The Thief (Isaac Bell 5) - Page 41
“And who are they?”
“They live at the consulate.”
Bell found himself holding his breath. “Which consulate?”
“The German consulate.”
Isaac Bell and Harry Warren walked quickly to the Third Avenue El and rode downtown to the tip of lower Manhattan. They got off at South Ferry and strolled up Broadway. Deep in conversation as they passed the handsome sixteen-story Bowling Green Office Building, they barely glanced at the Hellenic Renaissance granite, white brick, and terra-cotta facade.
Of the thirteen bays of windows from ground floor to roof, all but two were dark this late at night. The White Star and American Line shippers, the naval architects, bankers, and lawyers who conducted business at the prestigious address were home in their beds. Of the lights still burning, both were on the ninth floor, which housed the offices of the German consul general.
“Cover the place,” Isaac Bell ordered. “Try to pick up something more.”
18
“I heard that the agency had a protection contract with the German consul general of New York City back in ’02,” said Isaac Bell, when he strode into Joseph Van Dorn’s walnut-paneled Washington, D.C., headquarters office in the Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House. The boss spent the majority of his time in Washington these days drumming up business from the Justice Department, Congress, and the Navy, and was intimate with the workings of the capital city.
Van Dorn laughed heartily. “We did indeed, and I’ll never forget it.”
Mirth reddened his face — a grand moon of an affair wreathed in robust red whiskers and splendid burnsides and topped by a shining bald crown — and his hooded eyes almost disappeared as their lid
s crinkled around them. He was a large, powerfully built man. His affable manner and ready laughter disguised ambition, ferocious intelligence, and an unyielding love of justice that made him the scourge of criminals.
“Prince Henry of Prussia was touring the country,” Van Dorn explained in a rich voice softened by the faintest of Irish accents. “After all the assassinations in Europe, who knew if some anarchist or homicidal crank might take a potshot at him? The Germans had battalions of their own agents, of course, plus the Secret Service on loan from the Treasury Department, but they hired us, along with local cops, rail dicks to guard his trains, and some of the lesser private agencies. Turned into a regular Chinese fire drill: thirteen varieties of detectives were covering Henry, most blissfully unaware of one another’s identity. He was lucky to get home alive before some sorry Pinkerton shot him by mistake.”
“What did you mean the Germans’ ‘own agents’?”
“Foreign consulates import their secret police to shadow their countrymen who live or travel in America, keeping an eye on criminals and anarchists who might go back to Europe and make trouble.”
Isaac Bell said, “I understand that German consulates also field spies disguised as legitimate military and commercial attachés.”
“As do the British, French, Austrians, Italians, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Why did you ask about the contract?”
“Do they also have dealings with local criminals?”
“Ah, that’s where you’re headed… I wouldn’t read a lot into ‘dealings with local criminals.’ The consuls and vice-consuls stationed in the field are not what the Germans call hoffähig—gents, to the manner born — compared to the aristo diplomats in the Washington embassies. Consuls and vice-consuls mix it up with businessmen and cops and all sorts of troublemakers that traveling foreigners run into.”
Bell seemed to change the subject. “I received several cables from Art Curtis.”
Van Dorn frowned. “At your instigation, Curtis is pestering me to authorize hefty expenditures for information about the inner workings of Krieg Rüstungswerk GmbH. Information about something that no one has seen fit to inform me of yet,” Van Dorn added tartly. “Leaving the proprietor of this detective agency to speculate whether he will be the last to know what’s going on, and whether it has anything to do with that fire on the Mauretania, or that shootout on Pier 54, or the rumor that two or three people fell off the ship you happened to be sailing in, Isaac.”
“Art Curtis’s information is gold,” said Bell. “Pure gold. He turned up a disgruntled Krieg employee, a company executive, who claims that in New York and Los Angeles Krieg pays commissions to German consulate staff to act as unofficial sales representatives.”
“Gold?” Van Dorn scoffed. “Foreign consuls are supposed to grease the wheels of commerce. That’s their main job. Trade. Introductions. Selling.”
“Except these consular staff don’t sell anything. Nor do they arrange introductions. Nor do they court American customers. But they get paid commissions as if they do. In other words, Krieg is paying German consuls under the table. Don’t you wonder what kind of favors consulate staff grant in return?”
Isaac Bell was gratified to see that the boss had stopped laughing. In fact, he wasn’t even smiling. But his eyes were on fire, like a grizzly sniffing prey.
“That is interesting.”
“Art Curtis is the best,” said Bell. “I don’t know another man who could get so deep inside so quickly. But suborning a highly placed informant costs a lot of money. In other words, this executive Art turned up is accustomed to first-class remuneration.”
Van Dorn stood up from his desk and lumbered to the windows, where his second-floor corner office let him view people approaching the Willard’s front and side entrances. Then he wandered to the interior wall and inspected the reception room through a peephole drilled through the eye of Ben Franklin, whose portrait greeted visitors to the detective agency.
Bell sat still as ice, patient and silent.
At last, the boss faced him inquiringly. “Is this why you traveled all the way to Washington instead of telephoning me long-distance?”
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