Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America (14 page)
Authors: Howard Blum
A
s quickly as the invention had burst into flames, the operational significance of the lead cigar became clear to von Rintelen. He’d arm Scheele’s devices with copper discs thick enough to delay their combustion for about two weeks, and then plant them on ships carrying cargo to the Allies. The ships would be in international waters when the destructive fires erupted, and in the smoldering aftermath there’d be no clues as to what had caused the blaze. Visions of raging shipboard fires, the racing flames exploding American shells meant to target German troops, filled him with gleeful anticipation.
He promptly wrote Scheele a large check and sent him back to his laboratory in Hoboken to begin manufacturing the sinister cigars. In the meantime, he started recruiting men to plant the devices.
Using one alias, he went to several of the captains of the interned German ships and signed them on as supervisors of the sabotage operation. Next, using another alias, he met with groups of Irish stevedores.
He never revealed that he was working for Germany; he simply made it clear that he was out to harm England. Shared animosity, plus some cash, was sufficient to get their attention.
With the efficient authority of a chemistry teacher, he explained how the cigars were constructed. Then, deciding that candor was now necessary, he boldly stated that the devices needed to be smuggled aboard ships transporting explosives to Europe. To a man, they all agreed that it could easily be done. They were ready to start at once.
Now that the men were in place, however, von Rintelen faced an unanticipated problem. Scheele’s laboratory in Hoboken was tiny and makeshift. It was not suitable, the chemist explained, for the sort of nationwide sabotage operation von Rintelen was planning. They’d need, he insisted, a much larger space, preferably a metalworking plant where the lead cigars could be manufactured in quantity.
Von Rintelen listened, and immediately realized the contradictory obstacles he now faced. He needed a large-scale manufacturing plant. At the same time it had to be a covert operation; the bombs must be manufactured in secret. Yet the bigger the factory, the more likely that it would attract the attention of the American authorities. Unable to find a solution, in his frustration he began to make discreet inquiries, asking his expanding circle of American acquaintances for advice.
It was Bonford Boniface, a waterfront lawyer with a penchant for outrageous schemes and cheap whiskey, who came up with the answer. A friend of Weiser’s, he had no allegiance to Germany. Weeks ago he’d drifted into the network simply because it offered him the opportunity to make some extra money. Now he bounded into the back room of the E. V. Gibbons offices and bellowed that he’d thought of the perfect place to manufacture the devices.
Von Rintelen noticed that Boniface’s pince-nez was askew. Wearily, he suspected that today the lawyer’s drinking had begun just after breakfast. He told Boniface that he was busy; perhaps he could come back tomorrow. It took all von Rintelen’s discipline not to add,
When you’ve sobered up.
But Boniface plowed on as if he hadn’t heard. “Why not manufacture your bombs on one of the interned ships?” he suggested without preamble.
Rintelen thought about it for a moment and then decided that if Boniface wanted a drink, he was ready to buy it. It was a magnificent plan. “We are to transplant ourselves, with all our schemes, devices, and enterprises, on board one of the German ships and thus place ourselves in a most admirable situation,” he would later write, still excited by the lawyer’s strategy. “Germany within American territorial waters! What possibilities!”
And what choices! There were more than eighty interned vessels, from large passenger liners like the
Vaterland
to smaller fighting ships like the
Emden
. Before the scheme could move forward, he’d need to pick one for his workshop.
CHARLES VON KLEIST WAS AN
old salt. He’d been born into an ancient aristocratic family, but he had wanted nothing to do with his gilded heritage. After shipping off to sea on a windjammer when he was a boy, von Kleist had spent the next forty years behind the mast, rising to the rank of captain and sailing around the globe too many times to count. Now a feisty seventy, bald, his carefully groomed goatee as white as snow, he had settled in Hoboken and spent most nights drinking with crowds of admiring German sailors from the interned ships. His wild stories were famous, and a few of them might also possibly be true.
The old sailor was a favorite of von Rintelen’s. The spy enjoyed the shamelessly embroidered sea yarns, and he also had a bounder’s fascination with aristocrats—especially those who didn’t flaunt their distinguished families.
