The Hunter From the Woods (35 page)

“No.”

“Good, because it’s not your concern. You have your own war to fight. I presume you do. When are your orders coming through?”

“Any day now, I’m sure.” This was a hazardous area; he didn’t want the Ice Man checking up on his supposed division. “I’m ready to go tonight, if need be.”

“Are you?” Rittenkrett squinted at him through another smoke ring that floated toward Michael like a ghostly noose and broke apart only at the last second. He let the question linger, as he paced back and forth across the polished floor. His shoes were also white, and they made clacking noises. “Look, Major Jaeger!” Rittenkrett abruptly stopped, and with the cigarello clenched between his teeth he threw up his hands. “The problem seems to be that Franziska is neglecting some of her duties to be with you. Now, I don’t care if you’re fucking her. I myself have fucked her. She has a whole closet full of letters and medals and little pitiful gifts sent to her by men who have fucked her, from all branches of the services, and I think there are even some Boy Scout badges in there somewhere. I mean, this is what she
does
. She’s
famous
for it, sir. Surely you know why by now. Either that, or you’re dead down there.”

Michael was by no means dead down there, but he did feel a little ill.

“She is the perfect package,” Rittenkrett went on, behind his smoke rings. “And her photographic talents aren’t so bad either. Working with
Signal
, she has an open doorway to anywhere she wishes to go. Which makes her also valuable to
me
.” His gaze turned upon Franziska. “But I really
don’t
like it when you send me notes as if I’m not worthy of your time or presence. You have winnowed yourself into a position of responsibility, and I expect you not to falter in your duties. You realize, the perks you enjoy aren’t free.”

“I never assumed they were,” she said, with her own touch of ice.

Rittenkrett silently smoked at the center of the room. His expression told Michael he wasn’t sure he liked her tone. But then he shrugged the massive shoulders. “Let’s put this behind us and focus on our
work
. All right? The reason I’ve come here tonight is to tell you that something strange is happening with our list of clients. They are…shall we say…vacating the premises. Therefore we need to work faster. And, by the way, were you going to forget your appointment?” He checked his wristwatch. “In a little less than an hour, I believe?”

“There’s not much there,” Franziska said, and Michael just pretended to wear a puzzled look that he kept short of too much curiosity.

“But there’s
something
there,” the Ice Man reminded her, with a jab of his Indianer in the air. “You yourself said so, and I hold you to delivering it.” He gave the major a damp smile. “Business, you see, goes on both day and night. Oh, don’t look so glum, sir! I’ll tell you what.” He approached Michael, the white shoes clacking, but stopped short of crowding him. “We’ll give you a ride. Not far from your hotel is an excellent whorehouse with many beautiful young girls. Some of them are gypsies, if you like the dark look. Very talented, in their way. So if you were hoping for a warm hole tonight, you won’t be disappointed.”

Michael stared at the floor, somewhere between himself and the white shoes. “I’ll just accept a ride to the hotel, if that’s what you’re offering.”

“Yes, indeed it is. And Franziska, you should be on your way.”

She left without another word.

They rode back in a long black Mercedes that displayed small Nazi pennants on aerials mounted above the headlamps. Sigmund drove, Michael had the shotgun seat, and Ross and Rittenkrett occupied the spacious rear seat. Michael’s head felt foggy. He rolled his window down and put his face into the cold. A few snowflakes whirled before the lamps. Either that, or ashes.

Rittenkrett wished him good night in front of the hotel. “You do understand,” he added before Michael left the car, “the value of the work that Franziska is doing?”

“I’m sure it must be valuable.”

“Oh, yes. And one more thing, Major Jaeger: please don’t try to see her again. It really
would
interfere. All right?” He continued without waiting for a response, and this time his voice carried a sharp edge. “You’ve crashed my birthday party, made a spectacle of me before some very important people, and taken Franziska’s mind off her responsibilities. Now I’ll tell you that if I find out you’re seeing her again I’m going to forget what an excellent soldier for the Reich you’ve been and escort you through a door you certainly will not want to enter. In there is no cake and ice cream, I can promise you. But I’m sure we won’t see each other again, so once more I say good luck to you in your future battles, and Heil Hitler.”

