Target Churchill

by Warren Adler

  He cleaned himself up in the communal bathroom, shaved, and managed to get into clean pants, a shirt, sweater, and windbreaker. He groomed himself carefully, taking his time, a reminder of his SS glory days. He half hoped she would grow tired of waiting.

  He was wrong.

  “You clean up nice,” she said. She led him to the wheelchair, which she opened, then patted the seat. “Enthrone yourself.”

  The man behind the desk shook his head. She threw him a haughty and contemptuous glance, then moved the wheelchair into the street.

  She had been right about the weather, which was uncommonly warm for December. She wheeled him slowly past the Ellipse in the direction of the Potomac. They passed rows of temporary office buildings.

  “Remember your stroller days?” she said, moving at a swift pace, stopping finally at a bench overlooking the tidal basin and the Jefferson Memorial, its white marble gleaming in the sun.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” she said.

  He hadn’t said a word since leaving the Y. The situation was both mysterious and frightening. He tried to put it in the context of an intrigue, giving it a business twist, eschewing any emotional content. He forced his thoughts to deal with what her motives could be. Surely, he tried convincing himself, she had glommed on to him for a reason. Either the Americans were on to him, or the NKVD was concocting another plan. He had acquiesced, he assured himself, to get to the bottom of such suspicions.

  Trust no one, Dimitrov had cautioned.

  If she were an enemy, he would have to find a way to either evade her or dispatch her. Sitting here in the open, with little chance of being overheard, he speculated that she might be the conduit for more instructions from Dimitrov. It was inconceivable that her attraction was casual.

  “So why are we here?” he asked, observing her in profile.

  She turned to him and smiled.

  “You’re a strange one,” she said. “Why not just enjoy it?”

  Was she being cagey? He wondered. Or playing with him?

  “I’d like to know why,” he said.

  Despite the pleasure of her proximity, he could not shake his suspicions.

  “So would I, if you must know,” she chuckled. “I’m not sure myself. It’s a bit of a mystery, even to me.”

  “What is?”

  “Never mind.”

  He saw her flush, as if little patches of rouge had been applied to her cheeks.

  “Maybe you’re a challenge,” she mumbled. “Maybe that’s it.”

  “A challenge?” He was baffled.

  “Am I making a fool of myself?” she asked.

  He shook his head and sucked in a deep breath.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he told her.

  “You’re probably right.”

  They sat quietly, he in the wheelchair, she on the bench. From their vantage, they could see the low line of the Pentagon. He was conscious of her disturbing presence beside him.

  This is stupid and wrong! He rebuked himself, still unable to fully trust her motives.

  Then suddenly, he felt her hand touch his and caress it. He dared not look into her face, but he felt the inspection of her eyes.

  Inexplicably, he allowed her fingers to entwine with his. He felt her hand’s pressure in his and, to his surprise, returned it. She said nothing, turning her head away, watching the lazy flow of the muddy Potomac. As the sun declined, the air turned cooler.

  “Are you cold, Frank?” she whispered.

  It felt strange to hear her speak his name.

  Franz, he wanted to tell her. My name is Franz.

  “I’m fine.”

  He felt more confusion than chill. What was he doing here with this woman, holding her hand? He knew it was dangerous, but the fact was that he felt no danger, only a strange feeling of exultation.

  “Are you cold, Frank?” she whispered again, her lips close to his ear.

  Something was changing too rapidly for him to assess. By using his first name, she was accelerating the level of intimacy.

  He shook his head but said nothing. He was too busy sorting out his feelings. He wanted to address her by her first name, Stephanie. He wanted to say, Stephanie. But he held back.

  “Hungry?” she asked. “We could go to a restaurant if you’d like.” She looked at her watch. “I’m free until six.”

  Actually, he wasn’t hungry. Food was the last thing on his mind.

  “That would be nice,” he heard himself say, knowing now he was being carried by a momentum he could not resist.

  Again he cautioned himself. She might be here for a purpose. Be wary.

  They sat for a while longer, holding hands but saying little. He was determined to keep silent, hoping that she would soon tire of his lack of communication. Neither did he wish to ask her any questions about herself, fearful of starting a dialogue.

  Finally, after a long period of silence between them, she stood up.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” she said.

  He nodded his consent.

  She wheeled him to a modest restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he insisted she leave the wheelchair outside and clumped his way inside.

  “Machismo,” she giggled.

  It was true, he agreed. Actually, he hated the idea of seeming dependent, especially on a woman, although secretly he was beginning to enjoy the attention.

  The restaurant had plastic tabletops and middle-aged female waitresses. They both made quick choices of the blue plate special: fried chicken, spinach, and cottage-style potatoes. While waiting, their eyes met across the table and held.

  “It’s nice being with you, Frank,” she said, as if it were a confession.

  She paused, obviously priming herself.

  “What I don’t understand….” Hesitating, she explored his face. “…Don’t you have anybody in Washington…?”

