1945 (16 page)

He turned back at her, looking hungrily at what he was about to dismiss from his life. His wife was a bore, the children were bores, it was all emptiness. Erika had changed all that. She had granted him eighteen months of paradise—a fool's paradise.

"You heard me. We're finished. Now, tonight."

"Is
it your wife? Have you decided that her family's political connections matter more than me?"

He nodded.

She looked at him closely. Her face became still, expressionless. "You're lying."

He said nothing, staring at a point on the wall just past her left shoulder.

"It's something else, isn't it?"

"I don't want to discuss it. It's over with. You can keep the apartment, I'll pay the rent until you make other arrangements."

"I don't want other arrangements. I want you." Fiercely, she grabbed hold of him and forced him to look into her eyes. "You're afraid of something."

"I don't want to talk about it"

"You must," she said quietly, "I insist.
What happened today?"

He shook his head. "I'm not going to ... " With a crashing blow she slapped him across the face.

"What happened?"

"The Secret Service," he replied automatically before regaining control of himself.
Christ!
that had hurt. She really knew how to hurt a guy....

"What about the Secret Service?"

Seeing the look on her face, for a moment he was actually afraid of her, and again found it easier to answer than maintain silence.

The head of the Secret Service visited my office this afternoon. Officially, since I'm Chief of Staff to the President, he was conferring with me, briefing me on a suspected security leak... I was being checked out."

"Were you followed here?" she hissed, forgetting to mask the fear from her voice.

When he heard that fear his suspicion was replaced with certainty. Suddenly, he knew—and knew too the answer to his dilemma. Regrettable perhaps, but at least this course offered a clear resolution to a difficult situation.

"No," he replied after a long pause spent in reflection. "I was careful about that. I went to a bar I know that has a back exit. I left by the alley and caught a taxi on the next street. You're... safe. No one followed me."

She relaxed slightly. "Good. But as for it being over for us, for you, the answer is no."

"What?"

"Just that. No. Spell it out: N-E-I-N. Now do you understand?"

His head rocked back as if she had hit him again.

She smiled at him with a certain sympathy.

"You bitch! You think I'm under your thumb, don't you?"

She smiled and, leaning up, kissed him lightly on the cheek, affectionately. "Yes, lover, I do. You will never be free of me. And to think that when we started I was little more than a throw-away container for your lust. How we have progressed since then." Despite the words, her smile remained soft, almost loving. Much as it had always been.

"You're the leak. Everything I've told you. I started to 
suspect it months ago! You're a spy for the Nazis!" His voice filled with hysterical menace as he nerved himself for the next act in their little drama.

"It took you long enough," she chuckled throatily, nuzzled his neck, nipped very gently.

He pushed her roughly away, then began to advance on her, death in his eyes.

Still smiling, she slowly backed away.

"Ah, so you would be a murderer as well as a traitor?
Such
a piece of work you are, my—darling!"

He suddenly realized that it wasn't a sudden decision after all; he had come here to kill her. Even if they couldn't actually prove anything in a court of law, if the FBI and Secret Service ever found out about her it would be the end of everything. The power, the knowing, the surge of exultation every time he walked into the White House. All gone. And in its place? He shuddered. Loathing, humiliation, unending darkness. His very name would enter the national lexicon as an insult.

From the side table he picked up a heavy chrome-plated ashtray, all sharp corners, hefted it, moved to block the door. Still she just stood there, smiling gently, knowingly. Would she smile till the end? he wondered. He moved slowly toward her.

A blow to the back of his neck sent him crashing to the floor. The kicks that followed caused no pain. After a brief time a distant voice, Erika's, snapped out a command and the kicks stopped.

Rough hands rolled him over and through a cloudy haze he looked up into a roughly chiseled face filled with savage contempt, and a curiously personal hatred.

Unfortunately the haze was beginning to lift. Pain and awareness returned as one. Sickened John closed his eyes and rolled fetally on his side, struggling, failing to hold back the tears of rage and humiliation. Had they never been alone?

After a few moments he felt a warm hand taking his and a coolness on his forehead. He opened his eyes to see Erika kneeling on the floor beside him, gently stroking his forehead with a moistened towel. His tormentor was gone, or at least behind a door that did not look like a door.

"So, now you know."

He could only jerk his head, unable to speak.

"John ... we could keep things as they have been."

He shook his head.

"No, truly. You can still keep everything: your reputation, your wife's wealth, your job, your power, your reflected glory." She hesitated a moment. "You can even keep me."

John still didn't speak, but some of the tension was leaving him.

She pounced. "Of course I will expect a full weekly report on your White House affairs."

"Go to hell," he whispered.

She laughed softly. "I know where I'm going." There was almost a note of sadness in her voice. "They got me a long time ago. Just as I now have you. What can you do but cooperate? You can't expose me; if you did, you'd lose it all. And what is more, you would disappear into some dark little cell where you'd grow old."

She gazed tenderly at his convulsing form still curled in a fetal ball, gently wiped the tears from his cheek with her finger. "John, we mustn't let that happen to you. You are too good a person to suffer so for such a simple, human mistake."

For a while she silently stroked him. When his breathing slowed she returned to the job at hand. "But there will be new rules. First, I expect you to continue as you are. Tomorrow you'll go back to your office, do your job, soak up all the information you can. Please don't try to hold back or to lie to me. You are not our only... friend in Washington. If you try to cheat us I will learn of it. The first time I would be forced to give you to Joachim, he who so enjoyed kicking you. The second time we would simply expose you in such a way that you would wish that you were dead."

