Angel of Vengeance_The thrilling sequel to Angel in Red

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘All set, I think.’ Anna went to where her shoulder bag rested on a chair, and took out her lighter. ‘I don’t smoke myself,’ she assured him. ‘I think it is a disgusting habit. But so many of my guests do. From your breath I would say that you certainly do. You should give it up. But then, you’re not a very strong character, are you? Your professional life has been spent ill-treating your victims; you have never been a victim yourself. But one should always experience both sides of every situation, don’t you think? I have been tortured, you know. The experience either wrecks you forever, or it makes you twice as strong, mentally, as you were before. It did not wreck me. Of course, I was not physically damaged, except for a brief while. But once I start to burn you, you will be physically damaged, permanently. Because, as we are not going to be interrupted until six o’clock this evening, I am quite prepared to go on burning you throughout that time. With a break for lunch, of course. Now, Pieter, you have admitted that you were sent to investigate me. I wish you to tell me how this happened, and how you knew to pick me up outside Antoinette’s Boutique. I have a feeling that the two things are connected. If you are prepared to answer before I flick this lighter, nod your head.’

  Schlutz stared at her.

  ‘Your decision. Would you believe, Pieter, that I have never done this sort of thing before? Although there are quite a few men I have felt like doing it to. Well, one has to start somewhere, and yours is certainly big enough.’

  She stood between his legs and flicked the lighter; it emitted a huge flame. Schlutz’s chest rose and fell with great rapidity, and his head was moving too, up and down. Anna closed the lighter and laid it on the coffee table.

  ‘That was a very wise decision. Please remember that if you attempt to make a noise I will hurt you very badly.’ She moved behind him and untied the scarf. ‘So talk to me.’

  ‘A drink,’ he gasped. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘Why not?’ She refilled the schnapps glass and held it to his lips.

  He drained it. ‘You are a devil from hell!’

  ‘I think some people do believe that. But this is the hell, you know. Nazi Germany.’

  ‘Masquerading as an innocent young girl . . .’

  ‘I do not masquerade as a young girl. I am only just twenty-one. That men choose to regard me from their own limited sexual point of view is their problem, not mine. But you have not told me anything that I wish to know. Unless you do so, now, I am going to replace the gag, and then I will burn you whether you nod or not. Do you know, I am getting quite excited about it.’ She picked up the gag.

  ‘Frau Hedermann,’ he gasped.

  Anna frowned. This could be more serious than she had supposed. ‘Frau Hedermann works for the Abwehr?’ How could Bartoli have been so careless?

  ‘No. She is a friend of mine. And she is suspicious of Bartoli.’

  ‘How am I involved? He is my dressmaker, nothing more.’

  ‘She thinks there could be more. She noted this last summer, when you paid several visits to see him. It was supposed to be for a dress fitting, but she says the dress was a ridiculous thing, and that you never did take delivery of it. Bartoli burned it.’

  Now that was careless of me, Anna thought; she had merely told Bartoli to get rid of the dress. That he would be so stupid as to burn it in front of his staff had never occurred to her; he was supposed to be her Controller.

  ‘This all happened a year ago,’ she pointed out. ‘When did she tell you about it?’

  ‘Well, when we got . . . friendly. It was last autumn. But by then you had gone away.’

  ‘Did she know where?’

  ‘No. But I told her to contact me when you reappeared. If you ever did.’

  Anna gave him an affectionate squeeze as a reward. ‘And today was your lucky day. Or not, as the case may be. You say you told her to contact you when I returned from wherever I had been. Was this on orders from your superiors? From Admiral Canaris?’

  ‘I had no orders. There was nothing concrete to present to my superiors.’

  ‘So you were lying just now when you said you had been told to investigate me. You are acting entirely on your own. I am glad about that. Why were you so interested?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He flushed. ‘I asked Frau Hedermann for a description of you, and she told me you were the loveliest woman she had ever seen.’

