Judgment in Berlin: A Spy Story

by Noel Hynd

  “I’ll talk to Irv tomorrow,” he said. “I won’t call. I’ll go by the Regent Hotel in person while Caroline is at the playground.”

  “Final answer?” she asked.

  “Final answer,” he said.

  He owed it to Frau Schneidhuber to at least go back to Berlin and have a look.

  What harm could it do? he asked himself.

  Well, maybe plenty, he answered himself. But that’s always the case.

  Chapter 23

  Cambridge - June 1948

  The following noon, Cochrane had unsurprising news for Irv Goff when he met him in the dining room of the Regent Hotel in Cambridge. He agreed to go to Berlin.

  Goff gave him an address in London – 15, Clare Street - where he should go and give his name as Victor Baldwin to a gentleman – Goff cautioned that he used the term

  “gentleman” loosely – named Stan. There would need to be a new temporary identity, a new passport, maybe two passports, some papers to create, and some final instructions. The mission to Berlin carried its own dangers in the world of 1948. The only thing predictable about the Soviets and their East German lackeys was their unpredictability.

  Cochrane would need a briefing and a knowledge of who to see and where to go once he arrived in Berlin. There would be a Major Haley Pickford who would meet him at Tempelhof. Major Pickford had a security clearance, a high one, and Cochrane could discuss aspects of his search for Frau Schneidhuber with him.

  “You won’t recognize the city when you get beyond the airport,” Goff said sadly. “First we do everything we can to destroy it. Now we can’t rebuild it fast enough. Crazy, huh?”

  “How soon am I off?” Cochrane asked.

  “Three days. Four max. Get yourself to London. We’ll get you the rest of the way.” He paused. “You’re going by air, obviously. That’s the only way to get to Berlin. The airlift will give you good cover. You don’t mind traveling in a flying coal bin, do you?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You’ll find out when you get there.”

  Goff said he would take care of notifying Secretary of Defense Forrestal of Bill’s acceptance. Goff said he had a direct line. Cochrane was not sure whether he should thank him or not. In a mood of vexation, he decided that he need not.

  Chapter 24

  Cambridge and London – June 1948

  When Bill Cochrane left Cambridge to walk to the rail station that morning, the sky was blue with an occasional cottony cloud. Now, less than two and a half hours later, as he searched for an address on the gritty back streets to the north of Piccadilly Circus, a rough wind had come up. The morning sun was only a memory, and the sky was heavy with impending rain.

  All of this fit his mood. Step by step he became more irritable. Why, he wondered as a drizzle began and he stepped widely to avoid some garbage on the side street, didn’t they get someone else? The question answered itself in a few heartbeats. They didn’t get someone else because the identification of Bettina Schneidhuber demanded his personal involvement. And worse, they didn’t get someone else because they knew he would take the bait and accept the assignment. The latter was Cochrane’s own shortcoming. At least that was how he saw it this morning. He also replayed questions in his mind too often, he reminded himself. He had come to the decision to move forward. So forward he would move.

  Rain became steadier. He made his way to 15, Clare Street, which was a brick building in an industrial neighborhood. Across the façade of a storefront, there was a steel security curtain pulled down and padlocked. To the right was a door to what might have been an office. Cochrane tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. He stepped back a pace and looked to each side. To the right was a rusty iron gate that blocked an alley, but to the left of the gate was another gate that was open by about a foot.

  Beyond it was a descending ramp. Cochrane eyeballed his surroundings, re-assured himself that he had no observers, and walked through. He descended the ramp and came to another door where the ramp ended. From the other side of the door, he could hear heavy equipment, drills, and hammers hitting metal.

  Cochrane pushed the door open. It thudded to a stop against what turned out to be an oil drum. He heard two angry voices from within what seemed at first glance to be a garage. They were speaking something foreign. Polish, Cochrane guessed.

  Cochrane slid through the gap in the partly blocked doorway, keeping his hands in front of him, open and empty. The men stopped talking in angry mid-sentences.

