On a cold March morning in 1915, NYPD Captain Tom Tunney approached the altar of St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and hid behind it, silent and hiding in the shadows of the columns. He was the head of the police bomb squad with a long and enviable career. New York was the target of numerous bombings in the early years of the century, with the city besieged by both anarchists and the Black Hand of Naples. Clashes between workers and capital were also the order of the day. There were cracks almost everywhere, and Tunney decided to smuggle an undercover agent, Frank Baldo, into an anarchist group called the Brescia Circle. Otherwise, he gave him a simple instruction: ‘Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut’.
For months, undercover cop Frank Baldo waited for his chance. He rented a modest apartment, regularly attended meetings where speakers made fiery speeches calling for the sacking of the exploitative government and the punishment of the greedy church, but failed to attract the interest of anarchists. Finally, Carmine “Charlie” Carbone, one of the leaders of the Circle of Brescia, who was without fingers on one hand because they had been torn off when he was making a bomb, invited him to join his group and after a while told him that they were going to set two bombs in St Patrick’s Church. He explained that they would have enough time to return to work to provide an alibi. Baldo immediately informed Tunney.
Three cleaners with buckets and brooms were slowly doing their work in the nave of the church. One of them was on her knees cleaning the stone floor. As she leaned over, a scarf slipped from her shoulders and Tunney noticed that she had a revolver in the current on her chest. He had no time to warn her, for things were happening very fast. At seven o’clock in the morning the first worshippers entered the church. The floor-washer – the Reverend George Barnitz – stood up, picked up a bucket and began to move slowly towards the exit. Bishop Hayes’ homily rang out and the faithful stood up and folded their hands in devotion.
At 6:20, two men, Frank Baldo and his colleague, entered the church, humbly crossed themselves, and sat down in the church pew. Then, in the semi-darkness, they slowly rose, hid behind a pillar, each took a bomb from his pocket, lit the fuses and were about to leave the church. Then the three cleaners got up and quickly jumped to the two bombers. Two of them took a firm grip on each of their own, while the third hurried to the pillar and extinguished the fuses. Tunney knew that he had to arrest Baldo as well and detain him until Carbone and the other members of the Circle of Brescia were also in prison. He told the Bombas they were under arrest and took them to jail in front of the horrified few churchgoers.
The trial was swift and Carbone disappeared into prison for six years, the Brescia Circle disintegrated, other anarchist groups went quiet and there were no more bomb explosions. Tom Tunney breathed a sigh of relief.
Conspiracy organisation
The events that brought Tom Tunney to St Patrick’s Cathedral had their roots in the events of eight months ago. At the time, Count Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador to America, was on his way from New York to Berlin for “consultations”. He would have preferred to spend the summer with his mistress in Newport, where music, parties and sailing abounded. He was convinced that his Foreign Minister, Gottlieb von Jagow, had succumbed to panic. It was true that Archduke Ferdinand and his wife had been shot in Sarajevo in June 1914 by some villains – a very tragic event, to be sure, but not the end of the world. World crises were frequent in those days, and they all ended peacefully. But the reception in Berlin was not what he had expected. Despite his protests, he was received only by Under-Secretary Zimmermann, who coldly told him to report immediately to an address in Königsplatz.
The building on Königsplatz was an unsightly edifice, crawling with soldiers in combat uniforms. Bernstorff was led through numerous corridors to a windowless basement lit only by a wall lamp. A stocky man, with a short haircut, sat at a table and said coldly, “Sit here with Major Walter Nicolai.”
Bernstorff knew who Nicolai was. This was the man who had managed to smuggle his own people into the Russian Tsarist General Staff. He was a mysterious person, known to very few people and did not appear in public. He was the head of the political section of the General Staff, which meant that he was in charge of all German secret operations abroad and was responsible only to the German Kaiser. He only wanted results and was not interested in the means by which he achieved them. “Before the summer is over, there will be war. We need you. You will be in charge of the operations of the American section of Section III. B.”
Bernstorff swallowed his saliva, and Nicolai made himself comfortable in the armchair. He was almost completely satisfied, because he had agents in every European country. After two years of schooling near Berlin, they were sent abroad to look for jobs. They opened newsagents, greengrocers, small hotels, brothels, worked as waiters, teachers, governesses and prostitutes, carefully writing down everything they heard and sending the notes back to Berlin.
But Nicolai made a mistake, and he knew it could cost Germany dearly. He had no agents in America. America was a powerful country that could influence the outcome of a future war, so everything must be done to remain neutral. But if that is not possible, it must be prevented from sending ammunition, arms and food to Britain. So all that is left is to organise a network of agents in America and sabotage American ports. This was to be Bernstorff’s task.
In Europe, however, events have moved with lightning speed. On 27 July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm returned from his summer holiday and met with his ministers. The next day, Austria, to which Germany had pledged support, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia and bombed Belgrade. All the countries of Europe began to mobilise their armies and two million Germans were also preparing for war. On 1 August, Germany invaded neutral Luxembourg and World War I began.
