Authors: Alan Bricklin
"How was the ride over?"
"We stopped at Langenthal to change engines. Not sure
why, but it added twenty or thirty minutes to the trip." She spoke as she
strolled over to a table where Dulles kept cigarettes for her as well as for
other guests, and her walk, the way she removed the cigarette from the holder,
the assured way she waited for him to light it for her, all spoke of a
privileged upbringing. Mary had, indeed, been a debutante in Boston, where she
was raised by her step grandfather, C.W. Barron, the publisher of the Wall
Street Journal; but she was no detached society lady, filled with ennui.
Blessed with above average intelligence and a natural curiosity, she refused to
be bored, turning to literary pursuits in addition to striking up a friendship
with the Swiss Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. She had had both lovers and husbands,
the latter numbering two and the former, well, let's just say Allen Dulles was
not the first.
Since 1934 Bancroft had lived in Switzerland with her
accountant husband who, for business reasons, traveled frequently. When Gerry
Mayer, the advance agent from the OSS, arrived in Switzerland, he scouted the
small American community for possible assets, Mary's name being one that stood
out. With her fluency in French and German, her intelligence and her literary
capabilities, she was immediately recruited by Mayer, a relatively easy task
since she was ever one for adventure and challenge.
"Well, you could probably use a drink; I know I
can."
"Bad day?"
"Let me fix the drinks first, then I'll fill you
in." When Mary first started working for the OSS, she was assigned to read
the German press and write an analysis of what the Nazi Party was proclaiming
and what layers of meaning each story might have. After she and Allen had
become acquainted, he had all of her work sent to him rather than Mayer.
Bancroft sat in one of the comfortable chairs placed around
the room in intimate groupings. Dulles would often meet with potential sources
of intelligence, and his apartment made for a private, comfortable refuge,
where the atmosphere and the furnishings were conducive to the discussion of
personal and secret information.
Allen placed the drinks on a table, the crystal tumblers
chiming as the ice cubes bounced and ricocheted against the glass, then settled
into one of two leather upholstered chairs sighing as he sat down. Mary looked
at him, sipping her drink, not pressing the issue but patiently waiting for him
to begin. He took a long pull on the drink then began, relating the tale of the
OSS man gone missing, the various possibilities he and Julian had mulled over
and then reiterated the importance of the operation to recover the plutonium.
Although not aware of the specific operational details she did know of the plan
since one of her duties that had evolved over the months they had worked
together was to review the information that Allen relayed to Washington each
night by radio-telephone. Since the line was open to eavesdropping he had to
speak in generalities, slang and references known only to Bill Donovan on the
other end. Afterwards, Dulles and Bancroft would evaluate what he had said to
make sure there was no confusion because of the circumspect language he had to
use, and then they would decide if clarification was needed in the next night's
transmission.
Mary listened patiently, commiserating over the bad state of
affairs without being cloying in her sympathy, knowing that Allen just wanted
someone to listen; her knowledge of field operations was minimal at best, and
she did not think she could provide anything of any use. But on this point, she
was wrong.
After the radio-telephone call had been completed, sans any
mention of the departed agent, and the post mortem on it was hashed over, the
couple walked the two blocks to one of their favorite restaurants and had a
leisurely dinner during which no business was discussed, not an easy thing for
Dulles. They strolled back to the apartment in near silence, and after a
nightcap Allen embraced Mary, holding her close before they went to the bedroom
where disinterested sex provided neither pleasure nor relief. Bancroft,
sensitive as she was, felt sorry for Dulles but there was nothing she could do,
so she made the motions and let him try to dispel his frustration by this brief
physical diversion. At times like this she felt used, and it was not the first
time Allen had treated her this way. There had been a pall over the evening and
after several fitful hours during which neither of them slept, she dressed and
returned to the hotel Schweizerhof across from the train station, where she
managed a few hours of sleep before she arose, showered and took the morning
train back to Zurich.
When Larry awoke, the sun was low in the sky and a gray
non-descript light filled the forest, subdued and without warmth. He shivered
and quickly put on his clothes, for the most part dry but still damp in
patches, the loss of heat from evaporation sucking the warmth from his body.
