The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 7

Chapter 7I read the note twice. I had to. The first time I

read it, I was tempted to tear it up and dispose of it. However, I

didn’t dare. Instead, I took a deep breath and read it again. It

was a carbon copy of a typewritten letter signed by Baron Heinrich

Rupert von Schreiber of Mecklenburg-Schwerin—Katharina’s deceased

husband—on his personal stationery complete with the Schreiber

family coat of arms at the top.

But more important was to whom it was

addressed: “The Honorable Walter Q. Gresham, United States

Secretary of State.” Moreover, it was written in perfect

English.

Dear Sir,

It is with deep regret that I write to inform you

that my wife, the Baroness Katharina Schreiber (nee Messner), and

her brother, Manfred, both of whom are American citizens, are

agents of the Spanish government and are involved in espionage

against both Germany and the United States.

While it is distressing and painful for me to

disclose such appalling information about my wife and her brother,

I feel I must do so in the interest of both our nations. Germany,

as you know, is a relatively newly united country and still

vulnerable to the machinations of unfriendly foreign powers.

As such, I have sent an exact copy of this letter to

German Chancellor Choldwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst. Proof of

what I am telling you is contained in a safe place and will be

provided presently. In the meantime, this letter is intended to

alert you of this serious betrayal and to extend my services to you

in this matter.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

Baron Heinrich Rupert von Schreiber of

Mecklenburg-Schwerin

April, 5, 1894

What now? I thought to myself. How do

I know this was actually written by Katharina’s husband? If it was,

then what about the proof he mentioned? In addition, was the letter

ever mailed to anyone, let alone to the U.S. secretary of state?

Moreover, if it wasn’t mailed, then why not? Questions abounded,

and I wasn’t sure where I was going to find the answers—or even if

I wanted to find the answers.

After all, I had only known Katharina

Schreiber barely a week, and I didn’t know her brother at all. Why

was I suddenly mixed up in such intrigue?

My head was throbbing. I was not a frequent

drinker of hard liquor, and the headache I was now feeling was

proof of that. I wanted to get off the ship, to disappear, and put

this unwanted problem behind me. I had enough issues of my own to

deal with. I didn’t need Katharina’s predicament weighing me

down.

I was still running everything through my

mind when someone knocked on my door. It was Potts again.

“Goddammit, what now?” I yelled a bit too

loudly.

“Soz, guvenor… but da baroness wants yew ter

join ’er fer lunch,” Potts responded from the other side of the

closed door, which I then opened.

“Can’t you tell her you couldn’t find

me?”

“Not likely… da ship ain’t what big what a

first-class passenger could get lost on it.”

I sighed. It was no use. I would have to

meet with Katharina eventually, but I was not about to bring up

Eichel or the note he gave me. I needed to have another talk with

him before I did that.

“Can you set up another meeting with Herr

Eichel… for later today?”

“Sure fing… how abaaaht Roarf o’clock?”

“What?”

“Uh, faaahr o’clock… Sorry, guvenor… It’s me

East End English.”

“Okay, four o’clock then… I assume the same

place?”

“What if I could get yew down ter da

second-glass deck? I’ll meet yew at da same gate at abaaaht three

forty-five.”

I nodded. Potts closed the door, and I got

dressed and made my way to the first-class dining room.

As I walked in, I immediately saw Katharina

sitting at a small table for two along the port side of the dining

hall. I took a deep breath and walked to the table. It would take

all of my acting abilities, which were not very good, to feign

normalcy.

As usual, she was dressed faultlessly

wearing a dark green Gibson Girl skirt, white blouse with a yellow

bow tie, and low-cut tan shoes.

“I missed you at breakfast,” Katharina said

as I settled into my chair.

“I didn’t partake… feeling a little

queasy.”

“Oh my… you probably wish you were back on

the flat Kansas prairie.”

“Or on any dry land… but I’m better now.” I

cleared my throat and took a sip of water the waiter had just

deposited on the table.

