"You didn't care for him?" Cochrane asked as Mauer reached again for the bourbon.
"Pest," retorted Mauer. "But, ah," he added with a brisk, contemptuous wave of his hand, "he's paying my Claridge's bill. So naturally in two days he's back. But now he visits with five other men. Muscle. Looked like Englishmen off the docks, all standing around my suite in Basil Rathbone-type coats, getting my walls dirty. He shows me a handwritten note from Major Asena in Gibraltar saying that my family never arrived there. Then they quickly team up on me. They tell me that I cannot stay in England. They're squeezing me, you see. They tell me that I entered the country on a no-good American passport and I will be put in jail. I tell them to go directly to hell. They make me another offer. They want to give me new identification, money, and let me run networks of German doubles in Morocco or Egypt, I take my pick. I ask them if they are completely crazy. I mention my wife and family and suddenly I realize-they never believed my story about a wife and son in Spain. Maybe they did not even believe my identity within the Abwehr. But this they must have believed. My information had to check with theirs."
There was a long silence and Mauer needed to be prodded again. "So what did you do, Otto?" Cochrane nudged.
"What do you think I did?" he snapped. "I say to this man, hey, I have an American passport. That makes me citizen of United States. I want to notify my embassy that I am here being recruited by foreign agents. Well, there was a pained expression around the room. They all filed out. But two of them stayed at my door for two days. I'm under house arrest now, can you believe? Then Richards came back yet again. Very reverential this time. Full of apologies. And an American diplomat comes in a minute later. We go through the Count Choulakoff charade again and the American turns to the major. 'Yeah, this is our man, buddy,' the American says. He tells me that my family is in Washington waiting for me. They put me on a disguised American military cargo ship that next night. I'm in New York in eight days, Washington in ten. I'm greeted by the F.B.I.. I demand proof that they have my family safe. They say, proof takes time. Just some questions first. I'm going crazy but I have no choice. I try to cooperate. We go through the whole stinking story again, everything I tell you in Germany, everything I tell the English in London. I know what they're doing. They're testing my story against yours. Then they discredit you to see if I change my story. I stick to the truth. It's all I have. Then I demand, absolutely demand, to see my family."
"Who was doing the interrogation?"
"Several. The little idiot who stutters a lot was the leader. Moustache. Little thin Don Amice-type moustache."
"Lerrick," muttered Cochrane, almost unwillingly.
"That's the one." Mauer grew angry again. "He stands, walks to me with a smile, and slaps me across the face! He's fifteen years younger, but I jump out of my seat to strangle him. But other Bureau toughs grab me, put me back in chair. He says I'm in America now and in American they don't like Nazis. I tell him I'm not a Nazi, never was, but he doesn't want to listen. He hits me again and I'm held down. He says his Bureau gives the instructions, not me. He says I will cooperate or he will make sure I never see family again ever, Then they keep me awake. They change me from room to room. They take off my watch and change my clothing. I have nothing familiar anymore. I lose track of days. I tell them everything I know. Everything. At the end, this man simply says to his assistants. 'All right. That's enough. No more.' 'My family?' I said to him"- Mauer's voice was deeply plaintive here, almost brittle with emotion-"'What about my family, you liar!' But he left the room."
More bourbon, then Mauer moved toward a conclusion.
"Later that same day the other man arrives,” he said. “The big hulking one who looks like a bear and who visits me sometimes here. He says there is a terrible difficulty, but he can help. My family is still in Spain, he says. I explode. I scream at him that I'm betrayed three times now by his same rotten Bureau. I go for him, but he grabs my hands. He is very calm. Then he shows me. He has a picture. He shows me a photograph of Natalie and Rudy in Madrid. 'They are being cared for,' he promises me. 'They will be brought to America when it is safe to travel.' He gives me his word."
Mauer exuded a long sigh. "Here," he said. The German reached to a drawer and handed Cochrane a black and white photo. Cochrane looked down at it as Mauer rubbed his own eyes. In the photo Natalie Mauer stood with her son, Rudy, an image in black and white at Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Natalie looked happy. The young boy looked sorrowful, as did the city in the background, which bore scars from the civil war.
Cochrane returned the photograph to Mauer, who tucked it into his pocket.
"They tell me I must wait," Mauer said. "I ask for asylum and they give me this house. I ask for a bodyguard and they give me this gun." He shook it with controlled venom and Cochrane leaned backward slightly. "I ask them to move my family immediately; Madrid crawls with Gestapo and SS and Franco's national police. But they give me excuses. I ask them to use Major Asena in Gibraltar and the Americans say they know of no such agent. So I sit here. I know nothing. Helpless. I've told everything I know." He took his longest pause yet. "God in heaven," he said as a benediction.
An absolute silence enshrouded the two men, the isolated farmhouse, and Mauer's whole black story. Slowly, as if it made no difference anymore, the German set aside his weapon and stood. He got to his feet slowly, as if battling a stiffness in the legs, and walked fretfully across the room. Cochrane watched him go. Mauer was in the kitchen and drew himself a glass of water. Cochrane glanced back to the shotgun. He was closer to it than the German. But now it barely mattered.
In the fading light from the outdoors, Cochrane watched Otto Mauer. A wave of commiseration swept over him. Despite the risks, Cochrane knew that he had enjoyed their first meeting much more. Back then, just a short year ago, Mauer was a dashing senior Abwehr officer of substantial influence. Now he was an aging defector, broken in spirit, separated from the things that he loved, and drifting into an uncertain murky future. Worse, he knew it. Stripped of his nationality and his influence, he remained a husband and a father. But even his family had been taken from him,
Cochrane broke the depressing spell of the room by reaching to a lamp and lighting it. Mauer returned, carrying a glass, obviously lost in thought. The German sat down.
"Anything else?" Cochrane asked.
Mauer looked up. "I told you, you know everything."
"Well, it simply occurs to me," the American said. "You've been driven from your country by a bunch of cutthroats, separated from your family, placed here by people you don't know and can't trust…"
Cochrane probed the German's narrowing eyes for some resonance. He thought he found some.
"You must have done some time thinking, Otto,” Cochrane said. You must have theorized on what went wrong. And where."