  One, a huge bear of a man, wore an auto mechanic’s mask. The other’s face was bare and visible. He was shorter and stockier but thick with a mechanic’s vest. He wore leather gloves, big ones, as if he had been lifting heavy equipment. His arms were muscular, scarred, and huge.

  “Hey! Who you?” demanded the one with the visible face and the vest.

  “My name is Baldwin,” Cochrane said, using the code name Goff had provided. “Victor Baldwin. I wonder where I can find Stan.”

  There was a silence. The man with the vest walked toward Cochrane, pulling off the gloves, one by one, until he stood less than a yard in front of Cochrane.

  “I am Stan,” the man said in English that was heavily accented but grammatically perfect.

  Stan was several inches taller than Cochrane, maybe about six feet four Cochrane assessed, and half a foot wider at the shoulders. He had the bulk of a man who had spent much of his life around heavy machinery, lifting it and moving it. Such men were invaluable in wartime. They could move other humans around just as easily. A hundred-pound oil drum was just a warm-up. A two-hundred-fifty-pound, armed foreign combatant was more of a daily challenge.

  All this was coursing through Cochrane’s mind when Stan turned to his assistant, gave him a hand signal, and bellowed at him in what was now clearly Polish. The grinding of heavy machinery began again, followed by hammering as the larger man set to work again. Stan gave a nod of the head, indicating that he and Cochrane should both step through the door to the alley. “Outside,” Stan said. “We talk.”

  They stepped out. The rain was bordering on heavy. They stood in it.

  “I need to get to Berlin,” Cochrane said. “Unofficial.”

  Stan snorted. “Of course you do,” Stan said. Like the rain, Stan’s accent was becoming steadier and heavier, too. “Passport?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Follow,” Stan said. Another jerk of the man’s huge head. Stan led Cochrane across the alley and around the back to a steel doorway of a neighboring building. Stan unlocked the door with a key that hung on his wrist, attached to a narrow leather watchband. The door unlocked with a crisp snap, then a groan as Stan pulled it open.

  “Still follow,” Stan said. They were then in a dark hallway that led to what Cochrane presumed was a makeshift studio. A few shafts of gray light filtered from a cracked, frosted window into the walk space. Then there was another door and Stan ushered Cochrane into a small studio. Stan used a switch on the wall to snap on an overhead light that hung from the ceiling above a square steel table in the center of the chamber.

  The room was narrow, cramped, and cluttered. The brick walls were mossy. There was no outside light and no outside sound once the door slammed closed. It was, Cochrane thought involuntarily, a perfect venue to chop up a body and prepare it for disposal, even if the body had walked in on its own accord. After several months of hiatus after the end of the World War, Cochrane felt many of his deplorable old instincts and insights kicking in, appreciated or not.

  On the red brick wall affixed with nails were two flags: the Polish flag with the white eagle, and the American flag, all forty-eight stars and thirteen stripes of it. Near the flags was a battered china cabinet with a selection of cameras behind a locked screen. With the cameras was an assortment of flash equipment. Stan used a second key that dangled from the chain on his wrist to unlock the cabinet. He rummaged through the cameras and selected two along with a set of flash attachments.

  “Befor
e we get started,” Cochrane said, “could I see a sample of your ‘product’?”

  Stan’s eyes half-closed with indignation. Then he gave a quick nod. The forger went back to the locked cabinet, reached into a drawer, and pulled out a handful of passports.

  “U.S.?” he asked.

  “Yes, American,” Cochrane said.

  “First-class stuff,” the Pole said. “No fucking junk.”

  Stan selected one at random and handed it to Cochrane. It was an American passport that purported to have been issued in New York in January of 1947. Cochrane turned the pages, slowly and saying nothing. Stan stood before him, attentive with his hands folded behind his back, like an artist at his own exhibition, which, in a broad sense, he was.

  The passport had a worn feel to it and was well-thumbed. The pages were neither too cluttered nor too empty. The numbers were fraudulent, Cochrane was sure, but consistent, in his opinion and in his memory, with when it had been issued. There was no photo for a bearer and no personal information. Those details were yet to be assigned.

