The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

Peis summoned Gisella to his office, offered her a glass of Steinhager, and then outlined to her the severe penalties she could expect her father to suffer. The least of these was punishment under the criminal statutes. But it was more likely that he would be tried under the “enemy of the state” laws before a “People’s Court.” If that happened, he certainly—and she herself more than likely—would be sent off to a concentration camp. On his release he would be permitted to make his contribution to the New Germany with a forester’s ax or a laborer’s shovel.

Peis then matter-of-factly let Gisella know there was a way out of the predicament: She would undertake to keep her father on the true National Socialist path; she would report regularly to Peis treasonous or defeatist statements made by their friends and associates; and she would come, when he wished, into his bed.

Gisella gave only passing thought to refusing him.

If Peis wanted her, he could have taken her right there and then, ripped her clothes off, slapped her into submission, and done it on his office couch. To whom could she have complained? The SS-SD was the ultimate law in Stadt und Kreis Marburg an der Lahn, and Peis was the number-two man in the SS-SD there. The question she faced was not whether Peis would have her body, but how to make the circumstances most advantageous to her and her father.

She went that afternoon to Peis’s apartment, allowed him to get her drunk, and fell into his bed.

An honorable man after his fashion, Obersturmführer Peis lived up to his end of the bargain. The charges against her father remained “unconfirmed, under investigation.” As long as she behaved, her father’s well-being was assured.

After the initial novelty passed, Peis required her to perform only infrequently. He had other young women similarly indebted, plus a small harem of others who considered it an honor to share the bed of an SS-Obersturmführer. Whenever he did send for her, it was less a hunger for her body than a desire to humiliate her. He made sure she was aware of this.

Gisella now realized that if she had been clever enough to pretend that she welcomed his attentions, he would more than likely have grown bored with her. But she hadn’t been able to do that, and Peis sensed her contempt. This he repaid with humiliation.

Six months after he originally called her into his office, she became a kind of occasional gift from Peis to his friends or else to someone he wanted to watch. By then, he had been given command of the Marburg SS-SD.

One evening he “invited” her to take dinner with him at the Kurhotel on the mountainside south of Marburg.

The Kurhotel, a small, recently built, Bauhaus-style building, was the nicest place around and Peis liked to be seen there in the company of “re-spectable” young women. He had “invited” her there before; after supper there would be a session in a room set aside by the management for Peis’s use.

He was not there when she arrived, so she took a seat alone at one of the tables in the barroom to wait for him. When the waiter appeared, she ordered a glass of white wine. When the waiter returned, he had a bottle of Gumpoldskirchner ’32 wrapped in a towel in a basket.

"Compliments of His Excellency, Fräulein Dyer,” the headwaiter smirked.

“I beg your pardon?”

He nodded toward a table across the room. Three men sat there, an Arab, a Nordic blond, and a huge Negro. She had seen them before both here and at the university, where they were known, somewhat derisively, as “the Arab Prince and his boyfriend.” The boyfriend, a rather good-looking young man—a very young man—caught her eye and raised his glass. She quickly looked away.

“Thank you, no,” she said to the waiter in a rage. “Take it away!”

She might be forced to prostitute herself to Peis, she thought bitterly, but she was not available to be picked up in a hotel barroom.

“His Excellency may take offense, Fräulein,” the waiter said.

“Not nearly as much as Hauptsturmführer Peis will,” she snapped.

She was still humiliated and angry when Peis came in. When he sat down, she told him what had happened. But he was not, as she expected, furious that someone was making advances to one of his ladies.

“Which one has the yen for you?” he asked. “The Arab or the Baron?”

“The Baron?”

“The young one is the Baron von Kolbe,” Peis said.

“I thought he was the Arab’s ‘little friend,’” she replied.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Peis said. “But they are apparently not homosexual.”

“You seem quite sure,” she said, now annoyed with him too.

“My dear Gisella,” Peis said, “of course I’m sure. It is my business to be sure.”

“I don’t think I understand you,” she said.

“Among my duties is the surveillance of people of interest to the Berlin headquarters of the SS-SD,” Peis said, obviously pleased with the opportunity to reveal his importance. “One of these is the Arab, actually a Moroccan. His name is Sidi Hassan el Ferruch. The other is Eric von Fulmar, the son of the Baron von Fulmar, as in Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft.”

“And they are being watched? Why?”