Out of Control (20 page)
“I wish . . . I wish I could, but . . .” He shook his head.
“It’s okay,” she said again. “Really.”
“I’m not a doctor,” he told her. “I know you think I am, but I’m not and I never was. I did have training as a medic, but you can’t tell that to anyone. If people knew that about me, about Jones, they might make the connection, figure out who I really am, and then I’d be dead. Do you get the pattern here?”
“Yes,” she said, blinking back the tears that had filled her eyes. “Dave.”
He smiled, but it faded far too quickly. “Knowing this about me . . . Maybe it would just be easier if . . .” He cleared his throat. “You want me to go away and just never come back?”
If he was bullshitting her, he was doing a damn fine job.
“No, I don’t,” she told him.
He started toward her, and she knew that he was going to kiss her now. She stood up. God forbid he sit down next to her on her bed, pull her back with him. She’d break every rule in her book.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said, talking fast so that she could get it all in before he reached her. It was too soon, she knew it was too soon, but that was just too bad. She didn’t want to wait. “After church? I was planning to take the mission boat up river. There’s an elderly couple who live way up north, a couple hours ride. I was going to pack a picnic lunch, go check on them, and then spend the afternoon just drifting back down. Instead of the barbecue, do you—”
“Yes,” he said.
“. . . want to come?”
He kissed her.
Feeling his arms around her was nothing like her fantasies. It was nine thousand times better. He was both hard and soft. Hard body, soft mouth, soft hair, soft touch. In about twelve hours, he was going to be with her, in the middle of nowhere, alone on a boat. She was going to let him in, going to give him everything he so desperately wanted, and take more from him than he’d probably dreamed he was capable of giving.
This was, no doubt, one of the shortest courtships in the history of the world. Unless, of course, she counted back to those days he’d spent in her tent. She would, she decided. Everything that was happening between them now had started then.
Jones kissed her longer, deeper, pulling her more tightly against him, molding her to him, reaching between them to cup the fullness of her breast.
They were breaking her rule, but it felt so good, she nearly didn’t pull away.
Somehow she managed though, pushing him gently toward and then out the door.
“Tomorrow,” she reminded him softly.
He just laughed and she knew what he was thinking. Yeah, like he was going to forget.
My last full day in Germany started with a bang at 6:17 a.m., with a frantic phone call from my Tante Marlise.
She was the youngest sister of my mother, only three years older than I. Pretty and vivacious, when she was my age, Marlise had married a handsome young cobbler’s apprentice named Ernst Kramer. Poor in the pocket, their humble home was rich with love. When I’d met them earlier in the week, they’d already had two sweet-faced little children, with another quite happily on the way.
The Gestapo had come shortly after ten last night, Marlise told me through her tears. They’d banged on the Kramers’ door, frightening the babies and waking the neighbors. They’d dragged Ernst from the house, thrown him into an automobile and taken him away.
Marlise had brought her children to her sister’s house and walked the twelve miles into Freudenstadt, to find out where Ernst was being held and why he had been taken. He was a good man, an honest man, a hardworking man. He paid his taxes and he never spoke ill of the Nazi Party.
She told me she’d sat in a waiting room at the local Gestapo headquarters for hours. Finally, just before dawn, she was brought into a room and interviewed. Yes, instead of being able to ask the questions, the questions were asked—none too kindly—of her.
Was it not true that Ernst had attended a recent Communist rally in Munich?
No! Ernst had never been to Munich. Not ever. Neither he nor Marlise had ever traveled more than twenty miles from their village.
Would she know of a reason why his name would be on a list of dangerous Communist dissidents?
Marlise was stunned. Her Ernst?
The questions went on and on and on, until finally, the last one: Were she and her husband related to an Ingerose Rainer, an American student who was visiting Berlin this very week?
Marlise wasn’t told where Ernst was being held, or if he were even still alive. But she’d hurried home to call me at the hotel, to find out if I knew why the Gestapo would have been asking about me in connection to Ernst.
And I did know. I knew right away. Ernst’s arrest was arranged to put pressure on me to spy for the Nazis.
I knew with a certainty that was chilling, that were I to go to Herr Schmidt and agree to send him American military secrets from Grumman, Ernst would be returned to his family.
I also knew that were I to continue to refuse, my mother’s other brothers and sisters would be arrested. And maybe even executed.
I was beside myself with anger and fear. I didn’t know what to do, or even what to think.
I quickly threw on some clothes and, taking only a minute to study the route map of the streetcars, I headed for Hank’s house.
House?
It was a palace. As I ran up the drive, I could see his Rolls out front, engine idling. His driver, Dieter, was holding the door open, standing sharply at attention as a man, dressed in the uniform of the Nazi SS, swastika on his armband, came out of Hank’s ornate front door.
I stopped short, filled with terror. Had they come for Hank, as well? Was he also in danger because of his association with me?
I hurried closer, ready for what? I’m not sure. Maybe to try to wrestle the entire Nazi machine to the ground. All I knew was that I had never hated anything or anyone so completely before in my entire sheltered life.
“Entshuldigen Sie mich!” I called out imperiously. (Excuse me!)
The officer turned.
And my innocence died.
It was, of course, Hank wearing that uniform. Or rather, Prince Heinrich von Hopf. It was hard for me to think of him as Hank while he wore that hideous crawling spider, the emblem of the Nazi Party, on his arm.
“Rose?” He was as shocked to see me as I was to see him. Or at least he was pretending to be shocked.
How much did he know?
All of it, no doubt.
