by Noel Hynd
When the knock on his door came the next morning at seven, he bolted upright in his bed. The night had gone too quickly. He responded groggily but fifteen minutes later was downstairs for breakfast. Another thirty minutes after that, he walked to the train station and caught the next available train to Bern.
“Next available,” was a fluid term in wartime. There had been an avalanche of snow coming off a mountain or a hillside north of the city. All trains were cancelled till evening.
“Don’t believe a word of it about the snow,” muttered a fellow voyager in the waiting room. “The Swiss army is moving troops. They close the tracks so no one can monitor their movements.”
“Oh, really? Do they move them to the German border or the French border?” Cochrane asked.
“Both,” the man said. “I’m going to the cinema. It will take all day.”
It did. The train didn’t leave till 6:15 PM.
Chapter 19
Bern, Switzerland
December 1942
If a city could be bland, exciting, charming, provincial, remote and important all at once, Bern, the Swiss capital, was exactly when Bill Cochrane stepped off the train from Geneva.
Situated on a bend in the River Aare, Bern remained in some was a quiet city of a hundred thousand people while the war swirled around Swiss borders. The spectacular Jungfrau and several other imposing mountains looked down upon its terraced neighborhoods, mediaeval architecture and arcaded streets. Once upon a time, a time which was vanishing into the past, Bern had been a quiet provincial capital of a steadfastly neutral country.
The First World War had changed everything in Europe, including Bern. The Swiss capital had moved, for better or worse, into the treacherous Twentieth Century. It may have been quiet, but by 1942 Bern was a world focal point, a joyous nest of surly spies and suspicious characters from all corners of the world.
In contemporary Bern, theater and music thrived in English, French and German. Young Swiss women flocked to the embassies to work. At first food was scare during the war, then when Americans and American dollars started to roll in, once could buy anything one wanted, and anything was available. The social center was the Palace Bellevue Hotel where congregated a lively aggregation of young expatriates, wheelers dealers, young diplomats, calls girls and mistresses, senior officers with no more battalions to command. They all seemed to have money and a willingness to put the war on hold until the next morning, or the morning after that. The Palace Bellevue had nightly jazz band dances, so why not kick up one’s heels? One’s luck might run out the following week and be obliged to return to the real world.
Thus, Bill Cochrane settled into a Bern hotel shortly after an evening arrival, much as he had done in Geneva. The desk clerk, a young woman, looked up at him. He surrendered his passport to her for registration.
“Welcome, sir,” she said. “My name is Gina.”
“Hello, Gina,” Cochrane said.
Gina smiled engagingly. She spoke French to Cochrane. She didn’t know exactly who he was, but she knew what he was and handled it with aplomb. Before Cochrane left New York, Donovan’s orientation team had given him an alert as to who she was.
Gina was thirty-one and an Italian by birth. She had fled fascists in Milan and had moved to Switzerland with the financial help of her Uncle Abraham who had wisely emigrated to the United States in 1936. Gina, in negotiating transport out of Mussolini’s Italy, had put herself at the disposal of William Donovan’s office in Washington. Her uncle, who knew very well how the world worked, had played tennis with Bill Donovan in Washington for several months. One evening he asked to speak to Donovan privately.
“My niece Luigina is half Jewish,” he explained. “She’s well educated and from a successful family of merchants. She speaks five languages, but, as you can imagine, she is in danger in Italy.”
“I understand. I’m sorry to hear that,” Donovan answered.
“I’m certain Gina could be of valuable service to United States,” Abraham explained. He paused; the deal not yet complete. “She even knows how to use a gun. I know because I taught her myself how a young woman needs to defend herself.”
“Admirable,” Donovan said.
“But she needs to get to a neutral country.”
“I would agree,” Donovan said. “Let’s see what we can do.”
