"This isn't Berlin, is it?"
"And one feels... oh, I don't know how to say this, and I know Werner is doing important things, but I feel... guilty I guess is the word... guilty about being away from the home front, where I could do something for the cause!"
"But my dear Inge," Goltz said. "You are doing something for the cause! Your very presence here helps Werner in the accomplishment of his responsi-bilities."
"I wish I could do more," Inge said.
She pushed herself off the seat back and slid back into the rear seat. The fin-gers of her right hand moved slowly and provocatively up Peter's leg.
With a little bit of luck, we are almost at the Casino Hotel and I can bid auf wedersehn to the lovely Frau Sturmbannf?hrer von Tresmarck before anything happens.
Ten minutes later, after passing through a residential area that reminded Pe-ter of the Zehlendorf section of Berlin, they came to a large, ornate, stone, bal-conied, turn-of-the-century building. It sat alone, where three streets converged in a half-circle.
"Ther
e it is!" Inge announced, squeezed his inner thigh almost painfully, and withdrew her hand.
As von Tresmarck drove up to the main entrance, Peter saw a sandy beach and a large body of water on the other side of a four-lane divided highway.
Muddy brown water, which probably means that's still the Rio de la Plata.
A doorman and a bellboy-a boy; he looked about twelve or thirteen- came down the wide marble stairs to the car.
Goltz opened his door for Peter to get out, and von Tresmarck went to the trunk to reclaim Peter's small canvas bag.
"I will leave word what time I'll be here in the morning," Goltz said.
"Thank you, Herr Standartenf?hrer," Peter said, and clicked his heels. "And thank you, Sturmbannf?hrer." Von Tresmarck nodded but did not say anything. "It was a pleasure to see you again, Frau Sturmbannf?hrer," Peter concluded, clicked his heels again, and marched up the stairs after the bellboy.
He did not look back at the car.
The lobby of the hotel was crowded with well-fed, well-dressed, prosper-ous-appearing people. There seemed to be fewer blond, fair-skinned people here than in Buenos Aires, but he wondered if this was just his imagination.
He was shown to a suite on the second floor, a foyer, a sitting room and room with a large double bed. When he opened the vertical blinds, he saw there was a balcony overlooking the water. He went out on it.
A few moments later he left the room, descending to the main-floor corridor by a wide flight of carpeted marble stairs, rather than by the elevator. He had just decided that the place reminded him somewhat of the gambling casino in Baden-Baden when, glancing down a side corridor, he saw the hotel casino.
He went in. He was not a gambler, but he was curious. Three-quarters of the casino's tables were in use. He watched roulette for a few minutes, then bac-carat, and that was enough.
When he left the casino, he passed through the hotel dining room, which was in the center of the building. It was a large, somewhat dark room from whose three-story-high ceiling hung four enormous crystal chandeliers. There was a grand piano at one end of the room, beside the bar, and a pianist was play-ing Johann Strauss. The bar was crowded.
A headwaiter offered him a table but he declined.
He left the hotel and walked around the street across from it. The smell of burning beef caught his nostrils, and he followed it to a small restaurant where an amazing amount of beef was cooking over glowing wood ashes.
He had a steak, french fried potatoes, a tomato and lettuce salad, and washed it down with a bottle of the local beer. He was surprised that the bill was so small.
On the way back to the hotel he stopped at a newsstand, where there was an array of American magazines. There was nothing in German except for yester-day's Buenos Aires Frei Post. He bought copies of Time, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, and a man's magazine, with a racy picture of a woman in a bathing suit on the cover, called Esquire.
He carried them back to the Casino Hotel, nobly decided against quench-ing the thirst his first beer had caused by having a second in the bar, and walked back up the stairs and down the wide corridors to his suite.
There, he called room service and ordered three bottles of the local beer on ice in a wine cooler. That much beer would last him until he finished reading the magazines. By then it would be time for supper. He would then go back to the small restaurant, have another steak and perhaps another beer. He would then return to the hotel stuffed and sleepy.
He took off his trousers and shirt and hung them neatly in the closet beside his jacket. He jerked the bedspread off the bed, arranged pillows against the headboard, took off his shoes and socks, laid the magazines out, and settled himself comfortably in the bed to wait for room service.
The knock came just as he opened Esquire.
"Come," he said as he reached for the money on the bedside table to tip the waiter.