Chapter 8
"Guard re-placement," the Russian soldier pronounced his English laboriously as he halted the Soviet staff car at the American side of Checkpoint Charlie.
"Okay, Commde," the MP said with an agreeable smirk, glancing at the erect figure in Russian uniform beside the driver.
"Your clothes ... in back seat," the man spoke to Joe as they drove away, "You change now."
Joe was in no mood to argue, or even make remarks. Even from a Soviet staff car, the Western Sector never looked better to him. And if he had to make a dressing room out of the front seat, so what. It was cramped and awkward, but by the time they were cruising down Hauptstrasse, Joe was a full fledged American GI again, wearing his cool khakis, but still itching from the felt uniform he had sweated in for so many hours. It was now 3:45 A.M.
"You get out here," the Russian directed gruffly, slowing just before Innsbrueckerplatz, "Maybe you get taxicab here. Is place open there to make telephone."
Joe felt dazed and disoriented as he stepped from the car. He didn't even hear the roar of the clumsy engine as it headed away. All he could see was the subdued neon that said, "Kleine Klause ... geoeffnet alle nacht".
It was like a big welcome mat, a haven of refuge beckoning the weary and hot traveler from a trek across the desert. Joe's imagination immediately conjured the vision and taste of a tall mug of the German beer he had learned to love in the past three years, and he brushed quickly past the liveried doorman.
"I am so sorry, sir," the barman inside explained properly, turning up his nose distastefully at Joe's request, "But if we sell beer, every Amer ... person comes in and makes a gasthaus of this place. But ... I have wine, a Mosel, or Rhine, or...."
"Dammit, I want a beer!" Joe glowered determinedly, standing up and slamming his fist down on the bar as the whole house turned to gawk, "I ... I've been working all day and I want a cold beer!"
"I am sorry," the bartender was equally adamant, folding his arms and glaring at Joe, "We do not serve beer!"
"The hell you don't! Two nights ago I saw...."
"Ach, so!" the German brightened, smiling as he reached down into the cooler under the bar, "Yes ... of course! You may have a picolo of Champagne ... with a beer on the side! Very good drink. Twenty marks for the Champagne, one mark for the beer ... or five dollars twenty-five cents if you don't have marks."
Joe eased back into his seat cursing in a mumble the perversity of European cabarets which had no sympathy whatever for beer lovers. He pulled out a fifty mark bill and slapped it down on the bar.
"You drink the Champagne, Heinrich," he managed a scowl to compensate for the forced five dollar tip, "Just give me the damned beer."
"As you wish, sir,' the barman shrugged.
Joe gulped it down, then ordered a Cognac with the next one, a combination which the bartender permitted, though the liquor was only five marks a shot. He had killed the pony of booze, when he caught a glimmer of recognizable red hair going across the mirror behind the bar. It was Sally Martin, the girl from the pension, the redhead with the lost husband.
The murder of Dorfstadt came vividly to Joe's mind, and a new fear welled up in him. There was the clue of the threatening GI that the MP's were searching out, and the redhead knew he had stomped out of the bedroom toward Dorfstadt's door, And there was only his alibi with Martha, which she would hardly corroborate if the chips were down.
With Sally Martin was a tall blond fellow in a blue suit. Her husband? Or maybe a CID agent from the MPs making the rounds to find Joe?
"Another Cognac," he asked the bartender quickly, shaking noticeably as he pushed the empty shot glass out, "Come on ... right now!"
"Hi, good lookin'!" the familiar voice came up at Joe from the rear, and the sedating liquor's relaxation vanished completely, "I haven't seen you since ... since several days ago."
Joe clenched his fists, refusing to look around at first. His new Cognac came, and he downed it in one gulp. He slammed the glass on the bar, then turned around bullishly to face the redhead.
"Look ... I think you made a mistake. I'm...."
"Easy, darling," she smiled with that same look of intriguing invitation as when she had laid nude on the bed,. "I'm on the lam too, you know. I wasn't a registered guest either ... remember?"
Joe gave a relieved sigh and wiped a spot of Cognac from his chin. The tall blond fellow in the blue suit was standing over by a table impatiently tapping his fingers. Joe looked back at the redhead.
