Flowers From Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  The restaurant was informal and Italian, a quiet little family place called Mario's around the corner from the Library of Congress. After the meal, he offered her a port back at his place before returning her to the Shoreham.

  Again, she accepted. She could almost feel a little tingle of the old girlish excitement: a quiet glass of port at a man's place. Maybe things would get nicely out of hand. Tonight, who cared?

  It was only nine in the evening when they left the restaurant and they were in no hurry at all, enjoying each other's company. The night was chilly and even raw when the wind kicked up.

  "Know what?" she asked, pulling her wool coat close to her, "it reminds me of Dorset in the winter. Mind if we walk a little?"

  "You Brits never feel the cold, do you?" he asked with a smile.

  "It's invigorating," she said, pulling her collar close. Her dark hair, pulled close to her by her collar, framed her beautiful face.

  "May I?" he asked, offering her an arm.

  "Why, yes. You may," she said. She took his arm.

  Washington fascinated her. Unlike London, it was a city that seemed to be only government. There were uniforms everywhere, Army, Navy, Army Air Corps, every third car that passed them as they strolled, looked official, and the illuminated monuments and Capitol Hill, washed in yellow lights after dark, told her that this was the seat of American power. This was where decisions were made. If America entered the war, the entry would become official within view of where the walked.

  A light cold rain began to fall and again it made her think of England. They hurried back to where the Hudson was parked on C Street and he was struck with an idea.

  "It just occurred to me," he said. "You've barely seen Washington. I'll give you the grand tour before that nightcap."

  "That would be wonderful," she said. They quickened their pace and almost trotted the last block back to the car. His arm was gently on her shoulders and then he unlocked the door on her side of the car. He helped her in, came around to his side, jumped in, and, almost on cue, the rain intensified. They both laughed. The car's engine whined, ground, then sprang to life. Then they were off across the shiny, rain-swept streets of the city: the White House, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the Mall at the foot of the Capitol dome, and then, for the finale, he crossed into Virginia at Arlington, turned the car in the traffic circle, and took the same bridge back into the city.

  She had come a long way, she was thinking, since Edward Shawcross and his plans for a country inn. Even the recent memory of her husband's attack on her seemed to recede. It was one of those magical evenings with a man who was so new to her life that by his very presence he conveyed novelty and excitement.

  She began to think about the house on Twenty-sixth Street where he lived.

  "I'm ready for some port," she finally said.

  He turned down Pennsylvania Avenue a final time. The flag was flying and lit above the White House. Roosevelt was in residence. There were three men in U.S. Navy uniforms standing in the rain before the iron gates, peering in. To Bill Cochrane, they keyed memories of the sailors from The Adriana in Union Station, singing on their way to their incendiary slaughter at sea. He had to work to suppress the unpleasant memory.

  The sight of the sailors keyed a similar association to Laura, and Cochrane suspected as much, because she had been very talkative over the course of the evening-more about university, her husband, her girlhood, her father-and now she was very quiet, as suddenly, were the rain-slicked streets.

  Envisioning her thoughts telepathically, or at least trying to, he sought to calm her. "I know you're alarmed about Stephen," he said. "I know how traumatizing it is. But there's no way he'll harm you again. There's no way he'll harm anyone."

  To which she had many reactions, but said nothing. Then they were parking near his house.

  When they entered, he led Laura to the living room, eased her coat from her, and turned on only enough lights to maintain the pleasantness of the evening. She rubbed her hands together, still chilled from the outdoors, and he checked the radiator. The heat was low, so he used some newspaper to kindle some logs in the fireplace.

  Laura sat quietly as the fireplace slowly came alive. "Now," he finally said, "time for that nightcap. Port, still? I have brandy, also."

  "Port would be fine," she said.

  He found some in a decanter on the dry sink in the dining room. He blessed the housekeepers for seeing to at least some eventualities.

