Midnight Hunter

I tap the ash from my cigarette into a porcelain ashtray. “Ja. I shot one young woman who aimed a pistol at me and then left the premises chasing another.”

“What happened to her?”

I wonder if anyone’s noticed I’ve shown up with a shabby new secretary this morning. I doubt Heydrich could put two and two together and come up with four, but even idiots get lucky now and then. It’s a good thing Fräulein Hoffman is transforming her as we speak. “She got away.”

“Think you’d recognize her again? What did she look like?

I pretend to muse on this a moment. “Thirty. Red hair. Tall. I only saw her from the back.”

“Too bad.”

“Ja. Too bad.”

Heydrich and I leave the office together, the other man’s face tight with anger and humiliation. I feel my good mood swell as his plummets. There are few things I enjoy more than seeing sneaking little upstarts get their just desserts.

Schooling my face into something more professional than I feel, I ask, “So, Heydrich. What have you learned from this disaster?”

The Hauptmann flushes and mutters banalities about better preparedness.

I laugh, cutting him off. “No, no, Heydrich. What you learned is that you’re not as clever, organized or capable as you want to be. You’d like to be like me, wouldn’t you?” I give him a commiserating smile. “Some of us were only meant to advance so far, to take orders rather than give them. Try not to let it get you down. Dismissed.”

And I watch, smiling broadly, as he’s forced to salute me, his cheeks red and his eyes burning with hatred.

Chapter Seven

Evony

I compose myself and go back out into the living room to Lenore, holding onto my old clothes like they’re a lifebelt. “Could I please have a bag for these?”

Lenore looks puzzled. “Don’t you want to throw them away? They’re rather…” But she trails off, polite to a fault. “Of course, I think I have a paper bag somewhere.”

The guard gives me a stunned look as we walk out into the hall where he’s waiting for us. I couldn’t give anyone the slip in these stupid shoes and resign myself to the fact that my escape won’t be effected today.

Volker’s office door is shut when we arrive back at our desks, which I’m intensely relieved about. We can hear him talking but the conversation is one-sided so it seems he’s on the telephone. Lenore shows me how to use the heavy Optima typewriter that’s sitting on my desk, getting me to feed the paper in and pointing out how to change from lower case to upper case letters. It’s completely baffling and hitting the keys makes my fingertips hurt, but she tells me I’ll toughen up in time. She gives me three pages of correspondence to type out and I work slowly and awkwardly, stalking letters across the keyboard like they’re prey. Why on earth couldn’t they have made the stupid machine with the letters in order?

Opposite me Lenore’s fingers fly over the keys, making a sound like machine-gun fire as she copies out a document from shorthand. She’s not even looking at her hands. It’s witchcraft.

Half an hour later we hear Volker go silent so he must have finished his phone call. After a few minutes Lenore pulls the letter from her typewriter and holds it out to me. “Would you mind taking this through to Herr Oberstleutnant?” Her face is carefully blank but I’m sure I catch a gleam in her eyes.

I’ve been nervously waiting for that door to fly open and for Volker to appear, and now my stomach clenches. I have to go in to him? I like it here behind my desk. The wood is like armor. I can’t keep the pleading note from my voice as I say, “Oh, can’t you? I don’t want to go in there.”

She flaps the paper at me, insistent. “Get it over with, like a plaster. You look lovely.”

So she’s not even going to pretend this is about her stupid letter. I get up and take it and she leans forward, dropping her voice. “Knock, wait for him to call out that it’s all right to enter, and then go in. And smile and say thank you when he compliments you!” she adds in a hiss as I turn away.

Sweat breaking out on my lower back, I raise my fist and knock. Volker’s voice mutters from within, a deep, distracted, “Ja.” I go in.

The office is large and bright and the opposite wall is all windows. The venetian blinds are up and I can see the Brandenburg Gate in the distance, the gray scar of the Berlin Wall running alongside it. On the other side is the West. I can see it, actually see it.

Volker is writing with a fountain pen and hasn’t looked up. His desk is large and empty apart from a tan Bakelite telephone, a lamp and a blotter. There’s a bookcase of bound volumes behind him and a portrait of Chairman Walter Ulbricht to my left, his small beard neat and salted.

As I approach Volker’s desk my hands are shaking. He finally looks up, expressionless, expecting Lenore. His eyes sharpen when he sees me. I expect them to travel down over my body, rude and possessive, but he looks only at my face. There’s brightness in those eyes and I’m reminded again of a predator. No one’s ever looked at me like this. What does he see that no one else ever has? Vulnerability, because he knows I’m alone and friendless? Does that excite him?

I swallow, and it’s difficult to speak because my mouth is so dry. “Fräulein Hoffman…wanted me to give you this.”

He takes the letter from my outstretched hand without looking at it. “Danke, Evony.” His voice is soft and pleasant, and he even smiles a little. But it’s his eyes that unnerve me, as they seem to see everything that I don’t want him to. That I looked for opportunities to escape today. That I’ll go on looking, no matter what. He knows this and it doesn’t concern him one whit. He’s so confident that I’m right where he wants me, and that I’ll never escape.

Heart racing, I turn on my heel and hurry out as fast as I can, closing the door behind me. When I’m behind my desk again my chest is heaving like I’ve run a race and my fingers feel cold and tingly.