The Bells of Hell

The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland
The Bells of Hell

The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

Hardcover(First World Publication)

$28.99 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Thursday, April 4
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Counter-intelligence agent Jacob Welker recruits a number of civilians to help foil a suspected terrorist attack by German spies in New York in 1938.

March, 1938 Otto Lehman arrives in New York on the S.S. Osthafen to be immediately confronted by two men with FBI badges . . . only, that isn’t his real name and the men aren’t with the FBI. The next day Lehman is found tied to a chair, beaten to death and naked, in an abandoned Brooklyn warehouse.

The sole witness to the crime, Andrew Blake, a homeless man struggling through the Great Depression, claims those responsible were speaking German. With the threat of the perpetrators being Nazis, President Roosevelt’s own covert counter-intelligence agent Jacob Welker is brought in to investigate.

Welker recruits Blake along with Lord Geoffrey Saboy, a British ‘cultural attache’, and his wife Lady Patricia, to help him to thwart a Nazi terrorist attack. But who exactly are the Nazis, what is their target and when will they strike?

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780727889690
Publisher: Severn House
Publication date: 12/03/2019
Series: A Welker & Saboy thriller , #1
Edition description: First World Publication
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.55(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

About The Author
A native of New York City now living in California’s Central Coast, Michael Kurland served four years in a branch of Army Intelligence, both in the United States and in Europe. He is the author of over 40 books, ranging from fantasy to mystery. He has been nominated for the Edgar award twice, for A Plague of Spies and The Infernal Device, the latter of which was also an American Book Award finalist.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Tuesday, March 1, 1938

Faust: How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

Meph: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it ...

– Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

On the thirty-fourth minute of the seventh hour of his last day on earth, Johann August Steuber stood up in his tiny cabin on C deck of the SS Osthafen, braced himself by the door against any last-minute whimsical dips or jounces of the ship, and quickly and methodically went through the pockets of his brown tweed suit and the compartments in his leather briefcase to make sure that he was taking everything that should be taken and carrying nothing that should not be carried. His Reisepass in the name of Herr Otto Lehman, 22b Hauptbahnstrasse, Nürnberg: Ja. His papers identifying Herr Lehman as an exporter of German mechanical toys: Ja. His guidebook to New York City with the rice-paper list of contacts pasted behind the picture of the Statue of Liberty: Ja. His letter of introduction to Frau Bittleman, the landlady of the boarding house on 92nd Street in Manhattan who was hopefully expecting him: Ja.

He located some bits and scraps of detritus: an overlooked theater-ticket stub tucked in a jacket pocket, a Berlin U-Bahn 2. Klasse ticket crunched into a small ball in the inner pocket of his vest, and, Gott behüte!, a short note from his butcher beginning Lieber Herr Steuber in a small outer flap of his briefcase. He put the room's metal ashtray on the washstand, dropped the material in, and set it afire with a paper match from a packet from the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. After a second's thought he added the matchbook to the blaze. When had Otto Lehman been in Berlin? Small details prevented large problems. He spent a long moment in contemplation of a half-empty pack of Juno Cigarettes he pulled from the jacket's outer pocket. He had bought them at the Adlon just before he left. But, he decided, a pack of cigarettes is a pack of cigarettes. The government tax stamp on the bottom with its little red swastika held no indication of where in the Third Reich the pack had been purchased. He shoved the pack back into his pocket.

Three hours earlier, at 4:30 in the morning, the Osthafen had docked at Pier 5 at the foot of Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, New York City, the United States of America, its sixteen-day crossing remarkable only in that the ship's ventilation system had only broken down once, and the engines not at all. Most of the passengers who had stayed awake to see the aging liner sidle past the Statue of Liberty shortly before midnight slept through the humming and throbbing, as two tugs pushed the Osthafen into the slip with a minimum of noise and thrashing about.

