Flowers From Berlin (25th Anniversary Edition)

by Noel Hynd

  They laughed.

  "Where you all from?" Cochrane asked.

  "I'm from the capital of Ireland," said the first sailor. "We all are," said the younger boy to his left, a rosy cheeked youth with short brown hair.

  "The capital of Ireland!" shouted the third, much too loudly.

  "Dublin?" Cochrane asked.

  "Bloody Liverpool!" exclaimed the first. All three broke up and Cochrane laughed with them. The sailors continued down the platform, lurching, supporting each other and occasionally throwing Cochrane an uncaring dumb smile as they continued to sing:

  "If one of the bottles should slip and fall-1-1,

  Twenty-four bottles of beer on the wall-1-1, Ooh-h-h . . ."

  Cochrane walked a few feet to a newsstand where he read the headline of the final evening edition of the Washington News. Hitler was demanding Danzig now and the Poles were trying to negotiate. Elsewhere there was a suggestion from a Republican senator that the framers of the Constitution would never have approved a third term for any President.

  Cochrane turned away. The sailors lost count of how many bottles were left and were burying their fears in a real pint of brandy. How many more months, Cochrane wondered, before these boys would be at sea? Hitler would have Danzig, just as he had had Austria and Czechoslovakia. If no one gave it to him, he would grab it. Hitler's own words: Today Germany, tomorrow the world. When was someone going to stop him?

  "The only ones who want America to enter a European war are the Jews, the English, and Franklin Roosevelt," Colonel Charles Lindbergh had told a rally of America First legions at Madison Square Garden earlier that same week.

  If only it were that simple, Lindy, Cochrane thought. If only the politics of Europe were as rudimentary and predictable as the six-cylinder engine of a monoplane.

  Cochrane suddenly realized: it was Hoover who had depressed him. In his usual crafty way, the F.B.I. director had manipulated him into a no-win position. Catch the saboteur, and Hoover would grab the credit. Fail, and Cochrane would take the blame.

  "Hey!" thundered one of the sailors from a hundred feet down the platform. "What did the Belgian amputee say to the German farmer's daughter?"

  Cochrane tuned them out. Besides, his train was coming now, chugging up from the south end of the track, its lone headlight like a giant Cycloptic eye casting a blinding yellow beam along the two rails.

  All right then, Cochrane decided. Just this one final assignment. The people in New York would have to wait for him. National interest and all that. High priority. Totally secret.

  This job would be within the borders of America, he told himself. No Gestapo pursuing him into Switzerland, no long boat rides from Palestine to Bermuda. Nobody trailing him or ripping through his luggage.

  The things he held dear would count: cleverness; judgment of character; intuition. He would combat the enemy on his own home ground this time, and that would make a world of difference.

  This time, he reasoned with great confidence, things would be much easier. The assignment was more finite: catch a spy. There would be no murders, he told himself, and he would not get involved with the wrong woman at the wrong time.

  The red and gold cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad rolled by as the locomotive chugged past him. Even the voices of the sailors from the Adriana were drowned away. The wheels squealed. The engine wheezed as the long night-train ground laboriously to a halt. Cochrane boarded, his ticket back to Baltimore stuck in his jacket pocket. He found a seat and was secure in his decision.

  His spirits were magically lifted. He was back in the spy game for a final time. And now, he concluded foolishly, he would be the master of his own destiny.

  ELEVEN

  Siegfried was ready for the Adriana.

  Smoking a Pall Mall, he drove resolutely northward to Boston on U.S. Route 5. The road was a new two-lane highway that wound its way from Connecticut into Massachusetts and onward into northern New England.

  The spy carried a Delaware driver's license in the name of Andrew Glover. Siegfried had forged the document himself. It was flawless. To complete the identity, he had decided that he was a schoolteacher from Wilmington, single, and on his way to visit his summer cabin in New Hampshire.

  Oddly enough, though he was known in New York as a clock manufacturer in one quarter and as an inordinately gifted, arrogant, and intense spy in another, Siegfried had the habit of easing into whatever role he was playing. His cover identity was both a discipline and something which he maintained a readiness to convert into at any given moment.

