After the three men had joined the ladies in the main reception room, Abel said to his host, ‘I should be getting back, Your Excellency.’
‘Back to the Baron,’ said Sir Bernard. ‘Allow me to accompany you to your car, my dear fellow.’
As Abel said good night to the Ambassador’s wife at the door she smiled and said, ‘I realize I’m not supposed to know, Mr Rosnovski, but many congratulations on your appointment. You must be so proud to be returning to the land of your birth as your adopted country’s senior representative.’
‘I am,’ Abel said simply.
Sir Bernard accompanied him down the marble steps to the waiting car. The chauffeur opened the door.
‘Good night, Rosnovski. And good luck in Warsaw. By the way, I hope you enjoyed your first meal in the British Consulate.’
‘I’ve dined here on many occasions, actually, Sir Bernard.’
‘You’ve been here before, old boy? When we checked through the guest book we couldn’t find your name.’
‘No,’ said Abel. ‘Most of the time I ate in the kitchen with the cook. I don’t think they keep a guest book down there.’
Abel smiled as he climbed into the back of the car. He could see that Sir Bernard wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.
As he was driven back to the Baron, his fingers tapped on the side window and he hummed to himself. He would have liked to return to America the next morning, but he couldn’t cancel the invitation to dine with Fletcher Warren at the American Consulate the following evening. Hardly the sort of thing a future ambassador does, old fellow, he could hear Sir Bernard saying.
Dinner with the American Ambassador turned out to be another pleasant occasion. Abel was made to explain to the assembled guests how he had come to eat in the kitchen of the British Consulate, and they listened in surprised admiration. He wasn’t sure if many of them believed the story of how he had nearly lost his hand, but they all admired the silver band, and that night everyone called him ‘Your Excellency’.
54
THE NEXT DAY Abel was up early, impatient to return to America.
The DC-8 flew into Belgrade, where it was grounded for sixteen hours. Something wrong with the landing gear, they told him. He sat in the airport lounge, sipping undrinkable Yugoslavian coffee, searching for any journal that was in English. The contrast between the British Consulate in Istanbul and a snack bar in a Communist-controlled country was not lost on him. At last the DC-8 took off, only to be delayed again in Amsterdam. This time the passengers were made to change planes.
When he finally touched down at Idlewild, Abel had been travelling for nearly thirty-six hours. He was so tired he could hardly walk. As he left the customs area, he suddenly found himself surrounded by newsmen, cameras flashing and clicking. Immediately he smiled. The announcement must have been made, he thought; now it’s official. He stood as straight as he could, and walked slowly and with dignity, disguising his limp. There was no sign of George as the cameramen jostled each other unceremoniously in their efforts to get a picture.
Then he saw George standing at the edge of the crowd, looking as if he were attending a funeral rather than greeting a friend who was returning in triumph. At the barrier a journalist, far from asking him what it felt like to be the first Polish-American to be appointed US Ambassador to Warsaw, shouted, ‘Do you have any answers to the charges?’
The cameras went on flashing, and so did the questions.
‘Are the accusations true, Mr Rosnovski?’
‘How much did you actually pay Congressman Osborne?’
‘Do you deny the charges?’
‘Have you returned to America to face trial?’
He shouted above the crowd to George, ‘Get me out of here!’
George squeezed forward and managed to reach him, then pushed his way back through the crowd and bundled him into the back of the waiting Cadillac. Abel bent down and hid his head in his hands as the cameras’ flashbulbs kept popping. George shouted at the chauffeur to get moving.
‘To the Baron, Mr Novak?’
‘No, to Miss Rosnovski’s apartment on East Fifty-Seventh Street.’
‘Why?’ said Abel.
‘Because the press is crawling all over the Baron.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Abel. ‘In Istanbul they treat me as if I were the ambassador-elect, and I return home to find I’m a criminal. What the hell’s going on, George?’
‘Do you want to hear it all from me, or to wait until you’ve seen your lawyer?’
‘My lawyer? You’ve already got someone to represent me?’
‘H. Trafford Jilks, the best.’
‘And the most expensive.’
‘I don’t think you should be worrying about money at a time like this, Abel.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Where is he now?’
‘I left him at the courthouse, but he said he’d come to the apartment as soon as he was through.’
‘I can’t wait that long, George. For God’s sake, tell me what’s going on.’
George took a deep breath. ‘There’s a warrant out for your arrest.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Bribery of government officials.’
