‘Why should I hate you? That was fun. And you have paid me a great compliment.’ Anna got up and picked up her suspender belt.
‘But that’s it between us?’
It should be, she thought, sitting down to put on her stockings. I have repaid you for saving my life, and you have given me the information I was sent here to obtain. But she reckoned he was about the straightest man she had ever met. Certainly he was straighter than Clive. And even if, despite that certainty, she valued Clive the more, she still couldn’t do without him. ‘I hope not,’ she said aloud.
He swung his legs out of bed. ‘You serious?’
Anna put on her cami-knickers, draped the crucifix chain round her neck. ‘I need you.’
‘Name it.’
She adjusted her slip. ‘I am employed by the German Embassy. Questions will be asked as to why I got rid of Stoltz and went off with you this afternoon, but I can explain that; getting close to you is part of my job, and you have given me valuable information.’
‘Glad to have been a help,’ he said bitterly. ‘I appreciate your frankness, but that is pretty devastating.’
‘Silly man,’ she said. ‘That is what I have to convey to my employers. I cannot remember when last I told them the truth, about anything. But I cannot just take off for an afternoon with Clive. He is an enemy of the Reich.’
‘The penny is dropping. You know, you’re asking quite a lot, much as I like the guy.’
‘There is no other way. He is certain to contact you, at which time you will set it up and invite me to have lunch with you. All above board.’
‘It’ll still be risky. I’d bet my bottom dollar that your Nazi friends are keeping an eye on you. Should a known British agent show up at lunch, even if I’m present . . .’
Anna put on her dress, added her jewellery. ‘He won’t show up at lunch. He’ll be here, where you will bring me after lunch, just as you have done today.’
He gazed at her. ‘Do you wrap every man you meet around your little finger? That is, when you are not actually killing them?’
She sat beside him. ‘Now you are angry with me.’
He kissed her mouth. ‘Angry with you? No, Anna, I could never be angry with you, not even if I knew you were about to put a bullet in my brain. That’s your great strength, I guess.’
‘Then you will do it?’
‘Sure. I need my head examined, but I’ll do it.’
‘I will make it up to you. If you would like me to.’
‘I would like to take you away to a desert island where no one could ever come near us again.’
She got up to find her handbag and peered in the mirror to start applying make-up. ‘You would be bored.’
‘You mean you’d be bored. May I ask you a question?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Will you answer with absolute honesty?’
‘Ask me the question.’
‘Are you in love with Bartley?’
Anna carefully etched in her mouth. ‘I owe him my life. Just as I owe you my life. I also owe him my sanity. Above all, I owe him any hope I may have of the future. But then, I probably owe you those things as well.’
‘Are you saying that you’re in love with both of us?’
Anna put away her lipstick and brushed her hair. ‘I am saying that I must be the most fortunate woman in the world, to be loved by two such men.’
Joe went to his jacket, and took out a card. ‘This is my private number. Call me if you need anything at all.’
‘Thank you.’ She put the card in her handbag, kissed him, and went to the door. ‘Do invite me out to lunch again soon.’
*
Love, she thought as she rode down in the elevator. Men always talk of love, when what they really mean is sex. The sad thing was that she felt she could probably love either of them, even if they were crippled and confined to a wheelchair. But that was self-deception. The only man with whom she had ever enjoyed sex before today was Clive, and how much of that had been because of the hope he held for the future, she could not be sure. But she had enjoyed today as well, and Joe was strictly the present, never the future.
Equally was there no use in denying that her heart was singing at the thought that in a very short space of time she would be with Clive again, however briefly. Of course she wanted the reassurance, the confidence, that he always brought with him, but she also wanted so much more than that.
She smiled at the concierge, put on her glasses, and pushed open the doors to the street. It was a magnificent early October afternoon. According to the people at the Embassy, the Wehrmacht were in the suburbs of Moscow, and expected to control it within a fortnight, although it was equally expected that the Soviets would fight with greater determination than usual for their holy city. It was more difficult than ever to deduce from where the eventual British victory was going to come, especially if the United States was definitely not interested, but she did not doubt that Clive would be able to reassure her on that point as well.
She stood on the edge of the pavement, spotted a yellow cab, and raised her hand. The cab had actually been stopped against the kerb only a few yards away, obviously having just dropped a fare. Now it obligingly pulled in again.
‘The German Embassy,’ Anna told the driver, and settled herself back on the cushions. She was enjoying a delicious sense of relaxation. Of course Stoltz would have reported the strange goings-on at lunch to his superiors, and the Ambassador would no doubt want a word, but he was a dear old soul and very obviously in total awe of her – and in any event, as she had told Joe, she had only been doing her job.
And the job was done. She could take the next boat to Europe, after having made sure Himmler knew exactly when and how she was travelling, so that the U-boats could be warned off. But there need be no hurry. That was the beauty of her situation. No one, least of all Himmler, would expect her to have completed her mission so rapidly and with such a successful result. Indeed, part of her own euphoria was that such a result had come about so suddenly, when she had just been growing impatient at her lack of progress. She could stay here, certainly for as long as Clive was able to, and even after he returned to England, Joe would remain . . . She remembered that when he had first made advances to her, in Moscow, he had said that if she ever came to the States he would show her his home in Virginia.
