by Noel Hynd
He glanced at Cochrane but gave no indication of recognition. Then he looked back to the items the Francophones were examining. The woman tried on a watch.
“I’ll be with you in a moment, sir,” Lesser said to Cochrane in German.
“I’m in no hurry,” Cochrane replied in German.
Cochrane browsed. The French couple finally purchased a Gebrüder Thiel watch. Lesser followed them to the door, thanked them politely, closed the door, locked it and returned to Cochrane. At the same time, Cochrane’s eyes landed on exactly what he wanted in a display case. It was a woman’s watch, a recent model, an Omega Chronometer with 14 karat rose gold.
“I wonder if I might examine this one?” Cochrane asked.
The watch merchant pulled a velvet custom from beneath the display case. He reached in and gently lifted the Omega from the others.
“Quite beautiful,” said Cochrane.
“I’m sure it matches the beauty of the lady you’re purchasing for,” said Lesser.
Outside the sun made a rare midwinter appearance. The jeweler held the watch by the edges of its leather strap so that the pinkish gold could catch the sunlight. He adjusted his spectacles to make them magnify. He was impressed by his own merchandise.
“It would match my Laura quite well,” Cochrane said. “May I?”
“Of course.”
Cochrane took the watch in his hand. It was love at first sight.
“I’ll take it,” he said. “It’s for my wife.”
“Excellent, sir.”
“There is one condition.”
“Monsieur?” asked Lesser.
“I am in the midpoint of a professional trip which will take me out of the country. The trip has some peril. This is wartime, after all. I would be happy to pay you the full price now, but please keep the watch in your safe until I return. I will also give you the name of my wife and a postal address in New York. If I don’t return within six months please send it along with a sealed note that I will write. Be sure that she receives it. May I rely on you?”
“That would not be difficult, sir,” Lesser said. “I can do that.”
“My employer assured me that you’d take care of this.”
Lesser’s eyes narrowed. “I understand perfectly,” he said. He reached to another spot under the counter. His hand returned with a small gift card and envelope for the occasion.
“Perfect,” said Cochrane. “Thank you.”
Lesser put the watch back into a case and giftwrapped it in red with a white ribbon. Cochrane meanwhile wrote out a note to his wife.
Laura, he wrote. I will always love you. Bill.
He sealed it. On a separate piece of paper, he wrote Laura’s full name and his home address on Seventy-Second Street in New York.
The watch cost three hundred Swiss francs. Cochrane paid in cash.
Lesser placed the cased watch in a strong envelope along with the note and the address. He gave Cochrane a nod.
“So, to be clear, in the case of my death you’ll see that the watch gets to my wife. Correct?” Cochrane asked.
“Of course, sir,” said Lesser. “We have several such orders. We will take care of every one.” He paused. He switched into English. “And tell Mr. Dulles I end my regards. We served together in the diplomatic corps in Vienna several years ago.”
Chapter 24
Munich
January 1943
In a corridor of a university building a few days later, Sophie and Hans spotted Frieda. They confronted her. Frieda confessed.
No, she wasn’t a university student. She was only sixteen and attended a fashionable but notoriously rigid secondary school nearby. The school was an “internat.” Students came from all over Germany and she boarded.
“My mother is dead and my father is away to the war,” she said. “They stuck me at this very formal school.” She was concentrating on music and mathematics, the work of Johannes Brahms and Kurt Gödel. “Everyone there is Teutonic and strict. Girls have to lower their britches and are caned by the male masters if they don’t do their assignments. I hate it! So I sneak out.”
“They don’t miss you?”
“They don’t care so long as I come back. All the girls sneak out. With the war, everyone has more to worry about than me. Plus, I’m smart. I don’t get caught.”
“Why do you attend Professor Huber’s class?” Hans demanded.
“I came over to the university to attend a concert,” Frieda said. “I overheard talk about Dr. Huber and I was curious. So I come to listen and be with likeminded friends. I love what he says.” She paused. “I’m anti-Nazi, too.”
“How do we know you are?” Sophie asked.
“Trust me.”
“It’s dangerous to trust people,” Hans said.
“Very dangerous,” Sophie added.
“I know. But I just trusted you.”
“Can we see where you go to school?” Hans asked.
“If you want to, yes. Take the tram with me on a Saturday.”
Sophie and Hans went to see Frieda’s school. Over several weeks, Frieda won their trust. She became a more integral part of the group, gradually had more to say and quietly developed friends at the university. In chats with some of the students, it became clear that the girl was phenomenally gifted in math. She was an excellent pianist and, in private, could play ragtime and jazz and the other melodies considered “degenerate” by the regime.
Frieda realized that she had nothing to fear from the members of the group. She became a regular at the meetings. So did Ilse who fell into a tight friendship with Sophie.
There was a piano at the Rathskeller Kleindienst and sometimes Frieda would play the songs of Kurt Weill, music that the Nazi regime said was anti-German and smacked of “cultural Bolshevism.”
