The Widow Killer (20 page)

“Come on! Make love to me. Buback! More than ever!”

Much later, when she seemed far more passionate about her cigarette than about him, he dared to ask why his truth, in contrast to hers, had deserved punishment.

“Your fateful love was Hilde; mine was Martin. The rest of them don’t belong here.”

Another thing confused him. It could happen at any time, except when making love—they could be listening to music, eating a meal, or just talking. Suddenly, she seemed to back away from him. A strange, bitter smile would appear on her face, and her mood would change as abruptly as the fickle weather of Sylt, where warm stillness gave way in seconds to an icy gale. When he mentioned it, she snapped irritably that nothing was wrong; she wasn’t moody, just thinking! After all, she couldn’t giggle at his every comment like an imbecile. If he wanted to stay with her—which was up to him—he should stop trying to force her to explain things and learn to deal with her as she was.

He asked himself why he should bother with the whims of this woman, when their only connection was a mutual need to dull the pain of irreplaceable loss. He got his answer one night when she failed to show up. Although it was his first chance at a good night’s sleep in days, he stared for hours into the darkness and tried to conjure up the sound of quick footsteps on the side staircase. With Hilde he had been a good husband; with Grete he was a complete man again. But he didn’t feel like much of a man at the moment. There was no point in drawing it out: if she wouldn’t explain why she stood him up, he would end it.

But the next night, when she ran up the stairs to his door, his need overwhelmed everything else. And when she hungrily kissed him like before, he lost his desire to ask the question. So she continued to come or sometimes not to come, when she supposedly wanted to be alone, and when she came, she drank, smoked, talked, and made love to him even more insistently. Then, by the time he returned from the shower she was asleep again, as if deep in thought, chin propped on the back of her hand.

Today, he dived into the bathtub, not knowing if he would see Grete or not, and took stock of their time together. He had known her less than thirty days, and yet she had altered the very fabric of his existence. She lent it meaning, he admitted; she gave him a goal, even if for now it was only to wait for her.

Like before in Dresden, in the days of his professional innocence, he studied the reports of potential widow killers on a daily basis. First he would listen as the translators summarized them for him, then later, with the office door locked, he would read the Czech originals over in detail. He consulted with Morava and his group as to what was and was not worthy of investigation, and meanwhile, diligently and unfalteringly as a barometer, measured the pressure and temperature in the ranks of the Czech police. This morning for the first time he would be able to satisfy Meckerle’s curiosity.

“If there’s a rebellion, the Czechs’ trump card will apparently be the radio, Standartenfuhrer.”

“No kidding,” his boss snorted in contempt. “Now there’s an idea. Radio’s been a target since the day it was invented.”

“I don’t mean the Protectorate radio station; a couple of tanks and a round of grenades will take care of it. I mean the city radio station.”

“And what’s that?”

“The central office for civil air-raid defense under the Prague police. Besides the sirens, it can patch through to all the public loudspeakers in the city.”

“Wouldn’t one tank and a single regiment be more than enough?”

“For the office, yes. I’d assume the Czechs are clever enough to broadcast by telephone from any local switchboard.”

“Aha,” Meckerle mused. “So what then? Cut the connections?”

“We could turn them off from the main post office, but then we’d be risking our own people’s lives; we don’t have a separate warning system.”

The giant leaned forward in his chair and thumped his elbows down onto the table, which indicated he expected his subordinate to make a suggestion.

“So, then.”

“With your permission I’ll ask our technicians and their Czech colleagues to check the state of the equipment across the entire city grid. Our agent will be there to map out all the stations. Then he’ll hand over a precise plan to the SS officer you designate, who will put together units that can occupy or decommission all the radio transmitters at once when the time comes.”

Meckerle sank back into the armchair.

“Dictate the order. Have it brought to me for my signature.”

Buback snapped to attention.

“Permission to leave, Standartenfuhrer.”

“No…” His boss visibly wavered before finally deciding. “Do me one personal favor, if you would. Take this note to… you know.”

“Yes,” he said, hoping that he wasn’t blushing. “Should I wait for a reply?”

His oversized boss looked as pleased as a child.

“Great idea, Buback! Thank you!”

“Silly idea, Buback!” said Grete, freshly returned from a performance. Balancing on the edge of the bathtub, she skimmed through the letter.

“Sorry,” he said humbly. “Somehow I thought it might divert any suspicions he had—”

“He’s got other problems at the moment,” she retorted. “He’s under suspicion himself.”

An image flashed through his mind: the conversation about that secret meeting of high-placed Reich chieftains, which had de facto contravened the Furhrer’s orders.

“Who suspects him, and why?” he asked tensely.

“His wife. Because of me. That’s the reason I have so much time for you.

“But for God’s sake, how did she find out?”

Grete tossed the paper away, stood up, and began to undress gracefully, a warm smile on her face.

“From me, love. I wrote her an anonymous letter. Now, let me into the tub.”

As always he read the daily papers on the night train. Still nothing! Meanwhile, for three long days they’d been going on about how the American president’s sudden death would disrupt the Western alliance with the Bolsheviks. He didn’t know much about politics, but was sure this was empty talk. The Reich was on its back, like a beetle that’s been kicked over. He grinned at the thought of a street full of Krauts, their boots scrabbling in the air.

He felt himself calming down, although home was still more than an hour away. He was alone in the compartment; the majority of travelers were commuters who had debarked by the time they reached Beroun. No one boarded the train there for Plzen; it was almost midnight. Despite the shock he had gotten, he wasn’t tired. Not in the least! He was content.

I’m reaching my stride!

There was no denying he’d made some nearly fatal mistakes. That whore was the worst one yet. He’d latched onto her by the cemetery as she hurried off to satisfy her lust. She was quiet as a mouse, the way she’d retreated so obediently, cowering with the knife at her throat. Then she did something he hadn’t expected. She threw open a door. Through it he could see a bed.

“Robert!” she shouted, and jerked away from his hand with such force that he dropped his knife. At the same time a man emerged from under the featherbed, naked but amazingly tall and with good biceps.

He broke out in a sweat; panic crippled him and drowned out everything else. Fortunately, it gave him time to realize the guy had no idea what was happening. Meanwhile, the woman, in an awkward retreat, tripped over the low footboard and fell on her back.

That was enough to allow him to bend down, grab the haft of his knife just below the long, thin blade, and then just stab. He reached the man’s heart in the first blow. It took three, maybe four for the woman; he didn’t count them. He managed to kill her even before the man’s body collapsed across hers. Interestingly enough, neither of them screamed.

He made sure he was in no danger from either of them and then sat down beside them on the bed. Eventually he caught his breath and stopped perspiring. All the while, he muttered curses at himself. Why did he lose his head so often? Where did the soldier in him go? He used to keep his cool even under fire. He’d have to get back on track…

On the other hand… how could he have known she’d already have a new stud in the bedroom?

He looked at the dead man’s face now and realized it wasn’t that of an adult. The height and broad shoulders were deceptive; the face was almost childlike, unmarked by great tragedies or passions. Suddenly he felt sorry.

That wasn’t what i planned!

This was a depraved relationship, and the boy was clearly the victim; that was why he was punishing them. And he would not stop…

UNTIL I WIPE THEM OUT!

A while later he threw off the cape and put down his postman’s bag. Methodically he proceeded through his task. The unfortunate boy he laid out in the bed, covering him up to his chest with the featherbed, unstained side up. He closed the boy’s panicked eyes so that it looked as if he were still asleep.

As he put the cursed soul into his satchel next to the unused straps, he decided to change his appearance again. Someone might wonder why an unfamiliar postman had been in the building so long. Then he remembered the caretaker on the embankment, still the only person to have gotten a good look at him. Maybe he should stop by today? No, not worth the risk; they might be watching.

I WILL GET HIM, ONE OF THESE DAYS!

After a short search he found a ball of hemp rope. He turned the cape inside out, wrapped the satchel in it, and tied it up, crisscrossing it with the twine into a shapeless bundle like the ones carried by countless Eastern refugees wandering across the Protectorate. He could not change his postman’s pants, but the boy’s jacket, with the sleeves turned up, obscured its origins.

