They remained in an embrace until the three had entered the next car. Fulmar was aware of two physical sensations: the hilt of the baby Fairbairn under the balls of fingers and the pressure of Elizabeth von Handleman-Bitburg’s breasts and legs against his body. And then there was a third sensation. Her tongue came out, and for the briefest moment went between his lips and found his.
Then she pushed him away.
“Now they’ve seen you with me,” she said. “Now you can’t kill me.”
“You should have called for help,” he said.
“Why? I knew you weren’t going to kill me.”
“You seem pretty goddamned sure,” he said.
“If you were going to kill me,” she said reasonably, “you wouldn’t have talked about it first. And then I looked in your eyes.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“Wasn’t it nice to be given a kiss, instead of the other way?”
“You’re out of your goddamned mind, you know that?”
“My father told my mother that when the Russians come, life won’t be worth living,” she said. “I’ve changed since the last time I saw you. If you’re going to die, you might as well take as much of life as you can before that happens.”
“He could be shot for saying things like that,” Fulmar said.
“No,” she said calmly. “That is now the official position of the Propaganda Ministry.” She quoted, “‘The German people must come to understand that if the war is lost, Germany as we know it will disappear from the face of the earth.’That came straight from Dr. Goebbels.”
“The operative words are ‘if’ and ‘when,’” he heard himself say." ’If’ is not defeatism. ‘When’ is.”
She shrugged.
“Where are you really going?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“I’m not going to turn you in, Eric,” she said.
“If those border policemen remember the Sturmbannführer kissing the girl, and if they remember your face, the Gestapo will come after you and question you. And if you knew, you would tell them.”
“Are they looking for you now?” she asked.
“Yes, but don’t ask why.”
“Maybe I can help,” she said.
“The best thing you can do is go back to your compartment and forget you ever saw me,” he said.
“That in itself would be suspicious,” she said. “And maybe I can help you. When they ask for my identification, which says that my father is a Generaloberst, they generally stop right there.”
He looked at her.
“And besides, if we went to the Bahnhof Hotel in Frankfurt and took a room while you’re waiting for the Berlin train, there would be less chance of you being asked questions than if you stood around the Bahnhof waiting.”
“I’m not going to Berlin,” Fulmar blurted. “I’m going to Marburg.”
“Not on this train, you’re not,” she said. “The first stop after Frankfurt is Kassel.”
“How do you know that?”
“I go to Marburg all the time,” she said. “I know the schedule. The first train you can catch to Marburg will put you in there at half past three in the morning. Do you want to arrive at half past three in the morning?”
“And the one after that?”
“Arrives in Marburg a little after nine,” she said.
“Maybe the thing to do is get a hotel room,” he thought aloud. “Then you could go.”
“What have you done,” she asked, “changed your mind? Lost interest?”
He looked down at her.
She raised her hand and put it on his cheek.
“I told you,” she said,“I’ve changed. I want what I can get now before it’s too late.”
Then she pulled his face down to hers. And she did to him what she would not let him do to her in the backseat of el Ferruch’s Delahaye in Paris.
XV
Chapter ONE
Hauptbahnhof
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany
0920 Hours 30 January 1943
The train from Frankfurt am Main to Kassel, with stops at Bad Homburg, Bad Nauheim, Giessen, and Marburg, did not run on Saturday. It was necessary for Fulmar to take the Kassel express, and to change at Giessen.
He absolutely forbade Elizabeth to return to the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt with him. She was hurt. She was crazy, was what she was. The way she’d talked, he had naturally decided that she had been fucking all comers, since she was convinced she was going to die.
That had not turned out to be the case. In the Bahnhof hotel, after the first time—which did not turn out to be terrific for either of them—she had come out and admitted that she had tried “it” three times before, because everybody seemed to make so much of it, and those times, too, had been disappointing.
But something happened when they tried it again in the morning. He did it then more or less because he thought she expected him to, and he imagined it would turn out no better than it had the night before. But it really turned out to be not only better, but different. He had no explanation why. It had just happened. It had, as a matter of fact, happened twice. And it would have happened a third time if he hadn’t had to catch the goddamned train.
And she said something else crazy just before he put her on the bus to Hoescht.
“Take care of yourself, Eric,” she said.
“You, too,” he replied.
“Ich liebe dich,” she said.
"You’re crazy,” he said.
“And you, too,” she said, still shaking his hand. “Why else?”
And then she blew him a kiss and stepped on the bus. He stood there on the curb, looking for her in the window. When he found her, just before the bus pulled away, she blew him another kiss.
He thought about—even mentioned—taking her out with him. She’d laughed at him, said he wasn’t very smart. Didn’t he know what they did to the families of people who just disappeared?
“Let ’em think you got killed in a bombing raid,” he had argued. “Blown away.”
“Have you got a passport for me? Travel authority?” she asked, and made him feel like a damned fool.
She hadn’t gotten into that “ich liebe dich” crap, however, until the last minute.
