by James Rouch
“Clever. He'd have blown away his face or his fingers, or both.” The effects of the drink were wearing off rapidly, but a steady throbbing persisted behind Revell's left temple. He found it hard to believe that Andrea had dried out during the last week. But she certainly didn't show any signs of having been drinking.
Andrea leaned hard on the horn as a taxi cut in front. “So, have you thought about what he was, who he was working for?”
Though he'd been speculating on that to himself, none of the answers Revell had come up with were all that satisfactory. “Gangsters, I suppose, possibly a black market mob.”
“Those were my thoughts, at first.” Turning into the parking lot of the major's hotel, Andrea drove around the side before parking in an obscure corner. “But he had too much information. It is true that some of the bigger gangs in the Zone are very well-organized, especially those involved in smuggling out refugees, but they would not have bothered to find out so much.”
“That leaves the possibility that he was working for the communists. A sleeper, a deep-cover agent?”
“Perhaps, or a freelance employed by them.” Turning off the engine, Andrea settled lower in her seat and peered out at the wall over the rim of the steering wheel. “Certainly he was one or the other. I realized that when it became obvious that he knew as much about my life before I deserted from the East German border guard, as afterwards. More, in fact.”
“Is that what sobered you up?” Revell was well aware that it would have taken exceptional circumstances to drag her away from the bottle. Discovering that her late masters knew her whereabouts might well have done it.
Andrea ignored the jibe. “If all along it was intended to be an assassination attempt, why all the elaborate trouble over so unimportant a target?”
“Thank you for that.” Revell knew what she meant though. The city was crawling with senior officers who populated the many service corps headquarters. You couldn't walk out of your front door without tripping over a general.
“Maybe bumping me off was an alternative plan. His main objective seemed to be getting the men out of the city as fast as possible. He and his bosses, or his controller, must have been upset when they lost me for those few days. Very likely they'd intended to contact me sooner, giving them longer to work on me. There would still have been the murder option, if they'd failed.”
Andrea looked at the car clock. “It is very strange. In a few hours, we will be out of the city anyway. Why was it so urgent to get us away that little bit sooner. What do they have planned for tonight?”
THREE
He hadn't expected Andrea to accept the invitation to his room. While she sat on the bed and spread the bundles of notes, he took a shower. Out of habit he locked the door of the bathroom, and he was cautious when he unfastened it.
Hard jets sluiced hot water over his body, making him gasp. Everything had moved so fast. He'd let her take him from the scene of the killing without thinking about it, as if suffering from a paralysis of will.
How much had he drunk that day? The fact that he couldn't remember indicated that it was a hell of a lot. Certainly more than the couple of bottles at the restaurant. The hand he gripped the shower control with, he let drop, allowing the water to flow for a while longer.
Perhaps he should allow her the benefit of the doubt, and attribute their hurried departure from the street to sound judgement on her part.
The approaching mob, doubtless with many drunks, would quickly have worked itself in to an excitable state. Especially at the sight of a soldier standing over a dead civilian. Some among them would have rapidly convinced themselves that they'd seen what had happened. Their garbled and lurid accounts to the police would have made a spell in detention virtually inevitable for the pair of them.
Pulling on a robe, he went back into the bedroom. Andrea was looking out of the window. The broken case lay on top of a bedside table. All of the cash had been carelessly crammed back inside.
“How much is there?”
“I could not be bothered to count it. More than a million marks I am sure, perhaps two.”
“Trusting sort our Otto, wasn't he, leaving it all with you.” Revell began gathering his clothing.
“He told me the case was booby-trapped. I had seen him close it and did not think he told the truth. I was right.”
Andrea turned and looked at Revell. “It is clear that you are not going to report the death. What do you have in mind for the money?”
His clothes bundled in his arms, Revell had intended to dress in the bathroom. Instead he dumped them on a chair, extracted his shorts from the pile, and pulled them on underneath his robe.
“I honestly hadn't given that a. thought. Have you any suggestions?” “Throw it away quickly. I have examined the notes. They are forgeries, and not even good ones. The federal German economy is in a poor way. If we are found with these, they will be harder on us than if we'd been convicted of Otto's murder.”
It must have been the drink that was preventing Revell's body responding to the situation. But if the alcohol could block a physical reaction, it couldn't subdue his feelings. He was crossing the room towards Andrea when there was a knock at the door.
“Could we have been followed?” Revell looked at Andrea as she took a small automatic pistol from a pocket of her denim jacket.
“Impossible. I kept a careful watch behind us. There was nobody.” “The Mercedes?”
“I do not think we can ever be traced from that. Off the road, it will be at least a week before it is even noticed.”
Covered by Andrea he opened the door. “Sophia!” “I forgot my perfume. I thought if I left it until tomorrow, one of the staff might ...”
She stopped when she saw Andrea, who was slow to pocket the pistol. Her reflex reaction was to look at the bed, and she saw the money.
Revell sensed she was about to go and pulled her firmly inside, closing the door behind her. “I'll get it for you. Where did you leave it? In the bathroom? I can't say I've seen it.”
