Chapter 10

Heading for disaster disguised as a Mexican.

Back in New York, Baron Hans Adam von Wedell and his fellow spies were getting out. The streets of the city had become too hot for them and the American secret service was on their tail.

All decided it was time to run. They booked their passages on a ship, unfortunately they berthed onto the SS Bergensffiord, a ship already boarded by Jack and was well known by the Royal Navy. To make matters worse, Adams, the US Federal agent who had infiltrated the German passport racket, had arranged for the authorities to swoop on the escapees as they left New York harbour.

The German Secret Service in America 1914-18 takes up the story: “Through Adams' efforts Ruroede and four Germans, one of them an officer in the German reserves, were arrested on January 2, on the Scandinavian-American liner Bergensffjord outward bound to Bergen, Norway. They had pass- ports issued through Adams at Ruroede's request under the American names of Howard Paul Wright, Herbert S. Wilson, Peter Hanson and Stanley F. Martin.

Their real names were Arthur Sachse, who worked in Pelham Heights, N. Y., and who was returning to become a lieutenant in the German Army; Walter Miller, August R. Meyer and Herman Wegener, who had come to New York from Chile, on their way to the Fatherland. On the day when Ruroede, his assistant, and the four men for whom he obtained passports were arrested, Joseph A. Baker, assistant superintendent of the Federal agents in New York, took possession of the office at  Bridge Street.

As he was sorting papers and making a general investigation, a German walked in bearing a card of introduction from von Papen, introducing him- self as Wolfram von Knorr, a German officer who up to the outbreak of the war had been naval attache in Tokyo. The officer desired a passport. Baker, after a conversation in which von Knorr revealed von Papen's connection with the passport bureau, told him to return the next day.

When the German read the next morning's news- papers he changed his lodging-place and his name. Von Wedell himself was a passenger on the Bergensffjord, but when he was lined up with the other passengers, the Federal agents, who did not have a description of him, missed him and left the vessel.”

So Von Wedell – disguised as a Mexican with a passport to match – carried on aboard the SS Bergensffiord across the Atlantic Ocean toward Norway and a fatal meeting with Jack and his shipmates.Rureode and the others were sentenced to three years in prison in Atlanta, Georgia..

 

written by Chris Bishop