The Best American Crime Writing (46 page)

Kappe told his men that when they arrived in the United States, their first task would be to create suitable cover for themselves. He provided them with forged Social Security and Selective Service registration cards. Dasch and Kerling became George John Davis and Edward Kelly, respectively—both born in San Francisco before the 1906 earthquake and fire, which meant that no one could demand records to corroborate their papers. Thiel became John Thomas, and was identified as a Polish immigrant in order
to explain his accent, which was heavy. Heinck became Henry Kayner, of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (a town name he was consistently unable to spell). Richard Quirin became Richard Quintas; Herman Neubauer became Henry Nicholas. Haupt kept his own identity, as did Burger. (Both had American citizenship.) Because Burger had worked as a commercial artist, Kappe developed the idea that Burger should move to Chicago, set up an art studio, and insert an ad for his services in the
Chicago Tribune
on the first and the fifteenth of each month—a plan that would give Burger visibility and credibility and would also provide all the men involved in the mission with an easy way to find him.

Kappe also made the men sign contracts obliging them to remain silent about their mission throughout their lives, on penalty of death, and stating that if they died during the mission, their wives would receive lump sums determined by the German government. Should their efforts prove successful, they would be given good jobs following the war. Kappe told them that they would be under constant observation in the United States by German intelligence—which, he claimed, had infiltrated the FBI.

On April 30, the last day of class, Kappe gave special instructions to Dasch and Kerling. Each was to lead three other men. The teams were to travel across the Atlantic by U-boat and land secretly in separate locations, carrying with them crates of explosives and other tools for sabotage. Dasch and Kerling would each be given $50,000 in cash for bribes and expenses, and their men would be given $9,000 apiece. Dasch and Kerling received white handkerchiefs that, when permeated with fumes from a bottle of ammonia, would reveal a message stating how to reach Kappe and several U.S.-based contacts. Kappe emphasized that the two men were to focus initially on establishing cover and to refrain from any sabotage activities whatsoever. Detailed instructions would come at noon on July 4, at the Hotel Gibson in Cincinnati.

Almost a month later, after his men had had a few weeks of
leave, Kappe gathered them together in Lorient, France, where the Germans based some of their U-boats, and gave them their final orders. Kerling, Neubauer, Haupt, and Thiel would depart for Florida on May 26; Dasch, Burger, Heinck, and Quirin would depart for New York on May 28.

On May 28 Dasch and his team boarded submarine U-202. Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner announced over the loudspeaker that the four men were on special assignment to America, and called on every crew member to treat them well and ask no questions. The sub carried forty men, fourteen torpedoes, a cannon, and an antiaircraft gun. As the vessel approached the Long Island coast, on June 12, the captain switched from diesel to silent electric motors. Just before midnight the men heard a scraping sound: The sub had touched the ocean floor some fifty yards from shore.

Dasch and his team, accompanied by members of the U-boat’s crew, were loaded into an inflatable rowboat along with four wooden crates full of explosives and supplies, and a giant canvas seabag containing civilian clothes and other gear. The men were dressed in German military uniforms; if they were apprehended immediately, they would become prisoners of war. Lindner ordered Dasch to subdue by violence any civilian or soldier who challenged his team, and to send the person back in the rowboat so that the sub’s crew could “take care of him.”

“It was pitch-dark, foggy night, made to order for landing,” Dasch later recalled. The fog was so thick that the men could see barely fifty feet ahead. After rowing in circles for a time, the group finally made a landing, and Dasch quickly sought higher ground to survey his surroundings. To his horror, he saw beacons both left and right. Running back to the boat, he ordered his men to put on their civilian clothes. As soon as they had changed, Quirin and Heinck
began burying the explosives in some high dunes. Burger, however, seemed already to be entertaining thoughts of betraying the mission. Out of sight of the others he placed an empty German cigarette tin in the sand, where it could later be easily discovered by a passing patrol. Farther up the beach he left a small schnapps bottle, some socks, a vest, and a bathing suit for good measure.

