Flowers From Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  They were toward the end of the corridor and Wheeler held out his fist and knuckles just above a door as a prelude to knocking. He turned and dropped his voice to a whisper.

  "I'm going to introduce you to the 'Virgin Mary,”he said. Then he rapped. An agreeable female voice from within a final chamber gave them entry.

  The Virgin Mary was Mary Ryan, an eighty-one years old, a graduate of Vassar, 1882, and the only current employee of the Bureau who had spent half of her life in the previous century. Mary came and went as she pleased, Wheeler explained, and did astonishing things with numbers, sequential series, probability, factorials, logarithms, and the other numerical complexities of cryptology. She had earned an office of her own.

  Mary was an elfin white-haired woman with a small impish face, dazzling deep-green Irish eyes, and ruddy red cheeks. She wore her hair pinned back into a loose bun, and despite Cochrane's protestations, she stood when they entered the room and remained standing as they spoke.

  Mary's desk was an outrageous scramble of papers, clippings, pencils, erasers, and simple additions and subtractions. As they entered she turned facedown onto the table whatever it was she had been working on.

  All the great mysterious things that the Virgin Mary did with numbers she did in her head-conceived them immaculately, someone from the Bluebirds had once said-and could beat Deciphering's primitive computing gadgets. Only Mary's simple arithmetic was on paper.

  Mary offered Cochrane a delicate hand, lined with thin bluish veins, but surprised him with a secure, sound grip. As part of her introduction, Wheeler mentioned that Mary was an alumna of the State Department's "Black Chamber" from the Great War of 1914-18. The Black Chamber was that dubious wing of the State Department in which the government spied upon anything and anyone for whom they were in the mood. Secretary of State Henry Stimson had disbanded the chamber in 1929 stating, "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail."

  "Maybe gentlemen don't," Mary Ryan had snarled back when furloughed, "but Mary Ryan sure enjoys it. Oh, well…"

  And she went quietly out to pasture, only to be called back in 1937 when the F.B.I. started picking up strange blips and dots bouncing through the stars.

  "Bill Cochrane's going to be working on special assignment for us," Wheeler informed her. "I've assured him that he'll have the support of everyone in Section Seven."

  "Oh, how wonderful," Mary Ryan answered. "It's not so often that we get some handsome young men up here. What sort of assignment?"

  "I'm trying to catch a spy."

  "On our floor? Figures!"

  "No, no. Out in the United States somewhere."

  "I wish you luck, dear," she said. She winked at him. "Section Seven isn't always too good about keeping its own secrets," she said. "What a bunch of detectives! If the power failed in this building half the male population couldn't find its way to the street. Oh, well, a woman pays a price to be surrounded by younger men. What did you say your name was?"

  "Cochrane. Bill Cochrane."

  "If you have a numerical sequence or code type, let me have the first look at it. Mary will save you a lot of time. Despite what this Mr. Wheeler tells you, you can skip Deciphering altogether. Them with their machines. Claptrap! Haven't the foggiest idea what they're about. Bring it to Mary first and Mary will help you in every way she can."

  "Thank you, Mary."

  "You are a handsome young man," she said to Cochrane as they left. "I do so hope that wasn't why you were hired, but I think I do see something behind the eyes."

  "Thank you, Mary," Wheeler said this time, and he and Bill Cochrane continued to the end of the corridor.

  Then Wheeler spoke again, relighting his pipe, sucking furiously to pick up the flame and then exuding a long cloud of smoke. "Mary's got the sharpest intellect in this whole section, including yours and mine combined," he said. He stopped, produced a key from his pocket and unlocked a final door. "If Mary Ryan were a man she would probably be running the Bureau. But she's not. So J.E.H. has the job, for the time being, anyway." Wheeler lowered his voice. "I hear Roosevelt wants to replace him."

  "That rumor's been around for seven years," Cochrane said. "Hoover always lands on his feet. Other people come and go, including Presidents."

  "True enough," Wheeler mused. "What do you think?" He opened the door. "This is your office."

