Rittenkrett slowly released the breath he’d been holding.
He said, “I have one question for you, Major. Answer it very carefully.”
“Go ahead, sir.”
Rittenkrett’s snow-capped head nodded. One hand slowly came up to grip Michael’s right shoulder. The blue eyes crinkled.
“Would you like ice cream with your cake?”
“Yes,” Michael replied, holding back his sigh of very huge relief, “I would.”
“Ross, go get it for him,” Rittenkrett said into the air, and the thuggish one moved to obey. “I suppose it’s unnecessary to surmise that you’ve given back to the enemy double or triple what you and your brave comrades have endured? No answer needed there, I can see for myself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be alive, yes? Franziska! Why isn’t our new friend a colonel?”
“I was going to ask him the same question.” She wound her arm around Michael’s in a smooth, beautifully sinuous motion.
“There are already many talented and able colonels,” the wolf in the room answered. “I prefer to be nearer the action.”
“Ah!” Rittenkrett beamed. “Spoken like a man who ought to be a colonel. Your accent…is it…?”
“Westphalian,” Michael responded. “My hometown is Dortmund.”
“I’ve had some dealings involving the Hadamar hospital there. A shame your fair city has taken so much damage from the bombers. But that will be reckoned with, very soon. I presume you were here last night? During the air raid?”
“I was, yes.” It had been around eleven o’clock when the sirens had begun to shriek, and Michael had been in bed resting for the day to come. He’d gone down to the cellar with the other guests, maybe seventy or so people in the entire hotel. The lights had flickered and vibrations had pounded through the floor and the walls and a few of the women had begun to sob as they held their children but the night bombers had left smoking craters and fire-scorched ruins in another part of the city.
“Prepare for more,” Rittenkrett cautioned, his smile now gone. “But don’t fear, our courageous Luftwaffe is steadily rebuilding. I know of some tricks up their sleeves, yet to come.”
“I don’t fear,” Michael said. Tricks up their sleeves? He didn’t like the sound of that. “I have the utmost confidence in the Luftwaffe and in the ultimate destruction of all our enemies.” He decided to add, “If the Fuhrer says it will happen…so it shall.”
“Exactly.” Rittenkrett leaned in toward him and said, sotto voce, “But in the meantime, Major, make sure you get your ass to the cellar when you hear those sirens.” Then he winked and laughed and clapped Michael hard on the arm that Franziska wasn’t holding, and Michael allowed a smile and a nod.
The thug returned with a plate of cake and ice cream and both a fork and spoon engraved with the name of the hotel. As Michael accepted the gift and wondered where he was going to dump the sugary stomach-clogger, the man who looked like a distressed accountant whispered something into Rittenkrett’s ear and the big red-faced man grimaced. “Well, Sigmund reminds me I have business to tend to even on the night of my own party. Franziska, I’m sure you’ll be in your element as a gracious hostess in my absence. Oh…” That last word, Michael realized, was meant as a bridge between party-talk and more serious matters, for Axel Rittenkrett’s eyes sharpened again as he regarded the lady.
“Our continuing project requires your special enthusiasm,” Rittenkrett told her. “Your invaluable communication skills. We have some new clients on the list. Shall we talk in my office tomorrow morning? Around nine o’clock?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“She warms my cockles,” Rittenkrett replied, speaking to Michael. “Major Jaeger, eat and drink to your heart’s delight and walk through any door that pleases you. It was an honor to meet you. Good luck and good… I’m sure you must hear this quite a lot…hunting. Heil Hitler.” He put up his right hand in the salute.
“Heil Hitler,” Michael replied, lifting his hand with the fork in it and on the fork a little bite of cake with buttercream icing.
The white, mountainous shape of the Gestapo investigator and his two assistants moved away through the throng. He had trouble getting out, as people converged upon Rittenkrett to clap him on his back, speak in one of his flaming ears and otherwise brown-nose him all the way out the door and beyond.
Four
The Battle Is Life
“Interesting man,” said Michael in the rippling wake of Rittenkrett’s departure. “May I ask…why the white suit in winter?”
“His persona.” There was a note in the woman’s voice that said she was quite relieved her Gestapo acquaintance had left the party. “He always wears a white suit, in every season. He likes to be called the ‘Ice Man’.”
“The ‘Ice Man’? Why is that?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said, and when Michael looked into her eyes he saw a boundary there that should not be crossed. “We’ve just met, but… I have to say…you take a great chance speaking that way to someone like him.”
“I’d probably take a greater chance putting this in my stomach before bedtime.” He set the cake and ice cream on the tray of a passing waiter.
“I mean it.” Franziska’s hand found his. “Axel has two faces. You can never know which one is looking at you.”
“Meat,” said Michael.
“What?”
“Oh, I’m thinking aloud. I would like some meat. I believe the restaurant’s still open across the lobby. Have you eaten dinner?”
“I should stay here.”
He looked at her steadily. He put himself in her eyes.
“No,” he said gently, “you should not.”
Even though supplies were running low, the chef was doing the best he could and the grilled lambchops in the Koniglicher Garten were excellent. Franziska grazed on a salad. In the brighter lamps of the restaurant, she was no less stunning a creature than Michael had first seen. Here again he had to be very careful, because she would ask a question—about his life in Dortmund, his education and so forth—and she would watch him intently and also, it appeared, listen intently until his reply was done. Never once did she ask if he was married. He wore no ring either, but still…he might have left it in his room. She touched only very briefly on his military service, which suited him fine because even though he’d fully memorized the exploits and travails of the 25th Panzer Grenadiers gleaned from prisoners of war captured in the Ardennes a month ago, he didn’t wish to wander too deeply into the details.
“Your accent is strange,” she suddenly said, as he was reaching for a glass of water.
He continued his motion, picked up the glass and took a good swallow.
“I’ve known…met…people from Westphalia before. Your accent…it’s different, somehow.”
“Accents are as different as people, I suppose,” he answered. Was his throat too tight when he said it?
“I suppose,” she agreed, and she shrugged her lithe shoulders.
“I have a question.” And thank God for it, he thought. She focused entirely on him, which was a trait both complimentary to a man and confounding to a secret agent. “As a Signal photographer and journalist, what project are you working on with the Gestapo?”
She didn’t even blink. The gray eyes—and there were hints of violet in them, he saw, or perhaps that was a trick of the small candleflame between them—were steady and absolutely cool. She turned her head as if to speak to someone else across the room, perhaps one of the partygoers who had stumbled in and to whom she’d already introduced her friend Major Horst Jaeger.