  He glanced at her and idly thought, What do I think I'm doing here with my suspect's wife? Then he reminded himself that his resignation from the Bureau became effective within less than two weeks. He had no suspects any more because he had concluded his final case. So much for conflict of interest.

  "Bill?" she asked at length. "What do you think will happen?"

  He poured a tawny port into two cordial glasses, barely looking up as she spoke.

  "About what?" he asked.

  "In Europe," she said. "Germany and England."

  He drew a long breath and returned to the sofa. He handed her one glass and sat down near her.

  "I suppose Hitler will topple what's already shaky," he answered. "France is totally unprepared for war. They'll fall the same way the Weimar Republic did. Soviet Russia is another question. I sense they’re extremely powerful and will be willing to sacrifice millions of lives.”

  "And England?" she asked.

  "Chamberlain's been discredited because a war has started despite all his concessions. He'll be out of office within weeks, also."

  "I'm not an expert," she said as she sipped very slowly, "but England doesn't have the ships and planes that Germany has. Do you think there will be an invasion?"

  "I think there's a good chance that one will be attempted. Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.”

  She was looking straight ahead now, not at him, and Cochrane knew where her thoughts were: in Salisbury, at the Georgian home of her father, surrounded by memories and a peaceful garden from her girlhood. All the things she had told him about.

  He placed an arm around her shoulder before he even realized what he was doing.

  "I also think England will get some ships and airplanes," he said. "Very quickly, if she needs them."

  She turned to him and smiled. She was, as he had noticed all along, very beautiful, in addition to being another man's wife.

  "From Roosevelt?" she asked.

  "That's the rumor on Capitol Hill," he said. "But who knows? There's an election coming, also. If Roosevelt leaves office, few of the other candidates have any international vision at all. Die-hard isolationists, they are. They'll travel to hell and back to keep America out of another European war."

  "What will you do?" she asked. "Enlist if there's a war?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "What would you like to do?"

  "Go to New York, I suppose. Find some peaceful work. Make a few dollars. Want the full truth?" he asked.

  She nodded and was half finished her port.

  "Fall in love again," he said, finishing his. "And yourself?" he asked.

  "Myself?"

  "What would you like to do?"

  She thought for a moment, looked away to the fire, then looked back to him. "You'll laugh," she insisted.

  "No, I won't, Laura."

  "I'd like to spend time with you," she said. "A lot of it."

  He set down his glass of port and took her hand. It was surprisingly chilly, despite the fire. Then there was a long silence, as each attempted to rationalize the danger signals that flashed.

  "That would be wonderful," he said in response. And his instinct was to add the conditions: wonderful, thank you, but you're married; wonderful, thank you, but I've buried the only other two women I've loved; wonderful, thank you, but I've totally given up on love, remember? I'd hoped to fall again, but figured I wouldn't. Until I met you, that is, a voice within him said. Until I saw this lovely, frightened, distraught Englishwoman standing in the woo
ds behind a church.

  But there were no other words spoken. Instead, he kissed her. Then there was an urgent embrace and they sank back onto the sofa. Her eyes were closed and her arms were around his shoulders. When his hand moved gently to the buttons of her sweater, she did nothing to stop him. Rather, a delicious anticipatory warmth coursed through her. Much later in the evening she remembered thinking, This isn't adultery at all, I'm simply going to bed with a man I love.

  When it was over, and when she lay next to him watching the final embers in the fire, words formed before she knew she was saying them.

  "If America enters the war," she said softly, "don't you dare get killed."

  FORTY-ONE

  The sound of the persistent knocking, a fist on a wooden doorway, forced Laura to emerge from a deep, satisfying sleep.

  There was the warmth of the strong male arm around her. His chest pressed to her back beneath a sheet and a blanket. There was, as she slowly woke, the excitement and strangeness of Bill Cochrane's bed. There was the sound of traffic outside. Then came that knocking again.

