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ledgers. It was important that he be free to roam the ship without suspicion; he’d be a porter.
    Why, this was the thrill of his life! He immediately quit his job working in the back room of a certified public accountant on lower Broadway. He spent the next fewdays, until the ship sailed, being his typically obsessed self, preparing for his mission as he worked through the night to study diagrams of the ship, practice his role as a porter, brush up on his German and learn a 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