The man would obey. On the minute the telephone would ring and the man would lift the receiver. A strange voice told him to do certain things—either a definite assignment, or instructions to be at a similar place on the following day to receive a message. Or he might be told to meet another man, who would give him money and further orders. The voice at the other end of the wire spoke from a public telephone booth and was thus reasonably sure that the wire was not tapped.
And Koenig trusted no man. He never sent an agent out on a job without detailing another man to shadow that man and report back to him in full the operations of the agent and of any persons whom he might deal with. He was brutally severe in his insistence that his men do exactly what he told them without using their own initiative.
Koenig had spies on every big steamship pier. He had eavesdroppers in hotels, and on busy telephone switchboards. He employed porters, window-cleaners, bank clerks, corporation employees and even a member of the Police Department.
This last, listed in his book as "Special Agent A. S.," was Otto F. Mottola, a detective in the warrant squad. The notebook revealed Mottola as "Antonio Marino," an alias later 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. Through him Koenig sought to keep closely informed of developments at Police Headquarters in 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 they questioned him about Koenig.
Koenig's very caution was the cause of his undoing. The detectives who shadowed him learned that he "never employed the same man more than once," which meant simply that he was careful to place no subordinate in a position where blackmail and exposure might be too easy. To this fact they added another trifling observation; they noticed that as time went on he was seen less in the company of one George Fuchs, a relative with whom he had been intimate early in the war. They cultivated the young man's acquaintance to the extent that he finally burst out with a recitation of his grievances against Koenig, and betrayed him to the authorities.
"P. K." was defiant always. "They did get Dr. Albert's portfolio," he said one day, "but they won't get mine. I won't carry one."