“What about me?”
I love you, she wanted to tell him. The words appeared in her mind as though from deep inside her and she opened her mouth to say them, but stopped. Instead, she reread the cable.
It was spare: Eddie was alive and in a hospital where his condition was stable, although he was not well enough to be moved yet. Please advise.
“I’d better go get him,” she said. “Take him home. Or stay with him.” And Tim’s arms tightened around her, reminding her that sometimes nothing is gained without an attendant loss. “Oh,” she said, putting her arms around him in return.
Then she remembered. “I can’t, can I? Not until all this other business with Christian is over. Dammit.” She stood up, grateful for the anger that kept away the idea of saying good-bye to Tim. “Damn.”
“Talk to Eiger,” Tim said, his voice flat.
“Yeah,” said Sally, walking to the door. “I’d better go do that right away.” She stopped and said, her back to him, “All those photographs I’ve been looking at for six years, of all those people who’ve died, but now, someone’s alive! I’d never have believed anything like this could happen, something good.”
“Sally?” His voice was hesitant. She faced him, but Tim said nothing else, just looked at her, then smiled, releasing her. “Better go talk to the colonel,” he said gently.
“HE’S ALL THE family I have left, Colonel,” Sally explained when she showed Eiger the cable. “And tracking down an ex-husband who may or may not be implicated in a crime is suddenly not a priority with me.”
“I’m surprised at you,” Eiger said.
“I’m not saying the crime shouldn’t be investigated and the man punished, but, oh, Colonel, don’t you see . . .” She leaned forward, her hands on his desk. “That is the past. I mean, it’s all to do with death. All of this, being here, in the army, us, we’re all working to avenge the deaths of so many innocents. A thing that should be done. But, please, give me a chance to a future, to finding life. Even if he . . . if he’s too banged up to move, or a vegetable or whatever, he’s still alive. Alive!”
“I think you ought to go,” Eiger said in a mild voice. “I can’t argue with that.” He pulled a bottle of bourbon out of his bottom drawer and poured them both a drink to toast the miracle of Eddie’s return from death. Sergeant Dolan came in and joined them, then left to make the arrangements for Sally’s trip.
“The Mayr business is simple,” Eiger said. “You just need to tell the sister, ah, Annaliese? Just tell her that you’re leaving immediately. Tell her why.”
“All right,” Sally agreed. She reached for the phone and asked that the connection be made.
“I hope Annaliese is there,” she said to the colonel as they waited for the call to go through.
She was.
Sally told her the news and was gratified, and guilty, over Annaliese’s emotional response. “Oh, Sally,” she said. “To have someone come back. Oh, my dear, I’m so pleased and happy. And I’m so glad you’ve told me. It makes me feel better to hear of such good news.”
“I also want to tell you, Annaliese,” continued Sally, “that I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Yes. I don’t really know what condition Eddie’s in, and I’m the only family he’s got. He doesn’t even know about his wife and kids. I’ve got leave to fly out there.”
“All the way to the Philippines?”
“Yes, I’m leaving Friday,” Sally improvised. She wanted it to be over.
“Sally,” cried Annaliese, “that’s so soon.”
“I know. I was lucky to get on a flight. As it is, it’s going to take me a week, at least. It’ll be a horrible trip across Turkey, India, but it’ll be worth it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry you’re leaving so soon, I guess we won’t be able to see each other?”
“No. And Annaliese, I don’t think I’ll be back either,” said Sally slowly.
There was silence. “What will you do?” said Annaliese in a small voice.
“I don’t know. It depends on Eddie’s health,” Sally said, speaking the truth. “But listen, I have your address and I’ll write when we reach San Francisco. Please keep in touch. Send me pictures of Klara. I’ll miss both of you so much. And if there’s anything I can do later, if you—I don’t know—want to come to the States or need anything, don’t hesitate to write. Promise?”
“Promise,” agreed Annaliese.
“Good, well, I’d better say good-bye,” said Sally.