  “This is very good work, Stan,” Cochrane said. In the center pages, the borders had been carefully created. Cochrane turned the item over and back and examined the stitching. “If it were any better, I’d start to suspect it was real. Very good, indeed.”

  “I know,” Stan said.

  Cochrane handed it back. Stan took it with a nervy snatch.

  “I assume you can fix me up with a neutral second identity as well,” Cochrane said. “In case things get dicey, it’s always nice for the other side to not know who they’re looking for.”

  Stan grunted. “Yeah, boss. Sure thing,” he said.

  Stan returned to his cabinet of magic, opened a narrow drawer on the lower left, and pulled out some Canadian samples. Cochrane was again pleased with the workmanship. He dictated a name and some dates and places, keeping the new cover story similar to one he had used successfully in 1943. Everything was easier to remember that way.

  Stan made written notes. Fastidiously, he replaced everything in his cabinet, carefully positioning his works in progress, Cochrane noticed, in exactly the same place in the small stack where he had found them.

  “Let’s proceed,” Cochrane said.

  Stan had an assortment of hair pieces and mustaches for those who wished to change an identity. Such would not be the case. Stan pointed Cochrane to a place in front of a wall where the bricks had been plastered over to provide a smooth neutral background. He guided Cochrane to the proper point to stand, went back to the table, fussed with his camera, loaded it with film, and attached a flash. On the table, there were four flashbulbs. What was essential was a full-face portrait, printed on the same type of paper that might be used in New York.

  Stan fussed for several seconds. Cochrane removed his overcoat and was down to jacket and tie for the photo. Stan took the picture and used all six bulbs. “Two days,” Stan said.

  “You do your work here?” Cochrane asked.

  Stan motioned to the sink with the chemicals and darkroom equipment. Cochrane, with a long experience with the FBI working against counterfeiters, recognized the printing and engraving accessories that occupied a shelf near the sink. Cochrane then noted a darkroom lamp that hung above the work space. An impressive setup.

  “First-class. No junk,” Stan said again. Then there was a flicker of a smile and a wink.

  “I can return on Thursday,” Cochrane said.

  “Do that,” said Stan.

  Chapter 25

  Berlin – Late June 1948

  The summer weather in northern Europe was better than the rest of the year, but that didn’t mean it was safe for aviation. The success of the airlift teetered on the precipice of early disaster. Sudden storms and occasional thunder and lightning combined with heavy rains played havoc with schedules and flying conditions, which could change from minute to minute.

  Water leaked into the planes and created storage and electrical problems. On one rainy day, three dozen British Dakotas based in Gatow were down due to electrical problems and half of the rest of the fleet was unable to fly because the crews were spread so thin. Maintenance became erratic. At Gatow loading and fueling fell behind schedule while the base command tried to get flights aloft every ten minutes.

  On a perfect day with no weather problems, the British and the American air crews were able to deliver fifteen hundred tons of coal, flour, clean water, and medical supplies to Berlin. Yet this was less than ten percent of what had come into the city by rail, water routes, and motor vehicles before the blockade began in June. At this rate, when the colder weather came in the autumn, the Soviets would complete their stranglehold on the city and the Allies would easily be forced into a humiliating evacuation.

  The three air corridors, the highways in the sky that had been organized by the American commanders, were abruptly reorganized and reconceived overnight. Each would handle only one-way traffic.

  The middle corridor, the most critical, was reserved for flights returning from Berlin, usually empty of cargo but occasionally hauling passengers. Both British and American planes could fly in this corridor. The northern corridor was for British aircraft coming eastbound from any of the seven or eight British landing fields in Germany or even from the British home islands. The southern route was for American aircraft from Wiesbaden and Rhein-Main.

  Victor Marino flew this route, often three round trips a day. Lt. William Lafferty flew it, also, the same number of round trips but occasionally a fourth, usually partnered up with “Nutsy” Glenn Taylor. Tommy Olson flew the route but was sometimes assigned to fly back to England or Belgium to pick up passengers or raw materials.

