A Game of Spies (6 page)

It was time to go home.

She had just finished her bath and was regarding herself desultorily in the mirror above the sink—there were wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth; when had those appeared?—when the rapping came on her door.

The rapping was steady and insistent, the kind of sound that might attract the wrong sort of attention from the neighbors. Eva pushed down the first feathery stirrings of panic and rushed to answer it quickly.

She was wearing a loose robe; as she crossed the tiny basement apartment she held it tightly closed against her breast. She reached the door and then wavered before opening it. It was past nine, and she was not expecting a visitor. It could not be good news. If the Gestapo were to come for her, in fact, this was how it might happen. For a moment, she considered not answering the door at all. She considered going into the bedroom, pulling the blankets up above her head, and waiting to be left alone—as if that childish trick might actually have a chance of thwarting the Gestapo.

Then the rapping started again. She swallowed once, with a click. Her fingers moved smoothly over the three locks on the door, worked the mechanisms, dropped to the knob and twisted it.

Klinger was there, his eyes sparkling with dark mirth. “Surprise!” he crowed.

He staggered past her with the smell of schnapps following in a thick cloud. Once inside the flat, he paused, swayed, and turned.

“You,” he said. His finger wagged in her face. “You …”

Eva waited.

“You … must have been … a beautiful … baby …”

He turned away, singing louder.
“You must have been … a beautiful … girl …”

She shut the door, took a moment to compose her face, and then followed him into the apartment. He had moved to the wireless radio on the bookshelf. Now he switched it on and began to tune through the stations.

After looking at Klinger's back for a few seconds, Eva went to put on a kettle, wondering if any of the neighbors had seen him. What did he expect from her tonight? He had probably gotten drunk and then started feeling romantic. But he seemed more interested in the radio, for the moment, than in her.

He settled on a broadcast by Lord Haw-Haw. Lord Haw-Haw was in unusually good form, his nasal voice describing Germany's good intentions toward a pacifistic Britain with an unmistakable sneer. Klinger listened for a moment, his head bent, his eyes closed. “Feh,” he said then. He switched off the radio, moved to the threadbare sofa, and. collapsed onto it heavily.

Eva left the kettle to boil and went back into the living room. “Otto,” she said. “You shouldn't be here.”

His eyes had closed again. He was nodding rhythmically, as if following some tune playing in his head.

“It's late,” she said gently. “You ought to go home.”

“My wife's at home,” he said. His eyes opened. “Did you know I have a wife,
Liebling
?”

She shook her head.

“Well, it's true. A wonderful woman, my wife. You should meet her sometime. You have something in common, you know. Me.” He shook his head, then began to sing again.
“I married an angel …”

The kettle whistled. Eva returned to the kitchen, found two cups, set them on a tray beside a teapot, and went to join Klinger on the couch.

But Klinger was back before the bookcase. His finger traveled unsteadily over the spines. It paused before a book Eva had never read:
Deutsche Mathematik.
The book was only for show. She had long since purged her collection of anything that might be considered suspicious reading material, filling it instead with books that had been sanctioned by the propaganda ministry.

Klinger took down the book and began to page through it.

“Ah!” he said. “Look here—listen. ‘The proposition that mathematics can be considered without a racial perspective'”—the words came out slurred:
The proposhition that mathematics can be conshidered without a racial pershpective
—“‘carries within itself the germs of destruction of German science.'”

Eva set down the tray in her hands, and made no comment.

“Huh,” Klinger said thickly. He returned to the couch, shaking the book in his hand. “Do you know,” he asked, “that my father was once an honored professor at the University of Berlin?”

She sat beside him, poured the tea. “No,” she said. “I didn't know that.”

“Of course not. Why would you? I've taken great pains, little one, to keep it a secret. If you look at the official records, in fact, you'd discover that my father is not my father at all.” He laughed—a brittle laugh. “I'm a simple man, dear Eva. A simple man with simple tastes. Why should I invite trouble?”

