The Hunter From the Woods (39 page)

“Oh!” she said at his appearance. “Are you the new serving-man here?”

“Does the uniform give me away, madam?”

“It does. Please be kind enough to take it off and serve me.”

She watched as he undressed, making rather interesting noises and a few earthy comments here and there. Then, nude, Michael took her flute and poured some more champagne and as she leaned forward and gave his right buttock a fairly stinging slap he dropped into the sparkling liquid the small pill that had been held in his palm. He faced her with the glass down at his side, giving time for the dissolvement.

“You have a very strange look on your face,” she observed.

“Possibly there are strange thoughts in my mind.”

“I’m a journalist!” she said brightly, and sat up on her knees. “Tell me
everything
!”

He drank down the rest of his champagne, set her full glass on the table and his empty one next to it. His voice was husky when he spoke; not with passion, as she might think, but with the first pangs of true grief. “I’ve always been better at showing than telling.”

If anything, he had to command his own performance. Franziska was talented, true, and she was eager and hot-blooded and adventurous, but Michael Gallatin was fighting his own battle even as he stormed her walls.

He gave her as good as he could, as long as he could. He stretched her out and pressed her inward. His tongue shattered her dam, and her mouth brought forth droplets of rain in February. He lay back on the pillow, seeing colors and catching his breath.

Before he could move or speak or do anything, she stood up from the bed, picked up her flute and drank the champagne. She took three long swallows.

It was too late to move. To speak. To do anything.

He noticed then the bruises on her smooth bottom and the backs of her thighs.

“What are those?” he asked.

“Those what?”

“Bruises. Right there.”

“
Bruises
? Where?”

“There. Right
there
, on your—”

She slid into bed, tight up against him, and kissed him. Her mouth might have given him a taste of her champagne too, he thought. But it no longer mattered.

He pushed her back. “The bruises. From
what
?”

“I fell down today. I slipped on some snow. Fell smack on my bottom.”

“That’s not true.”

“It
is
true!” she said, right in his face. “I promise!”

“I don’t believe you. Not even a promise.”

She tapped his lower lip with her forefinger. “Is this our first quarrel?”

“No, it’s not a quarrel.”

“That’s too bad.” She sat astride him, her legs curled around his hips. “Because, you know, they say the best thing about a quarrel is the making-up.”

The bruises were not going to be explained. Michael let it go; the ticking of the clock had begun.

They lay together, cuddling. Warmth upon warmth. They kissed lightly and deeply. One mouth was never without the other for very long.

She lay without moving for awhile.

Michael said, “Are you all right?”

“Sleepy,” she answered. “It just came on me.”

“It’s late,” he told her.

“I did have a long day.” She turned toward him and, looking into his eyes, she softly stroked his cheek. “You need a shave.” Her voice was a little listless.

He caught her hand and kissed the fingers. Every one.

“Will you hold me while I sleep?” she asked, nestling against him.

“I will hold you forever,” he said, and he put his arm around her.

“I’m so…
tired
. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so tired. Or so
happy
,” she amended. “I think you’ve worn me out.”

“Just lie still. Rest.”

She gave him a crooked smile, her eyes hazed. “I used to be
young
,” she said.

He waited.

When he looked at her again, her eyes had closed.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, with a jerk of her body. Her eyes opened. They were bloodshot, and Michael thought with a shrill of alarm that he was going to have to kill a messenger after all.

But she smiled in his direction, and she felt for his hand until he found hers, and she asked in a voice that was going away, “Am I still…only
nearly
…the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?”

He might, in some other situation, have had a response to this. A quick-witted comeback, a double-entendre, a poetic witticism worthy of Cyrano. Now, though, at this crucial and terrible instant he was struck dumb as a stone.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. Her eyes closed again, and with her last dwindling strength she squeezed his hand. “Tell me when I wake up.”

She breathed in and out, and in and out. He heard her breathing become shallow. As if in slow-motion, her head came back and her neck stretched, a cord standing out against the flesh, and for an instant Michael thought she was having one of her small deaths, and that when she regarded him again it would be with sated eyes, a dimpled smile and the sparkle of sweat on her cheeks.

But she was gone.

He felt her leave. Because suddenly the room felt so dark, and suddenly he felt so alone.

He got up after a few minutes, because she wasn’t coming back. He went into the bathroom, where he sat down on the cold tiles in a cold corner and wept.

She was right, he decided when he was all cried-out. Maybe he did need a fresh shave.
She never knew my real name
, he thought. That was what caused the first cut. Then, dripping blood from seven slips of the Solingen, which was not such a safety razor after all, he stood over her body and finished the last glass of champagne. He sat beside her for a time, just looking at her. She did appear to be only sleeping. But when he touched her hand he felt her already becoming common clay. That thought caused the tears to burn again. His nose ran like a spigot. Still, he held her hand until he was sure her ghost was no longer there, and he could no longer hear the music of her laughter.

One last thing. To get her properly in bed, with the sheet tucked around her and the fan of her black hair spread out on the pillow. Her face in repose did seem to have the hint of a secret smile. Something, perhaps, she knew that he did not?

Good dreams
, he wished her.

He was tired, too. Worn out and weary. Sick with himself. He wished he could go to sleep and dream with her. It was going to be mind over matter tonight to get dressed and make his way to the safe—

He heard the footsteps at his door. The creak of a board.

They didn’t bother with knocking.

A heavy boot crashed the door in. Men in black leather coats came boiling like ebony wasps into the room and from their midst strode the big man with the red face and the white suit.

He brushed past the major even as two men caught Michael’s shoulders and slammed him against the wall. A painting of a golden-haired
fraulein
in a sunlit garden jumped off its hook and fell to the floor.