Not long after his conversation with Boniface, von Rintelen met up with von Kleist for a drink and shared his plan. He let it sink in, and then confided, “Well, Kleist, this is going to be something out of the ordinary. We must find a ship where the captain will play the game; where the crew will abide by the orders given; and where, above all, the whole crowd will keep their mouths shut.”
Von Kleist pulled on his goatee thoughtfully. “Well,” he said finally, “you are asking a good deal. Qualities like those are a rare combination to find on board one vessel.”
Still, the old sailor began to throw out several possibilities. But no sooner had he mentioned a ship than he’d find a reason to dismiss it. As the list of failed candidates grew, von Rintelen began to despair.
Suddenly von Kleist banged his fist on the table in triumph. “I think I’ve got it! It is the steamship
Friedrich der Grosse
you want!”
Over the next week the ship was transformed into a factory. The firm of E. V. Gibbons ordered large quantities of lead and copper tubing, as well as machinery to cut the metal to precisely calibrated lengths and thicknesses. Under the cover of darkness, the purchases were carried up the gangplank and smuggled on board the steamer.
At night, the hold of the ship became a hive of activity. Teams of sailors went to work, the blades of a half dozen machines whirling in a purposeful, high-pitched buzz as they cut through the lead pipes. Once the cigars had been cut to size, copper discs were inserted. This was careful, meticulous work. Each disc first had to be cut to precisely the thickness that Scheele’s experiments had determined would take fifteen days to dissolve. Finally, they had to be soldered into place—a genuine challenge, since the pieces of tubing were small and very narrow. It took an entire week to fabricate approximately one hundred lead cigars.
When the shells were ready, sailors delivered them to Scheele in Hoboken. His lab was hidden away in a crawl space above his firm’s offices; it could be accessed only by climbing a ladder to an artfully camouflaged trapdoor.
The chemist locked himself into this secret room and, in solitude, filled each device with the copper-eating chemicals. A careless slip of his hand or a too-sudden gesture, and the incendiary acids might run into each other and explode. He’d be burned alive. Scheele worked with a nerve-wrenching slowness, always aware that his life depended on his precision. By the time he fixed the last wax caps on the last cigar, he was completely undone. His hands continued shaking for hours.
The finished devices were packed into a small wooden box and taken back across the Hudson River to the office on Cedar Street. The box was stored in a drawer of von Rintelen’s desk. The cigars would not explode for fifteen days, but the thought of working in such close proximity to enough explosives to set the entire building aflame was sufficient motivation for the spy to move quickly. He told Weiser to gather all the Irish stevedores for a war council that evening.
No sooner had the stevedores filed into the back room than they told von Rintelen they had news to report. The
Phoebus,
a British transport, had started loading munitions. It was a large order, and the work would not be finished for several days.
Von Rintelen opened his desk drawer and removed the box. He gave each of the men several of the devices. He was as jovial as if he were handing out real cigars.
The next morning the dockers carried barrels, cases, and sacks filled with American-made shells and bullets onto the
Phoebus
. And in their pockets were the combustible devices. When they were certain no one was looking, from time to time they bent down and, all stealth, wedged a cigar unobtrusively into a dark corner.
As they went about their surreptitious work, von Rintelen strolled along the dock where the steamer was berthed. He glanced at the British sailors on deck, carbines slung over their shoulders, ready to prevent saboteurs from interfering with their valuable cargo. Didn’t the fools realize it was too late? he gloated. Didn’t they know they couldn’t stop Franz von Rintelen? That he was invincible? But of course he said nothing. He simply continued on along the waterfront, his mind near to bursting with its secret, joyful pride.
The
Phoebus
sailed the next day, and von Rintelen waited impatiently for news. Each morning he eagerly read the
Shipping News
, but no report about the
Phoebus
appeared. He had calculated the date when the copper disc would dissolve and the acids would combust, but this day passed, and there was still nothing in the paper.
He began to grow anxious; doubts filled his thoughts. Perhaps Scheele had miscalculated the necessary amounts of acid, and the devices wouldn’t work. Or maybe they had been discovered and tossed overboard. Or maybe, he suddenly feared, the Irish stevedores had played him, and the plot had been reported to the authorities. The next knock on his door might very well be the police.
But two tense days past the deadline, he picked up the
Shipping News
: “
Accidents
. S.S.