She realized that she had almost been nodding off, and also that they seemed to have been driving for a very long time. She hadn’t been in Washington very long, but she had gathered from her outings with Stoltz that it wasn’t a very large city, and now they were . . . She looked out of the window. They were in some sort of deserted suburb.
She leaned forward, tapped on the glass, which was obligingly slid open. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘But I wish to go to the German Embassy, not a drive in the country.’
‘We stop now,’ he said, and stopped so suddenly she nearly bumped her forehead on the glass. She jerked her head backwards, and both the rear doors were opened, to admit a man to either side of her.
‘No noise, now,’ one of them said, and held a knife to her breast.
Anna inhaled, aware that she, of all people, had allowed herself to drift on to Cloud Nine. She certainly didn’t like the look of either of the men. But in the confined space of the car, and with the knife blade pressed against her, there was nothing she could do, at least for the moment. So the best thing to do was nothing, save act; her greatest strength, when people tried to take advantage of her, was that they never knew of just what she was capable.
She panted. ‘Please don’t hurt me. Look, there’s money in my handbag. Take it. Just don’t hurt me.’
The man on her other side grinned at her. ‘We wouldn’t dream of hurting a pretty doll like you. All we want to do is take you for a little ride, see?’
‘No, no,’ Anna gasped. ‘I won’t give you any trouble. Just don’t hurt me. Please.’
‘Then you behave. But we’ll just make sure.’ From the side pocket of hi
s jacket he produced a little box. This he laid on his lap, opened it, and took out a hypodermic needle.
Shit, she thought. Once again she had been taken by surprise. But still there was nothing she could do while the knife blade was resting on her breast. And a moment later the needle was being driven into her arm.
*
Anna awoke to a headache and a bitter taste in her mouth, and a peculiar feeling of half comfort and half pain. She realized that she was tied to a bed, spread-eagled, each wrist handcuffed to the outside bar of the iron bed head, and each ankle similarly to the bars at the foot. She was also naked. But this was not even a nuisance, however much her captors might suppose she would be so humiliated and embarrassed she would be the more ready to surrender to their demands. But every man, and every woman, beginning with Dr Cleiner at the SS training school, who had had her in their supposed power, however briefly, had begun by removing her clothes. The room was warm, and as far as she could tell they had not done anything to her yet.
Far more disturbing was the fact that they had taken her jewellery, and her watch, but when she turned her head, she saw them lying on the table on the far side of the room, and gave a little sigh of relief.
She heard movement, and turned her head the other way. A woman had been seated in a chair by the window. Now she got up and came to stand above her. She was a mature woman, in her mid-thirties, Anna estimated, and had a cold face. ‘Have we met?’ she asked.
The woman turned away and opened the door. ‘Comrade Kronsky!’ she called. ‘She is awake.’
Shit! Anna thought again. She was in deeper trouble than she had supposed. Although had she been thinking clearly she would have guessed immediately who her kidnappers had to be. And she was absolutely helpless until they released her, and surely they had to do that eventually.
There were heavy feet on the stairs, and then Kronsky came in, accompanied by two men, one of them actually – and somewhat melodramatically – carrying a tommy gun. ‘Countess,’ Kronsky said, also standing above the bed. ‘Do you know that you are every bit as beautiful as they say, and that your photographs suggest?’
‘I don’t think I know you,’ Anna said.
‘Boris Kronsky.’
‘I assume you are Russian?’
‘That is correct, Countess.’
‘You are employed by the Russian Embassy?’
‘Indeed. I am also employed by the NKVD, an organization with which I understand you are familiar.’
‘May I have something to drink? My mouth tastes like a sewer.’
Kronsky snapped his fingers, and a moment later the woman was holding a glass to Anna’s lips, raising her head to do so. But her wrists remained cuffed to the bed. The liquid was clear, but Anna knew it would be vodka, and so sipped rather than gulped. Her mouth burned, but some of the foul taste was gone. ‘Would you not like to finish it?’ Kronsky asked.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Well, perhaps later. You are very calm.’
‘I am very angry. I am a Chief Secretary at the German Embassy. Did you know that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then you will know that you are on your way to prison. And if you rape me, you will be gone for a very long time.’
He sat beside her, held her jaw, and moved her head from side to side. ‘What you do not realize is that I know everything about you. I know that you are not really a countess, but an Austrian assassin named Anna Fehrbach.’
His hand moved from her jaw to stroke her neck, caressing the flesh but squeezing just hard enough to give the impression of immense strength. For all her determination not to panic, Anna caught her breath.
‘I also know that you were sent to Russia last winter, on a mission to assassinate Premier Stalin, but were prevented from carrying out your assignment by my colleagues.’
To Anna’s relief his hand left her neck, but then slid lower. She realized it was going to be a very long evening.
‘But you escaped them. No one seems to know quite how, because it was hushed up. But no doubt it will come out at your trial.’
‘You hope to take me back to Russia for trial?’
