“No-it’ll send me to sleep.”
“A pot of coffee, then,” she told the waiter. When the man had gone, she sat on the couch beside Dieter and took his hand. “Did everything go according to plan?”
“Yes. Rommel was quite complimentary to me.” He frowned anxiously. “I just hope I can live up to the promises I made him.”
“I’m sure you will.” She did not ask for details. She knew he would tell her as much as he wanted to and no more.
He looked fondly at her, wondering whether to say what was on his mind. It might spoil the pleasant atmosphere-but it needed to be said. He sighed again. “If the invasion is successful, and the Allies win back France, it will be the end for you and me. You know that.”
She winced, as if at a sudden pain, and let go of his hand. “Do I?”
He knew that her husband had been killed early in the war, and they had had no children. “Do you have any family at all?” he asked her.
“My parents died years ago. I have a sister in Montreal.”
“Maybe we should be thinking about how to send you over there.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why?”
She would not meet his eye. “I just wish the war would be over,” she muttered.
“No, you don’t.”
She showed a rare flash of irritation. “Of course I do.”
“How uncharacteristically conventional of you,” he said with a hint of scorn.
“You can’t possibly think war is a good thing!”
“You and I would not be together, were it not for the war.”
“But what about all the suffering?”
“I’m an existentialist. War enables people to be what they really are: the sadists become torturers, the psychopaths make brave front-line troops, the bullies and the victims alike have scope to play their roles to the hilt, and the whores are always busy.”
She looked angry. “That tells me pretty clearly what part I play.”
He stroked her soft cheek and touched her lips with the tip of his finger. “You’re a courtesan-and very good at it.”
She moved her head away. “You don’t mean any of this. You’re improvising on a tune, the way you do when you sit at the piano.”
He smiled and nodded: he could play a little jazz, much to his father’s dismay. The analogy was apt. He was trying out ideas, rather than expressing a firm conviction. “Perhaps you’re right.”
Her anger evaporated, and she looked sad. “Did you mean the part about us separating, if the Germans leave France?”
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. She relaxed and laid her head on his chest. He kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair. “It’s not going to happen,” he said.
“Are you certain?”
“I guarantee it.”
It was the second time today he had made a promise he might not be able to keep.
The waiter returned with his lunch, and the spell was broken. Dieter was almost too tired to be hungry, but he ate a few mouthfuls and drank all the coffee. Afterwards he washed and shaved, and then he felt better. As he was buttoning a clean uniform shirt, Lieutenant Hesse tapped at the door. Dieter kissed Stephanie and went out.
The car was diverted around a blocked street: there had been another bombing raid overnight, and a whole row of houses near the railway station had been destroyed. They got out of town and headed for SainteC‚cile.
Dieter had told Rommel that the interrogation of the prisoners might enable him to cripple the Resistance before the invasion-but Rommel, like any military commander, took a maybe for a promise and would now expect results. Unfortunately, there was nothing guaranteed about an interrogation. Clever prisoners told lies that were impossible to check. Some found ingenious ways to kill themselves before the torture became unbearable. If security was really tight in their particular Resistance circuit, each would know only the minimum about the others, and have little information of value. Worst of all, they might have been fed false information by the perfidious Allies, so that when they finally broke under torture, what they said was part of a deception plan.