Von Bernstorff found it difficult to cope with the task he was given. Gentlemen, however, do not spy on each other and he made many friends during his six years in America. Now he was returning there on the neglected steamer Noordam, avoiding contact with the other passengers and always clutching under his arm a black pouch containing $150 million worth of German treasury bills, the initial start-up capital for a spy ring.
On 4 August, 700,000 German soldiers in pointed helmets marched into Belgium and Kaiser Wilhelm told the deputies, “We have drawn the sword with a clear conscience and clean hands.” Von Bernstorff quickly got to work after arriving in New York. He regularly appeared in public as a dapper and affable ambassador, attending receptions and dinners, ardently supporting American neutrality, and meeting three colleagues in his office to expand his network of agents.
The young economic attaché Heinrich Albert opened accounts in numerous US banks, transferred money there and laundered it through a number of companies owned by German-American businessmen. In the first year of the war alone, he spent $30 million to finance his agent network.
Captain Karl Boy-Ed was a German naval attaché who studied in detail the US Navy, its strategy and the strength of its coastal defences. The third person whom Ambassador von Bernstorff brought into his circle of conspirators was the arrogant military attaché Franz von Papen, who became responsible for recruiting agents.
The choice of agents who preferred Germany to America was quite varied. There could have been eight million of them, as almost one in ten Americans was born in Germany or had German parents. All over the country, in cities like New York, Chicago, Milwakee, Cincinnati and St. Louis, there were neighbourhoods called Little Germany, and there were 500 newspapers in German. In Berlin, German Foreign Minister von Jagow boasted to the American ambassador: ‘We have half a million German reservists in your country ready to take up arms. America is about to find itself in a civil war.” The Ambassador replied coldly: “We have half a million telephone poles in America on which we can hang your half a million Germans living in America if they rebel against our country.” After the outbreak of World War I, nearly 100 German ships also took refuge in American ports from the pursuit of the mighty British navy, and were no longer allowed to sail by the American authorities.
Von Bernstorff hesitated so long to launch his agent network that events turned against Germany. German troops in Europe, which had penetrated into France in August 1914, lost 220,000 men in just one bloody week at the Battle of the Marne and were pushed back. It became clear that the war would be long and bloody. America had suddenly become extremely strategically important and it was now von Bernstorff’s job to prevent German enemies from getting arms, ammunition, supplies and food from America. So day after day he read the new machine guns sent to him by Major Nicolai:
“Organise sabotage on ships sailing to countries hostile to us, and make work in factories for military production impossible. Demolish the Canadian Pacific Railway in several places.”
Von Bernstorff knew he could waste no more time and that his network of agents had to get to work. He left the field work to von Papen. It was a hurry, because more and more telegrams were coming from Berlin, all of them ending with one question: “When will the agent network start work?”.
The first attempts ended in failure. The Walland Canal on the Canadian side, connecting Lakes Ontario and Erie, was not blown up because the perpetrators were afraid, and the forgery of US passports was exposed after initial success. Fortunately, no one suspected that the German Embassy was involved.
Then von Papen found the man he thought was right for his plans. Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront had long been considered a no-man’s land. It was where dock workers, knife-wielding sailors, desperate prostitutes lived in cheap rooms, cheap beer was poured, heroin and opium were bought, brothels were dirty and neglected, and blood often flowed. Paul Koenig, a supervisor for the German shipping company Hamburg-American Line, was the king of the place. He and his gang of thugs intimidated anyone who tried to stand up to them. Von Papen called him in and asked him if he would work for him. “I would like that very much,” he replied, and kept his word.
Even in the autumn and even in the cold winter of 1914/15, bomb explosions could be heard. They were simple and crudely made, but effective. They were planted on ships by stewards, because Koenig always found enough people to leave bags of bombs under their desks for $25, no questions asked. In New Jersey, the Du Pont gunpowder plant blew up in the middle of the night, a week later three workers died in an explosion at the Wright Chemical Works, and later a fire broke out at Pain Fireworks, and then the Detwiller and Street gunpowder plant exploded, killing several.
Then the ships on the high seas started to burn. The cargo ship Knutford, full of food for England, suddenly caught fire in the hold. The Samland, bound for Liverpool, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic, and when the Devon City caught fire off Nova Scotia, people started to wonder what was going on. A labour dispute? Personal revenge or an insurance scam? Theories abounded.
A difficult task
Police officer Tom Tunney was woken up in the middle of the night by his supervisor’s voice on the phone, ordering him to report to Police Commissioner Woods’ office immediately in the morning, but without anyone noticing his arrival. Commissioner Woods was always difficult to reach. What is behind this summons?
He crawled into the building through the refuse entrance, took the lift to the top floor and entered the room. The smell of expensive cigars hit his nostrils. In addition to Woods, there were three other men in the room who Tunney knew were in the very top echelon of the NYPD. Woods was blunt: “Tom, you were right. So I apologise.”
