Judgment in Berlin: A Spy Story

by Noel Hynd

  “Who are you?” the other German asked.

  Suddenly inspired, Bill Cochrane riffed. He continued forcefully in German and was on a roll with it, exuding confidence and an aura of command. Forgetting the fact that he was desperate, he assumed the bearing not of a man whom they should interrogate, but one whom they shouldn’t question.

  “Allied Command Headquarters,” he said, inventing a whopper. “It’s a Soviet-American combined agency. One of the few remaining where there’s any cooperation, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “Never heard of your agency,” Vogelsang said.

  Cochrane feigned indignation successfully. “Then you haven’t studied the most recent administrative codes for the city very well, Comrade,” he said. “We’re looking for people who’ve gone missing. I came here to search for a young woman I knew. I feared something had happened to her.” He sighed. “I’m heartbroken, but I’ve found her.”

  He motioned to the gurney.

  “You knew her?” Keller asked.

  “Not well. Just in passing. You know how the city is right now. People come and go.” His eyes pounded the two Germans back and forth. “You are doctors?” he asked.

  “Medical examiners.”

  “How did she die?” Cochrane asked.

  After a hesitant moment, Vogelsang answered. “Did you look at the body?”

  Cochrane sold them a flat lie. “Only her face to be sure. I couldn’t bear to see more,” implying he had not seen the wounds.

  “Accident,” Vogelsang said.

  “Yes. Accident,” Keller added.

  “What sort?” Cochrane asked.

  “Hit by truck,” Vogelsang said.

  “What a tragedy,” said Cochrane, shaking his head, and having seen enough homicides to recognize one when it was on a gurney in front of him.

  The Russian soldiers drifted to the body. Cochrane’s gaze followed them. One lifted the sheet, and they shared a long look at the naked, abused female body underneath. They stood there saying nothing, just leering. Cochrane cleared his throat and shot some ocular daggers at them. When they didn’t take the hint, he barked at them.

  “Hey! You two! Have some decency! Or do I have to go find your sergeant?”

  The young Russians abruptly relaxed the sheet and their intrusive gawking.

  The Germans didn’t appear to know what to say, so Cochrane took control of the conversation before they could ask questions.

  “The young woman’s name was Lena,” he said. “That’s all I knew her as. But I believe her last name was Schroeder.”

  “How did you know her?” one of them asked.

  “From where she worked. A café,” he said, guessing but sounding good with it.

  Before they could question him or say anything further, he forged ahead. “I’d like to make sure she gets a proper funeral,” he said, reaching for the cigarettes. “Not a cremation. Not an unmarked pauper’s grave. Something proper. Family notified. Public notice in the Berlin papers, the German ones, not the Russian or American. If you fellows could assist me and guide me through the process,” he said as he passed around the bent smokes, “I’d make it worth your while.” He paused. “I have access to Western currency. All four of you will get something. Could we do that, or do I need to speak to your superiors?”

  The Russians stood by hopefully. The Germans looked at each other before the older one looked back to Cochrane. “We can arrange it,” said Vogelsang.

  Cochrane withdrew four five-dollar bills from his billfold and started to hand them around. “There’s one of these for each of you,” he said. “You each get one more after things have been set up. Everyone understand?”

  They said they did.

  “And you’ll keep this quiet, right?” he said. “We never met.”

  Of course, they all agreed.

  “How long have you men worked here?” Cochrane asked the Germans, as he crossed the palms with American currency.

  Vogelsang had been there since January 1946, Keller since mid-1947.

  “Did you ever know a woman named Bettina Schneidhuber?” he asked casually.

  Cochrane’s eyes shot back and forth quickly from Vogelsang and Keller. He saw something in the older man’s eyes. He locked in and waited.

  “Used to be a woman here named that,” he said. “Not here any longer.”

  “Lovely woman. I’d love to say hello while I’m passing through. Is she still in Berlin?” Cochrane asked.

  Vogelsang said, “Maybe. Don’t know.”

  “I remember the name. Never knew her,” Keller said.