As usual, he met no one in the building and felt sure the passersby outside were paying no attention.

As he finished his paper in the train, he was more interested in what they would say about him tomorrow than about the course of the war after Roosevelt’s death. However, he was sure of one thing: the decay of morality had spread so far—he’d witnessed it personally today— that he had to change his plans.

I’ll punish them every week!

Once again he felt an unpleasant tingling as he got off in Plzeh. Recently, food inspections had become more frequent on trains from the countryside. He hadn’t yet met one on an express from Prague. Fortunately the platform was empty. And anyway, he grinned to himself, what could be so interesting about a single solitary pig heart?

Between lovemaking and her stories they sipped champagne; right at the beginning she’d hauled three cases of it over in a taxi, Meckerle’s entire stock. He set up a military storehouse at my place, she said mockingly, and Buback did not dare to ask the next logical question.

She was sitting on the bed again, hugging her knees, wrapped in a large white towel as usual. He realized from the beginning that she was obsessed with cleanliness; she showered several times a night, and taught him to do the same. How had she done it near the front? he’d asked. She always chose lovers with running water, of course! And during the retreat? Suddenly she turned ashen.

“I told you I’d rather die than talk about that.”

He would have been glad to be finished for the night; the role of confessor, hearing the details of her love life, was mentally exhausting. He did feel honored, but at times her directness seemed almost cruel. She evidently wanted to emphasize the casual nature of their relationship, but why so bluntly? That night she seemed determined to finish the story whose beginning he already knew.

Grete managed to make Martin Siegel fall in love with her a second time and after a short tempestuous affair he even divorced on her account. Her own marriage had a catastrophic ending: amiable Hans, who up till the last believed he and Grete would reconcile, fell under a subway train on the way back from family court. She could only guess as to whether it was an accident or suicide—it happened while she was riding up the escalator. She was so in love with Martin, though, that this shameful tragedy affected her far less than the sudden change she saw in her relationship with Martin.

The banal story’s sudden change into drama managed to raise Buback’s weary eyelids.

“What change? Did he find someone else?”

“No, that wasn’t it. During our whole time together he never deceived me, not once. But I was the last in a line of conquests that always ended with him returning to his true love, the theater. I should have seen how easy it was to pry him away from his wife—it was more like I set her free. When he was learning and playing a big part, it was as if I didn’t exist. Othello and Mercurio occupied him far more than any passing fling could; a woman I could have buried, like any other competitor. Martin, that fantastic lover, stopped needing to make love when he was with me. Fleeced a second time! And what’s worse, I was still just his mistress; ‘we’ve both had our marriages already,” he’d say, “haven’t we, darling?” “

Then war broke out for real. Actors of Martin’s caliber did not have to enlist so long as they joined troupes entertaining German soldiers behind the front lines. Grete forced him to arrange for her to go as well, singing in a group with the depressing name
Freudenkiste
—“Box o‘ Joy.” She thought that, removed from the surroundings where he was king, he would come to appreciate her presence. They could return to their starting point, those rapturous nights in Hamburg. The director of the group, however, soon struck Martin’s modest handful of famous monologues, which had been his substitute for performing the classics; they bored the soldiers. Instead, he was condemned to recite trite little verses, meant to give men who used traveling whorehouses for sex an analogous replacement for emotions.

Martin was unbearable. Because he couldn’t punish that Nazi, she said—lighting a new cigarette while Buback rubbed his eyes quickly, so she wouldn’t see—he tormented her instead. He must have known how she longed for him and he must have wanted her himself at times, but he had an inhuman self-control; crawling into bed, he would turn away from her and fall asleep without so much as a good night.

Desperate and vengeful, what else could she do but have an affair— but with whom? Even after days of bathing in the Lido, the soldiers and officers currently recuperating in Rome after their Sicilian battles stank of God knows what, most likely death. And she would rather have died than sleep with a troupe member. Then she saw her chance.