Lucky Bastard

by Charles McCarry

  “Ouch.”

  “No remarks,” Greta said. “Actions only. I will do everything. You will respond. Understand?”

  She began.

  “Jesus, Greta,” Jack said.

  “Shut up,” Greta said, lifting her head. “Think only about what is happening.”

  While it happened the party went on at the other end of the house, murmurous, punctuated by the ring of china and crystal. Over the noise of his own rushing bloodstream, Jack heard rippling laughter—soprano, tenor, and bass-baritone guffawing in unison, as if a choir had just been told a joke by a bishop.

  Greta took Jack through a sexual act the likes of which he had never imagined, much less experienced. Seconds before it should have ended, she bit him.

  Jack said, “Don’t stop, for God’s sake!”

  “You sign a blank check? You will pay me anything? Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Afterward, Jack sank to the floor, exhausted. In the hall, the guests were saying goodbye. German words of parting drifted down the corridor. Outside the open front door, powerful engines started; tires crunched on gravel.

  Wearing nothing but her black stockings, Greta stood up and glanced round the room. “Ah,” she said. “Somebody cleared the dishes for us.”

  5 Greta drove Jack back to Heidelberg in a different car, her own Mercedes roadster.

  “About the blank check,” she said, “this is my price. You and I must be an absolute secret. No one must know about us. No one must know that we even know each other.”

  “Manfred knows. So does everybody at the party we just went to.”

  “Manfred thinks I hate you. The ones at the party are blind. You understand the bargain? Yes or no?”

  “If you put it that way, yes.”

  “Good. ‘No’ would have meant death.”

  Greta smiled her glittering sidewise smile and turned up the music. Jack saw no sign that she was joking. The car, faster and more nimble than the antique Daimler, hurtled down the steep road like a stone released from a slingshot.

  After that, the sex games continued. Greta always came to him; by the rules of their affair he was forbidden to approach her, even to call her. Each encounter was comprised of one act only, never more. Jack was always left in a state of arousal.

  “Next time, something better,” she would whisper, then slip away.

  Jack could never imagine anything better than what had just happened, but Greta always kept her promise. Jack lived in a world of continual erotic surprise. They had sex constantly, always feverishly, always in risky situations: on park benches, in cars, in cinemas, in darkened churches, in bathrooms at parties after ignoring each other all evening, on trains and buses, outdoors in darkness and light, in rain and snow. Greta was perverse, wild, beautiful, hot as a firecracker, insatiable. Often Greta would pounce on him in disguise. She wore wigs, costumes, walked on crutches, dressed as an old woman or a little boy. Jack was obsessed by her and by this game of sex that had no limits and never ended.

  As a result of such conditioning, Jack’s sexual personality altered. From an amateur rapist who remembered nothing and imagined nothing, he was transformed into a sex object who reimagined the hours he spent with his lover and attempted, always in vain, to guess what oriental delight was coming next. As Greta put it in one of her reports, “He is losing his power to fuck and forget.”

  Greta was an expert. She had been trained in these matters by a technician Peter had sent to her two years before, when she was seventeen. This man, a German who had been brought to Moscow by Communist parents who escaped from the Nazis and later died in the gulag, looked like he had stepped out of an SS recruiting poster. During a summer holiday in Majorca, he had taught Greta the entire manual for Swallows, as girls and boys who provide operational sex were called by our organization. Usually such youngsters have the temperament for this work to begin with; Greta certainly did, which made her subsequent recruitment quite easy. And usually they fall in love, as Greta did, with their teachers. Alas, back in Russia this virtuoso of the bedstead was as unhappily married as anyone else, so he and Greta met only when he had an assignment for her. And afterward, when she collected her reward.

  Our original interest in Greta was not herself but her father, who was an important figure in the Christian Democratic Party. Most of the glossy people Jack encountered at the Fürsts’ villa were leading political figures of the German Federal Republic. But Greta was so revolutionary, so highly sexed, and so wild, that we soon realized that we could not get to her father through her. Herr Fürst was a practical man who knew that his daughter was an uncontrollable psychopath and would thank us most sincerely if we got rid of her for him.