She shook her head helplessly.

“Feh,” Klinger said. “I know what some might say to that. He is your father; you are his son. You have a duty, Otto—that's what they would say. But we are very different, my father and I. He cared for ideas, Eva.” He looked at her with sudden intensity.
“Ideas.”

She reached for a cup of tea and pressed it into his hands. He set it down again immediately.

“When it came time to join the Teachers' League, my father refused. He wouldn't take the oath. Wouldn't even hear of it. Do you know the oath? All teachers were forced to take it, from the lowest kindergarten to the highest university. ‘To be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.' Well, he wouldn't have it.
Racial science,
indeed. Feh. Centuries of learning … out the window. He wouldn't have it.”

His voice was climbing now, in volume and in timbre.

“He was a man of ideas, my father. And he paid the price. So I am not his son! I am the son of some other Herr Klinger, if you read my official records. A farmer from the east. Why should I invite that sort of scrutiny, that my father's son would have to face?”

“Otto …”

“I don't need that. Dear, darling Eva. Would you blame me—”

“Keep your voice down,” she said.

He trailed off, then looked at her cannily.

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “We wouldn't want to attract attention to ourselves, would we?”

That same dark humor danced in his eyes, feverishly.

“Not us,” he said. “A traitor and a spy.”

Cool shock took Eva, chilling her, making her stomach twist.

Klinger raised the cup again, drank, ran the back of his hand over his lips, and belched. “Don't look that way,” he said. “I'm only joking. Dear, darling Eva.”

She looked away.

“You're no spy, of course. You're only the latest in a long string of beautiful women to throw themselves at me. Why, it happens every day. Several times a day. My tremendous natural charm.” He laughed. “Why should I suspect that you have any ulterior motive? That would be foolish of me. Worse than foolish. Paranoid. Eh?”

She reached for her tea. Her hand was shaking. She steadied it with her other hand and forced herself to bring the cup to her mouth.

“So nervous!” he said wonderingly.

When she spoke again, her voice was thin. “Otto, you shouldn't say things like that.”

“Feh,” he said.

“It's dangerous to say things like that.”

“Feh.”

“You're drunk. You should go home. To your wife.”

He sat in silence, glowering. Emotions played across his face transparently, as they do on the faces of drunks and children. Then he murmured something, seemingly to himself. It sounded like
“Schlieffen.”

She leaned closer. “Did you … say something?”

His eyes closed again, squeezed tight, then opened.

“Nothing,” he said. “You're right. I'm drunk.” He looked at her searchingly, and stood. “Forgive me, Eva. I'm sorry.”

“Go home, Otto. Go to bed.”

She had the sense he was on the verge of adding something else; but then he turned away. “Good night,” he said simply, and moved to the door.

He began to try to work the bolts there. Astoundingly, he got them open. Then he turned again, and said, without meeting her eyes, “They will know.”

As quickly as he had appeared, he was gone.

She looked after him for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, she stood, moved to the door herself, and shot the bolts. She hugged herself tightly, leaning against the thin wood and shivering.

A traitor and a spy.

Had she betrayed herself?

She ran back over the conversation in her mind. No, she decided, she had not betrayed herself. He had been testing her, perhaps—and she had not betrayed herself. But nor had she taken advantage of the opportunity. He had confessed about his wife, even about his father. It would have been a fine chance to suggest something, to make some inroads toward her ultimate goal. But she had let the chance pass.

She let out a long, shuddering sigh. The temptation to burrow into bed returned. In bed nothing could get to her. Ridiculous, of course; but a soothing thought nevertheless.

She peeled off her robe, trailing it across the floor, and crawled into bed without even brushing her teeth. She felt suddenly exhausted.

She was not cut out for this. It had started as a game—years before, miles away. But now it was no game.

A traitor and a spy.

They will know.

Who would know? The Nazis? Did they suspect him? Were they watching her?

