Chapter 6
When midnight came, things looked different. Joe's relief signed in at the Decoding Room at 11:55. And in the hours before, sobering second thoughts had set in to blur the firmness of the decision he had made on the spur of the moment. Transmissions had been light tonight, due to an atmospheric disturbance over the Atlantic, and alone in the code room, Joe's mind had experienced a similar turbulence, vacillating each new idea and making his head seem like a cocktail shaker in perpetual motion.
Did Erika really deceive him, want to marry him only to legitimatize a Communist conceived child?
Did he still love her? Did he ever really love her?
The Corporal on duty at the front desk provided part of the answer when Joe was about to leave the building.
"Know a broad named Erika?" the Corporal asked with a wry grin.
"Erika! She's my...." Joe gave away his true feelings with the tone of enthusiasm, "Yeah! Yeah ... she's a gal I know. Why?"
"Sure got a nice bedroom voice on the phone," the youth drawled it out tortuously long for Joe's tight anxiety, " ... 'course all these Frauleins got bedroom voices. But this one here called 'bout a hour ago an' says she wants you to meet her at some joint called the Kleine Klause up by Innsbrueckerplatz ... know it?"
"Yeah ... yeah!" Joe jumped to it eagerly, snatching the memo from the solider's hand, "Thanks ... thanks a lot."
Joe ran out the door, and the two blocks to Bismarckstrasse where he could flag a cab. He was beside himself now with new hope. Gone were the angers over the Tranquizine, gone were the insinuations of the jealous Martha, gone were the lingering desires for the young nurse's body. All Joe could think of was Erika-that afternoon they'd met on the Kurdamm, the whole night of dancing, the long walk by the Havel and watching the sun come up over the foreboding ramshackle of rooftops of Communist East Germany on the other side, them first night in the little pension when they slept wrapped in each others arms.
"Keep the change, Heinrich," Joe gleefully manufactured a name for the German cabbie when they reached the Kleine Klause, passing him a twenty mark bill.
Inside the intimate cabaret, Joe's eyes scanned every table, the bar, the booths along the back. Each time his eye caught a glint of blonde hair, a fairly common sight among the Nordic featured natives of Northern Germany, it was a potential Erika. But his spirits took a dip with each new false alarm. Was someone playing a cruel game with him? Could this be another form of Martha's non-violent vengeance? And why would Erika choose this place? They had never been here before, and there were other all night bars in Berlin.
When the last blonde was counted, Joe's hopes were lower than the Kleine Klause's lighting, his excited heartbeat as high as their prices. This was the type place a visiting wheel could pick up something nice ... and expensive, or where the bustling town's broad minded elite could bring their wives or dates for a look at the new sophistication that replaced the Old World charm of another day.
"A table for you, Sergeant?" a dapper waiter inquired of Joe, trying not to let his distaste for the Enlisted uniform show.
"I ... I was supposed to meet my girl friend here ... Erika," Joe explained nervously to the anonymous waiter, "Maybe ... maybe she's just late. I'll wait at the bar."
Two doubles of Weinbrand did little to quell the mounting anxiety, the tenseness that grabbed him inside and out.
"Hi, Sergeant!" a familiar voice friendlied up from his left as Joe downed the dregs of the second drink.
"Dam!" he gasped in surprise, seeing first the long blonde hair as he jerked his head around.
But it wasn't Erika. It was Hildegard Krauss, the girl with the silhouette and hair that were right, and still wearing Erika's tight, white sheath.
"I picking you up ... for business," she whispered, sliding onto the stool beside him, then affording a generous view of ungirdled buttocks as she pulled the skirt up to flip it back over the seat, "You make it like good act ... okay?"
"Look ... where's ... ?"
"Come on ... come on," she scolded, smiling and murmuring at the same time.
"Yeah ... how about a date?" he asked clumsily but aloud, noting the two American freeloaders down the bar immediately lose interest at the intimation of money, "You ... got a place, baby?"
"Sure thing, GI. I got nice room for sure. You got a hunnerd marks?"
"It's a deal, Schazi."
"All right, blondie ... where's Erika? Where is she?" Joe demanded in her room after a five minute cab ride during which she had refused to even whisper about it, "You gave Erika's name when you called...."
I had to be sure you come," she cut him off tersely, a questioning look in her intense eyes as she picked up a bottle of Cognac from the table, "When I say I'm Erika ... I figure you gonna come for sure."
"Well ... what's the deal?"
"You got the film?" she asked, pouring a drink for Joe after he nodded affirmatively toward the bottle, "We take the film over to East Berlin ... the pictures be okay ... you see your Schazi okay."
"Look ... Hildegard," he used her name for the first time, trying desperately to think of a way to explain away the minicamera, "I ... I messed up the film. I didn't want ... didn't mean to do it. But I forgot how to work the thing...."