  On arrival, Siegfried browsed leisurely through several scientific and optical supply houses until he found a suitable establishment called Lebow Opticals on Reade Street in Cambridge. Siegfried examined Lebow's strongest telescopes until a short balding salesman named Mr. Kiely appeared quietly at his side.

  "What I'm looking for," Siegfried explained, assessing a powerful Swiss-made instrument, "is something that will allow me to peer right into the craters of the moon."

  He turned toward the salesman. For a moment the spy towered above the smaller man and glared down at him. The salesman felt a flash of fear. Siegfried set down the telescope that he held. The smaller man struggled with his strange reaction to his customer.

  Rallying, the salesman said, "If you'll follow me, sir . . ."

  Siegfried gave Mr. Kiely the creeps.

  But the salesman led his customer to his most expensive line of optical equipment. "I'm not sure how much you intend to spend, sir," said the clerk, now relieved that other salespeople and customers were nearby.

  "Price is not a consideration," Siegfried said.

  "Very good, sir."

  The clerk removed from a display case an eighteen-inch-long American-made telescope called the Celestron 1000. It was the latest and most compact device in the store.

  Siegfried hefted it in his hand and admired the feel of the instrument. He elongated the scope and examined the crystal at both ends. Then he turned to the clerk.

  "May I?' Siegfried asked, motioning gently toward the front window.

  "Of course," Mr. Kiely replied.

  Siegfried stood in the front window of Lebow Opticals and tested his telescope. He peered through his left eye down Reade Street. At one hundred yards, on the eyepiece's second adjustment, he could read one-column headlines on the Boston North American. He stretched out the scope to its greatest power, leaned forward slightly to give himself the proper angle, and trained the scope on an apartment building that he estimated to be a mile away, rising above several lower buildings.

  Siegfried watched moving figures within distant buildings for several seconds. He could discern facial features. He would actually have recognized these people if he had encountered them an hour later. The spy thoughtfully pursed his lips.

  He turned to Mr. Kiely and broke into a warm smile. "Perfect," he said. "Just perfect." Mr. Kiely grinned back.

  Siegfried added a tripod to his purchase, paid $467 in cash, and an hour later checked into the Ritz-Carlton, again under the identity of the fictitious schoolteacher from Wilmington, Andrew Glover.

  Siegfried left his room only once. Grumbling to the doorman at 2 A.M. that he was unable to sleep, Siegfried went out for a brief stroll. Using pliers and a screwdriver, he stole two complete sets of Massachusetts license plates from cars parked along Boston Common. He concealed the plates within his coat, retraced his own path to his room, and slept.

  He checked out after breakfast the next morning and drove northeast until he reached an isolated two-lane highway that wound by the rock-strewn rivers and jagged hills of southern New Hampshire. When he reached a remote bend in the highway, he pulled over, waited a moment or two, and then left the road completely. Concealed by trees, Siegfried placed a stolen set of plates onto his car. Then he continued until he reached a region of the Monadnock Mountains that was busy with both quarries and forestry. Consulting the Yellow Pages in a restaurant, he easily found an establishment that sold dynamite. New
Hampshire placed no special regulations upon its use.

  The firm was a supply depot located in a single building off Route 9. The clerk was a grizzled, taciturn Yankee who engaged in no unnecessary conversation whatsoever. Idly, Siegfried mentioned that he had a number of tree stumps and boulders to clear from his land. He needed thirty pounds of the most powerful stuff available.

  The Yankee complied wordlessly. Siegfried also purchased fuses and detonators.

  Then Siegfried inquired as to the availability of nitric and sulfuric acids. The Yankee raised his eyes looked into the cold eyes that had also victimized Mr. Kiely in Boston. But the Yankee stood his ground.

  "Would you be wanting glycerin next?" the clerk asked.

  "If you have some," the spy answered.

  "Yep," the man answered, recognizing full well the three elements of nitroglycerine.

  Much later, Siegfried placed his acquisitions in the trunk of his car. He had thirty pounds of Canadian "black" TNT. And he had enough potential nitroglycerine to sink a ship.

