"No," she answered quickly. "Returning home indefinitely," she said. "Until Stephen could decide whether he wants to be married to me."
"Home to England?"
"Yes."
And according to immigration records, you did, he thought, not saying it. For two and a half months this past summer. Just when some of the worst bombs were planted.
"And did you?" he asked, testing.
"June of this year," she said. "Until mid-August. I went to see my father in Salisbury."
"A pretty cathedral city if my fifth-grade geography still serves me," he said.
"It serves you quite well. I’m impressed.”
"Did Stephen travel with you?"
"No, he did not."
Cochrane sipped his tea. Laura refilled his cup when he set it down. He waited for her to speak.
"Stephen was here in America," she said. "We weren't getting along. I thought some time away from each other might help."
"Did it?"
She found herself answering defensively. "Yes," she said firmly. "I think it did." Then she turned the questions back on him.
"And what about you?" she asked. "You should be ashamed," she said with mock severity, "turning your federal interrogation techniques upon an innocent Englishwoman. What about you, Mr. Cochrane? Happily married, I suppose, with a beautiful wife from a patrician American family. You have two little ones, a boy and a girl at a manageable interval, and a lovely home outside Washington, D.C."
He shook his head. "I have a three-room apartment in Baltimore when I'm not on an assignment. Right now I'm lodged in a crumbling old wooden structure in Georgetown. No children. I'm widowed," he said.
There was a heavy pause.
"Oh, I am sorry," said Laura, feeling inordinately clumsy. "I did not meant to-"
"It's all right," he said. "It was several years ago. But you were almost right. She was a very pretty woman from an old Virginia family. We had grown up together."
"What was her name?"
"Heather."
"A pretty name," she said. "I can remember when my mother died," she said after a pause. "Death creates such a horrible void. It's so difficult to fill it."
"One can't fill it," he answered. "One can only get on with the rest of one's life. Sometimes you have to go in new directions. I would never have joined the F.B.I., for example, if my wife hadn't been killed in a car accident. I needed new challenges. New scenery. New faces. Does that make sense?"
Laura nodded. "There's only one thing that doesn't make sense about you so far, Mr. Cochrane."
"Which is that?"
"Why you're testing me. Lying, actually."
"Lying? About what?"
"You're investigating Stephen," she said. "You came here ostensibly to investigate a murder. But a murder is a state crime, as you yourself said. And you've even come back for a second look. Or, should I say, a second snoop. What are you looking for, Mr. Cochrane? Be as honest as you can with me. Maybe I could even help you."
He studied her and was struck by the manner in which he had foolishly both underestimated her and talked too much. He reached for a cookie as she silently held him in view. Every bit of his training dictated that he stay with his cover story. But then there was instinct. That, and the most enticing brown eyes that had ever drawn a bead on him.
"I'm waiting," Laura said.
"Everything I've told you is true."
"Of course it is," she answered. She folded her arms and waited. “But there’s more, isn’t there?”
It was a decision based on instinct and hunch, just as trusting Otto Mauer had been.
"I'm looking for a spy," Bill Cochrane said. "A murderer and a spy. Same man. And I'm drawing close."
Then he told a story which fit astonishingly with the account given by Peter Whiteside. By the end of it, half an hour later, all the bombing dates coincided with Stephen's absences. As for Birmingham a few years ago, Laura thought, one could only draw certain conclusions. When he finished, she was greatly shaken. She spent a long time in the midst of several dark thoughts.
"I can't believe that my husband is the man you're looking for, Mr. Cochrane," she said at length. "He has his faults like any other man. But he's not the monster you described."
"I never said that he was," Bill Cochrane answered. "You came to that conclusion yourself. Same as I did."
There was a silence. Then the monstrosity of the whole thing was upon her, and it was too big, too horrible, and too terrifying to even comprehend. So she rejected it completely, and Bill Cochrane with it.
"How dare you!" she said, suddenly turning on him. "You come in here, accept our hospitality, and then make these accusations about my husband. I'll thank you, sir, to be on your way. And unless you have something concrete, don't ever come here with such stories again. Now, out!"
Cochrane nodded and said nothing. He rose and, in apparent defeat, left the minister’s home.
THIRTY-TWO
The vision was filled with its usual irrationality. It was familiar. Cochrane had suffered it before.
President Roosevelt was sitting on the east portico of the White House, sunning himself, making pencil notes in the margin of a typewritten report. Cochrane stood to the right, arms folded behind his back, as a man who was no more than an unidentifiable spectre approached Roosevelt.
"Oh. Hello, my friend," Roosevelt said, looking up and grinning. The cigarette holder was in place.
The visitor handed Roosevelt a package as Cochrane tried to protest. But words would not escape his lips.
"Das ist fur Sie," the man said as Roosevelt accepted it.
Cochrane twisted and turned. His feet were cemented in place; his throat empty.
"Fur mich?" Roosevelt asked.
"Jawohl." The man nodded courteously.
"Danke schoen," said the grateful President. "I hope you'll consider voting next November. Are you a Democrat?"
"Nein," said the visitor, "I'm a National Socialist. Hell Hitler!"
Roosevelt looked quizzically at the man, then grinned at Cochrane, who was waving his arms to protest. Next, there was a tremendous explosion in red and gray and black; and upon the explosion, Cochrane saw the largest swastika he had ever envisioned.
Then everything settled and Cochrane was far away, as if in an airplane. The White House was tranquil down below him, except it flew the red, white, and black banner of the Third Reich from its flagpole and Hitler stood at the east portico, his arm raised in the Nazi salute as one million cheering people stretched from the lawn of the White House across the city to the Washington Monument.
Cochrane tossed himself upright in his bed and came awake. His neck and face were wet and warm. The bedside clock, when he turned the light on, said 1:30 A.M. His mouth was parched. Cochrane wished his mind would behave itself when he was trying to sleep. Wasn't Siegfried furtive enough without creeping into his dreams?
Cochrane stalked down the creaky staircase. He was midway between a fitful sleep and a fatigued wakefulness. Some ice water, which he found in the Frigidaire, might help. He stood by the kitchen counter and sipped. He thought of Laura and wondered where her husband really was. What was it about Reverend Fowler and his church, in the midst of the Bluebirds' triangulated zone of suspicion, that rankled him?
He wondered if Reverend Fowler was making love to Laura right then, as he stood in the kitchen finishing his ice water. He tossed the cubes into the sink, then thought of his own late wife. He had put Heather's photograph away recently, but now missed seeing her. Maybe he would get the picture out, try to cull more warmth than sadness from the memory, then go back to bed.
Then sleep, maybe.
He set down the glass in the sink. He turned, then noticed something. He looked again. The window over the sink was closed but crooked. Cochrane eyed it closely, leaned forward, and inspected it. Then he reached for the lock above the lower panel of the window and felt it.