Flowers From Berlin (39 page)

Then all three of them froze. Their eyes were upon the Potomac. United States Navy PT 622 was moving down the river toward the ocean. It grew steadily larger as it approached. But the eyes of Laura, Bill, and even the wounded Whiteside were upon the vessel behind the naval patrol boat.

It was
The Sequoia
, smooth, white, and sleek compared with the gray naval gunboat. Like its escort, it moved resolutely through the black river.

"Fowler came out of the water," Cochrane said. "The bomb is already in place."

"A doctor," Whiteside moaned again, losing consciousness. "Please . . . I beg of you . . . a doctor."

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.

PART SEVEN

Thanksgiving and Christmas

1939

FORTY- FOUR

The newspapers called the explosion aboard
The Sequoia
a "horrible accident," but no actual explanation was ever attributed. The Hearst newspapers, which had never in Roosevelt's political lifetime been members of his fan club, hinted broadly at some evil, foreign conspiracy, and the tabloids likened the blast to the one which sunk the United States warship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. But those with a long memory recalled that no evidence was ever offered as to culpability in that blast, either.

At the F.B.I. in Washington, stronger words than "conspiracy" were used. To the American public, however, jittery enough over the course of world events, nothing was ever stated to confirm that a German spy had planted a bomb against the vacationing President's yacht. The body of Stephen Fowler was returned to Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, for burial in the family churchyard. The official cause of death was listed as a motor vehicle accident.

In the days that followed, as Peter Whiteside recovered in an Alexandria hospital, Dick Wheeler was kept under arrest at an army guardhouse at Fort Meade. This, for the safety of everyone as well as for the convenience of his interrogators from the F.B.I., many of whom he knew personally.

To them, and to the world at large, Dick Wheeler had little to say. A week passed. Then he said that under certain conditions he would speak to Bill Cochrane—and him in only one session. It was Frank Lerrick who conveyed this to Cochrane. The latter said he was getting out of town anyway. Why not invest an afternoon in it? Lerrick asked Cochrane to keep his F.B.I. shield for a few days into the next month.

*

FortMeade was a sorry place on a gray December morning, made even more somber by the presence of truckloads of quaking new Army recruits. Cochrane drove there alone. Along the way, he was reminded of the trip to see Mauer, and he could only hope that the German, reunited with his family and now in Toronto, could find some peace.

Cochrane used his F.B.I. identification at the gates. Two MP's in army khaki and white helmets saluted him smartly after checking his name off a list. His visit was more official than even he had thought. The Bureau was still playing games.

"The guardhouse is along that route, sir," one of the MP's told him, giving a nod to an asphalt driveway which veered to the left—the opposite direction of the bomb disposal unit. But Cochrane could have picked out the guardhouse with his eyes closed. It was a big, dark granite bunker dating from the grimmest days of the WPA, and when his car reached it there was another team of sentries. The Hudson was to remain outside the inner fence, but he was cleared for admission.

Cochrane found Dick Wheeler on a cot in a six-by-twelve foot cell. The walls were concrete on two sides and barred on the other two. Wheeler was hunched into a corner, a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand, staring off into the distant space across his tiny cell.

"Hello, Dick," Cochrane said.

Wheeler turned and a smile flashed. Cochrane had a sense of visiting a terminally ill friend in a hospital. There was an ice bag by the cot and Cochrane could see by the large bruise across the side of Wheeler's forehead that Burns and Allen had performed a bit of their act.

A sergeant unlocked the cell. Wheeler stood as Cochrane was admitted. "I'm sorry I can't offer you more gracious surroundings," Wheeler began. "We're not very long on comfort here."

Cochrane sat down on a straight-backed wooden chair and Wheeler sank back onto the bed. "They even took my pipe. They had some insane idea that I might fashion a shiv out of it. Imagine."

A hundred reactions hit Cochrane at once. First, there were the charges against Wheeler. Second, there was the depth to which Bureau activities had been compromised since 1936. Cochrane envisioned the days when he had fled Munich with a Luger tucked into his coat and a Gestapo shield in a sweat-soaked palm. His anger flared. Then, just as quickly, there was little point in rage. Before him was Dick Wheeler. Big Dick. The Bear. And they used to throw junction boxes and catch crooks together in Kansas City.

"They told me you wanted to see me," Cochrane said. "Instead of a lawyer."