  ‘So you got the idea that when I turned up again, you could flash your badge and bully me into having sex with you. You really are a despicable creature, Schlutz. But also a very stupid one. So I eventually returned from wherever I had been, and Frau Hedermann remembered that you were . . . interested, and telephoned you. She is every bit as despicable as you. And you hurried down to the Boutique, and I suppose you flashed your badge at my taxi-driver and told him to clear off.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Now just tell me one more thing. You are quite sure that no one in the Abwehr knows anything about this. It is entirely between you and Edda Hedermann. Who, I assume, is your mistress, and in order to retain your favours is prepared to pimp for you?’

  ‘Well . . . there were Edda’s suspicions that you and Bartoli were engaged in possible subversive activities.’

  ‘Of course,’ Anna agreed. ‘Suspicions which, if I do not agree to have sex with you, can easily be passed to your superiors, which could make life very difficult for me.’

  ‘It need not happen. Anna, stop this silly game, release me and have sex with me, and I will agree not to take the matter any further.’

  ‘I think that is a very reasonable proposition,’ Anna said.

  ‘Well, then, let me go.’

  ‘But I don’t think it would be safe for me to agree to it. I cannot bring myself entirely to trust you. But I will make you very happy. Oh, dear, your little man appears to be going to sleep.’ She knelt between his legs and began to play with him.

  ‘Anna,’ he gasped. ‘Oh, Anna. Take him into your mouth, Anna.’

  ‘I do not wish to do that.’

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘I would not like you to think that I have anything against fellatio,’ Anna explained. ‘But I do need the physical evidence that you were trying to rape me when I . . . defended myself . . . There we go. Wasn’t that fun?’

  He was panting, his chest heaving. But his brain was starting to work again. ‘You . . . What are you saying?’

  ‘Give me a moment.’ Anna went into the bathroom and washed her hands.

  ‘Anna!’ he called. ‘Come back. I have said I will drop the investigation against you.’

  Anna returned. ‘Oh, I am sure you will never do that, Pieter.’ She walked round the back of the settee. ‘I would like you to know that your company, although most distasteful, has also been quite stimulating. It has taken my experiences to new heights. Although I suppose it is actually depths.’ She was now standing behind him. ‘But I will wish you good fortune in whatever future you may be going to.’

  She drew a deep breath and swung her right arm from behind her shoulder, getting all of her 120 pounds into the movement, holding her hand rigid, and crashed it into the side of Schlutz’s neck, just above where it joined his shoulder.

  Chapter Three – Going West

  Schlutz slumped without a sound, his head sagging sideways on to his shoulder. Anna waited for a few moments, then rested two fingers on his neck. There was no pulse.

  She released his ankles, then rolled him over and freed his wrists. Another roll and he tumbled on to the floor, on his back. She knelt beside him and picked up his discarded pants, replaced his handcuffs on his belt, then restored his Luger to its holster; in each case wiping the article clean of her prints. Then she let the pants lie beside the body, dropping the drawers on top of them. Her own handcuffs she restored to the drawer in her bedroom.

  Then she washed the glasses they had used, and stood above him for a moment, finger on her chin while she considered. She was working, as she had been from the moment she had realized that he was too d
angerous to be allowed to live, her mind entirely concentrated on what needed to be done. Normally in these circumstances she would telephone Heydrich, and he would send a disposal unit to remove the body. But he would want to know what had happened, and how it had happened. The way the body was lying, its appearance, and the semen would certainly back up her story that he had been endeavouring to rape her and she had defended herself. But there was one considerable drawback to that scenario, at least as regards Heydrich. When in March 1939 she had been forced to kill Elsa Mayers to prevent the betrayal of her liaison with Clive Bartley, she had used that self-same story. Clive had long since departed, on her instructions, and she had told Heydrich that Elsa had tried to rape her, and that she had defended herself, violently. As he had known all about Elsa’s proclivities, he had accepted that tale without question. But would he accept an almost exact repetition, two years later, even if the sex was different? She had a high regard both for his intelligence and his suspicious nature.

