“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Berlin,” he said.
“Oh, good,” she said. “There’s a two-hour wait for the Berlin train.
We can have a nice visit.” He nodded.
She cocked her head again and looked at him intently. And then she took his arm and led him out of the aisle onto the connecting platform between cars.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to begin… There’s an interesting story going around about you, Eric,” she said evenly.
“Is that so?” “My father told my mother,” she said. “I overheard them. I didn’t hear it all. And when I asked him, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Wouldn’t tell you what?”
“What I did hear was that a friend of his, a Minister in the Foreign Ministry, had told him that you were seen in Casablanca.”
“I was in Morocco, of course,” he said. “You remember el Ferruch?”
“In the uniform of an American officer,” Elizabeth von Handlemanbitburg said.
She was looking into his eyes now. As he was trying to frame a reply, she said,
“Oh, my God, it’s true!”
“What I’m supposed to do now,” Eric said, almost conversationally, “is kill you.” Her face went white, and her tongue came out and licked nervously at her lips.
“And I suppose what I’m supposed to do is scream,” she said, very softly.
Then she met his eyes again. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Shit!” Fulmar groaned.
The door to the car started to open.
He quickly put his arms around her. There was a moment’s resistance, and then she understood what he was doing. Whoever was passing between cars would see a young officer kissing a young woman.
She raised her face to his.
It was the two border policemen passing between cars with the conductor. “Guten Tag, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer,” one of them said. One of the others chuckled.
They remained in an embrace until the three had entered the next car.
Fulmar was aware of two physical sensations, the hilt of the baby Fairbairn under the balls of fingers and the pressure of Elizabeth von Handlemanbitburg’s breasts and legs against his body. And then there was a third sensation. Her tongue came out, and for the briefest moment went between his lips and found his.
Then she pushed him away.
“Now they’ve seen you with me,” she said. “Now you can’t kill me.”
“You should have called for help,” he said.
“Why? I knew you weren’t going to kill me.”
“You seem pretty goddamned sure,” he said.
“If you were going to kill me,” she said reasonably, “you wouldn’t have talked about it first. And then I looked in your eyes.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“Wasn’t it nice to be given a kiss, instead of the other way?”
“You’re out of your goddamned mind, you know that?”
“My father told my mother that when the Russians come, life won’t be worth living,” she said. “I’ve changed since the last time I saw you. If you’re going to die, you might as well take as much of life as you can before that happens.”
“He could be shot for saying things like that, ” Fulmar said.
“No,” she said calmly. “That is now the official position of the Propaganda Ministry.” She quoted, “”The German people must come to understand that if the war is lost, Germany as we know it will disappear from the face of the earth. That came straight from Dr. Goebbels.”
“The operative words are if’ and when, “‘ he heard himself say.
” If’ is not defeatism. When’ is.” She shrugged.
“Where are you really going?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“I’m not going to turn you in, Eric,” she said.
“If those border policemen remember the Sturmbannfuhrer kissing the girl, and if they remember your face, the Gestapo will come after you and question you. And if you knew, you would tell them.”
“Are they looking for you now?” she asked.
“Yes, but don’t ask why.” “Maybe I can help,” she said.
“The best thing you can do is go back to your compartment and forget you ever saw me,” he said.
“That in itself would be suspicious,” she said. “And maybe I can help you.