By the time he got off the train in Giessen, he’d thought some more about her. Maybe there was something special between them. He had certainly never felt better screwing than the last couple of times. There had to be an explanation for that. He had done a lot of plain and fancy fucking in his time, and it had never been like that.
He had a couple of really wild, childish thoughts. When this fucking war was over, he would look her up. Maybe he could even get her out before it was over.
Giessen brought him to his senses. The place was in ruins. The moment they opened the doors of the train, he could smell burned wood, and the more pervasive smell of decaying human flesh.
Giessen had been hit and hit hard. He wondered why. As far as he could remember, there were no factories of any importance here, certainly nothing worth all the effort it had taken to bomb the shit out of the place. Could it have been bombed by mistake? He had heard Canidy and Whittaker joking about their astonishment that B-17 pilots with 200 hours total flying experience could find Germany, much less a particular city in Germany.
But the bomb destruction reminded him that there was a war, and that neither he nor Elizabeth von Handleman-Bitburg were liable to make it through that war. He certainly wouldn’t, if he kept acting like some high-school kid with a bad case of puppy love.
The train from Giessen to Marburg, which stopped at every other crossing, was ancient. It looked as if it belonged under a Christmas tree. There was only one class, un-upholstered benches in unheated coaches, and he rode most of the way beside a fat peasant woman with a potato bag full of cabbages. She told him that her son had been captured by the Americans in North Africa, and asked if he had been stationed there. He told her he had and that he’d almost be
en captured himself.
He had a mental picture of her son sitting at Fort Dix or someplace, wearing American fatigues with a big P painted on the back, eating three meals a day, and congratulating himself on being alive and out of the war.
When the train approached the outskirts of Marburg, he stood up, squeezed past the people in his row of seats, left the car, and stood on the platform, turning the collar of the black overcoat up against the cold wind.
He wanted to see how much damage had been done to Marburg. Aside from what looked like filled-in bomb craters along the roadbed, he could see no evidence of damage. The roadbed reminded him, however, of the Gestapo agent. By now, they must have found the body and started doing whatever they did when somebody stuck a knife in a Gestapo agent.
In just a couple of hours, if they hadn’t found out already, they would learn that Reber was no longer on the train. And they would, if they hadn’t already, start looking for him.
He told himself that if the train stopped at the Südbahnhof, he would get off there and ride into the center of town on the Strassenbahn.
The train slowed as it went through the Südbahnhof, but not enough for him to jump off.
Five minutes later, it jerked to a halt in the Hauptbahnhof. The station here was intact, too, just as he remembered it. The one in Frankfurt had some damage, and most of the glass in the arches over the platforms had been blown out. There was no glass roof over tracks in Marburg. There were just platforms on both sides of both tracks. Steps down from them led to a tunnel under the tracks to the station building itself.
Railroad police were on the platform, but they were just keeping an eye on things, not asking for identification and travel authority. But there would be a checkpoint somewhere. As soon as he went down the stairs to the tunnel, he found it. It had been set up in the tunnel under the tracks, out of the cold wind. What the railroad police were doing on the platform was making sure everybody went through the tunnel and didn’t take off across the tracks to avoid the checkpoint.
The line moved quickly. It looked as if it were a routine checkpoint, not one set up to catch somebody special. Like whoever had scrambled a Gestapo agent’s brains.
He had almost reached the head of the line when an SS-Unterscharführer (Sergeant) standing behind the table the railroad police had set up spotted him and shouldered his way through the crowd to him.
“Heil Hitler!” he barked, giving a straight-armed salute.
Fulmar returned the salute casually, smiled, and without being asked, produced his identification.
The document was studied casually, and handed back, with another salute.
“Pass the Sturmbannführer! ” the sergeant called loudly.
“Danke schön,” Fulmar said.
He was almost at the table when the sergeant ran after him, caught up, and touched his arm.
Fulmar, his heart jumping, turned to look at him, wearing what he hoped the SS noncom would consider a look of polite curiosity. He was relieved to see that the sergeant was smiling, but he still felt clammy sweat.
“The taxis are out of gas again, Herr Sturmbannführer,” the sergeant said. “May I offer the Herr Sturmbannführer a ride?”
“That’s very kind of you, Scharführer,” Fulmar said. He would, he decided instantly, have himself driven to the Café Weitz and announce that he was meeting friends there.
“It would be a long cold walk up the Burgweg today,” the sergeant said.
How does this sonofabitch know I’m going to Burgweg?
“I beg your pardon?” Fulmar asked coldly.
“It was an attempt at humor, Herr Sturmbannführer,” the sergeant said. “No offense was intended.”
“None so far has been taken,” Fulmar said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I simply presumed that since the Herr Sturmbannführer is on the staff of Reichsführer-SS, he might be looking for a certain very senior officer, also stationed in Berlin. I repeat, Herr Sturmbannführer, that no offense was intended. ”
“I took none,” Fulmar said, and smiled,“but I know a certain Standartenführer who might.”
