Then he told a story which fit astonishingly with the account given by Peter Whiteside. By the end of it, half an hour later, all the bombing dates coincided with Stephen's absences. As for Birmingham a few years ago, Laura thought, one could only draw certain conclusions. When he finished, she was greatly shaken. She spent a long time in the midst of several dark thoughts.
'I can't believe that my husband is the man you're looking for, Mr. Cochrane,' she said at length. 'He has his faults like any other man. But he's not the monster you described.'
'I never said that he was,' Bill Cochrane answered. 'You came to that conclusion yourself. Same as I did.'
There was a silence. Then the monstrosity of the whole thing was upon her, and it was too big, too horrible, and too terrifying to even comprehend. So she rejected it completely, and Bill Cochrane with it.
'How dare you!' she said, suddenly turning on him. 'You come in here, accept our hospitality, and then make these accusations about my husband. I'll thank you, sir, to be on your way. And unless you have something concrete, don't ever come here with such stories again. Now, out!'
Cochrane nodded and said nothing. He rose and, in apparent defeat, left the minister’s home.
THIRTY-TWO
The vision was filled with its usual irrationality. It was familiar. Cochrane had suffered it before.
President Roosevelt was sitting on the east portico of the White House, sunning himself, making pencil notes in the margin of a typewritten report. Cochrane stood to the right, arms folded behind his back, as a man who was no more than an unidentifiable spectre approached Roosevelt.
'Oh. Hello, my friend,' Roosevelt said, looking up and grinning. The cigarette holder was in place.
The visitor handed Roosevelt a package as Cochrane tried to protest. But words would not escape his lips.
'Das ist fur Sie,' the man said as Roosevelt accepted it.
Cochrane twisted and turned. His feet were cemented in place; his throat empty.
'Fur mich?' Roosevelt asked.
'Jawohl.' The man nodded courteously.
'Danke schoen,' said the grateful President. 'I hope you'll consider voting next November. Are you a Democrat?'
'Nein,' said the visitor, 'I'm a National Socialist. Hell Hitler!'
Roosevelt looked quizzically at the man, then grinned at Cochrane, who was waving his arms to protest. Next, there was a tremendous explosion in red and gray and black; and upon the explosion, Cochrane saw the largest swastika he had ever envisioned.
Then everything settled and Cochrane was far away, as if in an airplane. The White House was tranquil down below him, except it flew the red, white, and black banner of the Third Reich from its flagpole and Hitler stood at the east portico, his arm raised in the Nazi salute as one million cheering people stretched from the lawn of the White House across the city to the Washington Monument.
Cochrane tossed himself upright in his bed and came awake. His neck and face were wet and warm. The bedside clock, when he turned the light on, said 1:30 A.M. His mouth was parched. Cochrane wished his mind would behave itself when he was trying to sleep. Wasn't Siegfried furtive enough without creeping into his dreams?
Cochrane stalked down the creaky staircase. He was midway between a fitful sleep and a fatigued wakefulness. Some ice water, which he found in the Frigidaire, might help. He stood by the kitchen counter and sipped. He thought of Laura and wondered where her husband really was. What was it about Reverend Fowler and his church, in the midst of the Bluebirds' triangulated zone of suspicion, that rankled him?
He wondered if Reverend Fowler was making love to Laura right then, as he stood in the kitchen finishing his ice water. He tossed the cubes into the sink, then thought of his own late wife. He had put Heather's photograph away recently, but now missed seeing her. Maybe he would get the picture out, try to cull more warmth than sadness from the memory, then go back to bed.
Then sleep, maybe.
He set down the glass in the sink. He turned, then noticed something. He looked again. The window over the sink was closed but crooked. Cochrane eyed it closely, leaned forward, and inspected it. Then he reached for the lock above the lower panel of the window and felt it.
Something inside him flashed. Someone had tampered with the lock. He opened the window itself and saw the telltale marks left by a flat blade-either a knife or a screwdriver--that had been used to pry the window. He climbed onto the porcelain sink and looked at the lock at the midpoint of the window. It had been forced, then bent back into shape. An intruder had worked well, but not perfectly.
Cochrane placed himself within the mind of Siegfried. Where was he, Cochrane, most vulnerable?
He tore up the stairs and threw on every light in the house. He grabbed pants, a sweater, and a pair of shoes. He did not open any drawer or door that hadn't already been touched. No use springing a booby trap that he had so far been lucky enough to escape.
He stood in the bedroom, his heart pounding. Then he stared at the bed. Logic told him where anyone is most vulnerable.
Gingerly he went to his hands and knees. He crept to the edge of the bed and took a flashlight from the night table. He pushed aside the blankets. The fear was in his throat as he shined the light.
He saw the device, planted in a long black woolen sock. He had little doubt as to who had planted it, when, why, or what the device was.
He also knew that he was not dreaming. Less than a minute later, he was down the stairs and out the door, standing on Twenty-sixth Street, flagging down a police car like a maniac.
Cochrane stood outside, huddled against the November night, when the District of Columbia bomb squad arrived. One man arrived by a police car. The other two came with a truck that looked to be a cross between a tank and a covered wagon. It was covered by six-inch-thick steel cable, and Cochrane, from his days as an ordinance officer in the Army, knew just how much of a wallop the truck could contain if anything inside it exploded.
The three men from the bomb squad donned greenish-brown suits of armor plating. They pulled on square steel helmets that shielded their heads. There was a shatter-resistant visor that allowed them to see right in front of them, but barely to the side at all.
One man, a graying, angular District police lieutenant, who said his name was McConnell, remained outside. The other two men dragged their equipment inside and crept cautiously up the stairs to where Cochrane had located the thing in the black sock.
Fifteen minutes passed. The two men emerged from the house, holding between them two ten-foot poles. An iron basket dangled from the middle of the poles, about three feet off the ground. McConnell opened the rear of the bomb truck and the men eased the poles onto hangers within the truck. McConnell quickly closed the door.
'Now where?' Cochrane asked.
'Fort Meade, Maryland,' he said. 'Detonation range. Coming? Nice night for it,' he added sourly.
Cochrane heaved a long sigh. 'Yeah. Coming.'
The truck made its way slowly through the quiet avenues of Washington, then onto the new highway that led to Maryland and the Northeast. The trip took an hour. Cochrane followed a quarter of a mile behind the bomb truck, in Lieutenant McConnell's car. All other traffic was diverted from the highway as the truck passed.
At Fort Meade, Cochrane looked at his watch. It was now 3 A.M. and McConnell was the ranking officer on the scene. He told the driver of the bomb truck to take the device to Detonation Range B.
'You're going to blow it up, huh?' Cochrane asked.
'Got a better idea?' McConnell was a twenty-year veteran of the District police. He behaved accordingly.
'I want it defused.'
'You want what?'
'There are components in there that might lead to the bomber. There are fingerprints possibly.'
'Yeah, and let me tell you, Mr. F.B.I., judging by the weight of that little birthday cake, there could be enough