Andrea sprawled across the bed. “Perhaps she didn't forget it. Perhaps she only came back because she wanted to see you one last time.”
“Try the top drawer of the dressing table”. Sophia didn't take another step into the room.
Revell noticed a brittle edge to her voice, as he searched for the bottle. He had begun to think Andrea right, when he found the vial of White Linen that had rolled to the back.
“I'm sorry, Sophia, but this isn't what you think.”-It was hard for him to know what to say. He'd never been any good at handling these sorts of situations. Not that he'd ever had any quite like this.
“No, it is I who am sorry.” Sophia looked directly at Andrea, who replied with a sardonic smile. “I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I am sure you are not paying her for any service. Apart from the fact that she'd never warrant the sort of price that money would suggest ...”
There was a broadening of Andrea's smile, as she derived genuine amusement from the sarcasm. The stupid overdressed bitch, thinking that saying that would get to her...
“... I've seen her sort before. There is no way she'd let a man put his cock between her legs, she'd prefer a...”
Anticipating Andrea's reaction, Revell managed to grab and restrain her before she could reach Sophia. The bottle of scent fell to the floor and spilled its contents across the carpet.
Looking down, Sophia spread the dampness through the pile with the toe of her expensive shoe. “There, it is in a good cause. If you cannot improve the company you keep, at least the room will smell better.”
With an effort of self-control, she went out, pulling, the door closed slowly and quietly. Once outside the room, she realized she was shaking. She had wanted to hurt, to provoke the woman, but she had never expected so violent a response.
Sophia had never seen violence unleashed like that before. The eyes that had blazed above the snarling mouth had turned a hard but beautiful face into a projection of hate and fury. In it sh
e had read an urge and passion to kill.
Still shaking, she took the elevator to the lobby and went to the powder room. It was empty. She put her head over a wash basin and was violently sick.
Andrea had calmed down immediately, wrenching herself from Revell's grasp a moment after the door had shut. She made no effort to follow. Instead she went over to the television and turned on an in-house movie.
For a while Revell hesitated to move away from the door. Gradually he felt able to relax his vigilance, and moved to the drinks refrigerator. “Can I get you something?”
He made the offer unthinkingly, as he withdrew a can of Holsten Pils. Finger in the ring-pull, he waited for her answer. She was lounging across the bed, legs trailing over the side. Was she going to stay off the drink? There was no way she could retain her place in the unit, if she continued to hit the bottle the way she had been doing until recently.
Not that she could be kept away from temptation for ever. This was as good a time as any to put her to the test.
“What are you hoping, that I will take a drink, give you an excuse to get rid of me? Perhaps though you don't. I think you want me to stay. You want the chance to find out if what that fancy tramp said is correct.”
Looking past him, Andrea noted the contents of the shelves. “Such an interesting selection, but such silly little bottles.”
She looked up, and her eyes held his. Revell felt himself mesmerized by them. As carelessly as she had thrown the shot at the communist agent, she indicated a small pale green bottle.
“One of those. It is a snowball, I think. Shake it well, then come and sit by me.” As if his willpower had been sapped, drained from him, Revell complied with her instructions - her orders.
Stretching full length on the duvet, Andrea moved her fingers to the buckle of her belt and released it. Unfastening her slacks, she began to edge them lower on her hips.
“When you watched me touching myself, in the woods, you liked what you saw.”
It was a statement, not a question. He nodded. No words would come.
“I knew you were watching. That was why I made it last so long. Now you must pay for the entertainment I provided.”
An erection straining inside his shorts, Revell watched the gradual progress of her waistband as it began to reveal the details of her body. It felt as if each of her words was being stamped on the inside of his skull with a red-hot hammer.
“Give the bottle another shake. I want it to be nice and creamy and fizzy.” With a last push that brought her head up from the pillow, Andrea's clothes were down to mid-thigh.
She sank back, closing her eyes as she ran her hands down between her legs. They lingered there, with the fingers moving gently. After a moment she withdrew them, then repeated the process.
“Open it carefully. Pour it over me. The bed does not matter. You are not sleeping here tonight. See where my fingers are.” Her breath came in short gasps of anticipation. “Let it run just there...”
His face close enough to feel the heat rising from her body, Revell saw her fingertips tracing a path between the tops of her thighs. He began to tilt the bottle. As the cream-coloured foaming liquid began to pour, she grabbed his hair and began to force his face down.
“Lick it off. Drink it, all of it. No, not so fast - gently. Let me feel your tongue.”
FOUR
The taste was still in his mouth. His lips and his face were still sticky with the cloying sweetness of the cocktail. And there was another taste that lingered…
Andrea's clothes were strewn across the floor. She'd discarded them as she went to the bathroom. He could hear the shower running. Through the partially open door, he could occasionally glimpse her, but he stayed in the bedroom.
While he waited for his turn to wash, he dimmed the lights, to look out on the city without their reflection on the glass.
