Chapter 1
"Wow! what a body!"
Sergeant Joe Guthrie made the expression quietly but with a great deal of feeling as he tip-toed into the little room at Pension Dorfstadt and gazed admiringly at the shapely nude silhouette in bed. He had just finished a hectic night shift at CSS Headquarters in internationally turbulent West Berlin, but sleep was the last thing on Joe Guthrie's mind now.
The girl in bed lay languidly on her back, a perfectly formed thigh propped up provocatively even in sleep. Or was she really asleep, Joe wondered, removing his necktie and edging closer to the bed.
It was still almost pitch dark, but the bare outline of her voluptuous body was enough to charge Joe's fervent imagination until he had a clear mental picture of each creamy curve and crevice.
Her left knee shifted slightly to make an open chasm at the apex of two langorous legs.
"Oh, baby!"
Joe mumbled his excitement audibly this time, his hands reaching down anxiously to touch the firm yet yielding thighs, and feel a shudder radiate from the rapturous torso.
Only a month ago. Erika Lang had been but a face in the crowd, like any of a thousand or so girls who saunter nightly along Berlin's bright Kurfuerstendamm, looking for a boyfriend, a customer, or just out to marvel at the sights of the gaudy "gay white way" of the Western World set so incongruously here in this tight little enclave of freedom over a hundred miles inside the Iron Curtain.
But there was something about Erika that was different, something beyond the sparkling and expressive face, the long shimmer of golden blonde hair, and the figure that would do credit to a modern day Venus even in the drab cotton frock of the East Sector's State owned HO store.
Joe had asked her to have a drink with him and suggested they go somewhere for the night in much the same way a million GI's must have asked a million German girls along the Kurdamm since World War Two. But from there on it had been different.
Erika Lang was no "shack job". She was the marrying kind. And Joe, in spite of his sophistication and worldliness after four years in the Army and a year before that as a country cop back home, "wanted desperately to marry Erika. The feeling was deeply mutual too. But just as strongly impossible. Because the day before they met, Erika had slipped through the wall from her home in East Berlin. And for fear of reprisals against her family if she registered at Marienfelde as a refugee, she had insisted on remaining incognito.
The naked form on the bed moved again now, emitting a lightly impassioned moan, then reached out to Joe who was standing by her side. His hands crept tenderly across the subtle squirming body. She shuddered again, this time quivering sensuously to his feel.
And then it happened! Suddenly Joe knew this wasn't Erika. He was too familiar with each detailed sweep and orifice of her tremendously articulate body. And this girl, he now sensed when his hand glided over the outsize bosom, was not Erika Lang. Erika's breasts were smaller in proportion and unusually well defined and exciting. But this girl was heavy busted, at least a 38 compared to the well rounded 34 he knew so well, the lovely little shelf of rigid, titillating projection that went so proportionately with the petite 23 waist.
. "Don't turn on the light, darling," an American girl's voice cautioned from the strange lips so close to him, "...just make love to me ... now ... like this."
She spoke in a hushed and husky plead. Long arms moved up to his neck and pulled him against the twisting mounds of plus flesh that played an undulating game of mobility with her restive body.
"Dammit, girl!" Joe cursed savagely, countering his surprise with anger," Who the hell are you-Where's Erika-Where is she?"
Joe wrested himself away from the probing hands and yanked on the wall light cord behind the bed. The naked glare of the unfrosted bulb gave an abrupt harshness to the small guest room of the Pension Dorfstadt. It was almost bare except for a white leather suitcase by the foot of the old wooden bed, and an open wardrobe displaying a row of New York feminine finery like Erika had never dreamed of owning.
"Turn off the light, darling ... please," the voice of a completely nude redhead, her fulsome body still mobile and teasing, begged enticingly.
"Who the hell are you? Where's Erika?" was all Joe could come up with as he reached down to pull the top sheet off the floor and drape it over the redhead's disconcerting nakedness. "This room is ... is my wife's...."
Joe clammed quickly and began to pace the floor. This was a fool thing to do ... spout off like this to a perfect stranger when he was keeping house with a forbidden East German girl. Maybe the Army had sent the redhead to check up on him. Or perhaps she was from the East Sector trying to find the escaped Erika.
"I've had this room for over two weeks, darling," the voice from the bed insisted, her lips pursing seductively as she deliberately let the sheet slide away from her tremendous jut of breast and peered down with a suggestive smile at their ruby tipped prominence, "You should have been here sooner. You're quite a delicious looking man."
Joe only frowned at the compliment. He balled up a fist and whacked it into his palm frustratedly. Of course Joe Guthrie was the type gals went for-tall and muscular with a devil-may-care outlook that matched the unconcerned lope of a walk he'd picked up during a rugged youth with plenty of outdoor living on an upstate New York farm.
But there was no jaunty swagger to his walk now.
"Where the hell is Erika?" Joe shot the question at her for the third time. "Let's stop this crap about being in this room for two weeks!"