  “Know where I should look?” Cochrane asked.

  “She went to work for the Russians,” Vogelsang said.

  “Really! Where?”

  “Some club. Russian officers and German police. Eastern Zone, farther out.”

  “A club?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Military or civilian?”

  They claimed to not know.

  “You wouldn’t have a name, would you?” Cochrane tried. “The place she might work?” As not-so-subtle inducement, Cochrane fingered a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. He felt confident enough to flick it.

  “No. It’s not always good to know those things,” the technician said. Vogelsang’s quick glance found the Russian soldiers and bounced back as fast as it could. One of the young Russians was staring at Cochrane. The other was looking downward at his shoes.

  “Of course,” Cochrane said. “The world is a rough place, isn’t it? So hard to find people after all the fighting. Discouraging is what it is.”

  Jawohl, Vogelsang said.

  Cochrane folded away his billfold.

  Vogelsang explained the funeral procedure. They would do the paperwork and send it to Room 143-D in this same building. Cochrane should return the next day to formalize the arrangements. The official currency of the establishment was Reichsmarks, but Deutschmarks would be more useful. So bring Deutschmarks, Vogelsang recommended.

  “How will we get the rest of our money?” Keller asked.

  “There will be a notice about the funeral in the newspapers, correct?” Cochrane asked, giving instructions as much as asking questions. “It will contain the dead woman’s name, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be at the funeral,” Cochrane answered. “I’ll take care of you there.”

  Chapter 44

  Berlin – July 1948

  The next day, Cochrane returned to the clinic and visited the office that handled funeral arrangements. The entire cost was equivalent to fifty American dollars. A young man who worked there explained that the burial would be at either Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg or Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof which was in the district of Mitte. Friedhof meant graveyard. “Any preference?” the young man asked.

  “None,” Cochrane answered.

  The burial office was in the Eastern Zone. The office accepted only Reichsmarks, the Soviet choice. Cochrane had brought an ample amount with him. On the way out, stepping out of the building and onto the sidewalk, Cochrane ran smack into a plump man who had been lurking near the entrance. Cochrane tipped his hat to excuse himself.

  The man was remarkably nimble for someone so plump. Cochrane patted himself down as he moved along, convinced that his pocket had not been picked but checking anyway.

  As he walked away, he had another thought. If this man was a street surveillance agent of the East Germans, the level of street surveillance that the other side had put on him so far was so low as to be insulting.

  So far, Cochrane knew he had done nothing to bring any special treatment upon himself. He decided to nurse his current escort along so as to not bring on a heavier hitter. When that happened, the game would become much more serious.

  Chapter 45

  Berlin – July 1948

  At the end of his next day in Berlin, Cochrane stood at the crowded, noisy bar at the Helmut’s café across from Tempelhof. Hel
mut poured Cochrane a glass of wine and exchanged another joke and good word or two at the bar. While the waitress, who was usually untalkative, kept a certain customer engaged by the door, Cochrane noticed that two cargo handlers, the men in the black former-GI coveralls, had approached Helmut at the far end of the bar and engaged the barkeeper in a brief conversation. During their exchange, Helmut glanced Cochrane’s way, said little, but listened a lot.

  Meanwhile, Cochrane glanced at the newspapers scattered around the bar and the tabletops in Helmut’s place. He scanned through stories about the airlift and the American presidential election. Worldwide, Truman was getting so-so press. The airlift was gaining a popular uptick, though a small one.

  Helmut moved back in Cochrane’s direction but made a point of taking care of two other customers on the way. Helmut had his own set of troubles this evening. He was running out of Scotch whiskey and couldn’t get any. He cursed the black market and its profiteers and watched his supply diminish.

  “What brand do your customers prefer?” Cochrane asked.

  “Whyte and Mackay,” Helmut answered. “It’s also what I get the best price for.”

  “Sorry I don’t have any with me,” Cochrane said.

  “Not your fault,” Helmut said with half a growl.

  As he spoke to Helmut, Cochrane kept an eye on the cargo workers, who didn’t move. They also didn’t have drinks in front of them. They were loitering. Cochrane immediately caught a shift in Helmut’s demeanor.

