Amerikan Eagle is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. A Bantam Books Mass Market Original Copyright © 2011 by Alan Glenn All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. B B and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. ANTAM OOKS eISBN: 978-0-345-52760-8 Cover deign: Carlos Beltran Cover photo: Jack Delano / Library of Congress www.bantamdell.com v3.1 This novel is for my wife and my parents. Whoever saves one life saves the world entire. —The Talmud Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Prologue Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Interlude I Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Interlude II Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Part Two Chapter Twelve Interlude III Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Part Three Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Interlude IV Chapter Twenty-two Interlude V Chapter Twenty-three Chapter Twenty-four Chapter Twenty-five Interlude VI Chapter Twenty-six Chapter Twenty-seven Chapter Twenty-eight Chapter Twenty-nine Chapter Thirty Interlude VII Chapter Thirty-one Part Four Chapter Thirty-two Chapter Thirty-three Chapter Thirty-four Chapter Thirty-five Chapter Thirty-six Chapter Thirty-seven Chapter Thirty-eight Chapter Thirty-nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-one Chapter Forty-two Chapter Forty-three Chapter Forty-four Chapter Forty-five Part Five Chapter Forty-six Interlude VIII Chapter Forty-seven Chapter Forty-eight Chapter Forty-nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-one Interlude IX Chapter Fifty-two Chapter Fifty-three Interlude X Chapter Fifty-four Interlude XI Part Six Chapter Fifty-five Chapter Fifty-six Chapter Fifty-seven Chapter Fifty-eight Chapter Fifty-nine Chapter Sixty Chapter Sixty-one Chapter Sixty-two Chapter Sixty-three Chapter Sixty-four Chapter Sixty-five Chapter Sixty-six Chapter Sixty-seven Chapter Sixty-eight Acknowledgments Author’s Note PROLOGUE Miami, Florida, Wednesday, February 15, 1933 His whole life had been focused on keeping secrets, and after the twelve-day voyage south here on the Nourmahal, a luxury yacht owned by Vincent Astor— his neighbor from Warm Springs, Georgia—the newly elected president of the United States looked at the swarms of people meeting him at Bayfront Park this warm evening, and amid all the waves and jokes to his aides and puffs on his cigarette, he thought, Children. They are all children, frightened at what has happened to them, what has happened to their families, what has happened to their country. That was his latest secret, then, that he looked at the 140 million Americans out there and thought of them as children, even the twenty thousand who had gathered to see him tonight. Children who needed to look to a strong father who would promise to make everything right again. He grimaced, wondering what Colonel McCormack and his damnable Chicago Tribune would do with that particular thought. Which was why … secrets, so many secrets to be kept. But oh, how that made sense, seeing all these people as children. Their dreams, their lives, everything torn apart since Black Tuesday nearly four years ago, as the stock market crashed and the grinding Depression followed. Despite all the soothing words of Hoover and his administration, it had gotten worse month after month, year after year. Factory after factory shutting down. Farmland turning to desert. Unemployment lines and soup kitchen lines and relief lines stretching for miles through hushed and fearful cities. So here he was. New York state senator, former assistant secretary of the navy, failed vice presidential candidate in 1924, two-term governor of New York, under a month away from being inaugurated the thirty-second president of the United States, and already he knew he would have enormous power and the authority to use it once he was in the White House. During the leisurely cruise south to Florida, as he fished and talked and drank his own well-made martinis, the work had been under way. He was picking his cabinet, conferring with his smart young men, eager to go to Washington to make the necessary and overdue changes. From getting people back to work to ending the embarrassment that was Prohibition to finally chopping out the rot in the capitalist system that allowed a depression to shatter so millions of lives … There was so much to do! The heat was oppressive, he thought as the motorcade rumbled its way through the crowds, the excited people reaching out to touch him, he waving at them, enjoying their attention, enjoying, too, the trust they were putting in him. Such a time to be alive. The problems of this blessed and rich and desperately troubled country were not unique in the world and weren’t even the worst. Japan was in Manchuria, ruthlessly slaughtering thousands of Chinese every day, hurtling threatening remarks about the Pacific and the Philippines. And Europe —ah, Europe, that would have to be faced once again, under two decades after the Great War. The global depression was devastating England and France and Germany. Now, Germany, that was a place to watch. An Austrian beer-hall rabble-rouser had just been named chancellor of Germany, and though elections were to be held there on March 5—the day after his own swearing-in—there was little doubt that Herr Hitler and his Nazi sons of bitches were going to seize power. And speaking of sons of bitches, there were a handful here he needed to keep an eye on, like Senator Huey Long from Louisiana, the Kingfish himself. Just last week Long grabbed control of the state’s banking system—even though, as a U.S. senator, he had no authority to do so. But the governor there, a weak character named Oscar Allen, did what the Kingfish told him to do—and Long still ran that state as his own private kingdom. Long had campaigned hard for Roosevelt, but he still didn’t trust the man, not for a second. And there was Al Smith from New York, the former governor who believed he should have been the nominee last year. Keeping his enemies and friends in line was going to take a lot of a work, a lot of work, indeed. Certainly not one term; two terms, at least. And in the future, well, why not a third term? There was a tradition of only serving two terms, but the depth of the crisis—banks closing across the country, county judges lynched to prevent farm foreclosures, desperate streams of refugees going from state to state looking for work, looking for a new life, looking for hope—would surely allow for tradition be tossed aside. He was now sitting on the rear seat of his halted green Buick convertible, helped up by Gus Gennerich, head of his Secret Service detail, his legs with their ten-pound leg braces dangling uselessly before him. Yet another secret, his paralysis of nearly twelve years, a secret he was determined to keep from those who didn’t need to know. This was a time to be alive, but the millions of people who had voted for him might have hesitated had they known just how crippled he was. The mayor of Miami introduced him, to thunderous cheers and applause. As the microphone was handed down to him, though he had no prepared speech, he