7.
Fraulein Weismuller looked up as if she
had been electrified. Jim licked his lips, suddenly nervous. But he
had already presented himself to her as someone who bought and sold
women – someone who worked beneath the system, probably who crossed
borders by night and thought little of immigration controls. It
wasn’t a stretch that he would be able to take a woman from East to
West.
But as Jim Phelps, as the team leader
of his Impossible Missions force, as the top man in his cell, taking
his orders from the Secretary; that was different. Ostensibly it
would be even easier for him than for his alias – but in reality
things weren’t that simple. It was a promise that would be tough
and dangerous to back up – as much for her as for him. It could
compromise his whole position in the IMF if he were found out.
‘Why would you take me to the West?’
she asked him bitterly, staring at him with nothing but distrust in
her eyes. ‘To sell me to someone who’ll send me back east? What
do men like you feel for women? We’re commodities. Nothing more.’
‘You are more,’ Jim said.
He wanted to bite his own tongue out.
He was so perilously close to blowing his own cover. He was stupid,
stupid, to even be here.
‘You
don’t know me,’ she said.
‘No,’
he replied, reaching out a hand to her cheek, touching the drying
tears there.
She turned away. Jim bit his lip into
his mouth. He ought to turn around now and go. But Liesl walked
across the room, filled the kettle and put it on the gas ring.
‘I owe you a cup of coffee, Herr
Baum,’ she said with her back to him. Even in that over long jumper
there was something about her shoulder blades and the set of her neck
that made Jim want to go to her.
‘I’d like that,’ he said, aware
that he was suddenly smiling like a schoolboy.
He pushed the expression off his face
before she turned around. He had to act like Otto Baum, not Jim
Phelps, and certainly not like a lovestruck Jim Phelps. He strode
across the room and took a seat at the table without asking her.
Perhaps he would be lucky. Perhaps Otto would repulse her, where Jim
may not.
‘It must have been tough working for
Georg Bauer,’ he remarked. ‘But he’s a lucky guy,’ he added,
remembering to think as Otto. ‘He must have been crazy to give you
up.’
Her shoulders stiffened.
‘Women are supposed to be protected
in this world,’ she said. ‘They are supposed to be shielded. They
are not. Women work the hardest of all, for least reward.’
Jim half-smiled. He wasn’t sure what
to say to that.
After a time she brought the coffee in
two cups, and sat down on one of the old, scratched wooden chairs.
‘Georg Bauer disgusted me,’ she
said simply. ‘I would like to go to the police, go to the
newspapers, tell the world what that man is. But no one would believe
me. Besides, his men will be watching me.’
Jim stiffened, glancing momentarily
over at the window, not that there was anything to see through a
third-floor window.
‘Why do you think they’ll be
watching you?’ he asked, keeping his tone casual.
‘Because he told me so,’ she said
simply. ‘He made me aware how lucky I am to have my life.’
Jim clenched a hand under the table. He
had known it was stupid to come here. He had known it. Never let
personal feelings interfere with a mission. That was one of his first
credos.
He got up and went to the window,
looking down into the street below. The sky was still like slate and
the streets were still covered in dirty snow. There was no one down
there but pedestrians hurrying by. Still, it would be best to wait
until dark before he left the building, and to leave by another exit.
‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ he
said, coming back to the table.
‘Then why did you?’ Liesl asked
him, regarding him over the top of her coffee cup.
He shrugged. He could allow some
honesty. ‘Because I am a foolish man,’ he said. ‘Because I saw
you in the café and I knew I must see more of you. I wanted to see
that you were all right.’
Her lips turned upwards in a grim
smile. ‘Are you a believer in love at first sight, Herr Baum?’
Jim shook his head. ‘I never have
been,’ he told her.
She poured a little whiskey into her
coffee, and then some into his.
‘It keeps the cold at bay,’ she
said.
Jim took a mouthful from his cup. It
wasn’t good coffee and it wasn’t good whiskey, but she was right.
It did keep the cold at bay.