  Helmut returned to Cochrane, lowered his head so that his lips could not be read, and spoke sotto voce to Cochrane in German. “Those two men at the end of the bar,” Helmut said. “They claim to be cargo workers from Tempelhof. Do you know them?”

  “I might have seen them before. Don’t know,” Cochrane said. He folded away the newspapers. “Have you seen them before, Helmut?”

  “They come in here with the cargo workers and seem to know the other ones,” he said. “I have no reason to doubt them.” He paused. “They want to talk to you, mein Herr.”

  Cochrane glanced at them and did a visual frisk. Yes, bulky clothing. They could have been concealing anything from a pen knife to a truncheon or any firearm sized in between.

  “Send them over,” Cochrane said.

  “Should I listen in?” Helmut asked.

  “If you can, why not? It wouldn’t hurt.”

  Helmut winked back. He went down to the other end of his bar and conversed with the two men in black. They walked to Cochrane and found a place at the bar directly next to him, both staying on his left side. They were tall men, each of them taller than Cochrane by an inch or two. They were also bulked up, which suggested they really had been working with cargo: heavy industrial machinery, sacks of flour, and bushels of coal.

  “Yes, gentlemen?” Cochrane asked.

  Keeping his voice low, Heinrich Roth spoke first. He introduced himself, then indicated his companion as Otto Kern. They claimed they handled cargo at Tempelhof.

  “Good for you,” Cochrane said. “We appreciate your work. Who’s your boss?”

  “Sgt. Pearson,” Roth said, giving the right name.

  “What can I do for you?” Cochrane asked as Helmut loitered.

  “There is a man who followed you in,” Roth said. “East German security. He followed you in and I suspect he will follow you out.”

  “Thank you,” Cochrane answered, without lifting his eyes from in front of him.

  “The one over by the door. He’s looking at a copy of Die Abend.”

  “My daughter is taking his order,” Helmut said, not looking directly in the man’s direction. Cochrane noticed how Helmut’s gaze fluttered around the room. Cochrane followed the path and saw that the barman had a system of mirrors at angles and in corners around the ceiling. At any instant, he could see who was here and what was happening in groups.

  Cochrane’s gaze traveled, also. Not by chance, the man they were watching turned away to obscure his face. “Which police?” Cochrane asked either of the cargo handlers. “West Berlin or Eastern Sector?”

  “Eastern,” Kern said.

  “Bastard! Communist! Shouldn’t even be in here,” Helmut said. “I ought to throw him out.” He made an initial gesture to go do exactly that.

  “Don’t,” Cochrane said, using a hand to hold him back. “We know who he is. If he knows we know, they’ll replace him with someone else and you’ll bring Russian trouble on yourself. Let’s see who he keeps company with.”

  Helmut simmered. “One of Colonel Markgraf’s people?” Cochrane asked Kern.

  Kern said, “Yes.”

  “Bunch of rats,” Roth said. “Red rats.”

  “I agree,” Cochrane said. “Is the man German or Russian?”

  They didn’t know. They only knew who he worked for.

  A short conversation followed. Both Kern and Roth confessed to being war veterans, but they had fought in the East and each in his own way had survived the long retreat after the Reich collapsed.

  “If you served your nation honorably, you have nothing to be ashamed of,” Cochrane said. “Were you in SS units or Wehrmacht?”

  They both said Wehrmacht. They asked if Cochrane wanted to see papers. Cochrane declined. Papers could be forged. He would make his own decision on Kern and Roth. So far, he liked what he sensed. He edged around to what he really wanted to know: where the men were from and what they had done before the war. Kern talked about being an electrical craftsman. Roth mentioned wanting to be a farmer, much like the previous generations in his family had been. But then the war had come along and changed everything. Much to his own horror, Roth said, he had become highly adept with pistols and small firearms.

  “Did you kill a lot of Russians?” Cochrane asked.

  Roth didn’t say anything. Kern looked away.