  In any event, Heydrich had virtually washed his hands of her, at least for the time being. She needed to go to the top, to the person who was just working himself up to come to her.

  She picked up the telephone, gave the number. ‘The Reichsfuehrer does not take telephone calls,’ the woman announced.

  ‘Will you just tell him that it is Anna, that something very serious has happened, that I need his help, urgently, but that I cannot come to him.’

  ‘Really, Fraulein,’ the woman said. ‘Do you expect the Reichsfuehrer to be interested in your domestic problems?’

  ‘Yes, I do, and I recommend that you do as I say or it may be unfortunate for you.’

  There was a brief hesitation. Then the woman said, ‘I will need your full name and status.’

  ‘Anna will do.’

  Another hesitation, then the woman obviously laid down the phone and went off. Anna sat absolutely still, staring at the dead man. Number fifteen! Soon enough, she knew, she would be overtaken by an enormous surge of guilt and remorse, of self-horror at what she had done, a sense of disbelief that she, Annaliese Fehrbach, who not four years ago had been a convent schoolgirl, considered by the nuns as almost the perfect pupil, brilliant and inventive, and yet always obedient and polite, could possibly be sitting here contemplating the body of the fifteenth adversary she had killed with ruthless efficiency. One day, when it was all over, she would go to confession, something she had not been able to do for all of those three and a half years. She wondered what her penance would be; half a dozen Hail Marys would hardly fill the bill.

  But at this moment, Annaliese Fehrbach did not exist. She was the Countess von Widerstand, applying herself to the task of survival and eventual success with all the enormous concentration and determination she had at her command, which would allow nothing and no one to stand in her way, to threaten her existence, and, by projection, that of her family.

  ‘Anna? What has happened?’

  ‘Oh, Herr Reichsfuehrer! I have a problem.’

  ‘A problem? What problem?’

  ‘There is a dead man here.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘In my apartment.’

  ‘A dead man? In your apartment? How did he get there?’

  ‘He was alive when he came here. He forced his way in and tried to rape me. So I defended myself. I must have hit him too hard . . .’

  ‘My God! Listen, do nothing. Touch nothing. Just wait. I will take care of it.’

  ‘Oh, thank God! I knew you would not fail me, Heinrich. Oh, I do apologize, Herr Reichsfuehrer. That was unforgivable.’

  ‘Not at all. I would like you to call me Heinrich, at least in private. We are working together, are we not? I will be there in fifteen minutes.’

  Anna replaced the phone and took another look around the room. Then she grasped the front of her shirt and tore it open; the buttons burst and scattered. She released her belt and slid down the slacks. Her cami-knickers were already torn where Schlutz had grasped them in the lift, but she tore them some more, to expose her crotch entirely. She pulled the pants back up, fastened them, then seized them and jerked them open; again buttons flew. Then she refastened the belt. A last look round the room, then she sat down to wait. This was one of the occasions when she wished she did smoke.

  *

  ‘My dear girl! My dear, dear girl.’ Himmler looked as if he would embrace her, but thought better of it. The room was full of men; even the concierge had come up to discover what had happened to his favourite resident. So Himmler contented himself with grasping her shoulders while holding her at arms’ length, peering at her torn clothing. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Now that you are here, Herr Reichsfuehrer.’

  ‘I meant are you hurt in any way?’

  ‘I do not think so. Perhaps you could examine me . . .’

  He blinked at her in embarrassment, and she realized that with a man as sexually timid as this she would have to be careful. But his attention was distracted by the doctor, who had come to stand beside them. ‘Well?’

  ‘It would seem to be exactly as the Countess has said, Herr Reichsfuehrer. The man must have spent himself immediately before death. Well, you can see . . .’

  ‘Of course I can see,’ Himmler snapped. ‘It is disgusting.’

  ‘My people are cleaning it up now. There are just a couple of things . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He appears to have been struck, violently, on the chin, at some time before death.’ His gaze drifted to Anna.

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said, ‘when he threw me down and started to take off my clothes, I kicked him.’