Also on the beach that night, on a six-mile foot patrol, was Coast Guardsman John Cullen, of Bayside, Queens, a 21-year-old former Macy’s deliveryman who enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1940 and later became a “sand pounder,” to keep watch at night for suspicious activity close to shore. For weeks on end Cullen had patrolled, unarmed, without ever encountering another person. But at about 12:30 that morning, through the fog, he saw a dark object in the water some twenty feet away, and three men standing nearby. “I thought they were fishermen, local residents,” he recollected recently, at his home in Chesapeake, Virginia, “until I saw one of the guys dragging a seabag into the dunes and then speaking in German.”

“What are you doing down here?” Cullen asked. “Who are you?”

“We’re a couple of fishermen from Southampton who have run ashore,” Dasch answered. “We will stay here until sunrise and we will be all right.”

Cullen told them that sunrise was hours away and said that there was no reason Dasch couldn’t come with him to the Coast Guard station until then. Dasch, concerned that the seabag might raise Cullen’s suspicions, decided to pretend to go along with him. In the meantime, one of the Germans came running down the beach with the seabag and addressed Dasch in German, Dasch hollered, “You damn fool, why don’t you go back to the other guys?” He then took Cullen’s arm and asked menacingly how old he was, and if he had a father and a mother. Cullen said he did.

“Well,” Dasch said, “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you. Forget about this and I will give you some money and you can have a good
time.” He offered Cullen $100, which Cullen refused. Dasch then offered $300, and Cullen accepted. “I was afraid they were going to knock me off right there,” Cullen later said. “But when he offered me the money, I knew that was a little encouragement.”

Dasch took off his hat and shined a flashlight into his own face. “Take a good look at me,” he said to Cullen. “Look in my eyes. You will hear from me in Washington.” Dasch then turned around and joined his colleagues, and Cullen began walking cautiously backward before turning and racing toward the station, in the town of Amagansett.

Burger told the others that Dasch had been talking to an American sailor. The men were concerned, but Dasch said to them, “Now, boys, this is the time to be quiet and hold your nerves. Each of you get a box and follow me.” Burger dragged the seabag, deliberately leaving a track that could be identified later, and then helped the others bury it, along with their army uniforms.

The team proceeded inland, almost crawling, for half a mile. They lay still in the dunes for an hour and then began walking until they found a road. Whenever a car passed, they dove into nearby bushes. Heinck, shivering like a dog, said over and over, “We’re surrounded, boys!” Eventually, at just after five in the morning, they stumbled into the tiny train station in Amagansett. They were wet, grass-stained, and generally filthy.

When the station opened for business, at six-thirty, Dasch bought four tickets to Manhattan. “Fishing in this neighborhood has been pretty bad lately,” he observed at the ticket window, in a feeble attempt at nonchalance. Not long after, he and his men boarded their train.

After moving out of sight of Dasch and his men, Cullen raced to the Coast Guard station and sounded the alarm. He and other officers
quickly formed a search party and returned to the site of the encounter. “While I was standing there,” Cullen recollected recently, “I saw the light from the sub. I could also smell diesel oil. I knew it had to be a sub, so we notified the main Coast Guard station at Napeague. The sub was stuck on a sandbar, and when they revved the engines, the ground where I was standing shook. We didn’t know at the time whether the Germans were coming in or leaving.”

At daybreak they found the cigarette tin and the bathing suit. After following the trail left by the seabag, a member of the search party poked a stick in the sand and struck something hard. The men dug the four crates of explosives out of the sand. Other members of the party followed footprints and soon found the buried German clothing, including a cap with a swastika sewn on it.

Sensing the gravity of what had been found, Coast Guard intelligence officers came and immediately took it all to Governor’s Island, near Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, where, at the area Coast Guard headquarters, they opened three of the crates. The fourth, hissing because the TNT inside had been exposed to salt water, was moved to the end of a dock and carefully opened there. At 11:00
A.M.
the FBI was notified of the find, and by noon everything the Germans had brought with them, with the exception of their money and the clothes on their backs, had been impounded by the Bureau. Tension remained high, however: No one knew how many men had landed or what their plans were.

