She quickly looked away.
"Thank you, no," she said to the waiter in a rage. "Take it away!" She might be forced to prostitute herself to Peis, she thought bitterly, but she was not available to be picked up in a hotel barroom.
"His Excellency may take offense, Fraulein," the waiter said.
"Not nearly as much as Hauptsturmfuhrer Peis will," she snapped.
She was still humiliated and angry when Peis came in. When he sat down, she told him what had happened. But he was not, as she expected, furious that someone was making advances to one of his ladies.
"Which one has the yen for you?" he asked. "The Arab or the Baron?"
"The Baron?"
"The young one is the Baron von Kolbe," Peis said.
"I thought he was the Arab's little friend, "' she replied.
"That's what I thought at first," Peis said. "But they are apparently not homosexual." "You seem quite sure," she said, now annoyed with him too.
"My dear Gisella," Peis said, "of course I'm sure. It is my business to be sure."
"I don't think I understand you," she said.
"Among my duties is the surveillance of people of interest to the Berlin headquarters of the SS-SD," Peis said, obviously pleased with the opportunity to reveal his importance. "One of these is the Arab, actually a Moroccan.
His name is Sidi Hassan el Ferruch. The other is Eric von Fulmar, the son of the Baron von Fulmar, as in Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft."
"And they are being watched? Why?"
"Reasons of state, of course," he said. "I can't get into that, of course."
"Naturally not," she said, hoping he thought she sounded very impressed with him.
"But I can tell you something rather interesting about them," he said.
Whatever that was would have some sexual connotation, she knew.
He liked to embarrass her.
"Really?"
"They like their women shaved," Peis whispered.
"What?" Gisella asked, but then she understood. "Wilhelm," she said, somewhat surprised to realize she was really quite curious, "how could you possibly know that?"
"Frau Gumbach told me," he said, "that when His Excellency sends his bodyguard for girls once or twice a week, payment is generous and in advance, but before the girls can leave, they have to show N'Jibba, the bodyguard, that they have shaved their most intimate places." "I don't believe that," Gisella said.
"Why?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," he said. "But I'm going to find out."
"How? Are you going to walk over there and ask him?"
"No," he said. "I'm leaving. You're going to find out for me."
"I don't think this is funny, Wilhelm," Gisella said.
"I'm not teasing you, if that was your question," he said. "I've been trying to think of a way to meet both the Arab and the Baron.
Socially, I mean. And I just worked out how to do it. I'm going to go over there with your apologies for refusing their wine. I'm going to tell them you are a respectable girl who didn't know who they were.
And then I'm going to leave."
"I told you, I don't think this is funny," she said.
"I told you I wasn't teasing you," Peis said. "Let me phrase that another way. I want you to get to know one or both of them intimately.
Preferably the Moroccan. And I hope you can do that with discretion.
Because if you can't, Gisella, the next time N'Jibba fetches whores from Frau Gumbach, one of them is going to be you." She fought back tears. He was obviously serious, and besides, her tears only pleased him.
"Will you tell me why you want me to do this?"
"I will expect a full report from you," he said.
"About what?" "About anything interesting they do," he said.
She watched in her compact mirror as Peis bowed and clicked his heels at their table. When she saw them glance in her direction, she quickly snapped the compact closed and studiously looked away. Peis then walked across the room, but stopped just outside the door and nodded his head to signal that he had arranged things.
Three minutes later, with a triumphant smirk, the waiter brought the bottle of Gumpoldskirchner 32 back to the table.
"Compliments of the Baron, Fraulein Dyer," he said.
"Thank you," she said.
Then von Fulmar was standing beside her.
"I thought perhaps, since you are alone, I might ask to sit with you," he said. There was sarcasm in his voice.
He was quite self-confident, which was strange and even a little funny. k He was not a day over twenty, if that, despite the well-tailored English suit.
She was twenty-five. Quite a gap as far as she was concerned, but he seemed oblivious to it.
"Please do," she said, and gestured to a chair.
The waiter immediately produced a glass. Fulmar waved it away.
"I'm drinking the cognac," he said. "Would you fetch my glass, please?"
"Jawohl, Herr Baron," the waiter said.
An odd combination of sophistication and boyishness.
"Where're your friends?" Gisella asked.
"They were already engaged," Fulmar said. Gisella was sure this boy and the Arab had decided between them who was coming to her table.
Perhaps they had even flipped a coin over her. And this boy had won.
"And Hauptsturmfuhrer Peis was called to duty," Gisella said.
"What's going on, Fraulein?" Fulmar asked.
"I'm not sure I know what you mean, Herr Baron," she said.
"Why do you call me that?" he asked, turning unfriendly. But after a moment, she also realized he was not acting like a young boy making a play for an older woman.
