“… and I need a shower and a fresh uniform. Could you meet me in the bar in, say, thirty minutes?”
“I’ll be waiting. Thank you so much, Captain Cronley.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cronley stood and put the receiver back in its cradle.
“How’d I do?”
“You’re no Cary Grant, more like Humphrey Bogart. Anyway, all you have to do is keep her happy.”
“How do I do that?”
“By doing whatever she wants you to do.”
“You going to be here when I’ve fed her?”
“No. I get off at five. It’s now five-fifteen. How about I meet you in the dining room for breakfast at seven?”
“I’ll be there.”
[FIVE]
As he went into his room, after a moment’s indecision, Cronley dropped a matchbook in the doorjamb so it wouldn’t close.
He didn’t know if Rachel would come to his room instead of waiting for him in the bar. He hoped she wouldn’t. But she might. She seemed oblivious to the risks of their getting caught. And he didn’t want her to be seen knocking at his door. By Freddy Hessinger, for example, who might be leaving his down-the-corridor office as she did so.
After thinking about this, too, he laid an Ike jacket with the insignia of captain of Cavalry on the bed before going in the shower. That would enable him to play the role of the nice captain entertaining the colonel’s lady at dinner in the colonel’s absence. Colonels’ ladies do not fool around with young captains. They just might fool around with CIC special agents.
What stupid games am I playing?
He got as far as the bathroom door before returning to the bed. He put the captain’s jacket back into the closet and tossed the Ike jacket with civilian triangles he had been wearing all day onto the bed.
He was standing naked in front of the sink several minutes later wiping shaving cream from his face when Rachel came in.
“Why do I think you knew I wasn’t going to wait for you in the bar?”
“Because you know I know you take chances you shouldn’t take?”
She walked up to him and put her hand on him and then pulled his face down to hers. She kissed him lewdly for a moment, then pulled away.
“That’s what you’re not going to get,” she said, “because you were flying your damned Russian around all day and not paying attention to me.”
Then she walked out of the bathroom.
He finished wiping the shaving cream off his face and put on his underwear before going back into the bedroom. She was sitting in an armchair, her legs crossed and showing — he was sure intentionally — a good deal of leg.
“Well, are you going to say you’re sorry?” she asked.
“For what?”
“You know for what. I spent all day waiting to just hear from you.”
“What was I supposed to do, Rachel, call your room?”
“Why not?”
“‘Colonel Schumann, this is Cronley. Can I speak with your wife?’ Come on, Rachel.”
“Tony went to Vienna. You knew that.”
“I didn’t.”
“On the phone just now you knew.”
“Hessinger had just told me.”
She considered that.
“I spent all day waiting for you to call.”
“I’m sorry. Frade wanted me to fly him to Frankfurt. I flew him to Frankfurt. I waited for him and the admiral to take off. He took off. I came back here. The defense rests.”
“I believe you,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“Not necessary.”
“You want to know how sorry I am?”
“You’re going to slash your wrists?”
“Come here.”
He walked closer to her. She sat forward in the armchair.
“Closer,” she ordered. “I’m sorry I thought you spent all day with that Russian.”
She put her hand to his shorts, pushed them aside, and took him into her mouth.
Some time later, she tucked it back in.
“That’s how sorry I am,” she said. “Forgive me?”
“My God!”
“But that’s all you get now. I spent two hours in the beauty salon making myself pretty for you, and I don’t want to mess my hair. Right away. After dinner is another matter.”
[SIX]
“I can’t believe you ate all that,” Rachel said, as he put his knife and fork across the plate that had held a medium-rare porterhouse steak, baked potato, and buttered peas.
“I said all I had to eat all day was a bacon-and-egg sandwich,” he said, then drained what was left of his double Jack Daniel’s rocks.
“I hope you got your strength back, you poor starving boy.”
“That was a very nice steak.”
“And a large one. I had an idea when I was sitting under the dryer in the beauty shop,” she said.
“Why do I think it was lewd?”
“I don’t suppose you could put me in that German airplane of yours and fly me up to your monastery? Just the thought of doing it there feels delightfully lewd.”
“I couldn’t fly you there without a lot of people asking questions.”
“But you can use that Opel Kapitän, right?”
Cronley nodded.
“So you could drive me to your monastery tomorrow?”
When he didn’t reply immediately, she went on: “Everybody knows I stayed here when Tony went to Vienna so I could look into the enlisted men’s welfare facilities. No one would ask questions if I went there. And while I was there, perhaps the commanding officer would show me his quarters. I’d really like to have the commanding officer show me his quarters.”
“Great idea, except that I’m under orders to stay here until I hear from Colonel Frade.”
“Hear from him about what?”
“He didn’t choose to tell me that.”
“Damn.”
“I would be delighted to show you my commanding officer’s quarters in Pullach tomorrow.”
“I really would like to tell Tony that I got into the monastery after you shot up his car to keep him out. We couldn’t make a quick trip early in the morning?”
“Maybe after I hear from Colonel Frade.”
“I suppose that’s better than a flat-out ‘Hell no, Rachel, you can’t go to my monastery.’”
“I’m being charming as I have designs on your body.”
Cronley then had a fresh disturbing thought: Now that I have decided — and really believe — Mrs. Colonel Schumann is really somebody I shouldn’t be fucking, what’s going to happen when we get upstairs? What if I can’t get it up?
PART X
[ONE]
Special Agent Friedrich Hessinger was sitting at a small table in a far corner of the dining room when Cronley walked in.
A waiter followed Cronley to the table and took their order. When he had gone, Hessinger asked, “How did it go with Mrs. Colonel Schumann last night?”
“I bought her dinner and then we went to bed.”
“You weren’t listening when I told you that would be dangerous?”
It took a moment for Cronley to take his meaning.
“Screw you, Freddy.”
“A little joke,” Hessinger said. “But you should watch what you say. You should have said, ‘After dinner she went to her room. And then I went to mine.’”
“Fuck you.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me that way. Officers are not supposed to say unkind things to enlisted men. It hurts our feelings. And then we can go to the inspector general to complain. You know our IG, right? Colonel Schumann?”