Mauer was between forty and fifty, with brown hair that was silvering instead of graying and a narrow, unfriendly jaw. He wore thin round glasses and had an air of being midway between a dentist and an aristocrat. Cochrane, after a few meetings, began to like Mauer. He quickly learned that the man's appearance was deceiving. Or perhaps it was for show. Independently wealthy, he had gone into the government because it had once been a respectable thing to do in Germany. He had also been to university and enjoyed sharing a schnitzel lunch with Cochrane or an evening in a beer garden talking Hegel or Schopenhauer and maybe even flirting with some Kierkegaard, if the evening became sufficiently sodden.
'So unusual to even find a man who knows those names anymore,' Mauer remarked one evening as they walked through Berlin. 'No one going into government now with any education. Not since the Nazis closed the universities. Difficult to find anyone with more than eight years of schooling. Country is run by a bunch of fascist thugs.”
Cochrane had a suspicion he was being tested. 'But the party has rebuilt Germany,' he said.
'Yes. Of course,' Mauer answered, lacking any conviction. 'Wonderful thing, isn't it? Sieg heil.” He spat on the floor.
They strolled through a quiet park and came to a commercial section. Three shops were boarded up that Cochrane remembered from the previous week. A tailor, a watchmaker, and a grocer were gone. There were heavy boards across broken storefront windows and enormous swastikas had been scrawled across the jagged woodwork. They passed the shattered storefronts without comment.
'Germany is in the process of change,' said Mauer, given heavily to understatement. 'Not everyone is convinced it is for the best.'
'Germany has its historical place in the world,' Cochrane answered. 'As a power in Europe, for example.'
'Germany,' Mauer replied, 'has started and lost too many wars already.' He turned toward Cochrane as they walked. The German assessed his American friend thoroughly. 'Why don't you come visit my family some weekend? Not in Berlin, but down to the south. We have our permanent residence outside of Munich. I would like you to meet my wife and son.'
Cochrane thanked Mauer and accepted. Later, Theresia said something about having to visit an ailing aunt in Baden-Baden, so Bill Cochrane picked the following weekend to be Mauer's houseguest. He caught an express train from the new station in Berlin.
Mauer had preceded him, taking a personal holiday and leaving on Wednesday. But as the train carried Cochrane southward, he began to notice crated military equipment stacked in increasing volume from one station to the next. At Regensburg, Cochrane stepped off the train during its fifteen-minute stop, ostensibly to smoke a small cigar. It was a damp day, surprisingly chilly for that time of year. Cochrane walked the length of the platform, as if to savor the exercise.
The supplies carried Wehrmacht insignia and were barely concealed. Had Cochrane wished to look more closely, which he did not want to appear to do, he could have learned which battalions were the intended recipients. But he did pass close enough to the crates and their military guards to actually learn some of the contents. It was the precise war equipment-helmets, rifles, blankets, and knapsacks-Cochrane reasoned, necessary to sustain a light-armored or infantry division.
A bit farther south, at Freising and at Landshut, Cochrane observed the soldiers who would be using the equipment. By the time Cochrane reached Munich, soldiers were everywhere. But the equipment was nowhere in view and Bill Cochrane knew he had stumbled across a military secret unknown outside the Third Reich. Germany was fortifying for an invasion of Austria. There could be no other reason for a buildup of troops in that area. Surely, Austria, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia were not preparing to invade Germany.
Otto Mauer met Cochrane at the central railway station. Mauer drove a sleek dark blue Mercedes convertible, its top down, since the weather had cleared. Mauer was shown great deference, Cochrane noticed, by the local police. They drove to the chocolate shop in Freising where Natalie Mauer, Otto's wife, was the proprietor and employed a staff of five. Natalie Mauer joined the two men in the car.
Then they drove twenty minutes out of the city to Mauer's estate, an impressive spread of land featuring a rambling stone mansion behind gates and a brick wall. Inappropriately, a new road had been constructed just outside the estate's walls and a small bus stop had been installed, presumably for the Mauer family's staff.
Cochrane reasoned correctly that Herr and Frau Mauer had not been on a bus in their adult lives. Just before dinner, Natalie Mauer changed into a delicate pink and blue Chinese kimono. She was ten years younger than her husband and very beautiful in a way typical of German women-tall and strong, with high cheekbones, dark eyes, brown hair, and a perfect smile. Her legs were long and her arms were slim. She introduced her husband's guest to five-year-old Rudy, their son, an angelic blond child with a crown of tousled curly hair. Then a nurse with an Austrian accent guided the boy to his own play area and bedroom.
Dinner followed. Their cook had prepared a spectacular meal of wild boar, roasted apples and potatoes, and diced chard, all complemented by a 1928 Chambolle Musigny from the cellar.
'The last good year of the Chambolle Musignys,' Mauer lamented with sincerity. He added that he was sadly down to his last two cases.
After dinner there was German brandy, which Cochrane accepted, and cigars which he declined. He might also have declined the drift of the conversation- contemporary Germany politics. But Natalie Mauer sat in rapt attention, studying Cochrane after they had moved from the table to the salon. And Otto Mauer seemed intent upon the subject. Natalie turned on a radio, which began a broadcast of an evening of Strauss from the philharmonic in Munich.
Meanwhile Mauer pressed his guest.
'But what about these National Socialists? You've been in the Reich for a year now.
Surely you must have an opinion.'
'Hitler has restored respect to the German people,' Cochrane said. 'Where they laughed at Germany in the 1920s, they now fear the might of the new Germany.'
There was a silence as Otto Mauer gravely studied his cognac. Natalie Mauer looked Cochrane firmly in the eye from across the room.
'Hitler is a swine,' she said. 'And so are the murderers who surround him. Educated people realize this.'
With those words she returned her glass to the table and left the room. Cochrane, rebuked by the outburst, felt the gaze of Otto Mauer upon him. He turned to his host.
'I'm sorry if my opinion is not welcome,' he said.
A smile crossed Mauer's face. He agitated his cognac slightly in the glass, warming it with his palm.
'We take you to be a man of breeding,' Mauer began coyly. 'My wife spent time in England and the United States in the 1920s. I studied at an American university. We recognize Americans a bit better than most Germans do. One pays lip service in public these days to the Nazis. One must. But a man of your station, Mr. Cochrane, does not sympathize with political liars and criminals. Far from it, I suspect.'
And now Cochrane knew. This whole weekend was a test.
'You are an observant man,' Mauer continued. 'You have noticed that many Germans recognize Hitler's madness. There are influential people in the Reich who would curb his influence. Perhaps through the Abwehr, where there are many who oppose him. But we lack the power now.'
Cochrane opened his mouth to interject. But Mauer silenced him with an upraised hand.
'The youth has been raised to worship Hitler,' Mauer grumbled. 'And the army is partially controlled by the same monsters who control the party. To stage a successful coup d’etat, one must have the people on one's side in addition to the army. The opposition to Hitler has neither.'
Cochrane was quiet.
Mauer relit his cigar, and for the first time since speaking of the Chambolle Musigny, a legitimately mournful expression crossed his face. He blew out a long cloud of cottony white smoke. 'No one in America understands. Hitler did not rise by acclamation in Germany. And all the people did not blindly accept Nazi doctrine. If they had there would have been no need for a Gestapo or an SS. But now all opposition lives in danger of persecution-loss of jobs, labor camps, or worse. As an opposition, we complain a lot in private. But we are passive. Eunuchs. Heaven help us all!' Mauer concluded. 'We are all cowards.'
Cochrane was both chagrined and confused. Exactly what sort of test was Mauer giving him? he wondered.