  So Greta became a time bomb, and her psychosis became a fuse for Peter to light and walk away from. If she blew a finger or two from her father’s hand when she went off, so much the better.

  6 The fuse was quite long. Sometime in March, after five months of operant conditioning—certain behavior by the organism earns certain rewards from the operator—the time came for Greta to lead Jack onto more dangerous ground.

  The ground chosen was a low-grade operation run by Manfred, who was a station-keeper on an underground railroad for American deserters. Manfred’s method was to entrap lonely GIs with young German girls, who would then turn them against the Vietnam War and persuade them to desert. Heidelberg, location of the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe, was an excellent place to do this work. Once the soldiers had deserted they were smuggled into Sweden, where—after denouncing America and its colonialist-imperialist war in Southeast Asia—they were granted political asylum and granted stipends, university scholarships, and other benefits arranged by members of the Swedish antiwar movement. After that, their sex lives, like the other parts of their lives, were over. Most turned themselves in to the American embassy after a few months of loneliness, and went home to be court-martialed and dishonorably discharged.

  As these trivial results suggest, this was meaningless work except as a training exercise for youths who would later be asked to perform more serious missions. It was virtually free of risk because the U.S. Army had no police powers in Germany and the German police did not care how many American soldiers escaped to Sweden.

  It was the no-risk factor that made it attractive as a way to provoke a predictable response in Jack. He would, we knew, be terrified at the prospect of being involved in such an operation. Realizing that he could not be drawn into such an activity gradually, or be talked into it, we instructed Greta to entrap him, then compromise him. The obvious means were already in place: yet another sexual ambush. We waited until he was firmly in Greta’s power, then sprang our surprise.

  This time Greta, driving her Mercedes roadster, picked Jack up as he walked along a busy street on his way home after class. It was late afternoon. As usual Greta offered no explanation, made no small talk. She wore her rich-girl costume, cashmere and tweed, crocodile and gold.

  With Jack beside her, she drove out of town, north on the autobahn. At first Jack saw nothing unusual about this; they sometimes rode a long way before arriving at whatever destination Greta had in mind. This time, however, they drove on for hours, listening to music, saying little, because every time Jack tried to speak, Greta ordered him back into silence by laying a finger across her lips.

  When they did talk, Greta insisted that they speak German. By now Jack spoke the language like a precocious twelve-year-old. Around nine o’clock, as they left Hamburg behind, Jack asked Greta what she had in mind.

  “For a while,” he said, “I thought maybe we were going to get out of the car and tear off a piece on the autobahn.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Greta replied. She turned her head and smiled. The smile lasted a long time. They were traveling at more than 100 mph. In his anxiety, for which no one could blame him, Jack took a deep breath filled with the sound of saliva, extended his palms, and pressed his body against the back of his seat.

  “Good move, Jack,” G
reta said. “You are now five centimeters farther away from the next car we crash into.”

  She accelerated to 120 mph, flicked the wheel to the right, crossed five lanes of high-speed traffic, and plunged with shrieking tires down an exit ramp.

  Jack covered his eyes with his hands. When he uncovered them, he saw that the car was speeding along a two-lane road that ran straight north across a marshy, featureless plain. Greta was still driving at the same tremendous rate of speed she had maintained on the autobahn.

  Jack said, “I have to pee.”

  “Soon,” Greta said.

  Jack saw a sign: CUSTOMS AHEAD. PREPARE TO STOP.

  He said, “Denmark?”

  With a squeal of brakes, Greta pulled into a rest area where several cars with German and Danish tags and many large trucks were already parked. The frontier was in sight now, a glow of lights from the customs posts clearly visible about a kilometer away.

  Greta said, “You can piss now. I’ll join you.”

  Jack jerked his head, indicating the parked trucks.

