Her one hope was that she might be able to warn Berlin that she had been found out. She had some real information to transmit as well, which was that Eisenhower was planning an invasion. Her masters in Berlin already knew that, but what Eva offered was further evidence. There was also the possibility that she could turn the tables on Fleischmann and the OSS. If Berlin planted false information through her, it might work to their advantage. It was all almost too much for Eva to grasp, but the spymasters in Berlin were experts at this sort of thing.
Eva padded down the hall to the doorway leading to the attic. The door was locked; she took an old-fashioned key from a pocket of her robe. When she opened the door, a stream of cold air spilled down the stairwell and Eva clutched the robe more tightly to her chest. Even in winter, the enclosed space smelled of dust and mice. Stepping into the stairwell, she pulled the door shut behind her. There was a light switch, but she did not turn it on. No point in calling attention to the attic if anyone was watching from the street. Instead, she reached for a flashlight that sat on the third step.
Eva moved quietly, easing her weight onto each step to avoid making creaking noises. The steps were not particularly wide, more like a ladder than a proper stairway. She felt a chill breeze as she passed a pane of wavy glass that looked out over the street. An old cotton curtain swayed like a ghost in the draft. Cold in winter, hot as an oven on a summer’s night and often buzzing with a stray wasp or two, the uninsulated attic was not the sort of place that invited visitors. That made it the perfect lair for a spy, the only place in the house where she could truly drop her act to become the real Eva Von Stahl. As for Petra, the girl had never shown any interest in the attic since Eva had hinted that it was full of bats.
Behind an old dressing screen that hid them from view, Eva had set up a table and an upholstered chair from the last century, both of which she kept covered with a quilt. She swept the quilt aside to reveal a shortwave radio on the table. The radio was a special unit designed to fit inside a suitcase; indeed, that was just how she had smuggled it into America.
Eva lit a stub of candle, switched off the flashlight and settled herself on the chair. She opened a drawer and took out a Walther PPK, then set it on the table.
When she turned on the radio, two dials came to life with a warm orange glow. One dial showed a range of frequencies that Eva could adjust from night to night or week to week, dodging around so that the Allies could neither pinpoint nor predict the signal. The second, smaller dial had a needle that danced to and fro based on the strength of the incoming signal. Eva found the second dial impressive-looking but useless; one either heard the radio signal or not. She put on the headphones and tuned the radio to the proper frequency.
Messages arrived in relays across the Atlantic, finally sent again from a U-boat somewhere off the American coast. When she sent a message, it traveled in the same fashion, but in reverse order, all the way to Berlin. This was not one of her scheduled broadcasts, so she hoped some radio operator would be listening at his post on the U-boat. How to explain herself? The news they wanted to hear in Berlin was that General Eisenhower was dead. The message she planned to send would not be as welcome; she just hoped that someone in the Abwehr had the good sense to use the information to Germany’s advantage.
She clicked on the microphone, ready to speak, but stopped when she heard what sounded like a creaking floorboard. The back of her neck prickled. Some sixth sense that she was being watched.
Eva whirled in the chair and saw Colonel Fleischmann standing just beyond the screen. He looked like some ghostly apparition, wearing white boxer shorts and T-shirt, his legs and arms pale and goose fleshed in the cold attic. The colonel looked huge in that small space. He stared at her in amazement.
Eva snatched off the headphones. “What are you doing?”
“So this is how you do it,” he said. “A radio. Of course! I should have guessed. I just assumed you had a contact somewhere in the city.”
“You are supposed to be asleep!” Eva said uselessly. She felt violated. She had meant to keep the radio secret from him for as long as possible. He had come into her most private space that she kept hidden from all the world.
Fleischmann only laughed. “What a prize! I would have found it eventually, you know, but I never expected to find it so soon. Frankly, my dear, I’m a bit disappointed.” He slapped his hands together and rubbed them enthusiastically. “They’ll make me a full colonel for this! Now, what messages are we going to send tonight to Berlin?”
“Only this one,” said Eva. She picked up the Walther and aimed it at his heart.
“Come now, Eva. We’ve already been through this downstairs. We both know you haven’t got the nerve.”
Eva pulled the trigger.
Chapter 25
The noise in the cramped attic was like a thunderclap. Her ears rang. In the candlelight, she could see the round, neat hole in the front of his white T-shirt. Fleischmann looked down at the hole, then at her, wide-eyed. He put one hand over the wound and held up the other toward her, palm out as if to ward off bullets. This time she put two hands around the pistol grip, took careful aim, and shot him again.
Fleischmann stumbled backwards, reaching for the antique dressing screen to catch himself, but it was too flimsy and he only succeeded in knocking it down, sending up a storm of dust from the attic floor. He sank to his knees, his mouth moving noiselessly like a fish gasping for air on a riverbank. His eyes turned glassy. Then Fleischmann slumped forward and didn’t move, his face buried in the pit of one arm that was flung out as if to break his fall. He had the unnaturally limp look of those dead animals one sometimes saw by the side of the road.
Eva turned back to the radio and switched it off. The orange glow faded. She put away the pistol, then covered the table and chair with the quilt. Berlin would have to wait.
Now, what to do with Fleischmann?
From the bottom of the attic stairs she heard Petra call out in a frightened voice, asking if everything was all right.
Quickly, Eva made up her mind. She lifted the quilt and retrieved the pistol. Her hands shook but she forced herself to steady them. She wrapped the dead fingers of the colonel’s outstretched hand around the Walter, then screamed for all she was worth in her best stage voice. Petra flicked on the overhead light and stormed up the attic stairs.
When the girl saw the body she did not cry out, but only put a hand to her mouth and made a soft noise that sounded like oh. She had learned during the war in Poland to react quietly to death in case the killers were still nearby.
The single bulb overhead barely dissipated the shadows in the cluttered attic, but it was enough to light up the grisly scene. Fleischmann’s clean white T-shirt and underwear seemed to glow against the age-darkened floorboards.
“Is he dead?” Petra asked in German.
Eva nodded. “Ja. I think so. Yes.”
The girl made the sign of the cross and mumbled something that might have been a prayer. “What happened?”
“Can’t you see the gun in his hand? He shot himself.”
Petra glanced at Eva, a brief questioning look. Then she nodded. If you say so.
Actress though she was, Eva could not bring herself to shed a single tear or say so much as the poor man, even if it was for Petra’s benefit. Fleischmann was dead. “Good riddance,” the Americans liked to say.