“Will these coupons be all right?” Fulmar asked, holding up a couple of bills folded tightly.
The waiter looked at him for a moment, then took the money in a smooth movement.
“I believe we can take care of the Herr Sturmbannführer,” he said.
What he got a few minutes later was two slices of dark bread, between them a slice of salami.
Six days before, Fulmar thought, he had been disappointed because there was only ham and roast beef for sandwiches at Whitbey House; some sonofabitch had eaten all the turkey.
Chapter FOUR
Fulmar stayed in the dining car for an hour, until the train had stopped at and left Strassburg.
The waiter had not seated anyone else at his table, and that eliminated the necessity (and the risk) of carrying on a conversation. Canidy had been blunt about that: He was not to get overcocky because his German was flawless. The minute he opened his mouth he would risk saying something he should not say, or of being asked a question he could not credibly answer. Consequently, he was to avoid conversation wherever possible. The whole idea was to be inconspicuous. And if he stayed in the dining car any longer, he was likely to become conspicuous.
And the wine had “calmed him down.” Which meant that it had dulled his senses. And that he couldn’t afford.
The waiter nodded at him as he left the dining car.
“Heil Hitler!” Fulmar said, raising his hand from his elbow in a casual salute.
The dining car was behind the three first-class wagons-lits coaches. In the first, the conductor was taking tickets and two border policemen were checking identification and travel authorization. One of the border policemen looked at him without suspicion and flattened himself against the window as he went past.
The train, he noticed, was now almost full. Until now, it had been two-thirds empty.
He was almost through the second first-class car when he heard a female voice call out his name.
He hesitated momentarily, in the blink of an eye deciding that some other Eric was being called.
“Eric von Fulmar! ” the voice called again, louder this time.
Christ, now what?
He stopped and turned.
A young woman, round-faced, dark-eyed, was walking quickly down the aisle to him. It took him a moment to recognize her. She was in a blue uniform, without makeup, with her dark brown hair done up in a bun. He identified the uniform by the armband. She was in Organization Todt, which Hitler had set up under Dr. Fritz Todt, the man who had built the Autobahn, to control all German construction and industry for the war effort.
Her name was Elizabeth von Handleman-Bitburg, and the last time Fulmar had seen her was in Paris. They had had dinner, she and Sidi Hassan el Ferruch and some other German girl whose name he could not now recall, in Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs Élysées.
After dinner, in the backseat of el Ferruch’s Delahaye, she had slapped his face just after he had put his tongue in her mouth and his hand up her dress. And then she had made things worse by sobbing.
Her father was Generalmajor Kurt von Handleman-Bitburg. No. He corrected himself. Eldon Baker—the first contact I had with that sonofabitch —had been in Fouquet’s that night, checking on Fulmar, and Eldon Baker never forgot anything.
At Deal, on the Jersey shore, Baker told me that “your girlfriend’s father got himself promoted.”
Elizabeth was the daughter of Generaloberst von Handleman-Bitburg.
“I thought that was you!” she said happily, offering her hand.
“Doing your bit for the fatherland, I see,” Fulmar replied.
“Isn’t this uniform dreadful?” she asked.
“I didn’t recognize you at first,” Fulmar said.
“When did you go into the SS?”
“March 12, 1942,” he said without thinking. That date had been drilled into his memory, as had the particulars of his service since then—until his detail to the staff of the Reichsführer SS—with Waffen-SS units that had been conveniently wiped out in Russia or captured in North Africa.