“Shrewd, clever, cunning, smart, crafty, and a credit to your race. How’s that?”
“Better. Sometimes I need praise as others need drugs. It’s my one failing. Otherwise I’m quite perfect.”
“I know.”
“Now, then, you understand what we must do.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“When?”
“They used to lecture us that the wee hours of the morning were best.”
“The OSS, you mean.”
“Right.”
Ploscaru nodded thoughtfully. “Around four, I’d say.”
“Let’s make it three-thirty. Oppenheimer might have heard the same lecture.” Jackson looked at his watch. “It’s twelve-thirty now. That’ll give me time to wake up his sister and tell her what we’re up to.”
“I’m not sure that that’s terribly wise.”
Jackson stared down at the dwarf for several moments. All friendliness had deserted the gray-haired man’s face. In its stead was a cold, hard wariness.
“Up until now we’ve done it your way, Nick,” he said. “I’ve been Tommy Tagalong, not too bright, but loyal, plucky, and loads of fun. Now we’re going up against some guy who wears dresses at teatime, but who also just might know how to use a gun. And then there’s Oppenheimer, although I don’t have to tell you about him. And finally there’s you, Nick, and that double-cross you still think you’re going to pull off. That worries me too, so I’m going to tell you again just what I told you at the train station in Washington. Think twice.”
The dwarf nodded, almost sadly, and started brushing his hands together again. His gaze wandered around the room. “I’m sorry to learn that you still don’t trust me, Minor,” he murmured. “It comes as quite a blow. It really does.”
For a moment, Jackson almost believed him. Then he grinned and shook his head. “You’ll recover.”
“Yes, of course,” Ploscaru said. “But you’re quite right about Oppenheimer and the Gloth person. Caution shall be our watchword. Now, just what do you plan to tell Miss Oppenheimer?”
“That she’d better have her bag packed, because her brother and I might be heading from hither to yon very quickly.”
“In the roadster?”
“Uh-huh. In the roadster. That’s why we bought it, wasn’t it?”
“To be sure. Now, we all know where hither is. But where might yon be?”
Jackson shrugged. “Holland, maybe. It’s close. But she must have some safe spot in mind where she can stash him for a while until things calm down. I’ll ask her.”
The dwarf looked up at the ceiling. “You said, I believe, that you and Oppenheimer will be speeding off. Just what will I be doing in the meantime?”
“You?” Jackson said with a grin. “Why, you’ll be sitting on his lap, Nick.”
Eva Scheel sat up in bed in the room at the Gasthaus that had been established in 1634 and looked down at Bodden. It was chilly in the room, and she covered her bare breasts with her arms and hugged herself. Bodden watched the smoke rise from his cigarette.
“So, printer,” she said softly. “Killing does not excite you.”
He sighed and shook his head. “It was a bad business.”
“You have a conscience,” she said. “I’m glad.”
“And you?”
She shrugged. “He’s dead. Perhaps he deserved it. Perhaps not. But I feel nothing.”
He looked at her. “Are you really quite so hard, little one?”
“No, but I pretend to be. There will be time for remorse later — when we can afford it. It’s quite a luxury, you know.” She shivered again and wondered whether it was really the cold that made her do so.
Bodden sat up in bed and reached over to a small table for the bottle. “Here,” he said, pouring some clear Schnapps into a glass. “This will warm you up.”
She accepted the glass gratefully, drank, and shivered again as the harsh liquor went down. “We could, of course, just run with the money we have.”
He drank from the bottle. “They would find us. You know that. Your plan is better.”
“Yes, if it works.” She rose and turned. Only the cold made her conscious of her nakedness. He stared at her with interest, if not with desire.
“You still like what you see, printer?”
“Very much.”
“We must find something that will excite you.”
“Counting a great deal of money might do it.”
“Has it before?”
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling for the first time. “I’ve never tried it”
She set the glass down and started putting on her clothes. “Leah gave me the name of the hotel where the American said they’d be staying. It will be best to avoid him, so when I get there, I’ll send a note up.”
“To the dwarf?”
“Yes.”
Bodden reached down to rub his still-throbbing knee. “That one I owe a little something to.”
“Revenge, like remorse, is another luxury that we can’t yet afford.”
“Someday.”
“Someday,” she agreed, and slipped into her fur coat. From its deep pocket she brought out a pistol. She looked down at it curiously for a moment and then handed it to him.
“Well,” he said. “A Walther.”
“Satisfactory?”
“Perfectly.”
Her head tilted to one side a little as she stared down at him. “You may have to use it.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know.”
The whore awoke when Kurt Oppenheimer rose from the chair, causing its legs to scrape slightly.
“You did not sleep,” she said.
“A little, here in the chair.”
“You could have used the bed.”
“I know.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a carton of Chesterfields. “Your cigarettes.”
“Do you want to—”
He shook his head and smiled. “No, not tonight. Perhaps another time.”
She yawned. “What time is it?”
“A little past one.”
“You are leaving now?”
“I have a long walk to make.”
“At this time of night?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“No,” he said. “It can’t.”
Jackson watched as Leah Oppenheimer pulled on her stockings. She wet her finger and ran it along the seams, twisting her head around, looking back and down to make sure that they were straight.
“Why do women always do that?”
“What?”
“Wet their finger and then run it along the seams.”
“It keeps them straight.”
“The seams?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
She slipped the dark blue dress over her head, glanced at herself in the mirror, gave the dress a few tugs, and then turned to Jackson.
“All right. Now I am dressed. Where do we go?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then why—”
Jackson interrupted. “Sometime within the next few hours we may find your brother.”
She didn’t seem surprised at the announcement. Instead she nodded solemnly, waiting for Jackson to continue.
“If we do find him, we may have to leave Bonn in a hurry. The question is — where do we go? We need a place that’s safe and relatively close.”
“Cologne,” she said almost automatically.
“That’s not much better than Bonn.”
“I have certain friends there who are well organized. If you can get my brother to them, then your job will be done.” She moved over to her purse and took out pencil and paper. “Here — I will write their name and address.”
While she was writing, he said, “There may be complications.”
She looked up. “What kind of complications?”
“I don’t know. If I did know, they wouldn’t be complications — only problems.”
She went back to writing the name and address. “And if they do turn into problems, what will solve them?”