He glanced across at the windows of his
own apartment, wondering how Barney and Willy were doing, if Cinnamon
was safe, if Rollin was in there. As he watched he caught a sudden
flash of light on binoculars, and realised that Rollin was there,
and that he was reclining in the old armchair near the window,
watching Jim. There could be men in any of those windows, watching.
An uncomfortable feeling crept up his spine. He got up quickly and
drew the curtains closed.
‘It
keeps the heat in better,’ he said to Liesl as she shot him an
enquiring look. He flicked the electric light on, and sat back down.
Whatever it was
that magnetised him to Liesl Weismuller, it seemed to be a reciprocal
attraction. There was no reason that she should trust any man, least
of all a man she had seen selling a woman to Georg Bauer, but still
she sat at the table with her eyes on him, leaning closer to him than
she needed to. Jim tried again to tell himself that he was here for
professional reasons, that she could tell him many useful things
about Bauer and his household – but the only person listening to
the lie was himself.
‘You
lived in Georg Bauer’s house for a long time, didn’t you?’ he
asked her. He could perhaps try to make some truth of his lie.
She nodded. ‘Almost
seven months. A short time. A long time. It depends from which side
you are looking.’
Jim half smiled.
‘You came straight from Berlin?’
Again she nodded.
‘I had known little of life,’ she said. ‘I only knew I wanted
to get to the West, to be with what is left of my family. I had a
great fault, Herr Baum. I trusted people.’
‘That’s
not always a fault,’ Jim said, reaching his hand out across the
table. Against all his expectations, she reached toward him and
touched his fingers with her own. In some ways he despised himself.
She was perhaps desperate for any kind of affection, and he was
taking advantage of that.
******
Rollin lowered his binoculars as soon
as Jim closed the curtains. He sat in the tired armchair, legs
stretched out and crossed at the ankles, rubbing a finger against his
lip. He was worried about Jim. At least he had had the sense to draw
those curtains, though. If Rollin could see in to Fraulein
Weismuller’s apartment, then so could anyone else. But he knew Jim.
He didn’t fall easily, but when he did, he fell hard.
He got up and wandered over to the
counter beside the sink. He had pushed away the effects of the
morning’s alcohol with a good deal of coffee, and now he cut
himself a few thick slices of bread and ate them covered in butter
and honey. He had gleaned from his morning’s work that Bauer would
almost certainly be at the club tonight, and would probably bring
along his new trophy, Cinnamon. Rollin would welcome the chance to
see that she was all right as much as he welcomed the chance to get
some dirt on Bauer. He had a lipstick camera identical to Cinnamon’s.
All he would have to do at the end of the night was to swap his with
hers.
He had his reporter’s clothes laid
out over a chair in his bedroom. That would give Bauer distraction
enough, at least. Worried people thought that they were more careful.
In fact, they were far, far more careless. With the thought of a
reporter in his club Bauer’s mind would be far from the safe in the
cellar and far from thoughts that his lovely new woman could be a
plant. He would be watching Rollin, and nothing else.
He whiled away the afternoon playing
solitary card games and occasionally taking a glance at those closed
curtains across the street. He was hoping that Jim would return soon,
but he didn’t. At around six he saw Willy and Barney returning,
looking dirty and tired as they left their van and walked towards the
front door of the building. He looked out into the corridor as they
came past.
‘Like me to fix dinner for you
fellers?’ he asked, acutely conscious of how he had spent the day
drinking or relaxing while they had been down underground, digging
out half-frozen earth.
‘Be there as soon as we’re clean,’
Barney responded with a grin, holding up mud-smeared hands.
Rollin grinned back, and turned back
into the apartment. He didn’t have a lot to cook with, but he could
make something with potatoes and sausage and canned tomatoes. It
might even taste nice.
******
In the club later he was glad of the
solid meal that helped to soak up yet more vodkas and brandies and
cocktails. He nursed his drinks, but he didn’t want to look as if
he was too obviously waiting around. Besides, it wasn’t such a
hardship sitting at one of the round tables and watching the stage
show, which was little more than girls in feathers and skimpy
costumes performing rote dances to please the patrons. They did
please, not so much for any innate talent but because they were some
of the prettiest girls Rollin had yet seen in this country.