Disembarking began shortly after eight a.m., the customs officials taking their positions in the forward lounge and commencing their rummaging about in the passengers' luggage, asking searching questions, and examining passports. It was ten thirty by the time Steuber, his Otto Lehman passport stamped, stepped onto the gangway and headed toward dry land.

His two steamer trunks awaited him, intermingled with the others on the oversized luggage wagon; a porter awaited him with a hand cart to take him and his luggage through to the cab stand; and two large men in brown double-breasted suits, brown fedoras, and well-polished brown shoes awaited him by the exit doors.

One of the men stepped forward, blocking Steuber. 'Otto Lehman?'

'Yes?' Steuber took a step back. 'I am Otto Lehman. Who are you and what do you want?' He told himself there was no reason for alarm, but he could feel the muscles of the back of his neck tighten.

The man pulled a leather card case from his pocket and flipped it open. It held a gold badge pinned to the top and a government identity card underneath. He held it up about four inches from Steuber's nose. 'Federal Bureau of Investigation,' he said. 'I am Agent Parker and this is Agent Swallow. You are the man calling himself Otto Lehman?'

'Calling himself? What do you mean?' Steuber attempted to look indignant. 'I am Otto Lehman. Here —' He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers. 'My passport, my identity card, a letter of introduction to our New York office – I export toys, the finest German mechanical toys. I am here to demonstrate our new product line.'

He knew he was beginning to babble but he couldn't help himself. He had taken no more than ten steps off the ship and here, badge to nose, was the verdammte FBI. They were not supposed to be so good, so efficient, so all-knowing, this joke of a J. Edgar Hoover and his 'G-Men'. He closed his eyes and gathered himself and then opened them and smiled. Perhaps it was nothing, but if he didn't act normal it would certainly become something. In his homeland the Gestapo would already be frog-marching him down the street merely because he blinked twice.

Agent Parker took the papers from Steuber's unsteady fingers and pushed them down into his jacket pocket. 'We will give these our complete attention,' he said. 'You will come with us.'

'What? Why?' Steuber briefly contemplated running blindly off in some random direction, but caught himself in time.

'There is some question about your identity,' Parker said. 'It could be, could it not, that you are in actuality one Johann August Steuber, a member of the German Communist Party and an agent of the Comintern?'

'What?' Steuber managed to look horrified. He was, as it happened, horrified. 'How could anyone think that? Where did you hear this? How ...'

'Come along, bitte, Herr Steuber,' Agent Swallow said, taking him by the arm, 'our car is over here.' He waved at the porter with the trunks to follow them, and they went.

Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds later a gray Chevrolet coupe pulled into an OFFICIAL PARKING ONLY space on the pier and two men in brown double-breasted suits, brown fedoras, and well-polished brown shoes emerged from the car. They walked rapidly past the thin stream of passengers still emerging from the ship or dawdling about their luggage and went up to the steward at the bottom of the gangplank. One of them pulled out a card case and flipped it open in front of the steward's nose. 'Special Agent Trower, FBI,' he said. 'Has a passenger calling himself Otto Lehman disembarked yet?'

'Lehman ... Lehman ...' The steward flipped through his check-off list. 'Ja. Herr Lehman has departed the ship. He had with him two steamer trunks.'

'How long ago?'

'Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.'

'Did you see where he went?' the special agent asked.

'Nein. I do not myself even know which one he is.'

One of the porters, a thin, scrawny man with a nose that preceded his face by several moments, paused. 'Lehman? With the two trunks. Sure. Two guys picked him up. I had to put one of his trunks in the back seat with him and it was a tight fit, I'll tell you.'

'What two guys?' Special Agent Trower asked.

'I dunno, just two guys. They was dressed a lot like you, come to think of it.'

CHAPTER 2

Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!

– William Shakespeare, Henry V

Lord Geoffrey Saboy, Cultural Attaché to the British Embassy in Washington DC, strode into the parlor of his Georgetown residence and struck what he fondly believed was a dramatic pose, with one foot on the seat of an upholstered chair he particularly disliked. But the house had come furnished, and there it was. '"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done,"' he announced. '"It is a far, far better place that I go to than I have ever known." So have cook hold up dinner for me, I'll probably be a bit late.'

