The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

“Is there any other way in which I can help the Herr Minister?” Hamm said.

“I can’t think of one,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said after a moment’s hesitation. He offered his hand. “I am touched by your courtesy, Herr Hamm, and impressed with your thoroughness. I shall tell the ambassador what you’ve done for me.”

They were by then standing beside the Admiral. Hamm opened both doors and, after the father-and-daughter had gotten into the backseat, closed them. The young SS officer walked around the rear of the car and slipped in beside von Heurten-Mitnitz. Hamm gave another salute, which von Heurten-Mitnitz returned casually, and with a smile, and then Hamm stood back as von Heurten-Mitnitz backed the Admiral out of its parking space.

All things considered, Hamm thought, I handled that rather well.

When they were a few yards from the station, the tall, gray-haired man in the backseat spoke. “My God, when he stopped you, I thought I was going to faint.”

“You really don’t faint when you’re frightened, Professor,” Eric Fulmar said. “Fear causes adrenaline to flow, and that increases, not decreases, the flow of blood to the brain. Shutting off blood to the brain is what makes you faint.”

“Oh, my God!”the young woman in the backseat said with infinite disgust.

Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz chuckled.

“How very American,” he said.

“Where are we going?” Professor Doktor Friedrich Dyer asked.

“To Batthyany Palace,” von Heurten-Mitnitz said. “It’s on Holy Trinity Square. Not far from here.”

“And what happens there?” Professor Dyer asked.

“I don’t know about anybody else,” Fulmar said. “but I intend to go to work on a bottle of brandy.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Professor Dyer snapped.

“You’ll be told what you have to know, Professor,” Fulmar said,“when you have to know it. The less you know, the better. I thought I’d made that plain.”

Professor Dyer exhaled audibly and slumped against his seat. His daughter flashed a look of contempt at the back of Fulmar’s head, and shook her own head in resignation.

Von Heurten-Mitnitz turned off the square, stopped the Admiral with its nose against the right door of Batthyany Palace, and blew the horn. A moment later, one by one, the double doors opened. He drove through, and the doors closed after him.

Beatrice, Countess Batthyany and Baroness von Steighofen, was standing in a vestibule waiting for them. She was wearing a sable coat that reached nearly to her ankles and a matching sable hat under which a good deal of dark red hair was visible. Von Heurten-Mitnitz drove past her into a courtyard, turned around, and returned to the vestibule, where he stopped.

The Countess went to the rear door and pulled it open.

I’m the Countess Batthyany,” she said. “Won’t you please come in?”

Professor Dyer and Gisella got out of the car and, following the direction indicated by the Countess’s outstretched hand, walked into the building. The Countess turned to smile at Fulmar. “And you must be my dear cousin Eric,” she said dryly. “How nice to finally meet you.”

Fulmar laughed. “Hello,” he said.

She turned to von Heurten-Mitnitz, who had walked around the front of the car.

“I see everything turned out all right,” she said.

“The Gestapo man at the station personally led us past the checkpoint,” he said.

“Oooh,” she said. “I suppose you could use a drink.”

“I could,” Fulmar said.

She turned to look at him again.

"You look like Manny,” she said. “You even sound like him. That terrible Hessian dialect.”

He chuckled.