Midnight Hunter

Unruffled, he rolls onto his back and closes his eyes. “I wouldn’t say I’m doing much thinking when I’m in bed with you. What I am thinking about isn’t her or anyone else who isn’t you.”

I prop myself up on my elbow and watch him. “You as good as told me you stole me because I remind you of her.”

“Johanna was a good-natured, beautiful girl who brought a smile to the face of everyone who met her. She was nothing like you.”

“Schwein.”

He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Ja, I know. You have told me this before. Liebling, you are nothing like her, and I am glad of this.”

I frown in confusion. “What? Why?”

He slides his arms around me and pulls me up onto his chest so I’m lying on top of him. “Because I’m nothing like I was then, either. You’re a hard young woman. You’ve faced difficult things and you have not crumbled because you are strong. You’ve probably thought of a dozen ways you might escape me.”

Just the one, actually, but it’s a good one. “You sound proud of me.”

“I am. So—” he reaches for his cigarettes on the nightstand and lights one “—when I wake in the night and feel a twinge of conscience about keeping you here against your will I am able to fall back asleep very easily.” He smokes his cigarette, watching me narrowly. “I’m not letting you go, you know.”

That Reinhardt is troubled by his conscience for even a moment I find hard to believe. “You will when you tire of me.”

He looks at me steadily and says, with deliberate slowness, “Nein. I’m not letting you go.”

I get that awful feeling that he’s able to read my mind. Smell treason. Sometimes I forget that my lover is der Mitternachtsjäger. Pretending to laugh, I say flippantly, “Are you threatening me or telling me you’re in love with me?”

“I have no idea, meine Liebe. Do you?”

I stare at him. I was being provocative, trying to deflect his attention from the guilt he might see in my face. He’s serious, though. How can he possibly think that he’s in love with me, even with his twisted ideas about devotion? I wonder if this is a new strategy to wrong-foot me, to gloat over my captivity, and say quickly, “You won’t break me. I won’t let you.”

“I never thought I would, and I don’t want you bro

ken.” He slides his fingers into my hair and caresses the back of my head. “I like you as you are, strangely. My churlish, ungrateful, bad-tempered girl.”

He smiles at the baffled look on my face. “I hardly expected you to be pleased that I have kept you here against your will, even if I have kept you out of prison. But you could have been tearful day and night. You could have stopped eating. You could have pulled all the books off the shelves and smashed every plate and glass in the apartment.”

“Verdammt. I didn’t think of that.”

He laughs, shaking me on his chest. “But here you are in my bed, and though you do take vicious delight in scratching me and swearing at me you are as sweet as any man could want.” His hand moves to stroke my cheek and he speaks softly. “Sweeter, even. You’re strong, Liebling, and I know how important that is. If you’re not able to fight then this world will crush your body and your spirit.” His eyes are dark blue in the half-light. “Please tell me if you’re having bad dreams or if something has upset you. I worry if you’re quiet. I’d rather you call me names and fight me than slip away where I can’t reach you.”

“Why do you even care how I feel? I thought all that mattered to you was that I was here.”

He continues to stroke my cheek, a look in his eyes like I’ve never seen before. “Because you are my shield maiden. No, more than that. You are my Valkyrie, and I want you strong. If you are strong then there’s nothing that can touch us. Touch you.”

My heart is racing, making me feel sick and confused, so I put my head down on his shoulder. He worries that I might be taken from him, too. If not love, he does seem to cherish something tender for me. It should make me exultant, because his affection can only be useful to me.

I can feel him watching me, made uncertain by my silence, and I reach for the first question that comes to mind. “I know so little about you. Tell me something about you.”

“Like what?”

“When did you join the Party?”

He seems surprised by my change of subject, but goes along with it. “About a year after I returned from the war. I’d read The Communist Manifesto as a prisoner and started attending meetings almost straight away, and then I was vouched for and made a member.”

I think about how he reads Neues Deutschland every morning, cover to cover. The paper is State-run and seems to be popular at Stasi HQ. My father always said it was stuffed full of propaganda and lies. “Do you really believe in everything that they say? That they stand for?”

I hear the skepticism in my own voice and flinch. I’ve forgotten who I’m talking to. But Reinhardt doesn’t seem perturbed and he’s silent for a moment, considering his answer. “As much as I can believe in any political party. I come from the military, not the government. In the days after the war I saw how dedicated the Party was to anti-fascism and I liked that very much. The Stasi was the ideal place for someone like me.”

I remember the Stasi motto: the Shield and Sword of the Party. Reinhardt is the embodiment of it. Protective. Possessive. Strategic. I can see that he’d naturally gravitate towards the security ministry. But I shake my head, exasperated, as I’ve heard him speak about fascism before.

“The war was twenty years ago. Where is fascism now? Why must you be our sword and shield when there is nothing to fight?”