“Wait, Sally,” said Annaliese. Sally froze the receiver against her ear. “It’s about Christian . . .” Annaliese began.
“Tell him,” said Sally, with a quick glance at the colonel, who raised his eyebrows. “Tell him what’s happened and that I hope he’ll be happy for us. I think he liked Eddie. Tell him I got the locket and understood the message and . . . I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yes, just tell him that I’m sorry,” said Sally and, saying good-bye again, hung lip, putting down the receiver as though it were hot. She hadn’t liked making the call, deceiving Annaliese.
“All right. Now,” said Colonel Eiger, “we set up the trap.” He reached for the telephone. “That bit about leaving Friday was chancy. We don’t know if she can get word to him in four days.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Sally said, her stomach aflutter with nervousness.
CHAPTER 5
IF YOU STICK close to me, Christian won’t be able to contact me. Besides,” Sally added, “he would have to get past Sergeant Sanchez up here and the guards downstairs. Which means he probably won’t come. I really think I ought to take long walks or some such thing.”
“Absolutely not,” Eiger said. He had called the rest of the unit in that morning to tell them Sally’s news and to make the plans necessary for her safety.
“He’s not going to hurt me,” Sally said.
“You don’t know that,” Max Tobin said in his usual mild manner.
“Not if he’s the guy in the photos,” Finkelstein added.
“Lieutenant,” Eiger said. “You are a United States Army officer, working for a military intelligence unit. You have the photographs of him committing a criminal act, a war crime. And what’s more, you can identify him personally.”
“I guess so.” She was aware of Tim, seated at the end of the table next to the colonel. She didn’t like being the center of attention.
Sally looked across the table, above Armbrewster’s well-groomed head, to where the sequence of photos were tacked up: the officer aiming his gun, the crumpled body of the child on the ground under the tree, the officer wiping his brow, his arm shading his face.
Heat. Summer. That day in late June, during the bloody weekend of the Röhm Putsch, he had worn his uniform. Then, later, after the meal, he had stood in the hall, his hat in hand, saying good night. She had slapped him. He had put on his hat and gone away. She shivered, remembering the redness of his cheek, the stiffness in his body as he reacted to her slap, and, most clearly, the shadow the hat had cast on his face.
“You’re right,” she said, “but it’s hard,” she added under her breath.
“We don’t want you hurt,” Max Tobin said.
“He wouldn’t—”
“Sally,” Tim said, interrupting her. “He’s dangerous. Whatever he might have been—whatever you were to him, he’s different now. You must accept that, Sally.”
She looked around the table at the faces of the men, so full of concern for her. She tried smiling at them. “He’s probably in Buenos Aires by now. He probably won’t show.”
“Sure, if he knows what’s good for him,” Finkelstein said, in a mock-tough voice.
“Now, let’s arrange her pickups to and from work until she leaves,” Eiger said.
“You do remember that Tobin and I are due in Potsdam at noon today?” Armbrewster said. “Perhaps we can do our bit later in the week.”
“I’ve got Friday,” she was glad to hear Tim say. Wi
th all the new developments, she had wondered if their date was still on.
“I can do it the rest of this week,” Finkelstein offered and he and Sally agreed that he should come by her office at 1700 and drive her to her quarters.
As the men got up to leave, Max Tobin put his hand on Sally’s shoulder and squeezed it as he passed her. When they were alone, Tim leaned toward her and touched her knee.
“Did I tell you I was going to Nuremberg tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” she answered unhappily. How much time would she have left with him?
“Otherwise, I’d stick to you like old gum. Drive you anywhere you wanted to go.”
“Thanks, Timmy.”
“I’ll miss you, Sal. I wish . . .”
“No,” she said, standing up, moving out of range of the hurt in his warm eyes. “Let’s not talk about it. Maybe later. After . . . I can’t think about that now. I mean. . .” She turned quickly, afraid she had said something stupid again.
“Don’t worry, kid, I know exactly what you mean and I only wish I were going to be here all week to watch over you.” He got up and went to her, putting his hands on her upper arms.
