Noel Hynd - Flowers From Berlin

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.