Five months ago, Tom managed to speak to Woods and express his suspicions that the German secret service was behind the explosions and fires. He had no proof, but he knew that they were linked. He also heard a rumour – just an unverified rumour and nothing else – that someone was offering German-speaking workers $25 for certain non-hazardous work. By the spring of 1915, 70 fires and explosions had already been set and thirty people were dead. He believed that the perpetrators were German agents or American sympathisers.
He then asked Woods to allow him to investigate. “Ah, Tom,” Commissioner Woods said to him, “you’re a good policeman, but you have an overactive imagination. Besides, your job is to prosecute criminals, and let the War Office deal with politics.” Tunney knew that it would be different now, because sitting next to Commissioner Woods was the man in charge of Section V of the British Secret Service, Captain Guy Gaunt.
The British, who were able to read German military codes, knew what von Bernstorff’s duties were and informed the Americans. They were now in a quandary. America was neutral and was making good use of its neutrality. The economy was booming, with European countries ordering large quantities of arms, machinery, raw materials and food. Business was very profitable and there was no sign of economic difficulties. People were busy and generally happy. If a careless step had dragged America into war, this economic idyll would have been over. So cautious steps had to be taken, but the Germans in America cannot do as they please anyway.
But only cautious people can take cautious steps, which is why Tom Tunney was chosen to take on the case. He should select a group of reliable men and hunt down and remove those who are disturbing American neutrality. He set to work at once, first gathering around him detectives who had worked with him in breaking up the Brescia Ring and who spoke German. In the end, he decided on a trio; Valentin Corell, Henry Senff and Henry Barth. He knew that he would first have to tackle the port of New York, which was bustling with ships loading goods destined for Europe. Agents of various European governments were walking around the port, waving bundles of banknotes, ready to pay almost insane prices for the goods they wanted. There were also many, now penniless, German sailors from the ships that had been stranded in American ports at the outbreak of the war.
Tom didn’t know why he first started to see what Paul Koenig, the Hamburg-American Line’s supervisor, was doing in the harbour. He knew nothing about his role and illegal activities, but he was suspicious. The British blockade was supposed to have made it impossible for this German company to operate, but it was still very active in business. He was convinced that Koenig had only a minor role – if any – in the explosions and fires. Nevertheless, he had him monitored and was amazed to learn that, like a true professional, he always shook off his pursuers. Sometimes he would enter the building through the main entrance and then immediately disappear through a side door into the street again, always jumping on the bus at the last moment before the pursuers. But why did he do it if he had a clear conscience, Tom wondered?
He then came up with the idea of tapping his phone calls. Ever since Kansas undertaker Almon Strowger invented a new device in the 1880s, it has been possible to eavesdrop on conversations with little skill. These devices were first used by bankers to eavesdrop on their colleagues. Although it was illegal, the technicians of the city telephone company were always ready to help when they saw a bundle of banknotes.
The connection to Koenig’s phone was arranged within a day, and detectives began to record the conversations, but never found anything unusual. Then one day, an angry voice called him and told him he didn’t deserve to be treated like this, and he started swearing. Koenig quickly hung up, as if he was afraid someone was listening in on the phone conversation. Tom was astonished. Who would dare to scold Koenig and what had he done to make him so angry? He decided that he had to find out who the unknown caller was.
Tom didn’t know that the mysterious caller wasn’t the only one who was unhappy with Koenig. They were furious in Berlin because there had been so few explosions and fires, and they were also unhappy with von Bernstorff. Koenig had failed to undermine American industry and shipping. In Berlin, they found it all very amateurish and lacking the necessary Prussian discipline.
The war dragged on and on, and the problems on the German front kept piling up. Soldiers had to squat in wet and muddy trenches because ammunition was scarce. The artillery was not allowed to fire test shots because there were too few grenades, and the duration of salvos was very poorly measured. The Allies, however, were able to constantly replenish their stockpiles of grenades by importing them from America. The American grenades were also of higher quality and made of real steel, not iron like the German ones. American banks also lent money to the Allies, including Russia, despite the grumbling of the government, because the repayment of the loan was guaranteed by gold reserves. The main lender was J.P. Morgan, and its owner was worshipped as a saviour in London and as the devil in Berlin. “We have to do something about this Morgan”, Nicolai mused.
Germany also needed a new man in America, and Nicolai chose Captain Franz Dagobert Johannes von Rintelen, who had spent three years in New York before the war as a representative of Germany’s second largest bank, the Disconto-Gesellschaft. At the outbreak of war, he was drawn into the intelligence service. Von Rintelen was a younger man, suave, always well dressed, seductive and popular in society, and he still had many friends in America. Major Nicolai told him before he left that, although he would be working with von Bernstorff’s network of agents, he would also have the right to act independently. On 3 April 1915, von Rintelen, under the name Emile Gache and with a Swiss passport, boarded a Norwegian passenger ship in Oslo bound for America.
Telephone tapping
Tom Tunney still didn’t know who it was who had got so angry with Koenig on the phone. So he sent a uniformed police officer to the headquarters of the company that maintained the telephone network, who, although he had no written authority apart from his uniform, nevertheless asked the terrified technician to find out where the phone call had come from on that day and at that time and at that time.
