Return to Berlin

by Noel Hynd

  “And what do I do then?”

  “You take whatever he gives you and you guard it with your life. Next, you move the Tyrolean Alps if you damned well have to but you bring it back to me in this neutral nation in this picturesque city in this lovely room by this comforting fireplace beside which we currently sit and speak and then we can have another drink over it.”

  The longest pause of the evening followed.

  Then, “Clear?” asked Dulles.

  “Clear.”

  There was another silence in the room. It lasted for several seconds.

  “Questions?” Dulles asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Throw them at me.”

  “Since it’s my life that’s going to be on the line, or my head that is going to fall backwards into the executioner’s basket, I’m curious on several points. First, your contact, Koehler, has been leaking material to the OSS. He says he’s got another boatload of material. How did you find him?”

  “He contacted another American he knew before the war. A man who worked at Standard Oil. He’s friendly with Bill Donovan. Donovan referred him back to me.”

  “How did you contact him?”

  “Through intermediaries.”

  “Could you give me a hint of the process?”

  “Notes in a dead drop. A brick wall on a side street off the Kurfürstendamm.”

  “Can you tell me what I’m supposed to bring back from Berlin.”

  “No. You find out when you get there.”

  “I’m told by General Donovan that he contacts you be high speed blips and a code book.”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m told that the deciphering is a murderous procedure but you’ve taken steps to speed it up. As a matter of interest, would you mind telling me how?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Dulles said.

  Dulles explained that he had come up with the solution in his first month at his new post. There was a growing population in Switzerland of American airmen whose planes had crashed after bombing runs in Germany and Austria. Some had managed enough good luck to find their way across the Swiss border. Switzerland being neutral, these men were seen as foreign combatants but not enemy. Hence, they were interned in camps and not returned to their units.

  The camps were not nearly as horrible as the work or labor camps in German or Poland or Russia. But most of these men hankered to get back to their units, which the Swiss steadfastly refused to allow. It was no secret that they would be shot if they tried to escape.

  Many of these aviators were interned within a day’s drive from Bern at a place named Adelboden, a vacant summer resort northeast of Geneva. The camp commandant was a blond, blue-eyed officer named with the unlikely name of Shubert who reminded the internees of every SS man they had ever dealt with. The men were put up in stripped-down resort hotels, where they were kept under constant surveillance.

  The prevailing problem at Adelboden was boredom. The prevailing sport was drinking. The men could purchase their own alcohol with the small stipends they received in lieu of flight pay from the American legation in Bern. Some of them stayed drunk for days at a time. And after a while, boredom, spartan conditions, and the growing proximity of Allied armies in France fed the urge to flee.

  The obstacles to flight, however, were daunting. Some of the men took hikes deep into the mountains, escorted by armed guards who acted as guides. It was a storybook landscape: church bells chiming every hour, glacial lakes sparkling like giant jewels in the midday sun. But only an expert mountain climber stood a chance of escaping through the massive Alpine peaks that rose, like so many imprisoning walls, around the deep, pine-scented valley. And beyond the impassable ranges, in every direction, lay the Reich.

  The guards explained that the mountains prevented their country from being overrun by the German army. They also maintained that more than 60 percent of the Swiss population was of German descent, and that many Swiss belonged to local Nazi groups and were not likely to assist an American on the run.

  From instinct and from having dealt with the Swiss for more than twenty years, Dulles knew which Swiss were friendly to the Allied cause which were pro-Nazi. Dulles went to the Swiss whom he trusted and obtained permission to visit Adelboden. He quickly assessed that it was a miserable place in a lovely setting. Hot water, for example, was a luxury. It was turned on once every ten days at Adelboden, and then for only a few hours. Without coal to heat their quarters in cold weather, the men ate their skimpy meals of black bread, potatoes and watery soup dressed in their flight suits and gloves. They ate meat once a week and it was awful—usually blood sausage made from mountain goat.

  So Dulles sent black market goods, especially liquor, some liberated from the Queen Mary, over to the camp commanders, including Schubert. Then he sent over better food for the guards and the captured Americans.

  In return, the Swiss managed to warp the rules a little. They began to issue one-day “recreational passes” for teams of airmen. The airmen came to Bern on their passes and were trained as code readers. For an extra coal delivery that might warm the barracks and fuel the ovens for an extra week, Dulles was allowed consecutive seven-day daily passes for his code readers. Soon Dulles had created teams of code creators and readers who would visit in twenty-four hour shifts, often working two eight hour shifts with another eight hours tossed in for sleeping. Best of all, the American captives felt they were working for the war effort, which they were.

  Dulles loved one time code pads and the furloughed POW’s became experts. Dulles assumed everything that was sent out was also being recorded by the Germans and probably the Soviets as well. Once a Soviet friend and Dulles, comparing notes, realized that they had both been reading the same intelligence reports. What neither could figure was whether the report had first been Russian, British or American.

  They worked not in Dulles’s home, but rather in the small compact and eventually heavily guarded apartment on the top floor of 26 Duforstrasse in Bern.

  “Twenty-six Duforstrasse is where you’ll work for the next week,” Dulles said. “You’ll need to study the file and do a lot of memorization. We’ll create your new identity and your papers. Game?”