Phoebus
from New York—destination Archangel—caught fire at sea. Brought into Liverpool by H.M.S.
Ajax
.”
He ordered the men on board the
Friedrich der Grosse
to get back to work that night making more lead shells. He sent word to Scheele to purchase additional quantities of acid. The first battle had ended in a glorious victory: the
Phoebus
’s cargo had gone up in flames, and the ship had foundered. Now the main attack would begin.
T
om prayed for another miracle. After he reported last month to Commissioners Woods and Scull that his team had identified Fuchs and was making progress in building a case against Koenig, Tom had brushed off their praise. Modestly, he admitted that it was more luck than anything else that had finally moved the investigation forward.
Now once again stymied, the Koenig surveillance bringing no new leads and ship explosions suddenly escalating, Tom regretted his previous cavalier disdain. He’d happily settle for another gift thrown his way.
He soon got it. Only this time the clue came not over a tapped phone, but from the French ambassador.
Four bombs had been discovered packed among bags of sugar in the hold of the steamship
Kirkoswald,
en route from New York, when it docked in Marseille. The French police removed the explosive charges and, after some heated debate, finally agreed to send the bombs back across the Atlantic to Ambassador Jean-Jules Jusserand in Washington. Protocol required that they be delivered to the State Department, the ambassador determined. From there, the now harmless devices made their laborious way to Mayor Mitchel’s office at City Hall in New York, then on to Commissioner Woods, who promptly handed them over to Tom.
The bombs were like nothing Tom had ever seen before. They were metal tubes, about ten inches long, divided into two compartments. The potassium chlorate (the French report made no mention of picric acid) and sulfuric acid that had each filled one of the two sections had been drained, but it was clear how the bomb was meant to work. The acids would eat through the thin copper disc separating the two compartments, and when the fluids merged, an explosion would take place. For some unknown reason, though, this time the internal copper discs had not dissolved. The bombs aboard the
Kirkoswald
had been found intact.
The devices were a mystery, and—frustratingly—at the same time they were Tom’s only clues. If he was ever going to get anywhere with his investigation, the bombs, he decided, would need to be the starting point. They were the evidence that could lead to the men behind the sabotage—if only he was smart enough to make sense of what he had in front of him. These were puzzles, Tom sternly told himself, that he must solve.
He picked up a device in his hand, feeling its weight and then running his index finger along the cold metal. It seemed harmless; in fact, it occurred to him that the bomb was about the size and shape of a cigar.
Looking at it with greater scrutiny, he saw that the device was, in its diabolical way, a work of art—an ingenious design, built from good-quality metals and fabricated with careful workmanship. It was nothing like the crude, makeshift weapons thrown together by the Brescia Circle bombers or any of the other anarchist groups he had encountered. This was the work of a skilled, rather artful professional.
That told him something, he decided. There had to be someone involved with a sophisticated knowledge of chemistry and design. Perhaps the mastermind was an engineer, a chemist, or a science professor. Another thought: the saboteurs were well funded; metals of this quality were expensive.
It suddenly occurred to Tom that they must be working out of a factory or a manufacturing plant. The lead tubes and copper discs were cut with precision, the edges smooth to the touch. Only industrial electric saws, he imagined, could do this meticulous work. Of course the factory could be anywhere in the country, but it was, he wanted to believe, an insight that could prove valuable as the case progressed.
He put the device down and closed his eyes. Deep in thought, he tried to focus on what else the bombs could tell him. To his great annoyance, only stray, irrelevant notions ran through his mind.
Then he remembered that the
Kirkoswald
had carried supplies to France. The other fires—and over the past two months a long list had grown even longer—had also occurred on ships making deliveries to the Allies. No bombs had been found on those vessels, bolstering arguments that the blazes had been accidents. Yet now this tangible evidence confirmed his working theory: the bombs had been placed on the vessels by either German spies or their henchmen. He had been right all along.
However gratifying, this realization did not bring him any closer to identifying the saboteurs. And it certainly wouldn’t stop future bombings. Tom needed to dig deeper.
