Flowers From Berlin

FORTY-THREE

On their way to the hospital Cochrane practically took he corners on two wheels. They were at the emergency- room entrance within five minutes, and had Whiteside upstairs in an operating room within eight.

To the astonished nurses and physicians, Bill Cochrane brandished his F.B.I. identification and asked the hospital staff to telephone the police.

"Tell the police they'll find another body on the promenade by the river," he told them as he assisted the wounded Englishman onto a stretcher. A more complete explanation would be forthcoming later, he promised, "But the body down by the river doesn't need an ambulance. Just the wagon from the morgue."

Then he and Laura drove at a dizzying speed back to Washington, picked up a pair of police cars, which chased him but for which he did not stop, and came to a screeching halt before the Naval Station basin, which, with the Sequoia departed, seemed all but asleep.

Cochrane and Laura were stopped at the iron gate by Navy Shore Patrol who now had strict orders not to let anybody pass. The F.B.I. shield did no service to him, and as he argued with one sailor, another stood to the side, a mean glint in his eye, holding an M-1 carbine at port arms.

"What I'm telling you is that an explosive device may have been placed against the President's yacht. I want to see the officer currently on duty."

The sailors were both skeptical and impassive. "We'll make a note of it for the morning," one of them said.

"Morning's too late!" Cochrane raged, "Where's the duty officer?"

"I'm the duty officer," said one of the sailors, who bore on his sleeve the stripes of an enlisted man.

"The duty officer is never below the rank of a lieutenant at this station," Cochrane fumed. "Now would you call him?"

Laura stood by, her face tight with tension.

The MP gave Cochrane a look of extreme irritation, then disappeared into a booth and made a telephone call. He looked up twice at Cochrane as he spoke.

"Well?" Cochrane asked when the sailor emerged.

"Wait here," he said.

The MP's withdrew into their regular posts behind a wire gate. Several minutes later appeared a naval lieutenant bearing the name tag of Symonds.

Symonds was a tall, sandy-haired officer in his late twenties with an honest, open face and a soft mid- South drawl which Cochrane placed as from the Tidewater region of Virginia.

"What can I do for you?" Lieutenant Symonds asked.

Cochrane showed his F.B.I. identification again and mentioned a possible explosive device somewhere against the hull of The Sequoia.

"Begging your pardon, sir," Lieutenant Symonds answered. "But the ship was thoroughly searched, both inside and outside. And the harbor's been held secure for three days."

"Not secure enough," Laura said. "One man swam through."

The lieutenant looked at them with narrow eyes, trying to decide. "Swam?" he asked.

"A diver," Cochrane said. "He may have come from the other side of the Potomac. All

I know is that the chances are excellent that The Sequoia will blow up at any minute."

"And who are you again?" the officer asked.

"F.B.I.," Cochrane said, increasingly vexed.

"And who's your lady friend here?"

"British intelligence," Laura answered.

Lieutenant Symonds seemed to yield. "I'll radio to the two escort ships. Let me take all the information that you have. Both the PT's have frogmen aboard. They can do an extra check on the Sequoia."

"That's fine," Cochrane said. He made a motion to step through the gate. Symonds placed a hand on his shoulder and the Sailors stepped forward again.

"I have to take your statement here, sir," the officer said. "We're under strict orders. No one sets foot within the gate tonight without direct written permission of the Department of the Navy."

Cochrane eyed the young officer and the two Sailors. "All right," he finally said.

Lieutenant Symonds took a pad and pencil from a booth and took Cochrane's statement. His pencil hesitated twice when Cochrane spoke of an assassin who had been shot on the opposite bank of the river. But Lieutenant Symonds politely recorded everything. "I'll transmit this right away," he promised. "Thank you, sir."

He saluted smartly and returned within the naval yard, leaving Cochrane and Laura outside the gate. "Now what?" she asked.

"Now," Cochrane said, "we hope the Navy divers get to that device before it detonates."

From within his office, Lieutenant Symonds watched the man and the woman step back into their car. He reached for a shore-to-ship telephone and the two Sailors watched him. The Hudson backed up from the gate, turned, and grew smaller as it moved toward the capital. Lieutenant Symonds put down the telephone without speaking a word.

The sailors laughed. Lieutenant Symonds shook his head. He tore up the statement he had taken from Cochrane. He sprinkled it into an ashtray.

"Don't think there was a chance he was for real, do you, sir?" one of the sailors asked.

"A snowball's chance in hell, gents," drawled Symonds. "I don't think a sea trout could have swum within a knot of that yacht tonight, without being spotted. Do you?"

"No, sir," the sailors agreed in unison.

"See if you can get rid of the next crazy without breaking up my card game," Lieutenant Symonds said. The sailors grinned. "Carry on."

The lieutenant saluted smartly and the Sailors returned it. There were no other "crazies" that evening.

*

This time Siegfried had wound the watch.

The Sequoia was one mile off the coast of Newport News on its journey to Augusta when the two copper wires met and the electrical charge from the dry cell detonated four sticks of black dynamite.

The Sequoia convulsed with the explosion. And while Siegfried had been correct in his estimate that he did not have enough dynamite to destroy the entire ship, he had also been correct that he had enough explosive material to do the intended job. Even the legendary steel and seaworthiness of the Bath ship works of Maine were not enough for four sticks of TNT.

Everything in the President's bedchamber was destroyed. The dynamite blew the metal from the hull of the ship through the outer wall, then through the inner walls of the presidential cabins. A hole twenty feet wide from the waterline upward was gutted into the vessel, those near the explosion were practically deafened, and amid the smoke and shards of metal, the first seamen to make their way to President and Mrs. Roosevelt's suite found nothing but destruction, smoke, and ruin.

U.S. Navy PT 336, the escort vessel to the rear of The Sequoia, threw its throttle forward and was first to reach the scene of the catastrophe. What they saw when they shone their floodlights on the yacht was a pleasure craft that was remarkable in that it was still afloat. The hull was warped upward to a point above the waterline.

Several blackened crew members were picking through the rubble. Some sailors aboard The Sequoia wept openly, this being the last place that President Roosevelt had been seen alive. Others stood in a near-catatonic state, witnesses to this great disaster, unable to move or react: and, for that matter, unable to comprehend:

November 27, 1939. Roosevelt, most assuredly, was dead.