“Well, I have,” he said defiantly.
She sighed heavily and shook her head to indicate her failure to understand. “All right,” she said, “so now it’s done. You know who he is and where he is. You just come back to Hamburg, pick up the phone, and call the police. They’ll do the rest. That’s what they’re paid for.” Miller did not know how to answer her.
“It’s not that simple,” he said at last. “I’m going up there later this morning.”
“Going up where?” He jerked his thumb toward the window and the still dark range of mountains beyond it. “To his house.”
“To his house? What for?” Her eyes widened in horror. “You’re not going in to see him?”
“Yes. Don’t ask me why, because I can’t tell you. It’s just something I have to do.”
Her reaction startled him. She sat up with a jerk, turned onto her knees, and glared down at where he lay smoking, his head propped up by a pillow.
“That’s what you wanted the gun for,” she threw at him, her breasts rising and falling in her growing anger.
“You’re going to kill him—.”
“I’m not going to kill him—.”
“Well, then, he’ll kill you. And you’re going up there alone with a gun against him and his mob. You bastard, you rotten, stinking, horrible—.”
Miller was staring at her in amazement. “What have you got so het up for? Over Roschmann?”
“I’m not het up about that horrid old Nazi. I’m talking about me. About me and you, you stupid dumb oaf. You’re going to risk getting yourself killed up there, all to prove some silly point and make a story for your idiotic magazine readers. You don’t even think for a minute about me!’ She had started crying as she talked, the tears making tracks of mascara down each cheek like black railway lines.
“Look at me-just damn well look at me. What do you think I am, just another good screw? You really think I want to give myself every night to some randy reporter so he can feel pleased with himself when he goes off to chase some idiot story that could get him killed? You really think that?
Listen, you moron, I want to get married. I want to be Frau Miller. I want to have babies. And you’re going to get yourself killed. Oh, God…” She jumped off the bed, ran into the bathroom, slammed the door behind her, and locked it.
Miller lay on the bed, open-mouthed, the cigarette burning down to his fingers. He had never seen her so angry, and it had shocked him. He thought over what she had said as he listened to the tap running in the bathroom.
Stubbing out the cigarette, he crossed the room to the bathroom door.
“Sigi.” There was no answer.
“Sigi.” The tap was turned off.
“Go away.”
“Sigi, please open the door. I want to talk to you.” There was a pause; then the door was unlocked. She stood there, naked and looking sulky. She had washed the mascara streaks off her face.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Come over to the bed. I want to talk to you. Well freeze standing here.”
“No, you just want to start making love again.”
“I won’t. Honestly. I promise you I won’t. I just want to talk.” He took her hand and led her back to the bed and the warmth it offered.
Her face looked up warily from the pillow. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked suspiciously.
He climbed in beside her and put his face close to her ear. “Sigrid Rahn, will you marry me?” She turned to face him. “Do you mean it?” she asked.
“Yes, I do. I never really thought of it before. But then, you never got angry before.”
“Gosh.” She sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “I’ll have to get angry more often.”
“Do I get an answer?” he asked.
“Oh yes, Peter, I will. We’ll be so good together.” He began caressing her again, becoming aroused as he did so.
“You said you weren’t going to start that again,” she accused him.
“Well, just this once. After that I promise I’ll leave you strictly alone for the rest of time.” She swung her thigh across him and slid her hips on top of his lower belly. Looking down at him, she said, “Peter Miller, don’t you dare.” Miller reached up and pulled the toggle that extinguished the light, as she started to make love to him….
Outside in the snow there was a dim light breaking over the eastern horizon. Had Miller glanced at his watch, it would have told him the time was ten minutes before seven on the morning of Sunday, February 23. But he was already asleep.
Half an hour later Maus Winzer rolled up the drive of his house, stopped before the closed garage door, and climbed out. He was stiff and tired, but glad to be home.
Barbara was not yet up, taking advantage of her employer’s absence to sleep longer than usual. When she did appear, after Winzer had let himself in and called from the hallway, it was in a nightgown that would have set another man’s pulses bounding. Instead, Winzer required fried eggs, toast and jam, a pot of coffee, and a bath. He got none of them.
She told him, instead, of her discovery on Saturday morning, on entering the study to dust, of the broken window and the missing silverware. She had called the police, and they had been positive the neat circular hole was the work of a professional burglar. She had had to tell them the house-owner was away, and they said they wanted to know when he returned, just for routine questions about the missing items.
Winzer listened in absolute quiet to the girl’s chatter, his face paling, a single vein throbbing steadily in his temple. He dismissed her to the kitchen to prepare coffee, went into his study, and locked the door. It took him thirty seconds and frantic scratching inside the empty safe to convince himself that the file of forty Odessa criminals was gone.
As he turned away from the safe, the phone rang. It was the doctor from the clinic to inform him Fräulein Wendel had died during the night.
For two hours Winzer sat in his chair before the unfit fire, oblivious of the cold seeping in through the newspaper-stuffed hole in the window, aware only of the cold fingers worming around inside himself as he tried to think what to do. Barbara’s repeated calls from outside the locked door that breakfast was ready went unheeded. Through the keyhole she could hear him muttering occasionally, “Not my fault, not my fault at all.”
Miller had forgotten to cancel the morning call he had ordered the previous evening. The bedside phone shrilled at nine. Bleary-eyed, be answered it, grunted his thanks, and climbed out of bed. He knew if he did not, he would fall asleep again. Sigi was still fast asleep, exhausted by her drive from Hamburg, their lovemaking, and the contentment of being engaged at last.
Miller showered, finishing off with several minutes under the ice-cold spray, rubbed himself briskly with the towel he had left over the radiator all night, and felt like a million dollars. The depression and anxiety of the night before had vanished. He felt fit and confident.
He dressed in ankle boots and slacks, a thick roll-neck pullover, and his double-breasted blue duffel overjacket, a German winter garment called a Joppe, halfway between a jacket and a coat. It had deep slit pockets at each side, capable of taking the gun and the handcuffs, and an inside breast pocket for the photograph. He took the handcuffs from Sigi’s bag and examined them. There was no key, and the manacles were self-locking, which made them useless for anything other than locking a man up until he was released by the police or a hacksaw blade.
The gun be opened and examined. He had never fired it, and it still had the maker’s grease on the interior.
The magazine was full; he kept it that way. To familiarize himself with it once again, he worked the breech several times, made sure he knew which positions of the safety catch were the “On” and “Fire,” smacked the magazine into the grip, pushed a round into the chamber, and set the safety catch to “On.” He stuffed the telephone number of the lawyer in Ludwigsburg into his trouser pocket.