  She felt Bill's arm leave her waist and she rolled over. She fluttered her eyes open and saw him hurriedly dressing. Slowly, her mind began to register. The previous evening. Dinner. Logs in the fireplace. A new lover.

  He pulled on his clothes.

  "Good morning," she said, sitting up.

  Then came the knocking again.

  "Morning," he said.

  She sat up in bed, held the sheets to her, then figured, why bother? She liked her lovers to admire her. The sheet was across her lap.

  "What is that?" she then asked, realizing that the persistent rapping would not go away. "Bill, what's going on?"

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders, and kissed her.

  "You're very beautiful and you're a spectacular lover," he said to her. "And I have no idea who is downstairs at my door. So I thought I'd get dressed and find out."

  "Oh," she said, feeling a trifle foolish.

  He went to his dresser and withdrew his pistol from the second drawer. He checked it as he disappeared down the stairs. She listened.

  Moments later, she heard the door unlock. Then there was an animated, tormented conversation. Bill's voice. Another man. She recognized it.

  Peter Whiteside.

  She found her own clothes, ran a comb through her hair, and paused at a mirror. She looked like a very sinful girl who had slept over at a strange man's house without even bringing her own things. Such was life, she reasoned. She was entitled to her own imperfections. Then she stopped at the head of the stairs. Snatches of conversation rose up from the living room. .. shot to death by the filthy bastard. Two of my best bloody men.." Whiteside's impassioned voice: "My own fault, I should have assigned fifty men to guard him… and what the bloody hell do we do now? Fowler is loose again!"

  "For starters, we don't panic," Bill Cochrane answered. Laura tiptoed down the stairs and saw a greatly shaken Peter Whiteside standing in the living room with Bill. Whiteside's face was ashen.

  "Mind?" Whiteside asked, opening a decanter of Scotch and pouring himself some.

  "Suit yourself," Bill answered, his arms folded before him.

  Whiteside gulped down three fingers of liquor as if it were water.

  "And Laura's missing, too," Whiteside said urgently. "Tried to reach her since six this bloody morning. Called the hotel, finally had the bell captain check her room."

  "And?" Cochrane asked.

  "Never returned there last night." Whiteside threw down another gulp of whiskey.

  "Is that a fact?" Cochrane asked.

  "Laura's perfectly safe," Laura said from where she watched the conversation.

  Whiteside whirled as if addressed by a ghost. "But we're going to have to do something about her former husband,” she added.

  Whiteside stared at her. Then his gaze shifted to Cochrane. "Oh. I see," he finally said. He looked as if he were about to deliver a lecture on morality.

  Cochrane interceded and saved the moment. "After you've finished drinking your breakfast, Peter," he said, "we'll have to get moving. I suspect Fowler's right here in Washington."

  "Here? Why?"

  "He's stalking Roosevelt."

  "Oh, my Lord!" Whiteside, who was having a bad morning, exclaimed. He reached for the bottle again.

  "Well," Cochrane said, "it's about time you both knew, isn't it? That's all we're doing. Preventing an assassination that could change the world."

  *

  There followed a day of quiet panic in the District of Columbia. Cochrane hit the pavements almost immediately and ferreted out anyone in the Bureau or Secret Service with whom he could still obtain an open ear. To most field agents, he was still a leper. The Secret Service was not partial to obtaining their leads from the F.B.I. and Frank Lerrick was either "out" or "unavailable" whenever Cochrane called.

  All Bill Cochrane wished to convey was that Siegfried, or Rev. Stephen Fowler, had slipped the leash of British intelligence and was probably in Washington.

  "So what's new about that?" asked one of the White House Secret Service detail.

  "Just be extra vigilant," Cochrane advised.

  "We'll keep our eyes extra open," came the response, heavy with sarcasm.

  In the early afternoon Cochrane found his way into Bureau headquarters and onto the sixth floor. Most of the Bluebirds were absent: more empty desks and listening posts than Cochrane had ever seen. The place had an air of summer vacation or lunch hour, this in late November and in the middle of the afternoon.