"I was told your father is the Baron von Fulmar."
"Well, true. But I'm an American, and Americans can't be barons."
"Your German is perfect," she said. "You could easily pass for a German." The compliment rolled off him quickly. "Languages come easily to me," he said matter-of-factly. "I even speak pretty good Arabic. But what I asked is' what's going on, Fraulein? "' The waiter returned with the brandy glass. Von Fulmar sniffed at it, sipped at it, and set it down.
Then he looked at her for her reply.
"I really don't know what you mean," she said uncomfortably.
"I know who Peis is," he said, almost impatiently, and with obvious contempt, "and I know who you are. Why is the local Sicherheitsdienst thug offe ring me his girlfriend?" Gisella felt her face flush.
She blurted what came into her mind. "You can get in trouble calling him a thug," she said.
Fulmar dismissed that with a wave of his hand.
"Do you work for him?" Fulmar asked.
She met his eyes but didn't say anything.
He shook his head. "What does he want to know?" he asked.
She was frightened now. This was not going at all the way she had expected it to.
"Just fishing, huh?" Fulmar said.
Gisella blurted, "I'm not his girlfriend." "I thought you were," he said matter-of-factly, and she believed him. And that meant that he really was unafraid of Peis. He had sent the wine to her without caring whether Obersturmfuhrer Wilhelm Peis would like it or not.
"I think I understand," Fulmar said. "He's got something on you, right?" She nervously, softly, licked her lips before she spoke.
"I think he wants to be friends with you and your friend." Fulmar laughed unpleasantly.
"I'll bet he would, "he said. "That sonofabitch!
"Then he looked at her curiously. "What's he got on you?" When she didn't reply, he shrugged. "Sorry, none of my business. shouldn't have asked."
"Please," she said softly, "don't make trouble for me." He looked at her again, and she realized she liked his eyes.
"No," he said. "Of course I won't. We'll sit here and have a couple of drinks and dance. If he has somebody watching us--the goddamned waiter seems very curious--he will report that we seemed to be getting on famously." She smiled.
"You have a ve
ry nice smile," he said.
"Thank you," she said, and realized that her face was warm, that she was blushing.
"How do you know who I am?" she asked, a moment later.
"You were pointed out to me at the university," he said. "I've had a couple of lectures about tungsten from your father. I'm studying electrical engineering." Then he stood up.
"May I have the pleasure of this dance, Fraulein Dyer?" he asked with exaggerated courtesy.
While they were dancing, he seemed determined to keep distance between them, and after a moment she understood why, He had an erection.
Uncharacteristically--but on purpose--she moved her midsection close to his for confirmation.
When they were back at the table, his knee brushed hers and then. j_ quickly withdrew. A moment later, her knee found his. This time his did not withdraw.
"Is that on orders, or not?" he asked, looking into her eyes.
Shamed, she withdrew her knee.
"I didn't mean I don't like it," Fulmar said.
She averted her eyes from his, but moved her knee against him again.
"Would you care to see my etchings, Fraulein Dyer?" Fulmar asked.
She smiled. "It would give the waiter something interesting to report.
"Where are your etchings?" she asked.
"Here. Upstairs. I live here." She picked up her wineglass and drained it, and then stood up.
"Shall we go, Herr Baron?" she asked.
As they waited for the elevator, the waiter came to the dining room entrance to see where they were off to.
She took more pleasure than she expected to from coupling with Eric von Fulmar. That was probably because he was kind and straightforward, and enthusiastic. Peis made a point of looking bored as he pumped away at her.
When Peis phoned the next day to ask how things had gone, she replied, "It made me feel like one of Frau Gumbach's whores." "I asked you," he said, obviously taking pleasure from that, "how things went, not whether or not you liked it. For instance, did you have to shave?" He let that sink in for a moment, and then added, "You went to Fulmar's room at seven-thirfty. You came back down at quarter to nine and had dinner. You went back to his room at half past ten and stayed there until three in the morning. He drove you home then in the Arab's Delahaye." She was stunned.
"I'm happy for you, Gisella," Peis went on, that you have formed this new relationship. And I would be very unhappy if it were broken off."
"Wilhelm, he's twenty years old!"
"I don't care if he's fourteen," Peis said.
Damn you!
He laughed and hung up. But what was really funny was that she had outwitted him. As long as von Fulmar stayed at the university, she more than likely would be able to exchange sleeping with Peis, and whoever else it amused him to offer her to, for a really decent kid, with nice eyes, who didn't treat her like a whore.
The only thing that finally went wrong with Gisella Dyer's relationship with Eric Fulmar was that it had to end.
And after it ended, of course, she went back to her role as whore-on-call.