‘I’ve never bribed a government official in my life,’ protested Abel.
‘I know, but Henry Osborne has, and whatever he did, he’s now claiming it was in your name, or on your behalf.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Abel. ‘I should never have employed the man. I let the fact that we both hated Kane cloud my judgement. But I find it hard to believe Henry’s told them anything, because he’d be implicating himself.’
‘Henry’s disappeared,’ said George. ‘And the big surprise is that suddenly, mysteriously, all his debts have been cleared up.’
‘William Kane,’ said Abel, spitting out the words.
‘We’ve found nothing that points to that conclusion,’ said George.
‘Then how did the authorities get hold of the details?’
‘It seems an anonymous package containing a large file was sent direct to the Justice Department in Washington.’
‘Postmarked New York, no doubt,’ said Abel.
‘No. Chicago.’
Abel was silent for a few moments. ‘It couldn’t have been Henry who sent the file,’ he said finally. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ asked George.
‘Because you said all his debts have been cleared up. The Justice Department wouldn’t pay out that sort of money unless they thought they were going to catch Al Capone. Henry must have sold his file to someone else. But who? The one thing we can be certain of is that he would never have released any information directly to Kane.’
‘Directly?’ said George.
‘Directly,’ repeated Abel. ‘Perhaps he didn’t sell it directly. Kane could have arranged for an intermediary to deal with the whole matter, if he already knew Henry was heavily in debt and the bookmakers were threatening him.’
‘That could be right, Abel, and it certainly wouldn’t have taken an ace detective to discover the extent of Henry’s financial problems. They were common knowledge to anyone sitting on a bar stool in Chicago. But don’t jump to any conclusions before we hear what your lawyer has to say.’
The Cadillac came to a halt outside Florentyna’s old apartment, which Abel had never sold, in the hope that his daughter would return one day. H. Trafford Jilks was waiting for them in the foyer. Once they had settled down in the apartment, George poured Abel a large whiskey. He drank it in one gulp and gave the empty glass back to George, who refilled it.
‘Tell me the worst, Mr Jilks,’ Abel said. ‘And don’t spare me.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Rosnovski,’ he began. ‘Mr Novak told me about Warsaw.’
‘That’s history,’ said Abel, ‘so we needn’t bother with “Your Excellency” any longer. You can be sure if Frank Hogan were asked, he wouldn’t even remember my name. Come on, Mr Jilks, what am I facing?’
‘You’ve been indicted on seventeen charges of bribery and corruption of officials in fourteen different states. I’ve made provisional arrangements with the Justice Department for you to be arrested here at the apartment tomorrow morning, and they will make no objection to the granting of bail.’
‘Very cosy,’ said Abel. ‘And what if they can prove the charges?’
‘Oh, I think they’ll be able to prove some of them,’ said H. Trafford Jilks matter-of-factly. ‘But as long as Henry Osborne can’t be found, they’re going to find it very difficult to nail you on most of them. But I’m afraid the real damage has already been done, Mr Rosnovski, whether you’re convicted or not.’
‘I can see that only too well,’ said Abel, glancing at a picture of himself on the front page of the Daily News. ‘I want you to find out, Mr Jilks, who the hell bought that file from Henry Osborne. Put as many people to work on it as you need. I don’t care about the cost. But you find out, and find out quickly, because if it turns out to be William Kane, I’m going to finish him off once and for all.’
‘Don’t get yourself into any more trouble, Mr Rosnovski,’ said H. Trafford Jilks firmly. ‘You’re knee deep in enough shit as it is.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Abel. ‘When I finish Kane, it’ll be legal and above-board.’
‘Now listen carefully, Mr Rosnovski. Forget about William Kane for the time being, and start worrying about your impending trial, unless you don’t care about spending the next ten years in jail. There’s not much more we can do tonight. I’ve already got several men looking for Osborne, and I’ll be issuing a short press statement denying the charges and saying we have a full explanation that will exonerate you completely.’
‘Do we?’ George asked hopefully.
