Flowers From Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  There was no time for lifeboats. The Adriana capsized within five minutes and went under, like a child's toy in a boat pond, within nine. The entire crew of 186 English seamen, plus seven British and two American civilians, went down with her.

  *

  In Washington on Monday evening, Bill Cochrane was in the living room of his new quarters. He sat in shirt sleeves and his suit pants in a faded armchair, a brandy by his side and his arms folded behind his aching, sorrowful head. He thought of the three sailors he had seen in Union Station. They would have done better, he thought, to have gotten so drunk that they never could have found their ship again.

  He turned on the Philco console at one minute after nine. The President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, came on the air with what had been announced previously as "an extraordinary message to the American people."

  In truth, it was. France and Great Britain were finally at war with the little Austrian corporal and his Thousand Year Reich. Roosevelt, speaking from the White House, asked for "an adjournment of all partisanship and selfishness," and asked that Americans join together to work toward "a true neutrality" which would "keep this newest world war from the western hemisphere."

  The President added that he could not, however, expect every American to be neutral in thoughts. "A neutral," Franklin Roosevelt concluded, "cannot be asked to close his mind or his conscience."

  "I know what that means," Bill Cochrane spoke aloud to the console. And he saw the old alliances from the First Great War drifting slowly back into place. And then for another moment he was a boy again, skipping stones into the Rivanna River when his own father went off to war.

  Each new generation, he thought, fails to learn from the one before.

  J. Edgar Hoover was also very good at grasping Roosevelt's meanings, particularly when beckoned anew to the White House the next day. Roosevelt had allotted ten minutes for Hoover, less if possible.

  The President was livid. The Adriana had been in touch by shortwave with the British Naval Chancellery at Foggy Bottom in the hours between her crippling and her annihilation. There was little question that HMS Adriana had been sabotaged on American shores and German naval intelligence had known. A submarine had been sent specifically to stalk and kill her after she left port.

  "And you know, of course, J. Edgar," said Roosevelt, his face already drawn with tension, "the only way the German Navy could have known that quickly would have been by wireless."

  "That's correct, Mr. President," Hoover answered.

  Roosevelt looked up from his desk. He wore a gray cardigan sweater belonging to his eldest son; his eyes were drawn and haggard. "J. Edgar," he said. "If you think this is beyond the scope of your Bureau, other arrangements could be made."

  Hoover's response was chilly. "I assure you, Mr. President, that our field agents should be very close to a resolution by now."

  "See that it's resolved quickly," Roosevelt concluded. "Or I'll expect your resignation. That's all."

  *

  It was the moment to shake Hamburg to its foundations.

  Siegfried leaned into his transmission key a few moments past eleven on Wednesday. He gave Hamburg a coded lesson in American civics: MY ASSESSMENT OF U.S. POLITICS AS FOLLOWS: THERE IS ONLY ONE ROOSEVELT. AMERICANS HAVE NO OTHER LEFTIST PRO-JEWISH PRO- BRITISH LEADER OF SIGNIFICANCE. PREDICT CONFIDENTLY THAT REMOVAL OF ROOSEVELT WOULD RESULT IN NEW ADMINISTRATION EITHER NOW OR AFTER 1940 ELECTION MORE AMICABLE TO NEW ORDER OF GERMAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM, OR AT LEAST TO HISTORIC AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM. IN THIS MANNER, AMERICANS CAN BE EFFECTIVELY KEPT FROM JOINING EUROPEAN WAR.

  Siegfried grinned. He pictured the reactions of those thick-browed Gestapo dolts at AOR-3. Then he fired off his conclusion.

  CAN EASILY PLANT FLOWERS FROM BERLIN FOR PRESIDENT F.D. ROOSEVELT. SEEK PERMISSION FROM NO ONE LOWER THAN THE FUEHRER HIMSELF BEFORE I PROCEED. END. CQDXVW-2

  Siegfried relaxed and treated himself to a Pall Mall. Almost forty-five seconds expired before his receiver was alive with a response from Hamburg. Siegfried grinned at the jittery dots and dashes.

  "The frightened little Gestapo twits," he cursed to himself, blowing out a long stream of smoke.

