She was, in fact, forty. She was from Duluth, Minnesota, where she had been left widowed, childless, and well-off shortly after the war began. Volunteering for the Red Cross seemed to be just the thing.
Her position carried with it enough assimilated rank for her to have a room at the Dorchester, and she spread enough cash around so that the room became a suite. She quickly got in the habit of dropping into the bar at cocktail time or after dinner with one or more of the prettier young Red Cross girls. They naturally attracted the handsome and dashing young pilots.
Eleanor Redmon had decided to cultivate Stanley S. Fine when she noticed the warm affection people had for him—people whom she had only previously seen on the silver screen.
It wasn’t difficult. All she had had to do was save a place for him at her table. And the results had been more than worth the effort: Soon, the Scorpion was able to write home that Major David Niven and Private Peter Ustinov had sat at “her” table in the Dorchester bar at the same time, and that her new friend, Captain Stanley S. Fine, who had been a vice president of Continental Studios, had had to lend them the money to pay their bill.
For his part, Stanley S. Fine watched with morbid fascination the Scorpion arrange her nightly intrigues in the bar. Young officers who came to the Scorpion’s table wondering how they would separate the blonde from the old broad frequently woke up the next morning with the old broad beside them in the old broad’s bed.
To Fine, whom she regarded as a decadent (and thus understanding) “movie person,” she frankly admitted that she found boys who wore officer’s uniforms and pilot’s wings—boys who were not old enough to vote— irresistible
He saw, too, how skillfully she charmed the middle-aged senior officers who frequented the Dorchester bar. To a man, they stoutly defended her when it was hinted that her interest in peach-skinned young officers was more than motherliness.
As the Scorpion, smiling broadly, reached the table, Fine saw that she was on her fifth or sixth Scotch, and thus likely to be both horny and bitchy.
With a little bit of luck, he thought, she might go after Canidy.
“Hello, Stanley!” she cried. “Introduce me to your friends!”
By friends, Fine understood, she meant Fulmar. Whittaker was obviously taken; and Canidy, wearing the uniform of a field-grade officer assigned to SHAEF and looking very tired, did not appear boyish. Fulmar, on the other hand, with his parachutist’s wings and shiny boots and Silver Star, did.
“Captain Stanfield, Major Canidy, Captain Whittaker, Lieutenant Fulmar, may I present Miss Redmon?”
“I’m very happy to meet you all,” the Scorpion said.
“Are you really going to sink your fangs into him?” Canidy asked.
“Jesus Christ!” Fine said.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“Stanley said you were going to sink your fangs into Eric,” Canidy said. “I’ve been wondering what he meant.”
“I can’t believe Stanley would say anything like that,” she said.
“That’s what he said,” Fulmar said.
The Scorpion’s eyes flashed with rage, but she elected to stay and pretend everyone was being very clever.
She sat down.
“Are you stationed in London, Major?” she asked as she took a cigarette from her purse and indicated she wanted a light from Fulmar.
“No,” Canidy said.
“And you must be with the Eighty-second Airborne,” she said to Eric.
“No,” Eric said.
“Then you must be involved in whatever Stanley is doing,” she said,“that no one’s supposed to talk about,” she added significantly.
“I thought Stan was with the SHAEF movie branch,” Canidy said.
“I am,” Fine said quickly.
“All right, then,” the Scorpion said. “We won’t talk about that.”
Her appetite, Fine saw, was whetted by her belief that the horny young hero was involved in intelligence.
“We’re assigned to the 32nd Bomber Group,” Canidy said. “I’m an engineering officer, and Eric has the parachute-rigging detachment.”
“Oh,” she said, more than a little disappointed. “Then you just met Stanley? ”
“Oh, no,” Canidy said,“we’re old pals. From Hollywood.”
The Scorpion brightened considerably.
“You’re in the industry?” she asked. Canidy nodded. She smiled at Fulmar. “I should have guessed. You carry yourself like an actor.”
“I’m not an actor, sorry,” Fulmar said sharply.
“But you were in the industry?” she insisted.
“Stuntman,” Canidy said. “He did all of Errol Flynn’s stunts. Alan Ladd’s, too.”
“Really?” she asked. “How fascinating!”
She beamed at Fulmar and sat down next to him.
Fulmar rose to the occasion. He told her that Errol Flynn had a phobia about horses, and that in his stocking feet Alan Ladd was five feet one and had to stand on a platform beside his leading ladies.
And then a full colonel, wearing a SHAEF patch and Chemical Warfare Service insignia, came to the table and asked the Scorpion to dance. She hesitated, and then got to her feet.
“Let’s get the hell out of here while she’s gone,” Canidy said, standing.
Fulmar and Fine quickly followed him into the lobby.
“You don’t have to come with us, Eric,” Canidy said. “You could pursue the Red Cross lady. She seemed fascinated with you.”
“Don’t laugh,” Fulmar said. “As she stood up to dance with the colonel, that kindly old gray-haired lady grabbed me on the cock.”