  Two days later, Siegfried materialized in New York. Ironically, he wandered through a neighborhood that Bill Cochrane knew well. Moving serenely among the Jewish shopkeepers and merchants along Hester Street, the spy purchased two used suits off racks from street vendors who accosted him as soon as he fingered their material. He paid cash and also bought several used shirts, a small straw suitcase, one pair of new shoes, and two changes of pants. Everything went into the suitcase. The suitcase went into the trunk of his car. He drove back uptown and left the car in a lot near Lexington Avenue.

  He took the trolley across Forty-Second Street to Broadway and found a theatrical supply shop across from the Hippodrome vaudeville theater on West Forty-Fifth Street. There Siegfried purchased a variety of hair dyes, dye remover, and a makeup pencil. Farther down the street, at a Woolworth's, he purchased two dozen No. 3 Ticonderoga pencils, the type with the softest lead, and a small box of chalk. Then, at an Eighth Avenue hardware store, he purchased a replacement chain for the gears of a bicycle.

  He circled back down Sixth Avenue. He stopped at the Horn & Hardart automat at Fortieth Street and pleasurably took in forty-five minutes of young secretaries on their lunch hour. Watching them, appreciating a snug skirt, a flattering blouse, a nicely shaped calf, put him in the mood to visit his call girl, Charlotte. But Siegfried kept the impulse in check.

  Today he was working.

  He made a final shopping visit to a kitchen supply store in the East Thirties. There he purchased a small mortar and pestle, the sort used for pulverizing herbs. Then Siegfried retrieved his car and drove to Newark. He checked into a modest hotel. He was still Mr. Andrew Glover, the schoolteacher from Wilmington.

  He informed the desk clerk that he was representing a textbook firm over the summer. He would not be there every night, as he had relatives in Westchester and Connecticut, but would, of course, always be returning ultimately. Then Siegfried paid for two weeks in advance, which went a long way toward allaying any suspicions.

  Siegfried carried his own bag to his room. He arranged his few toiletries above the sink. Then he took from his suitcase the mortar, pestle, and chalk and laid all three on the dresser. He sat down at the room's writing table and opened the two boxes of pencils. With a butcher knife, he cut open a dozen pencils and extracted the soft graphite.

  The spy worked carefully, avoiding mixing even the smallest chip of pencil wood with the graphite. The process took more than half an hour.

  Next Siegfried walked to the dresser. He poured the graphite into the mortar. He broke off a piece of chalk and added it. Then he began to grind them together, standing before the mirror above the dresser as he worked. He studied his face carefully, from cheekbone to hairline, from the bridge of his nose downward to his jaw. He wore a slight grin. Satisfaction, he assumed, from knowing that everything was on course.

  As he worked, he considered scenarios for the next few days. He knew he would have to take chances not paralleled by any he had taken previously. He firmly pulverized the graphite and the chalk, every so often looking up at the mirror and noticing a new intricacy to the space below his eyes or around his nose and mouth.

  He thought of the Reich. He thought of the feeble governments in London, Paris, and Washington. The Western democracies were unable, unwilling, and unprepared to rise to the real threats of the twentieth century.

  He thought of the HMS Adriana. What was it doing at a United States Navy shipyard at Red Bank, New Jersey? Soon, at least, he would have that answer.

  He thought of the dozens of sleek new U-boats that Hitler had christened and launched over the last few years. He thought of the Adriana's crew of predictably dim-witted English seamen. He grinned again.

  Killing them all would be so disgracefully easy.

  TWELVE

  In the county of Wiltshire, it was the coldest, rainiest summer since 1912. The rain was implacable when Laura arrived at the Salisbury railway terminal and it only heightened when she boarded the public omnibus that took her out to Friars Lane, where her father still resided.

  With the rain there was the dense creeping, crawling smoky ground fog that engulfed lorries and automobiles, pedestrians, dogs in the street, the spire of the cathedral, entire sections of the town, and, for that matter, most of Salisbury itself. July of 1939 set hardly an auspicious mood for Laura's homecoming.

