Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Perhaps, after all, it would be more sensible to take the money to Washington. Dasch headed back to a store near Pennsylvania Station, where he purchased a large, tan leather briefcase for $38. In another store, he bought some large manila envelopes, rubber bands, and metal clasps. Returning to the hotel, he removed the money from under the false bottom of his bag, and carefully counted it out. He sorted the fifty-dollar bills into bundles of a hundred, each bound by a rubber band, and stuffed the bundles into the envelopes. He then wrote a note for himself in pencil on hotel stationery:

Content $82,350

Money from German government for their purpose, but to be used to fight them Nazis.

He packed a leather suitcase with enough shirts, neckties, pajamas, and suits, all brand-new, to last him through the weekend. The rest of his belongings he wrapped in laundry bags, which he put into the water-damaged Gladstone. He left this bag in the closet of Burger’s room across the hall, after letting himself in with a key borrowed from the maid.

In the meantime, he had asked the manager to book him into a good hotel in Washington. After a couple of hours, a telegram arrived from the Mayflower Hotel, a venerable establishment in the center of the city popular with government officials and members of Congress, confirming a reservation. Dasch was lucky to get a room: hotel accommodations were in desperately short supply in wartime Washington. He settled the Governor Clinton bill, and then wrote a short note to Burger, which he left at the front desk.

Dear Pete!

Sorry for not have been able to see you before I left. I came to the realization to go to Washington & finish that what we have started so far.

I’m leaving you, believing that you take good care of yourself and also of the other boys. You may rest assured, that, I shall try to straighten everything out, to the very best possibility. My bag and clothes I’ve put into your room. Your Hotel Bill is paid by me, including this day.

If anything extra ordinary should happen, I’ll get in touch with you directly. 3

The train journey to Washington took a little under five hours. From Union Station, Dasch took a taxi to the Mayflower, checking in once again as George John Davis, of St. Louis, Missouri. The reception clerk told him he could stay a maximum of four nights and handed him the keys to room 351, a double room on the White House side of the hotel, for $6 a night. After washing up, he took a streetcar downtown to find a place to eat, and wandered into the Olmstead Grill, at Thirteenth and G Streets. To Dasch’s dismay, his waiter turned out to be an old acquaintance from the waiters’ club in New York, who immediately greeted him as “George.”

At first, he pretended he had never met the man before. But the waiter, whose name was Louis B. Martin, reminded him of their pinochle-playing games at Mayers. Dasch sensed that Martin regarded him as a “conceited brat,” too proud to talk to him. 4As a stranger in a new city, on the verge of a turning point in his life, he also felt “kind of lonely.” After a glass of whiskey, he told Martin, “Boy, you were correct in identifying the fellow you thought I was,” and invited him for a drink after work.

The two men went around the corner to the Trans-Lux Café, where they began drinking heavily. By the second or third whiskey, Dasch had told his old acquaintance he was on an intelligence mission and, if anything went wrong, he would probably go to jail for a long time. The more he drank, the more he talked, and the more he talked, the more extraordinary and unbelievable his story became. He hinted that he was engaged in espionage work for Russia and had infiltrated a sabotage school in Germany for the purpose of learning as much as possible about the Nazi Party. Another group of saboteurs had left Europe at the same time as his group; their secret rendezvous point was Grant’s Tomb in New York.

As Dasch spilled out his story, he became more and more excited, waving his long arms in the air. He claimed he had been in touch with “high officials” in Germany, and insisted that the only way to beat Hitler was to undermine him from within. “If the Nazis knew what I was doing in Germany, they would have shot me, my father, and my mother on the spot,” he murmured conspiratorially, swinging back more whiskey. 5But everything was fine now. “I am protected, I don’t have to worry about that.”

The two men finally parted around midnight. Dasch jumped into a cab, saying he was going to look for a girl. Martin went back to his apartment, where he described the strange encounter to his roommate, another waiter. He was impressed that Dasch, who had previously always been broke, was wearing a good suit and seemed to have plenty of money. On the other hand, they had both drunk heavily and Dasch’s story was too fantastic to be believed. The roommate thought this was probably just a case of “another waiter blowing his head off because he had a few dollars in his pocket.” Martin was inclined to agree.

WHILE DASCH was telling his story to Martin in Washington, Burger was doing his best to keep the others occupied in New York. He had found a nightclub on Fifty-second Street that offered a fine selection of music, liquor, and girls. Heinck, still nervous about being seen around New York, preferred to stay in his room at the lodging house. Burger and Quirin went to the Swing Club, where they spent most of the evening talking to a girl named Frankie, who promised to set them up with some of her friends the following night. 6By the time they lurched out of the nightclub, it was 3 a.m. Rather than return to the lodging house on Seventy-sixth Street and wake the landlady, Quirin went back to Burger’s hotel, spending the night on the spare bed in his room.

As long as he was drinking and chatting with girls, Quirin was easy enough to manage. By the following morning, however, he had become truculent again, demanding to know where Dasch had gone and accusing him and Burger of failing to obey orders. Apart from anything else, they were risking drawing attention to themselves by living much too lavishly, Quirin complained. “I won’t stand for what is going on,” he told Burger. “You and George will have to suffer the consequences.” 7He left the hotel without saying goodbye.

ON FRIDAY morning, Dasch had breakfast delivered to his room at the Mayflower. After eating, he took a shower, and then got down to business, telephone directory in hand. He could not decide whom to approach first, the FBI or the Secret Service, so he called the U.S. Government Information Service and asked the woman operator to explain the difference between the two agencies. She asked the nature of his business, and he explained that he had “a statement of military as well as political value” to make. 8The operator suggested he call the War Department, and gave him the number of a Colonel H. I. Kramer, of Military Intelligence. The colonel was not in, so he left a message asking him to call back. 9

Having drawn a blank with the army, he reverted to his original idea of calling J. Edgar Hoover. He dialed REpublic 7100, the general FBI number, asked for Mr. Hoover, and was put through to his office. The receptionist connected him to a second office, where another secretary transferred him to a third office, which shuttled him off to a fourth office. He was about to give up when agent Duane L. Traynor came on the line.

Traynor turned out to be in charge of the Bureau’s antisabotage unit. A mild-mannered lawyer from Minnesota, he had joined the FBI four years earlier, at the age of twenty-eight, because it offered a good starting salary and the prospect of steady work. He spent most of his time investigating reports of suspected sabotage in factories. 10It was not a particularly glamorous assignment: the acts of “sabotage” were often nothing more than disgruntled employees throwing something into the machinery because they were mad at their foremen. Sometimes, workers reported imaginary incidents, just to cause trouble. But each allegation had to be investigated.