She gently brushed the damp hair from his forehead. "Do we understand each other?"

Though he did not answer direcdy his sobbing became audible. Kindly, she took that for assent. Explicit submission to her will could wait until he had composed himself. She was, after all, rather fond of him, and genuinely looked forward to further "games" in the context of their new relationship.

"Come,
Schatzi,
my little treasure." Carefully she helped him to his feet and guided him into her bedroom, laid him down. A minute later she returned with a glass of bourbon, slightly watered, three ice cubes. Just the way he liked it.

"Take this; you need to sleep for a while." When fretfully he made as if to refuse the glass, she said to him slowly, "John, from now on you must do exactly as I say."

Like a child, he followed her directions. After downing the drink he rolled over and faced the wall, silent now.

Turning off the lights, she closed the door behind her and walked back to the kitchen where Joachim too was having a glass of bourbon.

"You didn't have to kick him like that."

"I was just having a little fun." Joachim smirked. "It was all to the kidneys. There'll be pain, lots of pain, but no bruises."

"You hate him, don't you?"

"He is scum. In Germany he would have been found out and shot long ago."

She settled herself at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. As she poured herself a drink she looked at him from under lowered lids and said softly, "But such useful scum. We have dealt with others as low. Why him?"

"All right. I don't like what you do with him, having to listen."

That is all you do, listen?"

"Except for when taking the photographs, yes. Listen. That is all."

"It doesn't... excite you? I but do my duty to the Reich, you know."

"Yes, of course it excites me. That's what I hate! You. With him.
Scheisse im Himmel!"

"Is it so different with us ... Lover?"

"He is a traitor. Filth."

"Yet you do share certain tastes ... I can tell, though you try to pretend otherwise."

Joachim refused the bait. "Sometimes I indulge you. That's not the point.
Ach!
There is no point! Him. You. It disgusts me.

"Do you think they know about the leaks?" he asked, changing the subject.

After a moment lost in thought Erika replied, "Nothing lasts forever."

"Too true. Me, I think they're on to him. Let's just kill him and get the hell out."

She shook her head in angry disbelief. The Chief of Staff of the President of the United States? "Without orders? You must be mad. Besides, now I can interrogate him, rather than having to be satisfied with bits and pieces, always worrying about my cover." She stared contemplatively at her drink. "Also, we have to find out more about 'Manhattan.' Now we can send him back to get the information we need."

"You're protecting him."

She looked up and smiled. "He's like a child who has been disciplined too harshly I feel sorry for him."

"At the first hint of pressure he'll spill his guts to the Secret Service. Then they either pick us up or start feeding us false information."

"You were right when you called him a coward," Erika replied. "We need merely keep him more frightened of us than of them. Between us, we will not find that a difficult task. Remember, while as far as you and I know he's our only top-level source, he doesn't know that. He'll continue to feed us straight information including whether he thinks the Secret Service is closing on him."

"And you'll continue to play with him, won't you?"

"Only when I'm not with you," Erika said coolly. "Now go, but stay close by. When he wakes up, I want to give him a little motivation before sending him on his way."

March 29

A Training Camp in Germany

Otto Skorzeny leaned back in his chair and laughed. After the mind-numbing training schedule of the last few weeks they were finally getting to blow off some steam. The scent of beer and roast sausage mingled in the heavy smoke-laden air with other less savory odors faintly emanating from the rear of the establishment. A rather pale Richer staggered past on his way to where the bad smells came from.

"He looks like such a mama's boy," Karl slurred drunkenly. "I still remember how he cut up that whore in Smolensk. Turned my stomach. Takes a lot to do that to me." Coming from Otto Skorzeny's Number Two, that last was something of an understatement.

Skorzeny, who hadn't been there, only shrugged in reply. Richer was a weapon; many weapons did more harm than was strictly necessary for the completion of a mission. If there were a weapon more precisely tailored to the job Skorzeny would use it, but what counted was that the weapons used do the job. As he drained his tankard he saw Richer come staggering back. Two of Richer's NCOs jumped up from the table they shared with their commander to prop him up and half-carry him back.

"Despite present appearances they are in near-perfect form," Karl said. "So sharp and ready that much more training would start to take the edge off. They needed this break."

"Just remember, there won't be a second chance, and we
must not fail."
Skorzeny slammed the table with his fist.

Karl looked at his boss. Skorzeny wasn't drunk, not as a

German soldier would understand the term, but his inner concerns were rather more visible than he normally allowed them to be; even old Joy-Through-Strength Skorzeny was not completely immune to responsibility-overload. To change the subject, Karl asked, "What about the models of the targets? When will they be ready? From the little you told me it is hard to believe people could have such fun while contributing so much to the war effort."

Skorzeny smiled. "You think they are having more fun than us?"

Karl laughed in return. This was more the Otto he knew. He continued to look inquiringly, wanting to keep his friend's mind on the new topic, and actually curious about these genius grown-ups playing with doll houses.

Skorzeny took the hint and continued. "They're finishing up right now. It really is rather marvelous. The entire facility, accurate right down to the different types of houses, is laid out on an indoor drill court near Potsdam. Leni Riefenstahl is in charge. You remember her: she directed
Triumph of the Will.
The Führer loved it. She has her very best camera people working on it now. They run cameras over the model at speeds that simulate an actual approach from two hundred meters up, with the only illumination coming from inside the models and from the miniature streetlights. Happily, we need not assume blackout conditions for this job. The pilots of all the planes will train with the films starting next week.