His hand had reached her breasts, and he caressed her flesh before pulling her nipples, quite hard. Again she could not stop herself catching her breath. ‘I am told you enjoy this,’ he remarked. ‘Yes, Comrade, I am going to take you back to Russia for trial. I am told that Premier Stalin himself wishes to interview you before you are hanged. I am sure he will wish to be present then, too. To get out of the Lubianka you killed a friend of his, did you not? Commissar Chalyapov? As well as an NKVD officer, Ludmilla Tserchenka?’
His hand at last left her breasts and moved down to her stomach, where he gently massaged the soft flesh.
‘You are going to have to pay for those crimes, before your execution. I believe you will beg for death before it comes.’ He touched her scar. ‘Did our people do this to you?’
‘No. Do you think you can just kidnap me and ship me out of this country like a parcel?’ Anna had not intended to reveal any weaknesses such as curiosity, but she knew where his hand was going next and needed to prepare herself for it.
She was not going to get the time. His hand moved between her legs, and his fingers began to probe. Now she forced herself to breathe evenly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘It will take a little time to arrange, but I will enjoy having you as my guest. I did ask the FBI simply to arrest you and hand you over to our custody, but they refused. They may be supporting us in fighting our war, but one has to feel that they do not really like us. So I am going to have to arrange transportation for you on a suitable ship, and as I say, that will take a little time. So I suggest that you just lie back and enjoy it.’
Anna was now breathing very hard as, no matter how determined she was not to let him get to her, she could not prevent the sensation spreading throughout her groin and up into her stomach. To allow this bastard to bring her to orgasm . . . If she could just get her hands free . . . ‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘I need to use the toilet.’
‘Of course.’ At least he had to move his hand to snap his fingers. Anna took several deep breaths and worked her own fingers to restore all possible feeling, and then she saw the room fill with people. There were now two women and three men, as well as Kronsky, and one of the men was still carrying the tommy gun. She did not think they could possibly know all about her, but they were definitely afraid of her. ‘The lady wishes to relieve herself,’ Kronsky explained. He spoke Russian, but Anna had become fluent in the language during her residence in Moscow. ‘Now, ankles first.’
The two women began untying the cords. Anna had expected this, and made herself lie still. Once her legs were free, they each grasped one and pressed down while two of the men moved to the head of the bed. The other man pointed his tommy gun at her.
‘You see, Countess,’ Kronsky explained, ‘it is on file, and your record confirms, that you can be absolutely deadly. So you will forgive us for being careful. Otherwise we might have to shoot you. And Premier Stalin does want you back in Moscow, unharmed. His orders about this were quite specific. With the proviso, of course, that having you dead would be preferable to not having you at all.’
Her wrists were free, but the two men were still holding her arms, and the women her feet, and the gun was still pointing at her head. The odds were simply too great, even for her. And now she was rolled on to her face, her arms brought down behind her back, and her wrists again handcuffed, this time together.
‘There we are,’ Kronsky said. ‘Now we can all go to the toilet together.’
Anna looked past him, at the tommy gun. How odd, she thought, that I have been in this business for three years, and I have never actually fired one of those.
*
‘Clive!’ Joe shook hands. ‘You old son of a gun. I won’t ask what brings you to Washington. But you’re welcome. How long is it now?’
‘Five years since I was last here,’ Clive acknowledged. ‘And if I remembe
r rightly, you were quite keen on me leaving again.’
‘Well, some of your methods were a bit extreme, even for us. Sit down.’ He indicated the chair before his desk, sat himself, and waved a curious Margaret from the room; she had not been his secretary five years before. ‘But I would imagine that this time you are not looking for someone, at least not with the intention of taking him out.’
‘But I am looking for someone, as I am sure you know,’ Clive said. ‘And as this is in the nature of a flying visit, I need to contact her as soon as possible. As we’re officially on different sides of the fence, I need your help.’
‘Relax, old buddy. It’s done.’
‘Eh?’
‘Well, I knew Anna was here, of course. So the moment I was informed that you had landed in New York, I took her out to lunch and put her in the picture. That was two days ago.’
‘Have you seen a lot of her?’
‘No. Lunch was the first time. I reckoned it was best that she should contact me, if she wanted something.’
‘And she never did?’
‘Nope.’
‘But she was glad to hear from you. I mean, you saved her life.’
‘Yeah. I think she was glad to see me. She was even gladder when she heard what I had to say.’
‘And she’s all right?’
‘She is more beautiful, more Anna, than I even remembered.’
Relief came as a great sigh through Clive’s nostrils. ‘Did she tell you what she’s doing here?’
‘Gathering information for the Reich. It seems they’re confused by our behaviour, the way we are pouring aid into both Britain and Russia, but apparently aren’t interested in going to war in their support.’
‘I have to say, old friend, that that confuses us as well.’
‘Yeah,’ Joe said sombrely. ‘I know your PM has been virtually begging the President at least to issue a declaration of intent that he will not stand by and allow the Japanese to take over Indonesia or Malaya. Lord Lothian has been on Cordell Hull’s doorstep every day with the same objective.’
Angel of Vengeance: The thrilling sequel to Angel in Red (Anna Fehrbach) Page 12