Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America (23 page)

Chapter 47

S
ome old athletes live forever in their glory days, preferring the memories of their youthful triumphs to the present. Tom was not one of them. But on a single afternoon each year he’d relive the moment seventeen years earlier when as a rookie he won the hundred-yard dash at the annual Police Field Day. Now, though, Captain Tunney would stand at the finish line, the celebrated past champion awarding the gold medal to this year’s young winner.

He had risen on the morning of the meet at the Gravesend Bay track, July 3, looking forward, he’d recall, “to a day of relaxation and pleasure.” He felt he needed it. For months he’d been grappling with mysteries whose solutions remained just beyond his grasp. The ship fires, Koenig, Fay, and now von Rintelen—they all were, he was growing convinced, tied together, strands of the same conspiracy. But the old track star didn’t need to remind himself that he was a long way from the finish line. Or that only winners received gold medals. Nevertheless, “it was a holiday, with another to follow, and I proposed to enjoy it,” he remembered.

He rode a streetcar from his Prospect Park home across Brooklyn to the track, reading the newspaper on the way. A front-page bulletin reported last night’s Capitol bombing. There were few details—the morning edition went to press at 1:00 a.m.—yet he gave the story a professional’s attention. He wondered what group was responsible, and what sort of device had been detonated. But once he was at the park, it was a sunny summer’s day, and there were old friends from precincts around the city, and many other things to talk and think about.

At about noon the runners were warming up on the track, and Tom decided he’d better make his way to the finish line. “Duty calls,” he joked to the circle of detectives he’d been talking to, finishing his beer with one long swallow and excusing himself. He was headed across the grass when an officer found him. “Captain,” the officer announced with urgent excitement, “the PC needs to talk to you. He’s on the phone.”

“Mr. Morgan has been shot by a German,” Commissioner Woods revealed as soon as Tom got on the line. He wanted Tom to get to Glen Cove at once. “Find out the man’s motives and any accomplices he had,” Woods ordered. “Keep in touch with me.” He hung up without another word.

BY THE TIME TOM ARRIVED
at Glen Cove at about three that afternoon, the sleepy little town had shaken itself anxiously awake, and rumors were spreading quickly. Many residents had grown convinced the Gold Coast was under siege.

Sir Cecil Spring-Rice had reported that only hours after the attack on Morgan, he had been motoring to a neighboring estate when a “low, long, dark-colored touring car” filled with six men had tried to abduct him—but Paddison, the Morgan chauffeur at the wheel, had bravely outrun the assailants. A garage owner claimed that “two young Germans” were asking questions about Morgan. Someone else notified the police about a bicyclist “with a German accent.” And F. Worthington Hine, the owner of the Keystone National Powder Company, which manufactured much of the munitions being sent overseas, had spotted two strangers sprinting across the lawn of his estate. When he called to them, they turned and ran. Joined by Donald Bane, the son of the president of the Seaboard National Bank, he hurried to his car and gave chase. He sped down the road, only to lose control at the first sharp turn and crash into the brick wall of a neighbor’s estate.

There was no proof that these incidents were tied to the shooting, or that German agents were involved in them. People might have simply been on edge, willing to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. In the end, no arrests were made.

But by the afternoon dozens of reporters were milling around the entrance of the tiny Glen Cove police station. When they saw Tom, they converged on him in a ravenous pack. At Gravesend, while he searched for an available car, Tom had spotted Detective James Coy from his squad and recruited him to come along. Coy spoke German, and Tom thought an interpreter might come in handy. But now Coy might have been a blocker on a football field as he roughly cleared a path through the scrum of reporters shouting questions at his boss.

Inside, the station house was a hive of noisy activity, officers and civilians scurrying about feverishly. Tom took it all in with a critical eye. It looked as though the country cops were in over their heads.

He was led into the office of Frank McCahill, the constable in charge. Heavyset, with a red drinker’s face, McCahill quickly confirmed Tom’s initial suspicions. Never had anything like this before, the constable confided, a desperate note in his voice. A maid pinches the silver, we can handle that. But an assassination, Germans running all over the place, that’s out of our league.

Tom asked McCahill to tell him all he knew. He spoke evenly, hoping his calm would help settle the constable.

McCahill pulled himself together to give a broadly accurate account of the attack. Then he handed Holt’s one-page statement to Tom.

With some embarrassment, he added that it was already out on the wires; both the Associated Press and United Press had somehow gotten hold of it.

Tom did not think this was a problem. Since it was out there, he told McCahill, there was no telling what would turn up. It might even be a blessing, he suggested. Then Tom focused all his attention on Holt’s words.

He read slowly, as if he was trying to uncover something hidden in each sentence. But all he found, he decided when he reached the end, was an assassin who was smart enough to understand that silence would be impossible. Holt had attempted to gain control of the dialogue, volunteering what he wanted them to focus on. Tom knew he needed to learn the rest of the story.

“I’d like to talk with the prisoner,” he said finally.

THERE WAS NO INTERROGATION ROOM,
and Tom thought commandeering McCahill’s office would be a rudeness that might make any future cooperation with the locals problematic, so the interview took place in a corridor. Two camp stools were placed in the hallway; Holt sat on one, and Tom across from him on the other.

With the thick bandage still wrapped around his head, one eye blackened, the other now swollen shut, and handcuffs on his thin wrists, Holt looked very vulnerable. Tom began by asking the prisoner his name, age, and profession; he hoped to establish a perfunctory rhythm that would keep the conversation moving forward. But once the frail, slight man started talking, Tom realized he was entering a world of madness, and he would have to journey through it patiently before he could discover what lay at the end.

“What did you try to kill Mr. Morgan for?” Tom asked.