  “I’m fine,” he interrupted. “I told you, I’m just passing through.”

  “From where to where?” she asked.

  He continued to look at her, not knowing exactly how to respond. Apparently, she was ahead of him.

  “It’s all right, Frank. I was being nosy. Your prerogative—I won’t pry.”

  For the moment, her statement satisfied him. But he was certain that she would continue to be curious. Better to put the onus on her, he decided.

  “Why did you become a nurse?” he asked, deflecting the conversation.

  He admitted to his own curiosity now, still unsure about her role.

  “There was a shortage,” she replied. “And please, I don’t want to sound noble. Someday, I think I’d like to go to medical school, become a doctor. When things settle down.”

  She seemed to be talking in shorthand, which raised his suspicions again.

  When he asked no follow-up questions, she continued, “I mean I like nursing. I guess I’m a natural caregiver.”

  He waited with trepidation, wondering when she would begin to pry again, wary of the ultimate response: And you?

  The blue plate special came. The chicken was stringy and the cottage fries greasy, but they did not comment on it and picked at their food. But when they looked at each other, their eyes held.

  Miller had never been in this position before. He felt the odd pull of it, the strange sense of inchoate longing.

  “Been in Washington a year now. Actually, in two weeks it will be my anniversary,” she said, suddenly as if in midsentence.

  He suspected she was talking about herself to induce him to speak about himself.

  “Do you like it here?” he said, deliberately focusing the spotlight on her.

  “Lots of stuff happening. They say that now that the war is over, they might be reducing staff here. There’ll be plenty of work at the VA hospitals, lots of wounded men to be cared for. I used to work
in Massachusetts. We treated everybody, POWs, too.”

  “Germans?”

  Without thinking, he had blurted the question.

  Her eyes widened, and she nodded and smiled.

  “Some Italians, too. The human body is the human body; we’re all flesh and blood.” She knocked on his cast through his shirt. “Even you—big, silent Frank Miller.”

  Oddly, he felt a sudden unburdening, a release. He heard himself chuckling.

  “Well, well,” she said. “The man doth smile.”

  She looked at her wristwatch, the face of which was on the underside of her wrist. He noted that her fingers were long and graceful, tapered with short nails. Leaving most of their food untouched, he paid the check, clumped his way outside, and got into the chair.

  Keeping silent, she rolled him into the lobby of the Y.

  “Have a good ride, Miller?” the clerk at the desk said.

  They both ignored the comment.

  “Remember the rules.”

  There was a little room off the lobby and away from the prying eyes of the man at the desk. She wheeled him there, and he got out of the wheelchair, which she folded and leaned against the wall.

  Then she turned to face him. He felt his stomach tighten and beads of sweat roll down his back under his cast. They faced each other for a long moment.

  “I’m glad I came, Frank. I wasn’t sure.”

  He stood silently looking at her, rooted to the spot. His strange yearning seemed to overwhelm him, but he could not bring himself to react.

  “I’m glad you did,” he stammered.

  His knees started to tremble. Reaching out, she moved toward him, and they kissed, a long deep kiss, yet another totally new experience for him. He felt her hand caress the back of his head.

  “Tomorrow,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t want to cause you trouble with the management.”

  She disengaged reluctantly and started to move away, then she came back, and they kissed again. Her pelvis pressed against him, and he was certain she felt his erection, which, inexplicably, embarrassed him. She moved away, looked back, and waved, then was gone.

  Back in his room, he lay down on the bed without undressing and tried to make sense out of this uncommon encounter. What did it mean? He could not relate it to anything he had ever experienced. Try as he might to put it out of his mind, he could not succeed. His reality seemed skewered. This situation was interfering with his concentration. He tried going through the machinations of an impending assassination attempt on the president but could not get a potential plan straight in his mind.

  He was still erect. But it was a different kind of desire, something more than merely the anticipation of impending pleasure. There was more to this, a lot more. He reached for his penis with his left hand. It was too awkward for him to masturbate. Besides, the expression “beat the monkey” seemed too crude to associate with her. He felt oddly ashamed.

  She came the next day and the next. He made his regular call before she arrived, and they spent the day together. Strange things were happening. The mission, which had totally absorbed him since arriving in the States, seemed to fade into the background of his life. He was well aware that one day, he would be summoned, but the anticipation seemed to be getting less real.

  Before his accident, he had been totally focused on the impending assignment. Now, he no longer bothered to read the papers or listen to the radio. What was happening in Europe was of little interest; even Dimitrov’s face faded in his memory.

  It had been months since he had arrived in Washington. If it weren’t for his daily call, he might have thought that he had been forgotten.

  Stephanie was what absorbed his full attention. He felt charged, invaded. It was getting increasingly hard to be evasive and was becoming less and less difficult to clump around. She wheeled him around Washington, and they kissed and fondled each other wherever they could snatch some privacy. At times, they indulged themselves in mutual masturbation, but it seemed demeaning and unsatisfactory.

  It was awkward and frustrating for both of them. She lived with three other nurses in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest Washington. The housing shortage was acute. He had been lucky to get his room at the Y, but he suspected that his so-called sponsors had pulled strings to get him in. Apparently, they wanted him based at that specific spot. He suspected that he might be under surveillance, but he soon dismissed the idea.

  “We could go to a hotel,” he suggested.

  She told him it would be uncomfortable for her. House detectives might make trouble. She could lose her job. It would have been an unacceptable risk for him as well.

  Dimitrov had warned him that once he got the car to Washington, he should use it only as necessary for the mission, the less exposure the better, with no risk of being stopped and ticketed for a violation. What would be the harm, he decided, provided he could handle it in his present condition? After all, he had been careful on his trip from Canada. Besides, the car was America’s love chamber. In Germany, the cars were too small and cramped.

  His revelation about the car surprised her.

  “Can you drive?” he asked.

  She shook her head in the negative. “Too busy to learn.”

  He was able to manage it, and they began to drive and park along deserted roads in Virginia. They began to make love in the car.

  “I’m not very experienced, Frank,” she told him. “I’m also a virgin.”

  “Is that important to you?” he had asked.

  “It was,” she said. “Until now.”

  He did not press the point. Yet their lovemaking was passionate, and they satisfied themselves in ways that did not interfere with her virginity.

  “Are you sure, Frank?” she would ask at times, when they had reached a point where a little more effort would have settled the question.

  Of course, his being in a cast was inhibiting, even when they moved to the backseat. They never undressed completely. Besides, they each felt the tension of accidental discovery.

  He remembered an expression from his teen days in America: “Everything but.” Even the girls at Yaphank were guarded about their virginity, although it was at Yaphank that he had lost his with an older girl. He had been fifteen; the girl was seventeen.

  Back in Germany, Himmler had created camps where SS men and carefully screened girls were available strictly for propagation purposes. There was no love involved; it was sex by the numbers. He had been paired with a girl from Munich who was hell-bent on having a baby for the Führer. It hadn’t been a very satisfactory episode, barely pleasurable, and he learned later, she hadn’t conceived. Remembering that, he did not press the issue. Besides, an accidental pregnancy would be a complication he did not want.

  Despite their physical intimacy, he kept himself carefully guarded, always leaving open the possibility that she might be an agent, a mole like himself, planted to find out what he was up to. And yet, when he held her in his arms, he could not imagine someone so beautiful, open, and loving could stir such suspicions.

  Of course, there was dialogue between them, but he kept any answers deflective and evasive. He was wary of revealing anything of his past, his point of view, his beliefs and prejudices, his hatred of the Jews and all mongrel races, his absolute belief that the destiny of the pure Germanic race was to one day rule the world, that Adolph Hitler’s defeat was merely a temporary pause in this great crusade.

  Surely, he was convinced that she was of Aryan stock. She was blue-eyed, and her pubic hair was golden. Her breasts were large, delicious, and he greedily sucked her nipples. Together, with their classic Germanic looks, they could make beautiful Aryan children. Despite all his discipline and self-control, something had occurred deep inside him, beyond his control.

  She made some small effort to probe beyond the scrim of his silence; and in order to protect himself, he invented
a line of half-truths. He had grown up in New Jersey, which was true, although he was not specific. When she asked about his parents, he said they were both dead, which was true. He gave his correct age of twenty-seven, which she could find out if she went through his forged identification papers.

  “Have you plans for the future?” she asked, numerous times.

  That answer departed from any semblance of truth. In his mind, he remained an SS man, a soldier, a knight in a holy cause. Instead, he invented another persona. He told her he had planned to study architecture, build things. He was on his way to California—it could have been anywhere. He had spent the war years in the merchant marine on Victory ships. But when she probed beyond the thin slice of information, he balked and changed the subject.

  Rather than questioning her, he waited until she volunteered. She was twenty-two, had grown up in Newton, Massachusetts. Her father was a physician, her mother a housewife. She had two brothers; both had been in the army. Yet, he detected hesitation, which instigated brief episodes of heightened suspicion, and he could not contain his curiosity.

  “Why me?” he asked. “Why single me out?”

  “That again,” she sighed.

  “You must have had reasons. You see many patients in the hospital.”

  “I can only say, my darling, the human heart cannot be explained. It takes you on strange journeys when you least expect it.”

  He admitted some difficulty with the explanation.

  “But why me?” he pressed.

  “I can’t explain attraction, Frank. I was just drawn to you, I guess. Maybe you were sending out signals. Who knows? Maybe you looked needy. But there is no denying you struck a chord. I’m sorry, but I guess I yielded to an impulse.”

  She started a playful chain of kisses from his forehead to his lips. Then she stopped and observed his face.

  “And to you,” she said.

  He laughed and kissed her forehead.

  “I guess I was a vulnerable target.”

  “Are you sorry?” she asked coyly.