“Well, you can’t say Stanley didn’t warn you,” Canidy said, laughing.
“I didn’t believe him,” Fulmar said.
The Packard was outside, but the driver was a tall, thin WRAC corporal. Which meant, Canidy thought, that Agnes was off somewhere with Bitter.
“We’ll take the car,” Canidy said. “I don’t think that Jimmy and Her Gracefulness are going out anywhere.”
On the way to meet Joe Kennedy and John Dolan at the Air Corps Officers’ Club, Eric said,“Before we get schnockered, what should I do about my mother? See her or not?”
“That’s up to you, pal,” Canidy said. “She’s not my mother.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “What the hell, she is my mother.”
“If you’re asking if there is any reason you shouldn’t see her, some OSS reason,” Canidy said,“the answer is the OSS doesn’t give a damn, one way or the other.”
“I wonder where she is, how I could find her?”
“Take care of that little detail for the lieutenant, Stanley, will you?” Canidy said.
“Sure,” Fine said.
“Thanks,” Eric Fulmar said, emotionally.
XII
Chapter ONE
The Kurhotel
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany
17 January 1943
After Peis brought Gisella and some trollop into the restaurant, it was a little awkward between Müller and Gisella. Stiff and formal. Which was understandable. Gisella was embarrassed. Everyone would think she, too, was a whore Peis was serving up to him.
Gisella is not a whore, Müller thought. She did what she did because she had no control of it. A whore is a whore because she wants to be a whore, because it is easier. Gisella was forced to sleep with other men because Peis is an asshole.
But what other people think about Gisella tonight can’t be helped. Actually, it’s useful: It will be safer for both of us if everyone thought she was what she looked like: a young woman being sweet to an older man because he was a Standartenführer who could provide nice things that younger, less important men could not.
Even when Müller and Gisella danced—despite what had happened between them on New Year’s Eve—it was awkward. They danced like a father with his daughter. Which was also understandable, though he wasn’t quite old enough to be her father.
&nb
sp; But as they came off the dance floor, Gisella caught his hand in hers. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. When they reached the table and had to let go, he knew she really wished she could continue holding his hand.
Right after dinner, Müller let Peis know it was time for him to go and take his whore with him. Peis predictably made it clear he was quite aware that Müller was anxious to take Gisella to bed. As she rose to leave, Peis’s whore kissed Gisella.
“Liebling,” she said, wearing her most ravishing smile, “I know we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
This upset Müller more than he wanted to admit.
Peis then came to attention, clicked his heels, threw a stiff Nazi salute, and bellowed loud enough for everybody in the room to hear him (which was clearly his intention),“Guten Abend, Herr Standartenführer. Heil Hitler!”
Müller returned the salute with a casual movement of his arm.
After Peis and his whore had left, Gisella started smiling. Müller looked at her quizzically.
“I have seen more formal salutes,” Gisella said.
Gisella was looking at him. Into his face—his eyes. It was the first time she had done that.
"I think I am going to have a brandy,” Müller said. “Can I order something for you?”
“I will have a brandy, too, please,” Gisella said.
The proprietor personally delivered the brandy, displaying it like a treasure. It was one of his last two bottles, he said, as he placed a balloon glass in front of Gisella and then Müller.
“Before the war,” Gisella said when the proprietor had stepped away, “this is what my father used to drink.”
“Then we’ll buy him a bottle,” Müller said.
Her eyes were bright with pleasure.
“Could you?”
“Of course,” he said. “You heard him, he has two.”
That didn’t please her. It seemed to frighten her.
“When you’re finished,” he said,“I will take you home, if you like.”
“I would like, I think, to dance.”
This time, they did not dance like father and daughter. He could feel the softness of her breasts against him, and then Gisella laid her head against his chest, and he could smell her hair.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
“All right.”
Is she in some kind of trouble? If that swine Peis…
“Are you sending me home, Johnny?” Gisella asked.
“I thought you—”
For an answer, she squeezed his hand again.
It is entirely possible that Gisella would prefer to be the girlfriend of a Standartenführer—even an old, turning-to-fat, balding, peasant Standartenführer—to being at Peis’s beck and call.
So what? What do you care why, just so you can get in her pants?
And then he discarded as beyond credibility that she might like him for himself.
“Why don’t we take the cognac to your room?” Gisella asked softly.
She knows what will happen there; that isn’t a riding crop pressing against her belly.
Gisella went straight into the bathroom when they reached his room. She came out in her slip, which was cotton, practical, and ill-fitting.
I should have bought her some nice underwear.
Then Müller took a quick shower, and, a little self-consciously, splashed 4711 cologne on his chest and under his arms and down there. He wrapped a towel around his middle and walked back to the bedroom.
Gisella lay in the bed, and she’d tossed her ugly slip on the back of a chair. She’s naked under the blankets! She raised her arm and held the sheets and blanket open for him.
When he slipped in beside her, she moved so that she was half on top of him, her leg over his, her face against his chest. He marveled at the softness of her back.
