But what other people think about Gisella tonight can't be helped.
Actually, it's useful, it will be safer for both of us if everyone thought she was what she looked like, a young woman being sweet to an older man because he was a Standartenfuhrer who could provide nice things that younger, less important men could not.
Even when Muller and Gisella danced--despite what had happened between them on New Year's Eve--it was awkward. They danced like a father with his daughter. Which was also understandable, though he wasn't quite old enough to be her father.
But as they came off the dance floog Gisella caught his hand in hers.
She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. When they reached the table and had to let go, he knew she really wished she could continue holding his hand.
Right after dinner, Muller let Peis know it was time for him to go and take his whore with him. Peis predictably made it clear he was quite aware that Muller was anxious to take Gisella to bed. As she rose to leave, Peis's whore kissed Gisella.
"Liebling," she said, wearing her most ravishing smile, "I know we'll be seeing a lot of each other." This upset Muller more than he wanted to admit.
Peis then came to attention, clicked his heels, threw a stiff Nazi salute, and bellowed loud enough for everybody in the room to hear him which was clearly his intention), "Guten Abend, Herr Standartenfuhrer.
Heil Hitler!" Muller returned the salute with a casual movement of his arm.
After Peis and his whore had left, Gisella started smiling.
Muller looked at her quizzically.
"I have seen more formal salutes," Gisella said.
Gisella was looking at him. Into his face--his eyes. It was the first time she had done that.
"I think I am going to have a brandy," Muller said. "Can I order something for you?"
"I will have a brandy, too, please," Gisella said.
The proprietor personally delivered the brandy, displaying it like a treasure. It was one of his last two bottles, he said, as he placed a balloon glass in front of Gisella and then Muller.
"Before the war," Gisella said when the proprietor had stepped away, "this is what my father used to drink."
"Then we'll buy him a bottle, " Muller said.
Her eyes were bright with pleasure.
Could you?
"Of course," he said. "You heard him, he has two." That didn't please her. It seemed to frighten her.
"When you're finished," he said, "I will take you home, if you like."
"I would like, I think, to dance." This time, they did not dance like father and daughter. He could feel the softness of her breasts against him, and then Gisella laid her head against his chest, and he could smell her hair.
"I have to talk to you," she said.
"All right." Is she in some kind of trouble? If that swine Peis..
"Are you sending me home, Johnny?" Gisella asked.
"I thought you--"."s For an answer, she squeezed his hand again.
It is entirely possible that Gisella would prefer to be the girlfriend of a Standartenfuhrer--even an old, turning-to-fat, balding, peasantstandartenfuhrer--to being at Peis's beck and call.
So what? What do you care why, just so you can get in her pants?
And then he discarded as beyond credibility that she might like him for
"Why don't we take the cognac to your room?" Gisella asked softly.
She knows what will happen there, that isn't a riding crop pressing against her belly.
Gisella went straight into the bathroom when they reached his room.
She came out in her slip, which was cotton, practical, and ill-fitting.
I should have bought her some nice underwear.
Then Muller took a quick shower, and, a little self-consciously, splashed 4711 cologne on his chest and under his arms and down there.
He wrapped a towel around his middle and walked back to the bedroom.
Gisella lay in the bed, and she'd tossed her ugly slip on the back of a chair. She's naked under the blankets! She raised her arm and held the sheets and blanket open for him.
When he slipped in beside her, she moved so that she was half on top of him, her leg over his, her face against his chest. He marveled at the softness of her back.
"Johnny," Gisella said, her voice muffled, GI've been listening to the BBC."
"You can go to jail for that," he said tenderly, making it a joke.
"I wasn't surprised when Peis brought the radio," she said.
"What do you mean by that?"
""Gisella thanks Eric for the radio, "' she quoted.
"Aren't you afraid your neighbors will report you?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," she said. "I'm careful."
"I think it will be all right now," he said. "Peis is afraid of me."
"I should be afraid of you," Gisella said. "Somehow I'm not.
Quite the opposite."t He tightened his arm around her.
"That was a message to you, wasn't it?" Gisella asked.
"Yes, we think so," Muller said.
"We?"
"The less you know, the safer you are," he said. And immediately knew that was nonsense. If they were caught, it wouldn't matter how much or how little Gisella knew. They would both die, very slowly and very hard, at the hands of someone like Peis.
"I knew the other one was, I don't know, a confirmation of the first."
"What other one?" he asked.
"There were two messages." He looked down at her, saw her scalp where she parted her hair, looked down to see her breast half flattened against his abdomen.