  Cochrane shrugged. “It’s all right,” Cochrane said. “I don’t like them either.”

  Cochrane was about to speak again when Roth found words. “I didn’t kill enough of them, to my mind,” he said. “My family, my girl, they were civilians. Murdered by the Soviet Army.”

  Cochrane nodded. “I understand,” he said. Then, changing his tone, “Are you Berliners?” Cochrane asked.

  They weren’t natively, they said, but they were now. Kern revealed he was a family man. Roth was single, the girl he had intended to marry having disappeared during the war.

  Cochrane bought each man a drink, another way of directing money to Helmut. They chatted further. The surveillance man grew bored and departed. Or maybe he had been replaced, Cochrane reasoned. He scanned and scoped out the café, looking to see who looked the part. It could have been anyone.

  “May I ask you a question, mein Herr?” Roth asked Cochrane out of the blue.

  “Of course.”

  “Were you in the war?”

  Cochrane didn’t lie exactly, but he didn’t tell the whole truth, either.

  “My stint in uniform was mostly before the World War,” he said. “I was an ordnance officer in the United States Army when I was young and felt that I was immortal. I defused a bomb or two. Or maybe several, truth be known. Sheer craziness. Then I was in the U.S. Army Signal Corps when I was older and wiser. The things we do as young men, right?”

  He shook his head. The two Germans smiled and agreed. Cochrane felt as if he had connected. A few minutes later he made excuses and said he must be getting back to Tempelhof. Kern and Roth needed to move along to their homes, also.

  Discreetly, before the two Germans departed, Cochrane found two American five-dollar bills in his pants pocket. He laid the money on the counter. He looked back to Roth and Kern and thanked them. Danke schön, he said. “Each of you take one of these greenbacks and spend it here in the future so that my friend, Helmut, and his family end up with it.”

  The two Germans nodded thanked Cochrane.

  “Anything else?” the American asked.

  There wasn’t. Nichts anderes, Roth indicated.

  The meeting conc
luded pleasantly. Kern and Roth rejoined their klatch of tired German working men.

  Cochrane looked back to Helmut and moved closer to him. Helmut was watching his daughter, saying nothing except with his parental protective eyes.

  “Pretty young girl,” Cochrane observed in German. “She okay working here? Men don’t bother her?” Cochrane asked.

  Jeder weiß es, Helmut answered in a mutter.

  “Everyone knows what, Helmut?”

  Helmut showed Cochrane a battered Sid Gordon baseball bat that a friendly American sergeant had given to him to keep under the bar for security purposes.

  “Anyone touches Elfriede and I break their skull open,” he said. Then he put the bat away. Cochrane had already noticed it under the bar. He also noticed that Helmut liked to show it every night at least once, lest any fool not get the message.

  “I like your spirit, Helmut,” Cochrane said, thinking of his wife and daughter but mentioning neither. Enough of such little slips could blow a man’s cover.

  Helmut stood taller on the spot and the bond between the men strengthened. Helmut even managed a smile as he tucked the bat away.

  When Cochrane walked back to Tempelhof that night, the first security goon was gone, but a second picked him up. The second man looked like a larger version of the first. Obviously there had been a handoff in the café. The new man followed him only halfway, then remained at a trolley stop, apparently oblivious of the fact that Cochrane knew the trolleys didn’t run that late. One advantage Americans – some of them, anyway – often had was that their foes often took them to be stupid or ignorant. Sometimes they weren’t.

  Meanwhile, C-47s and now the occasional C-54 roared overhead, coming in to land while others in the convoy were taking off. Some reinforcement of the Tempelhof landing field had been completed and bigger cargo jets could now land. The C-54 Skymasters were gradually changing the equation in the air. These large, four-engine transports carried four times the cargo capacity of a C-47, as much as ten tons of cargo. The C-54 was the military version of the DC-4. It greatly increased the ability of the U. S. Air Force to maintain the minimum of the nearly five tons of supplies needed daily to feed Berliners. Because of its massive capacity, the C-54 also now carried most of the city's coal shipments.