Part 2

When the men tailing him reported in that he was in the Hamburg-American Building, and probably in his office, we cut in on his wire, and posted an officer at our receiver to take down all conversations which passed. The outgoing calls were disappointing. Koenig was no fool--or rather was a highly specialized fool--and was not careless enough to give information of aid and comfort to the enemy through such a gregarious medium as a public telephone wire. We listened for a long while, in vain....

Then came a call which offered possibilities. A man’s voice told Paul Koenig that it thought Paul Koenig was a “bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” and added other more lurid remarks. The conversation was short, but while it lasted indicated that someone was not pleased with Mr. Koenig. Within the next few days the same voice called “P. K.” again and told him several things it had forgotten to mention, all pointing to the fact that the owner of the unknown voice had been misused.

We hunted up the number from which the disgruntled calls had been made. It was a public telephone pay-station in a saloon. Crucial events can almost always be traced to some trivial circumstances--the poem “for the want of a nail the battle was lost” is an illustration of what I mean. We are not dealing here with possibilities but with facts, yet I cannot sometimes help speculating on the extent to which German atrocities might have been carried in New York and Canada, if we had not found a bartender with a good memory in that saloon. Yes, he remembered a fellow who had come in there at certain times to telephone. Yes, he came in once in a while. Didn’t know his name, but thought he lived around the corner at such and such a number. At that number we found out the man’s name--the bartender’s description had been accurate. The name was George Fuchs.

So to George Fuchs we mailed a letter, typed on the stationery of a wireless telegraph company, suggesting that we had a position for which we believed he was the proper man, and that we would be pleased to have him call at the office of the company, at an appointed hour, to discuss the work and wages. Fuchs did not show up at the appointed hour, which disturbed the plans momentarily, but when he did arrive, he was greeted cordially by an executive of the “company” who proceeded to get acquainted with the applicant. The manner of the wireless person was so disarming, his German was so good, and his certainty that Fuchs was the man for the job so taken for granted that the two adjourned to a nearby restaurant. (Detective Corell had a very good working knowledge of German.)

“Who did you say you were working for?” Corell asked, across the crater of Fuchs’s glass of beer.

“That bull-headed Westphalian Dutchman,” Fuchs sputtered. “He is some relative of my mother’s. She was a Prussian, though, _Gott sei dank!_”

Corell laughed at the right time, and in the conversation which ensued drew out the man’s grievance against Koenig. In September Mr. and Mrs. Koenig had paid a visit to the Fuchs household in Niagara Falls, N. Y., where Fuchs lived with his mother in the Lochiel Apartments. The wonders of the Falls had received proper attention from the strangers, and Koenig showed some interest in the Welland Canal, the channel through which shipping circumnavigates the Falls. He said that the waterway was closely guarded, otherwise he would like to go over and have a look at it, and suggested, as a convenient substitute, that Fuchs go over to Canada and take some snapshots of the locks for him.

“Why don’t you go yourself?” Fuchs asked.

“They would probably pick me up if I did,” Koenig replied.

“Well, that’s just why I won’t take any camera over there with me,” Fuchs rejoined. “But I’ll go if you want a report.”

The bargain was closed. Fuchs, Koenig said, was the very man, as he was known on the Canadian side as George Fox, was an American by birth, and would not excite suspicion. So at 7 P. M. of September 30--slightly more than a year since Horst von der Goltz and Captain von Papen had made their first abortive attempt to destroy the Canal--“Fox” registered at the Welland House in Welland, close by the waterway. There he spent the night. The next morning he went to Port Colborne, the Lake Erie mouth of the Canal, and during the balance of the day followed its course northward, making mental notes of the shipping and the construction and guarding of the locks. By night he had reached Thorold, where he found a room, jotted down his observations, and spent the night. The next day he covered the balance of the 27 miles to Lake Ontario, noting the number of locks, and the fact that there were two or three armed soldiers on guard at each. With his head full of good ideas for bad plans he reached Niagara Falls again that night--October 2.

Koenig was enthusiastic over his report, but when Fuchs had written it down he decided that it would be hazardous to have such a document found on his person. “Mail it to me at Post Office Box 840 in New York. Sign it just ‘George’--nobody would know who that was even if they did find it.” He went back to New York. Fuchs heard nothing from him for a few days, except that action had been deferred. Then the country cousin began to importune the city cousin, and Koenig suggested that he come down to New York to work for him. Which Fuchs did, and on October 8 was placed on the payroll of the “Bureau of Investigation” at eighteen dollars a week. Koenig arranged that Fuchs was to hire men who would row a boatload of dynamite across the upper Niagara River to smuggle it into Canada, and he had meanwhile arranged with two others, Richard Emil Leyendecker, his chief assistant, and Fred Metzler, his secretary, to carry out a definite plan to sever the main artery of lake traffic by blowing it to pieces.