  Cochrane stepped in and found a plain desk and chair in a carpeted room. There was ample filing space, sufficient lighting, and two telephones. There were extra chairs and a sofa. No glamour, just creeping Bureau utilitarianism.

  "It's fine," Cochrane said. The window behind the desk overlooked the inner quadrangle, which was currently a parking lot.

  "It's nothing fancy, of course," Wheeler said with a tinge of apology, cupping the bowl of his pipe in his hand. "But I figured you'd be better off near your backup people in Section Seven."

  "Of course. No complaints," Cochrane said again.

  "Oh! I knew there was something else," Wheeler said suddenly. "This is just a sample of what's floating around our atmosphere at night."

  Wheeler handed Cochrane a memo.

  "The Bluebirds picked up a transmission in German coming from somewhere between New York and Philadelphia, or so they think. Whoever was sending it was pretty cool. Beat the listeners by hustling his message along. Bluebirds got the end of it," Wheeler explained, motioning to the sheet of paper. "Make of it what you will."

  Cochrane scanned the words scrawled before him:

  … Blumen von Berlin. Siegfried

  "And that's it?" Cochrane asked. "That's all of the message they picked up? 'Flowers from Berlin'? 'Siegfried'?"

  "The hand on the key was quick as a cat," Wheeler answered. "Like I said, clever emission. Shrewd to the point of arrogance. Quick and even-toned, yet nervy enough to spout off in German. Didn't even bother to code it, the arrogant little punk"

  Cochrane stared at the words before him, not knowing what significance to draw, if any. A rank amateur? A practical joker? A seasoned professional?

  Wheeler spoke again. "You might file it somewhere, Bill. We're going to have to take anything on the East Coast seriously from here on."

  Cochrane nodded. "Did the Bluebirds get the transmission pattern?" he asked.

  Wheeler grinned, appreciating Cochrane's insight. "They've got the frequency pegged twenty-four hours a day now. If our Kraut pal goes back on the air, the Bluebirds will be perched on his shoulder. We'll try some triangulation right away, too. Can't run any risks."

  "Let's hope he doesn't change frequencies," Cochrane said absently. "Of course, it might be nothing at all, also."

  "What are you doing? Reading my mind?"

  Cochrane folded away the paper. Then Wheeler slung his arm around Cochrane's shoulders, leading Cochrane back down the corridor in the direction in which they had come. Somewhere in the distance, Lanny Slotkin and Hope See Ming were having a noisy argument and someone had passed through Section Seven again with another cigarette.

  "Hey," Wheeler said. "There's a new chili parlor in Georgetown that'll set fire to your esophagus. My treat, my friend. You got to be hungry after all this, Bill. By the way, there's been one slight change from the other evening. You'll be reporting directly to John Edgar Hoover yourself. Doesn't change anything, does it?"

  "Not much, it doesn't," Cochrane answered. “Why would it?”

  He then changed the subject, leaving Wheeler to wonder exactly what he had meant.

  EIGHTEEN

  On Monday morning at 8 A.M., Bill Cochrane sat in his office and reviewed the material placed at his disposal. His sense of mission heightened, as did his bewilderment. Cochrane drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. For a moment he tried to recall how he had been maneuvered into this assignment. Then he remembered Banking Fraud in Baltimore. He looked back to the files before him, trying to conjure up an image of the man he might be looking for. No image appeared.

  Cochrane was not beset with the self-doubts that had tormented him during
his sabbatical with Mr. Hay. He knew he possessed the skills to be an outstanding detective. But he also knew that 95 percent of good detective work is routine, unspectacular inquiry, posing the right questions, ferreting out the proper responses. There are weeks of checking and double-checking. And there is the laborious placing together of disparate parts, never knowing exactly which parts are missing, which parts are incomplete, or how many make the whole.

  Further, any successful federal investigation relied heavily at its inception on information received from local American police departments. Just as the cop on the beat had a better idea what was happening in his neighborhood than his commanding officer did, local police departments had a better insight than F.B.I. offices into their respective cities.