When he got the answer, he was very disappointed. A stranger was on a public phone in a pub in lower Manhattan. Hundreds of people visited the pub every day, and after a mug of beer, they might have decided to make a phone call. Tunney knew he was dealing with a professional who could not be put on ice. But his police orderly was a smart man and decided to get to the bottom of things. He went to the pub, found the barman and asked him if he remembered anyone who had repeatedly come into the pub at a certain hour just to make a phone call. “Yes, I remember him. Sometimes he does come and I don’t think he lives far away, around the corner in fact.”
On the same day, detectives searched the neighbourhood of the pub, knocking on doors, asking discreet questions, and found out that George Fuchs, an unemployed German immigrant, was living there. But what should they do now? An arrest would not have solved anything, because Fuchs would probably have kept quiet. But then Tunney had an idea. Someone must offer the unemployed German a job to save him from social hardship. This will keep him under control and waiting for him to make a mistake.
George Fuchs, who had already registered as a jobseeker, soon received a letter from an unknown telephone company offering him a job requiring German language skills. He took the bait, Detective Corell played the role of recruiter and Fuchs accepted. “It’s nice to have a job again after I lost my last one,” he said. Corell feigned indifference and asked, “And what was that job?” Fuchs hesitantly replied, “With that Westphalian fool Paul Koenig.”
Corello’s heart skipped a beat, but he made no reply. They went to the pub and after the third mug of beer, Fuchs got talking and said that Koenig had once visited him and asked him if he would visit the Welland Canal in Canada and make some sketches of the locks, ask about the guards and how much traffic there was on the canal. He wrote a report on all this and Koenig then hired him. They planned the demolition of this important canal between America and Canada. Fuchs was also to hire men to take the explosives across the border to Canada by boat.
And then their friendship ended. Koenig was a ruthless employer and punished any lateness to work by deducting a full day’s earnings. Fuchs complained and Koenig fired him. A series of angry phone calls followed, and Tom Tunney now found out about them, providing enough evidence to arrest Koenig. But he still didn’t know who was planting the bombs and setting the fires. So there must have been more enemy agents at work. He decided to pursue Koenig, hoping he would make a mistake, and used the money to buy Fuchs’ silence.
Von Rintelen and his luggage were standing on a dock in New York harbour. Malvin Rice, a member of Du Pont’s board of directors, was not waiting for him, as he had been promised in Berlin. He was to hand over a large sum of money to buy explosives. Von Rintelen waited a little longer and then took a taxi to the German Club in Central Park, where – again according to Berlin – the naval attaché, Captain Karl Boy-Ed, and the military attaché, Franz von Papen, were regular guests. He did meet them, but the meeting was very cold. They assured him that they did not need him because their network of agents was working perfectly well and they did not intend to listen to his instructions. All right, von Rintelen thought, I will do it myself and show everyone what Prussian precision is all about.
In a city he knew well, he began to live a double life. By day, he wandered around the harbour in wrinkled clothes and worn shoes, watching British, American and Russian ships loading ammunition and equipment, and making strange acquaintances. He told those he trusted that the induction was over and that they had to get down to serious work for the Fatherland, as the Emperor himself demanded it of them. At night, dressed in elegant evening clothes, he would attend parties, receptions and dinners, saying that he had come to New York just to have fun. Invitations to parties rained down, so that sometimes he was not able to attend them all.
Of course, he also met von Bernstorff. The meeting was cold, almost hostile. Even the ambassador told him immediately that he did not need him. Von Rintelen replied that the Emperor himself had sent him and that he should not try to stop him. Then he turned and marched out of the embassy.
Cigar box
A few weeks later, they set up E.V. Gibbons Inc. – Importers and Exporters, based in downtown New York. Max Weiser was sitting in the first room with his secretary. Both were reliable people who were involved in small import/export business. In the other room, von Rintelen worked, receiving and dropping off guests, announced and unannounced.
One day, Dr Walter Scheele, a chemist by profession and a former agent of the pre-war Department III, came to him unannounced and presented him with a device as big as a cigar box and covered with a copper barrier. On one side of the barrier was picric acid, on the other sulphuric acid. Both of them were feeding the copper barrier and when they came together, a strong flame erupted. This could have happened in a few hours, or it could have happened in a few days or even weeks, depending on the thickness of the barrier.
Von Rintelen’s eyes lit up and the next day they tested the device in the woods of New Jersey. The flames were so intense that they jumped away, terrified. Von Rintelen was satisfied that he finally had something in his hands that worked and left no trace. If ship fires had occurred on the high seas, days or even a week after the ships had left American ports, who could blame Germany for them?
He quickly handed Scheele a hefty cheque and sent him to his laboratory in Hoboken, with the task to start making his “cigar boxes”, while he set about finding suitable people to put them on ships. First, he contacted some of the captains of the German ships interned in New York harbour, who were to supervise the operations. He then met a group of Irishmen who welcomed him with open arms. He knew that they hated the English passionately and were fighting for the independence of their island.
