Return to Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  Chapter 4

  Bern, Switzerland

  November 1942

  On a gray afternoon in November, twenty-four hundred miles southwest from the fighting in the Soviet Union, German and Italian intelligence entrenched in North Africa detected a major buildup of Allied shipping passing through the Strait of Gibraltar. The Germans dismissed the convoy of ships off the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula as another shipment of supplies to reinforce Malta, which the British held.

  Annoying, but tolerable.

  The Italians were not as sure.

  But by that point in the war the Germans were already ignoring their Italian allies. Then, on November 9, 1941 the phone rang at five thirty in the morning in the plush bedroom of the Fascist Italian foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, waking up Ciano. Ciano was married to Edda Mussolini, Il Duce’s daughter, but wasn’t working very hard on the marriage. He was in bed with his most recent mistress, an earthy sexually insatiable lady who had kept him awake till four AM. The phone startled him out of something between a dream and a stupor.

  Struggling to come awake, Ciano was horrified to hear the guttural voice of German foreign minister Ulrich Jaochim von Ribbentrop shouting at him over the line.

  Von Ribbentrop informed Ciano of British and American landings at the Algerian ports of Oran and Algiers and the Moroccan port of Casablanca.

  “Air attacks?” asked the sleepy Ciano.

  “No, you imbecile! Landings! An invasion.”

  Ciano had no immediate response.

  “What,” von Ribbentrop demanded, “do you plan to do?”

  Ciano replied sleepily and nervously, but also honestly. “I have no idea,” he said.

  What von Ribbentrop and Ciano were witnessing, and what Hitler and Mussolini were also learning of that morning to great distress, was Operation Torch, a boldly ambitious strike by the United States and Great Britain at Fascist North Africa, where pro-German Vichy French forces defended much of the coastline.

  The western Allies had transported sixty-five thousand men, commanded by Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, from ports in the United States and England. They had done the unthinkable. They had successfully invaded North Africa.

  They had beachheads immediately. In Algiers, the French Resistance coordinated its activity and had staged a coup at the same time as the landings from the sea. The Allies pushed inland and forced a surrender on the first day.

  Elsewhere, Vichy French troops put up a fight. Bad weather hampered the invaders. The Task Force attacking Oran suffered losses to its fleet trying to land in shallow water. But Vichy ships were sunk or driven off. British battleships opened fire on Oran. The city surrendered. To the east, the allied forces laid siege to Casablanca, the principal French Atlantic naval base. Axis forces surrendered after eight days. They had been focused elsewhere. The Germans were bogged down in their struggle for Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

  Moreover, the situation for Axis armed forces in Egypt had grown increasingly grim throughout September and into October. The British had revved up their troops under Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery for a reinvigorated offensive against Rommel’s powerful Afrika Korps. At the end of October, Montgomery’s Eighth Army had attacked the Germans at El Alamein precipitating a massive battle of attrition, the second in the remote stretch of Egypt, that Axis forces had no hope of winning. Not surprisingly, Axis leaders concentrated on what was happening in the Egyptian desert.

  By early November, Rommel’s forces were rapidly retreating back into Libya against the specific orders that Hitler was shrieking into his telephone lines. Benefiting from accurate espionage and intelligence, Eisenhower’s forces struck in Algeria and Morocco. The Allied victory at the Second battle of El Alamein was the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal, Palestine and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields.

  The repercussions of Operation Torch would remain enormous during the remainder of the war. It would postpone the landing in France until 1944. At the same time, it allowed the United States to complete mobilization of its immense industrial and manpower resources for the titanic air and ground battles that characterized the Allied campaigns of 1944.

  Behind the scenes, it had other repercussions.

  A closely related but much quieter event transpired in Bern, Switzerland on November 9, the second day of Operation Torch. An American stepped off a train from France shortly after noon. He had been lucky to arrive. His train passed from Vichy France into Switzerland only minutes before the Germans closed the border. The Germans had taken this action the same day Allied troops landed in North Africa.

