Flowers From Berlin

THIRTY

Fritz Duquaine, the Boer and Siegfried's onetime spy master, felt like a fool. Twice he had been to St. Paul's by night to leave messages for Fowler. Twice he had urged the stubborn minister to contact him. Protocol forbade a direct meeting anywhere outside of New York. And they had made rendezvous arrangements in the summer. But Fowler, Duquaine cursed, has this fixation: his independence and his self- professed anonymity. Siegfried hadn't made contact for three weeks, since the last signal left in the church.

Duquaine stood before the Sailors' Monument in New York's Battery Park. Beneath his left arm he held an umbrella and an attache case. In his right hand he held a New York Mirror. The weather had turned sharply colder and wind swept in from the harbor. Duquaine was reminded of the docks in Bremen or Cape Town in the winter. Yet another exercise in futility, Duquaine thought. In a raincoat, he was freezing. It was a Tuesday a few minutes after noon. Few other people were in the park. Apparently few New Yorkers enjoyed having their ears turned to ice.

Duquaine walked to a bench near a park exit toward Wall Street. He hunched his shoulders. Even here the wind found him. He cursed Siegfried again and muttered a special oath for all self-styled spies. Someday one of them would get him killed.

What, he wondered, was Siegfried doing that would get direct approval from Hitler? How far could Siegfried have managed to get, seeing how the Gestapo's contact within the F.B.I. had sent out an alarm?

Duquaine lit a cigarette, using three matches within his cupped hands. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes past noon. Well, he decided, he wasn't going to freeze more than three more minutes. That was certain. He turned to his left, squinted slightly against the brightness, and eyed the ferry and a British frigate leaving the harbor.

The British, he thought again, thinking back to his own boyhood. Filthiest colonialists in the world. Now at least England was in the war against Hitler. Over the pretext of Polish territorial integrity, of all things! Duquaine wondered whether he would soon be assigned to infiltrate England in advance of the German invasion. It was not without reason. He had relatives up north, toward Sunderland and Edinburgh, and under a colonial guise he could probably get a good look at submarine activity.

Duquaine was in the midst of this thought when he turned quickly and was startled to see Reverend Fowler standing beside him, looking down in the ominous squinting glare that Duquaine had always disliked.

"Daydreaming?" Fowler asked in English.

"Waiting for you and freezing," said Duquaine. "And not for the first time."

"But possibly for the last," said Fowler. "Shall we walk?"

"Of course."

Anything, Duquaine thought, to get moving and get business accomplished. They walked toward Wall Street.

"I am instructed to warn you," Duquaine began, "the Federal Bureau of Investigation has picked up your trail. Apparently, they do not know who you are yet, but they may be close.”

"I'm aware of it," said Fowler flatly.

"There is a particular agent. His name is William Cochrane. He-"

"I'm at least a week ahead of you, Duquaine," Fowler said. They paused. A policeman walked by and gave them a nod, which they returned. "I know about the F.B.I. and I know about the agent. I want from you two things. One is the agent's home location. Do you have that for me?"

"I do," Duquaine said. He gave it and Fowler memorized it.

Then Fowler continued. "Now, I need an escape route and it must be ready immediately. I assume Berlin has arranged such?"

"Berlin has. You are to travel under a pseudonym. Do you need identity papers, too?"

"Duquaine," Siegfried responded curtly, "if I needed papers I would have told you so. I need a route," he said. "That is all."

Duquaine hesitated and held his own temper. "You are to travel to Mexico City," he said. "There is a German Embassy there, as you know. The undersecretary of consular affairs is a Herr Jacquard. You will go to a restaurant called Renato's, which is down the boulevard from the embassy. Do you speak Spanish?"

"Adequately," Fowler answered.

"Inquire at the bar for Senor Lopez between six and seven on your first evening. The bartender will say that he does not know your name. You will move to the end of the bar and drink. Senor Lopez is Herr Jacquard. He is available each evening for such emergencies. He will find you. Remain ready to travel; have no more than one small suitcase. You will be sent to either Tampico or Veracruz the next day and will leave on whatever German ship is first scheduled out of port. Probably a freighter."

"A freighter?"

"What did you prefer? The Bismarck? Or perhaps the Fuehrer's personal vessel?"

"Something more than a freighter," Fowler said acidly. "What am I? A deckhand? I'm going to keep America out of the war, all by myself."

"If you are unhappy," Duquaine replied with evident relish, "arrange your own passage."

"What I shall arrange," said Fowler, stopping and breaking off the conversation, "is that you will be placed on latrine duty in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Good day to you Duquaine. You've been of some small help."

Duquaine held his silence but looked furiously at Fowler. The American, however, turned his back on the South African and walked away.

"Bloody Nazis," Duquaine mumbled when Fowler was far out of earshot. If he never saw any of them again, it would be too soon. The Nazi true believers were almost as repellent as the English. Then, as Duquaine disappeared toward Worth Street, in search of a Longchamps for lunch, a few of Siegfried's words came back to him.

What had Siegfried meant, "Keep America out of the war"? Fowler, Duquaine was now convinced, had delusions of grandeur. What a shame that Berlin was actually dealing with him.

*

"Where is your husband?" Peter Whiteside inquired on Wednesday.

Laura, seated on the sofa in her own living room, cocked her head. "So this is a business call, isn't it, Peter?" she snapped. Whiteside lowered his eyes and set aside the cup of tea she had brewed for him. She folded her arms and glared indignantly at him.

