by Nick Carter
"I forgot, you wanted to use the phone," she said, smiling warmly. "It's under the bed. I'll be downstairs in the main hall. Come down when you're finished." I watched her walk out, the jeans tight around her buttocks, forming a kind of girdle of their own, her walk a slow, gliding movement. I quickly decided that this century was good enough for me and reached under the bed for the phone.
II
It was grim and it was painfully slow, but I stuck with it. I checked out every hospital and aid station in the area. I was damn near at the end of the fist when I got the message I didn't want to hear. Ted Dennison's body had been recovered and identified. There were only four survivors besides Helga, it seemed, two men, a woman and a child. Grimly, I put in an overseas call, collect, for Hawk and managed to get through unusually quickly. After I told him of the tragic accident, there was a long pause and then his voice, flat and icy, tossed one out at me.
"It was no accident," he said. That was all. He just threw it out and let it lie there, knowing I'd pick up the chill meaning.
"You sure of that?" I asked, a little gruffly.
"If you mean proof, you know better," Hawk answered. "If you mean am I convinced, I'm damn well certain of it."
As he spoke, something kept popping up in my mind. I kept seeing the boat opposite me and hearing the explosions. There had definitely been two of them, in instant succession, but two nonetheless. The smaller one first, immediately followed by the huge roar as the boilers went up. Two explosions. I heard them again in my mind, this time with a new meaning.
"They killed all those people just to get at Ted," I said, a little awed by the monstrousness of the thought.
"To keep him from talking to you," Hawk said. "Besides, what's a few hundred innocent lives to some people? Hell, Nick, don't tell me you're shocked at that anymore, after all these years in the business."
The Chief was right, of course. I shouldn't have been shocked. I'd seen it before, the callous disregard for life, the slaughter of the innocent, the end justifying the means. Long ago I'd come to learn that those who believed themselves touched by destiny always seemed to adopt a terrible indifference to the importance of human life. No, I wasn't really shocked in the true sense of the word. Appalled was probably a better term, appalled and angered. And there was one other inescapable conclusion.
"Whatever Ted found out," I said to Hawk, "was important. They're taking no chances, it seems."
"Which means it's important to us, too," Hawk said. "I'm going to meet you in West Berlin tomorrow, at our place. You know the present set-up there. I'll catch a plane tonight and be there in the morning. I'll fill you in on what little we know at that time."
I put down the phone and felt a hard knot of anger growing in my stomach. Strangely enough, though I felt very bad about Ted Dennison, it was the others that really got to me. Ted was a professional, like myself. We lived with death. We laughed, loved, ate and slept with death. We were fair game. If they wanted to get to Ted they should have found a way to reach just him. But they had taken the easy way, the callous way. And in doing so, they had involved me, Nick Carter, the human being as well as agent N3. Whoever they were, they'd be sorry. I could promise them that.
I got up from the wide bed, opened the heavy door and stepped outside into the gloomy, dank, stone corridor. Suddenly I knew I wasn't alone. I felt eyes boring into my back. I whirled but I could only see dim shadows. Still, I sensed the presence of another person. Then I saw the man, at the far end of the corridor, tall, well built, sandy colored hair. He had small blue eyes and a thin slit of a mouth. He didn't look like a gardener, nor did he look like any little old winekeeper I'd ever seen. He watched me for a moment, then slipped away through one of the numerous archways that led from the corridor. I turned and walked to the main hall where Helga sat with her legs irreverently propped up on one of the long oak tables.
"I just saw someone," I said. "Back there in the corridor."
"Oh, you saw Kurt." She smiled. "The watchman. I'd forgotten about him. Nowadays you need someone always on the premises as a guard."
She stood up and came over to me, taking both my hands in hers. I knew she saw my eyes dwell on those absolutely magnificent full breasts straining the thin fabric of the tucked-up blouse. I told her about finding out that my friend had been killed in the explosion and she was appropriately sympathetic. When I told her about having to be in West Berlin in the morning, Helga broke out in a warm, dazzling smile.
