She then wondered about the Standartenfuhrer she would be entertaining tonight. Would she be just a little bit lucky, and would he be reasonably young and pleasant? Probably not. Christmas was over.
As she walked into the foyer of the Kurhotel, already crowded with drunk and exuberant New Year’s Eve revelers, she remembered how furious Peis had been–and what Peis had done to her–when one day in the early spring of 1940, after returning for his fourth year at the university, Eric von Fulmar had simply vanished.
Peis had been unable to accept that Fulmar had said nothing to her about that. She still remembered Peis’s words, between brain jarring slaps, “You sucked his cock for two years, and he just took off without a whisper? You don’t really expect me to believe that, you stupid cunt!” Gisella Dyer gave her coat to the attendant and entered the dining room.
The room was full, and extra tables had been crowded into it to accept the New Year’s Eve crowd.
She wondered, What does anyone have to celebrate?
She saw Peis at a table across the room. There was a thin, long-haired blonde with him, doubtless some whore of Frau Grumbach’s.
And a stocky man in the black uniform of the SS.
She fixed a smile on her face and made her way through the crowded room.
“Heil Hitler!” she said, making the gesture. “Good evening.
Happy New Year!”
“My dear Gisella,” Hauptsturmfuhrer Wilhelm Peis said, rising and kissing her hand. “You look very lovely tonight.” “Thank you,” she said.
“Herr Standartenfuhrer Muller, may I present Fraulein Gisella Dyer?” Muller shook her hand, then held her chair out for her.
He was neither as old as she had feared, nor as unattractive. And he had intelligent eyes, with neither sexual interest in them nor contempt for a rounded-heels female. The blonde from Frau Gumbach’s smiled at Gisella warmly, as if they were old friends.
Shortly after one in the morning, Gisella found herself in the suite the Kurhotel had made available to Standartenfuhrer Muller. She had known this was going to happen, but the way it was happening was making no sense. During the evening he had been formal and correct, which she suspected was because he did not want to act incorrectly in public with a woman whose morals might be questioned.
But once he had locked his bedroom door, the correctness did not end.
She had steeled herself to be pawed, but he made no move to touch her.
He was in fact acting as if she were not in the room.
He took off his tunic and hung it up, then sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. Next he arranged his breeches on the couch so as to preserve their crease.
“How much have you had to drink?” he asked suddenly. “Are you sober?
” “I’m a little happy,” she said.
“Are you drunk is what I’m asking,” he said, looking at her.
“No, I don’t think I am.”
“I have a message I want you to deliver,” he said.
She looked at him with the unspoken question in her eyes.
“From Eric von Fulmar. He wishes to express his best wishes to your father.” She felt a chill.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said, her voice faint.
“But you heard what I said?” Muller asked, somewhat impatiently.
“Yes, but I don’t understand the message,” she said.
“It is a very simple message. When you go home in the morning–I think it will be best if you stay the night–you will give that message to your father, and then at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon you will go to the Cafe Weitz. I will meet you there and you will relay his answer to me.” She felt the tears start, and she couldn’t stop them.
“Herr Standartenfuhrer,” she said, “I swear on my mother’s grave that my father doesn’t know who Eric von Fulmar is!”
“But you know him?”
“Yes, I knew him.”
“That’s all?”
“He was my lover when he was at the university,” she said.
“You were in love with him?”
“I… I was performing a service to the state at the request of Hauptsturmfuhrer Peis,” she said.