Lady Patricia stretched panther-like on the red chaise longue and smiled up at her husband. 'Good afternoon,' she said. 'And where have you been?'

'Out and about,' Geoffrey told her.

'And, no doubt, doing this and that?'

'Exactly!' He blew a kiss in her direction. 'How clever you are!'

'And now you're going out again?'

'In a few minutes. Sir Ronald calleth. And when the ambassador calleth, I goeth.'

'What is it this time?'

Geoffrey shrugged. 'He consults me on things about which I have scant knowledge, and I assure him that I will get up to speed – he is fond of the phrase "up to speed" – on said topic. And then quite usually he never asks me about them again.' He removed his foot from the chair and patted the cushion back into shape. 'Yesterday it was Spain.'

'Ahh?'

'Yes. Sir Ronald wants to know everything there is to know about Generalissimo Francisco Franco. His Majesty's government have, in their infinite wisdom, seen fit to recognize the Franco government although the war in Spain is still going on and the matter is far from settled.'

Patricia swiveled her body around, planted her feet on the floor, and sat up. 'I don't like Franco,' she said. 'He shoots people.'

'It seems to be a Fascist habit,' Geoffrey told her.

'Why on earth would our government do that?' she asked. 'Recognize Franco, I mean.'

Geoffrey came over and sat next to her. 'Because, O fairest of the fair, the PM is set on keeping the peace with Italy and Germany, and Franco is their man. Which is why Mr Eden, who doesn't trust the Nazis, just resigned as Foreign Minister and Lord Halifax has been called in to replace him. Halifax positively swoons into his porridge when he thinks on how delightful Hitler and Göring are. Or so I've been told.'

'What does Winston say?'

'Your friend Mr Churchill says preparing for war would give us the best chance of keeping the peace. As he has been saying for the past three years.'

'They should listen to him,' she said.

'Curious,' Geoffrey said.

'What?'

'It just occurred to me. Franco likes to call himself "El Caudillo", which translates to "the leader".'

'Yes?'

'Mussolini likes to be called "Il Duce" – the leader. Herr Hitler goes for "Der Führer". Do we see a pattern?'

'It must be their innate shyness.'

'Yes – that must be it.'

Patricia stood and adjusted the neckline of her lacy cream-colored peignoir. 'I also must prepare for the outer world,' she said. 'I have an assignation.'

'Surely not in the middle of the afternoon?'

She laughed. 'Not that sort – at least I don't think so. I have met this charming Italian Embassy person, and I have decided to cultivate him.'

'Ah!' Geoffrey said. 'Is that what they're calling it now?'

'Shame on you,' she told him. 'I don't make jocular remarks about your, ah, extramarital activities, now do I?'

'Perhaps because I don't parade them up and down in front of you and discuss their good and bad qualities.'

'I never!' she protested.

'You often,' he told her. 'But that's all right. I am here to take care of you at such times as you need taken care of,' he added, looking down musingly at the woman he had married. 'And you perform the same service for me. And, what is beyond all understanding, we are actually fond of each other.'

'There is to be a do at the Italian Embassy in a few weeks,' she told him. 'We should attend.'

'If it's to be a dinner party we should certainly go,' he agreed. 'Best food on Embassy Row. Is it to be a dinner party?'

'I don't know yet.'

'Well, in any case it will give us a chance to snub the German Ambassador. Herr Dieckhoff needs a good snubbing.'

'We certainly seem to be fulfilling that ancient Chinese curse,' Patricia commented.

'How's that?'

'"May you live," it goes, "in interesting times."'

CHAPTER 3

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is must we ever be.

– Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

The red-brick building, which had been a warehouse for the DozeWell Mattress company, took up most of the block at the corner of Water and Gold, a few blocks from the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. One room occupied most of the ground floor and, with its high ceilings, much of the second. There was an attempt at a third floor perched on the west corner of the building, clearly an afterthought and about the size of three hotdog stands. The ground-floor room was large in all directions and damp and cold. It was not so much furnished as filled with discards: there were two discarded desks, four file cabinets half full of long-discarded papers, a pile of pallets, three rolled-up rugs, a smattering of discarded office chairs, and one discarded thirty- four-year-old human being named Andrew Blake.

Andrew had taken residence about six months ago, he wasn't sure. Time does odd things when you're out of work, out of friends, and no longer have any family to speak of. When he had first found the place he had moved his two beat-up suitcases, his piece of well-splattered painters' canvas that served as a mattress, and the red couch cushion that was his pillow into the manager's office, up a flight of stairs that hugged the north wall, presumably so the boss could oversee the helots working below. It even had its own small bathroom, with a white porcelain sink still with running water, which he scrubbed clean. He had also scrubbed out the medicine cabinet above the sink and arrayed within it his safety razor, soap, shaving brush, toothbrush, and tooth powder. But when his left leg twisted out from under him during an accidental encounter with a patch of slick ice, the resulting sprain made it painful to climb stairs; so he moved himself and his belongings to a small area behind a false wall he had discovered in the far corner, erected during Prohibition to conceal cases of whisky – the real stuff just off the boat – from casual view. This cut his stair- climbing to his once-a-day ablutions, and this is what saved his life.

He had consumed two not too rotten apples and half a head of cauliflower that he had scrounged from one of the waste bins behind the produce market on Bridge Street and was dozing fitfully on his canvas that Tuesday afternoon when the two men cracked the padlock on the Gold Street side door and pushed their way in. It was a little after two by the Ingersoll pocket watch that was one of the few possessions he refused to part with. The sky was slate gray, the streets still damp from the recent rain, and the produce markets had already closed for the day. Whatever the entrance of these men portended, Blake realized, it was nothing that would be good for Andrew Blake. He shrank back into his hiding place and lay down on his stomach to peer through a small rip at the bottom of the canvas false wall. A small rip? Surely it was the size of a hippopotamus and they couldn't avoid seeing him. He worked at stifling his sudden almost overwhelming desire to cough.

The men did a quick look around the large room, one of them speaking in staccato monosyllables like 'Here,' and 'That will do,' and 'Not yet,' and the other not speaking at all. The non-speaking man took a wooden chair from a corner of the room and moved it to the middle. The speaker stared at it critically and moved it six inches to his right and two inches forward. Then he stepped back from it, walked around it once, and nodded his approval.

It was perhaps five minutes before the door pushed open again and three men came in, two of them urging the third one forward between them. He seemed apathetic and uninterested in his surroundings, and kept his eyes down, staring at the floor.

His visitors, Blake noted, all wore suits. Three brown double-breasted serge, the fourth, the reluctant man, tweed and even more double-breasted. The fifth, the speaker, was a blond man with a square face, a short beard clipped straight across at the bottom, and eyes that somehow seemed too close together. His suit was a really dark blue or black, with a small collar and a long row of buttons down the front which were all, as far as Blake could tell, buttoned. The two who had been urging the man between them went out again and returned in less than a minute, lugging a pair of large steamer trunks behind them, which they dumped near the door. Then they took the reluctant man by both arms and steered him to the center of the room by the chair.

As they approached the chair the man being pushed suddenly lifted his head and looked around and, with a spasm of activity, made a violent attempt to twist away from his captors. For a second he broke free, but then the others grabbed him and propelled him further into the room. 'What is this place?' he cried. 'Where have you taken me?'

'Remain calm, Herr Steuber,' the man in the probably black suit said. 'You have nothing to fear. We merely want some information from you.'

'Information? What sort of information?' He twisted to look at the man in black. 'I know nothing. I sell toys, only. My name, it is Lehman. Otto Lehman.'

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Bells Of Hell"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Michael Kurland.
Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews