Hess turned up the water as hot as it would go and let the heat soak through him until it felt like he was being scalded. The heat finally seemed to melt the cold that had settled into his muscles and bones after the U-boat went down and he had been forced, wet and hungry, to cross the Delmarva Peninsula.
When he finally climbed out of the water, the bathroom was filled with a vast cloud of steam. There were shaving things laid out on the sink, so he rubbed a spot clear on the bathroom mirror and attacked the stubble that had been growing since the U-boat left Germany. Finished, he splashed on some Mennen aftershave and felt its satisfying sting. Looking at his visage in the foggy mirror, he decided that this was the cleanest he had been in months.
He glanced around the bath and realized he had nothing to wear. His old clothes had gone — he hoped — to the rubbish bin, but there wasn’t so much as a robe to put on. Hess unlocked the door, then wrapped himself in his towel and ventured into the hall. It was like stepping from a sauna into a refrigerator.
He was surprised to find Frau Von Stahl standing just a few steps away, wearing a bathrobe and holding a stack of neatly folded clothing. With some embarrassment, he noted that the top garment appeared to be a pair of boxer shorts.
“I tried to set these inside the bath while you showered, but the door was locked,” she said in German. “Tell me, is that how German soldiers defend themselves these days — by locking the bathroom door?”
“One cannot be too careful,” he replied, reaching for the stack of clothes.
Eva took a step back, causing Hess to step off balance. He raised his eyebrows but made no further attempt at the clothes.
“Come with me,” she said.
She led him down the hall to her bedroom. Eva could smell Colonel Fleischmann’s cologne lingering on the air. She wondered what Hess thought about that. She put down the clothes and turned to face him. To her surprise, Hess was not looking at her but was busy inspecting the room. Eva’s boudoir was simple, but she spent so much time in the room that it was furnished almost as completely as a studio apartment. Besides the huge bed, there was an antique dresser made of chestnut and a matching vanity piled high with hairbrushes and perfume. The hardwood floor was partly covered by a soft carpet. The liquor cart stood in the corner — adding that had been Fleischmann’s idea — near two comfortable sitting chairs and a reading lamp. A neat stack of books and magazines was piled on the floor between the chairs.
The room was still very cold, but Hess appeared to be unaffected by the chill, even wrapped in a towel and fresh from the shower. He walked to the cart covered with bottles and poured himself a cognac from one of the more expensive bottles, then downed it in one smooth swallow. He refilled the glass without offering to pour one for her, and then came back to stand in front of Eva. She noted that he moved as gracefully as a cat, his bare feet not so much as making the old floorboards squeak.
Hess had shaved and now looked much younger. He was slightly built, thin across the chest and shoulders almost like a boy, but she could see taut ropes of sinew working under his skin. The muscles of his abdomen stood out in ridges on his flat belly just above the towel. An angry, red ridge of scar tissue cut across his belly and down his side toward his lower back, as if his flesh had been raked by a single claw.
“What do you want of me, Frau Von Stahl?”
Her hand trembled as she reached out to undo his towel, letting it fall to the floor. Hess did not respond, other than to stare at her with his strange, colorless eyes. She shivered as if she were the naked one.
She wondered if she had made a mistake, thinking she could manipulate him like the other men who came to her house. For the most part, she had found that the rational part of a man’s brain shut down as soon as he got a whiff of perfume and a taste of her on his lips. She took men by the balls — both literally and figuratively — and led them to tell her things they shouldn’t have. Eva knew that was her chief method as a spy.
She realized that all men could be dangerous to her in their own way, especially if they found out her secret, but there was something more elementally frightening about Hess. He was no bureaucrat. She had seen eyes like his on a falcon once, indifferent as it sat with its talons sunk deep into a hare. Eva had not been informed of his purpose in Washington, but she was sure it had something to do with Eisenhower. She understood that Berlin’s vague instructions were simply a way of creating another level of secrecy, but she found it maddening.
Berlin had hinted that she was to assist a saboteur, but Eva doubted that he had come to America to blow up train stations and power plants. A saboteur was really just an engineer who was good with bombs. He would have to be capable of fitting into crowds to plant his explosives. An anonymous man would make a good saboteur. Hess wasn’t like that. He had the eyes of a raptor.
Eva had vowed to know his real purpose in Washington before the night was through. Now she was not so sure that would happen. She and Hess stood facing each other as if sizing each other up.
Then Hess seemed to remember the glass of cognac in his hand. He sipped at it, savoring the flavor. Eva took the cognac from him and drank the rest, then set the glass on the dresser. She let her robe slip off.
She reached out and touched his chest. “Bruno —”
But Hess was not interested in talking. His experience with women consisted of a milkmaid back home before the war and then a few Slavic whores. As far as he knew, love was meant to be made quickly and forcefully. He took Eva by the shoulders and pushed her roughly onto the bed. Startled, she tried to shove him away, but Hess caught both her wrists in his left hand and pinned her arms above her head. She struggled, but it was no use. He was much stronger than he looked. He used his right hand to guide himself into her. A moan escaped Eva’s lips.
Each thrust carried Hess’s mind farther and farther away. The sheets might have been a clean white field of snow, the woman under him an ice queen. He was vaguely aware of her shuddering and crying out in a way that the whores never did. When he exploded inside her a fireball seemed to go off behind his eyes. He rolled off, panting, heart pounding.
“Mein Gott,” the woman beside him said, trying to catch her own breath. “That was, that was —”
“Sshhh,” Hess said. He rolled onto his side away from her. Eva spooned against him. Might as well cozy up to a fence post, she thought. There was nothing soft about Hess — every inch of him was bone or muscle.
“I can understand now why they sent you,” she whispered in his ear. “But why are you here, Bruno Hess?”
Hess did not answer. Eva waited a full minute, watching the rise and fall of his chest, before she realized that Hess had fallen asleep. She might have laughed — typical man — if she had not noticed how young he truly looked now. Eva felt a pang remembering how the years had seemed to disappear from her husband’s face when he slept. Kurt. He had been harsh and stern in his own way — an officer in the SS could be nothing less — but as a husband he was also capable of tenderness. What would Kurt think of her now? Eva forced the thought from her mind. He had given his life for Germany. Now she was giving her soul.
She leaned close to the sleeping man’s ear. “Hess? Bruno Hess?”
Satisfied that he was asleep, Eva slipped out of bed as quietly as she could. She put her robe back on. The clothes she had brought for him were scattered on the floor and she bent to pick them up and put them on a chair without bothering to refold them. She doubted that a few wrinkles would bother him.
Eva went out into the hallway. “Petra?”
The girl seemed to materialize out of the shadows. Eva wondered, not for the first time, if Petra was in the habit of listening at her keyhole. If so, she had just gotten an earful. “What is it, Frau Von Stahl?”