He didn't want to talk about messages. He just wanted to be where he was, with her naked against him, feeling her heart beat against his chest.
"Ach, Gott!" he said, and then, "I don't know about a second message.
And I have to know."
""Bubchen wants to paddle Gisella's canoe again, "' she quoted, so solemnly that he chuckled.
"What's it mean?" he asked. "How do you know it's for you? What does it mean, about a canoe? Bubchen?" She was silent for a moment.
"Why did you have to laugh?" she asked.
"Sometimes I'm an asshole," he said.
"I was older than Eric," she said.
"And you called him Bubchen'?" She nodded her head ayes" against his chest.
"And the canoe? What's that mean?" She told him about the picnic on the bank of the Lahn River the day before Eric Fulmar had disappeared from Marburg.
Surprising himself, he lowered his head and kissed her hair.
"It's humiliating, having to tell you," Gisella said.
"Why?" he said. "You were forced to be with him."
"Not that much, " Gisella said.
"You fell in love with him?" he asked.
"Something like that was impossible," she said.
"Are you still in love with him?" he asked, with a valiant effort to sound dispassionate.
Gisella pushed herself off him and looked down at him.
"Would you believe me if I told you no'?" "Yes " he said "Then no. "' "I'm glad," he said.
She threw herself into his arms again.
"What the hell is it all about?" she asked plaintively.
"It's one of two things, I think," he said. "He--they--either want something from your father, or they want to get him, maybe both of you, out of Germany."
"I have been asking Father to come up with some connection with Eric," Gisella said. "But he simply doesn't remember him."
"I'll have to have a go at that," he said.
"With my father?"
"Yes."
"He pretends he doesn't know about Peis," Gisella said. "I don't know how he'd react if you showed up at the house."
"We're going to have to find out," he said.
"I suppose," she said.
They lapsed into silence.
Two minutes later, Muller said, You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."
"That's an elaborate compliment," Gisella
said. "When men pay elaborate compliments, they generally want something." He felt his face flush.
"Does that mean you want to make love?" Gisella asked.
"It didn't," he said, taken back, hurt. "But yes, I do," he added defiantly.
"Good," she said, pushing herself erect and looking down at him again.
"I was afraid you would go to sleep on me." She saw the look on his face.
"Why are you so surprised?"
"I don't know," he said. "I am. I've never... been successful... with women."
"You are with this one," Gisella said, and took his hand. "See?
Feel?" IZ Burqwreg Marburg an der Lahn, Aermany 1000 Hours 18 January No one really knew how old Burgweg was. Presumably, it had been there before the fortress was built. The guidebooks said the fortress had been built "circa A. D.900 {? ) around an earlier watchtower." The road itself, paved with cobblestones, was steep. And covered as it was now with a thin layer of snow over ice, it was slippery. The rear end of Muller's Opel Admiral slewed from side to side, frequently bouncing against the curb on the down side of the hill. Several times it almost scraped the buildings that were flush with the side of the road.
The numbering ran from the top downward. They were almost at the gate in the fortress itself when Muller carefully bounced the right wheels of the car over the granite curb and brought the Admiral to a stop.
The big car was now half off the road, with its nose almost touching a large sign.
The sign carried the standard No Parking symbol, a P crossed by a diagonal red bar as well as (for special emphasis) the legend' Parking Absolutely Forbidden at Any Time." Muxer was unconcerned. Few policemen would even consider issuing a citation to an Opel Admiral.
None would be foolhardy enough to even look twice at this Opel Admiral.
Muller's vehicle carried not only Berlin license plates, but also, in the spot where common citizens and lesser officials carried the stamp signifying the payment of taxes, his plates bore a small, inconspicuous stamp signifying that taxes had been waived for this vehicle as it was in the service of the Schutzstaffel-Sicherheitsdienst.
He pulled the keys from the ignition, pulled on the parking brake, stepped out of the car, and moved quickly around the rear to open the door for Gisella. By the time he got there, she had her door open and was swinging her feet out, carefully, because the car was so close to the edge. Her coat had opened and her skirt was hiked up, and a flash of white flesh was visible above the silk stockings he had brought her from Berlin.
He felt his heart jump.
Goddamnit, she's beautiful!
"I can make it," Gisella said. Standing up and supporting herself on the car, she made her way to where he stood. She held in her hand a tissue-wrapped bottle. The proprietor of the Kurhotel had been more than pleased to present Herr Standartenfuhrer with one of his two bottles of Courvoisier.
"Wait," Muller said, "there's more." Gisella raised her eyebrows and looked at him curiously.