  The man, Allen Dulles, looked more like a university professor or a diplomat than one of the great intelligence agents of the Twentieth Century. But in the espionage business, appearances frequently deceive.

  Now forty-nine years old, Dulles was a man with a ruddy complexion, a small graying moustache, and keen blue eyes behind rimless spectacles. As he stepped from his train, he was wearing a tweed jacket with gray flannel trousers. He smoked a pipe and carried a single suitcase.

  Dulles was in Bern to head up the center of the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. Switzerland remained the only neutral country in central Europe, so it was logical for the OSS to plant their headquarters smack in the middle of a continent at war.

  Back in Washington, OSS Director Bill Donovan had wanted Dulles to work in the OSS office in London. Dulles argued for Switzerland where he had lived and worked twenty-four years earlier in the last months of World War One when he was attached to the US State Department. Switzerland was also the only neutral country with a common land frontier contiguous to Germany, albeit a rugged mountainous one in most areas. But it was the best point from which to observe what was going on, not only in Germany, but also in Italy and France. It was also a less difficult place to run agents in and out of all those countries.

  Dulles won the argument. Thus, on November 10 the American Legation wrote to the Division of Foreign Affairs, Swiss Federal Political Department, that a Mr. Allen Dulles had arrived by train on November 9, and that he was assigned to the Legation.

  The correspondence also stated that Dulles was staying at the Hotel Bellevue-Palace, the top hotel in the capital. Some scurrying around went on behind the scenes and Dulles moved within thirty days to a rambling rented apartment at 23, Herrengasse, a solidly upscale sandstone building on a cobblestoned arcaded street that ran along the ridge high above the River Aare.

  The building, in which Dulles had a large rambling apartment, had several perks that did not immediately meet the untrained eye. The building on Herrengasse was the last house of a row of adjoining fourteenth century townhouses built by the Bernese city government to house dignitaries. The street itself ended there in a cul-de-sac. The land fell sharply away beyond a low wall down to the vineyard terraces that sloped down to the Aare, which made a horseshoe bend around the ancient city walls. It was the most secure house on the block, if not in the entire neighborhood.

  The vineyards afforded an ideal approach for visitors who did not wish to be seen entering the front door on the Herrengasse. After dark, the cover was nearly infallible. From the terrace outside his apartment, Dulles also had what he referred to as “an inspiring view” of the whole stretch of the Bernese Alps. Working those Alps with high powered binoculars or the telescope he kept in his study could also unveil some interesting secrets from time to time. Hence, the “inspiration” of a professional spy.

  For those who might come to Dulles’s front door in the evening, the spymaster wanted to give some anonymity. So he bribed local officials and had the streetlight opposite his front door turned off for the duration of the war. The gesture was mostly a ruse. His most clandestine guests came and went via the back door and the vineyard.

  Normally seen while dressed in a suit and tie, the perfect vision of the Princeton graduate that he was, Dulles appeared at his own doorway a few mor
nings later. He was armed and dangerous; he carried a steel hammer and a small box of nails. He placed a discreet sign outside his apartment door and nailed it into place. A few neighbors emerged into the hallway to see what the gentle rapping was all about.

  Allen W. Dulles, the sign said. Special Assistant to the American Minister.

  The sign made it official. Mr. Dulles was as fond of understatement as he was of mind games. When one neighbor, a pretty Austrian woman in her thirties, gently chided him that a man so important as Mr. Dulles shouldn’t be dealing with such trivial matters as a hammer and nails, he cheerfully nodded in agreement.

  “Of course I shouldn’t,” he agreed. “You’re quite correct.”

  Then he added, “Ah! But at least I’m not working with a hammer and sickle,” he said, a twinkle in his blue eyes. The comment made the rounds of the building and local bars for the next week.

