Noel Hynd: Flowers From Berlin

Siegfried was intoxicated by everything that currently transpired in Germany. The enormous proud rallies! Handsome blond boys in uniforms! Laughing, healthy women! The powerful, fearsome black, red, and white flag everywhere! The degenerates and undesirables finally on the run! Siegfried accepted totally this New Order for the final two thirds of the twentieth century. This was how the world should be!

On this particular night in Yorkville, Siegfried could hear his own footsteps. That suited him perfectly. He preferred to move at this hour. Anyone suicidal enough to follow him would be conspicuous… and would suffer the consequences. Idly, and with some pride. Siegfried recalled the first time he had murdered for the Third Reich.

Siegfried had been in England in the city of Birmingham four years earlier. A coalition of Communist-led unions had shut down every factory in the city and had called for a massive May 1 rally. The strikers-textile, auto, chemical, and electrical workers-congregated at Hockley Circus and on the roads west. Then at 10 A.M. on a Friday, they had moved in a rowdy, rambunctious, singing, cheering legion down Hockley Road, across Great Hampton Street, and toward the center of the city. As they started up Constitution Hill, their voices came together in "The Internationale."

Siegfried, not long out of university, passionately hated that mob of ten thousand. The Marxists were the most vile force in the twentieth century: out to destroy churches, nations, and Aryan culture. It was bad enough that they had taken over peasant Russia and butchered the Czar. Now the industrialized West was their target, and weak-kneed liberal democracies like England and France simply stood by.

Only Adolf Hitler could stop them. And Siegfried-Hitler's loyal, anonymous, brilliant acolyte- was intent on doing his part.

The cheering throng surged into Colmore Circus and filled the mall. Police waited in a long, tense, blue line, not liking what they saw, but watching. Watching. Like the limpwristed government of Neville Chamberlain.

At twenty-two minutes after ten, as the workers moved into St. Chad's Circus, one stick of dynamite -- crudely but securely attached to a cheap Swiss alarm clock-detonated beneath the gas tank of a Triumph four-door. It blew fire and automobile parts toward the head of the crowd. The mob abandoned its flags and slogans and turned back upon itself. Pandemonium reigned, but the marchers could move neither forward nor backward. That's when, at the foot of the mall, Siegfried's second bomb detonated: three sticks of dynamite encased in iron piping and sparked by a remote-control signal. The device blew iron shrapnel out of a trash can for fifty yards in every direction. It was Siegfried's masterpiece.

At the end of the day, in what would become known as the Birmingham May Day Bombing, nine lay dead and forty-seven other marchers were wounded. Some lost fingers and hands; other lost feet or eyes. Those closest were deafened. One policeman was blinded. Siegfried left England two days later while Scotland Yard was still chasing its tail. He traveled on an American passport, of all things, and when he arrived in New York word reached him through Fritz Duquaine that Hitler himself was elated.

Now, America was next. The most dangerous individual bomber in the world, dedicated to his Nazism, was at complete liberty in a slumbering America, intent on changing the course of history.

Intent and confident. All he needed now was the specific orders from Berlin.

*

New York City was peaceful this evening, Siegfried observed. The contrast with the magnificent bloody scene in Birmingham was never far from his mind. This was a perfect night for thinking or relaxing, even for indulging in a man's simple sexual pleasures, if time permitted. Siegfried liked quiet nights. The atmosphere aroused him.

Siegfried walked westward across a darkened Eighty-second Street, then crossed Central Park, strolling near the lamplights. He paused only to light a fresh Pall Mall with the stub of each preceding one. Each time, as he lit, he scanned the area behind him. Not a soul. Siegfried was endlessly careful about rudimentary things.

On the west side of the park, Siegfried turned downtown and at West Fifty-seventh Street he checked his watch. He had hours to spare so he doubled back to Park Avenue, turned south again, then twice slipped up and down side streets toward Lexington. The F.B.I. was a pretty amateurish outfit, to his knowledge, led by that clown Hoover. But every once in a while they got lucky.

At Forty-ninth Street Siegfried saw a green and white Checker cab sitting outside the Waldorf Astoria, the driver sleepily peering over a tabloid newspaper. The spy raised his hand.

The driver set aside his newspaper. He moved his cab a few feet up the curb and looked at the passenger's suit, peaked brimmed hat, and expensive raincoat. He took his fare to be a businessman out on the town.

"Just goin' home, Mac?" the driver asked amiably as Siegfried slid into the back seat.

"Trying to." Siegfried spoke with a neutral, clipped accent which the driver took to be

American.

"Where to?"

"Pennsylvania Station."

"Not many trains at this hour," the driver said as he pulled out onto the empty avenue. "Hope your wife isn't waiting up for you."

"It doesn't bother her, so it shouldn't bother you," the passenger answered.

"Yes, sir."

En route to the station, the cabbie spoke one other time. "You see about that game Hubbell pitched against the Dodgers yesterday?" the driver asked.

"What?"

"Carl Hubbell. The New York Giants pitcher. One-hit shutout."

"I don't follow baseball," Siegfried said.

"Oh," the driver said. "Never mind." He glanced at his passenger through the rearview mirror. Siegfried was staring at the driver's hack license, posted near the meter. On the license were the cabbie's name and photograph. The passenger was staring intently, as if to memorize them for later use. A sudden tremor overtook the driver. The quiet man three feet behind him, seated equidistant between the two doors, gave him the creeps. There was something about the man, he suddenly realized, that filled him with fear. That sensation only deepened when, as if by some sixth sense, the passenger raised his eyes to glare back into the rearview mirror. When they arrived at Pennsylvania Station, the fare was eighty-five cents. The passenger gave the driver a dollar, refused change, and disappeared between the two eagles at the sandstone steps to the terminal.

Within the station, a crew of redcaps, black men all of them, dozing and nodding sleepily near a baggage cart, raised their heads hopefully when Siegfried entered. But they lowered their heads again when they saw that the man had no luggage. Siegfried walked to the baggage counter at the far end of the lobby and claimed a small brown suitcase. Then, bag in hand, Siegfried found an open gate leading to a train that would leave for Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, and Baltimore in another twenty-five minutes.

Perfect, the traveler thought to himself.

Siegfried walked into a nearly vacant car, passed two shabbily dressed men who were snoring in their seats, and entered the washroom. In the cramped quarters, he pulled from the suitcase a complete change of clothing, retaining only his white shirt and underwear. He folded his raincoat into the suitcase and neatly packed his dark suit and his tie. He replaced his neckwear with a sportier, more colorful tie and then donned gray slacks and a dark blazer. He closed his luggage.

He re-combed his hair and put on a pair of glasses. He studied himself in the mirror. He looked rather different. Younger. Sportier. More like an out-of-town businessman than a city-bred executive. He was pleased with the transformation.

Siegfried was off the train in five minutes. At a second checkroom on the lower level of the station, he rid himself of the suitcase once again. Now it was almost 3 A.M.