11.
The street was empty, but Jim couldn’t
help having the prickling feeling in his spine that at any moment a
police car would roar up to investigate why officers had raided
Bauer’s house with no recorded orders.
It was always that way as they walked away from a mission – that
feeling of success mingled with an adrenaline-filled suspicion that
all could still go terribly wrong. He never felt quite relaxed until
he was back home in his New York apartment with the fire burning and
a glass of scotch in his hand.
The car was
still there, though, and Liesl was still sitting there in the back
seat, her eyes intent and suspicious as she watched the street around
her. They got into the car quickly and wordlessly, slamming the doors
behind them.
‘All
right, let’s go,’ Jim said, turning the key in the ignition and
moving off down the road.
Cinnamon
had slipped into the back seat with Liesl, and Liesl was eyeing her
warily.
‘Cinnamon’s
with us,’ Jim told her tersely, his eyes on the rear view mirror.
There was no one following them, it seemed, but still, he would take
a circuitous route back to the apartment.
‘Then she was a plant,’ Liesl said,
sounding stunned. ‘All of this – everything.’
‘Everything,’ Jim nodded, his eyes
flicking between the road ahead and the rear view mirror. ‘All of
it designed to bring Bauer down – nothing more.’
‘Then you – ’ she began.
Jim pressed his lips together, suffused
by a feeling of guilt. She subsided into silence. In the mirror he
could just see Cinnamon’s hand slipping sideways and closing around
Liesl’s. He was glad that Cinnamon was there to give her that
comfort.
******
Back in the
apartment Jim shut the curtains and carefully locked the door while
Rollin spurred the heaters into action and Cinnamon busied herself
making coffee on the little stove in the kitchen area. Liesl sat in
an armchair with her coat still tightly wrapped around her, looking
stunned.
Jim stood
at the window for longer than was necessary, checking the street for
signs of police even though it seemed obvious that no one had
followed them. He didn’t know what to say to Liesl. She was
obviously torn between feelings of gratitude and betrayal, and he
didn’t know how to explain things to her with Cinnamon and Rollin
here in the room with them. What could he do for the woman anyway? It
wasn’t as if he could arrange for her to come back to the States,
and even if he did, what would she do then? He couldn’t be in a
long-term relationship with anybody, not in his job. He should never
have become involved. But it was too late now. All he could do was to
try to repair the damage.
He turned
his head a little and looked at Liesl out of the corner of his eye.
Something about her profile and the wave of her dark hair made his
heart jump a little in his chest. It was so easy to fall, and so hard
to recover from the landing. It could be that he felt more for her
than she did for him. After all, what had they really shared
together? Eye contact over coffee, and one night in a warm bed? He
had been watching her for longer than she had known of his existence.
‘All
right,’ he said abruptly, turning from the window, showing no sign
of his thoughts in his face. ‘Here’s what we do. Rollin, you’ve
got all the evidence from Cinnamon that you need. You need to get
that story written up and into the Berlin Daily. I want you to take
Cinnamon and Liesl into Germany and over into the Western Zone. We’ll
rendezvous there once Barney and Willy have completed their part in
this.’
‘Jim,
how are we going to get Fräulein Weismuller out of the country?’
Rollin asked seriously. ‘Barney’s tied up underground – he
won’t have time for faking papers or knocking up hidden
compartments.’
‘We’ll
think of a way,’ Jim said tersely. ‘There’s always a way. Once
she’s there, it’s your job to be certain she stays there.’
He turned
back to the window, his mind racing through possibilities. There had
to be a way. He couldn’t just dump her here, after getting her into
so much danger with Bauer’s people. Had it really become that they
were incapable of rigging up needed equipment without Barney to hand?
He looked
around again, watching as Cinnamon bent towards Liesl, offering her a
black coffee in a delicate china cup. Liesl’s fingers were closing
around the saucer, taking it from Cinnamon’s hands. It was hard to
tell whose fingers were whose.
He drew in
breath suddenly.