  He looked again for Frank Lerrick and failed to find him. Lerrick, since that previous morning, had gained the title of Acting Operations Chief, whatever that meant. Bill Cochrane supposed it was some sort of move designed to fill the vacuum left by Dick Wheeler's "sudden retirement due to illness," as insiders were asked to call it.

  Cochrane drove by the White House and parked across on Pennsylvania Avenue by the curb. He sat and analyzed the street. He "made" as much of the plainclothes security as he could. His spirits were lifted slightly. Somewhere, perhaps, someone had been listening to him that afternoon. There was extra security.

  For Siegfried? Or simply because most of Washington knew the unofficial news anyway: Congress was an hour or two from Thanksgiving adjournment. The President would be leaving for Warm Springs as soon as the final gavel cracked.

  Cochrane pondered: a man needing heavy security, he knew from experience, is most vulnerable en route. In public places-in transit-a ring of security is most difficult to set.

  Lincoln, he recalled, was shot in a theater. Garfield was shot at a train station. McKinley took a bullet at a public meeting hall. President Roosevelt, himself, escaped death in a Miami motorcade in 1933 when a bullet intended for him hit Mayor Cermack of Chicago.

  Transit, thought Cochrane. Where in transit? He had been too close to Siegfried not to have some understanding of the man's moves. He knew a bomb was probably already made. Where was it?

  Cochrane turned over the engine of the Hudson and drove to the Washington Naval Station. Cochrane showed his F.B.I. credentials at the main gate. Already he could see that security was tighter than usual. The word had spread. Something was going on.

  "Are you with the F.B.I. contingent already here?" a Naval Shore Patrol man asked.

  "That's right, sailor," Cochrane said.

  The sailor waved him past while another sailor stood ten feet away with a carbine. Cochrane parked in the first space available. He walked toward the presidential yacht. He pinned his F.B.I. shield to his lapel and kept his hands visible.

  The ship was ringed with sixteen Shore Patrol members, eight different posts, two men at each post. Cochrane glanced to the deck and saw a stronger presence there than usual. He moved down the pier a hundred feet from where The Sequoia was berthed and stared at the water.

  No movement at all along the waterline of the ship. He raised his eyes. There were two armed
US Navy vessels in the Potomac Harbor, visitors he had never seen before. One was a hundred yards upstream from The Sequoia, the other was a hundred yards downstream. Both dwarfed the presidential yacht. Cochrane studied them.

  "Satisfied, Cochrane?" a voice asked.

  Cochrane's head turned to his left. There was Frank Lerrick, who had spotted him, then appeared quietly at his side.

  "I'll be more satisfied when the President arrives safely wherever he's going," Cochrane answered.

  Lerrick looked angry. "Same old Bill Cochrane," he said. "Not your case anymore, but you have to keep nosing into it. Don't you understand what 'dismissed' means?"

  "Maybe not. But my resignation's not effective till the end of the month, anyway."

  Lerrick drew a breath. The wind was kicking up and the banks of the river were chilly. "What can I do to get rid of you?" Lerrick asked. "Short of having you locked up?"

  "Convince me that your security is more than ample. I think there'll be an attempt on the President before he leaves this harbor."

  "Impossible."

  "Convince me," Cochrane again challenged.

  Frank Lerrick went a long way toward convincing him. The yacht had been tossed inside out, Lerrick said. Even panels from walls had been taken off and riveted back on. Everything that could move had been picked up, shaken, and put back into place. Ten army demolitions experts had gone through the ship that very afternoon, and when they had finished, the District bomb squad had repeated the same procedure.

  "You couldn't slip a wet cough drop on or off that boat," Lerrick said.

  "How about the harbor?" Cochrane asked.

  Lerrick motioned to the PT boats. "Navy operation all the way."

  "What about a mine at the mouth of the river?" Cochrane asked.