“I’m not that helpless,” she gently chided him.
“I know. I know.” He brushed her lips with his. “I’ll see you Friday. We’ll talk about things then.” At the door, Tim paused. “Sally, he is dangerous. Don’t take any chances.”
When he had left, Sally sat for a long time studying the photographs on the wall, her emotions in a turmoil of excitement and sadness, resignation and anticipation, so that she had to struggle to focus on the pictures. Only Mala’s were there; the private photographs that belonged to Sally were in the colonel’s safe. Some of the prints had lost their tacks and their edges were curling up, so she tidied them up.
CHRISTIAN WAS IN her mind often that week. Not the adult in his black-and-silver uniform everyone said was a danger to her, but the boy from the lake. He was with her, all brown and golden, as she went about her work, as she waited for him to appear. She began to feel a heavy foreboding and hoped he would stay away from her.
Sergeant Dolan had achieved the impossible and gotten her a flight for the following Monday. He also started the paperwork for her discharge. Sally had a busy schedule: to clear her desk, finish the reports she could, and hand over those she could not.
As promised, Doug Finkelstein ferried her back and forth from her quarters and even hauled her footlocker off for shipment to San Francisco. Everyone, including Sally, assumed she was not returning. It was a bittersweet few days as she got ready to leave not only Tim, but the colleagues she respected and the work that had saved her sanity through so many long years. No one asked her what she would do in San Francisco and she did not think beyond getting Eddie there and taking care of him.
Thursday afternoon, she wrapped up the box of photographs taken from the camp victims for shipment to a refugee center, slipping in the snapshot of Katrina van der Lee. She made a silent apology to Mavis as she did so, but she just could not look at one more photograph of one more tragedy.
Nor would she go back into the conference room to look at the photographs of Christian, knowing too well what she would see: the implicit violence, the stark black-and-white shadows. They were just a few more of the many pictures she had been living with all these years, pictures of a world gone mad, pictures she didn’t want to look at anymore.
“SALLY, YOU READY to go?” Doug asked, startling her. He stood in the open door of her office with several manila envelopes in his hands.
“Oh, my. What time is it? Sorry. I’ve been a little distracted. I didn’t realize it was that late. Can you give me a minute?”
“No problem. I’ve got this mail to drop off, then I’ll get the car. You can meet me downstairs. You have any mail to go?”
“I sure do. If you wouldn’t mind lugging a box down.” She pointed to the box of photographs. “Is it too much to carry?”
“Nope.” Finkelstein picked up the carton. Sally put his envelopes on top of it and, thanking him, opened the door.
“See you,” he called, going down the hall. She watched him push through the swinging doors until they stopped moving, then looked at her watch. It was just after five o’clock, a dark, cold December afternoon. She wondered what the weather in Manila would be like and reminded herself to ask Sergeant Sanchez.
Standing at her desk, she separated a report from its carbons and put the original into a file and locked it in her bottom drawer. She clipped the carbons together and, glancing again at her watch, decided she had enough time to run them down to Nelson’s office.
The hallway, lit at intervals by bare, wire-caged light bulbs, was quiet. The door to Nelson’s office was locked and she continued down the hall to Sergeant Dolan. She could hear the wind come up outside, rattling the old windows, whistling in through the bomb-damaged closed-off offices. She looked down the hall at the series of doors, all nailed shut. There was nothing behind most of them but a three-story drop to the basement. But as she looked, one of the doors rattled, startling her.
Spooked, she hurried down to Dolan’s office, wondering which Nazi ministry had used this place, anyway. Scolding herself for her foolishness, she opened the door to the sergeant’s office. He was typing. It was a comforting sound in that long dim hall, with its row of closed, secret doors.
Sally handed Dolan the report for Nelson Armbrewster and they discussed her travel plans. She admonished him for staying so late.
“I am about ready to leave,” he assured her. “I don’t like to leave work overnight.”