  Hamburg began,DO NOT HAVE AUTHORITY TO ASSIGN

  Siegfried angrily whirled from his receiver to his transmission key. How these underlings could waste precious time! He slashed into their message: I AM NOT SEEKING YOUR PERMISSION, YOU INCOMPETENT MORONS! WILL PROCEED ONLY ON DIRECT PERSONAL ORDERS OF ADOLF HITLER. OBTAIN SAID PERMISSION THROUGH APPROPRIATE GESTAPO CHANNELS! AWAITING RESPONSE SUNDAY NIGHT. END. CQDXVW-2

  Siegfried boldly leaned back from his key, his shoulders square and erect. He stared at the receiver. Not a whimper from Hamburg. It was about time they learned who was in control. About time, indeed.

  *

  In Washington, Siegfried's entire transmission had come in clear as a bell. The Bluebirds had a complete recording. Cochrane, who had come up corpse-cold in his responses from twelve chiefs of urban bomb units, oversaw the Bluebirds' progress, then oversaw everyone in Cryptology as they tried to distill Siegfried's anguishing blips.

  "Mary Ryan has been in this repulsive business for a long time," Mary Ryan said with pride late on Thursday, "and she has never seen a cipher like this one. Alphabet soup, that's what it is. Heavy on the boiled pork and roast potatoes."

  Cochrane nodded. The Virgin Mary remained at her desk. Cochrane went by Bobby Charles Martin's cell in Section Seven. Together, Cochrane and the cartographer from Ohio spread out a huge map of the states of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

  Martin, creeping forward with the minimal new results obtained from triangulation, motioned with his finger and drew a circle with a fifty-mile radius around the area of New Jersey just south of New York City.

  "He's somewhere in here," the former Ohio state trooper announced solemnly. "But that's all I can say."

  A few minutes later, Wheeler passed Cochrane in the hallway. "Hoover's still screaming bloody murder," Wheeler said routinely as he passed. "I can keep him at bay for another couple of days."

  Mr. Hay chose that moment to pass both of them in the hallway, concealing a lit cigarette in his palm. He knew better than to even look up.

  *

  It was Hermann Goering, himself, founder of the Gestapo and currently Minister of the Air Force, who had the pleasure of passing along the report from the nervous Hamburg station to Hitler.

  War meetings at 9 A.M. were common in early September. Each day the Wehrmacht made extraordinary progress in every direction, pulverizing anything that stood in its way. The Luftwaffe, meanwhile, softened any potential resistance through its merciless aerial bombardment. Already, Warsaw was in ruins, Danzig had been taken, and Hitler had received ebullient reports on a potentially swift victory in France and a tougher but eventual victory over the Royal Air Force.

  Goering found Hitler in the map room of the Berlin Chancellery. Hitler wore a gray shirt, black tie, black trousers, and the mandatory armband. Goering noticed for the first time since he had ever known Hitler that the Fuehrer's eyes looked drawn and tired.

  There were a dozen men there, cabinet members and generals, to discuss war preparations. The mood of the men in the room, considering Nazi successes in the field and in the air, was suitably cheerful.

  Goering waited until noon when the meeting was adjourned and when all others had departed. Then he spoke privately to Hitler. He showed him the record of transmissions from AOR-3 in Hamburg. He recounted the successes of Siegfried in the United States.

  Hitler's eyes narrowed and sparkled at the same time. "Ah, yes," he said in his soft Austrian whine, "you have spoken of this man before." Hitler scanned the previous successes of the agent in America. Hitler's eyebrows were raised. "He has sunk two English ships? Once by himself, once with the help of our Navy."

  "He has always succeeded in whatever he has tried. I'm sure the Fuehrer recalls the bombing in Birmingham, England, a few years ago."

&nbs
p; "Ah, yes. Of course." Hitler's eyes were merry. "And now," Goering continued, nodding to the report before them, "he proposes-"

  "I see what he proposes," Hitler said softly. He pursed his rosy lips. "Do you think this is possible?"

  Goering quoted from Siegfried. "’Americans have no other leader of significance,’" he said slowly in German. "’Can easily plant flowers from Berlin for President F.D. Roosevelt.' The man has never yet been wrong," Goering said.

  Hitler still considered it. "Where did we find this man?" he asked.

  "We didn't, Mein Fuehrer," Goering said. "He came to us. He is completely outside all of our services. If we authorize him to proceed, then even we cannot stop-"

  "Completely outside?" Hitler asked abruptly, looking Goering in the eye. "Then he could never be conclusively traced to us?"