He opened his eyes and, with nothing else to consider, picked up the report written by the Marseille police. It had been forwarded along with the devices, and some anonymous diplomat, in either the French embassy in Washington or the State Department, had thoughtfully gone to the trouble of translating the three pages into a very efficient English. Tom had already read it several times, but now, as he went over the pages again, a single sentence drew him like a magnet: the bombs had been found hidden among bags of sugar.
What if—
But before he could even complete the thought in his mind, he was shouting for Barnitz.
Tom told his aide that he wanted him to check the cargo records of all the ships that had reported fires. He needed to know if they had also been carrying sugar shipments.
Barnitz moaned. He’d need to go over the manifests of at least nearly thirty ships. Danger didn’t bother him, but the monotony of following a paper trail loomed as certain torture.
Tom ignored the sergeant. He wanted the results by noon tomorrow, he ordered.
Barnitz’s report was a revelation. Not only had every one of the ships plagued by recent fires carried a cargo of sugar, but the detective had also discovered an ominous corollary: sugar was highly flammable. The experienced shipboard fire crews reported that next to munitions, sugar was their biggest fear. A blaze fed by bags of sugar, they knew only too well, took just moments to swell into a raging inferno.
Sugar! It was a whole new avenue to explore, opening up the investigation with a suddenly promising clarity. Encouraged, Tom decided he now understood how the saboteurs had planted the devices without being noticed: the bombs had been loaded along with sugar shipments.
But how had they done it? Tom wondered. And when? At the refinery? On the piers? On board the ships? He made up his mind to get the answers.
SUGAR FOR EXPORT WAS PACKED
in two kinds of bags.
Tom learned this firsthand as he toured the refinery in Long Island City. He had decided that since he was not sure what he was looking for, he’d better visit the plant himself. Perhaps, he hoped, he’d see something that would start him thinking.
He spent a long day learning all about the sugar-manufacturing business. He followed the entire process, from the arrival of raw sugar at the refinery to the bagging and shipping of the finished orders. It was a noisy, hectic education, his eyes and ears assaulted by pounding assembly-line machines and busy, shouting human chains of workers.
The incessant clatter made it difficult for Tom to think. But as he watched the refined sugar being bagged, he was struck by an idea:
If I were a saboteur, that’s how I’d do it. I’d put the devices right into the bags
.
He made his way over to a long table where a half dozen workers were sewing closed the bags that had just been filled. He watched them work. It was all done by hand with fast, sure stitches, using thick red thread and a big needle.
Without a word, he grabbed one of the sewn bags and ripped it open. It came apart easily.
Startled workers jumped to their feet in anger. Tom showed them his badge and backed it up with a menacing look. They sat down immediately.
He ordered one man to stitch the bag closed again.
The worker was confused, but he didn’t dare disobey. It was done in moments, and when Tom examined the handiwork, he saw that it was impossible to tell that it had previously been opened.
Tom moved on to the adjacent table. Here the tops of the heavy muslin bags were stitched closed by machines. He grabbed a bag and tried to repeat his previous experiment.
It took several attempts, and a bit of muscle, before the machine stitches came undone. And when the bag was resewn, the new stitches were obvious.
Lesson one, Tom told himself: The saboteurs most likely plant the devices in the hand-sewn bags. That should narrow the search considerably.
But no sooner had Tom come to grasp this knowledge than he realized he was getting ahead of himself. He had skipped a crucial part of the process. The saboteurs wouldn’t plant the devices in just
any
hand-sewn bags of sugar. They’d target only orders bound for Allied boats.
He quickly made his way to the shipping department and spoke to the clerk. He needed to learn how many people knew the final destination of a shipment when it left the refinery.
The clerk said there were only two. He was one. The shipping clerk, he explained, knew the destination of every order. The other was the lighter captain. He would pick up the shipments from the clerk and pilot the barge carrying the sugar out to a specific ship.
It was a short drive back to Centre Street, and all the while Tom’s thoughts were racing. Lesson two, he decided, with a mounting sense that he was getting closer to unraveling the mystery: the lighter captain inserts the bombs into the hand-sewn bags of sugar before he delivers the shipment to the boat.
A strategy had settled in his mind before he even walked into the squad room. He’d order his men to begin surveillance of the waterfront lighter captains. He’d follow the seamen as they loaded their barges at the piers and then steered them out into the harbor to the Allied boats. And in the process, he’d find his saboteurs.