"Oh, I'll see a lawyer eventually," Wheeler answered. "But I'd rather see a friendly face right now." Cochrane realized that he must have remained impassive, because
,
Wheeler studied him for a moment and quickly added, "You are a friendly face, aren't you?"

"As friendly as you're going to be seeing," Cochrane allowed.

Wheeler laughed very slightly and seemed to be looking for his pipe out of force of habit, then stopped when he remembered. Cochrane smiled very uneasily.

"They"—meaning the inquisitors who had spent two days "talking" to him—"seem to think I'm some sort of Nazi," Wheeler explained. "I was hoping maybe you would explain things to them."

"Only if you explain them to me first."

"You don't understand?" Wheeler was surprised. Cochrane gave a mild shake of the head.

"Doesn't anyone in this country see what's coming?" Wheeler snapped angrily. "We're about to embark on a second world war. And you know what? We're on the wrong side!"

Thereupon Wheeler launched an account of himself and his politics, harking all the way back, Cochrane suddenly realized, to an impoverished boyhood in the Ozark hills of rural Missouri. The real enemy of America, Wheeler maintained, was the subversion of what he called "America's national spirit."

"This is a God-fearing, white Protestant country," Wheeler explained without remorse or hesitation. "And may it always remain so!"

But Wheeler had lived forty-two years, he reminded Cochrane, and wasn't happy with what he had seen over the last ten. "A tidal wave of immigrants . . . a rise of home-grown leftist politics. . . a flood of Jewish rabble into the country . . . it all takes its toll on the American fabric. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Cochrane felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, but did admit to being familiar with Wheeler's point of view. It wasn't unpopular in these insular days.

"Roosevelt is responsible for much of it," Wheeler maintained. "He made left-wing politics acceptable during the Depression. Roosevelt embarked us on the road to socialism. First step to making us all Red."

And now, Wheeler postulated, there was in the offing an alliance with Russia. The Bolshevik demons. Told by Dick Wheeler in a soft Midwestern drawl, it all did sound very frightening. Stalin was the incarnation of the crimson Marxist devil, sculpted moustache, pointed tail, cloven feet, and all. America was about to go to war against the industrious blond-haired Germans, with Satan as our sidekick.

"Does it make any sense to you?" Wheeler asked, seeming to want an honest answer.

Then he forged ahead, not waiting.

"Compare the two systems," Wheeler explained. "Look at Germany in 1920. Weak. Impotent. Poor. Now look at what Hitler has done. Pride is restored. The Left has been vanquished. And a powerful Wehrmacht rules Europe."

"For today," Cochrane allowed.

"Now look at Western Europe. And look, if you wish, at America. Socialism crept in during this decade and what has it brought us? Second-class world status, a tidal wave of filthy immigrants, twelve million unemployed, and a legion of Communists who wish to destroy every institution we have. Do I make my case clear?"

Wheeler sipped the remainder from his bottle of Coca-Cola and waited.

"And so for this Roosevelt was to be killed?" Cochrane asked.

No, Wheeler answered, shifting his position on the cot. It was not quite that simple. His own sympathies, Wheeler explained, were never so much pro-Hitler as they were pro-America. Early on in his F.B.I. career he made a conscious decision. He would do what he could to keep America away from any entanglement with the Communists. If that meant helping the America First Committee, the German-American Bund, the Campfire Girls, or the  Nazis themselves, which it gradually and inevitably did, well then, so be it.

"Siegfried started to work independently," Wheeler said, "and Fritz Duquaine was the key link. Fowler brought his services to Duquaine early on; his pro-American editorials caught everyone's attention, including theirs. He insisted upon anonymity and to some degree he maintained it. But from the very outset, Duquaine knew who Fowler was. Did not take him very seriously at first, then suddenly realized how brilliantly efficient he was."

"And you did nothing to stop him?"

"Since he was potentially harming an Anglo-American-Russian alliance, no, I didn't." He paused and elaborated, "I'd been in contact with Fritz Duquaine, myself. I helped him stay a step ahead of everyone on this end."

"And the death of Roosevelt?" Cochrane asked.

"Fowler's grand design, I imagine. But as war approaches, grave steps must be taken. If it's the death of a President . . . well, we've survived that before, haven't we?"

Cochrane nodded without conviction.

"My goal," Wheeler concluded, "was to save America for white Christians. That's what I told those morons this afternoon. That's what they failed to understand. Kept asking me instead about Bund networks in Wisconsin. What crap!"

