by Noel Hynd
Mauer's wife and son were to leave Germany immediately for Spain. They would arrive in Madrid by air, then travel southward by train. They would cross the tenuous border to Gibraltar where they would contact an M.I. 5 agent, a self-styled nobleman called Major Asena, who ran a cafe in the afternoon and a network of anti-Franco infiltrators for the English at night. In exactly what force Asena was a major was open to dispute, and the conventional wisdom in Gibraltar had it that his rank was as self-proclaimed as his nobility. But no one pressed such questions; Major Asena solved problems.
From Gibraltar, Frau Mauer and her son were to take an Irish liner-named with the uncanny half-poet, half-warrior sense of Gaelic irony, The Empress of Belfast -to New York. There Otto Mauer and his family would rendezvous, at least according to prearrangements.
Mauer saw his wife and son to the airport in Munich. He watched them safely onto the aircraft, then stood on the observation deck as the airplane disappeared into the sky. He went to work for three more days. Then on a Friday morning, he threw his own ace.
I.G. Derringer, the sprawling German electrical supply company, had a plant in Helsinki. It was constantly under surveillance by both Russian and English operatives. Using his own passport and Abwehr identification, Mauer flew to Helsinki on a Luftwaffe civilian transport, ostensibly to run a spot security check on the plant.
He arrived, conducted his check, disappeared into a cafe, and convinced himself he was alone. He ordered a single Polish vodka, drank it, and waltzed out the side door and down two short, busy blocks. He reported to the American Consulate, which was busy, overworked, and functioned with a staff of six. There Mauer demanded to see the chief diplomatic officer, who happened that day to be the consul himself.
The consul was a trim, laconic Vermonter named Fred Godfrey. Mauer introduced himself as Count Choulakoff, just in from Munich, and demanded passage at least as far as London. Godfrey nearly threw him out, having, in his experience in White River Junction, never encountered Russians making demands for free travel.
Godfrey would in fact have thrown the bogus count off the premises after two minutes discussion, but Mauer drew a Luger from his overcoat. He suggested in concise English that Mr. Godfrey rethink his position.
Godfrey went sheet white and followed instructions. He cabled the F.B.I. in Washington, citing an emergency of the highest order and asking guidance. He cited that a gentleman of the Russian aristocracy, name of Choulakoff, recently of Munich, was sitting in his office. What should be done?
As they awaited a response, Godfrey drew up an American passport. The count happened to have a recent photograph handy and Godfrey had no deeply rooted instincts toward martyrdom.
The cable came back after ten very sweaty hours, all of which Mauer spent sitting in Godfrey's office, his loaded Luger in his coat pocket, making small talk with the consular staff. Washington's instructions were to "assist the count in travel westward."
Godfrey heaved a huge sigh and handed Mauer a passport with five hundred dollars. Mauer apologized profusely for his poor diplomatic table manners, politely accepted the passport and cash, and was on his way. Within a minute he was gone.
"I was in Oslo by steamer within thirty-six hours," Mauer recalled to Cochrane as the shadows elongated across the floor of the Pennsylvania farmhouse. "I was in England via a second steamer within two more days."
M.I. 6 pounced upon Mauer as his feet touched the dock in Southampton. Their agents at the harbor were expecting him, knew from the very outset that he was German, not Russian, and arranged to escort him onward to London, but very politely.
"Two of them brought me to London," Mauer said, "two very neat young men in Chesterfields. They both spoke fluent German and posed everything as a civil request." He paused. "They put me up at Coleridge’s," Mauer recalled, not without a certain appreciation. "A suite overlooking Brook Street."
Mauer's eyes danced for a moment. Cochrane nodded and then a shadow came across the German again. "But you see," Mauer continued, "my family was nowhere to be seen. And within a few hours I had been turned over to yet another Englishman. A Major Richards, a man in his thirties with very short dark hair and tortoise-shell glasses. He wore no uniform. He told me that he was in a branch of M.I. 5 called B.A. 1. I don't know what the letters stood for. But I knew what the branch did. Double-crossing enemy intelligence, both German and Italian. They would trap enemy agents and turn them back against the German or Italian spy masters who'd dispatched them. That, or execute them, I suppose, so the poor agents had little choice."
Cochrane interrupted. "Had you ever heard of B.A. 1 I before?"
Mauer's whitish eyebrows shot skyward. "Good Heaven, young man! Of course. Abwehr has a thorough file on them. I even had heard of Major Richards. That's why Major Richards' offer was so laughable."
"What offer?"
"He wanted to feed me back into Germany to work for England. I told him that I had already worked for the Americans and felt I was compromised. He laughed and said that the Americans had no intelligence service abroad yet. He told me that if I had worked for an American, I had actually probably been working for an American Communist in the employ of Stalin."
"How did you answer that one?" Cochrane asked, choosing his words very carefully.