  Meanwhile, Dulles hired a butler, a chef and a maid. He was soon living in upper-class European style, complete with bodyguards. Recently Dulles had been the recipient of a dump of some excellent military and naval intelligence from a source within the German government. The source promised more and named a strange price. Dulles did a lot of things by careful analysis of a situation and then proceeded by instinct.

  The source, for whatever reason, was asking for a specific American agent whom he had known before the war to become a conduit for a proposed deal. Dulles recognized the name immediately. As soon as Dulles was entrenched in his new offices with secure communication, he cabled OSS headquarters in Washington.

  The American’s name was William Thomas Cochrane. Dulles’s message to Washington was succinct.

  “Figure out where the hell he is,” Dulles requested, “and recruit him into the OSS without delay.”

  Chapter 5

  New York City – Manhattan

  October 23, 2019

  The two women arranged to meet in a small restaurant named Logan’s in Tribeca, situated in a narrow restored townhouse on West Broadway between Thomas and Duane Streets. Logan’s was a new place, but more comfortable than trendy, which was a relief to Caroline Dawson, who chose it as the venue for a meeting with a woman she had never met in person.

  Up until an out-of-the-blue phone call a few days earlier, Caroline had never even known that the other woman, Ellen McCoy, existed. But life was full of surprises. Good ones and bad ones. The trick was to embrace the former and gracefully sidestep the latter.

  Caroline knew Logan’s well. She lived nearby on Broome Street, so this was a short walk. She knew the staff. The owner was a friend of her grown daughter. So there was a built-in security system, so to speak, in case the caller, this unknown McCoy woman, turned out to be a dangerous nut or a scam artist. The world was full of them, after all, and New York had its fair share.

  Caroline sat at a corner table in the rear of the ground floor. Logan’s was frequented by the well-heeled clientele of Tribeca and Soho. The little eatery was surrounded by art galleries, trendy clothing places, independent bookstores and other restaurants and cafes.

  The building where Logan’s was located dated from the 1800’s. Much of the original brick walls had been restored. There were two rooms on the first floor. The front room was for quick bites and take-out and the cozy back room with the fireplace and the original brick walls was a space where a man or woman could come to eat, drink, or just talk with a friend over a glass of wine and not be hassled.

  This being October, there was no need for a fire for another month. There was an attractive bar upstairs with pressed copper on the bar and marble tops on the tables, but Caroline rarely went there and never alone. It was for a younger faster crowd, “the hard-living promiscuous set,” her daughter Ann called them. “The obnoxious Wall Street people who haven’t burned out yet.”

  Caroline had no idea if the McCoy woman would show up for this arranged meeting, though based on the call, based on past history, she strongly believed the woman would. She glanced at her watch, a vintage timepiece that was at least seventy-five years old. It wasn’t valuable from a jewelry sense, but it ran and kept perfect time. Plus, it had been her mother’s, which gave it all the value that mattered.

  As the second hand on the watch swept past the twelve, signaling 2:03 PM, Caroline glanced up and saw a woman tentatively enter the dining area, carrying a shopping bag and glancing from table to table. She was alone. The two women made eye contact. Caroline raised a hand in a polite wave and the other woman acknowledged with a smile. She walked to Caroline’s table and offered a hand.

  “Hello,” the visitor said. “I’m Ellen. Thank you for coming.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” she said. “Please sit.”

  Ellen sat.

  “Been waiting long? Am I late? I apologize if I am.”

  “You’re fine,” Caroline said. “I arrived about ten minutes ago.”

  Ellen McCoy was in town from the Chicago area, she said, and had been hoping and trying to set up this meeting for several years. First, of course, it had been necessary to find Caroline Dawson, the daughter of the late William Thomas Cochrane, the former spy, economist, lecturer at Harvard, and intelligence agent during the World War Two years.

  “I hesitated for years about getting in touch with you,” Ellen McCoy said, setting the shopping bag by her side at the table. “Some things are better left buried in the past. But I have a story to tell you. If you’re willing to listen.” She paused. “I’m a professor of history at the University of Illinois. My special area of interest is World War Two. I cam across something fascinating involving your father.”

