With the American visa Harry had gotten from his uncle, he went right through customs and immigration, no one giving him a hard time, no one to bribe. He had money and a place to live and nothing to declare. He exchanged his Swiss francs for American dollars at a bank on Fifth Avenue. Harry walked the streets, looking up at the tall buildings, amazed by the size of New York, almost overwhelming. He had seen shots of it in movies, but nothing like the impact of being there.
He stopped at a bookstore and bought an English–German dictionary and a map of the city. He walked to Grand Central Station at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Bought a one-way fare to Detroit, a fourteen-hour trip with all the stops, arriving on September 4, 1945 at 8:17 in the morning.
Harry took a taxi to his uncle’s house on Elmhurst, between Dexter and Linwood, the directions said, riding in morning traffic on Woodward Avenue, four lanes of automobiles in both directions, seeing Detroit for the first time, the city waking up, alive. It was small compared to New York, but still larger and more modern than the European cities he’d been to.
It was a nice-looking house, two-storey brick with a big porch in front and a green lawn, in a pretty neighborhood with a lot of trees. Harry was excited. He hadn’t seen his aunt and uncle since they left Munich in 1940. He rang the buzzer, waited, the door opened, his aunt looked at him and yelled.
“Sam…”
Harry stepped into the foyer, Esther hugging him, hearing Sam’s voice in another room. “What is it?” And then Sam appearing, coming down the hall toward them.
“My God, am I seeing who I think I’m seeing? Harry, why didn’t you tell us?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Surprise us? I almost had a heart attack. Where are your things?”
“This is it.”
“Esther will take you to Hudson’s; it’s a department store. You’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’ve never seen anything like any of this.”
“You like baseball, Harry? That’s right, you don’t know from baseball. I’m going to take you to see Hank Greenberg, greatest ballplayer in the world.”
“Harry, you’re going to like it here,” Esther said. “We can buy fruit and vegetables even in winter.”
“How about apples?” Harry said.
“As many as you want.”
“You hungry, Harry? Of course you are. Esther, get him something to eat.”
It didn’t take any time, Harry fell in love with American girls and baseball, playing in the street and going with his uncle to see the Tigers. He fell in love with the pickles from Grunt’s market on Dexter, and television, watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and The Milton Berle Show. He loved going to movies at the Avalon Theater and going to Boesky’s and Darby’s for lunch and dinner. But mostly he liked the fact that in America you could do or be anything you wanted.
Ten
Munich, Germany. 1971.
9:15 the next morning, Harry was having breakfast, studying the grainy photographs of Ernst Hess’ estate taken with a long lens. The house was big, a classic Tudor with dark exposed timbers, with stucco walls, steep roof lines and half a dozen tall chimneys. The windows were rectangular, with one- and two-storey bays and decorative leaded glass panes.
It was more mansion than house, ten photos showing the front, sides and rear, and the gardens, pool and tennis court behind it. There were several shots of Hess taken at different times. Hess in business attire, coming out the front, getting into a black Mercedes, Rausch, the linebacker he’d thrown over the table at Les Halles in Washington DC, standing in the frame. Hess in bathing trunks, climbing out of the pool, gut hanging out. Hess in the garden with a tall, slim dark-haired girl, identified as his daughter, Katya, age seventeen. There were also photos of Hess AG, the Zeppelin factory, two airplane hangars and a three-storey building built on an alpine meadow outside the city, the snow-capped Bavarian Alps in the background. And a final shot of Hess’ apartment building in downtown Munich.
The phone rang, Berman saying he had the merchandise Harry ordered. Harry took the elevator down and met him in the lobby. Berman handed him a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper that weighed about four pounds. Harry handed Berman a hotel envelope that had five hundred-dollar bills in it, thanked him and went back to his room.
Harry sat on the bed and pulled the tape off, unwrapped the paper and took out the gun, an untraceable blue-black Colt .38 Special, and ten rounds. He picked up the gun, pushed the latch forward and the cylinder popped open. The chambers were empty. He anchored the butt of the revolver against his belt, muzzle pointing at the floor. Held the cylinder with his right hand and fed rounds into the chambers, leaving one empty so he wouldn’t shoot himself by accident. He swung the cylinder closed with his left hand and heard it click. Harry thought about what he was going to do. Knew what Sara, the anti-war activist, would have said. She’d driven to Kent State on May 5, 1970 to join the protest after National Guardsmen fired sixty-seven rounds into a crowd of students in thirteen seconds, killing four, wounding nine. He took out her picture he carried in his wallet, a snapshot from a summer party, staring at his daughter’s innocent face, getting angry, thinking what he was going to do was justified. He flipped the wallet closed and put it back in his pocket.
Harry rented a BMW 2002 a block away from the hotel on Prannerstrasse. Drove north out of the city and arrived at the Hess estate thirty minutes later. The house was set behind a brick wall on ten wooded acres. Hess’ neighbors’ homes were on similar-sized lots spread throughout the rolling hills. He parked the BMW, the car hidden by trees unless you were driving by slowly looking for it. He got out, closed the door, and walked across the road, moving along the six-foot-high wall bordering Hess’ estate, following it as it curved into the woods.
He reached up and grabbed an oak limb and hoisted himself up on top of the wall, dropped to the ground on the other side. He picked his way through heavy timber and thick brush, and came out in front of the massive Tudor that had to be ten thousand square feet. There was a circular drive and two black Mercedes sedans parked near the front door.
Harry moved through the trees on the west side of the house, catching glimpses of the wide sweeping lawn and gardens, the swimming pool and pool house on the opposite side of the property, tennis court just ahead.
He could hear voices and see movement behind the fence. Harry crept up close to the court, crouching at the edge of the trees. He watched Hess, in tennis whites, blast a forehand at the girl from one of the photographs, a tall thin teenager whose moves seemed awkward, but she had a two-handed backhand, returned the ball with pace for a winner. Harry stared at the girl, innocent beauty reminding him of Sara, picturing her face in the morgue. He took the .38 out of his pocket, stepped to the fence and put the barrel through an opening, aiming at Hess across the court about fifty feet away.
The girl moved to the baseline. She was serving, and maybe sensing his presence, glanced to her right, saw him and froze. Harry and the girl were looking at each other. He heard Hess ask her what she was doing. She glanced at her father, saw him running toward the net. Then the alarm sounded and Harry was moving back away from the fence, running through the woods.
What was he thinking? Was he really going to kill the man in front of his daughter? Harry ran to the wall, jumped up, got his fingers on the limestone cap and hoisted himself up and over, the sound of the alarm stressing him, getting his adrenalin pumping. He ran to the BMW, got in as a black Mercedes went by, bodyguard behind the wheel. The car slowed and stopped, letting out two armed men who moved along the wall into the woods.