Flowers From Berlin

EIGHTEEN

On Monday morning at 8 A.M., Bill Cochrane sat in his office and reviewed the material placed at his disposal. His sense of mission heightened, as did his bewilderment. Cochrane drew a long breath and exhaled slowly. For a moment he tried to recall how he had been maneuvered into this assignment. Then he remembered Banking Fraud in Baltimore. He looked back to the files before him, trying to conjure up an image of the man he might be looking for. No image appeared.

Cochrane was not beset with the self-doubts that had tormented him during his sabbatical with Mr. Hay. He knew he possessed the skills to be an outstanding detective. But he also knew that 95 percent of good detective work is routine, unspectacular inquiry, posing the right questions, ferreting out the proper responses. There are weeks of checking and double-checking. And there is the laborious placing together of disparate parts, never knowing exactly which parts are missing, which parts are incomplete, or how many make the whole.

Further, any successful federal investigation relied heavily at its inception on information received from local American police departments. Just as the cop on the beat had a better idea what was happening in his neighborhood than his commanding officer did, local police departments had a better insight than F.B.I. offices into their respective cities.

The departments knew who was in town to cause trouble or what unusual crimes had occurred. They knew what was perplexing and what was unsolved. They quickly noticed things out of the ordinary.

Over the years, Cochrane had always dealt respectfully with local police, from the department chiefs down to the rookies on patrol. Unlike most other special agents of the Bureau, Cochrane saw local cops as plodders perhaps, but men of a special sort of dedication. They were overworked and besieged. But they did their work to the best of their ability.

Equally, Cochrane reasoned that the man he was looking for had to break the law from time to time. By the very nature of the spy's profession, he had to have an assumed identity, at least part of the time. That meant the forgery of papers. Similarly, this particular spy had to have entered restricted areas to plant his devices. Had anyone gotten in his way? Somewhere along the line, the spy had probably stolen certain items. Who was a suspect in that theft? And where had the saboteur obtained the explosives to sink the Wolfe? Were they stolen? Purchased? From whom?

Somewhere, Cochrane knew, there were witnesses to this man. No one floated around like Peter Pan. No one failed to leave fingerprints. No one had no other human contact. Where did the spy live? To whom did he pay the rent? With whom did he sleep? Where did he buy his food? His clothes?

Cochrane began making notes.

*

In the early afternoon Cochrane reached for his telephone. He dialed numbers in Boston, Providence, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Since the Great War, every major American city had had a bomb disposal unit. Cochrane spoke to the head of that unit in each city. In many cases, such as New York, where the head of the Bomb Squad was Lieutenant Francis Xavier Sullivan, Cochrane spoke to men whom he knew personally. Cochrane guided the conversations carefully. Each took on an identical drift.

"Yes," Cochrane would answer to the first query, "I am acting in an official capacity… Conducting an investigation given the F.B.I.'s highest priority… We are looking for a man about whom we know very little… No, no name, yet. Not even a description… We know he is an expert on incendiary devices… Yes, there is loss of life involved. A considerable amount, in fact…"

In each case, the man on the other end of the line quickly asked why an inquiry was being lodged in his area. Further, what federal laws had been violated? Why was the F.B.I. pawing the ground for criminal activity in his city?

Cochrane was ready with a response which invariably brought a rising silence from the other end of the line.

"Unfortunately, it's not a simple matter of criminal activity," Cochrane explained. "It's a matter of military security. National security as well, sir. Our conjecture is that the man is either a well-trained mercenary or has extremely strong pro-Nazi sentiments.. . We assume he is a German, probably an infiltrator… No, we cannot confirm that. It's at the stage of theory, only… We'd like to know if you have anybody in this category in your files. Or if anyone springs to mind."

Inevitably, the men who received these calls promised that their files would be scoured immediately and that their top lieutenants would also be questioned. Cochrane thanked the men generously and asked that they each get back to him within twenty-four hours.

Then, with the eastern calls complete, Cochrane placed a series of identical calls to the cities of the American Midwest with large German-American populations: Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, and St. Louis. It was not until past seven in the evening that all Cochrane's telephone contacts had been established.

Cochrane then completed a printed form known within the Bureau as an LKW. The form, headed with the words LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS beneath the Bureau's imprimatur, was an official investigative request within the Bureau. Once filled in, and sent through proper channels, the paperwork would pass through one or another of the Bureau's clerical divisions and yield the current or last known place of residence for whoever was named on the form.

