Jack was pleased to see Walter back to his usual self. He accepted the herring and sat down beside him.
“We all make mistakes. Me more than most.” He looked at Sue to make sure she was listening. “You’re a fantastic girl,” he said apologetically. “I was angry, and I blew a gasket. Any man would be lucky to have you. I’m—”
“That’s enough of the schmaltz!” Walter feigned a serious expression. “If there’s one thing everyone in New York knows better than the Yankees’ lineup, it’s that my friend Jack Beilis is king of the chuckleheads.” He gave Jack a wink and hugged him.
As they ate the fish, Jack gave his traveling companions a detailed account of his meeting with Wilbur Hewitt, immediately arousing the interest of Joe Brown and the Smith brothers. His fellow passengers’ eyes were wide, eager for gossip, but Jack, who knew the hardship they suffered, avoided mentioning certain details of his lunch, such as the abundance of food and the high quality of the dinner service.
“So, this Hewitt really is the big boss?” asked Walter at the first pause.
“So it seems.”
“And do you know if he’ll be able to help us?”
“Well, I didn’t have a chance to—”
“Did he say anything about workers’ salaries?” Joe Brown cut in.
“Did he say whether we’d get a house and medical care?” put in Brady, a miner whom they all called Silicosis.
Jack shook his head. When he admitted he hadn’t found the right moment to bring up those subjects, he could see the disappointment in their faces. He looked at the rags that hid their starving bodies and lowered his gaze.
“But he assured me that Americans with guts would be needed to get that factory working like it should.” He raised his voice. “And we’re going to be those Americans!”
That night, Jack was unable to sleep. They were a day’s sailing from Helsinki, and he sorely regretted wasting the one opportunity he was likely to have to better his situation. He should have followed Walter’s advice to make the most of his meeting with the executive, but instead, he had allowed himself to be bewitched by the man’s niece, and failed to make any kind of approach. Now it was too late. After they disembarked in Finland, their chance of running into the executive again would be remote at best, though as Hewitt himself had mentioned, he and his niece would remain in Helsinki until his injuries had healed.
Jack tossed and turned in his bed, thinking of Elizabeth’s perfect face and wondering where she had come from and why she was accompanying her uncle to such a far-off country. Was she promised to anyone? What did she like? What were her motives? He sat up, despairing. He had a thousand more important problems to deal with, and instead of trying to solve them, he was spending his time getting worked up over a woman who’d barely noticed him and whom he barely knew. What he did not doubt was that, because she saw him as nothing more than a worker, he would never know her.
He was sick of the straw mattress. He took off his only blanket and got out of bed in the middle of the night, trying not to make any noise. Walter snored nearby, hugging his pillow like a child. Sue did the same in the top bunk. He hoped that their peaceful sleep might be at least in part due to the hundred dollars he’d shared with them. As he’d done before, he headed to the hold door to look through the porthole, and observed the containers destroyed by the storm. Standing there for a long while, until the cold began to make his fingers numb, he contemplated the machines that had been rendered useless. Suddenly, his heart started thumping. Perhaps it was madness, but he had to take a chance. He opened the door and snuck into the forbidden hold.
8
The Port of Helsinki woke to a sky dark with menacing gray storm clouds, like inhospitable guards that glared watchfully at the passengers of the SS Cliffwood. From his hiding place, Jack breathed in the clammy smell of fish and petroleum. While he waited under the tarpaulin that covered the lifeboat, he rubbed his grease-covered fists. Disobeying the order that all passengers were to remain in their quarters until the ship had been moored, he had gained access to the bridge in the hope that he would find Wilbur Hewitt. But he had been freezing to death for an hour without any sign of the industrialist. He observed that the ship was being tugged burdensomely through the foggy waters by a minuscule barge that deftly dodged the many islets that dotted the bay. The image of that giant of the ocean led by a miserable packet boat made him think that, together, the destitute of America who had been forced to leave their country might be able to play a key role in the development of the Soviet Union.
P“Sorry, kid. I’m busy with the unloading now.”
“Pardon me, sir, but what I have to say is very important,” he insisted.
“Are you deaf?” Sergei intervened, irritated.
“Mr. Hewitt, at lunch I forgot to tell you, but I’m traveling to Gorky, too, to work at the Avtozavod, and I want to make you an offer,” Jack yelled, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the cranes.
“An offer? You? And what would that be?” Hewitt asked in astonishment. He gestured to Sergei to let the young man speak.
“I’d like to work for you directly.”
“Shucks!” He raised an eyebrow. “If that’s the way you do business, you aren’t going to get very far.” He turned back to the boatswain to continue directing the unloading of the machinery.
“Sir, you said that production would be delayed by three or four months, until a new consignment of parts arrived, did you not?”
“Sure, that’s what I said. But what does that have to do with—?”
“I can fix the machines.”
Wilbur Hewitt looked up from the cargo list and fixed his gaze on Jack.
“What did you say?”
“The damaged machines. I can repair them,” Jack repeated. “The Cleveland press. The one you got trapped under. I worked on it all night, and it’s almost fixed. If you hired me, I could—”
“You fixed the Cleveland?”
“I sure did. Well, a few heavy parts require assembly, but the main issues have been rectified now. With a little soldering, it’ll run good as new. As for the other machines that were damaged in the storm, if you could provide me with a winch, a milling machine, and a few workers to help me, I could repair them all in three or four weeks.”
“I don’t know why you listen to this charlatan,” Sergei broke in. “We run late and—”
“Please, be quiet for a moment!” said Hewitt, before turning to Jack. “Look, son, I’m extremely busy, but I’ll spare a moment to ask you this one question: Are you saying you could get that heap of junk in the hold working?”
“With total confidence, sir.”