Flowers From Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  "I'll tell him we can count on you. He’ll probably send you an autographed picture.”

  “Really?”

  “Count on it. He likes to do things like that.”

  Chief Higgins was beaming.

  "Now, the state police will be by for photographs," Cochrane said. "They'll also handle the removal of the body. Where do I find this Mrs..?”

  "Fowler? The one who discovered the body?"

  "Right," Cochrane said.

  "Well, sir, just follow me. It'll just take a minute."

  *

  Chief Higgins led Bill Cochrane to the home of Reverend and Mrs. Fowler. Cochrane and Chief Higgins waited in the Fowlers' living room as Reverend Fowler appeared first.

  "She's extremely upset," Reverend Fowler explained in low tones before his wife entered the room. "I hope you won't dwell on too many of the details."

  "I'll proceed gently," said Cochrane.

  "What are you, by the way?" Fowler asked. "New Jersey State Police?"

  "Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  Cochrane saw an unwitting flinch in the minister's eyes. He chalked it up to surprise.

  "Investigating a homicide?" Reverend Fowler asked, his tone of voice strange.

  Cochrane repeated the lie about banking and kidnapping. The minister appeared content with the explanation.

  The woman who entered the room a minute late was as beautiful as she was shaken. Laura wore a navy-blue sweater and a gray skirt. Bill Cochrane looked at her and wondered why he always met the truly extraordinary women in the line of duty or after they had married someone else.

  Then he reminded himself that a woman in city clothing was dead beyond the churchyard. He exchanged a few pleasantries with the Fowlers, sat down, and turned to business. Chief Higgins remained in the room.

  Laura recounted what she had found and how she had found it. She had little more to say. She had, after all, turned and run from the area in horror upon her discovery. And she had not been back to the location since.

  Reverend Fowler tried to take some of the attention away from his wife.

  "Really, Officer," Fowler said, "I don't know what else my wife can tell you. She only made the discovery."

  "Had either of you been up in that area of the woods on previous days?" Cochrane asked.

  The Fowlers shook their heads.

  "What about suspicious individuals?" Cochrane asked. "Or people you haven't recognized in town recently?"

  "I saw the woman's face," Laura said with a shudder. "I can still see her face." She stifled a tremor, and her husband, sitting on a sofa next to her, took her hand.

  She raised her eyes back to Bill Cochrane. "I had never seen her before. Ever."

  Fowler looked at his wife carefully and shifted his eyes back to Cochrane. It was at that moment that Fowler was unnerved to notice that Cochrane had been watching him as his wife spoke.

  "Reverend," Cochrane asked, "do you know anyone in the habit of using that area for any purpose?"

  Fowler said he did not.

  "But the only access is through the churchyard, isn't it?" Cochrane asked.

  Chief Higgins interjected. "Well, sir, no. Not exactly. The woods come out near the train station."

  "They do, do they?" asked Cochrane, intrigued.

  "They also border upon more than three dozen private homes," Fowler seemed anxious to add. "Really, Officer, there're probably a hundred ways to get to that location. None of them are particularly well watched."

  "Of course," said Cochrane. He looked at Laura again. Another man's woman. His attention lagged again and he wondered what such a woman had seen in her husband. Then, of course, he sensed it. Fowler was well-spoken, and handsome. Chief Higgins had already confided that their parish minister was from a moneyed Main Line family.

  "I suspect that's all for today,” Cochrane said. “Thank you."

  What was it, Cochrane wondered, that he did not like about the minister? Then he realized: Fowler had the type of woman that Cochrane had once upon a time wanted.

  "Officer?" Fowler asked, as they all stood and as Cochrane moved toward the door.

  "Yes?"

  "Tomorrow's Sunday," he said. "If you're here in the morning, St. Paul's would welcome you. We have services at eight and nine-thirty."

  Cochrane's response surprised the minister. "That's very kind of you," he answered. "I'll try to be there."

  Once again, Bill Cochrane thought he saw something strange in the man's eyes.

  "Wonderful," Laura said. "My husband gives an excellent sermon."

  "People like it because it's short," laughed Fowler. "They can get home to breakfast at a reasonable hour."