"Gherkov don't like tha ," Hildegard frowned with a worried look, "For sure he gonna make big trouble for you now."
"Can't I explain it to him? Won't he believe me? Is he coming here?" Joe rattled off the questions beseechingly as an idea began to form.
"No ... he don't come here," Hildegard informed him, pouring another drink, "We gotta meet the car over on Uater den Linden again."
"Gad, girl!" Joe started nervously, downing his Cognac quickly to quiet his fears, "I can't go running over ihere this late. The MP's would raise hell."
"No sweat," Hildegard broke into a little laugh, intrigued by Joe's serious intenseness and admiring the way his muscles tensed so virilly when he was upset, "You got a ... what Gherkov call "Sergeant privileges'. You just tell a MP you wanna visit a few cabarets in East Berlin with your girl friend. The MP give ya bunch a talk about stay sober ... but no sweat."
"All figured out, huh?" Joe was still uneasy as he paced the floor, then made a dramatically calculated gesture of pulling out his American Express checkbook, "Look ... look, Hildegard, I'm in a jam without that film. I don't know what those guys are paying you ... but I need your help real bad. Here ... I'll write you a check for five hundred bucks ... you can cash it first thing tomorrow ... if you'll just help me."
The German girl did a double take at the idea. Money was Hildegard's business ... from a bed partner or the Reds-or anyone who could pay for what she could do for them. She knew that even American Sergeants often had good sized bank accounts, almost believed the legend that American streets were paved with gold. And Gherkov paid her pittance on a job basis. Her whole take, in fact, for the Guthrie job would be less than 500 marks ... a month's pay for many a Berlin worker, but five times less than the bait Joe was offering.
"What I gotta do for this money?"
"Help me ... tell me where they've got Erika ... take my side that I messed up the film accidentally ... had to ditch the camera because I was afraid the Captain I work for was getting suspicious," he drew a quick picture for her, "You're the direct contact with me for Gherkov ... hell respect what you say."
"I don't tell you where they got her," Hildegard was fearfully adamant, but covetous of the money, "But ... mebbe I fix it so Gherkov don't kill the girl friend. Five hunnerd...."
"Sure ... okay," Joe jumped at the offer, pouring their glasses half full to seal the bargain in the accepted European fashion, "Ein prosit! We're in business."
"You not a bad lookin' guy, you know?" she smiled at him like a hundred German girls had before, then crossed her legs coyly to let him look at their stockinged shapeliness, "How much money you got in that GI bank account?"
"Uh ... close to a thousand bucks," Joe lied, recalling all too well it was closer to ten dollars and fifty cents, "A hundred more of it's yours if you tell me where they're keeping Erika ... where the old warehouse is."
"Hey, good lookin!" she stopped him with a laugh, then reached for the Cognac bottle, "I take a big chance to fix you up on this camera stuff. Okay ... I get by with that mebbe, an' nobody gets hurt. But when I tell you other things they gonna fix me good. Here ... you gonna feel better after 'nother drink."
She was warming to him. Joe felt it, knew the signs of reaction that seemed to always come with it. Hildegard, he reasoned, was no different than so many of the European play-for-pay kind-her worst weakness was what she was trying to make a salable commodity.
And this girl had to be pleased now, had to be played to. Hildegard was the first link to getting Erika back, the only real 'in' he had to the people holding her, the people with the power to ruin or kill them both.
"You write that check now, okay?" the girl broke into his anxious thoughts with a compromising smile, "Hildegard make it good for you then. I be back in a minute."
Joe took out his ball point as she got up and went into the bathroom. He was too engrossed in his own plans to even wonder why she had gone out. Signing the paper in an illegible scrawl and adding an extra initial, he would worry later about the ruckus at the bank when she tried to cash it. By that time, he figured, he would be successful ... or dead.
"You think I got nice body, Sergeant?"
The ball point clattered to the brittle linoleum floor of the cheap apartment. The relaxation which had begun to flow through his body from the four Cognacs, was obliterated by a sudden spasm of tenseness. Only this time it was not dread fear that clutched at Joe's loins and churned him up inside. Hildegard had entered from the bathroom more beautifully naked than the day she was born. And the body was so much like Erika's Joe blinked his tired eyes in utter disbelief.
"Thanks ... thanks, Joe. Muchas Gracias. Merci. Danke viel masF' she voiced happily, winking saucily as she glided across the floor to pick up the check, "Now you got a nice bonus comin', Joe. Hildegard likes a guy ... she treats him nice. Lotsa GI offer fifty ... hunnerd ... two hunnerd mark for Hildegard. You get it because you nice guy."