"That's wonderful," she exclaimed, pressing my hands tightly. "I live in West Berlin. We can spend the night here at the castle and drive in the morning. It'll be night soon and why drive after dark? Besides, I'd love to cook a meal for you here. Please, you must let me."
"I don't want to be a bother," I said, a little weakly, I'm afraid. The idea of spending the night with this very open, outgoing girl had more than a little appeal. I didn't plan on anything but pleasant company, but I'd also learned that one never knows when opportunity will knock. And if Helga knocked, it would be a sin not to answer.
"You wouldn't be a bother," she was saying, bringing my attention back from those jutting contours. "You saved my life, remember? You deserve a lot more than just a dinner. But let's start with that first."
Helga, I was rapidly finding out, was one of those girls who said things which could be interpreted in six different ways and then instantly proceeded onto something else, leaving you with no further clues to help you interpret correctly.
"Come," she said, taking my hand. "Sit in the kitchen with me while I start dinner. We can talk there."
The kitchen turned out to be a vast but obviously well-functioning establishment with great copper and stainless steel kettles hanging from the ceiling on long hooks. A rack of pots and pans crisscrossed the kettles and one entire wall held stacks of dishes, roasting pans and cutlery. Uncle, I decided, threw some sizable bashes over the weekends. A huge, old-fashioned stone oven lined one wall, and a freezer provided a jarring note of modernity. Helga extracted a side of beef from it, took a huge knife and deftly sliced away. In no time at all she had various pots and pans simmering and brewing and the big oven ablaze. While working, as I sat in a wide-backed comfortable chair, she told me she was a secretary in West Berlin, that she was originally from Hanover and that she liked the good life.
When she reached a certain point in the proceedings, she steered me to a small bar off the main hall and suggested I fix drinks. Then, with drinks in hand, she gave me a tour of the castle. Walking with her arm in mine, her thigh rubbing warmly against mine at every other step, she was a most provocative guide. The castle, I noted, had a number of small rooms on the second and third floors of the main section or keep, as they call it. Various medieval hardware adorned the walls, and the staircases were the ancient, stone, unbannistered, spiraling steps. I glimpsed a large room on the second floor which had been modernized with rows of bookshelves and a desk. She referred to it as her uncle's study. Helga kept up a perfectly pleasant line of chatter and small talk and I found myself wondering if she did it to prevent me from noting that she kept away from the entire left half of the second story where I saw three rooms tightly closed. If that had been her intent, it didn't work. The three rooms were almost conspicuous because of their grim, closed contrast to the rest of the place. Downstairs, I mentioned wanting to see the wine cellar and I thought I noticed her hesitate for just a moment. It was fleeting and I wasn't sure, but I wondered about it.
"Of course, the wine cellar," she smiled, leading me down a narrow flight of stone steps. Great round casks stood in silent rows, each one with its own little wooden spigot and each one sporting a tag on which the date and classification of the wine had been marked. It was a big wine cellar with rows on rows of the huge casks. As we went back upstairs, something bothered me but I had no idea what it was. My mind had always worked in that strange way, sending out little signals of its own that only clarified themselves later on. But they acted as a series of mental reference points
that usually came in more than handy at the right time. This was a perfect example. It had been a completely normal-appearing wine cellar, and yet I was bothered by something. I put it aside, knowing there was no use thinking about it at the moment. Back in the kitchen, I watched Helga finish preparing dinner.
"You know, Nick, you're the first American I've ever really known," she said. "I've seen a number of American tourists, of course, but they don't count. And none of them looked like you. You're an exceptionally handsome man."
I had to smile. False modesty was never for me. Helga stretched.
"Do you find me attractive?" she asked openly. In court that would have been called leading the witness. I watched her breasts stand out as she flexed her arms behind her head.