‘No,’ said Jilks, ‘but it will give me some time to work on our defence. When Mr Rosnovski has had a chance to check through the list of officials he’s supposed to have bribed, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s never had direct contact with anyone on that list. It’s possible that Osborne always acted as an intermediary without ever putting Mr Rosnovski fully in the picture. So my job will be to prove that Osborne exceeded his authority as a director of the Baron Group. Mind you, Mr Rosnovski, if you have ever met any of the people on the list, for God’s sake tell me, because you can be sure the Justice Department will put every one of them on the witness stand. But for now, go to bed and try to get some sleep. You must be exhausted. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’
Abel was arrested in his daughter’s apartment at 8.30 the following morning, and driven by a US marshal to the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York. The brightly coloured St Valentine’s Day decorations in the store windows heightened his sense of loneliness. Jilks had hoped that his arrangements had been so discreet the press would not have found out about them, but when Abel reached the courthouse he was once again surrounded by photographers and reporters. He ran the gauntlet into the courtroom with George in front of him and Jilks behind. They sat silently in the corridor waiting for their case to be called.
Although they waited for several hours, when they were finally called the indictment hearing lasted only a few minutes, and felt strangely anticlimactic. The clerk read out the seventeen charges, and H. Trafford Jilks answered ‘Not Guilty’ to every one of them on behalf of his client. He then requested bail. The Government, as agreed, made no objection. Jilks asked Judge Prescott for at least three months to prepare his defence. The judge set a trial date of May 17.
Abel was free again; free to face the press and more of their barbed questions and flashing bulbs. The chauffeur had the car waiting for him at the bottom of the courtroom steps, with the back door open and the engine running. He had to do some very skilful manoeuvring to escape the reporters who were still pursuing their story. When the car came to a halt on East Fifty-Seventh Street, Abel turned to George and put his arm around his shoulder.
‘Now listen, George, you’re going to have to run the group while I get my defence sorted out. Let’s hope you don’t have to go on running it after that,’ he said, attempting a laugh.
‘Of course I won’t have to, Abel. Mr Jilks will get you off, you’ll see. Keep smiling,’ he said, and left the other two men as they entered the apartment building.
‘I don’t know what I’d do without George,’ Abel told Jilks as they settled down in Florentyna’s living room. ‘We came over on the boat together forty years ago, and we’ve been through a hell of a lot since then. Now it looks as if there’s a whole lot more ahead of us to worry about, so let’s get on with it, Mr Jilks. Have you caught up with Osborne yet?’
‘No, but I have six men working on it, and I understand the Justice Department has at least another six, so we can be fairly certain one of us will find him. Not that we want the other side to get to him first.’
‘What about the man Osborne sold the file to?’ asked Abel.
‘I have some people I trust in Chicago detailed to run that down.’
‘Good,’ said Abel. ‘Now the time has come to go over that file of names you left with me last night.’
Jilks began by reading the indictment, and then went over the charges one by one. Abel made notes.
After nearly three weeks of back-to-back meetings, Jilks was finally convinced there was nothing more Abel could tell him. During those three weeks there had been no leads on the whereabouts of Henry Osborne, for either Jilks’s men or the Justice Department. Nor was there any information on who Henry had sold his information to, and Jilks was beginning to wonder if Abel had guessed right. Not that they could find any direct connection to William Kane.
As the trial date drew nearer, Abel started to face the possibility that he might actually have to go to jail. He was fifty-four, and fearful of the prospect of spending the last years of his life the same way he had spent the first few. As H. Trafford Jilks pointed out, if the Government was able to prove its case, there was enough evidence in Osborne’s file to send Abel to prison for a very long time. Abel doubted that any new business could make much progress without the kind of handouts and small bribes to various people documented with such sickening accuracy in Jilks’s file. He thought bitterly about the smooth, impassive face of the young William Kane, sitting in his Boston office on a pile of inherited money whose doubtful origins were safely buried under generations of respectability.
In the midst of Abel’s unhappiness came a ray of light. Florentyna wrote a touching letter enclosing some photographs of her son, and saying that she still loved and respected her father and believed in his innocence.
Three days before the trial was due to open, the Justice Department tracked Henry Osborne down in New Orleans. They would never have found him if he hadn’t turned up in a local hospital with two broken legs, after welching on several gambling debts. They don’t like that sort of thing in New Orleans. After the hospital had put plaster casts on Osborne’s legs, the Justice Department assisted him onto an Eastern Airlines flight to New York.
Henry Osborne was charged the next day with conspiracy to defraud, and denied bail. H. Trafford Jilks asked the court’s permission to be allowed to question him. The judge granted his request, but Jilks gained little satisfaction from the hour-long exchange. It was clear that Osborne had already made a deal with the Government, agreeing to testify against Abel in return for facing lesser charges.
