'No can do,' Wheeler answered. 'The Bureau slapped a red tag on them just forty-eight hours ago. From your own happy days working with that smelly little gnome up in the seventh-floor archives, you know what that means.'
'Removed to Hoover's own personal files,' said Bill Cochrane.
'Where they will probably sit until icicles hang in hell,' surmised Wheeler. A pensive silence shrouded them both, then Wheeler concluded. 'Monday morning early,' he reminded Cochrane. 'Second floor conference room.'
Wheeler left and Cochrane suddenly felt himself very alone. The sensation made him think of Heather. He stared out the window for a moment. That odd question was upon him again. If she came back for five minutes, what would he say?
I've missed you…
I love you…
I've been given the most perplexing problem, and I cannot solve it…
'Then you had better keep working on it,' he could almost hear her answer in her proper, magnolia-scented way. 'Work comes first. Fun comes later.'
But, Cochrane recalled, there would be no fun. Not today. Mourning ends, he reminded himself, pain sometimes doesn't. He sympathized with the family of Billy Pritchard, who that day was attending the twenty-two- year-old's funeral. The burial was in Kansas, where Berlin was something very distant. All the Pritchard family knew was that their son was dead. On the death certificate the circumstances had been 'redefined,' as Bureau parlance tactfully put it. Mike Cianfrani, from the Newark office, had taken care of everything.
Billy Pritchard had died, the report said, when a stockpiled harbor mine had accidentally been detonated. The military was dangerous even in time of peace, the family was begged to understand. These things did occur on the odd occasion. And everyone was so terribly sorry.
TWENTY-ONE
The powwow was scheduled for 8 A.M., Monday. In actuality, it was a war party.
Cochrane arrived at twenty to eight. The building was quiet. The door to Hoover's office was closed. But Cochrane had seen both Hoover's and Clyde Tolson's cars outside in the lot. The Director was lurking somewhere.
Cochrane entered the conference room and found Dick Wheeler already seated. 'J.E.H. is furious this morning,' Wheeler said. 'Keep your wits about you.'
Wheeler removed his pipe from his breast pocket, skewered the stem with a green pipe cleaner, and set it down on the table near an ashtray. 'Just give me enough room to talk when I need to,' Wheeler warned. 'J.E.H. listens to me, don't forget.'
Cochrane settled into a chair. 'What's going on?' he asked.
'We have company. From the executive branch.'
Wheeler grimaced and they both heard the door from Hoover's office open across the corridor. There were voices, including Hoover's.
A pulse beat later the door opened fully. Wheeler and Cochrane were on their feet as Hoover entered in a brisk, energetic shuffle. The Director wore a fiercer scowl than usual, and his cheeks and brow were florid. He looked angry, particularly when he spotted Cochrane. But then again, he always looked angry from a distance of fifty feet or less.
Frank Lerrick was with him and handled the introduction of a third man: tall and thin, with a squat, pug nose and big ears that almost seemed to flop. His name was Russell Middlebrook and he was an undersecretary of state. Cordell Hull's office was to be kept informed of progress in the case, Lerrick announced. Middlebrook took a place between Lerrick and Wheeler. At the table he gave no more than a nod in Cochrane's direction and settled in with a pad of paper and a pencil.
'He's a creep,' Wheeler would announce with a contemptuous grin to Cochrane in a later, lighter moment. 'Over at State they refer to him as 'Rabbit.' Went to Penn State University and took the right exams. What can you expect? He's second-string. If there's such a thing as simultaneously honest and untrustworthy, he's it. Big ears, get it? Mouth to match.'
'Okay, okay,' said Hoover waspishly after the introductions. 'Let's get started.' It was ten of eight. Hoover nodded toward Cochrane, who was expected to summarize activity since the previous meeting.
'A great deal of positive progress,' Cochrane began.
'Have we made an arrest yet?' Hoover demanded.
A pause, then Cochrane answered, 'We have a portrait emerging of a key suspect.' For several minutes, he provided details.
There followed a long glacial silence with which no one seemed inclined to tamper.
'We cannot arrest a profile, young Agent Cochrane,' Hoover scolded. 'How many more targets do we allow this man? How many ships do we lose?' Without stopping, the director shifted his own gears. 'How long have you been on this case?'
'Six weeks, sir.'
'Six weeks,' Hoover repeated flatly. 'And in six weeks you've managed to draw a profile.' Cochrane held his own indignation in check as Hoover bore ahead. 'You were taken off a relatively easy assignment in Baltimore. You should have been well rested. Do you know that I have a meeting with the President early this very afternoon? Mr. Roosevelt is going to ask me for a progress report. Apparently there isn't one.'
Hoover glared, set down a pencil across the table with a loud clack, and let go with his characteristic low, whining curses. His eyes bulged, his cheeks rouged and his lips tightened. Ruddy-faced and angry, he looked like a deranged Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. His puffy eyes darted to each of the other men at the table for help or sympathy.
Dick Wheeler, who knew better than ever to interrupt, had been waiting for just such a silence to rescue Cochrane.
'I think, Mr. Director,' Wheeler suggested mildly, 'that the President will be very impressed with the Bureau's progress over the last few days. I've reviewed it myself,' emphasized Wheeler, who hadn't reviewed it at all. 'I think a written summation of Bureau progress should be represented to the President. I think we can also safely state that we're extremely close to the key arrest.'
Cochrane shot Wheeler a beseeching glance but Wheeler's eyes were upon Hoover.
'Are we? Are we?' asked Hoover in his rushed, clipped voice. He looked at Cochrane without allowing him to answer. 'Well, all right. Much better.' He looked back to Wheeler.
'I think we have enough to please the President,' Wheeler said.
'Who'll make the report?' Hoover asked. 'I want this agent'-he indicated Cochrane with a sharp nod of the skull-'still out in the field. No point to take a field man to the White House.'
'I'd be happy to make the presentation,' Wheeler offered. Frank Lerrick looked at Wheeler with vexation.
'All right,' Hoover agreed. 'A report. Something in writing that we can both present verbally and submit.' Lerrick's small intense eyes still glowed like simmering charcoal in Wheeler's direction as Hoover spoke. Hoover turned to Lerrick and the red glow vanished.
'That sounds good to you, Frank? One o'clock.'
'Very good, Mr. Director,' Lerrick said with enthusiasm.
'I think this field agent, Mr. Cochrane, has done excellent work,' Wheeler continued, soothingly. 'I'd stake the reputation of my own office upon Mr. Cochrane's work.'
Hoover seemed pleased by, or at least content with, the endorsement. His mood now mellowed considerably. Undersecretary Middlebrook was taking short, precise notes-much to Cochrane's unease-and Frank Lerrick watched and listened with his arms folded. J. Edgar Hoover looked absently to Lerrick and then across to Wheeler. Everyone in the room knew the director had something on his mind. J. Edgar Hoover had, as Dick Wheeler had once termed it privately, 'his own cute ways of doing things.'