Visibility was good, very good. A near-full moon was adding its cold glow to that of the city's more garish illuminations. Seeing it lit up like this, he felt instinctively nervous at the lack of any blackout precautions. Not that he had any reason to be, the western boundary of the Zone was still forty kilometres from the city centre.
This part of southern West Germany had not seen the violent losses and gains of territory that had happened during the battles in the north. Here the Warpac forces were employing more cunning than brute force. Their advances were far less spectacular, often no more than a half-kilometre, but the pressure was as relentless.
Despite the Zone's steady encroachment on the city's dormitory suburbs, Munich flourished. Its industries churned out vast quantities of munitions and other war materials.
Sky-high wages attracted workers to its fiercely competitive labour market. Their salaries in turn drew in an army of civilian locusts to feed on them. Into the midst of all that had ventured several NATO military headquarters.
As word of the comforts and diversions of the city had spread, so more service corps HQs had found reasons to move there. The pressure on office space had sent rents soaring, and land values with them.
Munich was a metropolis expanding to the very edge of a chasm. That chasm could swallow it effortlessly, as the Zone had already done to so many other cities.
As he took in the brightly lit streets and parks, Revell found his gaze being drawn further out, towards the east. Not from here, but from the top of the television tower in Olympic Park, he would have been able to see the distant band of darkness that was the Zone.
In all its thousands of square kilometres, the only light at night was that of tracer or explosion. To show a light was to throw death an open invitation.
“Not for us a quiet sector.”
Deep in thought, Revell hadn't heard Andrea come in, her bare feet making no noise in the deep pile of the carpet. She came to stand before him.
The robe she wore was too big, the cuffs were turned back twice, and the material almost lapped her body.
“No, we've been promised action. The general will find it for us. You can be sure of that. Time's getting on; we'd better get moving.”
“Why do we have to be at the station so early? We will have a two-hour wait for our train.” Andrea reached for the cord to close the curtains, pausing to watch the traffic far below as it narrowly missed the herds of pedestrians constantly spilling over into the road.
Revell turned at the bathroom door. “Because I want to do a roll call as early as possible. That'll give me the best part of two hours to dig all the villains out from under the crap being piled on them by the provost marshal and the civilian police.”
He looked at Andrea. Despite the oversized garment, there was nothing waiflike about her, no girlish air of vulnerability. Damn her, damn her and her humiliating games. She'd only let him touch. Several times he'd tried to go further with her. Each time she had eluded his attempts. He should have got rough. Hell, even now he held back from grabbing her, and this perhaps the last chance.
“Are you ever going to let me fuck you?” Revell surprised himself with his sudden bluntness. He hadn't even realized he was about to say that.
Still looking out, Andrea took a long time answering. She watched his reflection in the glass. “Not tonight. Perhaps not ever. Do you think that makes your precious Sophia right?”
“I don't know.” There was no anger, no passion, only resignation in his voice. He heard it himself. “I only know that I want you. That I...”
“No.” Andrea shouted the word.
“No, don't say anything else. I don't want to hear any more, nothing.” Hands over her ears, she pressed her face against the dark glass and closed her eyes tight.
Walking up behind her, Revell went to put his hand on her shoulder. It hovered over the white towelling of her robe, then he withdrew it. He felt he wanted to kiss her, hit her, make love to her and kill her, all at one and the same instant. It was that confused blur of emotion that prevented him from doing anything at all.
“I will wait downstairs.”
Revell couldn't bring himself to stop her as she quickly dressed and went out. He couldn't even bring himself to say anything.
After she had gone, he stayed near the window. Some of the streets were looking darker now, as bars and restaurants closed. There was less traffic, and the crowds had thinned.
Across the rooftops it seemed to be getting brighter though. At least there was a glow. It was in the general direction of the Englischer Garten, the great swathe of parkland in the centre of the city. He was about to dismiss it, turn away, when the glow adopted a flickering centre.
Sliding back the glass door, he stepped through onto the balcony. Yes, there was a definite flicker ... and then confirming his suspicion, he clearly saw a tongue of red flame shoot above the rooftops.
“At least I'm not the only one who's had his night buggered up.” Even as he spoke to himself, Revell observed another glow beginning to reveal itself. Though apparently a little further off, it was in the same general direction.
A coincidence most likely. There were a lot of crazy drunks in the city tonight. They were always at their worst, their most excessive, at chucking-out time.
From the street below came the raucous howls, screams, and shouts of such a group, adding weight to his theory.
Strangely though, he couldn't hear any fire engines as yet. They must have started up very rapidly. Still, a few pumps should have been audibly on the way by now.
The thought of Herr Otto passed through his mind, but he shunted it aside. There couldn't be any connection. That was just too fanciful. Hell, this crazy city was starting to get to him. Another week here, and he'd begin to be as jumpy as the civilian population.
Returning inside, he pulled the door shut, then closed the thick lined curtains. In the Zone, burying your head in the sand was a sure way of getting your backside shot off. Here, for a few more hours, he could still do it without taking that risk. Others were being paid to take care of Munich. It wasn't his worry.