He opened the trunk of the car and took from it a large cardboard box.
"What's that?" Gisella asked.
"A few little things I picked up for you in Berlin," he said.
She looked at him with a warm sparkle in her eyes. "Thank you, sir," she said, and her voice caught. "Thank you very much." She likes me!
As they entered the foyer of the old house, a door opened a crack and an eye peered out.
Peis's resident snoop, Muller decided.
He followed Gisella up the stairs and waited for the answer to the knock at her door.
Although he had examined his dossier carefully, Professor Friedrich Dyer was not what Muller had imagined. He expected an academic type, an absentminded professor in mussed and baggy clothes.
Dyer was tall and erect with a full head of curly hair. There was a Hungarian somewhere in the bloodline, Muller decided. Perhaps that explained his rebellion.
"Heil Hitler!" Professor Dyer said, raising his arm.
"Heil Hitler," Muller mumbled. He stepped inside the apartment, and Gisella closed the door after them.
"Father," Gisella said, "this is Standartenfuhrer Muller."
"How do you do, Herr Standartenfuhrer?" Dyer said formally, neither coldly nor warmly. But his eyes, Muller saw, showed both contempt and shame.
Because his daughter * with an SS-SD officer? Or because he's meeting the man in whose bed his daughter spent the night?
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Herr Professor Doktor," Muller said. "As soon as your charming daughter relieves me of this burden, I will offer my hand." Gisella giggled. Her father nodded his head, just perceptibly, but did not smile.
"What's in there, Johnny?" Gisella asked.
"It should go, I think, in the refrigerator," he said.
Gisella stepped up to him and opened the flaps of the carton.
"My God!" she said. "Where did you find all that?"
"Is there a refrigerator?"
"There's an icebox," she said.
"I'll have Peis bring you a refrigerator," he said without thinking.
"No," Gisella said quickly.
"We manage quite nicely with our old icebox," Dyer said. "Thank you just the same," he added, clearly not meaning it.
"Professor, I am here as a friend," Muller said.
"I'm sure," Dyer said, very carefully. He smiled. But the smile was artificial, and his eyes were wary. And contemptuous.
Muller had a sudden insight, I could work on Dyer for the next twelve hours without making a crack in his hostility.
"Would you come here a moment, Herr Professor Doktor?" Muller asked, taking Dyer's arm and leading him into the kitchen. He went to the small FEG Volksradio and turned it on, raising the volume. Then he turned on the water in the sink.
Gisella looked at him with both concern and curiosity.
He took her arms in his hands and pulled her to him so that he could bring his lips to her ear.
"Peis may have this place wired," he said. "If you have to talk in here, make sure the radio is going and the water is running. It would be better if you talked in the woods, or a park. Not near a lake." She nodded.
He motioned Professor Dyer over and put his mouth close to his ear.
"Your daughter is going to tell you what's going on," he said.
"Pay attention. And keep your mouth shut, or we'll all wind up dead." When he let go of Dyer, he saw the confusion in the man's eyes.
He went back to Gisella.
"Tell him what you know. And make sure he understands how dangerous this is. Find out what you can. Anything. Wild guesses, anything." Gisella nodded and then, as she spoke into his ear, he could feel her warm breath, "You're going? Now? Why?"
"He's made up his mind not to like me," he said. "So he wouldn't trust me anyhow. You have to make him do that." He looked into her eyes until she nodded understanding and agreement. Then he added, "And I have to drive to Berlin, remember." He resisted the temptation to kiss her ears, and let her go.
He shut the water off and turned the radio volume down.
"It has been a great pleasure to meet you, Herr Professor Doktor," he said. "I look forward to that pleasure soon again. And I shall be in touch with you, my dear Gisella, just as soon as duty permits." He paused and said loudly, "Heil Hitler und auf Wiedersehen." Then he met Gisella's eyes a moment before turning and walking out of the apartment.
He was almost at the foyer door when Gisella caught up with him.
"Johnny!" She put her arms around him.
"Be careful," she said.
The foyer door opened and the resident snoop's eye appeared.
Muller yielded to the temptation to give her something to report.
He kissed Gisella on the mouth, then put his hands on her rear end and pressed her against him.
He kissed her longer than he had intended, and more tenderly.
Then he went out to the Admiral.
He thought, as he drove past the house, The truth is thati am acting like a sch
oolboy about that woman. I am going to have to watch myself Not only is the affection mostly imaginary, but emotion is always dangerous.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 3 - The Soldier Spies Page 34