‘Cinnamon,
how many passports do you have with you?’ he asked abruptly. ‘What
identities?’
She turned
to him, raising her eyebrows. ‘Greta Hoch’s, of course. And I’m
on your passport as your wife. I also have an identity as a reporter
for the Berlin Daily that mirrors Rollin’s, and one as a nurse with
the German Red Cross.’
Jim nodded,
and looked over at Rollin. ‘Rollin, can you make Liesl look like
Cinnamon?’
Liesl
looked across at the other woman, startled. ‘Well, no, of course –
’ she began.
‘Oh,
I should think so,’ Rollin cut across, unfolding himself from his
chair and coming over to look more closely at Liesl. ‘Similar bone
structure. The hair should be no problem. She’ll have to have
contacts to change her eye colour, of course, but the build’s
there.’
Liesl
looked at Rollin as if he had gone mad, but Jim smiled.
‘Good.
How long will it take?’
Rollin
looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got everything I need here. If
Cinnamon can sit for the mask and then do Fräulein Weismuller’s
hair, I’ll have the mask made in a couple of hours.’
‘I can do
that,’ Cinnamon said smoothly, cocking her head sideways as she
assessed Liesl’s hair. ‘It’ll be quite simple to make her match
the passport.’
Jim
nodded. ‘In that case – Rollin, you and Liesl will leave the
country together using the press passports. Cinnamon will leave later
with the rest of us. We can’t have two identical people trying to
leave the country at the same time.’
‘Oh,
I think that could be quite fun,’ Cinnamon said in a serene tone.
‘But I’m happy to wait here with you, Jim.’
She took a
sip of her coffee, then pushed her hair away from her face and leant
back in her chair, saying, ‘I’m ready when you are, Rollin.’
‘I’ll
have the plaster mixed by the time you’ve finished that coffee,’
he promised her.
******
No matter
how many times Jim had seen Rollin transforming himself or another
into a completely different person, it was strange to see Liesl being
turned into a carbon-copy of Cinnamon, right down to the
silver-blonde hair and the narrow-bridged nose and the wide
blue-green eyes. When she stood in the doorway of the bedroom and
looked at him, he had to look twice before he could perceive anything
of Liesl in her. Of course, it was there. There was something about
the way she held herself, the way her lips were pushed together with
a subtle sign of stress, the way her hands were curled at her sides –
but on the surface, she was Cinnamon.
‘Now
I believe it,’ she said simply, glancing sideways at her reflection
in the glass of a picture on the wall.
Cinnamon
moved past her out of the bedroom, looking smugly satisfied at what
she and Rollin had created. Their clothes were different, but still,
they looked like the most identical of twins.
‘Liesl,
can I have a moment?’ Jim asked, stepping closer and gesturing her
back into the bedroom.
Liesl
looked at him, then dropped her eyes. No amount of disguise could
hide the suspicion in her. She nodded briefly, and he followed her
back into the room.
‘Did
any of it mean anything?’ she asked him before he could speak.
Jim felt
something tighten inside his chest, and he nodded.
‘All
of it,’ he promised her, moving close enough to her that he could
smell and sense that this was Liesl and not Cinnamon in front of him.
‘The instant you were out of Bauer’s employment I should have
left you alone. But I didn’t. I came after you.
I shouldn’t have. It was unprofessional of me. But I did.’
‘You’re
not even Otto, are you?’ she asked.
He
shook his head. ‘My name’s Jim. I can’t say more than that.’
She smiled
weakly, her gaze lifting to meet his. He moved closer again, filled
with the urge to kiss her, but she drew back.
‘This
doesn’t feel – safe,’ she said, gesturing towards the mask that
covered her face. ‘I feel as if it would fall off if I sneezed.’
Jim
laughed quietly. ‘Oh, Rollin’s better than that,’ he promised
her, ‘but I understand. It’s strange for me, too. Cinnamon’s a
very good friend. A friend,’
he promised her, at her slightly suspicious look. ‘Nothing more.’