Then Dr Scheele informed him that his laboratory was too small to produce metal boxes. After much deliberation, von Rintelen met Friedrich der Grosse, the captain of the German ship, and he assured him that they could be made on his ship during the night hours and then transported to Dr Scheele to be fitted with acids. This was extremely dangerous work. Just a small wrong move and Dr Scheele could have been blown up with the laboratory. That is why the work here was very slow.
The cigar-bomb boxes were then stored in von Rintelen’s office. They had to be brought on board within a fortnight, otherwise the acid would have penetrated the copper barrier and the bomb would have exploded in von Rintelen’s office or on board the ship. Fortunately, the Irish soon informed him that they had begun loading ammunition and grenades on board the British ship Phoebus and that she would sail in a week’s time. Von Rintelen made up his mind; this would be his first target. So, while the ammunition was being loaded, the Irish hid several cigar boxes in the corners of the ship, the ship sailed and von Rintelen started counting the days. Finally, he read in a newspaper that a fire had broken out on the Phoebus, bound for Arkhangelsk. The ship was unseaworthy and had to be towed to Liverpool. The first victory and many more to come, von Rintelen was convinced.
Tom Tunney was still pursuing Koenig, but had not learned anything new. Suddenly, the number of fires on ships skyrocketed. What was going on, he wondered? The French ambassador gave him the answer. Four unexploded bombs were discovered among the sacks of sugar on board the Kirkoswald after docking in Marseille. They were removed and deactivated by the police and sent back to New York to Ambassador Jean-Jules Jusserand, who handed them over to the New York police, who handed them over to Tom Tunney. Tom bristled. The acid had already dried up, but the bombs were obviously made to work and for some reason the copper barrier had withstood this journey.
He found that the bombs were very precisely made and used the best materials. They must have been made by an engineer, chemist or scientist who had enough money, because the material was very expensive. The fires always occurred only on Allied ships, which could only mean that German agents were behind them. He called his assistant to make a list of the cargo carried by the ships on which the fire had broken out. It turned out that they were all carrying sugar, which was highly flammable. So the bombs had arrived on the ships with the sugar wrappers, they were in bags of sugar. It was clear to him that only the master of the barge carrying the bags of sugar on board could know which ship was bound for England. The noose began to tighten.
As a rule, sugar sacks were loaded onto ships at night, when there was less traffic in the port. Months dragged on, but police checks showed nothing. Then the police noticed that a boat would repeatedly creep up to the barge at night, and then the two would disappear into the darkness together before a speedboat could approach them. One day, five barge captains were arrested and, to their surprise, they all confessed to selling sacks of sugar to pirate smugglers in their boats at night and making good money. They knew nothing about the bombs.
Tom was wrong and admitted it to the Police Commissioner. He just told him not to give up, but to review his procedures and see what he had missed. After a careful check, Tom found that he had not overlooked anything. He then received a call from the French military attaché, Captain Martyn, asking if he would like information about someone who wanted to buy a small quantity of explosives from an exporter known to him for testing purposes. “What kind?” Tom asked and the attaché told him it was trinitrotoluene. Tom Tunney jumped as this was known in everyday conversation as the powerful explosive TNT.
The alleged buyer lived in Manhattan under the name Paul Sieb. When Sieb got the TNT, he was arrested and told that he had to hand it over to a Robert Fay in New Jersey, but he did not know why he was going to use it. The chain of participants in the purchase of TNT indicated that the end user was a professional who was very concerned about his own safety. They pursued Robert Fay, but he was cunning, took his car and drove out of town to a nearby wood. There he got out, left the car and disappeared into the trees. The detectives hoped he would return from the woods, waited until almost midnight, and then left, convinced that he had disappeared.
In the last few days, von Rintelen had not slept well because he had the feeling that he was being watched. He learned that the police were snooping around the port, taking an interest in the sugar loading and asking workers about strange things. But Tom Tunney did not know about it, and von Rintelen was just haunted by his imagination, an integral part of the life of any secret agent.
Unbeknown to Tom Tunney, von Rintelen had fallen into the trap of Section V of British Intelligence, headed in New York by Guy Gaunt. The British were listening in on the former Mexican President, General Victoriano Huerta, who was in New York. Von Rintelen promised him all German help in regaining power in Mexico, provided that he broke diplomatic relations with America and declared war on the country. The British, who had been eavesdropping on the Mexican, thus caught the German spy. It is not clear why von Rintelen was interfering in a matter which concerned exclusively diplomacy, but Gaunt did warn Tunney about von Rintelen.
“But what am I supposed to do with a German spy talking to Mexicans?” Tunney wondered, knowing that he had no solid evidence to arrest him, as America did not have a specific law against espionage at that time. But it ended badly for Huerta. He was arrested at the US-Mexico border and sent to prison, where he contracted jaundice and died.
Von Rintelen was just returning from a party when a man walked past him and whispered, “You are being watched.” As he was returning to the Yachting Club in a taxi, he saw that he was indeed being followed by a black limousine. Nevertheless, he decided that his next target would be the largest ammunition and grenade depot in America. On a semi-abandoned site in New Jersey, freight trains were bringing in explosives and grenades day and night, storing them and then shipping them out from the docks. If he had managed to get it into the air, it would have been the greatest success of his life.