We engaged in some small talk for the next

several minutes. I was relieved. I didn’t want to discuss our

adventures in Honolulu with Mataio and the man who had followed

us.

If Katharina knew what I had been up to the

past several hours, she didn’t let on. In fact, she seemed

downright cheery, as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

Then her mood changed. “Isn’t it dreadful…

We have another eight days at sea until we reach Yokohama? Whatever

shall we do? There is only so much shuffleboard, ring toss, and

bridge one can play, and I fear I am eating myself out of my

wardrobe.”

“Some folks might enjoy having worries like

those.”

Katharina looked at me, tilting her head a

bit to the side and squinting, the way she sometimes did when she

was trying to fathom some conundrum or discern some individual’s

odd behavior.

“Are you sure you are okay?” she asked. “You

seem… uh… different.”

“I’m not… just tired from this bout of

seasickness and a headache built for a horse.”

To her credit, Katharina didn’t press the

issue. Some forty-five minutes later, we parted, and I headed back

to my cabin. As arranged, Potts arrived around three forty-five to

take me down to the second-class deck and a second meeting with

Eichel. He opened the gate to the stairway, separating first and

second, and led me to a small saloon on the starboard side of the

ship. He agreed to wait for me and take me back up to first

class.

As I entered the saloon, I saw Eichel

sitting at a table in the back of the room. When I reached the

table, he stood up and extended his hand. I wasn’t sure I wanted to

shake his hand, but I did out of common courtesy. I didn’t like

this man. There was a deadness in his eyes. The occasion reminded

me of something my mother once said about an avaricious,

narcissistic banker she knew in Lawrence, Kansas: “He is a man who

warms his hands over the smoldering ashes of other people’s

lives.”

When we had both settled at the table,

Eichel leaned back in his chair and said, “So I assume you read the

note I gave you?” A half-full mug of beer stood on the table before

him.

“I did.”

“What are your thoughts?”

“My thoughts are these: how do I know the

baron wrote that letter, and if he did, how do I know that what he

charged his wife and brother-in-law with is actually true?”

Eichel took a long drink of his beer and

wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“The proof, Herr Battles, is in the

baroness’s cabin. She has documents, top-secret documents that

belong to the German government. You must find those records and

see for yourself, and then you must turn them over to me.”

I studied Eichel’s face for a few moments.

He was no longer the self-assured man I had met that morning at the

second class gate. He was obviously overwrought. Perspiration

dotted his brow, and his voice was uneven.

“I am not going to burglarize the baroness’s

cabin in search of some documents that may or may not be there. If

you want them so badly, then you will have to find them. Leave me

out of it.”

Eichel’s eyes tightened, and his face

reddened. Then, in a carefully controlled tone, he said, “If you

read that note, then you, as a deputy federal marshal, have a duty

to retrieve those documents—if not for Germany, then for your own

country.”

I stood up. “Not likely. Besides, I have no

jurisdiction on the high seas… You said so yourself. And I will be

damned if I will risk being thrown in the brig for theft. No, Herr

Eichel, if you want those documents, you will have to get them

yourself.”

I turned to leave, but Eichel grabbed my

arm. I pulled away and turned to face him.

“Sorry,” he said. “But have you shown the

baroness that note?”

I shook my head.

“Go ahead and do it. See what she says, what

she does. That will tell you if she is who I say she is—a cunning

spy who murdered her husband and made off with state secrets.”

I didn’t respond. I turned and walked out of

the saloon. Potts was waiting just outside the door, and we walked

back to the gated stairwell that would take us up to the

first-class deck.

I was angry. Angry at Eichel for pulling me

into this bit of international intrigue and annoyed with Katharina

for making me part of her problems. Was she what Eichel said she

was? A murderess and spy? On the other hand, was she merely a widow

trying to flee a tragedy not of her own making?

I managed to avoid Katharina for the next

couple of days. Then about three days out of Yokohama, the ship

encountered rough seas.

