“No,” she said.
“Put on that blue dress.” He rummaged around among the parcels until he found it in the largest box. He carefully removed the cord, got out the dress, laid it on the bed with precision; he did not hurry. “Okay? You’ll be a knockout. Listen, we’ll buy a bottle of high-price Scotch and take it along. That Vat 69.”
Frank, she thought. Help me. I’m in something I don’t understand.
“It’s much farther,” she answered, “than you realize. I looked on the map. It’ll be real late when we get there, more like eleven or past midnight.”
He said, “Put on the dress or I’ll kill you.”
Closing her eyes, she began to giggle. My training, she thought. It was true, after all; now we’ll see. Can he kill me or can’t I pinch a nerve in his back and cripple him for life? But he fought those British commandoes; he’s gone through this already, many years ago.
“I know you maybe can throw me,” Joe said. “Ormaybe not.”
“Not throw you,” she said. “Maim you permanently. I actually can. I lived out on the West Coast. The Japs taught me, up in Seattle. You go on to Cheyenne if you want to and leave me here. Don’t try to force me. I’m scared of you and I’ll try.” Her voice broke. “I’ll try to get you so bad, if you come at me.”
“Oh come on—put on the goddam dress! What’s this all about? You must be nuts, talking like that about killing and maiming, just because I want you to hop in the car after dinner and drive up the autobahn with me and see this fellow whose book you—“
A knock at the door.
Joe stalked to it and opened it. A uniformed boy in the corridor said, “Valet service. You inquired at the desk, sir.”
“Oh yes,” Joe said, striding to the bed; he gathered up the new white shirts which he had bought and carried them to the bellboy. “Can you get them back in half an hour?”
“Just ironing out the folds,” the boy said, examining them. “Not cleaning. Yes, I’m sure they can, sir.”
As Joe shut the door, Juliana said, “How did you know a new white shirt can’t be worn until it’s pressed?”
He said nothing; he shrugged.
“I had forgotten,” Juliana said. “And a woman ought to know . . . when you take them out of the cellophane they’re all wrinkled.”
“When I was younger I used to dress up and go out a lot.”
“How did you know the hotel had valet service? I didn’t know it. Did you really have your hair cut and dyed? I think your hair always was blond, and you were wearing a hairpiece. Isn’t that so?”
Again he shrugged.
“You must be an SD man,” she said. “Posing as a wop truck driver. You never fought in North Africa, did you? You’re supposed to come up here to kill Abendsen; isn’t that so? I know it is. I guess I’m pretty dumb.” She felt dried-up, withered.
After an interval, Joe said, “Sure! fought in North Africa. Maybe not with Pardi’s artillery battery. With the Brandenburgers.” He added, “Wehrmacht kommando. Infiltrated British HQs. I don’t see what difference it makes; we saw plenty of action. And I was at Cairo; I earned the medal and a battlefield citation. Corporal.”
“Is that fountain pen a weapon?”
He did not answer.
“A bomb,” she realized suddenly, saying it aloud. “A boobytrap kind of bomb, that’s wired so it’ll explode when someone touches it.”
“No,” he said. “What you saw is a two-watt transmitter and receiver. So I can keep in radio contact. In case there’s a change of plan, what with the day-by-day political situation in Berlin.”
“You check in with them just before you do it. To be sure.”
He nodded.
“You’re not Italian; you’re a German.”
“Swiss.”
She said, “My husband is a Jew.”
“I don’t care what your husband is. All I want is for you to put on that dress and fix yourself up so we can go to dinner. Fix your hair somehow; I wish you could have gotten to the hairdresser’s. Possibly the hotel beauty salon is still open. You could do that while I wait for my shirts and take my shower.”
“How are you going to kill him?”
Joe said, “Please put on the new dress, Juliana. I’ll phone down and ask about the hairdresser.” He walked over to the room phone.
“Why do you need me along?”
Dialing, Joe said, “We have a folder on Abendsen and it seems he is attracted to a certain type of dark, libidinous girl. A specific Middle-Eastern or Mediterranean type.”
As he talked to the hotel people, Juliana went over to the bed and lay down. She shut her eyes and put her arm across her face.
“They do have a hairdresser,” Joe said when he had hung up the phone. “And she can take care of you right away. You go down to the salon; it’s on the mezzanine.” He handed her something; opening her eyes she saw that it was more Reichsbank notes. “To pay her.”
She said, “Let me lie here. Will you please?”
He regarded her with a look of acute curiosity and concern.
“Seattle is like San Francisco would have been,” she said, “if there had been no Great Fire. Real old wooden buildings and some brick ones, and hilly like S.F. The Japs there go back to a long time before the war. They have a whole business section and houses, stores and everything, very old. It’s a port. This little old Jap who taught me—I had gone up there with a Merchant Marine guy, and while I was there I started taking these lessons. Minoru Ichoyasu; he wore a vest and tie. He was as round as a yo-yo. He taught upstairs in a Jap office building; he had that old-fashioned gold lettering on his door, and a waiting room like a dentist’s office. With National Geographies.”
Bending over her, Joe took hold of her arm and lifted her to a sitting position; he supported her, propped her up. “What’s the- matter? You act like you’re sick.” He peered into her face, searching her features.
“I’m dying,” she said.
“It’s just an anxiety attack. Don’t you have them all the time? I can get you a sedative from the hotel pharmacy. What about phenobarbital? And we haven’t eaten since ten this morning. You’ll be all right. When we get to Abendsen’s, you don’t have to do a thing, only stand there with me; I’ll do the talking. Just smile and be companionable with me and him; stay with him and make conversation with him, so that he stays with us and doesn’t go off somewhere. When he sees you I’m certain he’ll let us in, especially with that Italian dress cut as it is. I’d let you in, myself, if I were he.”
“Let me go into the bathroom,” she said. “I’m sick. Please.” She struggled loose from him. “I’m being sick—let me go.”
He let her go, and she made her way across the room and into the bathroom; she shut the door behind her.
I can do it, she thought. She snapped the light on; it dazzled her. She squinted. I can find it. In the medicine cabinet, a courtesy pack of razor blades, soap, toothpaste. She opened the fresh little pack of blades. Single edge, yes. Unwrapped the new greasy blueblack blade.
Water ran in the shower. She stepped in—good God; she had on her clothes. Ruined. Her dress clung. Hair streaming. Horrified, she stumbled, half fell, groping her way out. Water drizzling from her stockings . . . she began to cry.
Joe found her standing by the bowl. She had taken her wet ruined suit off; she stood naked, supporting herself on one arm, leaning and resting. “Jesus Christ,” she said to him when she realized he was there. “I don’t know what to do. My jersey suit is ruined. It’s wool.” She pointed: he turned to see the heap of sodden clothes.
Very calmly—but his face was stricken—he said, “Well, you weren’t going to wear that anyhow.” With a fluffy white hotel towel he dried her off, led her from the bathroom back to the warm carpeted main room. “Put on your underwear—get something on. I’ll have the hairdresser come up here; she has to, that’s all there is.” Again he picked up the phone and dialed.
“What did you get me in the way of pills?” she asked, when he had finished phoning.
“I forgot. I’ll call down to the pharmacy. No, wait;! have something. Nembutal or some damn thing.” Hurrying to his suitcase, he began rummaging.
When he held out two yellow capsules to her she said, “Will they destroy me?” She accepted them clumsily.
“What?” he said, his face twitching.
Rot my lower body, she thought. Groin to dry. “I mean,” she said cautiously, “weaken my concentration?”