"Attractive isn't the word, honey," I told her. She smiled and took down a stack of plates.
"Dinner's almost ready," she said. "Make us another drink while I set the table and change."
After the second round of drinks, we dined at one end of the long table, by candlelight, with a fire in the big fireplace. Helga had changed into a black velvet dress with buttons that buttoned at the end of a series of loops running down the front to her waist. The loops were wide and beneath each of them was Helga and nothing else. The dress, V-necked, struggled hard to keep Helga's breasts inside. Happily, it was not an altogether successful struggle. She had produced two bottles of superb local wine, not from the castle vineyards, she said, explaining that her uncle bottled very little, but sold mostly "from the wood" to other bottlers. Dinner was excellent and after the food, drinks and wine, a cozy rapport had built up between Helga and myself. She downed a good brandy, an armagnac, as we sat on a curved sofa before the fireplace. The night had turned cool and the huge castle was dank and damp, so the fire made a welcome oasis of warmth.
"Is it true," Helga asked, "that they are still very puritan in America in regard to sex?"
"Puritan?" I questioned. "How do you mean that?"
She toyed with her brandy snifter, peering up at me over the edge of it. "I heard that American girls still feel they must make excuses for wanting to go to bed with a man," she said idly. "They still feel they must say they're in love, or they had too much to drink, or they were feeling sorry for him or some such nonsense. And American men still expect them to make such excuses or they think the girl is a tramp."
I had to smile. There was a lot of truth in what she was saying.
"Would you feel a girl was a tramp if she didn't cloak her feelings in such ridiculous pretexts?" Helga went on.
"No," I answered. "But then I'm not really the average American male."
"No, of course not," she murmured, her eyes wandering across my face. "I think you're not average anywhere. There is something about you I have never met in any other man. It is as though you can be terribly sweet and terribly cruel."
"You speak about the pretexts and excuses of American girls, Helga. I take it you're saying the average German girl doesn't need excuses."
"Not so much anymore," Helga said, turning fully toward me, her breasts soft white mounds pushing over the top of the black velvet. "We have finished with excuses here. We face the truth of our human needs and desires for what they are. Maybe it is a result of all the wars and the suffering, but today we do not fool ourselves anymore. We recognize power as power, greed as greed, weakness as weakness, strength as strength, sex as sex. Here a girl does not expect a man to say I love you when he means I want you. And a man does not expect a girl to hide her own desires behind silly pretenses."
"Very enlightened and commendable," I said. Helga's eyes had turned a smoky, cloudy blue and they kept flicking from my face, down across my body and then back again. Her lips, slightly parted, were wet as she drew her tongue slowly back and forth across them. Her obvious desire was an electric current setting my own body aflame. I reached out and put one hand behind her neck, squeezing firmly, moving her toward me slowly.
"And when you have desires, Helga," I said quietly, very quietly. "What do you say?" Her lips parted further and she came toward me. I felt her arms slide around my neck.
"I say I want you," she murmured huskily, just barely audibly. "I say I want you."
Her lips were against mine, soft and yielding, wet and smooth. I felt her mouth open and her tongue shot out, flicking back and forth. I moved my hand down and the loops of the dress parted instantly and Helga's breast was soft against my palm.
She put her head back for an instant, tearing her lips from mine, and her body straightened out with a sudden quiver, her legs pushing forward. Her breasts were deep and full, I saw, soft white with small pink tips that rose at once to the touch. All the loops of the dress had come open and Helga had slipped out of it entirely. She wore only black bikini panties and as I pressed my lips down on her softly yielding breasts, she drew her legs up in an involuntary reaction. She thrust upwards, pushing her breasts toward my mouth, and her hands were quivering and clutching at me. She was panting and making small, unintelligible sounds of pleasure, her arms convulsively tightening and releasing.