The two tall, sturdy men who had accompanied Whiteside found subjects to amuse them outside of the room. One sat on the front doorstep and Laura assumed he was a guard. The other was in the kitchen, and she knew he was covering the rear access to the house. Whiteside had introduced them as his associates, Andrew McPherson and Mick Fussel. It had not taken inspiration to peg them as M.I. 6, like Peter.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Peter Whiteside," she said sternly. "Coming into my home, pretending you're glad to see me, asking your idiotic, insinuating questions."

"I am ashamed, Laura," he attempted, "but not for coming here today. I lied to you last time we spoke. And I let you remain in considerable danger."

"You're trying to change your story now? Is that it?"

"After a fashion, yes."

"Well, I don't believe you! I don't want to hear your new account of things, Peter. Can you understand that?"

"I can understand how you feel, but you must listen to me."

"I should never have listened to you!" she snapped, getting hotter.

Fussel appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, and disappeared again.

Now Whiteside was angering. "No, Laura, perhaps you shouldn't have. But you did. So you made an error, too, did you not? So now you have to listen to the truth. For your sake, for your father's sake, for England's sake-"

"And for the sake of yourself and all those who sail with you." She glanced at her watch, a black-faced oval Tiffany timepiece with Roman numerals, a wedding gift from Stephen's parents. "You have five minutes to set the accounts straight, Peter Whiteside," she said sternly. "After that, I will thank you to leave my home."

"I shall need more than five minutes, Laura," he warned.

She looked back to the watch. "I'm counting already," she said.

*

Siegfried was counting, also. Or, taking inventory, actually, in the apartment in Alexandria. His wet suit was in perfect order and packed within a locked suitcase. He had U.S. currency, Mexican currency, a small amount of gold, and some Third Reich currency. He turned his attention to the explosives. He still had enough TNT to sink a ship, but now there would be a change of plans. He hated changes, but sometimes last-minute quirks could not be avoided.

He drew all the window shades in the small apartment, then carefully threw the extra bolt on his door. He loaded his Luger, just in case he was disturbed. He liked the feel of the weapon in his hand. For the Third Reich, he would not hesitate to fire it.

He laid the Luger at the right side of a desk that he had converted to a work space. He then went to his mattress, undid part of the seam, and withdrew one stick of dynamite.

Intent on his work now, he conjured up plans for a second bomb. Four sticks of dynamite should pierce the hull of the Sequoia and do away with Roosevelt. But first there was this meddlesome F.B.I. agent to address.

Siegfried sat down at his desk and worked meticulously. He opened one stick of dynamite and poured out an ounce of TNT. He removed from a paper bag one of two inexpensive watches he had purchased at Grand Central Station in New York. With the help of a knife, he removed the crystal from the watch, then used a pair of tweezers to snap off the minute hand. Next Siegfried laid out a large section of iron pipe, three inches in diameter and seven inches in length. He unfolded a thick black woolen sock, acquired in New Hampshire, the type used by lumberjacks on winter work details, and cut two six-inch lengths of copper wire. Then he withdrew from his pocket a nine-volt radio battery.

Foolish F.B.I. agent, Siegfried thought. Who did he think he was going to stop? The early word on the F.B.I. had been correct, he mused to himself: a bunch of amateurs, led by that incompetent vainglorious effete Hoover.

Siegfried used surgical rubber gloves. He held to his ear the watch with only the hour hand. It was not ticking. Perfect. Not yet time to wind it. He set it aside.

The thought came back: Cochrane. The F.B.I. agent deserved what he was going to get. Fowler did not like the way Cochrane looked at Laura. Laura was his, to do with, to use, and to dispose of at times suiting his benefit and convenience.

Siegfried was angry. He set to work with unusual vengeance.

*

Whiteside held Laura's attention for a full twenty- two minutes. He watched her face as he spoke and he laid before her every bit of evidence. The Birmingham May Day bombing. The circumstantial notion that Fowler could have acquired knowledge of explosives from German agents in America and further could have been the saboteur who sunk the Wolfe and the Adriana.

Whiteside felt he was winning, but toward the conclusion, he saw skepticism growing again. She refolded her arms. And by the end, she was studying the floor, not looking at Peter Whiteside.

Fussel and McPherson were still at their sentry posts. It was five in the afternoon. There was a long silence as Whiteside finished.

"Well?" he asked.

"Every bit as fatuous and disreputable as your previous tale, Peter," she said. Her tone wasn't hostile now. It was simply disappointed. Before her eyes, Peter Whiteside had shrunk to something small, mean, and mendacious, and petulant.

"Laura, please…”

"I'm sorry, Peter," she said. "You'd better go." Her eyes flashed. "Now!" She was furious. "I mean it. I don't want you in my home and I don't want to hear any more of these stories. Please leave before I call the police!"

Whiteside puckered his lips, then let slip a long sigh of resolution. He nodded to Fussel, who was watching, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen.

"If you should change your mind, Laura," Whiteside tried, "I-"

"I shall not."

"I can be reached," he spoke through her, "through the British Consulate in Washington. It's on Connecticut Avenue. Ask for me by name. I'm ready to arrange for your protection at any time. Please remember that."

"Go!" she demanded, not looking at him.

Whiteside gave Fussel a slight nod of the head. And he went, no further word spoken, taking McPherson from the front door with him.