  “They’re asleep,” Greta said, squatting behind the Mercedes, lifting her cashmere skirt.

  Jack felt a stab of anxiety; in spite of the delights it produced, Greta’s exhibitionism still made him nervous. He turned his back and emptied his bladder.

  This took a long time. Behind him he heard Greta opening the trunk. Its light went on.

  Jack, still pissing, turned his head. Greta was looking into the trunk. He heard her say, in English, “Almost there. Would you like to pee-pee?”

  A second voice replied, “No thanks, I used the bottle.”

  Jack whirled, zipping up, and saw an American soldier curled up in the trunk.

  Greta handed Jack a bottle filled with the soldier’s urine. She said, in German, “Empty this.”

  The soldier, sleepy-eyed, was staring straight at Jack. Jack dropped the bottle. It smashed on the pavement, releasing the odor of its contents.

  Jack stared wildly at Greta. “You’re crazy,” he said.

  Greta said, “Time to go.” She closed the trunk. “Your turn to drive.”

  “Across the frontier?”

  Greta said, “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to get fucked in Denmark?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  She held up the car keys and shook them. “Then I’ll fuck the soldier right in front of your eyes and leave you here. How much money have you got on you?”

  A wave of nausea took hold of Jack. He never had more than ten marks in his pocket.

  “I said no, Greta, and I mean it,” he said. But his voice wavered.

  “Then you’ll want to ask somebody for a ride back to Heidelberg,” she said. “Do you know how to say that in German?”

  She reached inside the car and blew the horn. Truck drivers woke up and looked out the windows of their cabs.

  Greta opened the trunk. She said, “I’ll count to ten. Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf—”

  Jack said, “I can’t do it, Greta.”

  “Fine.”

  She reached under her skirt and wriggled out of her panties. To the soldier in the trunk she said, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Duane,” the soldier said.

  She lifted her skirt. “Would you like a little going-away present, Duane?”

  The soldier’s eyes opened wide. Jack slammed the trunk lid closed. “Give me the keys.”

  She slid the key into the trunk lock. “First you get into the car.”

  When Jack was behind the wheel, Greta put the keys in the ignition and started the engine.

  Jack’s hands trembled on the wheel. He said, “I’ll have to show them my passport.”

  “That’s the whole idea,” Greta said. “Duane doesn’t have one.”

  He put his forehead on the steering wheel. “I can’t do this.”

  “Choose, Jack! Lust or fear!” She held a wetted forefinger under his nose.

  Jack put the car in gear and drove toward the lights of the Danish customs post.

  When the guard saw the cover of Jack’s passport, he waved them through without inspection.

  7 After the Danish adventure, Greta told Jack that they would be together one more time—and only one. She would choose the moment and the place.

  “It vill be vonderful,” Greta whispered, Dietriching w’s into v’s as Jack liked her to do. “I vill give you vot you’ve always vanted.”

  “Vot vill that be?”

  “Silly boy! Vot else? A maiden’s dearest possession.”

  And then she broke contact.

  Jack did not see Greta again or have another woman (for she really had spoiled him for his old pleasures) for seven weeks. Then, on a rare sunny morning in May, Jack, who had gotten plump again, was out for his morning run along the Neckar embankment when the antique Daimler pulled up beside him.

  The windows of the Daimler were down. A Strauss waltz blared from the speakers; cars behind it sounded their horns. Greta smiled at him through the open window. She wore a blond wig with two long braids. She pulled over to the curb, then slid across the front seat, reached into the back, and flung open the door.

  “Get in,” she said. She was dressed in a puffy dirndl, petticoats billowing above her bare, dimpled knees.

  Gasping with laughter, Jack got into the backseat. Greta slammed the door, rolled up the front window, and put the car in motion to a fanfare of klaxons. She looked at Jack in the rearview mirror.

  “Take off those clothes,” she said.

  He wore a sweat-soaked T-shirt and running shorts.

  “I’m going to get perspiration all over the leather,” he said.