  Some male pilots resented a woman in the cockpit and refused to work with Olson. She quietly seethed but didn’t want to fly with anyone so hardheaded and stubborn, not in and out of Rhein-Main, Tempelhof, Gatow, or anywhere else in the world.

  Like most locations that Allied troops were dealing with in the late 1940s in occupied Germany, Rhein-Main was a relic of the pre-war era. The base had been designed in the 1930s for Zeppelins such as the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg, the largest airship ever built, was still fresh in postwar minds for its catastrophic arrival at Lakehurst, New Jersey from Frankfurt in May of 1937. The airship had been designed to be filled with helium. But due to the American export restrictions on helium, it had been filled with highly flammable hydrogen. A spark from static electricity or from nearby lighting had ignited the ship in a fiery crash landing that was recorded on film and played in movie newsreels around the world.

  During the war, the Luftwaffe had used the base at Rhein-Main for its fighters and bombers. Occupied by the Americans after the fall of Berlin, the American military had taken it over by 1946. There was now a reasonably modern single landing runway of sixty-five hundred yards. It was made of a heavily worn steel mesh matting, not strong enough for the heavy use that American planes required, but which took a brutal toll on the tires of landing aircraft. Like Tempelhof, the landing strips would need urgent refurbishing.

  The companion piece to Rhein-Main was the main landing field in the occupied British Zone in Saxony, now called RAF Wunstorf. Wunstorf had first been constructed, or cleared, in 1933 as a grass airfield. It became a Luftwaffe fighter station, and a remarkably busy one, during the war. The British Army overran it and captured it on April 7, 1945, following a savage battle between SS troops and elements of the 5th Parachute Brigade, 6th Airborne Division. British troops captured two dozen German aircraft when they gained the field and immediately replaced them with Spitfires.

  After the British seized it in 1945, they paved over the grass landing field with macadam. The installation had a half-dozen hangars and a rail link, but parked aircraft were still relegated to grassy parking slots. There was no solid area for taxiing, meaning heavy planes wore quickly into the dirt, which needed to be replaced daily as air traffic came and went.

  Postwar RAF flights, as well as British civilian and diplomatic flights,
would fly from Wunstorf to the British airfield at Gatow in southwestern Berlin, west of the Havel River, in the borough of Spandau. Gatow was a former Luftwaffe training college and later a fighter base

  In contrast to the easy approach that the British had to fly into Gatow, the Americans flying from Rhein-Main had a more difficult journey to Tempelhof, the principal airfield in the American Zone of Berlin. Tempelhof, big and sprawling, had been built by the Nazi regime in the mid-thirties. In keeping with Nazi philosophy, it was huge and grand. Its main building was thought to be the largest building in the world, so large that it housed all the airport facilities plus, during the war, an underground hospital and a Messerschmitt factory. The good news was that the runway was five thousand feet. The bad news was that its surface was pierced steel, sometimes jagged and tough on tires. Unlike Gatow, it was often beset by some of Germany’s worst weather.

  Then there was the approach. The most common flight pattern, depending on the winds, was from the west and between a row of new apartment houses on one side and a line of damaged buildings on the other. Nestled in there was a four-hundred-foot chimney from a local brewery that was somehow still functioning. The Americans tried to pay the owner of the brewery to tear down the chimney. He refused. It shouldn’t have surprised the Americans. The same owner had turned down similar requests from Hermann Göring for years, requests that at the time had been more like threats.

  If all of that could be navigated, an aircraft still needed to evade the steeple of St. Thomas’s Church, which presided at St. Thomas’s Cemetery, located on the stretch of land that had to be flown over just before setting down at Tempelhof. New buildings on one side, a brick chimney from a brewery, a church steeple, and ruined buildings on the other, all above a city block of untended graves and tombstones. That and a quirky set of crosswinds gave a pilot plenty to think about on each approach to Tempelhof. An alternative approach was to pass directly over the new buildings and then drop four times as sharply onto a longer stretch of runway. It could be done successfully but was more like divebombing than landing.