'Not entirely, sir.'
'What else could there be?'
'Mr. Wheeler wishes you to come straight to Bureau headquarters as soon as your bags are unpacked. I'm to wait.'
'Of course,' said Cochrane. 'It's a workday, isn't it? Saturdays always are, aren't they, Jenks?'
'Usually we get Saturdays off, sir. Today is the exception.'
“Wonderful,” said Cochrane.
Jenks drove him an hour later to the Justice Department. At the guard's desk in the lobby was a balding man who flicked through a list of special passes when Cochrane announced his name. Cochrane watched the gnarled, unsteady fingers twice pass his name before finding it.
'Cochrane. Cochrane, William. There!' the man looked up and smiled. 'Of course.'
He handed Cochrane his pass.
Cochrane proceeded to one of three new elevators, swift, smartly polished and chrome, and a black elevator man in a verdant uniform deposited him at Wheeler's sixth floor where yet another assistant was waiting for him.
Hoover was doing a fine job on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Cochrane concluded. Hoover had the F.B.I. wing all polished, modernized, and shining, a veritable temple to America's only federal policy agency. Hoover always knew where bodies were buried, Cochrane reminded himself.
Cochrane was announced and stood for a moment in a reception area, studying a collection of framed photographs on the wall, each depicting J. Edgar Hoover's personal role in the apprehension of various American bandits. Then Cochrane heard something midway between a bellow and a roar.
'Bill! Fine to see you! Thanks for being so prompt, though I knew you wouldn't be anything but.'
Cochrane turned away from a portrait of J. Edgar Hoover with a granite-faced President Coolidge to see Big Dick Wheeler hulking massively into the reception area, his hand extended in greeting, a huge smile across his face.
Wheeler, all five foot fifteen inches of him, clad in a gray suit, white shirt, and tie, lumbered to Cochrane's side. He took Cochrane's hand into his paw, crushed it with a welcoming pump, and wrapped his other arm around Cochrane's shoulders.
'Very good of you to come by on a Saturday morning,' Wheeler said. 'You saw your house? Your new residence for the duration?'
'Your driver took me there. Yes. Thanks.'
'I know it's not a home, but it will have to do,' Wheeler said. 'Tell you what. One of these nights the missus and I will have you over for a roast chicken. How's that? A man's got to live, doesn't he?'
Predictably, Dick Wheeler was louder, more garrulous, and more of a dominant force on the sixth floor, his own, than on the second, Hoover's.
'Why am I here today?' Cochrane asked.
'I want to show you through Section Seven,' Wheeler said. 'Much easier on a Saturday. Fewer interruptions.'
'What is Section Seven?'
'Espionage and Counterespionage,' Wheeler said, plucking a Missouri meerschaum pipe from a breast pocket. 'Call it 'Spying' if you want to use the current profanity.'
'I didn't know we actually had such a division.'
'Officially, we don't. Fact is, we've been turned down six times since 1935 for congressional funding for it. The money comes out of General Appropriations.' Wheeler stuffed tobacco into his pipe with his thumb and struggled to get a fire started. They walked down a hall, closing doors behind them. 'You'll feel at home here. I read your reports from Germany last night. Fine work! I'm surprised you're still alive.'
'So am I,' said Cochrane.
'My office first,' said Wheeler, leading Cochrane into the largest quarters on the floor. A picture window looked toward the Capitol. 'Have a seat,' Wheeler said. 'We need to chat first.' Cochrane chose an armchair, and Wheeler did likewise, staying away from his desk.
'Just out of curiosity,' Cochrane asked, 'what are Sections One through Six?'
'They don't exist.'
'Then what's this seven?'
'Seven is everyone's lucky number. The number seven symbolizes God's perfection, doesn’t it? His sovereignty and holiness. God created earth in seven days. One seven-day week is a reminder of our Creator. And God blessed the seventh day, making it holy. So. ‘Section Seven.’ Good luck. That's what you're going to need, you know. Luck. Just like J.E.H. to toss a good capable man into an impossible situation. But, come on. It beats banking fraud in Bored-All-The-More, doesn't it? I'll give you the grand tour anyway. You're going to need all the help you can get. Someone's here all the time, of course. That's another reason for the name. 'Section Seven' seven days a week.' Wheeler mustered a groan. 'One of those assignments. Like Racketeering in the Kansas City office. You remember?'
Cochrane nodded.
Wheeler foraged through a drawer of his desk and produced a bottle of twelve-year-old bourbon. 'Want a drink before we start?'
'No, thanks.'
Wheeler poured himself a taste of Tennessee's best in a small glass. 'You're sure? You and me? We have worked together three times now and I'm in charge here, you know.'
'It's all right,' Cochrane reaffirmed.
'Okay then,' said Wheeler, sipping and positioning himself massively in his chair. 'Just remember this is top- secret stuff. You don't even discuss this with any other agent. Only the people you see here.'
Cochrane nodded.
'Let me explain,' said Wheeler.
SEVENTEEN
As background in Section Seven, there wasn't much. Some counterespionage and intelligence gathering had been done in Europe, Wheeler said, but Cochrane himself had done the best of it and had a working knowledge of the rest. Bill Cochrane nodded and a flood of images came back to him, from Theresia dead on her bed to Engle carefully taking the order for a set of Swiss passports.
As for German espionage within the forty-eight United States, Wheeler continued academically, as his pipe smoldered in the ashtray, it had all been haphazard at best-at least as far as they knew. Cochrane nodded again.
'We've dropped down hard on a ring of sympathizers here and there, gotten the local police to hassle a few others. But there's no war, so there's no law being broken. A saboteur with some bombs is something else. He gets priority. Roosevelt is as angry as a wet cat.' Wheeler sipped. 'If we were just out to run down pro-Hitler groups, we'd be arresting half the Republicans in the Senate, William Randolph Hearst, Charles Lindbergh, and probably eighty percent of the Daughters of the American Revolution.'
Cochrane mustered an uneasy grin.
'So you see, we're in a swampy area. Very few real rules. The laws we have to enforce are the usual civil and criminal laws. And many of them are state laws, so we don't have jurisdiction. Added to that, we have a peacetime espionage situation. Confusing?'
'No.'
'Good.' Wheeler drew a breath. 'Because that leads us to the radio emissions. And the 'Bluebirds.'
'The who? '
Wheeler finished his bourbon and poured himself a refill. He tossed Cochrane a sly smile. 'So glad you asked,' he said.
The Bluebirds' official name was Monitoring Division and they had been formed in the queasy days of 1937