"I ripped into him. I said, 'Major, sir, you and the Americans share a common language. If you don't know what they're doing, why don't you go ask them for yourself?' He did not like that and suggested that perhaps I was not really Abwehr, but rather some sort of criminal. Maybe I should be returned. He said this, I know, just to get me hot. So I said very calmly, 'No, Major. I am in truth Abwehr. That is how I know you studied at Oxford and Heidelberg, were born in Taunton, married, and used to work in war office before being recruited into intelligence.' Major Richards withdrew very slightly, then nodded. 'Very good,' he answered me. Then I told him ten of his B.A. 1 agents who'd been discovered by the Gestapo. He didn't like that, either. He tried to make another offer to me, but I was getting very mad now. So I said to him, 'Major, you talk to your Major Asena in Gibraltar. You get my wife and son here and I'll see what else I can do for you. Until then, nothing!' I folded my arms and did not answer him for another half hour. Finally he grew tired and left. Good riddance."
"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 America
n 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."
Mauer looked at him glumly and his own voice was defensive again. "No theories," the German said. "I know."
"Then tell me."
"From the very start, young William Cochrane," Mauer said, "Gestapo had your number in Germany. And I should have known. But Abwehr didn't know at all. Only Gestapo. Trouble is, how do they have you before you even set foot in the Reich? How are they watching you every step of the way?"
"Exactly," Bill Cochrane answered.
"Better still, how did you escape when few others do?"
"I don't know."
"Then I tell you."
"Go ahead."
"You got very lucky, boy," Mauer said. "That's all. Like I said, Americans are bumbling amateurs in matters of intelligence and security. No match for Germans at all. When you get into the war-and make no mistake, England and France will drag you in again-you're all in great trouble. No doubt."
"We'll see."
"Ah." Mauer waved his hand contemptuously and dismissively again. "I show you!" he snapped, very angrily.
Impulsively he grabbed the shotgun again and whirled it upward as he remained in his chair. The moment seemed frozen in both time and horror to Cochrane because when the gun came up it was trained directly at Cochrane's upper chest, where it would blow a hole where his heart was. "I show you for sure!" the German said.
The German snapped the weapon open to check the ammunition and then clacked it shut again. "Ready?" he asked, and Cochrane did not have a half second to move before both triggers of the double-gauge were squeezed. There were two clicks. Two of the loudest clicks Cochrane had ever heard in his life. He stared at Mauer.
"When your Bureau gave me a weapon, they gave me no ammunition," Mauer said. "Fools!" He reached to his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of shells. He opened the weapon and slid them in. "Now, you go. You help me if you think you can. But you remember. When I am ready to shoot someone, I will be prepared, also."
A long final silence and then: "Remember, I could have shot you. You owe me your life. Bring me my family in return. Your own words once, 'One gentleman to another.' Now, go. We still have our agreement.”
*
Silence, darkness, and loneliness were the three great interrogators. Before them, a man's soul was bare and vulnerable. All three worked upon Cochrane as he drove the winding, black highway through the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. It was night now and he had left Mauer standing on the farmhouse doorstep, cradling the shotgun, seeing his visitor off. The image stayed with Cochrane. But now the entire sky was the color of Mauer's eyes and mood. And the darkness accused.
The headlights of the Hudson shone a frail yellow beam on the road ahead, but Cochrane saw the road only absently. Other visions descended. Distant voices asked questions.
Why had his own Bureau endeavored so carefully to keep him away from Mauer? Similarly, why had he been discredited in Mauer's eyes?
; Why was Hoover personally guarding Mauer's file?
Was Mauer telling the truth? If so, how much? If not, how much? Why had neither Lerrick nor Wheeler ever admitted that Mauer was in the United States in Bureau custody?
Cochrane worked the stories forward and backward, and turned everyone's account inside out. He searched for the details that did not fit, the subtle imperfections or the gross inconsistencies. He found none. He found instead only other images and other voices. And other questions.
Along the dark two-lane interstate, a vision came to him from somewhere deep in his own childhood. He was a boy again on a muggy summer day and he was skipping flat rocks across the river outside Charlottesville. Every once in a while he would throw wrong. The rock would plunge and not skip.
A smooth circle would emerge on the water, followed by another and another, round and concentric from the point where the rock had disappeared.
The perplexities now before him reminded him of the rocks that did not skip-disappearing into a fathomless surface, with other, deeper concentric questions rippling out from the epicenter.
At what point in 1937 had Cochrane actually been compromised in Berlin? And by whom? And how? Or was Mauer's "defection" a clever design to suggest just such unnerving questions? The purpose? To provoke America's embryonic intelligence service into jumping at its own shadow?
Cochrane turned on the car radio, trying to cleanse his mind of Otto Mauer, Germany, Siegfried, and how they linked together, if they did at all. He lowered the window to draw some fresh air into the car, and, as the radio warmed, first there was a rush of static and then a high pure swath of big band music from some ersatz ballroom in New York or Philadelphia.
