Cochrane went through the door first. Wheeler hulked after him.
The latter caught Cochrane on the marble steps outside on Constitution Avenue.
"Well, I warned you," Wheeler said, falling into stride beside Cochrane. "I tried to take the heat off you."
Cochrane cast him a sidelong glance and continued to walk. "You put the heat on me, Dick," he said.
"On? How?"
Cochrane stopped and turned to face Wheeler. Wheeler, an inch or two taller, looked downward and peered through his pipe smoke. "This fiction of being near an arrest. How can you put me on the spot like that?"
"Had to, old man."
"Had to, how?"
"I've been in Bureau headquarters more than a few years now, Bill," Wheeler answered. "I know how to deal with the Chief. Look, Hoover always has to think a resolution is close. Otherwise he brings in a new team. That means you go back to Baltimore."
"Not a chance. That means I'd retire. Become a banker again."
To Cochrane's surprise, Wheeler only shrugged. "That would be your own choice. The only indispensable man in Washington these days is Roosevelt."
"I'll be sure to tell Hoover you said so," Cochrane retorted.
"Bill, don't be an ass."
"Further, I need Mauer. Where is he? Do you know?"
"You don't need him," Wheeler insisted. "Are you forgetting? The man was a Nazi. Worse, he's a defector. Last time you dealt with him you were lucky to get away alive. Take some free advice, Bill. On something as vital as this, how can you believe a man who already betrayed his own country?"
"He joined the party because he had to. Any fool can see that. And he never betrayed me," Cochrane countered.
"Rules are rules," Wheeler crooned.
"That never bothered you in Kansas City."
"That was Kansas City and that's all over with. I now know better."
"Then I'll find Mauer on my own."
Cochrane drew away from Wheeler on the sidewalk but Wheeler reached to him and held his arm, not in confrontation, but as a friend might. "Bill, look," he offered. "Please understand." Cochrane stopped and turning back, albeit with mounting irritation. "You have to understand about J. Edgar Hoover. When he came into this agency in 1924, it was a corrupt little federal cop outfit operating out of a converted warehouse, the type of thing you'd get in some small hot banana republic in Central America. Say anything you want about the man, but he built this Bureau. He wants it spic and span. His greatest fear is that his F.B.I. will have a moral relapse. If it did, a lifetime of his work would go down the tubes."
Cochrane tried to find the rationale. But he wanted Mauer.
"Those are great excuses and a masterful apology for the man,” Cochrane answered. “Dick, you must be fabulous raising funds over on Capitol Hill."
"I'll take that as a compliment, Bill, because I'm not giving you Otto Mauer's new name or location. Hoover is intelligent and honest. He has reasons for his rules. You have to work around them."
"So we have a spy out there, a killer. He can do anything he wishes. But I have to deal with rules?"
Wheeler shrugged his shoulders. "Fascist methods versus democratic methods, Bill," Wheeler reminded him. "In the long run, which do you really prefer? Honestly now?"
Wheeler kept a hand on Cochrane's elbow until he felt it safe to release it. He looked at the younger man half as a chiding uncle, half as an older brother.
Cochrane seethed quietly. "Do you think Hoover is pro-Fascist?" Cochrane asked at length, cooling slightly.
"What the devil makes you ask that?"
"Answer me."
"No, I don't think he's pro-Fascist. He's just a Washington Republican."
"What about Lerrick?"
Wheeler laughed. "A card-carrying New Dealer from Illinois. Same as me, except I'm from Missouri. You want pro-Fascists, I'll find you some in the Senate, lurking like a nest of copperheads. Or in the House, where there's about a hundred. Or do you want the more visible ones-Colonel Lindbergh. Ambassador Kennedy. Huey Long. The Silver Shirts. What the hell are you getting at, Bill?"
Several thoughts came together at once: thoughts about Hoover, security, fascism and socialism, communism and democracies, loyalties and betrayals. But Bill Cochrane gave voice to none of them. Instead he sighed.
"Know what I think?" Wheeler confided. "I think you should take a day off. Collect your thoughts. Get your mind back on the right course. God knows, Bill, no man can eat and sleep this stuff with no respite. Do us all a favor. Take the day. Please. I'll cover for you."
Prompted by such enticements from an immediate superior, Cochrane took up Wheeler's offer. It was as good a way as any of disappearing for a few hours, then circling back to Bureau headquarters while Wheeler was in the Oval Office on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Cochrane wandered the sixth floor in an ostensibly jovial mood and buttonholed one Bluebird after another, taking them into his confidence. Those he could trust, at least. There was Lanny Slotkin first and then the two house-brand Germans, Roddy Schwarzkopf and Elizabeth Pfeiffer. Then of course there was the Virgin Mary and even Bobby Charles Martin, whom Cochrane found reading an ominous report on Gestapo interrogation techniques.
To each, when drawn aside, he made a grinning offer. "I'd like you to help me in a little intrigue," he said. "Consider it a game. Office politics, really. So don't speak to anyone who's not in on it."
Each accepted the challenge. And each was equally nonplused to learn that the victim of the intrigue was known to all and stood a full, towering forty-six inches tall.
*
Laura lay in bed beside her husband in the bedroom of their home. Stephen's eyes were closed; Laura's were open. He breathed evenly. She could not sleep. Her mind was teeming with the events of the day.
Laura quietly pulled the sheet off and stepped from the bed. The room was cool and she had no clothes on. She reached to the cotton robe and pulled it on. Sometimes when she couldn't sleep, it helped to walk around.
She went to the dormer window of the bedroom and sat on the plum-colored cushions on the bench within the window. Laura loved that view of sleepy Liberty Circle. She could see the stars, the moon, and the trees. The church across the street left a light on all night and a dim streetlight lit the road and walkway.
She looked out and heaved a long sigh. There was no way around it: it was good to be home. Good to be back with Stephen.
He had met her that morning when the French liner La Normandie had docked. He had embraced her passionately, handed her a two-pound box of Louis Sherry chocolates, and instantly made her glad that she had avoided the shipboard fling with the Swedish businessman who had been arduously chasing her.
Then Stephen had driven her home. The house had been clean and fresh. Stephen had hired a maid. And the little town was resplendent in the burnt orange of September. Stephen's mood was much more loving than when she had left. He behaved as if some burden had been lifted. He said that his parish had taken to him well and that the neighbors had asked about her. Above all, he said that he had missed her horribly.
He apologized in advance on one matter: the Lutheran Council on the East Coast had taken a shine to him and he would have to take the occasional trip to other parishes or other cities. But he would hurry back.
He would not ignore her again. Things, Stephen promised, would be different.
Then it was evening. Time for an early bed. She undressed with all the excitement of a young woman taking a new lover. And he was just as impassioned.
"I've been starving for you!" he had said to Laura at the moment when he climbed on top of her. And she had been starving for him. He led her and himself to a hurried but robust climax, made all the better by the fact that, to Laura's way of thinking, her husband behaved like a man who hadn't touched another woman since her departure.