Even so, the originally small operation to start fires in New York has spread to the whole of America. Ships departing from the ports of Baltimore, New Orleans and San Francisco were also set on fire. The execution of these exploits was the responsibility of his small team of five reliable men loyal to Germany. But he was most proud of his new destruction device – a small box filled with TNT that could be easily attached to the ship’s stern. With each turn of the rudder, a metal rod in the crate wound the trigger mechanism until the rudder blew up. And the inventor of this device was none other than Robert Fay.
Now Tunney had two leads; Robert Fay with the device to destroy the ship’s rudder and von Rintelen with his cigar-bomb box. Although Fay had disappeared, Detective Barnitz spotted him again outside the hotel where he was staying. He immediately called for five more detectives and they started to follow Fay. Fay took a bus out of town to the woods where he had disappeared a few days earlier. Barnitz followed him and saw him enter an abandoned cabin in the woods, come out with a wrapper in his hand, unwrap it, tear off a small piece of what was inside, put it on the floor and hit it with a hammer. It sounded as if he had fired a gun. He had tested the TNT, Barnitz now knew, jumped out of cover and, gun in hand, told him he was under arrest.
But Fay was not confused: ‘Just take it easy, we can talk. I’ll give you 50,000 dollars if you let me go.” Barnitz asked him, “And where do you keep the money?” Fay reached into his wallet, pulled out a $100 bill and said, “That’s it for now, the rest you can get in town.” Barnitz knew his mission was successfully completed, because in the meantime other detectives approached and witnessed the attempted bribery of an official. This was the only reason why Fay could be charged, as the possession of TNT itself was not yet a crime. He was taken to a nearby police station.
Fay spoke at the first hearing. He was an engineer at the start of the war, and instead of sitting in the tunnels listening to the grenades over his head, he offered his services to German intelligence. Because he had been in America for a few years before the war and knew how to build bombs, they said to him, “Go west across the channel”. Yes, he admitted, he was the one who made a bomb that could be strapped to the stern of a ship, yes, in his garage there are 25 pieces of explosives, 400 fuses and 200 bomb shells, a map of the harbour and a German military revolver. However, he has not planted any bombs himself, and he does not know the meaning of the cigar box that he is constantly shown. He will not betray his colleagues because he has family and relatives in Germany.
He finally broke down after a year, confessed to everything and was sentenced to seven years in prison. But despite his arrest, fires still broke out on ships, and with increasing frequency. Tunney knew that Fay was not the one who was so carefully organising terrorist actions. It must be someone else.
J.P. Morgan must die
While von Bernstorff was struggling with his network of agents in neutral America, Erich Muenter was almost getting used to life in the dusty Mexican town of El Oro, 150 kilometres south of Mexico City. The former Harvard professor fled America years ago, wanted by the police for the murder of his wife. He left his two children behind, justifying his actions in a letter to a friend by saying that his wife’s coldness had failed to satisfy him sexually and explaining that his family life, with its responsibilities, had also got on his nerves.
He changed his appearance, shaved off his moustache and tried to hide his German accent. He joined the ranks of many Americans who were fleeing something and hoping to find a safe haven in Mexico. He took a job as a stenographer in the town’s mining company, chose a new name, Frank Holt, and waited to see what fate would bring. He waited a few years, then made a plan. He would return to America, go to some insignificant college, study and slowly climb the social ladder.
In 1908, he moved to Dallas and enrolled to study German. When he graduated, everyone told him he was going to have a pretty good career, even though he was no longer the youngest. He was still Frank Holt, and he still had a yellowed newspaper article under a cover at the bottom of his suitcase, entitled The Mad Professor Still on the Run. He ended up marrying the timid Leona, moved to Oklahoma and then to Virginia, where he taught German as an assistant professor, and in 1913 got a job at Cornell, lecturing German at an Ivy League university and working on a dissertation on the influence of Shakespeare on French and German literature.
But Holt slept poorly and thought more and more about the danger his homeland was in. How unfair that Germany has to fight almost alone while the Allies are easily supplied with everything they need in America. But the motherland must be helped! One night he made up his mind. He handed his wife $6000 and sent her to her parents in Dallas, promising to come and see her and the children soon, but there was still some work to be done. Then he got on a train with $20 in his pocket and headed for New York.
The German intelligence service has always stuck to the rule that it never recruited collaborators who turned themselves in. But in 1915, the situation was such that this rule had to be broken. They never found out when and how Frank Holt contacted her and presented his daring plan. There were many reasons why von Bernstorff might have refused to cooperate with him. If he had failed, it would have been a black mark on his career, and if he had succeeded, the audacity of the act could have plunged America into war with Germany. He therefore decided to give Holt only money, weapons and a few tips, and then let him do as he knew how.
So Holt spent the whole of June 1915 working out a plan and gathering information for his action. Then he rented a small bungalow on Long Island, because his doctor had recommended the clean country air. Later, he bought some dynamite and told the salesman he needed it to remove some large tree stumps with deep roots from the ground. He had to wait for several days before two boxes of dynamite arrived in a special wagon at the nearby railway station.