  The departments knew who was in town to cause trouble or what unusual crimes had occurred. They knew what was perplexing and what was unsolved. They quickly noticed things out of the ordinary.

  Over the years, Cochrane had always dealt respectfully with local police, from the department chiefs down to the rookies on patrol. Unlike most other special agents of the Bureau, Cochrane saw local cops as plodders perhaps, but men of a special sort of dedication. They were overworked and besieged. But they did their work to the best of their ability.

  Equally, Cochrane reasoned that the man he was looking for had to break the law from time to time. By the very nature of the spy's profession, he had to have an assumed identity, at least part of the time. That meant the forgery of papers. Similarly, this particular spy had to have entered restricted areas to plant his devices. Had anyone gotten in his way? Somewhere along the line, the spy had probably stolen certain items. Who was a suspect in that theft? And where had the saboteur obtained the explosives to sink the Wolfe? Were they stolen? Purchased? From whom?

  Somewhere, Cochrane knew, there were witnesses to this man. No one floated around like Peter Pan. No one failed to leave fingerprints. No one had no other human contact. Where did the spy live? To whom did he pay the rent? With whom did he sleep? Where did he buy his food? His clothes?

  Cochrane began making notes.

  *

  In the early afternoon Cochrane reached for his telephone. He dialed numbers in Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Since the Great War, every major American city had had a bomb disposal unit. Cochrane spoke to the head of that unit in each city. In many cases, such as New York, where the head of the Bomb Squad was Lieutenant Francis Xavier Sullivan, Cochrane spoke to men whom he knew personally. Cochrane guided the conversations carefully. Each took on an identical drift.

  "Yes," Cochrane would answer to the first query, "I am acting in an official capacity… Conducting an investigation given the F.B.I.'s highest priority… We are looking for a man about whom we know very little… No, no name, yet. Not even a description… We know he is an expert on incendiary devices… Yes, there is loss of life involved. A considerable amount, in fact…"

  In each case, the man on the other end of the line quickly asked why an inquiry was being lodged in his area. Further, what federal laws had been violated? Why was the F.B.I. pawing the ground for criminal activity in his city?

  Cochrane was ready with a response which invariably brought a rising silence from the other end of the line.

  "Unfortunately, it's not a simple matter of criminal activity," Cochrane explained. "It's a matter of military security. National security as well, sir. Our conjecture is that the man is either a well-trained mercenary or has extremely strong pro-Nazi sentiments.. . We assume he is a German, probably an infiltrator… No, we cannot confirm that. It's at the stage of theory, only… We'd like to know if you have anybody in this category in your files. Or if anyone springs to mind."

  Inevitably, the men who received these calls promised that their files would be scoured immediately and that their top lieutenants would also be questioned. Cochrane thanked the men generously and asked that they each get back to him within twenty-four hours.

  Then, with the eastern calls complete, Cochrane placed a series of identical calls to the cities of the American Midwest with large German-American populations: Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, and St. Louis. It was not until past seven in the evening that all Cochrane's telephone contacts had been established.

  Cochrane then completed a printed form known within the Bureau as an LKW. The form, headed with the words LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS beneath the Bureau's imprimatur, was an official investigative request within the Bureau. Once filled in, and sent through proper channels, the paperwork would pass through one or another of the Bureau's clerical divisions and yield the current or last known place of residence for whoever was named on the form.

  Carefully, Cochrane filled in a name. Otto Mauer, late of the Abwehr, the man Cochrane had helped defect from Germany with his family.

  Minutes later, Cochrane left his own office, locked the door behind him, and dropped the inquiry at Central Alien Registry, where they would trace it in the morning. Cochrane had not seen Otto Mauer since Germany. He knew only from Frank Lerrick that Mauer had arrived in New York late in 1938.