"Find your husband?" he asked, nodding to the man.
"Oh ... him?" she gave a throaty chuckle, grasping Joe's hand which was still trembling slightly, "Heavens no. He's a private detective I've got working on it. But I think he's more interested in me than he is in finding Milo ... my husband. He's not my type though, darling. Let's shake him, okay?"
The redhead sidled her body up close to Joe. Her hips did two swivels against his leg and brought back a vivid picture of her heated undulations on Erika's bed at the pension. She might be a bitch, Joe realized. But at least she could be a friendly bitch. In fact she was one of the few people with whom he could share his own turmoil ... the murder of Drofstadt, and Erika's kidnapping.
"Sure, let's have a drink," he warmed with a smile, getting up from the bar, his eyes not missing the chance for a masculinely intuitive sweep of the tightly clothed body.
"... but if it wasn't for settling his estate, which amounts to getting my own money back really, I'd say to hell with him," the redhead finished up her summary of transpired events since the night at the pension. "And you, darling? No luck yet in finding your little ... friend?"
"Like I said ... Sally," Joe hesitated, aware again that the name didn't quite fit, "I can't tell you too much about it. The point is ... she's still missing. I'm in one hell of a mess. And when the MFs or the German cops run those fingerprints from your room through the Army file in Heidelberg, I'll be in it up to here."
"You Berlin GI's," she remonstrated with a slight smile, downing her second drink since they'd been at the table, " ... all spooks, all hushhush. You'd think we were in a nest of spies here."
"Look ... Sally," Joe lowered his voice, took hold of her hand and looked up into the enigmatic eyes, "I ... I don't know how to say this ... but, well, I need a friend. Really I do. And you ... I know you're not in love with your husband. This whole thing is probably just a big game with you, but...."
"I'm a woman, Joe ... and I'm very human," her mood changed abruptly from the flip, flighty facade and she gripped his hand hard, "I laugh and joke ... play the seductive queen. But how do you think it makes me feel to know my husband's run out on me? Whether I wanted him or not isn't the point. The point is he ditched me. That's why I go around trying to prove myself ... trying to prove I'm attractive."
"You don't need to," Joe broke into an intimate grin, responding nicely to her closeness, "You're a beautiful gal, and you know it."
"Oh ... I've got a pretty face, and statistically my thirty-eight, twenty-five, thirty-seven, is what the (guys go for. But that's like a clinical analysis of a healthy pig. And ... I don't want just any man. I'm choosy."
"What ... what did the cops say when Dorfstadt was murdered?" Joe changed the subject quickly, wanting her affection, yet wary at the same time of her aggressiveness.
"Nothing much more than I told you," she shrugged, giving him a quizzical look, "Uh ... Sally Martin isn't my real name, of course. I had to pay five hundred dollars to some crook in Paris for this Passport. The State Department characters didn't want me to come to Berlin looking for my husband ... so I had to do something."
"I didn't think it was Sally, Didn't fit," Joe smiled again, reaching for her hand, "What is it ... really?"
"Does it matter?" Can't I just be Sally, and you, Joe ... and we've met and liked each other in Berlin," she romanticized, nodding affirmatively as a waiter hovered over their empty glasses, "We're both married, Joe ... or at least we both have other obligations. Let's just leave it at that. When you find your girl ... I can be like a dream interlude-Sally in Berlin. No other name, no address, nothing tangible to bother our consciences."
"Okay," Joe couldn't help but agree, glad she wanted it this way, "But what about the MP's ... the cops?"
"Well ... I had to tell them you were in my room," she explained, leaning closer again, "But I swore you were just a guy I'd met at a bar ... that I didn't even know your name. I admitted you were arguing with Dorfstadt in my room ... I had to because the other guests heard you. But I told them it was only an argument over your being there in the room with me. And I told them you went straight out of the building ... you did, ... didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"Joe!" You didn't come back and kill him? You're not involved in that murder?"
"No ... no," Joe tried to quash her suddenly expressed doubts, holding on as she tried to pull her hand away, "It's all right, baby ... Sally. I didn't do it. I swear, I didn't."