Donovan, seeing opportunities large and small all over Europe, put things in motion, starting with a forger in Rome who was a master at exit papers. When Gina arrived in Switzerland a month after the post tennis conversation in Washington, Dulles took over. He guided her to a friendly soul in the labor ministry who arranged temporary residence and a work permit for her. Another accomplice directed her to this hotel whose owner was a pro-American French gentleman named Maurice Levi. Levi loathed the fascists and was happy to do anything to defeat them. He was delighted to give Gina her job and even more delighted when she became his mistress.
The arrangement with Gina was simple. If a reservation by mail or telephone or telegram came to her addressed to her formal name, Luigina, which appeared nowhere in the hotel records, she was to give it special attention. Such had been the case with a reservation received for Mr. Stykowski.
“We’ll put you on the fifth floor, sir,” Gina said. “That’s the top floor. I think you’ll be comfortable there.”
“That would be excellent,” Cochrane said.
Gina oversaw the operations and had a short list of other secured services around the city. She had her eye on invisible finances, emergency identity or armaments, and discreet escorts, the type of things that a certain sort of travelling man might require. She had been promised passage to the United States once the war was won. Hence, she always knew who to expect checking in.
The dining room was closed but the night porter, at Gina’s request, was kind enough to make two sandwiches for him and provide a half bottle of red Rhone wine. Cochrane accepted and was allowed to relax in the downstairs lounge, where the lights were turned back on for him despite his late arrival.
He appreciated the gesture and the food. What he appreciated even more was that Donovan’s people seemed to be everywhere.
Chapter 20
Bern, Switzerland
December 1942
In Bern, Cochrane killed the next day, waiting for his pre-arranged evening rendezvous with Allen Dulles. He wore the hiking pants that he had bought in Portugal, and then found his way to Herrengasse toward dusk, spotted Number 23, Dulles’s residence, and kept walking. He went to a small bistro for dinner, then toward 8:30 PM found his way to a low road beneath Herrengasse. He located the vineyard he had been alerted to and spotted the path through it. A cold rain began.
Punctually at nine PM, he entered the vineyard. He trekked to the other side, an uphill walk with loose stones and uneven turf. But he kept the back entrance of Number 23 in view. He emerged from the vineyard under a cover of near darkness with only one small tear to his hiking pants.
The cul-de-sac of 23 Herrengasse was across a narrow street from the vineyard. The streetlamp was off near the rear entrance to the building, which struck Cochrane as both odd and convenient. He crossed a street where several dark cars were parked. Globs of sleet were now falling. The street and sidewalk were already slippery. The weather distracted him from assessing his surroundings as he walked toward a door that appeared to be the back entrance of Dulles’s residence.
The space between the cars and the door was no more than twenty feet. He was halfway between the cars and the door when he heard noise. There was movement behind him. He turned sharply. In a severe shadow, the figure of a lean man unfolded out of a parked Citroen, legs first then the whole body as he stood. Cochrane looked to see if the man had a weapon but he didn’t see one. The night was cold and the man’s hands were in the pockets of a bulky coat.
“Bill Cochrane?” the man said softly.
Cochrane waited and didn’t answer. Had he been carrying a weapon he would have reached for it. The ma
n walked toward Cochrane. There were a few slices of light from the windows above the ground floor of the building. Cochrane’s eyes adjusted quickly. As the man approached, his hand emerged from his coat pocket. At the same time, Cochrane saw the glasses and recognized the shape and the facial features of Allen Dulles.
Dulles extended his hand in greeting.
“I apologize if I startled you, Bill,” Dulles said. “Precautions, you know?”
From out of a shadow close to the building wall, a large body swelled into view and loomed uncomfortably close to Cochrane. The body morphed into the shape of a big man in a leather jacket and gloves. The man must have been six feet six. Cochrane had never seen such a large individual loom into view from nowhere so quickly.
Cochrane wondered if his skills had eroded. First he missed Dulles in the car, now he had missed the security detail at the rear of 23 Herrengasse.
“You all right, Mr. Dulles?” the man asked.