  ‘I would say, going by the bruise, that you must have laid him out.’

  ‘I thought I had. But when I tried to get up, he caught hold of me and threw me down again.’

  ‘But he did not actually penetrate you?’

  ‘No, he was so worked up that, as you say, he came before he could complete. That gave me the opportunity to get my arms free, so I hit him.’

  ‘You hit him with your hand, on the neck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know that his neck is broken?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Herr Doctor, I was trying to defend myself.’

  The doctor scratched his head.

  ‘What a horrifying experience for a young woman,’ Himmler commented, leaving Anna to wonder if he had ever actually read her file in any detail. ‘Well?’ This to the SS captain who had accompanied him with four of his men.

  ‘We found this, Herr Reichsfuehrer.’

  Himmler took the rectangle of cardboard. ‘Abwehr?’ He looked at Anna.

  ‘Yes. That is how he got in. He was pretending to be a taxi-driver . . . I suppose the taxi is still outside . . .’ She looked meaningfully at the concierge, who was clearly listening; there could be no holes in her story.

  The concierge nodded. ‘It is still there, Countess.’

  ‘Well, when we got here, he showed me his badge and said he wished to speak with me. I did not wish a scene on the street, so I invited him up. I felt I should find out what he wanted.’

  The captain looked at the concierge, who again nodded. ‘That is exactly how it appeared to me, Herr Captain. The Countess did not look alarmed, so I saw no reason to interfere.’

  ‘I had no reason to be alarmed,’ Anna pointed out, ‘until we got inside, when he assaulted me.’

  ‘And he gave no idea what he wanted?’

  ‘He wanted me, Herr Captain.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘You had better get on to Canaris,’ Himmler said. ‘Find out what he’s after, interfering with one of our people.’

  ‘With respect, Herr Reichsfuehrer,’ Anna said. ‘I do not think Admiral Canaris, or his office, had anything to do with what happened. This man, this Schlutz, told me so, when I asked what he wanted. Nothing, he said. Save a piece of your ass.’

  ‘My God!’ Himmler said. ‘The scum these people employ. For God’s sake, get this place cleaned up, Schus
ter. And remove that carrion. Doctor!’

  ‘Ah . . . Countess . . .’ The doctor licked his lips.

  ‘I think the bedroom would be best,’ Anna decided. ‘You’ll excuse us.’ Her remark included the entire room, but she knew Himmler was following as she led the doctor into her bedroom. ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘If you would undress . . .’

  Anna began to remove her torn clothes.

  ‘You do not mind if I stay?’ Himmler asked.

  ‘I am your servant, sir,’ Anna said primly, and took off her cami-knickers.

  Himmler stood against the wall, breathing deeply. The doctor was more professional, but he was clearly enjoying what he was required to do, the more so as he could find no reason for doing it. ‘There are a couple of small bruises,’ he said at last, reluctantly. ‘Nothing the least serious. Would you like me to give you some ointment?’

  ‘I am sure I have sufficient ointment in my medicine cabinet, thank you.’

  ‘But this . . .’ He bent forward.

  Oh, Hannah Gehrig, Anna thought. If I hadn’t had to break your neck to save Belinda Hoskin’s life, I should have broken it to save your bullet from being such a nuisance. ‘It was a bullet wound, Herr Doctor. It is perfectly healed now.’

  ‘The Countess’s English husband shot her,’ Himmler said. So he had read her file after all, and, like Heydrich, accepted her account of the incident.

  ‘Good heavens! Well, then . . .’ The doctor looked longingly at her pubes.

  ‘I have told you, Herr Doctor, that he did not succeed in penetrating me. In fact he did not get near penetrating me. So there is nothing for you to find inside me.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, of course. Well . . .’

  ‘Oh, get out, Doctor,’ Himmler said. ‘You are irritating the Countess.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Well, good day, Countess.’

  He closed the door behind himself, and Himmler and Anna looked at each other. ‘May I put something on?’ Anna asked.