Rittenkrett walked to the edge of the bed and peered down at Franziska. He squinted, spoke her name, and then reached out to rouse her before he realized she could not be roused. “Hey! Sigmund!” he snapped. The accountant came over, lifted the sheet and tried to find a pulse. He leaned forward to feel for breath. He jammed a hand against her breast, seeking the missing heartbeat.

Sigmund shook his head. Rittenkrett turned toward the major with his face as red as a crimson lamp.

“You,” said Rittenkrett behind a thick forefinger, “have done a dirty. Haven’t you? Eh? Ask him, Ross.”

As the two men held Michael, Ross stepped forward and hit him in the stomach with a black-gloved fist. The second blow was harder, and the third made Michael’s legs buckle. Before he could find his balance, a hand gripped his hair and a knee burst his nose open.

“Careful with the blood!” Rittenkrett warned, retreating a step. “Christ, get him a towel! Stand up, Major Jaeger! But that’s not your real name, is it? How did you murder Franziska?”

A throat cleared. Rittenkrett turned around to see Sigmund holding up the two champagne flutes. “We’ll find out,” Rittenkrett promised Michael. “Next question:
why
did you murder Franziska?”

Michael didn’t answer. There was no point. Eight men in the room. At least four with drawn pistols. His nose was streaming blood, his eyes were swelling shut and his head pounded. Maybe down his sides or upon his back there were small stirrings of animal hair, but not much.

He could never commit suicide, but he was so weary and so sick at heart that he wished for death tonight. He welcomed it. He was no one’s hero. He was the shadowy slime that could kill a masterpiece of a woman who loved him, a perfect package, and no matter what her sins were he had failed to move heaven and earth to find a way to save her life.

He deserved to die. To die brutally, and in great pain.

Which had already begun.

“We’re going to march you out of here,” Rittenkrett said. “No clothes are necessary where you’re going, but we’ll take your uniform anyway to go over everything with our fine-toothed buzzsaws.” He came up close to the bleeding face, though not too close to risk the suit. “I hope you enjoyed her. Got your dick’s worth. Because now, sir, whoever you are, you’re coming to the Gestapo’s playhouse. And there we will give you a fucking of another kind. Sigmund!”

The accountant hit Michael across the side of the head with a leather-wrapped blackjack. He was fast and efficient, no energy wasted.

They dragged the naked, bleeding major out. Behind them the pair of men charged with tearing the place apart for evidence peeked under the sheet. One grinned at the other and with his fist made a pumping gesture at his crotch.

Thirteen

The Room

Through the wind and gusts of snow the two black sedans drove. Through the dark and empty streets of Berlin. They drove also through the nightmares of those Inner Ring members who yet remained in this city, manning the code books and doing whatever small sabotage they could conceive for the glory of old dead Germany.

When these black sedans came for you, the intelligent thing to do was to pick up the pistol in the upstairs desk, shoot your children in the head and then your wife and then yourself. That was called
escape
.

And it was the only way.

But for Michael Gallatin—sitting naked, groggy and bleeding on the back seat of the lead sedan between Sigmund and Ross—it was no way at all.

His strength was gone. He was all used up. He just no longer wished to live.

Was it suicide if he allowed someone else to kill him? If he simply lay unresisting as they pulled him apart? On that matter, the wolf in him was silent.

Through the streets they went, through the wind and snow. At length the two cars turned onto Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. Their yellow cat’s-eye headlamps approached a block-long gothic slab of bricks, with five floors showing. Beneath the street, who knew how many? Lights showed through some of the windowblinds. This place never slept.

The cars went through a black gate, past the electric lamps that stood on either side of a porte cochere, and slid to a halt before a secondary entrance toward the rear of the building. Michael was dragged out, with Ross’s Luger in his ribs. He knew that if he struggled, he would not be shot in the ribs but instead either clubbed again over the head, hit in the face or in the worst case shot in an area that would cause pain but no immediate death, like the back of the hand or the knee. He didn’t care to struggle; it was too much of an effort.

Sigmund pressed a recessed button on the wall beside a door. In a few seconds the door was unbolted from within. The entourage, six men strong, went through with Michael a pale hobbler at their center. Inside there was a desk and a soldier and a file cabinet and a telephone and another door. Michael was half-pushed, half-carried through this door and into a green-painted corridor with frosted glass light globes spaced along the ceiling. Various doors lined this hallway, and at the far end was a tall, wide window through which another light gleamed.

At about the hallway’s centerpoint they came to an oak-railed staircase and started down. When Michael’s feet wanted to balk, he was picked up by two of the men and rushed downward. The staircase descended past several landings and more doors. It angled to the left, straightened out again and then angled to the right. Bare bulbs lit the stained risers. Michael smelled the old odors of human sweat and fear, and some of them not so old.

“Move!” a voice said from behind him. Sigmund’s blackjack gave him a knock across the base of the skull, which filled Michael’s head with flaming pinwheels. They came to the bottom of the stairs. Michael heard the jingle of keys, a merry sound like little bells. A lock was turned.

When the door opened, he was pushed and hauled through. In his haze he made out a stone-walled chamber with light bulbs hanging on cords from the timbered ceiling. Shadows ate some of the room. There were chairs sitting about. There was a machine of some kind on rollers, with coiled-up cables that ended in what might have been large alligator clips. Another machine was attached to what appeared to be a portable water tank on one end and on the other a gray instrument that resembled a baker’s pastry bag. He doubted it was used to frost any birthday cakes. He heard the door close behind him. A bolt was thrown with a metallic finality that would have made most men start to either babble or weep. In here there were no windows. The air smelled of vinegar and the sharp bitterness of chemical disinfectant.