Garden of Beasts

variation of Morse code, called continental code, which was used when telegraphing messages to and within Europe.
    Once the ship left port he kept to himself, observed and listened and was the perfect A-man. But when the Manhattan was at sea, he’d been unable to communicate with Germany; the signal of his portable wireless was too weak. The ship itself had a powerful radiogram system, of course, as well as short- and long-wave wireless, but he could hardly transmit his message those ways; a crew radio operator would be involved, and it was vital that nobody heard or saw what he had to say.
    Heinsler now glanced out the porthole at the gray strip of Germany. Yes, he believed he was close enough to shore to transmit. He stepped into his minuscule cabin and retrieved the Allocchio Bacchini wireless-telegraph set from under his cot. Then he started toward the stairs that would take him to the highest deck, where he hoped the puny signal would make it to shore.
    As he walked down the narrow corridor, he mentally reviewed his message once again. One thing he regretted was that, although he wanted to include his name and affiliation, he couldn’t do so. Even though Hitler privately admired what the German-American Bund was doing, the group was so rabidly—and loudly—anti-Semitic that the Führer had been forced to publicly disavow it. Heinsler’s words would be ignored if he included any reference to the American group.
    And this particular message could most certainly not be ignored.
    For the Obersturmführer-SS, Hamburg: I am a devoted National Socialist. Have overheard that a man with a Russian connection intends to cause some damage at high levels in Berlin in the next few days. Have not learned his identity yet but will continue to look into this matter and hope to send that information soon.
    •   •   •
    He was alive when he sparred.
    There was no feeling like this. Dancing in the snug leather shoes, muscles warm, skin both cool from sweat and hot from blood, the dynamo hum of your body in constant motion. The pain too. Paul Schumann believed you could learn a lot from pain. That really was the whole point of it, after all.
    But mostly he liked sparring because, like boxing itself, success or failure rested solely on his own broad and slightly scarred shoulders and was due to his deft feet and powerful hands and his mind. In boxing, it’s only you against the other guy, no teammates. If you get beat, it’s because he’s better than you. Plain and simple. And the credit’s yours if you win—because you did the jump rope, you laid off the booze and cigarettes, you thought for hours and hours and hours about how to get under his guard, about what his weaknesses were. There’s luck at Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium. But there’s no luck in the boxing ring.
    He was now dancing over the ring that had been set up on the main deck of the Manhattan; the whole ship had been turned into a floating gymnasium for training. One of the Olympic boxers had seen him working out at the punching bag last night and asked if he wanted to do some sparring this morning before the ship docked. Paul had immediately agreed.
    He now dodged a few left jabs and connected with his signature right, drawing a surprised blink from his opponent. Then Paul took a hard blow to the gut before getting his guard up again. He was a little stiff at first—he hadn’t been in a ring for a while—but he’d had this smart, young sports doctor on board, a fellow named Joel Koslow, look him over and tell him he could go head-to-head with a boxer half his age. “I’d keep it to two or three rounds, though,” the doc had added with a smile. “These youngsters’re strong. They pack a wallop.”
    Which was sure true. But Paul didn’t mind. The harder the workout the better, in fact, because—like the shadow-boxing and jump rope he’d done every day on board—this session was helping him stay in shape for what lay ahead in Berlin.
    Paul sparred two or three times a week. He was in some demand as a sparring partner even though he was forty-one, because he was a walking lesson book of boxing techniques. He’d spar anywhere, in Brooklyn gyms, in outdoor rings at Coney Island, even in serious venues. Damon Runyon was one of the founders of the Twentieth Century Sporting Club—along with the legendary promoter Mike Jacobs and a few other newspapermen—and he’d gotten Paul into New York’s Hippodrome itself to work out. Once or