“I didn’t intend to kill him,” Holt corrected prissily. “I want to persuade him to use his influence to stop the shipment of ammunition to Europe.”

“Well, you chose a pretty strong means of persuading him, didn’t you?” Tom joked, all deliberate lightness. “What was the dynamite for?”

“I was going to show him what was causing all the trouble—explosives.”

The explanation made no sense at all, so Tom simply let it go. Instead, he tried to learn where Holt had bought the dynamite. But this was territory into which the prisoner adamantly refused to enter. “No amount of questioning would bring an answer,” Tom would later explain.

He decided that Holt had drawn this line because crossing it would reveal his accomplices. If Tom tried to push him across it, he feared, Holt would retreat completely. Besides, Tom had the sticks of dynamite that had been found in Holt’s suitcase and jacket pocket. They could be traced, and the resulting intelligence fed back to the prisoner. If Holt felt the authorities already had most of the story, he’d be more likely to cooperate and fill in the blanks.

For now, Tom offered Holt a compromise, and the prisoner grabbed it. Without any hesitancy, he revealed the names of the shops in New Jersey where he’d purchased the guns and the bullets.

“These facts gave me something to work with,” Tom rejoiced. Earlier, Coy had reached out to Barnitz, and the sergeant had assembled the entire team in the Centre Street offices, waiting for the captain’s instructions. Tom asked McCahill to bring the prisoner back to his cell while he went off to find a phone. It was time to set his squad off on the hunt.

THIS MUST BE MY TENTH
time, Robert Boardman, chief of detectives in Washington, D.C., wearily told himself as he once again picked up the letter signed by “R. Pearce” and forced himself to reread it. The bewildering statement had been delivered earlier that day to newspapers throughout the city, and so far it was the only clue he had in the Capitol bombing.

His boss, police chief Raymond Pullman, had left the night before to go to some sort of field day the New York cops were holding, but Pullman had already called twice—at long-distance rates!—to let him know that the whole department was counting on him to solve the bombing. The implication was clear: if Captain Boardman didn’t make some tangible progress soon, a new chief of detectives would be found who could. But all Boardman could think to do was to reread the damn letter.

When he finished his twelfth run-through without discovering even a hint of a clue, Boardman had had enough. He decided he needed a break; perhaps a short rest would cause something to come bubbling up into his thoughts. Absently, he glanced at what had been left on his desk while he was preoccupied with the Pearce letter. Seeing the statement that had come in over the AP wire from the man accused of attempting to assassinate J. P. Morgan, and with nothing better to do, he started to read.

“If Germany should be able to buy munitions here,” Holt had written, “we would, of course, positively refuse to sell her.”

Quickly, Boardman reached for the Pearce letter. And there it was, just as he remembered it: “We would, of course, not sell to Germans if they could buy here, and since so far we only sold to the Allies, neither side should object if we stopped.”

The two statements had to be written by the same man!

Elated, convinced not only that his job was now safe but that he could be in for a promotion, he telegraphed Chief Pullman in New York: “Ascertain from F. Holt, in custody at Glen Cove, N.Y., for shooting J. P. Morgan, his whereabouts Thursday and Friday, as he may have placed the bomb in the Capitol here Friday night.”

THE INVESTIGATION MOVED FORWARD. TOM
had telephoned his men the serial numbers of the revolvers, and detectives were on their way to New Jersey to question the store clerks. At the same time, another team was trying to find out the sales history of the recovered sticks of dynamite marked “Keystone National Powder Company. 60 per cent. Emporium, Pa.”

And now Woods had just called to tell Tom that the Washington police suspected Holt could have been involved with yesterday’s attack on the Capitol.

Tom needed to formulate his next move. He walked by Holt’s cell and stared at the prisoner lying on his bunk. “The man was getting tired: he had had a hard day, had been considerably battered, had been interviewed, photographed, harried with questions, his ankles and wrists ached, his head throbbed, and his mind, which though alert and active, was none too stable, and showing signs of exhaustion.” Tom decided the moment had come for “a formal examination.”

Erich Muenter being arraigned in court in Glen Cove, Long Island, where he was charged with the shooting of J. P. Morgan Jr.

(© Bettmann/Corbis)

The session convened at once, and this time it was in McCahill’s office, where his assistant, two deputy sheriffs, two patrolmen, a detective from nearby Mineola, and a stenographer joined Tom. But it was still Tom’s show. He asked the questions, and a smirking Holt continued to hold him at bay.

Question.
Where were you born?

Answer.
Somehow my brain is in such a shape that I can’t remember—Wisconsin, I know. I don’t know what it is that affected me—something inside of me—maybe it is the shock I got from that.

Q.
You speak with a German accent. Were you born in Germany, or in any of the European countries—tell me the truth.

A.
Now listen. That has been said before—that I speak with a foreign accent. That is because I speak several languages. I speak French, German, Spanish, and all that. That is the cause of that, you see?

Q.
We will eliminate the trouble of asking you questions if you will tell us the town or city in which you were born.

A.
Yes. Now I’m trying to think. (
A pause.
) I will have to disappoint you.

The thrusts and parries continued while Tom, with masterly control, inch by precious inch, subtly turned the questioning in a new direction. He needed to follow up on the lead that had come from the Washington detective. Could Holt have placed the bomb in the Capitol? Or was he just one of the plotters, part of that conspiracy too? Tom desperately wanted answers. But he knew if he blurted out his questions, Holt, disdainful, deliberately vague, an infuriating smirk on his face, would hold him off. Instead, Tom had to lead Holt slowly along to this destination. The prey could not realize he had stepped into a trap until it had sprung shut.