He presented himself to the United States Consulate in Hamilton and talked a skeptical undersecretary into placing a telephone call to Washington. On the next day, Washington brought him home, telling him that it all had been worth it, even before they learned what it all had been.
It was November 12, 1938. He had been away for fifteen months. For the next six weeks he was debriefed personally by Frank Lerrick, who generally named only topics, allowing Cochrane to guide him through the Abwehr at Cochrane's own pace. A stenographer recorded everything, and on one day two generals from the Joint Chiefs of Staff showed up also, sat quietly, and listened. Cochrane's testimony filled three locked filing cabinets.
By that time, even the dour Frank Lerrick was grinning like a gargoyle. Cochrane was exhausted, of course, both spiritually and physically, and tended toward an unhealthy loquaciousness. But what did it matter? The F.B.I. had scored a staggering intelligence coup, so it seemed, and Bill Cochrane had done it.
"I can see great things for you in this Bureau," Lerrick concluded warmly when all questions had been asked. "What assignment do you want next?"
"What do I want or what can I have?" Cochrane asked, much too smugly.
"Either. Just tell me."
So Cochrane told him. Lerrick paled slightly and shifted the topic to college football. Bill Cochrane smiled. Again, much too smugly. "Now you tell me something," Cochrane said. "If I can," Lerrick answered.
"What happened to Otto Mauer? And his family? I promised to get them out of Germany."
Lerrick's face went colder than a tombstone. Cochrane lost his smile.
"Come on, Lerrick!" Cochrane snapped. "I've been talking to you for six weeks. Would you answer my one question?"
"They alive. We got them to New York. That’s all I can tell you right now. Bill Cochrane exhaled an enormous sigh. He thought of Mauer, his lovely wife and their son. "Thank God. That's all I asked," Cochrane said.
*
A few days into 1939, Bill Cochrane reported for work and awaited a new assignment. No decision had yet been made on his future.
"He's in good health, has a wealth of talent, and his work has greatly impressed the President on behalf of the Bureau," Lerrick had informed Hoover in the director's office one morning in December. "There's only one thing wrong with him."
"If I recall," the chief said, "he's too much of a gentleman."
"Not anymore. And he really hates those Nazis.”
Hoover thought for a moment. "He's a fairy?" Hoover's eyes narrowed. "Communist?"
Lerrick shook his head.
"What, then?" Hoover inquired.
"He's ambitious. He, uh, wants your job."
"My job?" J. Edgar Hoover's cheeks flushed.
"And he says that within five years, he'll have it "
"Is that a fact?" Hoover asked ruminatively. "Well, we’ll fix him, won’t we?"
Lerrick, director of personnel for the Bureau, did just that. Cochrane was assigned to the top floor of the F.B.I.'s wing of the Justice Department building. He was to review a six-month backlog in the files on interstate automobile theft.
"What is this? A joke?" Cochrane asked Lerrick when he literally button-holed him in the lobby on the first Thursday. Cochrane knew it wasn't.
"Well," Lerrick said in lame mollifying tones, "your face and name are known in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Berlin. It's not the easiest thing, you know, uh, finding a position for someone with your experience."
"Why don't you create one? Something good."
"I'll get back to you."
Lerrick did not get back to him. Cochrane shared a stuffy, cramped top-floor office with a glum, dark- haired, olive-complexioned, gaunt, flatulent little dwarf named Mr. Hay, who hummed to himself, sneezed a lot, and plodded from one file to another. The office had no window and smelled of stale paper, mildew, paint remover, and, naturally, the dwarf. During the initial two weeks here, Cochrane was spoken to by Mr. Hay only when the latter needed Cochrane's help in removing something from the top rear of one of the files.
Mr. Hay was fortyish, with a face that could appear simultaneously young and old. He was trapped somewhere between boyhood and old age and wore an absurd brownish-gray wig. His teeth were yellow and his socks were checkered. His three suits came from the boys' department at Hamburger's. For Bill Cochrane, this was something new.
But Mr. Adam Hay was more than a sum of his parts. He had curious habits, too, most of which surfaced during the next few days. For no apparent reason, the diminutive archivist would not answer when addressed by his Christian name, which was Adam. He preferred instead to be always summoned by a clipped military "mister." He brought lunch with him, ate it alone on a public park bench, and indulged himself in his one passion at any free moment: horse racing.
Mr. Adam Hay was an inveterate handicapper, studying all aspects of a horse race and its factors before driving to Arlington Park in Virginia or Pimlico in Maryland on weekends to place his bets.
Bureau folklore had it that Mr. Hay made tons of money on the races and passed his picks along to J. Edgar Hoover himself, the Bureau's best-known horseplayer. But if there was validity in such rumors, it remained elusive. Adam Hay lived a quiet conjugal existence in a gritty section of Georgetown, surviving from one paycheck to the next. And he and J. Edgar had never been seen "within six furlongs of each other," as Dick Wheeler, the Bureau wit and diplomat, had phrased it.
Mr. Hay's other foible was of a different color. Normally alone with his files and archives, he had free run of them. If a request came from downstairs for anything for which the Bureau kept records, it was Mr. Hay, who would scuttle along from one file drawer to another and draw out everything on the subject. Next-totally without authorization-he would read the files from start to finish. Then he would send them downstairs.
"You read everything, don't you? I've been watching you." Cochrane inquired as he viewed this procedure on his second Monday morning in Bureau Siberia.
"Bugger off, Cochrane," the – dwarf replied, settling down to a file on Langston Hughes and an even thicker one on Albert Einstein. "It's none of your business."
"No, no," said Cochrane, who smiled and shook his head. "I don't care and I won't tell. I'm just amused by the procedure."
"Treat your amusement like your dick. Keep it to yourself."
"You read very quickly, too," Cochrane further observed.
There was a pause. Mr. Hay studied Cochrane. "I'm memorizing," Mr. Hay declared.
"Uh-huh," Cochrane answered.
"You don't believe me?"
"Frankly, no."
"I have a photographic memory," said the elfin one.
"No such thing."
"Bet?"
"Sure."
"Let's see your money, Cochrane."
Cochrane laid a five-dollar bill on the archive table. Adam Hay matched it. "Pick a file, any file," the smaller man challenged.
Cochrane found one in a bottom drawer in the B section: Patrick C. Barrie, a ringer of race horses and a fixer of races who worked for the Capone syndicate in Chicago in the 1920s. He handed the file to Mr. Hay, who flicked through a page a minute, then handed it back to Cochrane seven minutes late.
Cochrane took it in his hand and opened it. "Page four," he requested.
To which the dwarf recited the page word by word. Then he pocketed Cochrane's five dollars.
"Let's try again," Cochrane said. "Game?"
“Sure.”
Cochrane took out another five. Mr. Hay matched it with the one he had just won. Cochrane found a file on Carla Tresca, an anti-Fascist newspaper publisher in New York. Thirteen pages. Mr. Hay repeated word for word after ten minutes of study. Then he duplicated the procedure for racketeer Dion O'Banion and for balladeer Woody Guthrie. Cochrane, meanwhile, was four fives poorer.