  "No, Mein Fuehrer."

  "Then let us wish him luck," Hitler concluded. He reached for a fountain pen with a brisk single movement of his ivory-hued wrist.

  Hitler had entertained a savage hatred of Roosevelt since 1937 when the American President had made a speech in Chicago urging a world "quarantine of dictators and aggressors." Hitler had taken that speech to have been aimed directly at him-which it only partially had been-and had since borne Roosevelt nothing but venom. Hitler insisted that Roosevelt was partially Jewish and attributed all of Roosevelt's actions to "this basic fact."

  Now he initialed with great fervor a document which would dispatch a homicidal Siegfried toward Roosevelt.

  "Let us hope this will be the end of that Hebrew cripple in the White House," Hitler muttered, withdrawing his pen and musing cheerfully. "You know, of course, Goering, that Roosevelt suffers from syphilitic paralysis, not infantile paralysis. This, too, is a basic fact."

  "Of course, Mein Fuehrer," Goering answered.

  Goering clapped the file shut and raised his hand in a salute. Hitler returned to his battle maps. Goering was halfway out the door when Hitler, almost as an afterthought, jerked his head up.

  "Goering!" he shrieked suddenly.

  The Air Minister turned.

  "It is more urgent than ever that we obtain a victory in England before the Americans become involved." Hitler motioned toward the folder in Goering's hand. "This 'Siegfried' is more crucial than ever. See that he succeeds."

  "We will do everything to assist him," Goering said. Then he saluted again, turned, and departed.

  That evening in his radio chamber, four thousand miles to the west, Siegfried swooned in happiness and rejoiced in the unqualified authorization from Berlin that he had dreamed of for years:

  FLOWERS FROM BERLIN:PROCEED! ADOLF HITLER

  PART FIVE

  September-October

  1939

  TWENTY

  "Not very pretty to look at, Mr. Cochrane, sir," said Chief Martin Kugler of the Red Bank, New Jersey, Police Department. The two men stepped from a rusting green and white police car on the curb. Nearby there already stood an entire delegation of police vehicles. Men in various uniforms-local police, county sheriff's office, state police-stood with folded arms and waited. Police Chief Martin Kugler led Cochrane through a trail in the woods. The ground steamed with unexpected September heat, and a cloud of gnats pursued them.

  Kugler's tones were apologetic. "We knew a boy was missing from the navy yard, but they get AWOL's all the time. Generally they turn up a thousand miles away at their parents' home. Wish it had been the same with this one, right?"

  "Right," Cochrane mumbled, looking ahead. Kugler's waddling, measured steps set the pace. The police chief was a squat, sincere, balding little man with thick arms, an imposing paunch, and a. 45 that hung like a cannon at his left side. This was Chief Kugler's second homicide in nine years, and the first that did not fit into a neat pattern of victim-knowing-killer. He and Cochrane neared a group of men standing around a body in the center of the woods.

  Kugler continued. "We read all the F.B.I. circulars, you know. Read them carefully. Think they had your name on them."

  "They did," Cochrane answered.

  "Well, you know. Since the Adriana went down we been looking for anything funny around here. Then this morning two kids are playing in the woods and they find this."

  Billy Pritchard's corpse was in a middle stage of decomposition. The skin was dark and ulcerated, the teeth horribly accentuated by the rotting flesh of the lips, and the hair matted badly from dirt and rain. The entire corpse crawled with insects.

  Cochrane stared. The body of an American boy in his underclothes was more real than a thousand ships exploding at sea.

  Kugler stared also. The last few hours had been unpleasantly unique in his experience. First the body had been discovered in the woods. He had immediately filed the homicide report with the state police in Trenton. The state police-noting the proximity of the body to the navy yard, that an American sailor was still AWOL, and the events surrounding the Adriana -called it in to Washington.

  Moments later, Chief Kugler had found himself talking long distance to someone named Special Agent Cochrane who wanted more of the specifics.

  "See, I don't want to make something out of nothing, Mr. Cochrane, sir," Kugler had offered, "but the boy's uniform is gone. Now, you know that British boat that blew up? I was thinking…"

  "Don't touch anything," answered Cochrane. "I'll be there in three hours."