Frieda had learned the songs in several language. She developed a fluency in English and French through her love of the popular music of the Twenties and Thirties. Ilse, the music student, liked to sing and frequently joined in. Also popular among the students was the music of Al Jolson, the great Jewish-American stage and film star, whose music was banned by the Nazis due to Jolson’s “race.” Frieda introduced Ilse to some of Jolson’s music. Ilse was great in English. One night a big blond kid name Albert who was also ex-Luftwaffe took over the piano and Ilse and Frieda sang the California, Here I Come, a song that Jolson had introduced on Broadway in 1921 and later recorded in Hollywood.
The lights went dark in the Rathskeller and they had the whole place as an audience. They got up on the tables and sang.
They would do routines from time to time much to the delight of the students in attendance. Sometimes police or suspected snitches would come in, just to monitor what was going on. A student from the group at the door would blow a whistle and give a hand signal. The students would switch to patriotic songs, then have a huge laugh when the opposition departed.
One Saturday night, Hans handed Frieda a copy of a book in a thick envelope tied with string. “It’s a gift from Sophie and me,” he said. “Read it when you can. But it’s banned. So be careful.”
“All right,” Frieda said. “May I look now?”
“Yes. But don’t show it outside this group. You’ll risk a lot of trouble.”
At the same time, a lively discussion was taking place across three tables. The question at hand was what to name the group. Frieda was sitting across from Sophie. Frieda gently opened the envelope and slid a copy of Bruno Traven’s popular novel onto the table. Frieda smiled. She loved to read stories that took her far away and had wanted to read this book in particular.
Sophie’s eyes settled upon it. She looked up.
“White Rose?” Ilse asked aloud.
“White Rose!” Sophie said, invoking the book, the hacienda and the seemingly hopeless social struggle. “That’s who we are in this group. The White Rose!”
Chapter 25
Bern, Switzerland
January 1943
In Bern, Allen Dulles c
ould frequently be found in the late evening at the Palace Bellevue, usually with a beautiful woman on his arm. Nonetheless, the flourishing subculture of professional spies in the city annoyed him. There was no secret that Dulles was a high level intelligence operative or that his residence was being used for American intelligence work. Because of the openness of what should have been a covert operation, Dulles was constantly besieged by questionable visitors.
Many visitors were legitimate. But a greater number was not. Dulles listened to almost all of those who came. They would brazenly visit German agents in the morning, the British secret service in the afternoon, and Dulles’s office on the Herrengasse in the evening. They would offer to each prospective buyer their carefully prepared and sensational reports, a few of which were actually true.
Dulles had learned the hard way to listen to everyone and take any meeting offered.
In 1916, after passing the Foreign Service exam and finishing his master's degree at Princeton, Dulles left for his first posting, as third secretary in the US Embassy to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Vienna. He had barely washed his laundry when the United States declared war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dulles was sent scurrying to Switzerland for the first time at age twenty-three, joining the American Legation in Bern, Switzerland. He arrived there April of 1917.
When Dulles arrived no one knew what to do with all the extra help, so the first secretary took him to lunch one day. "I’m assigning you to work in intelligence,” the man said. Keep your ears open. There are more spies in this city than there are peanuts in a bag at the circus. Write me a weekly report so that it looks like you’re busy."
In the midst of all this, Dulles fell for a blonde, a Swiss woman who was said to be a knockout. She was socially prominent and a skilled tennis player.
Dulles and his best friend, a young undersecretary at the British embassy named Robert Craigie, were in hot pursuit of the woman and her twin sister. And why wouldn’t they be? The two ladies had finally agreed to an unchaperoned “tennis weekend” at a country chalet.
Late on the Friday afternoon of the planned departure, Dulles was concluding his week as the legation’s duty officer. He anticipated the type of weekend any young man might dream of.
The telephone rang. A man with a ponderous Russian accent introduced himself in German as Vladimir Illich Lenin and urgently requested a meeting for that same afternoon.
Dulles assumed the caller was just another local nut case trying to get back to his homeland, looking for some sort of help. Dulles told him to stop by on Monday.
"Monday will be too late!" Lenin snapped. "I must talk to someone! Now! This afternoon!"
Dulles declined. “Come in Monday,” he repeated.
The next morning, Saturday, Lenin was on his way to Russia in the sealed train provided by German officials. He arrived at Finland Station in Petrograd on April 16, 1917, where he was greeted by a large crowd of workers, soldiers, sailors, and Bolshevik supporters and proceeded to change the history of the Twentieth Century.
Hence, as the Second World War plodded on Dulles gave an audience to all of the kooks and cranks, con men and spies that wanted to bend his ear, always suspicious yet always trolling for that one little item that could turn the tide of history.
As Bill Cochrane had discovered, the apartment he had leased at 23 Herrengasse, was reserved for special clients. It too had more than a few armaments and security arrangements. He presented himself there again on his fifth day in the Swiss capital.
“I’m ready,” he told Dulles at a mid-morning meeting, “to go to Germany.”
“Good,” Dulles said. “The first part of your assignment: you get yourself to Berlin without being uncovered. We’ve equipped you with some addressees for contacts and safe houses. You’ve memorized everything?”
“Yes.”