I stood up and undressed, starting with my shirt. It was both slow and pleasurable, for Helga clung to me as I undressed, running her hands up and down my torso, pressing her face against my stomach, clutching my body to her. I took both full breasts in my hands and moved them in a slow, circular motion. Helga put her blond head back and moaned softly. I traced a slow, lambent line of pleasure down her torso with my tongue until her moans turned to cries of ecstasy. Helga became a quivering, pulsating wire, arching her back, thrusting herself upwards, begging with her hips for the moment she hungered for with such absolute abandon. And it was indeed abandon, but of a strange sort. There was none of the utter freedom and ecstatic delight, the pure pleasure of letting oneself completely succumb to the senses. It was an abandon that seemed to explode from some inner drive, from some tremendous need.
Helga's hips were wide and heavy boned. Fitting against them was both comfortable and somehow very proper. There was something of the earth goddess about her figure and her all-consuming manner. As I answered her moans and cries of desire with my body, she stiffened for an instant and then began to thrust herself up and down, her legs locked around my back. I felt carried away on some Valkyrian ride into the skies. Helga moaned and sobbed and cried and sighed, her breasts under my hands tossing and turning, her lips not kissing but sucking against my shoulder, moving down to my chest. Her tremendous drive was all embracing as well as all consuming, and I felt myself carried along with it, matching her every thrust with my own body until the wide, heavy sofa shook. Then, with a suddenness that surprised me, she pressed herself against me, hands digging into my back as a long, shuddering sob wracked her body. "Oh, God Almighty," she said, tearing the words out of her inner depths and then falling backwards to lie there, legs still locked around me, her large breasts heaving. She took my hand and placed it on one breast while her stomach, soft and round, slowly began to cease its contractions.
Finally I lay beside her and realized I was having a very odd reaction to what had happened. It had been exciting, unquestionably. And very pleasurable, too. I'd enjoyed every moment of it and yet I felt strangely unsatisfied. Somehow, I didn't feel that I had made love to Helga, that it was I who had brought her to new heights of sensual pleasure. Instead, I had the distinct feeling that I had been an object, something she had used to gratify herself. As I lay there, taking in the full contours of her body, I knew I wanted to make love to her again some other time, to see if the same, strange reaction came across. It would be worth it for itself, but this added to my desire. Of course, I knew that the first time, despite the qualities it always brought along, was never the most satisfactory with any woman. To bring the most out of a woman one has to learn how her sensory and psychic centers react and this takes time. Helga stirred and sat up, stretching, her arms upraised, lifting her gorgeous, full breasts in supplication.
"I'm going up to my room to go to bed," she announced,
getting to her feet.
"Alone?" I asked.
"Alone," she said to my surprise, flatly and matter-of-factly. "I can't stand to sleep with anyone. Good night, Nick."
She got up, came before me, pressed one breast into my face for an instant and then was gone, hurrying across the room, a ghost-like white form in the deep shadows. I stayed and watched the fire for a while and then went up to the room where I'd dried off. I went to sleep in the huge bed thinking that Helga was a most unusual girl. I had the thought that she was far from representative of the average fräulein.
In the morning I woke early. The great schloss was silent as a tomb. During the night I'd woken with a start at what I thought was a scream of pain. I'd sat up, listening in the dark, and there had been only silence. It could well have been a dream, I knew, and I went back to sleep. Nothing further happened to wake me and I slept the rest of the night soundly. I half-dressed and stalled down to get my shaving kit from the car. The door to Helga's room was ajar and I peered in. She was still asleep, the covers at her waist, her breasts two snowy peaks, her blond hair a golden circle on the pillow. She was a very striking dish, I realized once again. Striking and unusual, a fascinating combination for any man. But when I'd finished shaving, I knew that the day would be far too crowded to think much about Helga. I was on my way back to Helga's room to wake her when I found the feather in the corridor, long, brown with black spots. I'd seen feathers like this one before and I was trying to remember where and when. I was studying it when Helga appeared, dressed in the cotton print again, which, dried out, had a full, saucy line to it. I held the feather out to her.