By Sunday, November 7, Fuchs had been occupied in several odd jobs for Koenig, such as spying on outward-bound cargoes along the waterfront, doing special guard duty at Dr. Albert’s office, and going over to Hoboken to frighten a poor German agent named Franz Schulenberg, who had come on from the west to collect money from von Papen. On that Sunday he was sick and did not report for duty. He asked for his regular pay, however, and Koenig refused it, doubting that Fuchs had really been too ill to report, and holding that illness should never interfere with service to the Fatherland. This created bad blood between the two. On November 22 Koenig discharged him for “constant quarrelling with another operative, drinking, and disorderly habits,” and announced that he would not be paid for his services of the previous day, when he had refused to go on duty in a river-launch. That $2.57 due Fuchs had poisoned his soul against Koenig, and he had grown so bitter that the result we already know--evidence was at last in our hands for an arrest.

It was a case for federal prosecution, obviously, so we called in Captain William Offley and Agent Adams, an able operative of the Department of Justice. A few hours later Koenig was placed under arrest. He resented the intrusion, and snapped to Barnitz: “Anyone who interferes with Germans or the German Government will be punished!” His house up-town was searched and that search disclosed, among other matters, an item which is unquestionably one of the richest prizes of the spy hunt in America.

It was Paul Koenig’s little black memorandum book--a loose-leaf affair, scrupulously typewritten, and brought down to within a day of his arrest. A fanatic on office efficiency might have conceived it, but none but a German would have kept it posted up. For it told the story of his Bureau of Investigation with a devotion to detail almost religious.

The Hamburg-American Line probably never thought that when they assigned a shrewd ruffian named Paul Koenig to investigate an alleged case of wharfage graft in Jersey City away back in 1912 they had established a “Bureau of Investigation.” But Paul Koenig knew better. He surrounded his lightest activities with an air of mystery and efficiency true to the best of amateur-detective tradition. He called his first case by a mystic number, he conferred the ominous alias of “xxx” upon himself, hired a man named Fred Metzler as his secretary, and convinced himself that he and Metzler were a bureau. In the light of the all-absorbing importance which his bureau held for him, we are not surprised (and we must not smile), when we see chronicled neatly in his little black book that on May 13, 1913, he rented a room at 45 Broadway for “new offices,” on May 24 his first private telephone was installed, on Nov. 19 a steel cabinet was purchased for the files of the department, on May 28 of 1914 the adjoining room was added to Room 82, and Room 82 was converted into a _private_ office for the chief, and on July 14 a new safe was purchased and placed in the office. It may be that the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand had something to do with that last item, for it is certain that the Hamburg-American Line knew that war was coming well in advance of the declaration. At any rate, we find that on July 31, 1914, before England and Germany had actually gone to war, and on the same day that the director of the Hamburg-American in New York received instructions from Berlin that war was coming and that he was expected to supply German naval vessels in American waters--on that day Paul Koenig began his war duties by placing a special guard on all the piers and vessels of the Line in New York Harbor.

Up to this time the cases Koenig had handled were matters of shipping--stowaways, fires, steerage rates, charges against ships’ officers. On August 22 he became a German military spy. We find it entered in his own words:

“Aug. 22. German Government, with consent of Dr. Buenz, entrusted me with the handling of a certain investigation. Military attaché von Papen called at my office later and explained the nature of the work expected. (Beginning of Bureau’s services for Imperial German Government.)”

The “certain investigation” consisted in sending two men to Canada to spy on the Valcartier training camp where the first Canadian Expeditionary Force was being mobilized, and to report to the military attaché their state of readiness, in order that he might try some means of keeping them at home if it were not already too late. What von Papen had in mind was dynamiting the Welland Canal; it failed, but the case is of momentary interest to us here because it marked the beginning of a service on Koenig’s part which grew very fast and extended in many and diverse directions.

The Bureau was divided into three parts, the pier division, the special detail division, and the secret service division, or “Geheimdienst.” No one was allowed to forget that P. K. was head of all three. In his rules and regulations he records, among other gems, these:

“#2. In order to safeguard the secrets and affairs of the department prior to receiving a caller, hereafter my desk must be entirely cleared of all papers excepting those pertaining to the business in hand.

“#9. All persons related to me, however distant, will be barred from employment with the Bureau of Investigation. This does not apply to my wife.

“#6. It has been found detrimental to the discipline of the Office to invite direct employees of the Bureau to my residence or other place socially, or to accept their invitations, therefore this practice must cease. This ruling does not apply to agents of the Secret Service Division nor to direct employees if engaged with me on an operation which requires either social entertainment or travelling.”