“Sounds like a storm is coming up,” she said. “You don’t want to get caught in it.”
“No, ma’am, I do not,” he agreed seriously.
Stopping in the rest room, Sally washed her hands and glanced at herself in the mirror to check her hair. Her eyes were enormous, with dark smudges under them adding to her pallor. She smiled at herself, trying to relax, but in the glare from the overhead light, the smile only made her look worse. What the hell did Tim see in her, anyway? She certainly wasn’t a beauty anymore. She thought of his lips on her breast and shivered with anticipation, knowing there was nowhere on earth she would rather be than in his bed, with his arms around her.
Well, she’d be there, or at least in his apartment, soon, tomorrow night. Only twenty-four more hours to be gotten through.
Christian had probably been too far away for Annaliese to contact in time. And Sally realized how much she hoped that was true. She did not want to confront him. Not now. Not ever. Giving her bangs a brave fluff, she left the rest room and went to pick up her coat and bag.
Pale, watery light seeped through the blinds on the windows of her office from the streetlight outside. It had started to rain and she felt the cold wind that made its way into the room through the cracks in the window frame. It felt cold enough for snow. Sally leaned across her desk to pick up her bag, and stopped.
The desk light had been on when she left.
She froze just as she was, off balance, leaning toward the lamp, one hand outstretched, trying to decipher the sounds, the lights, everything blurred in the rush of the storm, the floating shadows.
She turned her head toward the window and, out of the comer of her eye, she saw something move.
He was here. Her brain knew it before her body could respond.
His hand covered her mouth as he pulled her back against him. He held a gun to her temple, the barrel cold and hard against her skin. The feel of the gun made her stomach turn.
She was very still, frightened by the gun.
“You feel this?” said the voice, his voice, in German, a tense, thin whisper, barely audible above the rain. “You feel it?” he repeated, pushing the barrel hard against her skull. She nodded, trying to quell the panic that rose in her. “You will be quiet, yes?”
She could do nothing, not move, nor speak, but he seemed to be satisfied, and taking the gun away, let go of her. She rubbed her temple t
o get rid of the feel of the cold metal.
A gust of wind hit the windows and she started. The storm battered the windows, drowning out the sounds of the rest of the world.
“Hello, Sally.”
She turned. He was barely visible, except as a tall shadow, striped in the moving, undersea light seeping through the blinds.
The gun, shining dully, pointed at her. It scared her, but her curiosity was stronger than her fear, and she searched the darkness for his face. The shadow put his hand on her shoulder, spoke. “You stay quiet and do what I say, and everything will be fine. Yes?” he said. She nodded. She was shaking.
“Good. Good.” He kneaded her shoulder, as though to calm her fear. “Believe me, I do not want to hurt you, Sally, I do not. So,” he said, still in that thin whisper of German. “Here we are. Not as you imagined.”
“Christian,” she tried in a weak voice.
“Quiet.” His voice was gentle but firm. His fingers flicked across her cheek. “I will speak and you will listen and no one will be hurt.” Pushing on her shoulder, he moved her to the window. He parted the blinds and was striped by the headlights of a passing car. Quickly he shut the room back into rainy darkness. Sally caught an impression of his face, of hard thinness and deep lines alongside his mouth.
Again, he leaned down to her ear. She could feel his breath on her cheek. “You have pictures. I want to see them. The pictures you say you have of me.” His voice was calm and reasonable, as if he were speaking to a child.
“There is only one.”
“There are four. I want to see them. You will not argue with me, you will do as I say. I do not want to hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you.”
“You sneaked in here for that? You can’t destroy them. The negatives are . . .” He put his hand on her face, the fingers splayed across her mouth, silencing her.
“I told you to be quiet, didn’t I? Not to argue. Now, you will take me to see the pictures. Shhh, no more talk. No more. Remember what I said.” He spoke calmly and only the tense grip of his hand on her face betrayed how much self-control he was exerting. His hand hurt her but she neither moved nor made a sound.
The Last Innocent Hour Page 59