"Don't get mad, darling," she reached out for his hand and dropped her voice to an intimate husk, "I'm Sally Martin, and I'm a nice little expatriate who's having herself a big bash here in Berlin. Come on now, Sergeant ... aren't you lonesome for some home grown loving? You know an American girl is better than these fickle Fraeuleins...."
"Go to hell!" Joe roiled up, wrenching away from her hold on his arm and pulling open the hallway door, "Herr Dorfstadt! Herr Dorfstadt! Get the hell out of bed and come here!"
"Shut up!"
"Was ist los?" Silencio!" A multilingual barrage of protests came from the other rooms.
"Ja....ja ... yes? What is matter, please?" a paunchy little German inquired in a thick accent, gesturing excitedly as he padded from his room in an old nightshirt, "What you want here? Are you make trouble for Miss Martin, soldier? I call MP. I call...."
"You won't call anybody, pops!" Joe angered, grab bing him by the collar and dragging the chunky proprietor into the room, "But you will tell me what happened to Er ... to my wife, and her clothes, and...."
"Mein Gott in Himmel!" the breathless German gasped, twisting and gulping hard to try and free himself from Joe's grip, "I swear to you, Sergeant ... I never see you wife ... I never see you before this minute. Miss Martin is here two weeks yet. She . .
"You lying son of a bitch!" Joe cursed him heatedly, gathering up more of the nightshirt collar and pressing him hard against the wall. "Now, look here, Dorfstadt! I know I told you not to tell anybody she was here. I know I paid you five times what the damn room is worth so she wouldn't have to register and get on the police records. But I'm the guy who paid you ... you can talk to me! Where the hell is she?"
"I ... I don't know what you mean!" Dorfstadt choked for air as he shrieked his denial, "I swear it! I never see you before...."
'Look here, you kraut bastard! I'll...."
Suddenly, Joe let go and the panicky German dropped to the floor, vainly groping for a hold on the radiator pipe. Joe knew his threats were meaningless. He could hardly afford for the German to call the MFs. If the Army ever found out he was keeping an unregistered refugee from the East Sector, his four year record as a model soldier would go right out the window. And with a General Courts Martial behind him he's never get back on the County Police Force when he got out, much less be able to take his discharge in Berlin and marry Erika legally .
"Okay, Dorfstadt. You win for now," Joe relented, stooping down to help the prostrate proprietor to his feet, "But I'm going to search this room until I find something of Erika's. Then you'll...."
"Please, Herr Sergeant. You can't do that," the man protested feebly, backing toward the door, "This is Miss Martin's room. She...."
"Oh, I don't mind a bit, Mr. Dorfstadt," the long silent redhead brightened with a flirtatious wink, the sheet now pulled decorously over her rich curves, "I think perhaps he could find something very interesting."
"Okay ... okay, Sergeant ... but you make me trouble I call MP," Dorfstadt warned, then closed the door behind himself.
"All right, Red! Where's Erika?" Joe started in again, stomping threateningly toward the bed.
"I ... really don't know," she replied hesitantly, dropping her tease, "Why don't you ... search the room?"
Joe turned quickly to the old wardrobe and yanked the girl's dresses from the rack, pulled out the dresser drawers and upended them, fished through the mire of feminine toiletries by the lavatory.
Not a trace of anything he recognized.
"Don't lie to me again!" Joe became menacing, talking between clenched teeth as he approached the bed and pulled the sheet back over the svelte body which she had managed to strip-tease down again, "You're lying and Dorfstadt's lying! But why?"
"I ... I can't tell you. Honestly, I can't," the redhead admitted suddenly, a shiver of fear seeming to course through her naked body as the big green eyes begged for belief, "But you ... you can't afford to make trouble either. I heard what you told Dorfstadt. You paid him to hide this girl ... your wife."
Joe wasn't listening now. His probing eyes had picked up a faint dot of something red wedged in the accumulated dirt under the old radiator. He stooped down to finger it out of the dust. It was a little red capsule, just like the ones he'd seen in the prescription box Erika carried in her purse.
"Take a look at this, Miss Martin!" Joe demand with a righteous sneer, pushing the capsule toward her startled face, "You still going to tell me Erika's never been here? This is hers! I recognize it!"
"Look, darling ... I'm ... I'm in trouble too," the redhead broke down in frightened seriousness, "I ... I don't know where Erika is ... I'll swear to that, Sergeant. But ... well, I guess we're both in the same boat."
"What land of talk is that?" Joe snapped impatiently, lighting up a cigarette but not offering her one, and still refusing to sit on the bed which she kept patting invitingly, "Okay, girl ... talk! Let's hear it!"
"I'm ... not supposed to be in Berlin," she began to relax a little, letting the sheet ride down over the magnificent breasts again while she reached for a cigarette in her purse on the night table, "My husband's been missing for almost three months now. He came over here on business ... we've got a small camera import business in New York. I tried to get over here sooner, but the State Department forbid it ... hinted he was on some sort of security or intelligence work and I might only mess things up. So ... I managed to sneak over ... and then found out about this place-the fact that if you paid Dorfstadt enough he wouldn't turn in your name as a registered guest like he's supposed to...."
