Flowers From Berlin Read Free

his own hands. Roosevelt recited from memory a litany of incidents.
    An explosion in a Newark, New Jersey warehouse had slowed the delivery of five thousand M-1 rifles to anti-Fascist partisans in Greece; a dynamite bomb in a Ford parts plant in Delaware had destroyed production capacity for a specific line of tank gearboxes essential to the French Army; yet another bomb, planted near a furnace in the Frankford Arsenal in Germantown, Pennsylvania, had almost brought down that entire edifice, a disaster which might have set back munitions production in the eastern United States by nine months. On and on the list went, incident after incident. Hoover squirmed uncomfortably until the President concluded with the plight of HMS Wolfe .
    "Tell me, Mr. Hoover," Roosevelt asked rhetorically, "how does a saboteur, particularly the one whom your Bureau is searching for, creep onto a religiously guarded vessel, plant a bomb, and sneak off again?"
    Hoover was about to answer, but Roosevelt kept talking.
    "There is a man at large somewhere in America," Roosevelt postulated, "who is both an expert at espionage and high-level explosives. He is costing us lives and he is robbing precious war materiel from the democracies of Europe. But he is an unnaturally clever man. Your F.B.I. cannot arrest him because you do not know whom to arrest. You cannot look for him because no one knows for whom to look. Indeed, the local police departments in the cities and towns of the Northeast cannot be used because we haven't the faintest idea which ones should even be contacted."
    Hoover sat in silence. The President looked him up and . down. "Well, what do you think, J. Edgar?" Roosevelt asked at length. "Have you been struck dumb? You've barely said a word since you walked in here."
    "The Bureau," Hoover replied quickly and defensively, "is working on this precise case day and—"
    "What has been accomplished?"
    Hoover groped. He mentioned a Portuguese network that could be closed down at any moment. And he spoke of a man named Fritz Duquaine who was believed to have entered the country from Vancouver some months earlier and who the F.B.I. had good cause to believe was operating in the Northeast.
    "But you have no proof?"
    "No, sir."
    "And you have no suspects who are so enormously gifted with explosives?"
    "No, Mr. President." Hoover verged on mentioning that no fewer than 43,000 immigrants had filtered into the United States from Germany since 1929. Sorting through them for a gifted bomber was not easy. But Roosevelt was speaking again.
    "Tell me," said the President. "Do I misunderstand the situation or am I correct? What we need is a face. A name. Or a past. We must find out who this man is, where he came from, and what his background might be. All this is even more important than a current identity because this man would certainly be gifted also at changing identities."
    "That's all correct, sir."
    Roosevelt continued to lead the conversation. "So what we are talking about is a bit of detective work. Identifying this particular man and locating him is the first task, without which any other plans are meaningless. And, of course, this work must proceed without alerting the suspect. Otherwise he will disappear and move elsewhere. Or return to Germany, perhaps."
    Mrs. LeHand buzzed the intercom again and notified the President that the secretaries of State and Interior were awaiting the President in the downstairs dining room. Roosevelt selected a fresh cigarette from the tin of Camels on his desk, placed it into a tortoiseshell holder, and slipped the holder between his teeth. Then he shifted uncomfortably in his chair, leaned back slightly, and lit his cigarette.
    "Now, Mr. Director," Roosevelt concluded, "who is the best detective in your Federal Bureau of Investigation?"
    Hoover considered it for a few seconds. "The best detective within the F.B.I.," answered J. Edgar Hoover, "would be Frank Lerrick. Special Agent Lerrick is director of personnel as