“Günther,” she said. “Günther.”
He withdrew his cigarette holder and said crisply:
“You have simply come here to gloat over me and to persuade your Jewish compatriots to put me to death. Well, I am not afraid; you will not have that last satisfaction, Grete. I am not afraid.” The last words were uttered in a penetrating whisper which was blood-chilling. Suddenly her reserve broke down; extending her arms and almost sinking to a kneeling posture on the floor, she began to whine and plead with him, almost like an Arab. Her voice had become sweet and shrill.
“Surely you understand; it is not you, it is Otto I am talking about. Günther, you must tell me where he is. I will do anything. For the love of God, can’t you understand what it is to have a child, to have a son?”
“A Jew,” he said.
“A child, a child,” she almost howled, shaking her impotent fists in the air. Then, as so often in the past, the old sense of uselessness welled up in her. She covered her face with her hands and pressed her cold forehead to the wall, breathing deeply, trying to think.
She opened her eyes wide, staring as if into the very stones of the prison wall; slowly her composure returned and her eyes grew dreamy, speculative, thoughtful; she turned slowly and once more confronted the figure which sat upright over its cards, setting them out with small precise insect-like gestures. His forehead was still pearled with drops of sweat; but his expression was set and grim — the two lines running down from the corners of his mouth framing its obdurate mood. She moved slowly towards him again, but this time her face was calm and abstracted, her voice more curious than forceful. It was as if she were now repeating a formula without being sure whether it would work or not. Yet the words were fraught with a new kind of significance to him; he did not look up at her, but he did raise his head and ponder briefly as he stared at the edge of the table, beyond the coloured line of court cards. Her words, spoken with a puzzled slowness, were:
“If I could free you, Günther… if I could free you, you would tell me.”
She paused to see what effect this new idea might have upon him. He gave a short harsh bark of laughter — satirical laughter which disowned the validity of the idea; and yet… he did not move. He still stared at the table. Then he took up his cigarette holder and drew a mouthful of smoke from it which he softly launched into the darkness around the door, thinking deeply, almost voluptuously — as if the word itself had struck a note of music in his mind. She stared at him with the eyes of a Medusa. Slowly he turned his head, and his cold eyes met hers with their basilisk stare. For a long second neither spoke. She could hear the drone of a nearby mosquito; somewhere in the middle distance there was the noise of a radio playing Arab quarter-tones. Grete bent her rapt golden head towards him and said, with a queer note of triumph:
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
He rose stiffly to his feet and, with his erect military posture, he walked to the further wall, taking, as he did so, a handkerchief from his sleeve. High on the wall there was an object protruding into the room which might have been the metal end of an air ventilator — or some sort of microlink. He slowly and methodically blocked this aperture with his handkerchief. Then he turned and leaned back against the wall and uttered, with an insolent and indifferent tone, a single word.
“How?”
“I have a way.”
A single muscle began to twitch with fatigue under his right eye; but he still stared at her carefully. Words began to tumble from her lips more freely now, for she scented her advantage.
“I tell you I have a way, Günther. It is on me that the question of your identity turns. If I refuse to identify you, or swear a deposition to say you are not Günther Schiller but someone else… there will be no case against you, do you see?”
“The Jews know already,” he said softly.
“Of course; but I am not talking about the Jews.”
“Who then?”
“The British. I could get you into British hands quite easily; then I could convince them that you were the wrong man. Do you see?”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, simply and without heat.
“But I can prove it,” she said in her thrilling tones. “Günther, I can prove it to you.”
“You will have me killed afterwards.”
“Why should I? Once you tell me what I want to know, the British army would send you to Germany, and there you would be freed for lack of evidence. Can’t you see?”
“How will you get me into British hands? One slip and the Jews will kill me, you know that.”
“I know that; but leave it to me. All I want is your promise that if I get you into British hands you will tell me. Have I your word?”
He hesitated for a long moment; she waited, trembling with excitement, staring into those cold little pig’s eyes. At last he said:
“Very well. I will tell you then.”
She heaved a great sigh of relief. “Thank God,” she said; and then all her doubts assailed her anew. She turned her face to him once more, scrutinizing his features with an obsessional attention, as if to read the truth on them.
“Swear,” she said at last. “Swear on your mother, Günther.”
“Ach.” He cleared his throat swiftly and made an impatient little gesture with his right hand.
“I swear,” he said, “on my mother.”
“Swear on Germany.”
“I swear on Germany.”
“Swear by Adolf Hitler.”
“I swear by Adolf Hitler.”
He stood looking after her as she turned and went to the door of the cell. His glance was one of thoughtful absent-mindedness, as if his preoccupations had suddenly shifted to a new topic.
“Send me the gaoler please,” he said drily and, putting his hands behind his back, began to walk slowly up and down the cell, deep in thought. He stubbed out his cigarette and stood gazing at the smoke for a moment before resuming his walk. He heard the bolts shoot into the wall after she left, then voices, and finally silence. It was some ten minutes later when the same bolts creaked back and he saw the figure of David advance across the cell towards him. David was astonished by the change in Schiller. His face was pale and drawn and deeply lined.
“I want to see a priest,” he said. “I am a Catholic. I want to be confessed.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
“Very well.”
Lawton’s thoughtful grey eyes rested on the young woman who walked up and down on the carpet before his desk, talking with a strange new nervous intensity. He had never seen Grete so pale and tense; yet she spoke with incisiveness and clarity — almost as if she were talking to herself, defending herself against an imaginary tribunal. Her eyes were circled with black, which suggested how little she had slept.
“Of course I have no means of judging the truth of the story, yet I believe it, for it comes from someone I knew well at Ras Shamir, and who is in the underground; why should he want to lie? On the other hand is this man Schiller — is he my husband? I can’t tell you that until I actually set eyes on him. That is what I am asking you, Hugh; let me prove it to myself. And then… if he is — you know what I want from him, don’t you? I have hidden nothing from you. But do you see?”
Lawton puffed his pipe with maddening composure and stared at her with his sympathetic eyes.