Carefully, Cochrane filled in a name. Otto Mauer, late of the Abwehr, the man Cochrane had helped defect from Germany with his family.

Minutes later, Cochrane left his own office, locked the door behind him, and dropped the inquiry at Central Alien Registry, where they would trace it in the morning. Cochrane had not seen Otto Mauer since Germany. He knew only from Frank Lerrick that Mauer had arrived in New York late in 1938.

As Cochrane left the Bureau's sixth floor, the day in Washington was dying. He saw through one of the slatted blinds the redness of the evening sky. Almost simultaneously, he noticed that several of the Bluebirds, like owls, were reporting to work. All other offices on the floor were quiet, with the exception of one poor soul slumped over a table in Cryptology. And like Dick Wheeler, the Virgin Mary had not been seen all day.

*

Back in England, Laura Worthington, had cause to smile.

At Barrett's, the antiquarian bookseller in Salisbury, she had invested one shilling in a thirty-year-old biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine. She spent the afternoon reading it on a bench on the cathedral square.

Eleanor had been the Queen consort first of Louis VII of France, then of Henry II of England. The peasants of each country contended that Eleanor had the devil's tail beneath her skirts and that, as the jargon happily put it, was how she hopped around from throne to throne. The devil's tail, for heaven's sake! Laura nearly laughed out loud, wondering how many women in the world had slept with and married two kings.

Such thoughts amused her, as it was a poor August for finding amusement elsewhere. Earlier in the month Chamberlain had spoken over the BBC about the recurrent Polish question. Anglo-French guarantees over Polish sovereignty would be fulfilled by force, if necessary, should Germany seize the Polish corridor and annex Danzig.

Hitler, as usual, was not to be outmaneuvered. On the previous day Germany had concluded a ten-year nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. With one stroke of the pen, Hitler had rid himself of the specter of a two-front war with France and Britain in the West and the Soviet Union in the East. War in Europe appeared more certain than ever. And if war began, sea travel would be precarious. It might be years before Laura could return to America. A decision pressed upon her.

She returned to Salisbury Plain on a rare, partly sunny day late in the month. Out there, in God's open green fields, she felt at ease enough to think. She walked the plain by herself for the better part of an hour. The sun was confused as to seasons: it seemed more April than August. She wore a tweed skirt and cardigan, which sufficed for the day. Laura examined her own life. She considered what a return to America offered her; she weighed her future in England.

Toward three in the afternoon, she saw a single figure strolling purposefully toward her from across the plain. Watching him as he approached, she saw that he was lean and tall, clad in a black raincoat and a hat. He had smooth easy movements and carried a walking stick, which he did not use.

She recognized his gait when he was a hundred yards from her. Peter Whiteside. Laura waited. Then a few minutes later, he was close enough so that she could see his face. Then his smile. Then his eyes. He wore the regimental tie that she recognized from her father.

"Laura… my dear Laura," he said. He embraced her as they met.

"I knew you would find me, Peter," she said.

"Find you? Find you? Of bloody course I'd find you. My top female dispatched to America. Gets married without my blessing. Mad at me still, I'd wager." His eyes shone.

"Peter, I-"

"Don't deny it. I can tell," he said, making light of it. "When a girl doesn't write back to me, I can take a hint as well as the next man."

"The flowers were lovely," she said. He looked blank for a moment and she added, "At the wedding. The roses."

"Oh, yes. Yes. The wedding. I'm so glad." He held out an arm, shifting a folded Telegraph to his other side. "Walk with me," he offered.

She took his arm and they proceeded. Laura noticed that Peter, like her father, had aged since she had last seen him. And she noticed too that the grass was still damp, despite the day's sun. A typical Londoner out for a hike: Peter had worn the wrong shoes.

They covered several hundred meters, moving in no particular direction at all, when Laura took the initiative. "I want you to tell me about my husband," she said.

A shrewd smile crept across Peter Whiteside's face. It merged with the lines near his mouth, nose, and eyes and for a split second gave him the appearance of an aging harlequin.

"You have it backward, Laura, dear," he said indulgently. "It is I who should be asking you about your husband."

"You had something against him," she said. "I could tell by your reaction. You kept asking for details. Every letter you wrote you wanted to know about him. I asked my father, too. When he returned to England after the wedding, you were all over him with questions."

