“Well, I finished the first after-action report, and thought you might want to see it. Wrong guess?”
“I don’t think being in my room is smart,” he said.
“Since Freddy gave me the master key, I thought coming in made more sense than waiting in the hall for you to finish your shower,” she said. “Shall I leave?”
“Let me see the after action,” he said.
She got out of the chair, walked to him, and handed him some typewritten sheets of paper. He glanced at the title: “Likharev, Sergei, Colonel NKGB, Capture Of.”
He became aware that she was still standing close to him.
He looked at her.
“We cleared up one misunderstanding between us yesterday,” she said. “Why don’t we clear up this one?”
“Which one is that?”
“Officers, and you’re a good one, don’t fool around with enlisted women, right?”
“I’m glad you understand that.”
“And everyone knows that a recently widowed officer would have absolutely no interest in becoming romantically involved with another woman, especially a subordinate enlisted woman seven years older than he is, right?”
She must have really gone through my personal files.
“Right again. Is there going to be a written test on this?”
“But you would agree that there is a great difference between a continuing romantic involvement and an every-once-in-a-while-as-needed purely physical relationship, if both parties are (a) aware of the difference, and (b) have been forced into the strangest perversion of them all?”
“What the hell would that be?”
“Oscar Wilde said it was celibacy,” she said.
“I don’t think I like this conversation, Sergeant Colbert.”
She laughed deep in her throat, and then pointed at his midsection.
His erect penis had escaped his bathrobe.
Her right hand reached for it, and with her left she pulled his face down to hers.
She encountered little, virtually no, resistance.
VIII
[ONE]
Suite 507
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0955 16 January 1946
Knowing that Major Thomas G. “Dick Tracy” Derwin was either already behind the door or would be there shortly triggered many thoughts in Cronley’s mind as he put his hand on the enormous door lever and pushed down.