of the club, wearing a blood-red uniform trimmed in black ribbon, walked through the lounge, tapping and repeating three notes on a miniature brass xylophone with a tiny hammer, signaling that the night’s gala was about to begin.

  Each September, as summer ended and fall began, the Harmonie Club honored the Man of the Year with a special event. This year’s honoree was the esteemed Dr. Harold Schwartz, Administrator of Ellis Island Hospital.

  As Max and Murray made their way along with the crowd into the ballroom, they passed a large poster resting on a wooden easel that advertised the evening’s program. Murray pointed to it and said, “You know the doctor is quite a good bowler. His team won the championship last year.”

  “I remember, Murray. In fact, the last time we bowled against them, they beat us by one-hundred pins.”

  Murray nodded. “That was embarrassing.”

  Large round tables, covered with white tablecloths, and sporting place-settings for the dinner service, filled the grand ballroom of the Harmonie Club. Max and Murray found a spot close to the front, near the dais where the man of the year, Dr. Schwartz, past honorees, and the officers of the club were seated.

  “You think it’s okay to sit here?” Murray asked, looking about.

  Max shrugged. “Why not, I don’t see any place-cards with table assignments?”

  Max sat down, unrolled the cloth napkin and draped it across his lap. He scanned the faces at the table and finished at an elderly man with a mustache that connected to bushy sideburns, seated to his right.