Even with his clothes on he felt cold and he coughed as he stood and slowly
stretched. His muscles ached from the pounding they had endured, and were
knotted in so many places that the best he could do was to massage the worst
and just hope that the rest would loosen up as he began to move. The short
climb to the top of the ravine produced protests from his arms and legs as he
pulled himself up, while the rest of his body merely grumbled discontentedly in
the background. Winded by the time he reached the top, Larry was nonetheless
thankful that the coughing seemed to have subsided somewhat, although without
his medicine he thought it would be only a matter of time until it returned. As
a matter of fact, the possibility that he would become too incapacitated to
complete the mission crossed his mind, but he quickly pushed it aside, refusing
to consider it. Instead, he took several deep breaths and focused on how he
would reach Munich now that he was without any form of transportation other
than his feet. He had already modified the route once to avoid the area where
the German soldier had been killed, and Larry wasn't sure if he had any other
viable options or, for that matter, whether there was even anything to be
gained in changing his intended path. But his training taught him to think
through all the possibilities, to look at a problem or task from different
points of view and to keep an open, receptive mind. Seemingly inconsequential
details may hold the key to improving the odds. Clearing his head he
concentrated on the terrain maps he had studied before leaving. His new route
was longer but, while he could have made up some time by riding a bit longer
each day or peddling a little faster, without a bike there was no way to get
around the fact that it would take him several extra days. The distance could
be walked in three to four days under good circumstances and if he were in good
shape. Unfortunately, neither was the case. Still, the route he had chosen
remained the best probability. The terrain was not particularly difficult and
it avoided any known concentration of German units. He turned over various
contingencies in his head, attempting to assess the resources this route might
offer as well as the dangers it presented. Food, shelter and, most importantly,
remaining inconspicuous were paramount. Emergency exit strategies came to mind,
in case the mission had to be aborted, but since he knew he carried a death
sentence more certain than any dangers he might face, thoughts of escaping were
easily dismissed.
Having completed his analysis, he paused to listen and
survey his immediate surroundings for intruders, then once more brought his
energy inward and repeated the examination of the situation. The results were
the same. Satisfied, he walked off in the direction of the road, picking his
way carefully, the forest in near darkness, until he reached the edge of the
woods where he could look out on the highway, illuminated by a quarter moon in
a clear sky. He stood there for twenty minutes or so, getting a feel for the
traffic that it carried, before he ventured out and headed northeast towards
Munich, walking along the edge of the macadam where the footing was more secure
than the grassy, litter strewn parkway that bordered the roadway and directly
abutted it with no shoulder on which he might have continued his journey. When
he heard an approaching vehicle he left the hard surface and walked in the
thick grass and weeds, partly to be less conspicuous and partly to prevent some
inattentive driver from bowling him over. Once, as he passed a cluster of
houses and out buildings, he was overtaken by two young men, seemingly in a
hurry to get somewhere. He kept walking, head slightly down, hoping they would
take him for some itinerant worker making his way from one village to the next.
They glanced back once and he nodded briefly at them, not wanting to appear
furtive. When, after another few minutes, they looked his way again, he
expected there might be trouble, but they suddenly turned off the road and
headed to a small farm house about a hundred meters up a side path. Looking
briefly to the side as he passed, Larry could see a light burning in the window
and thought he heard a dog barking. Picking up his pace he tried to put as much
distance as he could between himself and this lone outpost just in case the two
might relay their encounter to someone in the house who thought it odd that a
stranger should be out walking at night, and who felt that it deserved further
investigation. But no hue and cry arose, no pursuing dogs hounded him. This was
a nation that knew it was defeated even if some of its leaders did not. Most of
the populace, especially out here in the country, wanted only to protect and
keep what little they had left. They had strutted their brief march of conquest
and now, with the Russians approaching from the east and the Americans pushing
in from the west, they learned the bitter lesson of just how fleeting was
victory.
An hour or so after sunrise, when traffic began to increase,
Larry made his way purposefully but, he hoped, unobtrusively to the edge of the
woods, someone going to relieve himself or perhaps look for mushrooms. Slipping
into the cool shadows of the forest he found a sheltered area away from any
path, quickly gathered some twigs and vegetation for cover and warmth, eased
his battered, aching body down on the soft forest mat and promptly fell asleep.
