Cochrane offered his F.B.I. shield by way of greeting. The chief’s shoes hit the floor as he sat up.
"Don't see many of those around here," the police chief said.
Cochrane smiled amiably, folded the shield case away, and inquired of a man named Henry Naismith.
Zawadski gave directions to a farmhouse on a road diverging from the main highway.
Cochrane thanked him.
"Now, you do one thing for me," Zawadski asked. Cochrane listened.
"You tell Mr. Hoover that he should run against Roosevelt next time," the police chief said. "Three terms. That's a lot for one man. This ain't a kingdom, after all. You tell your boss he should run for President."
"I'll tell him," Cochrane said. He returned to his car. He noted in passing that Chief Zawadski's car was parked at the town's only fire hydrant. No one seemed to care.
*
The farmhouse was five minutes out from town and Cochrane saw it on the dirt and gravel road for a mile before he arrived. The building was big and white, wooden and rambling, with a dark shingled roof that sagged. As he drew closer, he saw that an occasional window was broken and every shade was drawn. More critically, Cochrane observed as he pulled into a semicircular driveway before the house, there were no approaches to the house that were not visible from a distance. He noted, too, that there were two strings of outside lights. He guessed they were illuminated on most nights.
Cochrane parked and had barely stepped from his car when he heard the front door of the house open. Cochrane walked a pace or two and almost did not recognize the man who stood before him.
It was Otto Mauer.
But it was an older, more sober, less-dignified Otto than Cochrane remembered, with more lines and a more hardened, hard-bitten cast to his face. The German stood on the front steps to the house staring at his arrival. He wore a neat white shirt, gray flannel pants, and a cloth tie, as if he had been interrupted while dressing for an afternoon hike in the mountains south of Munich.
But more important was the look of sheer hatred on the man's face. That, and the shotgun cradled like a baby in his arms.
"Hello, Otto," Cochrane said..
"You…!" said Mauer, breathing low and with evident animosity. "What the devil are you doing here?" He spoke in English.
"I came to talk to you."
Mauer's arms unfolded like a soldier's. He held the shotgun across his chest and Cochrane stopped in his tracks.
"I ought to shoot you right here. Right now. No questions, just shoot!"
"Otto…?"
The German pointed the weapon at his visitor, the butt end of the stock poised near the right shoulder in anticipation of firing. Cochrane dared not step in either direction.
"You leave me behind to be butchered! You leave my family to Gestapo and you make your own escape!" The weapon was still trained.
"Otto, I had passports sent to you from Zurich. By courier."
"No passports. Never any passports. Thanks to you. You were turncoat. Traded us for your own freedom at Freiburg. Why do you come here? To be shot? I bury you out back. No one know. No one care. Tell me, turncoat, you ready to die?"
Cochrane felt his own anger rising to his defense.
"Otto, who's been telling you these things?"
"They tell me," Mauer insisted, very loud.
"Who in hell is 'they'?"
"No matter to you!"
Cochrane groped for some other angle and tried the most obvious.
"Otto, where's your family?" he asked. "Have they separated you from your family?" Cochrane saw the German stiffen. He saw, too, from the crooked curtains in the window and the untrimmed shrubs near the door that no woman was on the premises. Further, Mauer hadthe air of a desperate, lonely man.
Cochrane switched into German, seeking any common bond.
"Otto, I trusted you with my life in Germany. I wouldn't come here if I'd betrayed you. We must talk. It's crucial for both of us."
"Turncoat!" Mauer said again.
The German jabbed the air with the two barrels of the shotgun. Cochrane flirted with the idea of turning and running, but quickly rejected it. One step and Mauer would fire. From twenty feet, the shotgun would tear a hole in Cochrane the size of a watermelon.
"Herr Mauer," Cochrane tried again, "I'm here on official business. Bureau business. I can prove it."
Cochrane made a motion toward a jacket pocket, but Mauer stopped him with another jerk of the weapon.
"Not a move!" Mauer continued in German.
Cochrane kept talking. "I'm trying to catch a spy. Gestapo, we think. A man who's in America, Otto. Here. Where we are!"
"There is no Gestapo in America," Mauer retorted.
Cochrane's anger rose again to the occasion. "Are you crazy," he demanded, "or just uninformed? They sit in New York and Newark all night with radios. They blow up ships, they sabotage plants. They derail trains and they kill people."
"Saboteurs," the German answered. "A few insane people. Malcontents."
"I'm looking for a very dangerous man," Cochrane said. "I can prove it. But you and I have to talk."
Mauer peered at him for the longest fifteen seconds of Cochrane's life, straight over the double barrels of the shotgun. Cochrane half-expected to see the flash and the eruption from the nozzle of the gun. He would feel the agonizing pain for only a second or two, then there would be darkness.
For some reason, as all these black thoughts coalesced at once, Cochrane thought of the country graveyard in Virginia where his family was buried. He wondered if he would be returned there. He fought off the thought. It had never occurred to him before.
And worse, he was out of words. Long ago at the National Police Academy they had taught him: always keep a gunman talking. They don't shoot when they're talking.
But Cochrane's mouth had gone desert-dry. He had said everything. There was no further appeal. All he could do was glare at Mauer. If the German was to kill him, he would have to look him in the eye.
Mauer still spoke in German. "You have a gun?" Mauer asked. Cochrane nodded.
"Loaded?"
"It's not much use unloaded, Otto."
"Very slowly. You drop it."
Very slowly, Cochrane reached with his right hand.
"Left hand! Left hand! Thumb and forefinger!" the German shouted.
Cochrane's right hand drew back and he reached his service weapon. He pulled the gun from the holster and he tossed it gently away.
"Now," said Mauer, his own weapon never budging, "if you're with the F.B.I., let's see identification. Again, left hand. Very slowly."
Again Cochrane obeyed. He removed his shield case from a pocket and tossed it toward the German. Mercifully, it landed open, the bronze shield facing upward. Mauer crouched down and picked it up. He stared at it so hard that Cochrane thought he was trying to memorize it.
Then Mauer looked back to his visitor. He spoke in tones that were not apologetic. "You come inside," he said.
Cochrane felt the moment slowly defuse. He moved forward. Mauer stepped back a little and kept his distance, just in case. In Cochrane's experience, however, shotguns were rarely used indoors. Too messy. Frightfully noisy. Mauer appreciated that, too.
If he were going to kill me, Cochrane later recalled thinking, he would have done it there. Right there. While I was holding the gun.
He entered the farmhouse at shotgun point and later recalled a second thought: I've been wrong before, he reminded himself.
*
But Cochrane was not wrong.
As the men entered the house, Mauer retreated to a stuffed, fading armchair on one side of the room. Beside it was a bottle of bourbon, already open and half consumed, a carving knife, and a pair of shot glasses. The German motioned to a sofa across the room. He indicated that he had be happiest if Cochrane sat there. Cochrane did. Then Mauer eased into his own chair, cradling his shotgun across his lap, like a dog or a small blanket, and he stared at his visitor.