He had an elaborate and complicated outlay of badges, shields and photographic identification cards for each operative, for which each operative stood the expense. His meticulous attention to detail, and the diligent caution which he observed at all times is indicated in a list of aliases which he set forth in the memorandum book. In 26 cases listed he used 26 different names--none of them his own. For example, in what he called “D-Case 250,” in dealing with an operative named “Sjurstadt” Koenig was known to Sjurstadt only as “Watson”; in D-Case 316, when he negotiated with his agent von Pilis (a propagandist who was later interned, by the way) Koenig was “Bode.” He devised a new name for himself for every new case, and sometimes used two or three names in dealing with different individuals in the same case. Naturally a man of as many identities as Koenig had to keep a record of who he was, and so his list of aliases furnished the government with an excellent catalogue of the pies in which he had his tough fingers. Each of his own employees in the Secret Service Division was known to him in three ways: by his Christian (or rather, his German) name, by a number, and by a special pair of initials. Thus Richard Emil Leyendecker, the art-woods dealer associated with him in the Welland Canal affair, was Secret Agent Number 6, known as “B. P.”; Otto Mottola, a member of the New York Police Department was Secret Agent Number 4, known as “A. S. (formerly A. M.).” The connections of the bureaus were mentioned in his reports by numbers, the Imperial German Embassy being 5000, von Papen being 7000, Boy-Ed 8000, and Dr. Heinrich Albert, the commercial attaché of the embassy, 9000.

In the same way he disguised his meeting places. In his instructions to the Secret Service Division we find this:

“Operatives of the S. S. Division when receiving instructions from me or through the medium of my secretary as to designating meeting places will understand that such instructions must be translated as follows:

“_For week Nov. 28 to Dec. 4 (midnight)._

“A street number in Manhattan named over the telephone means that the meeting will take place 5 blocks further uptown than the street mentioned.

“Pennsylvania R. R. Station means Grand Central Depot.

“Kaiserhof means General Post Office, in front of P. O. Box 840.

“Hotel Ansonia means café in Hotel Manhattan (basement).

“Hotel Belmont means at the bar in Pabst’s Columbus Circle.

“Brooklyn Bridge means bar in Unter den Linden.”

Each week he rearranged this code, so that anyone who thought that cutting in on a telephone call meant knowing where Koenig was bound was not likely to find him there. The man knew his German New York, and had numerous convenient meeting places where he could meet an agent and converse undisturbed, such as a German hotel at Third Avenue and 42d Street, or a German bar at Broadway and 110th Street, or a lodging house at South and Whitehall Streets, near the lower tip of the island, or a saloon connected with a Turkish bath in Harlem. He not only made it almost impossible to trace him by tapping his own wire, but his operatives were instructed to call him from pay-station telephones in locations where there was not one chance in a million of identifying the person who had called. Fuchs, of course, was the one-millionth chance, but Fuchs was no longer obeying Koenig’s orders, was persistent, and careless. Altogether Koenig had built up a system of caution on paper which almost beat the game, and which enabled him to conduct a large volume of business.

The functions of his departments were clearly defined. The pier division guarded the piers and vessels of the Line, and furnished him information of sailings from the New York waterfront, which he in turn passed on to the naval attaché, Boy-Ed. Through this division he was able to keep in touch with the waterfront element for whatever service of violence might be necessary, and to keep a fairly complete record of shipping. The special detail division was assigned to the guarding of von Bernstorff’s summer place at Cedarhurst, Long Island, Dr. Albert’s office in the Hamburg-American building, von Papen’s office at 60 Wall Street, and the Austrian consulate in New York. This division conducted every week a test to determine whether or not Dr. Albert was being shadowed. We find entered in his notes on his operatives this:

“_H. J. Wilkens_ is commended by me for good service rendered thus far as attendant on Dr. Albert. This commendation is based on a note received from the latter under date of November 12, reading as follows:

“‘Dear Mr. Koenig:

“‘The service rendered by your bureau’s operative, H. J. Wilkens, have proven entirely satisfactory.

“‘Yours truly, (Signed) H. T. ALBERT.’”

Apparently Koenig’s performance of his duty to the German cause encouraged the high officials of the German government in the United States to rely upon him, for these posts were gradually placed under his direction during the summer of 1915, the Embassy at Cedarhurst on July 3, Dr. Albert’s office on Sept. 1, von Papen’s office on Oct. 26, and the Austrian Consulate on December 15--three days previous to Koenig’s arrest, and less than a week after Captain von Papen, who was returning to his own country by the request of our country, had called P. K. to the German Club to “express his thanks for the services this Bureau have rendered to him.” “At the same time,” the little notebook confides, “he bid me Good-Bye.” We find these functions mentioned with a suggestion of reverence.

But the autobiography of Paul Koenig resumes its dark shroud of mystery when it turns to the functions of the division of secret service. There he is the dominating figure, a sort of cross between a Dr. Moriarity and a gorilla, a slippery conniver one minute and a pugnacious bully the next, convicted by his own complimentary reports. It was in handling the “D-cases” already mentioned that he employed his many false names, his secret numbers, his elusive places of appointment, and his essentially Teutonic discipline. The nature of the work of this division may best be suggested by citing a case which appears rather often in his records--Case D-343.