  Then Bill Cochrane and Chief Higgins were outside the Fowlers' home again and Chief Higgins was talking as they walked down the lane that passed the church. Higgins was saying how popular the new minister was, how he had just come from seminary at Yale, and how he had eased the transition from the older Reverend Dryer, who was now quite ill.

  Cochrane listened with one ear as they walked past the white wooden church. Cochrane looked skyward toward the spire.

  Then several thoughts came together. The steeple of St. Paul's was the highest manmade point anywhere in the area. And then he suddenly recalled why the name Liberty Circle had leaped out at him. The town was almost dead center on the radius map drawn by the Bluebirds of radio transmissions. His mind played Satanic games as he thought back to Wilhelm Hunsicker's description of an elusive spy.

  Except for one detail: Siegfried was German. Wasn't he?

  Cochrane was suddenly in his own universe with the implications.

  "What's wrong with you, Mr. Cochrane?" Chief Higgins' voice was urgent. “Hey! Snap out of it! Then Higgins’hand was on Cochrane's shoulder, shaking him, jarring him.

  ".. wrong with you?" Cochrane heard him say.

  Cochrane snapped back to where he was. "Sorry," he said.

  "We're strolling along here, sir, and you plain stopped walking. You all right?"

  "Yes," Cochrane said, realizing that he had in fact stopped walking when a certain realization was upon him. "I was thinking. That's all."

  "Must have been some thought."

  "Yes. Frankly, it was. Something personal though. Sorry, I can't share it."

  Fact: no one had ever established that Siegfried was a native German. That had been supposition. Dick Wheeler's, seconded by Hoover.

  And, fact: there was no such thing as coincidence in this line of work.

  Bill Cochrane checked into an inn situated in nearby Moorestown. From there he telephoned Dick Wheeler in Washington. He was staying here for a few days, Cochrane explained. Siegfried had been there four or five days earlier and no one had seen a stranger. So perhaps the spy wasn't a stranger.

  "Don't get carried away, Bill," Wheeler warned. "Why would Brother Siegfried kill in his own backyard?"

  “Because he could? Because he had to?” Cochrane suggested.

  Cochrane could almost smell the white pipe smoke seeping through the line. Dick Wheeler cast his own spells.

  "I don't know," Cochrane answered. "But it's as warm a lead as we've seen. So I'm staying."

  TWENTY-NINE

  The turnout for both church services that Sunday morning was larger than usual. The news of a murder within friendly Liberty Circle had spread through town. By Saturday evening everyone knew. By Sunday morning townspeople wanted to see each other and know that the world would safely go on. So they went to church.

  St. Paul's had pews of deep burgundy, two side aisles, light oak panels on the floor and the walls, and a pulpit to the center left. An ethereal, benevolent fair-haired Christ appeared on the stained glass behind the altar. Bill Cochrane was only an occasional churchgoer, but even he was moved by the old church -- 1797, said the historical marker outside -- the congregation that filled it, the service, and the pastor.

  Stephen Fowler was a man of great seriousness that Sunday morning. The congregation joined the choir in Ho
ly, Holy, Holy! -the processional hymn-and after an opening prayer and psalm, those assembled sang A Mighty Fortress. "At least one Lutheran hymn a week," Reverend Fowler liked to tell parishioners with a wink.

  Then came the sermon. Stephen Fowler met head-on the subject that troubled his parish most. He avoided words "murder" and "homicide," but he talked of the "tragedy" in their midst. He spoke eloquently of death as part of life, touched upon guilt and original sin, and then moved to both forgiveness and trust: trust in God, trust in Christ; trust in the teachings of Christ. Follow me.

  "Some follow and some stray," Reverend Fowler concluded. "It is up to each of us to decide which we are. But I promise you this." He held his congregation in rapt attention. "Those who follow are not those who need have fear now. Fear," he said, "is for those who have strayed. Let us pray…"

  The recessional hymn, appropriately, was Faith of Our Fathers, which keyed something within Cochrane and summoned up memories of a Methodist childhood in Virginia. After the service he felt good, as if the service itself had routed the specter of war and murder.