  As Cochrane left the Bureau's sixth floor, the day in Washington was dying. He saw through one of the slatted blinds the redness of the evening sky. Almost simultaneously, he noticed that several of the Bluebirds, like owls, were reporting to work. All other offices on the floor were quiet, with the exception of one poor soul slumped over a table in Cryptology. And like Dick Wheeler, the Virgin Mary had not been seen all day.

  *

  Back in England, Laura Worthington, had cause to smile.

  At Barrett's, the antiquarian bookseller in Salisbury, she had invested one shilling in a thirty-year-old biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. She spent the afternoon reading it on a bench on the cathedral square.

  Eleanor had been the Queen consort first of Louis VII of France, then of Henry II of England. The peasants of each country contended that Eleanor had the devil's tail beneath her skirts and that, as the jargon happily put it, was how she hopped around from throne to throne. The devil's tail, for heaven's sake! Laura nearly laughed out loud, wondering how many women in the world had slept with and married two kings.

  Such thoughts amused her, as it was a poor August for finding amusement elsewhere. Earlier in the month Chamberlain had spoken over the BBC about the recurrent Polish question. Anglo-French guarantees over Polish sovereignty would be fulfilled by force, if necessary, should Germany seize the Polish corridor and annex Danzig.

  Hitler, as usual, was not to be outmaneuvered. On the previous day Germany had concluded a ten-year nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. With one stroke of the pen, Hitler had rid himself of the specter of a two-front war with France and Britain in the West and the Soviet Union in the East. War in Europe appeared more certain than ever. And if war began, sea travel would be precarious. It might be years before Laura could return to America. A decision pressed upon her.

  She returned to Salisbury Plain on a rare, partly sunny day late in the month. Out there, in God's open green fields, she felt at ease enough to think. She walked the plain by herself for the better part of an hour. The sun was confused as to seasons: it seemed more April than August. She wore a tweed skirt and cardigan, which sufficed for the day. Laura examined her own life. She considered what a return to America offered her; she weighed her future in England.

  Toward three in the afternoon, she saw a single figure strolling purposefully toward her from across the plain. Watching him as he approached, she saw that he was lean and tall, clad in a black raincoat and a hat. He had smooth easy movements and carried a walking stick, which he did not use.

  She recognized his gait when he was a hundred yards from her. Peter Whiteside. Laura waited. Then a few minutes later, he was close enough so that she could see his face. Then his smile. Then his eyes. He wore the regimental tie that she recognized from her father.

  "Laura… my dear Laura," he said. He embraced her as they met.r />
  "I knew you would find me, Peter," she said.

  "Find you? Find you? Of bloody course I'd find you. My top female dispatched to America. Gets married without my blessing. Mad at me still, I'd wager." His eyes shone.

  "Peter, I-"

  "Don't deny it. I can tell," he said, making light of it. "When a girl doesn't write back to me, I can take a hint as well as the next man."

  "The flowers were lovely," she said. He looked blank for a moment and she added, "At the wedding. The roses."

  "Oh, yes. Yes. The wedding. I'm so glad." He held out an arm, shifting a folded Telegraph to his other side. "Walk with me," he offered.

  She took his arm and they proceeded. Laura noticed that Peter, like her father, had aged since she had last seen him. And she noticed too that the grass was still damp, despite the day's sun. A typical Londoner out for a hike: Peter had worn the wrong shoes.

  They covered several hundred meters, moving in no particular direction at all, when Laura took the initiative. "I want you to tell me about my husband," she said.

  A shrewd smile crept across Peter Whiteside's face. It merged with the lines near his mouth, nose, and eyes and for a split second gave him the appearance of an aging harlequin.

  "You have it backward, Laura, dear," he said indulgently. "It is I who should be asking you about your husband."

  "You had something against him," she said. "I could tell by your reaction. You kept asking for details. Every letter you wrote you wanted to know about him. I asked my father, too. When he returned to England after the wedding, you were all over him with questions."

  "My, my," Peter continued. "I have raised a clever little girl as my spy."

  Laura stopped walking, stopping Peter Whiteside with her.

  "Peter, don't withhold information from me."