“If we are talking about the same Standartenführer, Herr Sturmbannführer, I would be grateful if you would not—”
“Of course not,” Fulmar said. “He’s here in Marburg already?”
“Oh, no, sir,” the sergeant said. “There was a teletype message, unofficial, of course, that the unexpected duty would preclude his visiting Hauptsturmführer Peis this weekend.”
Fulmar took the news that Müller was not going to show with a calm that surprised him. That “possibility” had been planned for. The only question was why he wasn’t coming. Had he really been given some duty that kept him from coming here? Or had he backed out at the last moment? Or had the entire operation been compromised?
“I guess that happened after I left Berlin,” Fulmar said. “I hadn’t heard about that. I was just told…” He stopped and smiled. “Oh, I see! You thought I was delivering a little gift, to make the lady’s disappointment a little less?” Fulmar asked.
The sergeant shrugged.
“I must say that you are both alert and perceptive,” Fulmar said. “But that’s not it.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe there’s a message for me at Burgweg. I gratefully accept your kind offer of a ride.”
"It is my pleasure. Herr Sturmbannführer," the sergeant said.
When they reached the Dyer house, the sergeant said that he could wait if he wasn’t going to be long.
“The very least I’ll have to do is call Berlin,” Fulmar said. “And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there was an errand or two for me to run.”
The Unterscharführer didn’t seem suspicious. He replied that he would be on duty all weekend, and if the Herr Sturmbannführer needed a ride, all he had to do was call.
Fulmar thanked him and went to the door.
He knew the building, but he had never been inside before. Gisella had never wanted him to come to her house.
When he rang the bell, a small, hunched-over middle-aged woman, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, came to the door. She looked at him suspiciously.
“Fräulein Gisella Dyer, please,” Fulmar said.
“Top of the stairs and to the right,” the middle-aged woman said.
Gisella opened the upstairs door. She recognized him immediately, and there was fear in her eyes.
“Heil Hitler!” Fulmar barked, for the benefit of the woman who he was sure was listening at the foot of the stairs.
“Heil Hitler,” Gisella replied. “How may I help you, Herr Sturmbannführer? ”
“I have a message from a mutual friend,” Fulmar said.
“Please come in,” she said.
When he had gone past her, she closed the door and leaned against it.
“My God, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Where did you get that uniform? Are you crazy?”
“Where the hell is Müller?” Fulmar countered. “He was supposed to be here. Or send word when he would be.”
Instead of replying, she put her finger in front of her lips and pulled him into the kitchen and turned the water faucets on.
"Where the hell is Müller?” Fulmar repeated.
“He sent a message through Peis that he couldn’t make it,” Gisella said.
“That’s not what I asked,” Fulmar snapped.
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
Fulmar decided that she really didn’t know. The decision had to be made, and he made it.
“We’ll have to go without him,” he said.
“We can’t do that,” she said. “He’ll be here next weekend, if not before.”
"Right about now, there’s going to be a lot of people looking for me,” Fulmar said. “We go now.”
“What about papers? Passports? Travel authority? How do you plan to get us across the Dutch border? We’ll need a car.”
“We don’t need a car. We’ll go by train, and w
e’re going to Vienna, not Holland. I have documents,” he said.
"Vienna?" she asked. "What happened to Holland?”
“The plans have been changed,” Fulmar said. “Müller knew that. Maybe the reason he’s not here is because he’ll meet us in Vienna.”
And maybe he’s changed his mind. And maybe he’s been arrested.
“He sent word that he had documents,” Gisella said. “Travel documents, I mean. Johnny said ‘theater tickets,’ but I’m sure he meant documents. But he didn’t say anything about Vienna.”
“‘Johnny’?” Fulmar parroted accusingly. “Well, it was ‘projected’ that ‘Johnny’ might not be able to make it. And an alternative plan was set up. How long will it take you to get ready?”
“I’m not sure my father will go with you,” Gisella said. “I’m not sure I want to. You’re no longer a little boy, but Vienna?”
“Your father doesn’t have any choice,” Fulmar said. He waited until she looked at him, then finished: “I was driven here by an SS-SD sergeant from the local office. He knows I’m here, and so does your concierge. They will know I’ve been here.”
“So what?” she said. “I’ll worry about that. I’ll think of something to tell them, if they ask.”
Another decision had to be made, and he made it without very much thought.
“Gisella, my orders are that neither you nor your father are to be available for interrogation,” he said.
“Meaning what?” she asked, nastily sarcastic.
“The reason they will be looking for me is that it was necessary to eliminate a Gestapo agent on the train on the way here,” Fulmar said. “If necessary, I will eliminate you and your father.”
“Are you serious?”
He ignored that. “Where’s your father?”
“At the doctor’s,” she said. She looked at her wristwatch. “He should be here within the half hour.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Fulmar demanded.
“He had a cough, a bad one,” she said.
“Use the half hour to pack,” he said. “Nothing of value. Just what you would take in the way of clothing for a couple of days.”
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