minister's wife bolted awake at night with every creak in the floorboards or at every tree branch that scratched its November fingers against a windowpane. Her husband was gone, absent, vanished. He was somewhere but he was everywhere. And though the M.I. 6 agents Fussel and McPherson maintained twenty-four-hour sentry duty from the church, how did she know that Stephen wouldn't materialize suddenly and unobserved on the dangerous inner side of the bolted doors?
Laura slept fitfully when she slept at all. Twice she sprang upright from a half-sleep in her bed, convinced that her husband was standing above her with a knife. Twice there was a scream in her throat. Both times when she threw on the bedside light, the room was still, quiet, and safe. One time she cried, feeling herself alone and betrayed. But she rallied her spirits, telling herself, as Bill Cochrane had told her, that in the days ahead there would not be time for fear.
Laura saw herself at the center of a triangle at whose corners stood three men: Stephen, Peter Whiteside, and Bill Cochrane. They threatened to pull her apart if she did not maintain a tenacious grip on her sanity. She settled in to sleep, her hands beneath her pillow, a small steel paring knife from the kitchen beneath her mattress.
On both fronts it ended as if with a single jolt.
The Fundy Rover churned without fanfare into the port of Philadelphia late in the afternoon on its third day out of Hamilton. The Mauers were traveling now on two of the crispest, finest, freshest Canadian passports that Ottawa had never issued. The ship docked at a Cunard pier a few slips away from the United States Navy Yard in South Philadelphia. Whiteside guided mother and child off the freighter, through customs, and into a red and white taxi for the ride up Broad Street.
They arrived at the Bellevue-Stratford at a few minutes past five. Whiteside rang Cochrane's suite from the lobby.
'I've got your visitors,' he said. 'We've had a wonderful voyage. Little chilly for a cruise this time of year, don't you think? Do you have our Hun?'
Cochrane, on his feet with the telephone to his ear, turned and looked at Mauer, who stood and stared expectantly at him. 'Got him,' said Cochrane, who gave Mauer the thumbs-up signal at the same time. 'Bring them up.'
Cochrane set down the telephone.
'No tricks? Natalie and Rudy? They're here?' Otto Mauer asked in deteriorating English.
'No tricks. They're here.'
'I can't believe.'
'See for yourself, Otto. An agreement between gentlemen, remember. I haven't lied to you.'
The doorbell rang a few seconds later. Mauer's instinct was to rush to the door and throw it open, but Cochrane took the final precautions. Holding his service pistol in his hand, he went to the door and peered through. It was Whiteside, as expected. And Cochrane recognized Natalie and Rudy from several months earlier in Berlin.
He opened the door.
There was one moment made up of too much emotion for anyone to bear, then the woman and the child rushed into the room. The boy was noisy, his mother was tearful. Somehow, Otto Mauer magically shed ten years. His face was alive and joyful. He managed in one movement to sweep up his son in his arms and embrace his wife.
Cochrane watched from the doorway. Whiteside sauntered into the room a few steps behind his guests. Cochrane gave a nod to the peephole across the hall, through which either Cianfrani or Hearn was watching. Then he closed the door. He and Whiteside sat and exchanged idle chatter over the merits of steamer travel from Bermuda as they allowed the Mauer family to reacquaint themselves with one another.
Then Whiteside looked up at the Germans. 'You know of course that we'll have to move them again,' he said.
'Can you keep them?' Cochrane asked.
Whiteside nodded thoughtfully.
'I have a safe house ready on Spruce Street here in this city,' he said. 'Two blocks from the British Consulate. It should serve well for a few days. I want to move them to Canada as soon as I'm able.'
'I don't even want to know about it,' Cochrane said. 'I just need one number from Herr Mauer.'
Whiteside watched the Germans, who spoke so briskly in their own language that both he and Cochrane had difficulty. 'I think you've earned it,' Whiteside said.
Mauer thought so, too. Before dinner he stepped into the adjoining room with Cochrane. A five-digit additive to the naval code should be all Cochrane needed, Mauer agreed. And there had been a standing Abwehr order in effect since 1937, known only to those of his rank or higher:
All operatives in North America were to maintain the same additive. Changes over such a distance would be too difficult to effect. Any serious agent in America was working the code books with the same combination.
'So what is it?' Cochrane pressed.
'April 20, 1889,' Mauer said. 'It's so evident that I'm surprised no one tried it.'
Cochrane blanched for a moment, then the realization was upon him.
'Four, two zero, eight nine,' he said. 'The date. Naturally.'
Mauer was grinning with the ugly irony of it.
'A significant date to all Germans,' Cochrane said.
'To all Nazis,' Mauer corrected. Cochrane did not argue the point.
'The date of birth of Adolf Hitler,' Cochrane said. And Whiteside grimaced with him.
*
In Liberty Circle, Reverend Fowler appeared on foot leaving the railroad depot. He was halfway to his home when a DeSoto with New York plates pulled to the curb next to him. Fowler was more than mildly surprised to be confronted by two Englishmen, one with a northern brogue and the other who'd evidently been born within sight of another St. Paul's. Fowler was even more perplexed to find that both had weapons aimed in his direction.
Both Englishmen leaped from the DeSoto while Fowler froze. He held his hands aloft, as if accosted by highwaymen, and protested that if they wanted his wallet, they were welcome to it.
'We don’t want your bloody wallet,' said McPherson, who grabbed the minister by the top rear of his coat and slammed him hard against the car. A frisk revealed nothing. Then they handcuffed him, shoved him into the rear of the DeSoto, and were off, reporting to Peter Whiteside by telephone much later that evening.
Stephen Fowler offered no resistance, even when given no explanation for his abduction. For his captors, he had only forgiveness and advice:
'I don't know who you are or what you think you're doing,' Stephen Fowler said. 'But you've made the most dreadful of mistakes.'
THIRTY-EIGHT
When Lanny Slotkin entered Foley's on Washington's Twenty-fifth Street, Cochrane was at the bar, seemingly planted in one place, concerned with the magical contents of a beer mug.
Lanny couldn't resist. He ambled to the bar and overtook an unsuspecting Cochrane from behind.
'Bill Cochrane. Imagine. Never seen you here before.' Cochrane looked up, made a show of staring first at the mirror behind the bar, then turned.
'Hello, Lanny,' he said. 'Long time no… no what?' Cochrane grimaced. Slotkin glanced at the beer, and several dollar bills and some coins at Cochrane's solitary place at the bar. Cochrane breathed heavily.
'No see,' said Lanny, suddenly quite chummy. 'Long time no see.'
'I'll buy you a beer,' Cochrane offered.
He wrapped an arm around Slotkin and held him to the brass rim of the bar. 'Hey! Bartender!' he boomed, his Virginia accent more evident than Slotkin, of Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, had ever noticed. 'My friend here is an F.B.I. man. Set him up!'
'Not so loud,' Slotkin urged. 'I don't want people to know-'