The old temptation returned, to blame Hobbs. If Hobbs had been a more honorable man—if Hobbs had not misrepresented himself to her from the very beginning—she would not have found herself in this position. Then the old rejoinder: she had made the choice herself; she had followed a higher purpose. She was doing the right thing, for the right reasons.

But she had been so young when she had agreed to it—only twenty. Was it fair for a girl of twenty to make decisions that would affect the rest of her life?

She doused the lamp. One came to important junctures without even realizing at the time, she thought, just how important they were. If she had stayed on her parents' farm in Saxony, she would be living a simple life today. Riding horses, cooking, and probably married by now. She would have her own family; simple pleasures. But she had been anxious to leave the farm, to study in England—to do something more with her life.

She only wished she'd realized at the time what she was getting herself into.

She closed her eyes. Were all spies so confused? It seemed unlikely.

Schlieffen.

They will know.

Her eyes opened.

Not the Nazis, she thought. The British, Klinger had meant. The British would know.
Schlieffen.
He had told her something. But what?

She would have to find out. She would have to see him again.

A traitor and a spy.

Sleep, that night, was a long time coming.

PRINZ ALBRECHT STRASSE

“Herr Kriminal Inspektor,”
Hauptmann said. “Have you got a moment?”

Frick glanced up. Hauptmann was standing in the doorway, holding a thin sheaf of papers under one arm. He hoped, no doubt, to add the papers to the already formidable pile sitting on Frick's desk.

“Not if those are for me,” Frick said.

Hauptmann smiled, and came farther into the office. He was a stocky man with coarse chestnut hair and an offbeat sense of humor that was well known around Gestapo headquarters. “Too much paperwork,
Herr Inspektor
?”

“Far too much, Hauptmann. Far too much.”

“I seem to remember that you used to be fond of paperwork—before your time spent in the field.”

Frick frowned. To the best of his recollection, he had never been particularly fond of paperwork. But then, he always had been fond of organization. And his powers of recollection had faltered since his return from the front. He had more and more trouble, these days, keeping his mind focused.

Or perhaps it was just Hauptmann's idea of a joke.

Hauptmann waved the papers in his hand. “You'll want to take a look at this,” he said. “It might cheer you up.”

“What is it?”

“A report,
Herr Inspektor,
from a
Blockwart
in Wilmersdorf. I'd be glad to follow it up myself, if you like, this very evening.”

Hauptmann was glowing with barely contained self-satisfaction. The workday was already finished; the man's offer to follow up himself seemed strange. Frick held out his hand.

“If I need you,
Herr Kriminal Assistant,
I'll find you.”

Hauptmann looked pained. It must have been a promising report indeed, Frick thought, if the man was so eager to track it down. Hauptmann relinquished the papers, turned, and then paused at the door and turned back. “Got a joke for you,” he said. “Two Luftwaffe pilots walk into a bar. And who do they see sitting there but Field Marshall Goering himself? Goering has a plate in front of him. Pork schnitzel, smoked salmon, pheasant, venison. One pilot turns to the other—”

“Herr Kriminal Assistant,”
Frick said.

“Yes?”

“My schedule is very full today.”

Hauptmann straightened.

“Of course,
Herr Inspektor,”
he said, and let himself out.

Frick looked after the man for a moment, then turned his attention to the papers on his desk.

He soon realized that the
Kriminal Assistant
's eagerness had not been misplaced. Hauptmann had been lending a hand with the search for William Hobbs, and it seemed that he had struck gold. The papers described a family named Gehl, residents of the suburb of Wilmersdorf. Three days before, a mysterious visitor had appeared on the Gehls' doorstep. Several neighbors had immediately reported the man's appearance to the block supervisor. He was a tall man, they said, with an athlete's build, who moved with a slight limp. Since his arrival, he had been seen slipping out several times, always under cover of darkness, only to return within an hour.