  But, of course, it hadn't. Afterward, outside on a sunny cool November morning, he found himself glancing upward at the spire again. Then he saw Reverend Fowler and Laura exchanging greetings with the faithful in the vestibule, so he joined them.

  "It was good of you to come," Fowler said to Cochrane, shaking his hand. "I like to see new faces each Sunday."

  "It was a lovely service," Cochrane said. "Thanks for skipping Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

  Reverend Fowler chuckled. "I'll tell you," he said, lowering his voice, "we get requests for that mawkish bombastic piece. Once a year will do us fine on that."

  "Anything new?" Laura asked Cochrane, changing the subject.

  "On investigation? No,” Cochrane answered. “I suspect I'll be turning it over to the state police this evening."

  "Then you're not staying?" she asked.

  Cochrane shook his head. "I'm on my way back to Washington," he said. "Federal employees can only get away for so long before it starts to look like a vacation."

  "I'm on my way to New York, myself," Fowler said. "Later today. Sorry we're not going in the same direction. We could have had a fine talk."

  "Maybe some other time."

  "Maybe." Bill Cochrane turned to Laura and looked into the loveliest pair of brown eyes he could ever have imagined. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Fowler," he said.

  "I wish I could have helped more," Laura answered.

  For some reason, he was short of words. "I'm sure you did your best," he said lamely. Then he left, feeling their eyes on his back as he walked away.

  *

  From a slatted window in the church spire, just above the antique clock, and just a few feet from Siegfried's cramped transmission chamber, a man could see the railroad station. Reverend Fowler found it convenient to be in the spire that afternoon when the train to Philadelphia and Washington departed. He focused a pair of binoculars on the depot, scanned the voyagers assembled, and eventually found the snooping F.B.I. agent.

  Fowler kept the glasses carefully on Bill Cochrane. There was nothing about the man that he liked. His presence there. His sharp, penetrating mind. His observance of detail. The way he looked at Laura. The way she looked back at him.

  The train pulled into the station and Fowler kept the glasses on the troublemaker. Fowler thought of his wife. His wife was his possession, after all. She might have to be taught a lesson sometime soon. After all, he mused further, with Charlotte gone, Laura would have to fulfill other functions. A man needed a wife and a whore sometimes, Fowler mused wistfully. Laura would have to be both.

  The train pulled to a halt at Liberty Circle. The first three cars would transfer at Trenton to an engine and train of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Fowler watched Bill Cochrane carefully and was relieved when the F.B.I. agent boarded the second car. Fowler scanned all the exits until the train pulled out of the station.

  Cochrane had not disembarked. He was gone. Fowler placed his binoculars back in their case, content with Cochrane's departure. He was further satisfied that he could travel to New York, himself, later that evening.

  Fowler paid no attention at all to three other travelers who disembarked at Liberty Circle. One was a tall dark-haired Englishman in a coat and a bowler. The other two men were younger and more heavyset. They were bareheaded and followed their senior partner. But Siegfried, thinking ahead to his own departure that day, had no way of recognizing Peter Whiteside. Nor did he have any way of guessing his business in Liberty Circle. Nor, in his wildest fantasies, would he have imagined that Whiteside would have brought some M.I. 6 muscle along with him, just for good measure.

  THIRTY

  Fritz Duquaine, the Boer and Siegfried's onetime spy master, felt like a fool. Twice he had been to St. Paul's by night to leave messages for Fowler. Twice he had urged the stubborn minister to contact him. Protocol forbade a direct meeting anywhere outside of New York. And they had made rendezvous arrangements in the summer. But Fowler, Duquaine cursed, has this fixation: his independence and his self- professed anonymity. Siegfried hadn't made contact for three weeks, since the last signal left in the church.

  Duquaine stood before the Sailors' Monument in New York's Battery Park. Beneath his left arm he held an umbrella and an attache case. In his right hand he held a New York Mirror. The weather had turned sharply colder and wind swept in from the harbor. Duquaine was reminded of the docks in Bremen or Cape Town in the winter. Yet another exercise in futility, Duquaine thought. In a raincoat, he was freezing. It was a Tuesday a few minutes after noon. Few other people were in the park. Apparently few New Yorkers enjoyed having their ears turned to ice.