  “Can’t hurt to listen, right?” Caroline said. “And frankly, I enjoy listening to an expert on anything.”

  “I’m sure that people find you all the time with old stories to tell.”

  “Actually, you’re the first, the first stranger at least,” Caroline said. “My mother told me more than a few. I was born in the fifties, so it’s all secondhand information to me.”

  “Well, I was born in the late sixties,” Ellen answered. “Even then, even for us, it was really another time, another world. World War Two and all.”

  “To be honest,” Caroline said, “the war was a devastating experience for my father. Not so much to him professionally. He survived and became a lecturer about the politics of the era. Columbia and then Harvard. He did well in life. But deep down, the things he saw, the things he was asked to do for his country, mankind’s inhumanity to other people was not something that he fully understood. And I know he had some deep regrets about some of the things that he did in wartime. I think it made him deeply pessimistic in the latter part of his life.”

  She paused.

  “I don’t know,” Caroline continued. “My dad, William Cochrane, and I never had a conversation about it as adults. We should have but we didn’t.” She paused again. “He had a long career in education, the US State Department, the OSS during the war, and law enforcement. I’m sure there are a lot of stories I don’t know of. Some of them will catch up with me. Some will disappear forever, I suppose.”

  “I understand,” Ellen said. “This one’s not going to disappear.”

  “How did you find me?” Caroline asked.

  “Once I finally decided to contact you, I further researched your father,” Ellen said. “I found several obituaries. I did some web searches, found some phone numbers and made some calls. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I’m here, am I not?”

  “So you are. Thank you.” Ellen took a sip of her drink. “Do you have some time to listen today?” she asked. “What I have to tell you is very involved.” She paused. “That watch you’re wearing?” she asked, indicating the timepiece on Caroline’s wrist. “It’s beautiful. Was that your mother’s?”

  Astonished, Caroline answered. “Yes. It was. How did you know that?”

  “I’ll explain,” Ellen said.

  Caroline’s gaze found her watch again. It was now ten minute
s past two PM on a Wednesday. “I have all afternoon,” she said.

  Ellen hesitated, then found her voice again. “Did your father ever mention going back into Nazi Germany in 1943?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Does the name Sophie Scholl mean anything to you? Her brother, Hans? Friends named Ilse and Frieda?”

  “No.”

  “Hans Wesselmann?”

  “No.”

  “Jean Cambulat? Michael Skordeno?”

  Caroline shook her head.

  “Well, then!” said Ellen. “I’ve quite a story to tell you. I don’t know how you think of your father and I don’t know if you’ll change your opinion. I only know what I know. And I’m here to share it with you.”

  “Please go ahead,” Caroline said.

  Another slight pause, another sip of a drink.

  Then, “It was late in 1942,” Ellen said. “I think it all began in November of that year, just around Thanksgiving. Your father’s part at least. From what I’ve learned, your father was in the United States Army at a very unusual posting at the time, the Signal Corps in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He was training for possible combat in Europe when one day everything changed.”

  Chapter 6

  Fort Monmouth, New Jersey

  November 1942

  Master Sergeant Jimmy Murphy swaggered into the army mail room. Several dozen young soldiers at the US Army Signal Corps Unit had barely stopped sweating from the afternoon’s drills and marching. William Thomas Cochrane, several years older than the average new enlistee, stood with a letter in his hand that he had not yet had a chance to open.

  “Hey! Listen up, you no-good grunts!” the sergeant boomed. “Cochrane? Any of you dirtbags named Cochrane?”

  Bill Cochrane looked up. “Yes, Sergeant Murphy,” he snapped, tucking the letter away.

  “Make yourself visible, Mister!” the sergeant bellowed.

  Cochrane pushed his way through the other recruits and stopped in front of his drill sergeant.