"Johnny,” Gisella said, her voice muffled,“I’ve been listening to the BBC.”
“You can go to jail for that,” he said tenderly, making it a joke.
“I wasn’t surprised when Peis brought the radio,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
"’Gisella thanks Eric for the radio,’ ” she quoted.
“Aren’t you afraid your neighbors will report you?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m careful.”
“I think it will be all right now,” he said. “Peis is afraid of me.”
“I should be afraid of you,” Gisella said. “Somehow I’m not. Quite the opposite. ”
He tightened his arm around her.
“That was a message to you, wasn’t it?” Gisella asked.
“Yes, we think so,” Müller said.
“We?”
“The less you know, the safer you are,” he said. And immediately knew that was nonsense. If they were caught, it wouldn’t matter how much or how little Gisella knew. They would both die, very slowly and very hard, at the hands of someone like Peis.
“I knew the other one was, I don’t know, a confirmation of the first.”
“What other one?” he asked.
“There were two messages.”
He looked down at her, saw her scalp where she parted her hair, looked down to see her breast half flattened against his abdomen.
He didn’t want to talk about messages. He just wanted to be where he was, with her naked against him, feeling her heart beat against his chest.
“Ach, Gott!” he said, and then: “I don’t know about a second message. And I have to know.”
“‘Bübchen wants to paddle Gisella’s canoe again,’” she quoted, so solemnly that he chuckled.
“What’s it mean?” he asked. “How do you know it’s for you? What does it mean, about a canoe? ‘Bübchen’?”
She was silent for a moment.
“Why did you have to laugh?” she asked.
“Sometimes I’m an asshole,” he said.
“I was older than Eric,” she said.
“And you called him ‘Bübchen’?”
She nodded her head “yes” against his chest.
“And the canoe? What’s that mean?”
She told him about the picnic on the bank of the Lahn River the day before Eric Fulmar had disappeared from Marburg.
Surprising himself, he lowered his head and kissed her hair.
“It’s humiliating, having to tell you,” Gisella said.
“Why?” he said. “You were forced to be with him.”
“Not that much,” Gisella said.
“You fell in love with him?” he asked.
“Something like that was impossible,” she said.
“Are you still in love with him?” he asked, with a valiant effort to sound dispassionate.
Gisella pushed herself off him and looked down at him.
“Would you believe me if I told you ‘no’?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then ‘no.’”
“I’m glad,” he said.
She threw herself into his arms again.
“What the hell is it all about?” she asked plaintively.
“It’s one of two things, I think,” he said. “He—they—either want something from your father, or they want to get him, maybe both of you, out of Germany.”
“I have been asking Father to come up with some connection with Eric,” Gisella said. “But he simply doesn’t remember him.”
“I’ll have to have a go at that,” he said.
“With my father?”
“Yes.”
“He pretends he doesn’t know about Peis,” Gisella said. “I don’t know how he’d react if you showed up at the house.”
“We’re going to have to find out,” he said.
“I suppose,” she said.
They lapsed into silence.
Two minutes later, Müller said,“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
“That’s an elaborate compliment,” Gisella said. “When men pay elaborate compliments, they generally want someth
ing.”
He felt his face flush.
“Does that mean you want to make love?” Gisella asked.
“It didn’t,” he said, taken back, hurt. “But yes, I do,” he added defiantly.
“Good,” she said, pushing herself erect and looking down at him again. “I was afraid you would go to sleep on me.” She saw the look on his face. “Why are you so surprised?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I am. I’ve never… been successful… with women.”
“You are with this one,” Gisella said, and took his hand. “See? Feel?”
Chapter TWO
12 Burgweg
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany
1000 Hours 18 January 1943
No one really knew how old Burgweg was. Presumably, it had been there before the fortress was built. The guidebooks said the fortress had been built “circa A.D. 900 (?) around an earlier watchtower.”
The road itself, paved with cobblestones, was steep. And covered as it was now with a thin layer of snow over ice, it was slippery. The rear end of Müller’s Opel Admiral slewed from side to side, frequently bouncing against the curb on the down side of the hill. Several times it almost scraped the buildings that were flush with the side of the road.
The numbering ran from the top downward. They were almost at the gate in the fortress itself when Müller carefully bounced the right wheels of the car over the granite curb and brought the Admiral to a stop. The big car was now half off the road, with its nose almost touching a large sign.
The sign carried the standard No Parking symbol: a P crossed by a diagonal red bar as well as (for special emphasis) the legend “Parking Absolutely Forbidden at Any Time.”
Müller was unconcerned. Few policemen would even consider issuing a citation to an Opel Admiral. None would be foolhardy enough to even look twice at this Opel Admiral. Müller’s vehicle carried not only Berlin license plates, but also, in the spot where common citizens and lesser officials carried the stamp signifying the payment of taxes, his plates bore a small, inconspicuous stamp signifying that taxes had been waived for this vehicle as it was in the service of the Schutzstaffel-Sicherheitsdienst.
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