Eva was fairly certain that if the second bullet had not done the job, she would have been happy to shoot him a third time. Now, the problem was what to do with the body. She doubted the American authorities would be as quick as Petra to accept that the colonel had committed suicide — by shooting himself twice, no less.
“Should I call the police?” Petra asked.
“No,” Eva said. “We cannot call the police or bring soldiers here again.”
“But Frau Von Stahl, surely we must tell someone what happened.”
“If this had happened in Warsaw in nineteen thirty-nine, would you have called the police?” Eva asked.
“This is America,” the girl said, as if that explained everything. “The rules here are different.”
“Not for us,” Eva said. “Colonel Fleischmann worked for the OSS. They are spies, Petra. He was using us, don’t you see? Our house has already been under guard. If we report that the colonel is dead in our attic, what do you think they will do to us then? They will arrest us or send us back to Germany.”
The girl looked up, fear plain in her eyes. Eva truly began to understand now that Petra had sent the note warning of the assassination attempt not to save Eisenhower but to protect her mistress and herself. If their involvement with the assassin became known, their lives as they knew them would be over. Better to go to the authorities and look like one was doing the right thing than keep quiet only to be discovered later. However, if Petra had been willing before to accept that her mistress was naive to the ways of the world and thus became entangled with assassins, standing here in the attic the mist had lifted from her eyes. Colonel Fleischmann had no more committed suicide than a pig might.
But Petra nodded in agreement. Having survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, she understood a thing or two about not involving the authorities.
“Why did he kill himself?” she finally asked.
“He knew too much,” Eva said. “That can be dangerous for anyone.”
Eva looked around the attic. They could not call the police, but at the same time they could not leave the body where it lay. If someone was to come looking for Fleischmann — and someone would — they would be at risk. Hiding him in the attic was a possibility, at least while it was bitterly cold. But Eva wanted him out of the house. Think, she told herself. How could the two of them get the body out of there?
Her eyes settled on an old rug rolled up and set to one side. “Help me,” she said to Petra.
Together, they unrolled the rug with the edge next to the body. The Oriental rug was old and worn — too shabby for the parlor — but Eva prayed it wasn’t some valuable antique. The ultimate irony would be for the colonel’s blood to ruin one of the few items of value she owned.
Eva took the head, Petra took the feet. They shifted the body enough to get the carpet under him and began to roll it up. The weight was much easier to manage inside the rug and working together they soon had him wrapped up tight as a Cuban cigar. They slid the carpet down the attic steps and then down the hall and the stairs to the first floor. The head, being heavier, bumped on every step, a fact that almost made Eva regret that Fleischmann was dead. It would have served him right to suffer a bit of pain — he had certainly caused her enough.
Then they managed to drag their grisly baggage through the kitchen to the back door. Both of them were now panting with the effort, though Eva had to admit that she was impressed by Petra’s strength. She was very strong for such a skinny girl.
“Now what?” Petra wondered aloud as they stood by the back door.
Eva had never disposed of a body, but she surprised herself by seeming to know just what to do. She fought down the giddy sensation that she was acting in a detective film. “I will get the keys to the Cadillac,” she said.
Eva backed the vehicle as close to the back door as she could. Her driver, Mr. Dorsey, stopped by the house daily and also came over if she called his house, but it was too late at night to summon him. Besides, she did not want to involve anyone else at this point.Eva set the brake and then walked around to open the trunk.
In the kitchen, Petra eyed the distance to the car with apprehension. “It’s so far,” she said in a faint voice.
“You must help me,” Eva said. “I cannot carry him to the car alone.”
Resigned, Petra bent down to shift her end of the rug. With much struggling, they were able to get the bundled rug across the few feet of snowy yard and into the back of the car. Fortunately, the old Cadillac’s trunk was quite spacious.
“Get our coats,” Eva said. “We are going for a drive.”
Late on any January night, with the temperature in the teens and fresh snow covering the sidewalks and side streets, there would not have been much traffic. With the wartime gas restrictions on top of the weather and the late hour, almost nothing else moved. The Cadillac’s tires were not the best — she recalled that old Dorsey had warned her to get new ones — and she drove at a snail’s pace down the slippery streets. When they reached one of the rougher neighborhoods — another warning from Mr. Dorsey about this place — Eva backed the Cadillac into the darkest alley she could find.
Beside her, she heard Petra’s sharp intake of breath. “Where are we going?”
“Right here,” Eva said, stopping the car. Eva was a good driver, but her arms trembled with tension from wrestling the big car through the snowy city. But the drive had been worth it. The alley was dark as a tiger’s maw and deserted. Eva left the engine running. The two women got out and opened the trunk, and then with a final effort they tumbled the heavy bundle into the snow.
Alone in his suite, General Dwight Eisenhower studied a map of the French coastline. He was half-reclined on the sofa, feet on the coffee table where a cigarette in the ashtray curled a trail of smoke upward, a small glass of bourbon next to the ashtray. Mamie was asleep — or pretending to be asleep, at least — behind the closed bedroom door. After calling his wife “Kay” by mistake, Ike wasn’t all that sure he would be welcome in there tonight, so he had taken up residence on the couch. That slip of the tongue had been what his younger staffers would have called “a bonehead move.”
He pushed that thought from his mind. He was anxious to get back to England so that they could begin working out the details of the Allied invasion. Already, the names of French towns tumbled through his mind like stones rolling in the surf. Even Ike had to admit that planning a full-scale invasion was a daunting task as inclined to failure as success. They would have to coordinate air support with sea transport — always tricky — not to mention the whims of weather and tide. For they would need a very low tide to expose any beach defenses. That low tide would have to come early in the day, preferably at dawn, to give his troops the advantage of several hours of daylight in which to operate. And they would have to wait for spring weather, at least. That would give him time to plan. Besides, there was no point in mounting any operation on the wintry English Channel.
Ike hoped to create a hammer blow that would get his troops established on shore. But the slightest mistake would blunt the force of that hammer. Worse yet, if the Germans had warning of the attack, disaster might await them on the beaches of Normandy. Ike was a straightforward soldier who didn’t think much of spies and spying — he left that up to the likes of “Wild Bill” Donovan and the OSS. While he didn’t approve of their methods, even the general had to admit that misinformation had its uses. It would be almost impossible to keep the Germans from discovering that plans were being made for an invasion.