FOUR] Gisella Dyer was distressed.
It was bad enough that on the Eve of the New Year she had to charm and then sleep with a complete stranger, who, since he was a Standartenfuhrer, would almost certainly be in his fifties. But what made it really bad was that she'd just about allowed herself to believe she no longer had to be one of Peis's whores-on-call.
She had not jumped at this hope without reason, Because of her father's knowledge of titanium and other exotic alloys, the Reichsminister Albert Speer had sought him out--personally sought him out--when he had come to the Fulmar Werke in his private train a month before and had installed him, at a flattering honorarium, as "consultant" to the Fulmar Werke.
Her father was obviously now rehabilitated in the eyes of the government. And that should have been clear to Peis.
Despite the virtually limitless power Peis had as the local SS-SD officer, he was a peasant, very much aware of who his betters were.
And very much the servant in their presence. After the Reichsminister's departure, her father told Gisella that Peis looked like he was wetting his pants every time Speer spoke to him.
It just seemed logical that Peis would leave her alone, would probably go out of his way to avoid her in the fear that her father would get him in trouble with Speer.
It had been nice to think about. And then as the days and weeks passed and Peis didn't call her, it began to seem possible that she was free of Peis for good. She had not been "invited" to any of the pre-Christmas parties he staged for his close friends. Or, until just now, to a New Year's Eve gathering.
But it was starting all over again. Nothing had changed. And she felt foolish for having hoped.
She did what she could with her hair and dressed carefully (as a whore should, she thought bitterly), even to underwear that was no protection against the cold but would be pleasing to a man.
When the time came, she left the apartment and stood on the snow covered street wondering which would be the better route to catch the Strassenbahn, which would take her to the Sudbahnhof.
The Strassenbahn ride would be shorter if she turned left and went down the hill--the Marburg--that way. But the walk was almost twice as far as it would be if she went off the Marburg in the other direction and caught the Strassenbahn on the other side of the Marburg, by the City Baths.
She decided that since it was snowing, the shorter walk made more sense even if the ride was longer, and she started down the street toward the City Baths, her hands jammed in the pockets of her coat.
After the Strassenbahn put her off into the snow in front of the Sudbahnhof and she started walking up the ice-slippery cobblestone road to the Kurhotel, Gisella thought of Eric Fulmar. Probably because she was going to the Kurhotel, she had spent a good deal of time with him in the Kurhotel.
She wondered if he ever thought of her, wherever he was. Probably on the Eastern Front, but possibly, because he was able to walk through raindrops, in Berlin. Or, for that matter, in Paris or Budapest, safe, warm, and in bed with some woman. Right now she would have been pleased to have been that woman.
She then wondered about the Standartenfuhrer she would be entertaining tonight. Would she be just a little bit lucky, and would he be reasonably young and pleasant? Probably not. Christmas was over.
As she walked into the foyer of the Kurhotel, already crowded with drunk and exuberant New Year's Eve revelers, she remembered how furious Peis had been--and what Peis had done to her--when one day in the early spring of 1940, after returning for his fourth year at the university, Eric von Fulmar had simply vanished.
Peis had been unable to accept that Fulmar had said nothing to her about that. She still remembered Peis's words, between brain jarring slaps, "You sucked his cock for two years, and he just took off without a whisper? You don't really expect me to believe that, you stupid cunt!" Gisella Dyer gave her coat to the attendant and entered the dining room.
The room was full, and extra tables had been crowded into it to accept the New Year's Eve crowd.
She wondered, What does anyone have to celebrate?
She saw Peis at a table across the room. There was a thin, long-haired blonde with him, doubtless some whore of Frau Grumbach's.
And a stocky man in the black uniform of the SS.
She fixed a smile on her face and made her way through the crowded room.
"Heil Hitler!" she said, making the gesture. "Good evening.
Happy New Year!"
"My dear Gisella," Hauptsturmfuhrer Wilhelm Peis said, rising and kissing her hand. "You look very lovely tonight." "Thank you," she said.
"Herr Standartenfuhrer Muller, may I present Fraulein Gisella Dyer?" Muller shook her hand, then held her chair out for her.
He was neither as old as she had feared, nor as unattractive. And he had intelligent eyes, with neither sexual interest in them nor contempt for a rounded-heels female. The blonde from Frau Gumbach's s
miled at Gisella warmly, as if they were old friends.
Shortly after one in the morning, Gisella found herself in the suite the Kurhotel had made available to Standartenfuhrer Muller. She had known this was going to happen, but the way it was happening was making no sense. During the evening he had been formal and correct, which she suspected was because he did not want to act incorrectly in public with a woman whose morals might be questioned.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 3 - The Soldier Spies Page 18