Only a special order clearing the prison of men fit for the front had saved his sanity and very likely his life. Like most of the rest of the draft he’d had to crawl to the trucks and as they’d been driven away he had heard the screams of the men left behind, begging to be allowed to join the fighting. With those pleas and screams had been the laughter of the guards as they trooped back inside to quell the noise from the cripples in their own sadistic fashion.
Complaining loudly, Ripper surrendered the length of bench on which he’d been reclining, and sat up.
‘You lot, you just ain’t got no feelings for the sick.’
‘You’re fit enough. Get into a fresh suit, that one’s in bloody ribbons.’
‘Hey, come on Sarge, you’re kidding me, ain’t you. Since when have I been a bendy toy. I’m wounded, see? How am I going to struggle into an NBC outfit.’
‘All that’s wrong with you is a few minor burns. You’d have worse if I’d stubbed a couple of cigars on your scrawny carcass.’ Hyde was about to let it go at that, but he had an idea to speed the American’s change. ‘But then maybe I’m being unfair. How about if I get one of the others to help you, someone with a delicate and caring touch, maybe Dooley…’
‘Sarge, you just don’t appreciate my condition. I could do with the help, but not Dooley. He ain’t learned to dress himself proper yet. I’d end up crammed into a sleeve with my head poking out the cuff.’
‘How about Andrea then,’ moving aside Hyde let her pass. ‘I will not hurt you, much…’
Ripper yelled at her approach and clutched together the gaping front of his NBC suit as Andrea went to slit it open with a razor honed bayonet. ‘I ain’t about to let no woman near my vitals with a blade. Get her away from me.’
‘That’s enough.’ Hearing the commotion Revell ducked down from the command cupola. ‘Quit the games and get back to your positions. Ripper, you get a fresh suit on without help. If you’d been watching the chemical level indicator you’d have noticed that the contamination reading is going off the scale under these trees. If the air conditioning fails we’ll only have a minute or so before this much starts to find a way in.’
Nothing more was needed to prompt Ripper and he found the sudden use of his bandaged arm and shoulder as he started to shed the torn garment.
Slowly and very deliberately Andrea sheathed the bayonet, letting the back of her hand brush against Thorne. Her eyes met the major’s, and held them for a long moment.
Resentment and jealousy difficult to suppress near overwhelmed Revell’s self-control when he saw their fingers briefly touched. The contact looked accidental, but he was well aware that there was very little Andrea ever did by accident. Searching for a pretext to part them, he told Andrea to bring the map board to the radio console. Pushing Boris from his place, he accepted the board and then pretended preoccupation with marking their precise location.
Provocatively Andrea leaned over his shoulder to examine the map. He could feel her firm right breast against his back, and immediately sensed the acute discomfort of an erection suddenly stiffening when he could not put his hand down to arrange its more comfortable accommodation among the tight folds of his pants.
She didn’t wear any perfume, but she still managed to smell feminine. In an utterly shapeless NBC suit, the curves of her body further hidden by the grenades and other weaponry festooning it, she exuded sexuality. Her breath was on his neck and cheek as she bent closer to speak.
There is something I want from you.’ They were the words he’d have given anything to hear, but despite the leaping sensation in his chest he said nothing, waiting for her to go on.
‘After we have caught those civilians, those traitors, there is something I want you to do. It is some thing… special.’
He didn’t dare to speculate, to hope what her next words would be. Was this a sign that she had chosen him in preference to Hyde? The pause became agonizingly long, and his impatience grew with it. ‘Well? What is it, what do you want me to do?’ Damn it! He’d have done anything, couldn’t think of a single thing he’d have refused her.
‘After we catch them, when we have them safe, I want you to give them to me.’
Disappointment, bitter anger and frustration surged through him. Fighting to control the rage that whirled and merged with the overpowering emotions bottled inside of him, he didn’t feel the marker pen clenched in his tightening fist deform and burst to stain his palm red.
‘Why do you want them, so you can get in some practice killing civilians?’
‘You should know that I hardly need that, Major. Have you forgotten Hamburg so soon?’
Revell felt his mind being crushed by her words as though each were another massive weight loading a press. There was a question that begged to be asked, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter it. Instead he tried to read an answer from her beautiful face but it had set hard and was as devoid of expression as Sergeant Hyde’s. With nothing to be learned that way, the question rose through the many layers of repression that tried ineffectually to smother it and emerged in a hesitant stutter.
‘I remember… Hamburg. You were wounded… non-combatant… you worked with a radio location unit in the city… took no part in the fighting… When… when would you have had the chance?’
‘On the last day, when the garrison broke through the Russian cordon, many of their agents in the city were desperate to get out. They became careless, broadcast for too long. We heard them pleading for instructions, and we found them. Did you know that your friend, Inga, was an agent?’
All Revell could do was give an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It was not the whole truth, but the words that would have qualified his denial would also have choked him.
‘We had a long talk. About you.’
Now Revell could see a trace of expression in her face, a subtle alteration of the line of her lips, a slight widening of the eyes. It was a rare blend of amusement and cruelty, of contempt and self-assurance.
‘Surely you are interested in what we discussed?’ Leaning forward a fraction more so that her mouth was by his ear, Andrea feigned absorption with the map. ‘She told me everything, everything that you did together, or perhaps I should say what she had you do to her. I think she was well pleased, especially when you used your tongue. She said you made her very wet, so wet that you were almost sick when it filled your mouth. But you didn’t stop, did you? You did as you were told, as she ordered.’
The words came whisper soft, so faintly that they were on the threshold of his hearing, but to Revell it seemed that each was screamed so loud that all the crew must hear. He would have made her stop, somehow, anyhow, but was hypnotized by her voice and the memories it brought back.
‘And also I had her show me how you kissed. She did it well.’
‘You’re lying, you’ve got to be lying.’ Revell hissed the combined accusation and denial and though audible only to Andrea it was more filled with feeling than yelling it at the top of his voice would have conveyed.
‘Perhaps you would like to believe that, but I know that you do not. Do you recall the taste of her lipstick, of her mouth? I do, it was sweet, like tasting a perfume.’
‘Where, when did you talk to her?’ There was a sickening frightened feeling welling inside him. He had to know, and she was going to tell him anyway. Better that it came quick so that he start to learn to live with it, if he could.
‘It was at her apartment, at about the time you were leading the attack on the Russian trenches, I should think. You had done so much together… for her… that it took a long time to tell, and to show me.’