Glen Cove was known for its beautiful estates and luxurious country houses. But everyone agreed that Matinicock Point, the house at the end of the small East Island peninsula, was special because it was where banker J.P. Morgan spent his summer holidays. The local taxi driver told Holt everything he knew about him and his habits. Holt now knew enough, he took the train and went to Washington.
On 2 July, the US Senate was not in session on Capitol Hill, so tourists were able to see the building. On the first floor, there was a telephone exchange in a corner with a series of telephone booths reserved for senators. Holt looked around. There was no one around. He quickly slid the small travel case he was carrying under the switchboard. Inside was a bomb. Then he hurried out of the Capitol and walked nearby.
At 23:23, a powerful explosion rocked the Capitol building. Plaster fell off, large holes were punched in the walls, the doors were thrown off their hinges and the reception hall was in ruins. No one died, but America suffered its first real terrorist attack. Holt hurried to catch the last train to New York.
The next day he went to Glen Cove and took a taxi to J.P. Morgan’s brick house. He was carrying a small suitcase. Those were the days when rich people did not hire security guards and bodyguards to prevent strangers from entering their homes. Holt rang the bell and told the servant he wanted to speak to his old friend J.P. Morgan. He would not let him in, so he pulled a revolver from his pocket and threatened him.
“Mr Morgan is in the library,” lied the frightened servant, who knew that his master was having breakfast on the other side of the house with the British ambassador. Holt hurried into the library, but there was no one there. So he had been tricked. Meanwhile, the servant had already disappeared and called for help, and Holt found himself alone. Morgan had already run upstairs with the English ambassador, asking what was going on and whether the house might have been broken into.
Jane Morgan, the banker’s wife, standing with her husband outside the bedroom door, was the first to see Holt, revolver in hand, with her two children, Frances and Henry, standing terrified behind his back. Morgan pushed his wife away and rushed towards Holt, who opened fire. The first bullet hit him in the abdomen and the second lodged in his thigh. Blood stains appeared on his clothes. Holt fired twice more, but the revolver jammed. Despite his wounds, Morgan began to wrestle with Holt, knocking him to the ground and knocking the revolver out of his hand. “I’ve got dynamite in my pocket!” cried Holt, before he was seized by the servants, who ran in and banged his head against the floor until he was unconscious.
Morgan was put on the bed, picked up the phone, called Wall Street and said in a strangled voice: “I’ve been shot in the stomach. Send the best doctor.”
Matinicock Point was in a state of obsession. All Long Island police surrounded Morgan’s house, as no one knew if the assassin might have associates. Morgan’s injuries were serious but not fatal, as the bullet did not damage his spine. Holt gave a written statement at the police station that he wanted to persuade Morgan and America to stop sending ammunition and military equipment to Europe, as they would be responsible for the deaths of many European brothers.
Tom Tunney just sighed when he was asked to investigate Holt’s motive for the attempted murder of J.P. Morgan on top of everything else. Then, by comparing Holt’s movements over the last few days, he quickly concluded that Holt was the mastermind behind the Capitol explosion. It also soon became clear that Holt was none other than Erich Muenter, the murderer of his wife, who had been wanted for years. But something was still not clear to him. Holt himself was not capable of making this bomb. Who had made it, who had given it to him, and where was the rest of the dynamite hidden?
Holt finally told them that the dynamite was hidden in a public warehouse, and when they counted the dynamite sticks, they found that 160 were missing. Could there be another explosion in the pipeline? As Tom pondered this, he was informed that Holt was dead. Taking advantage of the inattention of his prison guard, he dove over the fence and landed on the concrete floor below.
Break-up of the agent network
Von Rintelen was shocked when he was shown a telegram from Berlin saying that he had to return to Germany immediately. How is that, when everything is running like clockwork? Nevertheless, he obeyed the order and on 3 August 1915 he boarded the Noordam, bound for Rotterdam. But like all ships from America, his had to land in England and all passengers had their passports checked. Von Rintelen was not afraid of being inspected because he was travelling on a Swiss passport and under a foreign name. However, two British officers on guard with fixed bayonets approached him and asked him to come with them. At that moment, he saw through the ruse.
The telegram that called him back to Berlin was a fake and was not sent from Berlin at all. But who forged it, he did not know. He did not know that it was Tom Tunney who had approached Guy Gaunt, the head of Section V of the British Security Service in New York, and asked him for a favour. He had no evidence against von Rintelen, but the British knew the codes between Berlin and their embassy in America and could forge a telegram. Thus Tunney was rid of at least one opponent.
Heinrich Albert, the German economic attaché, was returning from a meeting. He stood hesitantly in the street, debating whether to take a taxi to his office, which costs $1.25, or take the much cheaper tram. But a taxi was too much of a luxury, he was convinced, even though he had $60 million worth of bills in his safe, so he decided to take the tram. It was hot and steamy, his eyes just glued together of their own accord after lunch, and he squinted. He woke up when the tram stopped noisily at his stop and he quickly jumped onto the pavement. He had forgotten his bag, which he always carried with him, on the seat. Of course, he hadn’t noticed that Detective Senff had followed him onto the tram and had now imperceptibly approached his seat and squeezed his bag under his jacket. Senff looked out of the window and saw Albert running helplessly after the tram, waving his arms.