"For ... forgive me, Joe. I'm sorry," Sally almost burst into tears, laying her head over to his shoulder, "It's ... it's been so terrible ... so lonely here for me. I ... I can't sleep at nights. I walk the streets. I came into a place like this. I let that horrible private detective take me out dancing, paw over me...."
"Easy ... easy, baby," Joe consoled, feeling a burst of sympathy, understanding and oneness with the distraught girl, "We , ... we could go somewhere maybe. But not back to Dorfstadt's ... I don't want to go there again."
"I left that night," she told him, dabbing her eyes with a napkin, then easing away from his shoulder slightly so she could look directly into his face, "I was afraid they'd find out who I really was. I walked the streets until morning, then thought to look up a detective to help me. I had to turn to somebody."
"You're not staying with him?" Joe asked, feeling curiously jealous of the handsome blond man.
"No. Ye Gads, no," she managed a laugh, squeezing Joe's hand, "But he got me a room at a little place out in Grunewald."
"He had a mean look in his eyes when you told him I was going to take you home," Joe mused, leaning back for the waiter to serve their drinks, "I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't hanging around there waiting ... say, I've got an idea!"
"Yes?" she questioned, cheering up and looking at Joe interestedly, "I don't know what it is, but I think I'll like it."
"There's ... a little hotel about three blocks from where I work. Some of the guys ... well, anyway, as long as you pay for two rooms they don't ask questions."
"I ... I don't know whether to be seductive again ... or just tell you I'd love to sleep with you ... really sleep, I mean," Sally reacted with an unbelievable shake of her head, a look of unburdened relief on her pretty face, "Oh, Joe ... Joe, darling I need someone so badly ... someone to hold me and tell me I'm nice, make me know I'm a woman again."
"Prosit!" Joe offered the traditional German toast, picking up his glass.
A noise sounded through the distant mist. It came in short, erratic spurts, unlike the drone of a foghorn, yet it must be a foghorn. Joe felt his body moving in a hyper-sensuous whirl of erotic must. He felt the movement, but wasn't controlling it. His whole body seemed to glide through a shrouding mist, moving against something plush and delightful. It was like having your kick with complete lack of effort.
The fog began to clear, and Sally Martin's face hovered into focus. She was looking at him, smiling and beckoning. No need for him to gesture back though, because she was right there, her body undulating, convexing to met his. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his back, the long thighs stretched against his legs in an embrace of uniting passion.
And they kept drifting ... drifting through the air. Now Joe could feel himself working against her warm skin. He pushed and pushed, twisting his arms up so his hands could reach the large young globes of breasts which sent Sally into an ecstatic delirium of fanciful facial contortions. He pushed, pushed, pumped and worked now, fever wrought to make their love complete.
And then she began to drift away from him in the enveloping fog like the unfulfilled end of a love dream.
"Joe, darling ... love me! Love me, darling ... please," a voice pleaded.
Joe blinked his eyes and saw the light. It had been a dream, and now the light of day was filtering through the drawn drapes of a cheap hotel room. The bustle of morning traffic along the thoroughfare outside replaced the bleating fog horns with the incessant honking of irate motorists bound for work.
"Joe, darling! Ohh, Joe ... !"
The voice came through in a languorously culminative whine. It was soft and gentle though, not the plushy aggressiveness of the girl in the pension, but the sincerely needful cry of relief of a young woman who needed desperately the warmth, affection and love of a man.
"Good grief!" Joe ejaculated verbally.
He was totally naked, lying on his back. Sally, her plush body still throbbing, was on top of him.
"I'm sorry, Joe ... sorry if I frightened you, Joe ... sorry I had to do it this way," she begged forgiveness, clutching him around the waist and laying her head in the mat of hair on his chest, "But you passed out on me, darling. Remember last night ... this morning rather? You hit the bed and you were in dreamsville. I guess you must have been really dead, darling ... and the Cognac hit you like a sleeping pill."
"What time is it?"
