“Yes.”
“I want a pill. Something that dissolves quickly. Something that is tasteless and odorless.” He had to stop for a little bit, because he was hurting so much. “Something that will put her to sleep, within…fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s what I want. That she just go to sleep.”
Kollmann thought about it, his fingers tapping the arm of his chair. “It’s a tall order.”
Michael leaned toward him with such ferocity that the tapping instantly stopped and the man shrank back.
“Yes, it is,” Michael said, his eyes enraged though his voice was eerily controlled, “but I’m the killer. And I’m telling you, as a killer, that if she feels pain, that if she throws up her guts or defecates herself, or anything other than going to sleep, then I’m coming after the messenger. And the messenger may think he’s so righteous and pure for his glorious love of what Germany once was, but it’s all murder to me because I’m the killer. If the messenger tries to hide in his house, I’ll tear it to pieces, and if he tries to hide in his church I’ll take that apart too. And maybe I’ll never leave this city alive, but after she’s dead and I’ve ripped you to shreds I will have no more need to live another day, because the killer’s work will be finished.”
It took a moment for Kollmann to relax. He must have really been close to God, because his next question was, “Shall I bring you two pills, then?”
Michael had already thought about that. As much as he might wish it, suicide was repugnant to him. The wolf in him wouldn’t allow it. No. Never.
“Only the one,” he said.
The priest stood up, and so did Michael.
Kollmann said, “We’ll come up with something. Still…there won’t be an opportunity to test its qualities. It’ll have to be guesswork.”
“Prayer might help,” Michael advised.
Kollmann offered his hand. Michael just looked at it, and thought how he could tear it off at the wrist. On his way across the lobby, Kollmann was stopped by the older man and woman. The woman began to softly weep, and then so did the man.
The priest spoke to them and touched their shoulders, but never did he remove his blue-tinted glasses.
Michael climbed up the stairs to his room, where pallid-faced and gasping he leaned over the toilet just in time to be violently, wrenchingly sick.
Eleven
The Tenth Woman
He went for a long walk through the streets, as evening turned the dim light of afternoon blue and snowflakes whirled around him. He walked on and on, as if seeking to be lost, but his sense of direction was unerring and he always knew exactly where his hotel was. He walked through bombed areas, where people still tried to salvage something of their lives from the ruins. He saw an overturned wagon with two dead horses still in their traces, the bloated carcasses whitened with snow. He saw a pack of desperate dogs gnawing in to get at the entrails, and he walked on.
In the silence of the evening streets, just a few people out and a few wagons, some riders on bicycles and a scattering of cars, Michael thought he could hear the sound of artillery firing in the east. The Russians might be slowed for a short while, but nothing would stop them from taking this city. He knew the strong, unyielding and often brutal nature of the Russian; after all, he was one of them.
At his hotel, the clerk gave him a message from Franziska. She had a dinner engagement she couldn’t get out of, and then she had to do some photographic work in her darkroom. But she would call at eleven o’clock.
The clerk read the last lines of the message: “Think of me when you have dinner. A thousand kisses. Weather forecast: more rain coming”. The clerk looked strangely at the major, as if he suspected this must be some kind of secret code.
Michael took the paper and had dinner in the restaurant followed by a good strong glass of brandy. He wound up paying for an entire bottle, which he took with a glass up to his room.
He was waiting, half-drunk, when the telephone rang at ten-fifty-six.
“I have to work a little later,” she told him. “Some more pictures to develop, and they must be done tonight.”
“By order of Herr Rittenkrett?” he asked.
She was silent for a few seconds. Then: “You don’t sound like yourself. Are you all right?”
“I’ve had dinner and I’ve been drinking. Just a little.” Had he slurred that word? Have to be careful here, not to let his accent slip. What the hell was wrong with him, letting his guard down like this?
“You’ve been drinking,” she repeated back.
“Yes. Brandy. I’m looking at what is almost an empty bottle. I expect to empty it in the next…oh…ten minutes.”
Franziska gave a sudden gasp, as if she’d been slapped.
“Your orders came,” she said.
He closed his eyes, the better to see her standing before him. “Yes.”
“Oh… Horst. I’ll be right there.”
“No! Franziska…finish what you’re doing.”
“I’m leaving now. This can wait.”
“Listen to me!” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. “Just…stay there and do what you need to do. Keep your mind on your work.”
“Oh, of course!” Were there tears in that word?
“I mean it.” He wondered what Mallory and Kollmann would say to his telling her she should do the exact work he’d been sent to interfere with. Did it matter now? “Franziska,” he said in a quieter tone, “I don’t have to leave tonight. Nor tomorrow.”
“When do you have to go, then?” Yes, definitely a tear or two. Her voice had thickened with what could only be sorrow.
I have to go after you’re dead, he thought.
But he said, “We still have time enough. I promise.”
“There can’t be enough time.”
“Go back to your work,” he said firmly.
“I’ll be there as soon as I finish.” She hung up.
Michael returned the receiver to its cradle and then he picked up the bottle of brandy and swallowed some more courage. He would go down and buy another bottle, but he couldn’t get too drunk or he might lose himself. Whoever he was tonight.
When Michael heard the knock on his door at twelve-forty and opened it, Franziska rushed in and put her arms around him. She was wearing her fawn-colored overcoat and a sea-green beret. She kissed him on the cheek, on the forehead, on the lips and on the throat. She pressed herself into him. Then she put her head on his shoulder and said in his ear, “I know men who can help. They can have you reassigned to duty here. All I have to do is—”
He knew what she would have to do.
He took her chin in his hand and glared into her luminous eyes.
“No! You’re not doing that for me. Do you hear? Not for me.” He saw the pain in her face, and it nearly dropped him to his knees. He tried to pull a smile up from somewhere. “There’s no need for sadness. Didn’t you say to me that this is my purpose? And you know fully well you said that God would not allow a man like me to—”
“That was before,” she interrupted, and he saw the tears bloom. One overflowed and streaked down her right cheek.
“Before what? We went to bed together?”
“No.” A second tear followed the first. “Before I wanted you to stay with me. I know forever is a long time, so I won’t say forever. But we could start out by saying it might be forever. Couldn’t we? Please, please, please.” It was she who got down on her knees. She grasped his hand and kissed it, and she held it against a tear-wet cheek. “Please, I can take care of this. I can go see those men, it would be nothing, it would be so easy, I could—”