  She disembarked from the bus at the end of its line. She felt the swamp beneath her feet as she walked past the modest detached houses, each with its own small garden before it, until she came to Friars Lane. She passed a small thatched cottage in which two sisters, Joelle and Pauline Markham, had resided alone since Laura's girlhood. The doddering Markham sisters were elderly when Laura was young and, as she spotted them through their paned windows, seemed equally elderly now. Minutes later Laura arrived before the iron gate that she had envisioned so many times over the last year. Oddly, it was ajar. There was no sign and no name: the occupant had a penchant for both privacy and anonymity. Then Laura was before the large front door. The dark blue paint was peeling. Soaking, she sounded the bell.

  Nigel Worthington came to the door himself, opened it, and asked, "Yes?" Then recognition was upon him. He gave a start and almost jumped, seeing a ghost of his late Victoria.

  "Papa!" Laura said, her beautiful face radiant with a smile.

  "Oh, my God! My angel!" he exclaimed, holding open his seventy-year-old arms.

  They embraced. He lifted her off the ground. It was only moments later when he felt her tremble slightly with what seemed to be a sob, and when he did not see her husband, that he knew something was wrong.

  The lines in Nigel Worthington's face had furrowed more deeply since Laura had last seen him, and he made his way around the house and his office with a mildly arthritic limp. But the three-story house was rich with memories, almost all of them of youth and happiness; so Laura's spirits were greatly buoyed in the first days she was home. She saw an old friend or two and wore a brave face in public. She visited the antiquarian bookshops—Stennett's and Forsythe's—in Greencroft Street near the cathedral and she spent countless nostalgic hours rummaging through the print and map shops in High Street.

  In the afternoons, when the heavens abated the downpour for a few hours, she often stopped by Lumly's Tea Room, a shop with the eternally steamy front window facing Gravesend Place, and consumed jasmine or Irish tea. Occasionally, she indulged her lingering girlhood passion for Mrs. Lumly’s own home-baked shortbread. From time to time, she thought of her collapsed marriage.

  But as the days passed, the specter of Stephen Fowler haunted her. Was his coldness his way of telling her that he did not—could not—love her anymore? What had happened to the joyous life of the young newlyweds in New Haven, the divinity student and his wife who had entertained mirthfully, explored the celebration of foliage in the autumn, and attended at least one new musical and one new drama each season in New York?

  Where did it fail? And why? Th
e answers were in neither the jasmine nor the Irish tea leaves.

  It was all cruelly unjust, yet bitterly ironic. Laura had turned down a man, Edward Shawcross, whom she surely could have learned to love, for a man who from all evidence already did. Where one love could have flourished and grown, the other had asphyxiated itself. It was confounding.

  Once Laura went to a public call box, pumped a king's ransom in six-pence and shilling pieces into the machine, and dialed the number of Edward Shawcross in Bristol. She heard him answer. She heard Edward say "Hello" and "Are you there?" three times in his brisk, highly expectant manner. But something caught in Laura's throat. She hung up and did not call back.

  She walked home from the center of town and the rains momentarily had mercy upon her. At home, she cheerfully did her father's laundry and mended the pipe burns in two of his favorite cashmere pullovers. She sorted out his sock drawer, stitched some upholstery that had worn thin, and, in effect, mastered all the simple household tasks that escape the humble capabilities of any man living alone. In the evenings, Laura read or played the piano and her father smoked his pipe and contemplated the evening's programming on the BBC. For ten full days, they stayed carefully away from any serious discussions.

  Then Nigel Worthington confronted his daughter's moods. When she pulled the cover over the piano keyboard one evening, having done justice to a brooding sonata by Franz Liszt, she saw that her father stood in the doorway to the music room. He had probably been there for several minutes, she realized, inclined against the doorframe, puffing his pipe, and watching her with unconcealed affection and admiration.

  "I didn't know you were there," she said.

  He gently exhaled a long, disintegrating cloud of smoke. "Whenever you're ready to talk about it," he suggested, "I'm ready to listen."

  Laura's gaze traveled slowly through the room. "Stephen doesn't love me anymore," she said. Her voice was unwavering. She had rehearsed the line for many days. "In certain respects," she added, "I suspect he never did."