"My, my," Peter continued. "I have raised a clever little girl as my spy."

Laura stopped walking, stopping Peter Whiteside with her.

"Peter, don't withhold information from me."

"Laura, it's you who have the information. I've never met your husband."

"I want to know why his family was on your list," she said.

Whiteside held her gaze with his.

"The Fowlers are a prominent family," Whiteside said. "That's all. Influential. That's what all the names on your list are. Influential American families. That's all you were reporting to me. Very simple, very white intelligence."

"Peter, you're lying to me." She felt his uneasiness.

"There's really nothing I can tell you, Laura."

"You didn't deny that you're lying to me," she said. "Is that because you don't wish to lie a second time?"

"Laura, there's nothing for me to say. Listen to me carefully. There's nothing I can say. I'm certain that you're a much better judge of Stephen Fowler than I. He's your husband."

"I want to know why his family was on your list," she said again.

"I'm sorry, Laura. I have nothing to tell you."

"You're such a bore, Peter," she snapped. "All right, then. I'm going back to America in a week. When I arrive I intend to tell my husband that British Secret Service was investigating his family."

She turned and felt his hand on her arm. It was very firm and very insistent, much stronger than she had imagined it could be.

"Laura, you'll do no such thing!" he said.

"And why not, Peter? You tell me! Why not?"

"You insist you don't know?" His anger rose to equal hers.

"I know nothing!"

"Very well, then," he snapped back, accepting her challenge. "The man you married happens to be an agent of the Soviet Union. Hence, the so-called humanist Christian ruminations which we've all been treated to in print. And hence, if you'll forgive my liberties, his secretive nature and his day-to-day ramblings from one American city to another."

For a moment entire new panoramas of deceit opened to Laura: her husband was a wealthy rebel who did nurture a suspiciously Marxist heart; he had traveled the world a bit in the years before she knew him and sometime must have turned his eyes eastward to the "Russian experiment." Her mind rambled: he had women, or worse, one woman, somewhere else, and them, or her, he truly loved; and there was no wonder that he did not sleep with her anymore-the passion had never really been there in the first place. His marriage, like everything else, was a deceit.

Then she rejected all of it. "That's the most monstrous lie I've ever heard in my life," she said.

"Think so?"

“Yes.”

"Then prove me wrong." He bit off the words. A cloud covered the sun and Peter Whiteside stolidly held forth on Salisbury Plain, quoting from memory his file on the Fowler family.

Stephen Fowler had been pink, Whiteside insisted, as long ago as his undergraduate days at Princeton. "It was during the Depression, don't forget," Whiteside said, "and that brought a lot of bright young men to some rather radical conclusions."

Capitalism had failed both the nation and the Fowler family, Whiteside clipped along, and young Stephen sought an explanation. A student of history and political science, he wished symmetry in his solution. Marxism offered it in generous doses. There was further the romanticism of the era as well as the intellectualism. Stephen obviously thrived upon both as an undergraduate of Princeton and a divinity student at Yale.

"He traveled abroad and would have you believe he was in England and France," Whiteside concluded. "Which he was, for a while. But we suspect he made the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage," Whiteside repeated for emphasis. "All the way to the Kremlin wall and mother Russia itself. At that time he offered his services to Stalin's government and the offer was accepted. What he's doing in America now, I don't know, Laura. Whether he's an active agent or simply a pulpit propaganda pusher is another question, too. I don't know. We don't know. I'd wager even money that the American authorities themselves haven't the faintest clue as to what Stephen Fowler is up to. And to some degree it might not even matter. It doesn't even mean the man is evil or even any more dishonest than the rest of us. God knows, if Hitler steps another inch in any direction, we'll all be praying for the blood-thirsty Bolshevik army to step in and pin down fifty panzer divisions along the Vistula. Stephen's your husband and I hope you're happy. But you wanted to know, Laura. So I've told you."

Peter Whiteside gently released her arm. He wore an expression that begged her forgiveness. Her own thoughts conflicted in more ways than they came together. And there was something very awkward and very terrible about the whole moment. For several seconds she lived and breathed in limbo. She was terribly shaken and knew it.

Yet, beneath this all, there was Stephen. Her Stephen. What right did these men like Peter, with the agencies of government behind them, have prying into the beliefs of a New Jersey minister?

“Do you have any proof as to what you’re saying, Peter?” she asked.

