Flowers From Berlin

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, 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 amp; 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 very 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 very 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.