No one spoke. It was a time of observation. Cochrane noted first the shabby state of the house's interior, the walls crying out for paint, the furniture that had outlived its brighter days. An odd number of coffee cups and plates presided upon nearby tables and a pallor of imprisonment hung ponderously upon everything within the room, particularly Mauer.
Mauer had lost weight since Cochrane had seen him last. Patches of his hair were gray, like a small animal's.
Mauer scrutinized his visitor, trying to read what lurked behind Cochrane's eyes. He was unable, and his own eyes lost their menace and retreated into anxiety.
Cochrane rushed to a new conclusion about Mauer. Here before him was a lonely, broken man. A former officer of the Abwehr, Mauer now dwelt in the professional purgatory of the exiled defector, untrusted where he was, reviled where he came from. With the final days of his middle years slipping away, Mauer spent his weeks in isolation, fearing the advance of a lonely old age. He had the look of a man under siege.
"I want you to know at the outset," Cochrane began, "that I’ll help you in any way I can. But I need to know certain things. You must be honest with me, as I believe you always have been."
Mauer's glare was unyielding. Then it broke into a rueful smile and a scoff laced with cynicism.
"Me help you?" Mauer answered, switching into English. "Almost as funny as you helping me."
Cochrane saw no humor and was about to open his mouth when Mauer reached for a week-old Philadelphia Bulletin.
"See this?" Mauer asked. "War already." He shook his head sadly. "I do not know if Germany can win. Not with its current leadership." He glanced at the headlines and a newspaper map on the front page, a map bedecked with firm black arrows showing paths of German invasion.
"Poland," Mauer said with contempt. "Imagine England going to war over a corrupt, backward, ill-educated dictatorship of idiot colonels. Imagine Chamberlain complaining that Hitler has taken another part of Czechoslovakia when it was Chamberlain who agreed to its partition one year ago."
Mauer poured himself bourbon and sipped. "Imagine England taking a stand on the so-called Polish city of Danzig when Danzig was part of Prussia from 1793 until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Are you a student of history, Herr Cochrane?"
"I try to be."
"Would you not agree that the Allies themselves created Hitler when they partitioned Germany and wrote such an odious settlement to the Great War? It was such a settlement that built up the resentment in Germany that gave credibility to Hitler."
"I wouldn't disagree. Not completely."
"An insane document, the Versailles treaty. We are, in a sense, fighting the same war. A sad, oppressive settlement."
Forgetting the weapon across Mauer's lap, Cochrane took issue. "Similar to the settlement the Kaiser inflicted upon the Czar two years earlier. Wouldn't you say?"
Mauer, savoring a sip, set down his shot glass. His reaction surprised Cochrane. "Point," he said philosophically. "Now, tell me why you are here so I might decide whether or not to shoot you."
For the first time, in sunlight reflecting through the door, Cochrane caught a glimpse of the stock of the shotgun. Upon the stock was a beautifully carved scene of two men cornering a bear, the penultimate act of a presumed hunt. Then Cochrane's gaze slipped to the knife near the bourbon bottle. There were wood chips and slivers on the floor. Mauer was marking time by engraving the stock of his own weapon.
"I want to talk about Abwehr operations within the United States. Anything covert. Anything at all."
"It won't take time too much. I know nothing."
"But you were in the Abwehr. You know the procedures if not the specifics." When Mauer said nothing, Cochrane forged ahead. "I'm after a single man. I think he's working alone."
Mauer replied loftily. "Absolutely impossible," he said.
"The man exists."
“ In your mind perhaps, mein Herr."
Cochrane thought of Billy Pritchard's corpse rotting in the New Jersey woods. "No. The man is real," he answered.
"You've seen him?" Mauer asked quickly, switching back into German.
"I've seen his work."
"But you haven't seen him?"
"Otto, I wouldn't be here if I'd been that close."
Mauer laughed mirthlessly. "You were a banker once. Probably not even a bad one. But, if you'll excuse me, you have no aptitude for intelligence work whatsoever."
Cochrane felt the rebuke like a schoolboy, but kept quiet. "You are like most other Americans. This is what I tried to tell you a year ago in Berlin. You fail to understand Germany. And when you fail to understand Germany, you fail to understand Hitler or German methods of doing things."
But Cochrane did not fail to understand the German language. So he allowed Mauer to continue.
"There is no such thing as one man working alone,” Mauer said. “Nowhere, I repeat, nowhere in German society today. Particularly in the military. Or in the Abwehr. Or anywhere in the intelligence systems. The entire concept is totally antithetical to the Reich. Look," he said. The German's eyes came alive with intrigue for the first time. "A private in the Wehrmacht, the lowliest private, has a sergeant. The sergeant has a lieutenant. The lieutenant has a major, the major has a colonel, and so on up until you reach the field marshal. But the field marshal has commanders in Berlin, the strategists who plan the war. And they have their commander- Adolf Hitler himself."
Mauer replenished his shot glass. "Similarly with a spy," said Mauer. "A spy in America will have a command in his region. A spy based here in Pennsylvania, for example, may have a master in Washington. The master may be Portuguese or Spanish. But he is the master, nonetheless. The master would report by courier or by radio to Hamburg. Hamburg reports to the Intelligence Chancellery in Berlin and that agency reports to Admiral Canaris. Canaris reports to Goering. Goering reports to Hitler. Orders go down the chain of command. Reports go up. See? Very simple, very orderly. Very German. No man works alone."
"But someone is!" Cochrane insisted.
"Then he is not German," said Mauer sharply.
Cochrane rejected the notion. He was struck instead by the absurdity of being unarmed and interrogating a man who had a shotgun across his lap.
"So," Mauer said. "Now. I've told you what you wanted to know?"
"Only partially."
"What else?"
"I'd like to know how you arrived here from Germany. Particularly," said Cochrane, trying to maintain an easy, discursive tone, "if you didn't use the Swiss passports intended for you."
Mauer fingered the weapon again. "Look in your own files," he said.
"I want to hear it in your own words," Cochrane said.
"You, too? Everyone wants to hear my own words. They sat here with a wire recorder and transcribed me." "Who did?"
"Your superior. This Herr Lerrick."
Cochrane was thunderstruck and did his best to conceal it. Lerrick?
"He sat where you're sitting now," Mauer said. Then he motioned across the room to a worn straw chair with a ladder back. "And the other man. He sat over there." Mauer indicated with his gaze.
"Yes. Of course," Cochrane said, recovering. "And when was this again? Shortly after your arrival, right?" he guessed.
"About two weeks. I go to New York first of course," the German said, switching back to English for no apparent reason other than that the events recalled themselves that way. "Then to Washington. Then they put me here. Lerrick and the other man, both of F.B.I., badges like yours, come to talk to me here."
"The second man…?"
"I do not recall a name."
"What did he look like? Large? Small?"
"Big and tall. Broad like a bear. Looked German but wasn't. Smokes a pipe. Looked clumsy but wasn't."