"All right! All right! You don't have to tell me the rest," Joe cut her off impatiently, looking at the capsule thoughtfully before stuffing it in his shirt pocket, " ... and Dorfstadt told you to tell anybody who asked that you'd been here two weeks ... you kiss mine and I'll kiss yours. That's the way the bastard works."
"I'm ... not really in love with my husband," the redhead confessed needlessly, pouting impishly as she threw the sheet all the way off and twisted her fabulous body in a contortive spasm, "I'm only trying to find him because I put up the money for our business. Right now, darling, I'm simply starved for a man. Look at me! Nice, huh?"
"I'm not buying, baby," Joe pushed her off sarcastically, making for the door, "Go back to sleep and have a nice dream. Goodnight!"
"Damn you!" it was the redhead's turn to show her temper, but it subsided quickly to the more effective nymphish pout, "I'll see you later, darling. No man gets away from De ... little Sally that easily."
"Whatever your name is ... you make me sick! Joe clipped back.
But underneath his angered and deeply concerned exterior, the sight and motions of the warm blooded redhead had set up a turbulence as old as time. It was something a virile young man can never quite forget ... even when he's trying to be true to the most beautiful and exciting little blonde in the world-and she's crazily, mysteriously, unexplainably vanished into thin air.
Joe slammed the door and strode down the dim hallway toward Dorfstadt's room. He stopped short of his mark. Reason set in to replace his anxious anger. Joe Guthrie was trapped ... caged like an animal. He dared not threaten the crooked pension owner again.
It was I:30 now. The only thing to do was to go back to the barracks and talk it over with Larry, who was also involved to some extent with his hiding Erika away. Larry was always full of bright ideas, and as his roommate and closest friend, Sergeant Lawrence A. Thompson, had lent him some of the money to keep Erika housed, clothed and fed these past five weeks. Right now, he was the only person whose complete confidence Joe could share.
Outside the pension, the warm night air was forebodingly still. There was no sign of light or movement along the gas-lit cobblestone street.
"What the ... ?" Joe jumped around to his left at the sudden feel of hard metal gouging in his side.
The gunmen, who had stepped stealthily from the shadows, said nothing as Joe swirled his face around. A set of white teeth smiled with sardonic menace, and the gun jammed harder into Joe's ribs, steering him to the rear door of a black Mercedes at the curb.
"Your girl friend is safe, Sergeant Guthrie," a thick voice, heavy with accent, immediately informed him from the back seat, "But one word to the authorities ... and she dies a most terrible way ... so terrible you can not possibly imagine!"
Joe studied the outline of the man during the moments of silence which followed. He was not cumbersomely obese, merely squat and muscularly big. There was no clear delineation of the facial features in the darkness. But Joe could see he sported a huge mass of dark hair rooting up from barely an inch above bushy, "John L. Lewis" eyebrows. He had little forehead, the big head caving back abruptly in a near Neanderthal form which Joe dimly recalled seeing on some kind of poster recently.
"You ... you've kidnapped her!" Joe exclaimed with sudden realization, then winced as the gun pressed in against him harder, "But why? Why?
"You are not a stupid young man," the voice complimented obliquely, then began to display a frightening knowledge of the life of Joe Guthrie, "You have two years of college, twenty-six years of age, made Sergeant after only two years in the Army. Now surely you must realize why Erika has been taken."
"You goddam Commies!" Joe riled, feeling the gun twist and pinch through his thin summer shirt, "Yeah ... sure, I know why you've got her. You don't like to let anybody escape across that damn wall without...."
"Ha ha! You are amusing, Sergeant," the big one bellowed out in cruel laughter, "I am not interested in every little nineteen year old secretary who sneaks through to...."
"Then why ... why?" Joe blurted, holding out his hands.
"You know why! You are just putting on an act!" the man insisted loudly, "And if you will walk down the right side of the Kurfuerstendamm at noon tomorrow ... in the direction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church ruins ... you will find out how to save your beloved Erika from the most terrible torture and death a woman can suffer. You will be contacted then, Sergeant. Goodnight!"
"But look ... she may be sick ... she has some pills to....
Joe's pleas were cut off quickly when the gunman at his side yanked him away from the car. He went sprawling to the sidewalk as the big vehicle, it's rear the deserted street.
The words stuck in his mind, " ... walk down the Kurfuerstendamm at noon tomorrow ... you will be contacted.
Joe pulled himself up by grabbing the jutting balustrade of the old building next to the pension. He brushed himself off and started toward Innsbrueckerplatz to look for a cab.
Of course he knew why they had kidnapped Erika. There was only one reason the Reds would risk hitting the scene in the West Sector to get back an apprentice secretary who was going to marry a mere Sergeant in the U.S. Army: The mere Sergeant in this case was night duty code clerk in the top secret Combined Security Service of the Berlin Command.