  Cochrane telephoned the Newark Bureau office and asked for two special agents, Mike Cianfrani and Jim Hearn, whom Cochrane knew from New York, to be placed on local special assignment. As Cochrane took a taxi to Washington's Union Station, Cianfrani and Hearn took their own car to Red Bank to safeguard the crime scene.

  Kugler broke the deep silence that enshrouded the dead sailor. "Awful hot out here, ain't it?" the police chief said. "Poor kid. Body stinks to high hell."

  "How do you know it's the sailor?" Cochrane asked, still looking down. The eye sockets were dark and discolored.

  "Dog tags." Kugler motioned toward what used to be the boy's neck.

  "Yes," said Cochrane softly, seeing the flat gray shape of something metal. "Of course."

  "That's all that was touched here, sir," Kugler rushed to reassure. "Absolutely all. Rest of the area's as virgin as a Girl Scout tea party."

  "I'm sure," Cochrane muttered.

  Cianfrani and Hearn supervised the search of the area. Meanwhile, Cochrane excused himself to wander the area on his own. He had seen enough of the victim. The local police placed a sheet across the corpse.

  Moments later, Cochrane heard a body bag unzipping. Cochrane walked farther into the woods, looking for the odd item-a scrap of cloth, a bottle, a button, anything – which might yield a fingerprint or a clue. He found nothing.

  The gnats pursued him but his thoughts focused upon Billy Pritchard. It was doubtful that the young man had been taken to the woods and strangled. So where had the crime been committed? And why? Had Siegfried simply wanted a uniform to gain access to The Adriana? Or was this homicide one of those maddening coincidences that sends a detective in the wrong direction for months?

  Cochrane pondered as he continued to walk. He saw a clearing ahead and, when he reached it, was surprised to come upon an old gravel and dirt parking lot. He stood perfectly still for a full minute and stared at the abandoned diner and the lonesome telephone booth.

  He took a few more steps forward and noted that a road wound down the other side of the hill toward Red Bank. "Accessible by car," he said to himself. Then he walked back to where Billy Pritchard's remains were now in a yellow canvas body bag on a stretcher.

  Chief Kugler, looking more and more shaken, glanced up to Cochrane. "Don't get much of this around here," said the police chief. "This is a family region. Worst thing that'll normally happen is a man will take a deer out of season."

  "This incident didn't happen, Chief," Cochrane said. "The boys who made this discovery actually found a wino sleeping in the woods. That's all."

  Several heads turned.

  "Oh
, well, that's just dandy," Chief Kugler snapped. "As soon as the county medical examiner gets the body-"

  Cochrane interrupted. "The corpse is going to Newark for a postmortem. F.B.I. forensics lab," he said. Cochrane nodded to Cianfrani and Hearn. "Twelve hours should be sufficient for a thorough autopsy. If there are any doubts or delays, this is upon the authority of J. Edgar Hoover's office. Any questions?"

  There weren't.

  Two state troopers accompanied the Newark agents down the hill with the yellow canvas bag. Cochrane turned back to Kugler.

  "Did this Pritchard boy have friends?" Cochrane asked.

  "A boatload. Down at the yard." Kugler paused. "Parents, too."

  "I'll start with the friends," Cochrane answered.

  *

  What emerged that afternoon was a portrait of a homesick, clean-cut, dutiful young naval officer, half-man and half-boy, and totally naive to the malevolence of the world beyond Kansas.

  "Is he dead?" asked one shipmate.

  Cochrane wasn’t happy with a lie, but he was stuck with it. "This is a standard investigation. Ensign Pritchard is AWOL from a sensitive installation. Now, perhaps,"

  Cochrane nudged firmly, "you could recall your friend's daily routine?"

  At Reilly's, Pritchard's friend recalled, the young man liked to hobnob with the local females, and even shoot a round of darts with some of the English sailors, to whom he always lost.

  "A terrible dart player!" another of Pritchard's friends remarked. "The worst in the house."

  "Second worst," Buck Reilly, the bartender and owner, recalled that evening as he removed the padlock from his front doors and opened for business. "The worst was Pritchard's pal. The old man."

  "What old man?" Cochrane asked.

  "Elmer," said Buck Reilly, his ham-hock arms swinging at his sides as Cochrane followed. "And come to think of it, he's disappeared, too."