  Duquaine walked to a bench near a park exit toward Wall Street. He hunched his shoulders. Even here the wind found him. He cursed Siegfried again and muttered a special oath for all self-styled spies. Someday one of them would get him killed.

  What, he wondered, was Siegfried doing that would get direct approval from Hitler? How far could Siegfried have managed to get, seeing how the Gestapo's contact within the F.B.I. had sent out an alarm?

  Duquaine lit a cigarette, using three matches within his cupped hands. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes past noon. Well, he decided, he wasn't going to freeze more than three more minutes. That was certain. He turned to his left, squinted slightly against the brightness, and eyed the ferry and a British frigate leaving the harbor.

  The British, he thought again, thinking back to his own boyhood. Filthiest colonialists in the world. Now at least England was in the war against Hitler. Over the pretext of Polish territorial integrity, of all things! Duquaine wondered whether he would soon be assigned to infiltrate England in advance of the German invasion. It was not without reason. He had relatives up north, toward Sunderland and Edinburgh, and under a colonial guise he could probably get a good look at submarine activity.

  Duquaine was in the midst of this thought when he turned quickly and was startled to see Reverend Fowler standing beside him, looking down in the ominous squinting glare that Duquaine had always disliked.

  "Daydreaming?" Fowler asked in English.

  "Waiting for you and freezing," said Duquaine. "And not for the first time."

  "But possibly for the last," said Fowler. "Shall we walk?"

  "Of course."

  Anything, Duquaine thought, to get moving and get business accomplished. They walked toward Wall Street.

  "I am instructed to warn you," Duquaine began, "the Federal Bureau of Investigation has picked up your trail. Apparently, they do not know who you are yet, but they may be close.”

  "I'm aware of it," said Fowler flatly.

  "There is a particular agent. His name is William Cochrane. He-"

  "I'm at least a week ahead of you, Duquaine," Fowler said. They paused. A policeman walked by and gave them a nod, which they returned. "I know about the F.B.I. and I know about the agent. I want from you two things. One is the agent's home
location. Do you have that for me?"

  "I do," Duquaine said. He gave it and Fowler memorized it.

  Then Fowler continued. "Now, I need an escape route and it must be ready immediately. I assume Berlin has arranged such?"

  "Berlin has. You are to travel under a pseudonym. Do you need identity papers, too?"

  "Duquaine," Siegfried responded curtly, "if I needed papers I would have told you so. I need a route," he said. "That is all."

  Duquaine hesitated and held his own temper. "You are to travel to Mexico City," he said. "There is a German Embassy there, as you know. The undersecretary of consular affairs is a Herr Jacquard. You will go to a restaurant called Renato's, which is down the boulevard from the embassy. Do you speak Spanish?"

  "Adequately," Fowler answered.

  "Inquire at the bar for Senor Lopez between six and seven on your first evening. The bartender will say that he does not know your name. You will move to the end of the bar and drink. Senor Lopez is Herr Jacquard. He is available each evening for such emergencies. He will find you. Remain ready to travel; have no more than one small suitcase. You will be sent to either Tampico or Veracruz the next day and will leave on whatever German ship is first scheduled out of port. Probably a freighter."

  "A freighter?"

  "What did you prefer? The Bismarck? Or perhaps the Fuehrer's personal vessel?"

  "Something more than a freighter," Fowler said acidly. "What am I? A deckhand? I'm going to keep America out of the war, all by myself."

  "If you are unhappy," Duquaine replied with evident relish, "arrange your own passage."

  "What I shall arrange," said Fowler, stopping and breaking off the conversation, "is that you will be placed on latrine duty in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Good day to you Duquaine. You've been of some small help."

  Duquaine held his silence but looked furiously at Fowler. The American, however, turned his back on the South African and walked away.

  "Bloody Nazis," Duquaine mumbled when Fowler was far out of earshot. If he never saw any of them again, it would be too soon. The Nazi true believers were almost as repellent as the English. Then, as Duquaine disappeared toward Worth Street, in search of a Longchamps for lunch, a few of Siegfried's words came back to him.