"I'll see if I can straighten them out."

"Would you?" At least a quarter minute passed. It was an uneasy lapse of time, and when it ended, Wheeler's tones were considerably sadder. "I know what's in store for me, after all," he said. "Know what I mean?"

He seemed to want an answer, so Cochrane gave him an honest one. "You'll be tried for treason. Probably be executed."

"And you know what?" Wheeler asked. "I consider myself a patriot." He was suddenly adamant: "The real enemy is the Soviet Union, Bill. Joe Stalin and his unwashed Bolshevik hordes. As long as you live, don't ever forget that."

Then the gears shifted. Dick Wheeler began to ramble. He talked again of the penury of his own boyhood in the Ozarks and how his family, honest working people, never took a handout from the government, never needed the writings of Marx, always sent their males into the armed forces, and worked their way from lean to prosperous times. Why, Wheeler wanted to know, couldn't everyone do that?

From there Wheeler returned to his politics. Cochrane found himself listening politely but turning a deaf ear to it. There was no point in discussing it, challenging it, or even prolonging it. Afterward, certain phrases stayed with Cochrane:

Roosevelt will have all of us—white, yellow, and colored—communized and intermarried. By the year 2000, we will all be niggers…

I hate the Jews very deeply. Every boatload of them that arrives in New York should be turned back out to sea and set on fire. . . .

To safeguard the Republic from Bolshevism, presidential elections might someday need to be canceled; a strong Christian leader from the military could then guide the country indefinitely. . . .

And, to round things out as Bill Cochrane grew weary:

Unionized labor should be outlawed. . . .

The Bill of Rights should be suspended. Summary executions of known criminals by police squads could be held in public places. . . .

American fascism is the only ideology that can save Christian America…We need to become a fascist state.

The monstrosity of all this, weighing in on Bill Cochrane as the afternoon died, helped prompt him to his feet. Cochrane promised that he would attempt to make clear Dick Wheeler's point of view to the inquisitors. Wheeler said he was grateful.

"They have such sledgehammer personalities, Hoover's people," Wheeler said. "You're about the only one to whom I can make an intellectual appeal."

"I'm honored."

Wheeler cocked his head in a diffident manner. "Something else," he said.

Cochrane asked what.

"You fed the German naval code to Lanny Slotkin intentionally, didn't you?" Wheeler asked. "The proper additive and all."

Cochrane nodded. "You figured if I slipped a trap through the F.B.I.," he answered, "it would have come through Bobby Martin or HopeMing. Or even Roddy Schwarzkopf or Liz Pfeiffer. So I figured Lanny was the surest way of showing you the bait."

"Point." Wheeler grimaced.

Cochrane felt his anger rise very slightly. "Well, someone was going to take the bait from within the F.B.I.,”he said. "My contact in Berlin was murdered before my arrival. I was under surveillance the entire time. Otto Mauer and his family escaped only because hey were both ingenious and lucky. And someone,
someone,
tipped Siegfried as to who was closing in on him. How else does a bomb magically arrive under my bed?"

For the first time, Wheeler appeared unnerved by the whole conversation. But he looked without remorse at the younger man.

"Well, nothing personal you understand, Bill," he said. "But you'd become a nuisance.

Something had to be done."

"But why was I selected in the first place?"

"Not my idea!" Wheeler snapped, rummaging again for the missing pipe. "I argued long and hard for someone else. But you were the only choice: experience against Gestapo in Germany, veteran Bureau, background in explosives in the U.S. Army. Roosevelt handpicked you, himself, in case you never knew."

Which brought Cochrane to attention. "No. I didn't know."

Wheeler's eyebrows arched. "Final point?" he asked, Cochrane waited.

"Word reaches me," Wheeler said, "that you're having it on with Stephen Fowler's widow. Any truth to that?"

"We're seeing each other," Cochrane admitted after a suitable pause.

Wheeler considered it and then gave Cochrane schoolboy grin that had a conspiratorial leer to it. Then Wheeler laughed. "Do one other thing for me. On you way out see if the soldier boys who are guarding me will slip me another bottle or two of Coke. I’m dying of thirst."

Cochrane said he would. He rapped on the cell door for a guard while Wheeler added a request for newspaper.

"They're nice young men, these soldiers," Wheeler said in closing. "It's a national obscenity that they're all going to be sent off to be slaughtered it Europe. It's Stalin who's the real enemy. Did I stress that? Don't forget!”