“Proof?” he repeated. “Sadly, no. Just theory, and we know an American fitting his description --

Laura rallied and interrupted. "I curse you and all those like you, Peter," she said in remarkably civil tones. "Whatever my husband believes, it is his right to believe it. He's done nothing to you or anyone else, has he?"

Whiteside answered softly. "Not that we know."

"Then stay away from him. Let him live his life. For all I know, people like you are the reason he has to behave as he does."

She turned to walk away from him, but his hand was on her arm again. "Just one condition, Laura," Peter Whiteside said.

She looked at him and waited.

"We spoke in confidence," he said. "You must respect that much. We spoke in strict confidence!"

"I'll give you that much, Peter," she answered. "But no more. I cherish you as a family friend. But don't come to me with any of your bloody cloak-and-dagger stuff ever again. It's a dishonorable, dirty activity. I don't like it. I refuse to take part in it."

She turned away.

"Laura…?" he called as she left. "Good luck to you, Laura. I mean it. Good luck to you."

But she never looked back. She felt Peter Whiteside's eyes boring into her for several hundred yards as she hiked. Only once did she look over her shoulder and that was from a considerable distance. Peter was just a distant figure in black by then. Very small, he was, and very undistinguished and unimportant from that perspective. She was angry with herself for ever allowing him to get her so upset. What kind of world was it, after all, where grown men played such games?

*

She took the bus from High Street. When she arrived home there were raindrops again. She pushed through the iron gate before her father's home and, once indoors, saw the day's post waiting for her.

The letter from Stephen was on top. She set down her book and opened it. She began to read as she walked upstairs, thinking her father might be napping.

At the top of the stairs she stopped. She reread, as if Stephen's handwriting made no sense. But it did make sense. And her old Stephen had emerged from his year-and-a-half rumination.

…There is nothing in the world more precious than you, Laura… my own fault that you left me… more than anything else, I pray for your safe and early return… darling, Laura…

The phrases leaped out at her. It was as if a prayer had been answered. Laura yelled with joy. She ran from room to room looking for her father.

He was not in his bedroom, nor the sitting room. Her concern grew as she rushed downstairs, the letter still in her hand, and moved to his study where he often fell asleep on the couch. She still did not see him. She ran to the music room, the conservatory, and the library.

"Papa?… Papa!" No answer. She returned to the front door, where he often left a note if he had been called away suddenly. No note. And his raincoat was still on its hanger in the closet.

Frantic, she turned and looked in the kitchen in the rear of the main floor.

Then she saw her father. She stared in horror through the kitchen window and saw her father on the lawn behind the house. He was slumped in a frightful angle against one of his prized pear trees. From the distance, his face seemed ashen and lifeless, his arms at his side like those of a marionette with severed strings.

Then Laura was moving faster than she had ever moved in her life, She was down the back stairs to the pantry, out the back door, and across twenty yards of garden.

"No! No!" she shrieked, tears flowing down her cheeks now, mingling with the raindrops that failed to rouse her father.

Nigel Worthington did not move.

She slid to her knees beside him, embraced him, and yelled again, shaking him as if to raise him from the dead, and for half of a tormented moment, she thought that was exactly what she had done.

Dr. Worthington's eyes flickered dumbly, failed to focus, wandered, then zeroed in on his daughter.

"Papa!" she cried, half a gasp, half a plea.

"What the…?" he asked. He raised his arm and put it around Laura's shoulder.

"Can't a man take a nap without scaring his daughter half to death?" he asked.

She was crying so hard she was laughing now, or maybe it was the other way. "No!" she said. "Not under a tree in the rain!"

He looked around. He heard the rustle of raindrops on his fruit trees.

"It doesn't rain under trees," he protested mildly. "It only rains on trees." He paused, rallied, wakened some more, and added, "What's Stephen got to say?" he asked. "The good-for-nothing parson wrote to you, did he?"

“He loves me, Papa!" she said. "He still loves me! I'm booking passage. I'm going home!"

Nigel Worthington hugged his daughter as hard as he could. He laughed with her in a way in which he had once laughed with her mother. Then he reminded her of something that he had always believed; that sometimes things work out on their own.

Laura laughed with him, grinned, and nodded, now comfortable in the fact that, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, two men loved her and there were no silly rumors about the devil's tale beneath her skirts.

Or none, at least, that she had heard. She booked passage on a ship back to New York the next morning. On a whim, she choose the French Line over Cunard.