“The addresses are vital,” said Dulles. “If you must note them somewhere, put them into your own code and keep them well hidden. We have very few working contacts in Berlin right now, especially was it pertains to this case. Connect with your contacts. There’s a small apartment waiting for you: a room and a half on the ground floor of a secure building. That’s a key address. You’ve got that embedded in your brain, yes?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“125, Friedrichshain.”
“Good. You have a contact who works as a waiter in the Haus Faterland, also, and one who parks his car on the Frieburgstrasse near the big station. Those are you priorities, along with our guy Stein, who may or may not be alive.” He thought for a moment. “There’s also a drinking place called the Tavern Wittgenstein. It’s friendly to our people. Drop in at least a few times. Be seen.”
“How many times is ‘a few’?” Cochrane asked.
“At least once.”
“I read and memorized everything,” Cochrane said. “Somewhere along the line some dame is going to identify herself as Gina and she’s one of your people, too. I read everything, Allen. I’ll follow through.”
“Of course,” Dulles said. “Right. I know you will. Look, Bill, the anti-Hitler underground in Berlin is miniscule, but it’s there. Someone will find you when it’s known that you’re in Berlin. The trick is to be seen by our people but not theirs, right?”
“It’s a good trick when it works,” Cochrane said.
“Okay. I’m convinced. You’re ready to go.”
“Thanks.”
“Keep in mind that our key contact will be putting more information in your hands, your care, your custody. Your mission will be to get that source of information back to me, personally. Follow? You are to being the item here to me and present it to this office. I will vet it and then you will accompany it back to Washington. When all of that was confirmed, our contact will eventually follow. The Germans are already setting up their rat lines, by the way, their routes of escape when the Nazi roof caves in. You’re not travelling with a weapon are you?”
“I don’t have one, no.”
“Don’t carry one across the border into Germany. You’ll get arrested. But you’ll need one in Berlin. Once you’re ensconced in a safe location, one will be delivered. Don’t ask questions when it arrives.”
Dulles opened a side drawer on his desk. He pulled out two cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes. “Take these,” he said.
“I don’t smoke,” said Cochrane.
“Of course you don’t. But most of the Germans who are susceptible to pretty bribes do. I don’t need to explain that to you, do I?”
Cochrane shook his head.
“A few final points,” Dulles said. “Foremost, there’s a chance this operation is a set up. The man who is asking for you was in the German Navy when you were last in Germany. He still has a rank in the Naval Ministry. He’s now in the SS. You had a relationship with his wife while he was in South America. We’ve been over that.”
“Too many times,” Cochrane said.
“There’s a good chance he just wants to meet you to shoot you. Or cut your nuts off and let you bleed to death. We could be sending you into a trap.”
“I know.”
“Be prepared to fight your way out. I may be able to arrange some extra help for you while you’re there, to make up for the loss of Cambulat and Skordeno. But I can’t promise anything. Sorry.”
“I understand.”
“Oh! By the way,” Dulles said. ‘Pineapple’.”
“What?”
“Pineapple.”
“What the hell is ‘pineapple’?” Cochrane asked.
“What’s what?” Donovan responded.
“Pineapple!”
“Sorry? Say it again?”
“What the hell, Allen?” Cochrane snapped. “Pineapple! Pineapple!”
“There,” Dulles said. “Good. You’ve got it. That’s the operational word. If someone says it to you, they’re part of our team. I’m sure you won’t forget it. I made you say it four times. Good luck, Bill. Be sure to come back in one pi
ece. I’ll be waiting here in Bern.”
“And my wife will be waiting in Manhattan. I’ll be happier when I see her than when I see you.”
“That’s how it should be, my friend. May God protect you.”
They shook hands.
That evening, Cochrane carefully packed his suitcase for Germany. He would leave for Berlin at eleven AM the next day.
Chapter 26
Bern to Berlin
January 1943
Cochrane found a comfortable seat in a train compartment for six passengers. Two seats were empty. Three young men occupied the trio of seats across from him. They wore civilian clothing but had military shoes and haircuts. They were sitting hugger-mugger across the seats, laughing and pushing each other. Cochrane wasn’t sure whether or not they were drunk, even at that hour of the morning. He was equally unsure if they were Swiss or German until they started to speak and laugh further. Apparently they had just spent a few merry days on leave with some Swiss ladies in Bern.
Their German was from the north of the country, probably near Hamburg. They looked like three army friends on leave. One of them had huge hands and another had a scar across the side of his neck. As Cochrane looked more closely, he saw that most of the man’s left ear was missing. War wounds, Cochrane concluded. Another had food stains all over the side of his suit jacket. It looked as if he’d had a drunken collision with a soup bowl.
The train left the station at 11:23 in the morning. Cochrane pulled his book on Wagner out of his bag, the one that he had bought at the market in Lisbon. He settled in to read, keeping his eyes lowered and his ears open. It would not have been the first time that he saw or overheard something of interest on a train. Little things added up, he always told himself.
Cochrane had brought with him a Swiss newspaper. This had been an unconscious act, unthinking really. The German government was at war not just with an assortment of foreign powers but also with the worldwide free press. Cochrane had placed the copy of Der Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich’s most respected journal, on the empty seat next to him. There was a bold article on the front page focusing on the war on the Eastern front. It was not good news for Team Berlin.