He awoke in the mid afternoon and after fifteen minutes of
stretching and massaging the muscle groups that complained the loudest, he
walked further into the woods, exploring the area in a methodical pattern
looking for some kind of sustenance. The water in any of the small streams in
the area was not to be trusted, he knew. Having flowed through miles of
relatively flat land, far from its pristine alpine origin, the water was most
likely unfit to drink. Besides, it was not unusual to find wells or pumps in
the center of some of the small towns and villages along his path and as long
as he paused only briefly for a quick drink no one was likely to pay much
attention. Food, however, was a problem. He was burning a lot of calories and
with no food and little money there were few options left to him. The forest
held little of interest; no growths of wild vegetables, no plants with edible
roots and what game there might be was beyond his capacity to capture. After an
hour the only offering he had for his stomach were a few winter berries and a
handful of mushrooms too covered with soil and debris to eat without rinsing
them first. The berries he ate; the mushrooms went in the rucksack to await a
source of water.
Brushing himself off as best he could, Larry emerged from
the sheltering trees and resumed his trek, the feeble sun at his back as he
lifted one foot then the other, trying not to think beyond the next five
meters.
Lift them up and put them down.
The terrain here in the south of Germany showed much less of
the outward signs of the devastation of war, being less industrialized than
many other parts of the country, and less subject to the savagery of allied
bombing. Elsewhere it was an almost constant rain of destruction now that the
allies had almost unfettered supremacy of the skies over Germany. But even here
there was no escaping the catastrophe of the global conflict, and even if only
a rare five hundred pound bomb fell from the sky, splintering houses and
shredding flesh, the populace was no less injured, no less mutilated by the
decimation of spirit that spread from within, eating away at the heart of a
person until only the exterior shell remained. The star of the Third Reich had
reached its apogee and was now coming full circle. Where before the German
population had watched the hollow eyed faces of the subjugated parade in front
of the cameras, heads lowered in shame, bodies listless like Michelangelo's
Adam awaiting the spark of life from the hand of God, they now looked in the
mirror each morning and saw the reflection of that same humiliation and
despair.
The next day, Larry decided it was probably safer to travel
during the day, and he trudged on, a slow purposeful gait, head slightly bent,
occasionally looking up to glance ahead and to the left and right. He had to be
ever vigilant without attracting undue attention to himself. By mid afternoon
hunger intruded incessantly on his thoughts and he began to consider ways that
he might safely steal food. In front of a once prosperous looking farm a young
boy had a meager array of vegetables and a few eggs laid out on a blanket.
"How much?" asked Larry pointing from one item to the next. The
cheapest were the potatoes and he spent the few Marks that he had on three of
them, putting them into the pack along with the few mushrooms he had gathered.
He continued down the road, heading east and north toward Munich, a city that
was considered relatively safe, suffering less than many other cities from
allied bombing, and probably chosen by Schroeder for that very reason. At the
first sign of twilight Larry moved off the road and edged into the trees that
still bordered portions of his route, anxious not to lose what light remained
of the day while he looked for food. After thirty minutes of searching he was
able to find a source of running water, apparently the remains of an unused or
poorly maintained irrigation ditch fed from some distant stream. There was no
farm or cultivated land nearby and he supposed it was merely a conduit,
unlikely to warrant any activity or attention unless the water ceased to flow.
He found a rather large leaf and rinsed it before placing it on the ground next
to him. Next he removed one potato and the handful of mushrooms, holding them
each in turn under the running water and briskly rubbing them with his hands to
remove the dirt and clean them as best he could. It would be a cold supper for
him tonight; he could not risk starting a fire, a beacon that might attract
unwelcome guests. Nonetheless, the first bite of cold, raw potato received rave
reviews, as did the mushrooms he ate along with it. Constantly listening and
looking for intruders he finished the mushrooms and one of the spuds, forcing
himself not to wolf it all down. After inverting his pack and shaking it out as
best he could, he replaced the remaining potatoes and quickly walked off to
find a more secluded spot to get some sleep.