But Wheeler had lived forty-two years, he reminded Cochrane, and wasn't happy with what he had seen over the last ten. 'A tidal wave of immigrants… a rise of home-grown leftist politics… a flood of Jewish rabble into the country… it all takes its toll on the American fabric. Do you understand what I'm saying?'
Cochrane felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, but did admit to being familiar with Wheeler's point of view. It wasn't unpopular in these insular days.
'Roosevelt is responsible for much of it,' Wheeler maintained. 'He made left-wing politics acceptable during the Depression. Roosevelt embarked us on the road to socialism. First step to making us all Red.'
And now, Wheeler postulated, there was in the offing an alliance with Russia. The Bolshevik demons. Told by Dick Wheeler in a soft Midwestern drawl, it all did sound very frightening. Stalin was the incarnation of the crimson Marxist devil, sculpted moustache, pointed tail, cloven feet, and all. America was about to go to war against the industrious blond-haired Germans, with Satan as our sidekick.
'Does it make any sense to you?' Wheeler asked, seeming to want an honest answer.
Then he forged ahead, not waiting.
'Compare the two systems,' Wheeler explained. 'Look at Germany in 1920. Weak. Impotent. Poor. Now look at what Hitler has done. Pride is restored. The Left has been vanquished. And a powerful Wehrmacht rules Europe.'
'For today,' Cochrane allowed.
'Now look at Western Europe. And look, if you wish, at America. Socialism crept in during this decade and what has it brought us? Second-class world status, a tidal wave of filthy immigrants, twelve million unemployed, and a legion of Communists who wish to destroy every institution we have. Do I make my case clear?'
Wheeler sipped the remainder from his bottle of Coca-Cola and waited.
'And so for this Roosevelt was to be killed?' Cochrane asked.
No, Wheeler answered, shifting his position on the cot. It was not quite that simple. His own sympathies, Wheeler explained, were never so much pro-Hitler as they were pro-America. Early on in his F.B.I. career he made a conscious decision. He would do what he could to keep America away from any entanglement with the Communists. If that meant helping the America First Committee, the German-American Bund, the Campfire Girls, or the Nazis themselves, which it gradually and inevitably did, well then, so be it.
'Siegfried started to work independently,' Wheeler said, 'and Fritz Duquaine was the key link. Fowler brought his services to Duquaine early on; his pro-American editorials caught everyone's attention, including theirs. He insisted upon anonymity and to some degree he maintained it. But from the very outset, Duquaine knew who Fowler was. Did not take him very seriously at first, then suddenly realized how brilliantly efficient he was.'
'And you did nothing to stop him?'
'Since he was potentially harming an Anglo-American-Russian alliance, no, I didn't.' He paused and elaborated, 'I'd been in contact with Fritz Duquaine, myself. I helped him stay a step ahead of everyone on this end.'
'And the death of Roosevelt?' Cochrane asked.
'Fowler's grand design, I imagine. But as war approaches, grave steps must be taken. If it's the death of a President… well, we've survived that before, haven't we?'
Cochrane nodded without conviction.
'My goal,' Wheeler concluded, 'was to save America for white Christians. That's what I told those morons this afternoon. That's what they failed to understand. Kept asking me instead about Bund networks in Wisconsin. What crap!'
'I'll see if I can straighten them out.'
'Would you?' At least a quarter minute passed. It was an uneasy lapse of time, and when it ended, Wheeler's tones were considerably sadder. 'I know what's in store for me, after all,' he said. 'Know what I mean?'
He seemed to want an answer, so Cochrane gave him an honest one. 'You'll be tried for treason. Probably be executed.'
'And you know what?' Wheeler asked. 'I consider myself a patriot.' He was suddenly adamant: 'The real enemy is the Soviet Union, Bill. Joe Stalin and his unwashed Bolshevik hordes. As long as you live, don't ever forget that.'
Then the gears shifted. Dick Wheeler began to ramble. He talked again of the penury of his own boyhood in the Ozarks and how his family, honest working people, never took a handout from the government, never needed the writings of Marx, always sent their males into the armed forces, and worked their way from lean to prosperous times. Why, Wheeler wanted to know, couldn't everyone do that?
From there Wheeler returned to his politics. Cochrane found himself listening politely but turning a deaf ear to it. There was no point in discussing it, challenging it, or even prolonging it. Afterward, certain phrases stayed with Cochrane:
Roosevelt will have all of us-white, yellow, and colored-communized and intermarried. By the year 2000, we will all be niggers…
I hate the Jews very deeply. Every boatload of them that arrives in New York should be turned back out to sea and set on fire…
To safeguard the Republic from Bolshevism, presidential elections might someday need to be canceled; a strong Christian leader from the military could then guide the country indefinitely…
And, to round things out as Bill Cochrane grew weary:
Unionized labor should be outlawed…
The Bill of Rights should be suspended. Summary executions of known criminals by police squads could be held in public places…
American fascism is the only ideology that can save Christian America…We need to become a fascist state.
The monstrosity of all this, weighing in on Bill Cochrane as the afternoon died, helped prompt him to his feet. Cochrane promised that he would attempt to make clear Dick Wheeler's point of view to the inquisitors. Wheeler said he was grateful.
'They have such sledgehammer personalities, Hoover's people,' Wheeler said. 'You're about the only one to whom I can make an intellectual appeal.'
'I'm honored.'
Wheeler cocked his head in a diffident manner. 'Something else,' he said.
Cochrane asked what.
'You fed the German naval code to Lanny Slotkin intentionally, didn't you?' Wheeler asked. 'The proper additive and all.'
Cochrane nodded. 'You figured if I slipped a trap through the F.B.I.,' he answered, 'it would have come through Bobby Martin or HopeMing. Or even Roddy Schwarzkopf or Liz Pfeiffer. So I figured Lanny was the surest way of showing you the bait.'
'Point.' Wheeler grimaced.
Cochrane felt his anger rise very slightly. 'Well, someone was going to take the bait from within the F.B.I.,”he said. 'My contact in Berlin was murdered before my arrival. I was under surveillance the entire time. Otto Mauer and his family escaped only because hey were both ingenious and lucky. And someone, someone, tipped Siegfried as to who was closing in on him. How else does a bomb magically arrive under my bed?'
For the first time, Wheeler appeared unnerved by the whole conversation. But he looked without remorse at the younger man.
'Well, nothing personal you understand, Bill,' he said. 'But you'd become a nuisance.
Something had to be done.'
'But why was I selected in the first place?'
'Not my idea!' Wheeler snapped, rummaging again for the missing pipe. 'I argued long and hard for someone else. But you were the only choice: experience against Gestapo in Germany, veteran Bureau, background in explosives in the U.S. Army. Roosevelt handpicked you, himself, in case you never knew.'
Which brought Cochrane to attention. 'No. I didn't know.'
Wheeler's eyebrows arched. 'Final point?' he asked, Cochrane waited.
'Word reaches me,' Wheeler said, 'that you're having it on with Stephen Fowler's widow. Any truth to