The man spoke with a low voice and flat accent from the American Midwest, with forearms like ham hocks to make things even better. As Cochrane looked him quickly up and down, he saw that the left hand held a forty-five caliber American Colt semi-automatic. Cochrane recognized it as US Army issue. There was nothing subtle about the weapon; it could blow a three foot hole in a brick wall. Get any part of a man’s head with that artillery and the man would no longer have much to think with.
“I’m fine, Jimmy,” Dulles said. “Our guest here has come a long way. I’m here to welcome him. Thank you.”
Jimmy grunted. He retreated back into the world of shadows. Cochrane assumed there was at least one other guard on the premises, around front. But he had cleared scrutiny, so what did it matter?
Dulles and Cochrane shook hands. When the clasp released, Dulles wrapped an arm around Cochrane’s shoulder.
“Come on in,” he said. “The door’s unlocked. There’s a fire going. I’d tell you that all’s right with the world, but that would be a lie and you’d recognize it as one.”
“Indeed, I would, sir,” said Cochrane.
“Formality is not necessary. We know each other. Call me Allen. Welcome to the war.”
“Thank you. I think.”
Dulles arrived at the door.
“Warm up. Have a brandy. Have two or three. We have much to discuss. I’ve got a son-of-a-bitch of an assignment and you’re the only man who can help me.”
Chapter 21
Bern
December 1942
They climbed two flights of stairs. Dulles ushered Cochrane into an apartment that had a large foyer, lit with a copper standing lamp similar to one that Cochrane had in his library in New York. They continued into a salon. There was a sofa, comfortable chairs and two lamps. A pair of large windows faced the front of the building, probably giving a wonderful view of Bern. But it was night and the shades were drawn. In a grate, a fire was burning.
“Make yourself comfortable anywhere,” Dulles said.
“Thank you.” Cochrane settled into a Queen Anne chair.
“I’m having a cognac. Martell. I don’t have any of the XO, but I have some Cordon Bleu. Would that interest you?”
Dulles reached for a crystal decanter without waiting for a response.
“Indeed it would,” Cochrane said anyway.
“This is from a case from the Queen Mary’s maiden voyage in the 1936. I had a case of it when I arrived here,” he continued as he found two crystal snifters and polished them with a cloth. “I’m down to my last two bottles, I hate to admit.”
“Dare I ask how the case got from the docks to here?” Cochrane asked. “Switzerland is a landlocked country, after all.”
“Ask all you want. One of my MI6 friends across the street, a good fellow named Nigel, has some field people on the docks in Liverpool. When the Queen Mary was being converted to a troop transport,” Dulles said, “Nigel asked what to do with the cognac inventories. There was only one real answer: ship them immediately by air courier to the diplomatic staff in Switzerland. We don’t want the sailors getting drunk on the expensive stuff, do we?”
“Oh, hell. No, of course not,” said Cochrane. “Not when we can do it for them.”
Dulles smiled. “Point taken,” he said. “The Huns have closed down most of the air courier service,” Dulles said. “I doubt if we’d be able to get another case. Pity.”
Dulles poured. Two fingers high of the beautiful stuff into each snifter.
“They’re communists on the docks, you know. Liverpool, after all. Bill Donovan loves that part. But they can be malleable. You scratch my back, I’ll drive your Rolls. That’s how it works in England these days, doesn’t it?”
Cochrane accepted the joke and the Cognac at the same time. “I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“Of course you would, Bill,” Dulles said. “Don’t be coy with me. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“How is Donovan, by the way?”
“I thought you communicated all the time.”
“We do. But you saw him in person.”
“He’s fine.”
“Good. That’s good. Wild Bill is going to be in things for the long haul. After we win this damned war, we’re going to have a tiger by the tail with Stalin’s people. We’re going to need people to keep an eye on our Commie bastard pals. They looted half the gold from the Treasury in Madrid before the country fell to Franco, you know. Shipped it all to Moscow. Damned thieves. Cheers, again.”
“Cheers,” Cochrane said a second time.
