'’Can easily plant flowers from Berlin for President F.D. Roosevelt.' The man has never yet been wrong,' Goering said.
Hitler still considered it. 'Where did we find this man?' he asked.
'We didn't, Mein Fuehrer,' Goering said. 'He came to us. He is completely outside all of our services. If we authorize him to proceed, then even we cannot stop-'
'Completely outside?' Hitler asked abruptly, looking Goering in the eye. 'Then he could never be conclusively traced to us?'
'No, Mein Fuehrer.'
'Then let us wish him luck,' Hitler concluded. He reached for a fountain pen with a brisk single movement of his ivory-hued wrist.
Hitler had entertained a savage hatred of Roosevelt since 1937 when the American President had made a speech in Chicago urging a world 'quarantine of dictators and aggressors.' Hitler had taken that speech to have been aimed directly at him-which it only partially had been-and had since borne Roosevelt nothing but venom. Hitler insisted that Roosevelt was partially Jewish and attributed all of Roosevelt's actions to 'this basic fact.'
Now he initialed with great fervor a document which would dispatch a homicidal Siegfried toward Roosevelt.
'Let us hope this will be the end of that Hebrew cripple in the White House,' Hitler muttered, withdrawing his pen and musing cheerfully. 'You know, of course, Goering, that Roosevelt suffers from syphilitic paralysis, not infantile paralysis. This, too, is a basic fact.'
'Of course, Mein Fuehrer,' Goering answered.
Goering clapped the file shut and raised his hand in a salute. Hitler returned to his battle maps. Goering was halfway out the door when Hitler, almost as an afterthought, jerked his head up.
'Goering!' he shrieked suddenly.
The Air Minister turned.
'It is more urgent than ever that we obtain a victory in England before the Americans become involved.' Hitler motioned toward the folder in Goering's hand. 'This 'Siegfried' is more crucial than ever. See that he succeeds.'
'We will do everything to assist him,' Goering said. Then he saluted again, turned, and departed.
That evening in his radio chamber, four thousand miles to the west, Siegfried swooned in happiness and rejoiced in the unqualified authorization from Berlin that he had dreamed of for years:
FLOWERS FROM BERLIN:PROCEED! ADOLF HITLER
1939
TWENTY
'Not very pretty to look at, Mr. Cochrane, sir,' said Chief Martin Kugler of the Red Bank, New Jersey, Police Department. The two men stepped from a rusting green and white police car on the curb. Nearby there already stood an entire delegation of police vehicles. Men in various uniforms-local police, county sheriff's office, state police-stood with folded arms and waited. Police Chief Martin Kugler led Cochrane through a trail in the woods. The ground steamed with unexpected September heat, and a cloud of gnats pursued them.
Kugler's tones were apologetic. 'We knew a boy was missing from the navy yard, but they get AWOL's all the time. Generally they turn up a thousand miles away at their parents' home. Wish it had been the same with this one, right?'
'Right,' Cochrane mumbled, looking ahead. Kugler's waddling, measured steps set the pace. The police chief was a squat, sincere, balding little man with thick arms, an imposing paunch, and a. 45 that hung like a cannon at his left side. This was Chief Kugler's second homicide in nine years, and the first that did not fit into a neat pattern of victim-knowing-killer. He and Cochrane neared a group of men standing around a body in the center of the woods.
Kugler continued. 'We read all the F.B.I. circulars, you know. Read them carefully. Think they had your name on them.'
'They did,' Cochrane answered.
'Well, you know. Since the Adriana went down we been looking for anything funny around here. Then this morning two kids are playing in the woods and they find this.'
Billy Pritchard's corpse was in a middle stage of decomposition. The skin was dark and ulcerated, the teeth horribly accentuated by the rotting flesh of the lips, and the hair matted badly from dirt and rain. The entire corpse crawled with insects.
Cochrane stared. The body of an American boy in his underclothes was more real than a thousand ships exploding at sea.
Kugler stared also. The last few hours had been unpleasantly unique in his experience. First the body had been discovered in the woods. He had immediately filed the homicide report with the state police in Trenton. The state police-noting the proximity of the body to the navy yard, that an American sailor was still AWOL, and the events surrounding the Adriana -called it in to Washington.
Moments later, Chief Kugler had found himself talking long distance to someone named Special Agent Cochrane who wanted more of the specifics.
'See, I don't want to make something out of nothing, Mr. Cochrane, sir,' Kugler had offered, 'but the boy's uniform is gone. Now, you know that British boat that blew up? I was thinking…'
'Don't touch anything,' answered Cochrane. 'I'll be there in three hours.'
Cochrane telephoned the Newark Bureau office and asked for two special agents, Mike Cianfrani and Jim Hearn, whom Cochrane knew from New York, to be placed on local special assignment. As Cochrane took a taxi to Washington's Union Station, Cianfrani and Hearn took their own car to Red Bank to safeguard the crime scene.
Kugler broke the deep silence that enshrouded the dead sailor. 'Awful hot out here, ain't it?' the police chief said. 'Poor kid. Body stinks to high hell.'
'How do you know it's the sailor?' Cochrane asked, still looking down. The eye sockets were dark and discolored.
'Dog tags.' Kugler motioned toward what used to be the boy's neck.
'Yes,' said Cochrane softly, seeing the flat gray shape of something metal. 'Of course.'
'That's all that was touched here, sir,' Kugler rushed to reassure. 'Absolutely all. Rest of the area's as virgin as a Girl Scout tea party.'
'I'm sure,' Cochrane muttered.
Cianfrani and Hearn supervised the search of the area. Meanwhile, Cochrane excused himself to wander the area on his own. He had seen enough of the victim. The local police placed a sheet across the corpse.
Moments later, Cochrane heard a body bag unzipping. Cochrane walked farther into the woods, looking for the odd item-a scrap of cloth, a bottle, a button, anything – which might yield a fingerprint or a clue. He found nothing.
The gnats pursued him but his thoughts focused upon Billy Pritchard. It was doubtful that the young man had been taken to the woods and strangled. So where had the crime been committed? And why? Had Siegfried simply wanted a uniform to gain access to The Adriana? Or was this homicide one of those maddening coincidences that sends a detective in the wrong direction for months?
Cochrane pondered as he continued to walk. He saw a clearing ahead and, when he reached it, was surprised to come upon an old gravel and dirt parking lot. He stood perfectly still for a full minute and stared at the abandoned diner and the lonesome telephone booth.
He took a few more steps forward and noted that a road wound down the other side of the hill toward Red