The detective got off at the next stop and called his boss. Meanwhile, the German naval attaché Boy-Ed tried to calm down the agitated Albert, saying that thefts happen.
President Wilson has never seen more incriminating documents for Germany than those presented to him. Germany had bought the Bridgeport Projectile munitions factory in Connecticut for $2 million and was taking orders from British agents which it never intended to fulfil. It negotiated the purchase of one of America’s largest explosives plants, the Aetna Powder Company, it wanted to buy the Union Metallic Cartdidge Plant, it bought ingredients to make war gases, it bribed trade union leaders to organise strikes in the arms factories, it paid journalists, cotton manufacturers and Irish organisations to support the German cause.
President Wilson was at a loss as to what to do, still believing that the time was not ripe for America to enter the war. So he hesitantly told the Secretary of State to sort things out and left. He sent most of the documents to the editor of the New York Times, who was a personal friend of his, and asked him not to publish the source. The scandal was indescribable, especially after Guy Gaunt had somewhere dug up a picture of the married Ambassador Bernstorff in a bathing suit, holding a lady round the waist and grabbing her breasts with the other hand. But Tom Tunney was not interested in these piquancies. He feared that a wave of terror would sweep the whole country.
Across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan is the city of Honoken, then called Little Bremen. Only German was spoken and only German newspapers were sold, and the streets were lined with German sailors whose ships were interned in the harbour. There was no particular reason why Tom Tunney sent Detectives Barnitz and Barth to mingle with the inhabitants and eavesdrop. They might just hear something clever.
They returned three weeks later, bringing with them a panicked Charles von Kleist. Two weeks ago, they met him in a pub, had a beer and became friends. He told them that he was completely penniless. He worked in a chemical analysis laboratory, but Dr Scheele refused to give him the money he earned. “You know,” Kleist became confidant, “he doesn’t do analysis at all, he does bombs. They bring metal tubes to him, he fills them with explosives and the bomb is made.” And the detective: “What are you talking about bombs. You’ve had too much to drink.” Kleist got upset and invited them home, took a shovel and dug a bend in the garden. He unwrapped it and the two detectives looked at the cigar-bomb box in surprise. They told Kleist that the best thing to do was to go to New York together, visit Dr Scheele and recover his money. He agreed and they took him straight to the police station.
The hearing was chaired by Tom Tunney and Kleist soon spoke. Ernst Becker, the chief electrician on the Friedrich der Grosse, played a major role, while Captain Wolpert, who was the chief superintendent of the Atlas Line in Hoboken, planted the bombs. Boniface, the lawyer, provided them with the exact schedule of the ships and cargoes that would sail for Europe.
The police immediately swung into action and arrested everyone whose names came up during the interrogation. Then the name Steinmetz, which Tunney had heard for the first time, also came up. This German agent was supposed to have come to America carrying anthrax and horse-snot germs. However, because of the long journey, the germs were already dead and did not work. “Do any of you still deal with these and similar germs?” asked Tunney anxiously, but he got no reply.
On 3 December 1915, US Secretary of State Lansing summoned von Bernstorff to his office and told him that, in view of recent discoveries, Franz von Papen and Karl Boy-Ed were undesirable persons and must leave America as soon as possible. The same night, Tom Tunney decided to arrest Paul Koenig. His apartment was searched and it was discovered that he had been writing in a diary. Tom Tunney learned everything he did not know. He also found out who else had been sending Koenig all the information about the ships bound for Europe.
Friedrich Schleindl was a clerk at the City National Bank and had access to all Allied telegrams to the bank concerning the purchase and transport of ships to Europe. He was paid $25 a week to forward them to Koenig. Koenig then passed this information on to von Rintelen.
On 1 February 1917, Germany announced that it would attack any ship bound for Allied ports with submarines without warning. Sudden fires on Allied ships ceased to occur and England was supplied with American goods and ammunition without hindrance. America then broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and Guy Gaunt told Tunney: “Von Bernstorff is going home. I will drink it tonight.”
Meanwhile, British intelligence has decrypted a telegram sent by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt. In it, he proposed a military alliance between Mexico, Japan and Germany to attack the United States. In return for this favour, Mexico would get back the lost territories of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. This was a drop in the ocean and on 2 April 1917, US President Wilson declared war on Germany.
Tom Tunney is awarded the title of Police Inspector for his successful work against German agents. He was aware of how unprepared America was for terrorist actions in those months. A well-organised German network was causing great damage to America, with ships burning, people dying, factories burning and ammunition depots going up in flames. US intelligence services, including the military, were disorganised and at odds with each other, and the task of saving the country from terrorism fell on the shoulders of Tom Tunney and his group. Fortunately, they did their job perfectly.