Joe tried to return the smile, but it came out nervous. Berlin was overflowing with what the GI's called "free stuff-most professional B-girls would go broke in the town. But Hildegard was different. The "free stuff, even the overpriced stuff for the moneyed tourists, seldom looked this good. Of course Joe might be prejudiced because of the resemblance to Erika. But nearly any guy could be biased about Hildegard.
"You like?" she asked unnecessarily, pirouetting around on her high heels to show off the full blown curves of her trim legs.
Only Hildegard's face showed the schizophrenic strain of life for a Berliner. Her body was young, warm, supple, with a hint of firm yield and pliability to the plush shapeliness. Like Erika, she had the small, pointed breasts with the little erected nipples appearing in a constant state of excitement. Her legs were full yet lithe, the buttocks rounding out to the edge of respectability before concaving back to meet the inset demands of a tiny waist.
But unlike Erika, whose beauty was so differently intriguing because of her relative naivete and innocence, Hildegard provoked a man's feeling in each step and practiced movement. The way she articulated the taut buttocks with each step, the suggestive jounce she could set up in the perfectly formed little breasts, the so slight quiver in the full thighs as she came up on a man-these were talents indigenous to a girl who depended on her body ... and who took thrill soaked pleasure herself in the orificial orgies of love's abandonment.
"What ... what about Gherkov?" Joe asked, twitching his fingers worriedly, "Won't he be waiting for us?"
"'Nother hour," Hildegard dismissed the thought, then fell down on the couch beside Joe, "We take a cab to Charlie ... then it's maybe a five minute walk. You a good man, Joe? Forty five minutes to love Hildegard?"
The passion was rolling anew in Joe's body. The (purely physical demands fostered by the day's earlier frustrations, combined with the rational license of the situation. He was freed to a certain extent morally by the lingering uncertainty over Erika. And further, he could not risk offending the sexually enslaved Hildegard who was now his only remaining hope.
"Terrific body, baby...," Joe commented honestly, shunting aside the big worries to lose himself temporarily in the musty morass of pleasure, grazing his hands down the supple nakedness of her smooth thighs, then gripping the rigid buttocks and pulling her to him.
Hildegard was no longer the Commie go-between. She was hardly a spy type anyway, merely a trusts contact the Reds paid by the piece for seducing on inveigling gullible Westerners when the sex approach could be utilized. But now the young German girl was stripped of all elements of foreign intrigue She was merely the passionate neurotic product of torn and divided people lusting for the feel of a lover's body, hungering to be wanted, and desirable, am expensive.
With the deftness of experience, she loosened Joe collar and set about her pointedly arousing task of undressing him. She knew men like to be undressed like to have a woman's delicate fingers curl through their body hairs. Hildegard had learned all this long ago, learned a lot more too-about the unusual sometimes perverted tastes of so many men. But she was not worried about this with Joe. Even a whom likes a real affair of her own sometime. And Hildegard liked Joe. She would have even paid him had it become necessary.
Joe let his hands take up a continual play over the fascinating projections and orifices of her excited young body loving her mobile reactions to his touches as much as she did their feel. There was a strange awareness too of the striking similarity to Erika, an insoluble conflict that tugged at Joe's conscience, saying "do" and "don't " at the same time. But his emotional hyper-sensitiveness to the basic physical drive and temporary relief he sought so desperately in the stinging solace of sex, won out and compelled him on.
"Oh ... you're a nice man!" Hildegard caught her breath suddenly, the sparse light playing across her face an a way that erased the lines of strain and worry, "I like to see you nekkid, darling...."
Joe pushed his mouth to her lips, stilling the words while her tongue kept moving, darting its excited tip in and out between his lips, surling up under them and trying to explore further. Joe pulled away easily, Hildegard gave a disappointed start at first, then a slightly pleasurable moan when she realized he was going down further, trailing his lips along the smoothness of her neck. She tilted back desirously, scooting up onto his lap and hand leading an excited nipple to his eager lips.
"Ohhh! Mem Gott in Himmel! Du bist ein schoen ... schoen mannr she shrieked in a delirium of uncontrollable want when Joe laid her back on the couch while he let the hyper-sensitive nippel ride back and forth between his lips.
"Commde Krauss! Commde Krauss!"
The whole experience was shattered in one blinding moment!
Anatovich emerged from the big wardrobe cabinet by the wall, his right hand gripping a Russian .9 mm pistol.
"Wha ... ?" was all Joe could manage.
"No! No! I only do it to make him talk!" Hildegard cried out. the stark fear of the Communist retribution overshadowing every other thought, "No ... I tell Commde Gherkov, I only mean to...."
"Silence!" the Communist bully-boy shouted, remonstrating with the pistol to keep Joe at a distance.
"No! No! Ahhh!" Hildegard screamed as he brought his left hand smashing across her face.