  The jazz recording came to an end. Dulles held up a finger, signifying Cochrane should be silent for a moment while the music was changed. Dulles selected a new disc. Cochrane could see what it was. When Dulles sat, a recording of one of Cochrane s favorites, made in Paris in the 1920’s, began.

  “Josephine Baker,” said Cochrane.

  “Yes. You don’t object, do you?”

  “Far from it. I’m a fan.”

  “Quite a talented lady,” said Dulles. “She remains in France, you know, despite the war. Or at least that’s her home base. She still travels. I saw her perform in Paris in the 1920s when I was attached to the League of Nations. It must have been 1928. Doesn’t seem so long ago. She was spectacular.”

  “I envy you,” said Cochrane.

  “Of course I’m game,” Cochrane said when music resumed. “Why didn’t Donovan give me more details?”

  Dulles shrugged. We figured if you came all this way you wouldn’t turn us down.”

  “How do we know Koehler just doesn’t want a shot at me. By ‘shot’ I mean, ‘bullet.’ I suppose he has some sense of wounded honor and I did have an affair with his late wife.”

  Dulles shrugged.

  “We can’t say for certain, but it doesn’t appear that way. He wants to get to either the United States or South America. Part of the price is that he send us a further boatload of material. He promises to knock our socks off. He says the delivery system will be unusual. I don’t know if he has microdots or ledgers or photographs. But so far, he’s been providing extraordinary information that checks and double checks.”

  “So it’s worth it to you and General Donovan to put my life at risk. Correct?”

  “That sums it up rather concisely, Bill,” Dulles said. “But figure it’s wartime. Every man’s
life is being put at risk by somebody. Or several somebodies.”

  “True enough.”

  Dulles took a final sip of brandy. His glass empty, he set it aside.

  “Any other questions for tonight?” Dulles asked.

  “Do you know a good watch merchant in Bern. Anyone you favor.”

  “Doing some shopping?”

  “I’d like to,” Cochrane said.

  “There’s a Swiss Frenchman named Maurice Lesser near the big clock tower. He knows me. He’ll take care of you and give you a fair price on anything in his shop. He’ll be the only one in the shop. Should I phone him and ask him to take care of you?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  There was a pause, then Dulles spoke again. “I should mention one other factor in this before you read it in the file.”

  Cochrane waited.

  “This was supposed to be a three man operation,” Dulles began. “You were intended to have some support going into Germany. Two men. Problem is, there’s a venal little Gestapo officer who’s been made the principal for the other side on this case.”

  “And so?”

  “And so, indeed! Somehow the Gestapo got wind of what we were doing. An informer, most likely. The Gestapo agent is named Wesselmann. If there had been one more day, Wesselmann might have known there were three of our people on the plane. But he didn’t so you’re alive and Skordeno and Cambulat are dead.”

  Dulles paused.

  “I don’t have to tell you what happened, Bill. You saw it for yourself. Poor bastards. They were good men.” He paused, then concluded. “Don’t forget about them if you happen to encounter the man who murdered them.”

  Chapter 22

  Marseille, Vichy France

  December 1942

  In a dreary basement conference room in the main prefecture of police in Marseilles, Hans Wesselmann stood at attention as his Gestapo commander, Henrich Nussman, Klaus Barbie’s former top assistant in Lyon, berated him in language that might have scorched the wallpaper had there been any. The doors were closed but the tongue lashing could be heard throughout the corridor. These grim gray rooms, including Chambre 017, the one used for torture, had been commandeered by the SS and the Gestapo from the local police. It did not take a genius to know not to interfere. The regular city gendarmes upstairs went about their daily business and rarely ventured to the lower level.

  Had anyone peered through the thick glass of the small panel on Kriminaldirektor Nussman’s office door, one would have seen the rigidly posed Wesselmann stiff, sweating and not far from a tremble. For most of the quarter hour excoriation, he remained silent. Occasionally his lips wavered and moved as he formed short simple answers or questions. The next thing he knew he was dismissed and ordered to rectify his egregious mistake by any means possible, as quietly as possible and without fail.

  Wesselmann turned sharply after his browbeating. He left the room, his cheeks burning, his insides surging and his knees weak. He walked down a corridor that was even more gloomy than the meeting room. Everyone gave way. He blinked rapidly, anger and fear smoldering within him. He said nothing to anyone who passed him as he walked to his small office, Chambre 018.

  Across from “018” was the torture room. Just last week, a local resistance leader named Henri Picard had been beaten and skinned alive by Klaus Barbie, who had come down from Leon to interrogate the prisoner. Later Picard’s head was immersed in a bucket of ammonia. He died shortly afterwards; his body disposed of overnight in the harbor beneath the Chateau d’If.

  Wesselmann had been part of a detail of three to do the job. Well, Wesselmann told himself, he had done better than Picard. So far.

  Wesselmann closed his office door. He grabbed a pack of Gauloise cigarettes and smoked one. He fell into thought. He was a man who knew his own limitations. He lacked the mental acuity with which many Germans of his age had climbed the ladder of the SS and the Gestapo. He lacked the handsome Aryan features that propelled many of his peers upwards. And he did not have the physical bulk to make witnesses cower.