Dulles retreated to the chair just across from his guest. “How’s the wife. Laura, I believe? I met her once in Washington.”
“Excellent. Fine. Worried sick as to what you have in store for me,” Cochrane added.
Dulles set aside his Cognac. He strolled to a wooden console record player across the room. He selected a disk from a collection housed on an adjacent shelf. It was a jazz recording from the 1920’s, music by Bix Beiderbecke, the great American cornetist who had died of pneumonia at the age of twenty-nine. Dulles set the disk on the turntable, put the needle on the vinyl, pushed the volume loud enough to cover any ensuing conversation, turned and sat.
“Well, to be brutally honest,” Allen Dulles said, “she damned well should be. Worried, I mean. Laura. Your wife. Know what they do to spies in Germany if they get caught?”
“They decapitate them,” Cochrane said. “I’ve already been warned. Guillotine, I hear.”
“You hear correctly. If it’s good enough for a Bourbon king, apparently it’s good enough for a captured spy. That seems to be their thinking; or what passes for thinking.”
“Donovan mentioned that in New York,” said Cochrane.
“It bears repeating, my friend. They have a special scaffold, I’m told. The unlucky victim gets to be executed face up. The last thing he or she sees in this world or maybe any world is the blade falling. Then there’s darkness pretty soon after that, I would think.”
He sipped and savored the Martell.
“The Nazis are not shy about executing women, either,” Dulles continued. “There’s a Gestapo fellow in Bremen, I hear. A big Teutonic ape of a man with a wooden leg from the First Great War. He takes sadistic pleasure in his work. He uses a whip made out of rhinoceros hide. His ex-playmates in the Afrika Korps created it for him. He takes his victims to a private chamber and apparently can take a man’s head off with one or two cracks of the whip. His name is Burchhardt. At first I didn’t believe the stories but so many of our people in the Bremen area have repeated the details that I’m inclined to believe it,” he said, taking another sip. “That’s what happens to spies in Nazi Germany when they get caught. You should know that.”
“After I’ve travelled a quarter of the way around the world, are you trying to get me to decline the mission?”
“Of course I am. Then if you get killed I won’t feel guilty.”
“Would you feel guilty anyway?”
“Interesting question.” Dulles pursed his li
ps. “Maybe for a few days. A week at most,” he added with a wink.
“Then please tell me what I’m here for,” Cochrane said.
Dulles drained his glass. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do just that.” He thought for a moment, then resumed. “You have been requested personally, by name, for this project,” Dulles said. “Was that conveyed to you in New York?”
“The file I read stated that,” Cochrane said. “But I don’t know who it was.”
“A man in the Naval Ministry. He’s also a captain the SS,” Dulles said. “Two roles. That means he’s got quite a bit of power and a damned good share of official access. That’s our contact. Does that mean anything to you?”
“It’s starting to.”
“Apparently you had an affair with the man’s wife in Berlin around 1938, you hot-blooded scoundrel. That should make it pretty clear, I would think, unless you made an unhealthy habit of cuckolding several men who met that description.”
“There was only one,” Cochrane said. “His wife was a good woman.”
“You recall the man’s name?”
“Of course I do. Heinrich Koehler. And his wife’s name was Theresia. Eventually, she was murdered by the Gestapo. I settled scores with several of them as I got out of the country as fast as I could.”
“You shot a few of them from what I learn.”
“That’s correct.”
“Very good,” Dulles said. “We’re at the same starting point. Herr Koehler has been leaking information to us for the last eighteen months. He is of the opinion that the mad little dictator bit off far more than his armies could chew when he declared war on the United States. So he’s looking for a soft landing if he can get out of the country.”
Dulles paused.
Then he said, “The flow has intensified recently and it’s top shelf intelligence. We sense urgency on the part of Koehler and we’d like the flow of intelligence to continue. For it to continue, he has requested you to meet his intermediary in Berlin as soon as possible. He says he needs to put something in your hands physically.”
