Her auric response equated to raised eyebrows. “Oh? And what about Berta? She would wait for you very much aroused, and return sated.” She paused. “But then, Berta is much sexier than me, much more tempting.”
“That wasn’t it. I wanted to snoop around the schloss, but I was afraid I’d be caught and perhaps shot. With Berta, I had a good excuse: If we were caught, I could say we were looking for a place to make love. We would have been punished, but hardly executed.”
“Ah. And how many nights did it take to complete your snooping?”
“One. But by then she had learned things about me. So when she asked me to be with her again, it seemed best not to offend her.”
Anna smiled, not cynically. “And besides, it was such fun, nicht wahr?”
“She was good. I can’t deny it.”
“And what was it she learned about you that you wanted to safeguard?”
“You already know: that I am not a Schwachsinniger” “All right. And how did you manage to move around in the building without being caught? Even slipping down the corridor to the reading room or dining room would have been dangerous.” He said nothing. Undoubtedly she was reading his feelings, analyzing them.
“I must tell you,” she said, “that for a time I supposed you were a spy, put here by some office that disapproved of the Bureau. I could see no other explanation for your ability to move around at night.”
It seemed to him he could sense her mind perching at the edge of his, watching for a crack, a chink. Still said nothing. “Well, I can understand your silence, and I will let these questions lie for now. You have shown me respect; I will do the same for you. Good night, Kurt Montag, and pleasant dreams.”
Saint-Nazaire had been a small city; now it was an expanse of rubble. But the submarine pens-heavily reinforced tunnelsstill operated. The railyard was closed, had been heavily bombed again, and the two psychics rode the 35 miles from Nantes in a command car, over a road heavily and hastily patched.
After leaving their SS lieutenant at the harbormaster’s office, they were taken aboard a submarine in midafternoon, and assigned quarters. Though his was in a crowded crew compartment, Macurdy was privileged: He didn’t alternate in his narrow fold-down bunk with someone on a different watch, as the seamen did; it was his full-time. Anna was even more privileged: She occupied the tiny cabin normally used by the Ist officer, who would double up with the captain while she was aboard.
The craft stayed in its cavern till after dark; a submarine moving down the channel in daylight was at serious risk. One never knew when American or British planes might visit.
Eventually the vessel began to move, its throbbing diesels pushing it out of the pen, into the estuary. Despite himself, Macurdy sweated a bit, and raised a brief prayer, less to God than to allied destroyers and planes, that he might arrive safely in England. Not that I wish you guys bad luck or anything, he murmured inwardly, but my mother didn’t raise me to drown in some Nazi Unterseeboot.
The seamen were calm enough though, and before long he slept, despite the strange sounds and smells.
For the sake of speed and the batteries, the vessel ran on the surface till dawn, then the humming electrics were cut in, and the diesels shut off. Then bells jangled. Without pausing, the submarine tilted downward slightly and submerged.
The rubber boat was low enough that any chop would have soaked and any real seas upended them. But the sea was relatively calm, its low smooth swells the aftereffect of some distant storm, perhaps off the west coast of Jutland. Neither Montag nor Anna spoke, even in a whisper. They’d been warned not to, before they’d climbed out the conning tower.
Now he could see the beach ahead, low and sandy in the starlight, the swooshing of the low surf as regular as a heartbeat. The sub was well out of sight behind them, and Macurdy wondered if crewmen, off in a rubber boat, ever had trouble finding it at night.