  What he did have was viciousness and tenacity and a devotion to Adolf Hitler, whom he considered the savior of Germany and the Aryan people. Cornered and on the brink of being disgraced among his peers, he also had the venality to slash back at whoever was tormenting him.

  Wesselmann’s office was no more than ten feet by eight feet. It held two metal tables and two chairs, a filing cabinet, a small bookcase and a fan that never worked. On top of the tables, which barely had any working space, were files on local informers and suspects. The single window looked through a grate up to a junk-strewn courtyard. Outside it was raining and the rain spattered the glass.

  Wesselmann stood very still, then anger overtook him. He picked up a stack of snitch files and flung them across the room. He kicked a chair. This mistake at the airport was a huge black mark on his record, even though it had not been his fault.

  And then there was the even worse mistake, the one for which he was upbraided by Kommandant Nussman. One of Wesselmann’s sources was a street prostitute named Irena whom he patronized when he didn’t have enough money for one of the fancier brothels.

  Whores could be arrested if they worked in public on the streets, but many of them, including Irena, bought protection with their services. Irena had heard a story from another client, a drunken submarine officer on leave.

  The story revolved around about a man in the SS hierarchy who had links to the German navy. The man was a traitor, a defeatist. He was looking to deliver to the United States a bonanza of defense information and then defect to the United States with his family.

  In the pursuit of such, the man had contacted Allen Dulles in Geneva through intermediaries. Two spies were being sent to usher the man and his information out of Germany. One of the spies had had previous contact with the man during the 1930’s. That was the story Wesselmann had received.

  Wesselmann had seen this as a major case. If he could break it, it was a sure path to huge advancement in the ranks. So Wesselmann had investigated and pulled every string he knew of. He had the aircraft intercepted in France, had met it himself, and had terminated the two spies.

  Or at least he thought he had. He had acted too quickly. He didn’t have the story completely correct. Much of it was spot on, but the details about the spies was wrong. There had been three, not two. The third one had slipped past him. Wesselmann remembered him very well. He had used a Canadian passport and had a letter of passage which, now seen in retrospect, had been a fake.

  Now the spy, travelling under a fake passport, had landed in Geneva and was most likely on his way to Germany. Wesselmann had reviewed the flight information and had now narrowed it down as to he was looking for.

  Nussman had given him free reign and the authority. He had also given him the alternative: resolve this quickly or suffer your own sorry fate, instead.

  Chambre 017 – just across the hall in this dreary basement - was the alternative. Only it wouldn’t be Wesselmann’s head in a bucket of ammonia. It would be a set of more private body parts.

  Wesselmann spent the next days digging through his files, examining angles, making phone calls, prowling through his informers among the students. Suddenly, he thought he had a connection. He understood why the SS officer was so intent on defecting and getting one member of his family out of Germany. And sure enough, once again the case revolved around a troublesome female.

  Chapter 23

  Bern, Switzerland

  December 1942

  Cochrane went for a walk in the Swiss capital. Situated on a cliff surrounded on three sides by the aquamarine waters of the River Aare, a tributary of the High Rhine, the city had, for better or worse, preserved its medieval character. The streets were cobbled and bordered by covered, arcaded sidewalks that wound along for miles. On the lower levels of the buildings were shops, cafés, bookstores, and restaurants, while the upper floors were residences.

  The old town was not far from the government cent
er. It was segmented by public fountains, old statues, towers, several bridges across the Aare and the famous Clock Tower that dated from the Thirteenth Century.

  Cochrane walked toward the tower from the east. There was a slight drizzle. He stopped as a kiosk and purchased a Neue Berner Zeitung.

  Most of the Swiss, including many who were pro-Nazi, had feared a possible invasion by Germany. So, being a cautious people who had been at peace for several hundred years, they had removed all street signs. Cochrane had been in the Swiss capital in 1938, however, and recalled enough to retain a sense of direction and location. He also knew, as did Dulles, that the clock tower, the Zytglogge, was the key landmark medieval tower in Bern. Built in the early 13th century, it has served the city as guard tower, prison, clock tower, center of urban life and civic memorial.

  It had once even been a women's prison, notably housing Pfaffendirnen, "priests' whores," women convicted of sexual relations with clerics. The clerics were convicted of nothing, but the women were incarcerated.

  Cochrane followed an unpredictable pattern on foot. He slipped in and out of three stores and one café. Finally, convinced that no one was following him, he arrived at 99 Bundestrasse, the storefront of the watch merchant Dulles had recommended.

  He was happy to see, from the display window, that the proprietor was still listed as Maurice Lesser, the name Dulles had given. Cochrane entered the store.

  There were two other customers, a man and a woman speaking French. Cochrane knew enough French to place the accent as Niçoise, which meant Vichy, but it proved nothing. They may have been in exile. There was a man behind a counter and Cochrane assumed he was Lesser.

  Lesser was a short thin man with very white skin and black hair. He stood behind a dazzling counter of time pieces, contemporary and antique, ranging from the affordable to the astronomically expensive.