He tapped his glass quietly on the
tabletop. Somewhere down below, outside the perimeters of the clubs
walls, Barney and Willie were tunnelling again despite their long
day’s work, in an effort to reach the safe as soon as possible. Up
here he was still waiting for Cinnamon to appear. If she had snapped
anything of note in the house or in the club that evening, he needed
to be there to receive the lipstick camera from her and replace it
with an identical one.
Rollin glanced towards the door to the
back room. It was almost ten now, and Bauer still hadn’t appeared –
but as he watched the door half opened and the man himself looked
out, casting his eyes over the customers in the bar. Rollin stretched
his legs out and lolled back in his chair, smiling. With the sharp
suit and the camera around his neck and the notepad under his right
hand, he looked every inch the press man.
It was only a few moments later when
Bauer came over and sat down at his table.
‘Press,’ Bauer said simply.
Rollin tilted his head once, tapping
his fingers on the notepad.
‘Why are you here?’
Rollin smiled. ‘This is one of the
best clubs in the city, Herr Bauer. It is a place of interest to the
people. I write reviews of places like this. Of course, it helps when
the management are friendly.’
Bauer’s eyes narrowed momentarily.
‘Put my name once in your column and your editor will have you
immediately fired,’ he said in a level voice. ‘Just a warning.’
‘Well, of course, Herr Bauer,’
Rollin replied smoothly, touching his hat. ‘I want to keep my job
just as much as I imagine you want to keep yours.’
‘See that you do,’ Bauer said, and
he stood up abruptly and pushed back in through the door to the back
room. Rollin was certain that the room acted as a first stop for the
business of prostitution, perhaps where patrons were vetted or money
exchanged hands. There were enough hardened or abashed or
self-conscious looking men slipping through to convince him of that.
Rollin sat back in his chair again and
turned his attention back to the dancers, making some notes on his
pad for the sake of appearances. He could see through that door. That
was Cinnamon’s job.
******
It was almost eleven before Cinnamon
appeared. Rollin caught sight of her as she slipped out through the
door and walked up to the bar, ordering herself a tall drink. The
barman asked for no money. It was obvious that he knew she was
Bauer’s woman.
She turned around and leant against the
bar, sipping the drink daintily and looking about the room. Her eye
was caught for a while by the stage show, but then she put her drink
down and began to move about the tables, leaning close to the patrons
and speaking to them quietly. Rollin watched her, his hands clenched
under the table as a couple of the guys made lewd remarks or reached
out to touch her as she turned away. He certainly couldn’t leap to
defend her honour, and if he could read Bauer right, he was probably
watching and ready to come out himself at any sign of trouble.
Eventually she got to Rollin. She
smiled and leant closer and said, ‘Are you having an enjoyable
evening, sir?’
Rollin nodded and smiled, but he said
in an undertone, ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded. ‘I’m very glad, sir,’
she said aloud.
Then Rollin said in a louder, rather
drunk voice, ‘You need to freshen your make up, Fraulein. Too much
kissing in the back room, eh?’
‘Oh,’ Cinnamon said, her tone and
her smile still gracious. She reached into her small purse and
brought out a compact and her lipstick, but she fumbled and dropped
the little gold tube on the floor.
‘Let me,’ Rollin said as the tube
rolled under the table. He bent down and swiftly shook the lipstick’s
twin out of his sleeve, palming Cinnamon’s and straightening up to
offer her the new one.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she smiled.
‘There you are. Much better,’
Rollin nodded as she carefully retouched her lips.
He could feel the little metal tube in
his sleeve as she walked away. He watched her moving on to the next
table, exchanging more pleasantries, acting every inch the hostess.
She had spent a considerable time in the back, it seemed, and there
must be something of value in the camera for her to risk passing it
to him. Later he would set up the bathroom in his apartment as a
makeshift darkroom, and he would find out exactly what it was that
she had seen.
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