Cochrane felt the German's eyes boring in on him during the pauses as Mauer spoke. Yet Cochrane's only fidget was to remove an invisible smudge from the side of the brandy snifter.
'Really, Otto,' Cochrane finally said. 'I don't know why you talk in such a seditious way. At the very least, Hitler has brought Germany back from economic ruin.'
'And at what cost? A nation's destruction? A nation's soul?'
'I can't answer that,' Cochrane countered. 'I am not German.'
'Then I will ask you a question you can answer,' Mauer said, setting down his brandy with a click on the table. 'Come. Follow.'
Mauer led Cochrane up a flight of back stairs to the second floor. They followed a hallway and entered a darkened room. Mauer's voice grew soft as he closed the door to maintain the darkness.
'Don't even touch the curtain,' Mauer said as he quietly led Cochrane to a window. 'Just look between the curtain and the window frame. Your eyes are good? Look down the road fifty meters to the bus stop.'
Cochrane looked and saw two men waiting. They wore dark raincoats and sat on the concrete slab that served as a bench.
'Who are those men? What are they doing?' Mauer asked rhetorically. 'One carries a walking stick, but he has been there for three hours. Another merely sits and waits. For a bus you think? The buses have passed each fifteen minutes for the past five hours. But still they wait.'
Mauer stepped away from the window.
'Well?'
'I don't know them,' said Cochrane.
'Shame on you,' Mauer chided sullenly. 'You recognize Gestapo as well as I do. Now drop your pretensions and listen to me. There are only three reasons why the Gestapo would be watching this house. You. Me. Or both of us.'
Cochrane stifled a surge of fear and searched the eyes of Mauer. For a split second he thought he saw something.
'It is essential that you and I trust each other,' Mauer said.
'Why is that?'
'Because, my friend,' Mauer said, leading his guest back out toward the hallway,' my hunch-and the hunch of those Gestapo out there-is that you are nothing as simple as a securities broker. You are most likely a spy. And I do not work for the Labor Ministry. I work for the Abwehr Section Z and could have you arrested in two minutes. Should I do that?”
Cochrane felt a cold tingling running through him. Suddenly Frank Lerrick's words flashed back to him: 'Don't get caught. We won't be able to get you out.'
'You are absolutely mistaken,' Cochrane replied indignantly. 'I can't even imagine where you would manufacture such an idea.'
'Your contact in Berlin was probably a man named Kurkevics. He was tortured to death a week before your arrival. But he did reveal that he expected an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to arrive in Berlin. I began thinking the other day in my office. You arrived in Berlin at exactly that time.'
Mauer smiled gamely. 'Do you deny that, too?'
'I deny all of this categorically,' Cochrane answered sharply. But there had been an uncertainty in his voice, a slight hesitation, a slight shakiness. And they both knew it.
Mauer wrapped his arm around his guest's shoulders and led him down the stairs. Cochrane wondered if he should whirl, blast Mauer in the face, and flee. But Mauer continued to speak in a calm, conciliatory tone. So Cochrane tried a slight change of tactic.
'I don't understand any of this,' Cochrane said. 'Explain all this to me! Tell me what you want!'
Then they were in the drawing room again and Strauss was still on the radio. Natalie Mauer was refreshing the brandy snifters. She was as beautiful as before, tall and handsome in her kimono. She had placed dark Swiss chocolates in an orderly pile on a silver tray.
'I'm telling you all this because I believe I am right,' Mauer said. 'And I also believe you are a man of principles, even if you are engaged in espionage.'
Cochrane took a strategic seat, not far from the door.
'If I am wrong,' Mauer continued, 'you cannot hurt me because of my family and my position. If you reveal what I have said to you, no one will believe you. But if I am right, you can help me.'
'Help you how?' Cochrane asked.
Natalie Mauer was now witness to their conversation.
'We wish to leave Germany, Mr. Cochrane,' Natalie said in perfect English. 'With our son. Before it is too late.'
'We will help you considerably in your task,' Otto Mauer promised. 'But you must also promise to help us.'
'Help you how?' Cochrane almost exploded.
'We have been denied permission to obtain passports,' Otto Mauer said. 'If you are a spy, you can get us American passports.'
“I’m sorry! But this is absurd!'
'My grandmother was half Jewish,' said Mauer softly. 'Therefore I am one-eighth Jewish. My son is one- sixteenth. There are people who will eventually find this out. My world will change then. I don't consider myself Jewish and I don't care much for some of the Jews either. But I also have nothing against them. They are a brilliant people and work hard. They value education and culture, which is more than can be said for these Nazi hoodlums. And yet I know someday, for me, there will be trouble,' Mauer's eyes were intense. 'There! You know my secret and I know yours. Now perhaps we can talk. Tomorrow. In the morning. I will tell you everything about the Abwehr. But you must promise to get us out of this country.'
Across the salon, Natalie Mauer's face was lined with tension. She stared at Bill Cochrane and now so did her husband. It was an odd stare. Part contemptuous, part fearful, part expectant and hopeful.
Cochrane searched their faces. First his, then hers. And then, from his position across the room, he risked his life.
'I'll be happy to listen to whatever you'd like to tell me,' he said. 'Then if I can help you, I will.'
Cochrane could have bottled the sighs of relief that rose from the Mauers. So, sensing himself on steadier ground, he raised his brandy glass to his lips.
'That's a promise,' he said gently, before taking a sip. 'A promise between gentlemen, right?'
Natalie’s gaze rose from the floor. “God bless you, Herr Cochrane,” she said. There were tears in her eyes.
EIGHT
It was September 6, 1938, when Thomas Cochrane took a long walk through the woods surrounding the Mauer estate. And it was the first American penetration of the Abwehr.
'You cannot take any notes, coded or otherwise,' Mauer informed Cochrane as they walked. 'You'll be the object of searches eventually. Everything has to be committed to memory. Everything.'
Cochrane nodded.
'You told me once that you did some acting. At a summer playhouse, was it? Massachusetts?'
'Provincetown.'
'Then your memory should be trained for names and places,' Mauer said. 'If it's not, that's your loss. I'm only going through things once.'
'I'm ready when you are,' Cochrane said.
They were far from the manor house, and it crossed Cochrane's mind that Mauer still might be leading him into a trap. Suppose his two Gestapo babysitters arrived deep in the forest where Mauer, having lured Cochrane into revealing his purposes in Berlin, could hand Cochrane over to them? What had been done to Kurkevics would seem a picnic in comparison.