Michael returned the salute with small enthusiasm. He got out of the car.

The Mercedes pulled away.

He went to his room, took a cold shower and stretched out on the bed. The sheets were fresh, but still her aroma seemed to be everywhere. It permeated and perfumed the air in here. No wonder, he thought; it was in his clothes. And it lingered on his own flesh too, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

But, in truth, he didn’t want to scrub too very hard.

He might have gotten to sleep around midnight. But on the first ring of the telephone he was immediately awake. “Hello?”

There was a silence. Michael waited through it.

In a voice that tried to be cheerful but had a sad center, she said, “I’m missing you.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Franziska, come to me.”

She hung up, and he lay waiting for her in the fragrant dark.

She arrived within fifteen minutes. His heart beat harder when he set his eyes on her. When he kissed her, he found her face was still cold from the wind. He wondered if she’d gotten the BMW up to racing speed through the empty streets. Under her coat she was wearing the dark blue dress and the strand of pearls around her throat. Within another minute she was as naked as he was, the expensive coat and dress falling to the floor the same as if they’d been old rags, her shoes kicked away, her sheer stockings tossed one way and another, her underwear crumpled in elegant folds. She started to remove the pearls, but he caught her fingers and said, “Leave those on for now.”

Her raven-black hair was touselled and roughened by the night. Her gray eyes were sparkling and eager, but Michael could see they burned with a lower flame. He could smell the too-sweet cologne of the man she’d slept with, could smell his hair pomade and his bitter sweat. He could smell the cigarette the man had smoked in the aftermath. A much inferior brand to the cream of the British crop, he thought.

“I’ve been with someone,” she told him, which was perhaps the biggest waste of breath in the history of the world.

“I know, but you’re with me now.”

“Please,” she said, her mouth up close to his, “will you hold me?”

He guided her the few steps to the bed, and lying down together he enfolded her, and she pressed her head against his strong shoulder and gave a soft quiet sound worlds away from the brassy trumpets of the Third Reich.

She went to sleep in that position. He closed his eyes against the blue-shaded lamplight and dozed, opened them, closed them again, felt the full length of her body shift against his, deliciously warm in the sheets, her thighs moving, her lips grazing his cheek, and still she slept.

She trusts me, he thought. She trusts a fiction, to keep her safe through the night.

My God
, w
hat am I going to do
?

If he ever really went back to sleep he wasn’t sure, because the steam pipes began to knock and the radiator hissed. He heard the rumble and rush of wind beyond the glass. Maybe it was bringing heavy snow. The Ice Man’s element, he thought. To Hell with that bastard.

Suddenly he felt her above him, and when he opened his eyes she was staring at him with her chin supported on her forearm, as if trying to memorize every line, every pore, every newborn beard hair.

“I’ve realized what I can hear in your accent,” Franziska said. Her hair had tumbled forward, covering half her face. “You speak English.”

“Speak English?” He needed a few seconds to think about that. If he did decide to start speaking the King’s, she would instantly hear that he spoke it far too effortlessly. “No, I don’t.”

She frowned. It was a mystery she was trying to solve. Then her frown went away. Up close to his ear she whispered in lightly-accented English, “I’ve been waiting for you, for a very long time. I didn’t think you were ever going to find me. But I’ll wait for you still, however long it takes.”

With the greatest force of will he’d ever commanded, Michael just gave her a bemused expression and shook his head.

Franziska returned to her German: “I just said I bought you a present today. It’s in my handbag, over there.” It had been placed on a chair. She licked across his chest with her talented tongue. “Why don’t you go see what it is?”

When Michael removed the white-wrapped present with its green bow from the purse, he remembered Rittenkrett saying that this afternoon
she called my secretary and
said she had to go shopping.
Here, then, was what she’d gone shopping for. A gift for him. He felt he should be pleased, but why did something the size of a pine knot seem to be caught in his throat?

