SHADOWS FOLLOWING SHADOWS
He sought likewise to elude Americans trailing him. He never went out in the daytime that he did not have one or two of his agents trailing him to see whether he was being shadowed. He used to turn a corner suddenly and stand still so that a detective following came unexpectedly face to face with him and betrayed his identity. Koenig would laugh heartily and pass on. He loved to jibe the American authorities and ofttimes he would dodge around a corner and then reappear to confront the detective with a merry jest and pass on. By that means he came to know many agents of the Department of Justice and many New York detectives. When he started out at night he used to have three of his own men follow him, and by a prearranged system of signals inform him if any strangers were following him.
The task, consequently, of keeping watch of Koenig’s movements was most difficult and required clever guessing and keen-headed work on the part of the New York police. So elusive did Koenig become that it was necessary for Captain Tunney to evolve a new system for shadowing Koenig and yet not betray to him the fact that he was under surveillance. One detective, accordingly, would be stationed several blocks away and would start out ahead of Koenig. The “front shadow” was kept informed by a series of signals whenever Koenig turned a corner so that the man in front might dart down the street beyond and by a series of manœuvres again get ahead of him. If Koenig boarded a street car, the man ahead would hail the car several blocks beyond, thus avoiding any suspicion from Koenig. In other instances, detectives, guessing that he was about to take a car would board it several blocks before it got abreast of Koenig. Because of his alertness, he kept Detectives Barnitz, Coy, Terra and Corell always on the edge; but they finally ran him down.
It was never possible to overhear any conversation between Koenig and any man to whom he was giving instructions. Koenig always made it a point to meet his agents—some of his workers he never permitted to meet him at all—in the open, in parks in broad daylight, in the Pennsylvania Station, or the Grand Central Station. There, as he talked to them, he could make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. In the open he met many a man for the first time, talked with him and then said:
“Be at Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street at 2.30 to-morrow afternoon beside a public telephone booth there. When the telephone rings, you answer it.”
The man would obey the request. Promptly at the minute named, the telephone rang and the man answered the telephone. A strange voice spoke to him and told him to do certain things, perhaps to be at a similar place on the following day and receive a message, or he would receive instructions as to what he should do and where he should go to meet another man, who would give him money and instructions as to what he should do. The voice at the other end of the wire was speaking from a public telephone booth and was thus reasonably sure also that the wire was not tapped.
Koenig trusted no man. He never sent an agent out on a job without detailing another man to follow that man and report back to him the movements of the agent and the person whom that man met. He was severe with his men when they made their reports to him, and always insisted that they do exactly what he told them and never permitted them to use their own initiative. So stubborn was he in sticking to his own ideas that some of his men used to call him “the Westphalian, bull-headed Dutchman.”
As to the outline of Koenig’s activities, his book of spies, the great mass of information gained by trailing him, and by study of the documents seized in his office, show that he had spies along the water front on every big steamship pier. He had eavesdroppers in hotels, telephone switchboards, among porters, window-cleaners, among bank clerks, corporation employés and in the Police Department.
To Roger B. Wood, formerly assistant United States District-Attorney in New York, is due the credit for the unfolding of the intricate and varied schemes charged against Koenig. He studied the evidence for months as it was developed by Federal agents under Superintendent Offley of the New York office and Captain Tunney, and prepared for trial the cases against the German agent.
One of Koenig’s spies was listed in his book as “Special Agent A. S.,” namely Otto F. Mottola, a detective in the warrant squad of the New York police force whom he paid for special work. The note-book revealed Mottola as Antonio Marino, afterwards changed to Antonio Salvatore. Evidence was produced at Mottola’s trial at Police Headquarters that Koenig paid him for investigating a passenger who sailed on the Bergensfjord; that he often called up Mottola, asked questions and received answers which Koenig’s stenographer took down in shorthand. In other words, Koenig sought to keep closely informed as to the developments at Police Headquarters, and to be advised, perhaps, of the inquiry being made by the police into the activities of the Germans. Mottola was dismissed from the force because of false statements made to his superiors when asked about Koenig.