Engle's eyes drifted to the window at the front of the shop. 'Your Uncle Edgar is a dear friend of mine,' he said softly. 'Please have a seat.'
Cochrane chose a chair near Engle's desk. Engle went to his door, pulled down the shade, and put a sign in place indicating that he would reopen in an hour.
Then Engle turned. 'You are certain you were not followed?'
'Certain,' answered Cochrane.
Engle shook his head very slightly. 'Today everyone is followed. Not good for a man of my years. Please. You come to the back.'
Moments later, Cochrane was in the rear of Engle's shop, the doors closed for greater security. Cochrane needed three passports made urgently and smuggled back into Germany. Engle sighed. Cochrane informed him that Uncle Edgar in Washington would handle the reimbursement.
'These passports,' Engle inquired. 'Swiss? Canadian? What must they be?'
'Swiss would be excellent.'
'I cannot work without photographs.'
Cochrane withdrew the portrait of the Mauer family from his inside pocket. With a pair of scissors, he trimmed it into three single photographs. These he handed to Engle. Cochrane next printed the address of Frau Mauer's chocolate shop in Munich.
'The passports,' Cochrane continued, 'must be sent by private courier from within the Reich and in an envelope that will appear to be a business correspondence. It should be marked 'Personal Attention of Frau Mauer.' And I should stress,' Cochrane concluded, 'that there may be a certain urgency to this order.'
Engle raised his eyes slightly. 'These days, Mein Herr,' he said, 'there is always great urgency. The world rushes headlong with great urgency. And toward what end?' The old man hunched his shoulders. He sighed. 'We will do what we can do,' he said philosophically.
'Nothing more.' Engle cocked his white head. 'You are in trouble with the Nazis?'
'A bit.'
'Gestapo?' asked the old man.
'I’m certain of it.'
Engle studied his visitor. 'Did you kill one? A Gestapo agent?'
'Probably more than one.'
Engle arched an eyebrow. For the first time a crafty smile danced across the merchant's face. 'I see,' he said. 'I suppose then, we must give your order top priority.'
'I'd appreciate it.'
Engle steepled his fingers, then drummed them slightly against each other. 'Be very careful, my American friend,' he said. 'Zurich is alive with Gestapo and SS. Just in the last day or so there has been a marked increase. Normally there is the usual activity. A German expatriate is found dead here, a wealthy Jew disappears there. But right now they seem to be looking for someone.' Engle's gaze alighted on Cochrane. 'Maybe an American.'
'I've spent the last two days covering my back. They haven't found me.'
'May an old man give a young man some advice?'
'Feel free,' Cochrane said as Engle's eyes glimmered.
'Continue home immediately,' said Engle. 'Take the circuitous, least predictable route. I will see that your three friends'-and here the old man glanced down to what Cochrane had written-'the Mauer family, is taken care of.'
'Thank you, Herr Engle.'
Bill Cochrane offered Engle his hand, which turned into a clasp with both of the engraver's hands. 'Filthy bloody Nazis,' the old man murmured. 'Animals.'
*
Cochrane boarded an express for Geneva that afternoon. It was five-thirty when the train pulled away from the station. In the dining car that night, Cochrane's attention focused on an auburn-haired woman of maybe forty dining alone. He took her to be Swiss, and twice when she looked up she saw him watching her, but against his instincts, he decided that amorous pursuits were not worth the trouble. Not this night. So he suffered through the agonizingly bumpy eight hours alone in his sleeping berth, agitated rather than soothed by the churning of the train, and haunted by every footfall in the corridor. He awoke the next morning to notice that the woman had passed the journey just a few berths from him, accompanied indiscreetly by a man who, as Cochrane learned from a casual inspection of the contents of the man's baggage, was a married sales representative for the Renault Corporation, European Division.
In Geneva, Cochrane took the first plane out, which went to Tehran, where the Gestapo crawled in alarming numbers and where he again changed passports, becoming Canadian and using an English-language bookstore as a dead drop for his new identity. He dyed his hair black, acquired glasses, and found an ill-fitting brown suit in a flea market.
Then he grew a moustache, stuffed himself with figs, dates, and rice, and gained eight pounds in one week, puffing out his cheeks. Then he returned to the airport.
He flew to Palestine and enlisted as a cook's assistant on a British freighter bound to Bermuda. The trip was laborious, encountering the fickle mid-Atlantic weather of the late fall, and the temperatures in the galley reminded him of Calcutta or, worse, Savannah or even Washington in midsummer. But the vessel arrived safely.
He presented himself to the United States Consulate in Hamilton and talked a skeptical undersecretary into placing a telephone call to Washington. On the next day, Washington brought him home, telling him that it all had been worth it, even before they learned what it all had been.
It was November 12, 1938. He had been away for fifteen months. For the next six weeks he was debriefed personally by Frank Lerrick, who generally named only topics, allowing Cochrane to guide him through the Abwehr at Cochrane's own pace. A stenographer recorded everything, and on one day two generals from the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed up also, sat quietly, and listened. Cochrane's testimony filled three locked filing cabinets.
By that time, even the dour Frank Lerrick was grinning like a gargoyle. Cochrane was exhausted, of course, both spiritually and physically, and tended toward an unhealthy loquaciousness. But what did it matter? The F.B.I. had scored a staggering intelligence coup, so it seemed, and Bill Cochrane had done it.
'I can see great things for you in this Bureau,' Lerrick concluded warmly when all questions had been asked. 'What assignment do you want next?'
'What do I want or what can I have?' Cochrane asked, much too smugly.
'Either. Just tell me.'
So Cochrane told him. Lerrick paled slightly and shifted the topic to college football. Bill Cochrane smiled. Again, much too smugly. 'Now you tell me something,' Cochrane said. 'If I can,' Lerrick answered.
'What happened to Otto Mauer? And his family? I promised to get them out of Germany.'
Lerrick's face went colder than a tombstone. Cochrane lost his smile.
'Come on, Lerrick!' Cochrane snapped. 'I've been talking to you for six weeks. Would you answer my one question?'
'They alive. We got them to New York. That’s all I can tell you right now. Bill Cochrane exhaled an enormous sigh. He thought of Mauer, his lovely wife and their son. 'Thank God. That's all I asked,' Cochrane said.
*
A few days into 1939, Bill Cochrane reported for work and awaited a new assignment. No decision had yet been made on his future.
'He's in good health, has a wealth of talent, and his work has greatly impressed the President on behalf of the Bureau,' Lerrick had informed Hoover in the director's office one morning in December. 'There's only one thing wrong with him.'
'If I recall,' the chief said, 'he's too much of a gentleman.'
'Not anymore. And he really hates those Nazis.”
Hoover thought for a moment. 'He's a fairy?' Hoover's eyes narrowed. 'Communist?'
Lerrick shook his head.
'What, then?' Hoover inquired.
'He's ambitious. He, uh, wants your job.'
'My job?' J. Edgar Hoover's cheeks flushed.