I’d spent the day with him with Herr Schmidt’s blessing, I realized with dread. The truth was hideously apparent—Hank was part of this attempt to recruit me as a spy. What better way to tie a romantic young girl to the country of her parents’ birth than by providing her with a handsome man who claimed to adore her?
It all made so much sense now—an older, sophisticated man, an innocent girl. What could Hank possibly have seen in me to have been so attracted, unless it was my ability to provide the Nazis with this information they wanted?
I was devastated, but somehow I managed to keep my wits. I think I realized at that moment that Marlise and my mother’s other siblings weren’t the only ones in danger from these odious people. I wouldn’t have put it past the Nazis to create some terrible “accident” to befall me, should I refuse to cooperate.
“I didn’t recognize you,” I told him, somehow knowing instinctively that I should stick as closely as possible to the truth. “Is this the uniform you wear as you help govern Austria?”
“No,” he answered. “I have additional duties that I perform for the Reich, and . . . Are you all right? What are you doing here?”
He looked so concerned, but it was all an act. It had to be an act.
“It’s too terrible,” I said, erupting in noisy tears. They weren’t hard to fake. In truth, they were all too real.
He took me into his car and ordered Dieter to drive.
He held me close, my head against his shoulder, his arms around me tightly. I could feel his lying heart beating in his chest, and somehow, it gave me strength.
And I knew in that instant what I had to do. I had to agree to be their spy. But the moment I stepped off that boat in New York Harbor, I would go straight to the FBI.
I would be a spy for the Nazis, indeed. But I would only feed them information that my country wanted them to see and hear.
With my new resolve burning within me, I was able to stop my tears long enough to tell Heinrich about Marlise’s phone call, about Ernst’s arrest and the charges of communism. And with tears clinging to my eyelashes, I asked him, please, for his help.
“It must be a mistake,” I said. “Ernst Kramer is no more a Communist than I am. Why, he even had a framed picture of Der Fuehrer in his living room.”
I was, as my granddaughters are prone to say, pinning the BS meter with that one.
But Hank didn’t seem to notice. He barked out a street address in rapid-fire German to his driver. To me, he said, “Perhaps I can help. Not directly, but . . . We have a mutual friend, Herr Schmidt, who has connections in the Gestapo. I am certain he’ll be able to give you the assistance you require.”
Herr Schmidt was, of course, the horrible little man who’d asked me to spy for the Nazis. If I had any lingering doubts that Hank was somehow not involved, they were now crushed.
We arrived at a nondescript building near the university, and Hank led me out of the car. Up four flights in an elevator, down a hall. I remember it so clearly—the floor was hardwood and it gleamed from polish.
I was shown right into Herr Schmidt’s office. Hank was asked to wait outside. At first, he refused, but I reassured him. I would be all right. I was, in fact, quite relieved that he wouldn’t be there. I suspected that he would be able to see through the lies I was about to tell.
The door to Herr Schmidt’s office closed, and I sat in front of his desk, telling him about Marlise and Ernst. “It’s all been a terrible mistake,” I said again. “If you could help my family, if Ernst could be allowed to return home, I would be so grateful.”
And then, God help me, I said the words that were to change my life forever. “I would be willing to show my gratitude and my loyalty to my parents’ Fatherland by providing you with as much information from my employer as I can obtain after my return to New York.”
It was 8:30 in the morning.
Marlise called the hotel to tell me that Ernst was home by noon.
“I’m so glad they realized their mistake,” she told me as she wept. “I’m so glad it’s over.”
For me, the only thing that was over was my childish love affair with Heinrich von Hopf.
My career as a spy, however, with all its danger and intrigue and heart-hardening cynicism, had just begun.
Rose was ready to go on to the next section they were re-recording due to “tape glitch,” whatever that was, but Akeem’s voice sounded in her headset.
“Sorry to stop you, girlfriend,” he said, “but the MIB squad is here to see you.”
“Who?”
“Men in Black,” he clarified. “Or in this case, men and very hot woman in black. It’s your buddy George, and this time he brought some friends.”
Friends. Plural. That wasn’t a good sign. Alex had been kidnapped. George was here to tell her that, and the other two agents were handlers, assigned to make sure Rose didn’t pressure George into taking her out into the jungles of Indonesia to search for Alex herself.
Oh, Alex. Why do you insist on living in a part of the world where you’re always in danger? Why don’t you just look me in the eye and say—
The door opened and George Faulkner came into the studio. “I’m sorry to have to interrupt—”
“Is he alive?” she asked.
“We have no reason to believe he’s not.”
Rose nodded, glad she was still sitting down. “Do we know yet who took him?” A man and a woman had followed George into the studio. Neither of them were so full of themselves that they had to be introduced before she was given the facts.
“No,” he said. “We’re still working on that.”
“What do we know?” she asked.
“He was taken from a restaurant in Jakarta called The Golden Flame on Monday night, apparently against his will. A number of people saw him dragged into a plain white delivery truck. He was shouting, but no one could make out the words—apparently there aren’t too many English speakers in that part of the city,” George told her.
“Was he the only one taken?” she asked.
“Apparently, yes.”
“Who was he dining with?”
“According to the restaurant owner, his dinner companion hadn’t yet arrived. He’d made a reservation for two.”
Rose nodded. “His hotel room has been searched? As well as his apartment in Malaysia?”
“We’re in the process of doing that,” George said. “But as of right now, we haven’t managed to find his appointment book or a scrap of paper saying ‘Dinner at eight on Monday with so and so, and by the way, I suspect so and so wants to kidnap me.’ “
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