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And then something else occurred to her. She shivered again, this time a lot less happily. Did even Heinz Buckliger know all that might follow if he let people say what they really thought? No one in the Greater German Reich, no one in the part of the Germanic Empire on this side of the Atlantic, had been able to do that for a lifetime. How much was bottled up? And how would it come out?
When the telephone on his desk rang, Heinrich jumped. That happened about a third of the time. When he was really concentrating, the outside world seemed to disappear. It seemed to, but it didn't. As if to prove as much, the phone rang again.
He picked it up. Willi was laughing at him. Ignoring his friend, he used his best professional tones: "Analysis Section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking."
"Hello, Heinrich." Had Willi heard the voice on the other end of the line, he would have stopped laughing, and in a hurry: it was Erika.
"Hello." Heinrich did his best to keep his own voice normal. It wasn't easy. "What…what can I do for you?"
"I'm at my sister's house. Leonore lives at 16 Burggrafen-Strasse, just south of the Tiergarten. Do you know where that is?"
"Yes, I think so," Heinrich said automatically. Then he wished he could deny everything. Too late, of course. For wishes like that, it always was.
"Good," Erika said: another questionable assumption. "Come over at lunchtime. We need to talk."
"You, me, and your sister?" Heinrich said in surprise. He hardly knew Erika's sister. Leonore, if he remembered right, was separated from a mid-ranking SS officer. She was a year or two younger than Erika and looked a lot like her, but wasn't quite so…carnivorouswas the word that came to Heinrich's mind. He asked, "What about?"
"I'm not going to go into it on the phone," Erika said, which, considering that the lines into Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters were monitored as closely as any in the Reich, was probably a good idea.
Heinrich thought it over. If Leonore were there, things couldn't get too far out of hand. And even if they did, all he had to do was walk out. "All right," he said. "I'll see you a little past twelve." Erika hung up without another word.
Willi looked up from whatever he was working on. "Going out to lunch with Lise and her sister, eh?" he said, proving he'd been snooping.
Thank God I didn't say Leonore's name,Heinrich thought. He managed a rather sickly answering smile. That avoided the lie direct, anyhow. Willi took it for agreement. He went back to the papers scattered across his desk. Heinrich, who kept his work area almost surgically neat, wondered how Willi ever found anything. But he did. Though he had his problems, that wasn't one of them.
When Heinrich wanted to do something at lunch, the time before he could leave crawled on hands and knees. Today, when he really didn't, hours flew by. Had he done anything more than blink once or twice before he got up from his desk? If he had, it didn't feel that way. At the same time, Willi headed out the door with Ilse. That had to mean Rolf Stolle never called her back. Willi was smirking. Seeing him with the secretary made Heinrich a little less uncomfortable about paying a call on his wife, but only a little.
Why didn't I say no?Heinrich wondered, waiting for the bus that would take him up to the park. He could have stood Erika and her sister up even after saying yes, but that never occurred to him. What he said he would do, he did.
Brakes squealing, the bus stopped in front of him. He climbed aboard, stuck his account card in the slot, and then put it back in his pocket. The bus wasn't too crowded. He sat down as it pulled out into traffic.
Ten minutes later, he got off at Wichma
Reluctantly, he turned his back on the park and walked south down Wichma
Here was 20 Burggrafen-Strasse, here was 18…and here, looking very little different from the houses on either side, was 16. With a sour half smile, Heinrich went up the slate walkway, climbed three red-brick steps, and stood in front of a door whose ornate carved floral border spoke of Victorian bourgeois respectability. Wishing he were somewhere, anywhere, else, Heinrich rang the bell.
"It's open," Erika called. "Come on in."
He did. The entry hall was narrow and cramped. It made a dogleg to the left, so he couldn't see any of the rest of the house from the doorway. A polished brass coat-and-hat rack by the door offered a mute hint. Heinrich took it, hanging his black leather greatcoat and high-crowned cap on two of the hooks. Then, with a shrug, he went into the front room-and stopped in his tracks.
He'd seen plenty of seduction scenes in films. He'd never expected to walk into one in real life, but he did now. It was almost too perfect. A pair of champagne flutes sat on a coffee table. Behind it, on a couch, lolled Erika Dorsch. She wore something white and lacy that didn't cover very much of her and didn't cover that very well. There were no perfumes in films, either. This one-Chanel?-was devastating. "Hello, Heinrich," Erika murmured.
If he wasn't going to go forward and do what she obviously wanted him to do, he should have turned on his heel and got out of there as fast as he could. He realized that later. At the moment, captivated if not quite captured, he simply stared. "Where's your sister?" he blurted.
Erika laughed musically. She sat up, which put even more of her on display as the lingerie gave ground. "You were the one who said she'd be here," she answered. "I never did."
Heinrich thought back. She was right. He'd assumed what he wanted to assume. Maybe she'd let him-no, she'd certainly let him-do that, but she hadn't lied. The collar of his uniform shirt felt much too tight. "I'd better go," he muttered-the first half-smart thing he'd said, and it wasn't any better than half-smart.
"Don't be silly. You just got here." Erika patted the couch by her. "Sit down. Make yourself at home. Have something to drink."
He didn't. "This is…" He cast about for a word. He didn't take long to find one. "This is ridiculous. What on earth do you want with me?"
"About what you'd expect," she answered. "Do I have to draw you a picture? I don't think so-you're smart. And you'regemutlich. You're…not bad-looking." He almost laughed. Even she couldn't push it any further than that. Then venom filled her voice as she went on, "And Willi's a two-timing asshole. So why not?"
She leaned forward to pick up one of the flutes. A pink nipple appeared for a moment as the lace shifted. Then it vanished again. Heinrich hadn't added a memory to thethings I'm glad I saw even if I wasn't supposed to file since he was sixteen. He did now.
"Why not?" Erika repeated, this time making it a serious question. "Who'd know? Nobody but us, and I'd get some of my own back. Willi's probably out fucking that little whore right now."
So he was. Heinrich knew that, where Erika only suspected it. But she'd asked him why not, and he thought he owed her an answer. That was also, at best, half-smart. Again, he didn't realize it till later. His thinking, just then, was less sharp than it might have been. He said, "I love my wife. I don't want to do anything to hurt her."