Until then, I had managed to elude any

semblance of seasickness. That changed when we found ourselves in

what was apparently the edge of a typhoon. As the winds grew

stronger, giant waves of water crashed into the ship and swept over

her decks. Passengers were ordered to their cabins. Potts and the

other deck stewards, wearing bright yellow sou’westers and rubber

boots, made the rounds of each cabin, warning passengers what to

expect in rough seas.

Potts explained that when an ocean-going

steamship like the SS China hits rough seas, the screw is

frequently out of water for several seconds at a time; and as such,

it makes a loud screeching sound.

“It’s called racing,” he said. “When

da screw is aaaht ov da water, i’ spins very fast an’ causes da

stern ov da ship ter shake an’ vibrate. Just listen fer da choog

choog sound ov da engine. That’ll tell yew what all is well. It’s

when yew don’t ’ear da engine pulsatin’, what’s when yew need ter

worry.”

I didn’t feel much relieved by Potts’s

clarification. From the small window of my cabin, I could see the

ocean heaving, falling, and sending colossal waves slamming into

the ship and over the deck. The wind was a deafening dirge. Once

again, the power of Mother Nature left me feeling insignificant and

vulnerable. I longed to be back on the Kansas prairie. At least

there, I was on land and not at the mercy of a furious sea that

seemed intent on breaking the SS China in half.

Potts eyed me sympathetically. He could tell

I was concerned about the storm we were in, and he could see that I

was racked with seasickness.

“Don’t yews worry none, guvenor,” he said.

“I’ve ridden aaaht dozens ov stawms worse van dis one—and on

smaller ships an’ all. The SS China walks da water like a

fing’ ov life an, ll bear all ov us safely onward ter

Yokohama.”

With that, he left my cabin. I watched him

make his way aft to the next cabin, holding on to a succession of

ropes rigged to help the crew from being swept overboard.

I didn’t try to sleep the rest of the night.

For one thing, it would have been almost impossible with the ship

pitching and rolling almost continually for the next six hours or

so. Instead, I stood at my small window watching the ocean buffet

and pummel the ship.

When the stern of the vessel was lifted out

of the water by the raging water, I heard the harsh screech of the

screw as it bounced free of the ocean. A few minutes later, the

stern would settle back beneath the waves; and as Potts had said, I

could hear the reassuring “choog, choog” of the engine pushing the

ship forward.

There were other sounds too. The enraged

storm seemed intent on tearing the SS China apart. The ship

responded with almost humanlike groans and wailing as her bulkheads

and steel plates were twisted and hammered. I was sure I heard

rivets popping loose and had visions of large sections of the hull

flying off into the ocean.

I was thrown several times to the floor by

the force of the ocean and finally I gave up and sat on the floor

against a bulkhead. I vowed to avoid sea travel at all costs in the

future, though I knew there was no other way to return to the

United States from my destination in the Orient.

Several times during the night, I found

myself wondering about Katharina. A few times, I felt guilty about

not being there to help her ride out the storm. Then, almost as

quickly, those thoughts would dissolve as I thought about Eichel,

the note he had given me, and his assertions of Katharina’s alleged

occupation as spy and murderess.

I still couldn’t believe that the woman I

had spent the last ten days with aboard the ship and in Honolulu

was capable of the alleged crimes with which Eichel was charging

her. I nodded off several times, only to be awakened by the

incessant howling and pounding of the ocean against the ship and

the unearthly sound of the screeching screw as it was lifted from

the water.

Finally, at about five o’clock in the

morning the ship moved out of the storm and into calmer waters. I

climbed onto the bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Then, at

about seven o’clock, there was a loud pounding at my door. It was

Katharina.

“William, are you in there? Open up!” she

shouted between her hammering on the steel door.

I had slept in my clothes. My shirt was open

to the waste and outside of my pants. I tucked my shirt into my

wrinkled trousers, padded barefoot to the door, and opened it.

“My, aren’t you a sight… One would think you

had been in a storm,” Katharina said. Then she laughed and said,

“Get presentable and join me here on deck. I have something

important to tell you.” I nodded, mumbled something, closed the

door, and, five minutes later, I was standing next to Katharina at

the ship’s railing.