  “Never mind. No one will ever know you’ve been here.”

  No one could see him through the smoked windows. He did as she ordered. Greta drove on, shooting glances at him in the rearview mirror. In moments he was naked except for his running shoes and socks.

  “The shoes and socks, too.”

  Greta’s rucksack lay beside Jack on the backseat. He took hold of its strap, intending to move it to the floor.

  “Don’t touch that!” Greta cried. “Don’t touch anything!”

  She handed something to him, folded into a wad: surgical gloves.

  “Put them on.”

  Jack said, “On what?”

  “No boasting. Your hands.”

  “Why?”

  They stopped at a red light. Greta reached over the back of the seat and scooped up Jack’s T-shirt and shorts and jockstrap. She rolled her window down a hand’s breadth.

  “Put on the gloves or I’ll throw these out the window.”

  She was in a state of high excitement, sexual and otherwise. Jack did as she ordered; rules of the game. Greta slid across the seat.

  “Climb over and drive,” she said.

  With some difficulty because of the state he was in, Jack clambered into the front seat and got behind the wheel.

  “Put the seat all the way back.” Jack did as he was told. His toes barely touched the pedals. “Where to?”

  “Straight on,” Greta said.

  In addition to the dirndl, Greta wore white kneesocks and laced brown oxfords—the entire Rhine maiden costume. She took off her wig and tossed it into the backseat, along with Jack’s clothes. The wig was stiff, like a helmet; it rolled back and forth on the seat. While Jack drove through heavy traffic, Greta worked on him with hands and tongue, bringing him repeatedly to the point of ejaculation, then preventing it with a fingertip applied with clinical precision to exactly the correct pressure point.

  “Greta, for God’s sake! That’s agonizing.”

  “Nicht war?” She lifted her head and gazed through the windshield. “Turn right at the next street. Park on the right, in the middle of the block, in front of the shop with the red dress in the window.”

  Groaning, Jack did precisely as ordered. They were in a no-parking zone, across from a bank. Cars flowed by in a steady unending stream; the smell of exhaust leaked into the Daiml
er through its open vents.

  Greta, still fully dressed, reached into her bodice and brought something out.

  “Look, Jack, for you! All the way from America!”

  Greta waved a brand-new tube of Vaseline in front of Jack’s eyes. She unscrewed the cap and passed the open tube under his nose.

  She said, “Have you guessed?”

  Jack shook his head. All this was happening on a public street at eight-thirty in the morning in the midst of rush-hour traffic, in a car that stuck out like a sore thumb even when it was not illegally parked. He was stark naked.

  “Now you get the one thing I would never give you,” Greta said. “I’m all ready. Do you want some, too?”

  For once, Jack knew exactly what she meant. He couldn’t believe his luck. He nodded, paralyzed by a mixture of fear and desire. Greta squeezed half the tube into the palm of her hand and showed it to him.

  Whispering, Greta said, “This is the last way I am a virgin. Sit back from the wheel.”

  Jack obeyed. She lifted her skirt, then tulips within snowy tulips of scalloped petticoats. With her back to his chest, she straddled his body. Gripping him like the hilt of a sword, she lowered herself with brutal force, free arm out-thrown, screaming at the top of her voice.

  “Aaaaaaaaaah!”

  She sobbed, apparently in real pain, as she repeated the movement, producing in Jack an ecstasy so intense, a realization of fantasy so complete, that he feared, even as it was occurring, that he would never be able to duplicate it.

  It lasted only seconds, but when it was over, Jack was helpless, nearly senseless. His heart pounded. He was, for the first time ever after such a moment, limp. Greta got off him, more gently than she had got on.

  Jack lay with his eyes closed, in a state of trust and satiety. While his mind drifted, Greta placed his hands on the steering wheel, bent his fingers around it. He heard a tiny noise: click. And then another click.

  His eyes sprang open. His hands in their transparent gloves were handcuffed to the steering wheel.