She laughed
then, nodding. ‘She’s something more of a friend to Herr Hand,
perhaps?’
Jim
glanced at the door. He was never quite sure what did
go
on between Rollin and Cinnamon, if anything did.
‘Perhaps,’
he said. He turned his wrist to look at his watch. ‘Liesl, you’ll
have to be going soon. You’ll remember what we’ve all told you?
Just keep your cool, let Rollin do the talking as much as you can.
Look them in the eye, don’t give them a reason to suspect.’
‘I
spent a lot of time acting for Georg Bauer,’ she told him, a
hardness edging her voice. ‘I know how to hide my feelings when I
must.’
Jim bit back his feelings at those
words. His anger was for Bauer, not for her.
‘Good,’
he said, laying a hand on her cheek – Cinnamon’s cheek, it
appeared. The false skin even felt like skin. The warmth of Liesl’s
blood permeated the soft membrane. ‘Then I will see you in Berlin,’
he promised. ‘Rollin will look after you. Trust him.’
‘I
will trust him,’ she nodded. ‘You
trust him.’
******
After Liesl
was gone, Jim sat in one of the tired armchairs in the apartment and
drank Scotch. Cinnamon left him alone. There was nothing either of
them could do at this point, either to help Rollin and Liesl or to
help Barney and Willy. Cinnamon had given up her chance to escape the
country early to let Liesl escape in her place, and Jim didn’t know
how to properly express his gratitude for that. He knew it was the
kind of the thing that any of them would have done, but still,
Cinnamon was risking her life or her freedom for a woman she hardly
knew and to whom she owed nothing.
‘I
appreciate it,’ Jim said after a while, looking up from his drink.
The alcohol had just taken the edge off his tension and made the
evening seem a bit more friendly to him.
Cinnamon
looked up from her book, seeming startled at the sudden noise in the
quiet room. She registered what he had said, then shrugged. ‘You
don’t need to tell me that, Jim.’
‘Maybe
not,’ Jim said, ‘But I appreciate it.’
‘You
should go get some sleep,’ Cinnamon told him. ‘Barney won’t be
through to the safe until the morning, will he?’
Jim looked
at his watch. It was pushing close to ten p.m., and the night’s
cold was pressing through the windows no matter how tightly they kept
the curtains closed.
‘Not
until the morning,’ he nodded. ‘Then we’ll need to be on hand
to take the money to various banks. It’ll all go much more quickly
with us there too. Take a lot of the heat off of Barney and Willy.’
Cinnamon
nodded. ‘And we won’t hear from Rollin until the morning,
either,’ she said pertinently.
‘No,’
Jim said. ‘No, they’ll still be travelling...’
‘They’ll
both be fine,’ Cinnamon told him quietly.
‘Yeah,
sure,’ Jim nodded with a quick smile. ‘Sure.’
He stood up
abruptly, taking his glass over to the little kitchen area and
putting it down with a sharp sound on the surface by the sink.
‘Goodnight,
Cinnamon,’ he said.
‘Goodnight,
Jim,’ she replied quietly.
In
his room he lay on his bed fully clothed, his head resting back on
the pillow and his eyes unfocussed, staring at the light fitting that
hung from the ceiling. In the dim glow cast by the lamp by the bed
everything in the room looked strange. He wondered if Rollin and
Liesl were
making out fine. They’d be just about reaching the border by now.
But he wouldn’t know until tomorrow. He wouldn’t be able to do
anything anyway. It was up to Rollin to get Liesl through into East
Germany, and then to get her all the way through to West Berlin. It
was up to Rollin to get Cinnamon’s clandestinely taken photographs
and facts made up into a neat news story and printed in the
newspaper. If he succeeded, it was possible that Jim’s first
knowledge of it would be to see the story on sale in one of the local
shops. Then the pressure really would be on, as Bauer started to feel
himself attacked from all sides.
There was
nothing Jim could do right now to further any of this, and that was
the kind of time he hated most of all. All he could do now was sleep,
and make sure that the final part of the mission went off properly
tomorrow.