In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, breathlessly informed Attorney General Francis Biddle of the news of the moment. Biddle later wrote, “All of Edgar Hoover’s imaginative and restless energy was stirred into prompt and effective action. His eyes were bright, his jaw set, excitement flickering around the edge of his nostrils. He was determined to catch them all before any sabotage took place.” The FBI worked with the Coast Guard to set up continuous surveillance of the area where the materials had been buried,
hoping to apprehend the men when they returned for their stash. The Bureau commandeered a private bungalow on the beach and began interviewing local residents who fit the descriptions given by Cullen. Hoover also imposed a news blackout on the story.

Meanwhile, Dasch and his team had arrived at Jamaica Station in New York, at about 9:30
A.M.
, and had immediately bought themselves new sets of clothes. After changing in the men’s room at a restaurant, they threw their old clothes in a trash can and split into two groups, agreeing to meet later. Dasch and Burger registered at the Hotel Governor Clinton—Dasch as George John Davis, and Burger as himself. Heinck and Quirin registered at the Hotel Martinique under their respective aliases. They all ate, washed, and rested.

The men found themselves completely on their own in the city. Free and loaded with money, they took full advantage of their situation by shopping, carousing in clubs, and seeking out prostitutes. Dasch later wrote, “There was nothing in the way of Nazi surveillance to prevent me from taking [all of the money] I’d been provided with and fading into a happy and luxurious obscurity.”

But he didn’t. Dasch and Burger began to have frank discussions about their mission and their motivations. Dasch admitted to Burger that he felt he didn’t belong in Germany, and that he had in fact begun planning an escape back to America even as he had worked for Germany’s propaganda division. Burger, for his part, talked of his troubles with the Gestapo. Dasch then told Burger that he “was not George John Davis, the group leader of a gang of saboteurs, but George John Dasch, the man who came here into this country for the opportunity to fight Hitler and his gang in my own fashion.” Upon hearing this, Burger, according to Dasch, “broke out in a crying spell” and confessed to having left a trail of evidence on the beach, adding that he believed the crates of explosives must have been discovered by that time. The mission seemed botched before it had even begun.

Dasch told Burger it was critical that Dasch contact the FBI,
because, he said, should any of the seven men—or even Dasch himself—fall into police hands, “it would be very difficult for me to prove the real reason I came here.” First, however, Dasch and Burger needed to reassure Heinck and Quirin that all was proceeding according to plan. Burger met Heinck and Quirin several times during the next few days and persuaded the two to remain quiet in New York while Dasch supposedly pursued covert contacts for the team.

On Sunday, June 14, Dasch called the FBI. Agent Dean McWhorter answered, and Dasch introduced himself as Franz Daniel Pastorius, “a German citizen who has arrived in this country only yesterday morning.” Dasch told McWhorter that he had information so important to report that “the only person who should hear it is J. Edgar Hoover.” McWhorter suggested that Dasch come to his office, but Dasch mildly replied, “I, Franz Daniel Pastorius, shall try to get in contact with your Washington office either Thursday or Friday, and you should notify them of this fact.” McWhorter indeed made note of the call, but rather than sending a message to Washington, merely wrote, “This memo is being prepared only for the purpose of recording the call made by [Pastorius].”

On the morning of June 18, Dasch packed for Washington. He divided the money Kappe had given him into several envelopes bound together with a rubber band and attached a note that said, in part, “Money from German [government] for their purpose, but to be used to fight the Nazis. George J. Dasch, alias George J. Davis, alias Franz Pastorius.” He paid his and Burger’s hotel bills and left Burger a note.

Dear Pete:

Sorry for not have been able to see you before I left. I came to the realization to go to Washington and finish that which 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’ll put in your room. Your hotel bill is paid by me, including this day. If anything extraordinary should happen, I’ll get in touch with you directly.