Glenn Beck - Miracles and Massacres - True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

The good news was that he felt safe; the bad news was that he felt very alone.

In reality, he was neither.

Fifteen minutes into his patrol, John saw the most unlikely of sights: people. The fog was too thick to be sure of it, but it looked like they were pulling a dinghy out of the surf and onto the beach. Shining his flashlight toward them, its light doing nothing but illuminating the fog, he called out, “U.S. Coast Guard. Who are you?”

“Coast Guard?” shouted back one of the strangers. He had dropped the dinghy and was walking toward John.

Cullen could barely make out in the darkness the other three strangers busying themselves unloading materials of some kind out of the dinghy and onto various points along the beach.

“Yes. Who are you?” John asked.

“Fishermen. From East Hampton,” the man replied.

The man bore no resemblance to a fisherman. He wore a red woolen sweater, tennis shoes, a dark fedora hat, and pants that had been soaked through. Besides, he had no fishing supplies.

“We were trying to get to Montauk Point, but our boat ran aground,” he said, his long, lanky arms flailing. “We’re waiting for the sunrise to continue.” He was a thin man, shorter than average, with a streak of silver running through the middle of his jet-black hair.

“What do you mean, East Hampton or Montauk Point?” asked John. The two locations were twenty miles from each other, and these supposed fishermen were only five miles from where they said they’d started. Fog or no fog , John thought, who misses their landing spot by fifteen miles?

“Do you know where you are?” he asked the man in the odd clothes, with the odd accent and even odder story.

“I don’t believe I know where we landed,” he replied. “But you should know.”

“You’re in Amagansett. That’s my station over there,” John said, pointing up the beach to a building that was barely discernible through the fog. “Why don’t you come up to the station and stay the night?”

“All right,” the stranger said. But then, after a few steps, he stopped.

John’s suspicions grew. The bizarre stranger seemed even more nervous than before. If he were truly a lost fisherman, he would have no reason not to come to the Coast Guard station.

But John was now quite sure that this was no fisherman. And so the mysterious man’s next statement confirmed what John already knew.

“I’m not going with you.”

Shangri-La

Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland

Saturday, June 13, 1942

12:30 A.M.

In a large house set inside the most isolated of country estates, the President of the United States slept alone and undisturbed, his face a picture of a man at peace. The fate of his republic, and perhaps a few others as well, hinged on the choices he made during the day—but the night was his. He slept soundly at this weekend retreat in the mountains north of Washington, this place he had repurposed as a retreat and named Shangri-La after the fictional Himalayan utopia.

Yes, it was true that his nation and its allies were losing a war in which the very freedom of mankind was at stake. And yes, MacArthur was trapped in the Philippines, while Rommel was racking up victories in North Africa and half of America’s fleet lay useless at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt had carried the nation through a depression. There was nothing, he believed, he could not bend to his iron will—and that included the Nazis.

Amagansett, Long Island

Saturday, June 13, 1942

12:35 A.M.

“What do you mean you’re not coming with me?” John Cullen asked.

“I have no identification card, and no permit to fish.”

“That’s all right. We’ll sort it all out.”

“No, I won’t go.”

“You have to come,” Cullen said, grabbing for the man’s arm.

“Now listen,” the man replied, his tone suddenly changing, his hands trembling, his eyes narrowing, his accent becoming clearer. “How old are you, son?”

“Twenty-one,” replied John.

“You have a mother?”

“Yes.”

“A father?”

“Yes.”

“Look, you have no idea what this is all about. I don’t want to kill you. Forget about this and I’ll give you some money and you can go have a good time.”

“I don’t want your money,” John said, his heart beginning to race.

A second man was now visible through the fog, coming closer and dragging a large canvas bag. He started speaking in German to the man John had been questioning.

“Shut up,” the man called out in English, looking mortified. “Go back to the other guys.”

The other man did as he was told and retreated.

“Take a good look at my face,” the man said as he removed his dark fedora, reached into a tobacco pouch, and stuffed a wad of money into Cullen’s hand. “Look into my eyes. Would you recognize me if you saw me again?”

“No, sir,” John lied. He knew he would never forget the odd streak of silver hair through the middle of the stranger’s head, but the time for honesty had passed. He was unarmed and powerless over these men, whoever they were. “I never saw you before.”

“You might see me in East Hampton sometime. Would you know me?”

“No, I never saw you before in my life.”

“You might hear from me again. My name is George John Davis. What’s your name, boy?”

“Frank Collins, sir,” he lied again—now even more nervous after hearing the man say his name. Why is he telling me these things? he thought.

Cullen slowly took a step back. Then another. And another. After a few more paces the man had disappeared into the fog.

Cullen ran.

New York City

Saturday, June 13, 1942

7:30 P.M.

The Governor Clinton Hotel was among New York’s ritziest, and its restaurant, the Coral Room, among the city’s most elegant. As George sat down for dinner, he thought of all the other times he’d been in places like this, as a waiter, never as a customer. Now, far from his old life, and far from the scarcity of war-torn Germany, George sat in the Coral Room with a fine linen napkin across his lap and eighty thousand dollars in cash strapped around his waist. It was more money than the president of the United States made in a year.

After his encounter with the boy from the Coast Guard this morning, George and his three teammates—Peter Burger, Richard Quirin, and Henry Heinck—had found their way to the Amagansett train station. There they’d boarded an early morning Long Island Rail Road train headed for Queens. George and Peter had checked into the Governor Clinton while suggesting to the team’s other two members that it would be safer if they found a different hotel.

Across the table was Peter Burger, a toolmaker by trade. But neither Pete nor George looked liked a tradesman tonight. After treating themselves to a shave and a shopping spree in Queens, they’d made it to Manhattan and headed straight for Macy’s. There they bought more shirts, trousers, underwear, ties, handkerchiefs, and suits—plus new watches and three suitcases to carry it all in.

George was smart enough to know that shopping sprees and steak dinners were not exactly the best way to stay inconspicuous—but at that moment he didn’t really care. This was a celebration. After all, they’d somehow convinced their own government not only to let them leave the country, but to send them back on their own private U-boats.

“My sister’s father-in-law was seventy-three, a fine man,” George said to Peter once they’d finished talking about their early morning escape. “The Nazis threw him into a concentration camp. Nine months. Because he was too Catholic. While he was in there, his wife died.”

Pete, perhaps buoyed by the wine, perhaps emboldened by George’s criticism of the Nazis, talked about his own seventeen months in prison. How he’d written a paper critical of the Gestapo. How he’d been held with sixty other prisoners in a windowless cell. And how his pregnant wife had been harassed, pressured to divorce him, and shaken down by the Gestapo. When she miscarried, Pete knew whom to blame.