I took Katerina’s arm.
“Come on,” I said. It was like getting a tight cork from a bottle. I had to tug to get her to move.
And all the way back to the apartment, I was asking myself – if this thing had leaked, as it had to Sutcliffe, to Spiegel’s lot, and to the Jew Malacod, why hadn’t it got to Bonn? It wasn’t like them to miss the smell of drains in their own backyard.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LOVE IS THE STRANGEST THING
In the apartment, Katerina kept walking restlessly up and down, and there was a faint hysterical note in her voice, as she kept asking, “What does this mean?” and then not listening as I tried to explain. In the end I grabbed her by the arm and made her sit on the settee alongside of me.
“Just stay here,” I said, “and listen. I told you this thing was too big for either of us to look for a profit in it. And so it is. Just let’s get the hell out of this.”
“You think this thing will happen at Munich?”
“Yes. All the men down there know it. They know what’s coming now, and they’ll begin to make their dispositions, to work out new alignments.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A lot of people have suspected what was in the wind. All they want really is to suppress it. That’s what they’ve been after. To find this place and then grab Alois and the body and destroy both – and never a word of it ever leaking out. At least two of the men in that crowd, I know, are there for just that purpose. Now they’ve got some sort of a fix on this place, we’ve got to get out before the real action begins!”
She looked at me intently for a moment, her violet eyes wide, excited.
“You know this?”
“Yes. And maybe Alois does. I’m sure he won’t take any chances. He’s too clever for that. The moment these men go, he’ll clear everything out of here to some new hiding-place. Anyway, we’ve got to go – and quickly. Lottie, you and me.”
“But we can’t before tomorrow night.”
“Let’s hope that’s soon enough. Here—” I pulled out Frau Spiegel’s little silver case and handed it to Katerina.
“What is this?”
“There are some pills inside. Tomorrow evening you make sure that Hesseltod offers you a drink. Can do?”
She nodded, smiling, her eyes shining.
“These knock him off?”
“Out. Not off. One will fix him for an hour – and that’s all we need. Wait for him to keel over, take his key, and then come up here for me. And don’t explain anything to Lottie until Hesseltod goes under. Clear?”
She nodded. “I think so. But my head, it goes round and round with all this.” Then she leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You are a clever one. Always so clever. You saved me from marrying this Alois, from getting mixed up in this big business.”
“It’s big. And I saved you.”
“And now there’s nothing we can do until tomorrow night?”
I stood up, and pulled her up to me. “I wouldn’t say that.”
She smiled, then kissed me, and her arms went tightly around me. When she let go of me I nearly fell over.
I said, “We’ve had a hard evening. Time for a nightcap and then bed.”
“There is a bed here?”
“In the other room. No sheets or blankets.”
“What for we want those?”
She walked across the room to the bedroom door and opened it and looked in. I went to the cupboard and fixed us both a brandy.
She came back to me. I stood there with a glass in each hand and she came close up to me and touched my lips with hers. Then she laughed and took the drinks from me and said, “You go first.”
I went into the bedroom, flopped on to the bed, and kept my eyes on the open doorway which was lighted from the small lamp in the room beyond.
I heard her kick off her shoes, and I imagined I could hear the fall of her dress. After a few seconds, she came to the doorway. Her loose hair fell, glistening and smooth, about her neck, and she was naked, the light behind her touching the silhouette of her hips and arms and the long run of her firm legs with a faint silvery outline, and my throat was suddenly dry and parched.
She came over to the bed, holding the two glasses in her hand, and I said, “For God’s sake, give me a drink.”
She laughed, keeping her distance from me, and handed me a glass, and she said, “I am beautiful. You see me in the doorway?”
“I see you in the doorway. I’ll see you like that all my life. Pack up the sun, the moon and the stars and put them in cold storage. I don’t need them. You’re all I want now and for ever.” I raised the glass and drank deeply to her, and she raised her glass and drank to me.
She said, “It is nice, the thing you say. You always say such things to me?”
“Always.”
This was no moment for a man to waste valuable time in drinking. I drained the glass hurriedly. “Come here.”
She put her glass down on the bedside table. I don’t know what I did with mine. It went overboard somewhere. I put out my hands and she came down to me, smooth and cool, like a dream coming true. She lay, naked and eager, in my arms, and her lips were suddenly hard and hungry against my own, and my hands on the freedom of her body were burning and impatient so that she broke from me after a moment and said softly, “We don’t rush, no? There is so much of the night left. So many hours.... Darling....”
She raised herself