“Open it, open it!” she urged, sitting up with her legs crossed under her.

He did. It was a flawless silver case, and upon opening that he found a shiny new Solingen travel razor, the kind that screws two parts together to make a whole.

“It’s very handsome,” Michael said. “That was kind of you.”

“I was going to have your initials put on it, but I wasn’t sure what type of lettering you’d like. There are too many choices these days. Can we go tomorrow and get it done? I’m free until two.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“I’ll take you to lunch. All right?”

He nodded. He realized that she was asking for more time with him because the howling wind and cold outside spoke volumes of merciless death on the Eastern Front. Which, of course, now Berlin bordered.

“I’d like you to use your razor now,” said Franziska.

He touched his chin. It
was
a bit prickly.

“Not on you,” she told him, as she stretched her legs out before her. She wiggled her toes back and forth. “You missed the jar of shaving soap and the scissors in my handbag. Get them.” She smiled impishly, her dimples going deep. “I’ll wait.”

He got them. “And just what would you like me to shave?” he asked, though his cock already knew.

“I want a heart, right here.” She put a finger into her untamed black bush. “Are you up for that?”

Which might have been the second biggest waste of breath in the history of the world.

Michael prepared a warm towel and warmer water in a white bowl. He got the razor rinsed and ready. He got the soap foamy. His cock strained upward, which might be a problem. When Michael sat down on the bed between her open thighs to begin this heroic endeavor by shaping the heart with the scissors, Franziska gave a throaty little laugh that almost finished him off.

“We’re just using the
soap
cream right now,” she reminded him. “Go ahead, my life is in your hands.”

He did a good job. An excellent job. A slow, careful job. If a razor could speak, it would babble happily for the rest of its days.

Then it was done, and she gazed down upon the result and then looked at him with what he thought might be stars in her eyes.

“Now,” she said, “I can say that both my hearts belong to Horst Jaeger.”

He put the razor and the scissors and the soap and the bowl aside, and he grasped a handful of her hair to rock her head back and even as his mouth pressed forward hers opened to accept him and her tongue was formed of flame.

For the next hour, as the wind shrilled and the pipes thrummed, he devastated her. He took her to the edge and brought her back so many times she became a trembling, moaning, half-sobbing pulse of nerves vibrating with need and shining with sweat. He plunged into her full-length, at full power, and then he pulled out and balanced above her, the very tip of him making slow circles in the foldings of her new heart. Again and again he moved upon her, into her and within her. She cried out, and she mashed her lips against his shoulder to muffle her cries because any louder and the police would arrive to investigate the killing. Then, when she was crazed and her eyes were wild and her hair was a beautiful tangled jungle, Michael said he wanted to show her what pleasure he could give her with a strand of pearls.

At last, at length, as she lay upon him with her back against his chest and he clutched her breasts and stroked her fire like a machine, a cry came out from between her gritted teeth that became a scream from an open mouth. She tensed so hard Michael thought he could feel every muscle in her body move beneath the flesh like bundles of piano wire. It went on and on, and then the flash seared through his own body and as he slid out of her he felt the flood of her liquid explosion. In the next instant he knew what it was like to be a long-distance shooter, lying in a rain of his own making. She gave a groan that was nearly a different language altogether, and she turned over atop him and pushed him back in with one hand and clamped herself around him like a hot, soaking-wet vise.

They stayed that way, breathing hard together.

She shivered a few times, on her long strengthless falling back to earth.

She tried to lift her head. Tried to speak. He needed a towel and a new pair, because these were done for the night.

“Oh my God,” she finally was able to gasp. And again: “Oh my God.”

When he slid out of her again—and this time he wasn’t going back in for a while, no matter how much he might desire it—Franziska tried in vain to hold him, but she too was as weak as yesterday’s pudding.

With an effort her head came up and she looked at him through glazed eyes.

“I think you’ve broken me,” she breathed. “I’m in pieces.”

He brushed her hair aside and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ll put you back together again.”