"It's eight-thirty ... you've been asleep since five," Sally told him, raising up on her knees and pushing back wisps of the fiery red hair from in front of her contented face, "I couldn't help it, Joe. I couldn't sleep ... and you wouldn't wake up ... and you were so ... so ready, darling."
Joe grabbed Sally impulsively and brought her down on him again. His mouth received the responsive probe of her tongue, then ventured to the shapely nakedness of her soft shoulders and the posh voluptuousness of ripe nipples which extended to greet him as she eased up.
"Then ... it wasn't a dream," he realized out loud.
"No, darling," she smiled down on him, running long fingers through the stubbly crew-cut, "It was wonderfully, wonderfully real. But I don't think ... I don't think you were ... satisfied."
"Want some more?" He questioned with a vigorous grin, pulling her down again and rolling over until he was on top.
"Darling ... darling!" Sally moaned with a feeling that was excitement itself, "Joe, darling. I could love you forever and ever."
The possessive words would have chilled and frightened him a day ago. But now, after the resting sleep, and with the nearness of someone who shared, even obliquely, his burden, there was an infusion of feeling he did not want to deny. This would not be like the frantic attempt at love with Hildegard, or the frustrating thrashing with the jealous and vengeful Martha. This seemed like something that was good and right.
Joe worked his hands down the sides of her responsive body, exploring the curves and orifices that delighted to his touch with sensual twinges of re action. With a sense of mutual adjustment to the melding of their moods and bodies, Sally flattened herself on the bed, then moved and positioned, making each twitch of her mobile frame a sensation of love, until her body was perfectly situated. She raised a knee slightly, and Joe slipped his hand beneath the firm buttocks.
"Tease me first ... just for a minute," she urged him in a rapturous pant, guiding him with her hand, "Oh! Oh ... Joe! Joe! I love it ... love it ... love it!"
Her words surged out with the same orgastic thrust as her pelvic body movement, the same initial swell of unrequited need, the last push to contact them both in a sweeping flame of joyous movement that had to build and build to final fruition.
Joe was beside himself now, working feverishly to quench the want which had consequently built to top pitch, then been stilled so abruptly twice the day before. But now the rhythm became steadier, the harmony like a sonorous background of ebbing and flowing ecstatic utopia. These highest sensations grew and grew, until the last indescribable moment, the final explosion sf pent-up frustrations and agonies, were blasted away in the wanton peak of sensual summitry.
"Don't leave me ... please don't leave me, Joe!" Sally begged fiercely, hugging him tight when they finally awoke from the after sleep of love.
"I've got to go to work, baby. It's late," he explained regretfully, forcing away the delicate fingers that grasped his arm, "I'll be off ... at midnight."
The terrible moment of truth was suddenly realized. He would be off at midnight ... but they would be there to meet him. Be there to get the film from his wristwatch camera, take him to East Berlin, give him back Erika if he had obeyed them, kill them both if he had refused to endanger the life of the free world.
"Can't I see you before ... before then, darling," she beseeched him again.
"Look ... I'll come by at suppertime. How's that?" he questioned hesitantly, trying to think of a way to grab at one more pleasurable moment of escape from the midnight terror, "Sure ... I'll bring something to drink ... and some bread and cheese, a couple of sausages. Maybe I can get a couple of hours off for supper. I only work a few blocks away. I can be back at eight. How's that? Huh?"
"All right, darling," she smiled contentedly, watching with admiration as Joe stood naked in front of the bed and slipped on a shirt.
A knock came at the door, and Joe showed his first sign' of nervousness in hours.
"You ... you better answer," he whispered cautiously, "I'm registered in the other room."
"Who were you calling ... when?" Joe puzzled
"Here is portier, Miss Martin,' a voice muffled through the wood, "I have cigarettes you left in phone booth this morning."
"Oh ... thank you," she faltered nervously, avoiding Joe's eyes as she got up to crack the door, "Here ... I'll take them."
"Who were you calling ... w hen?" Joe puzzled after she palmed the cigarettes and closed the door.
"It was when you were sleeping so soundly, darling," she beamed at him lovingly, stuffing them in her purse, "I had to find out if the detective had anything new."
"Oh ... the lover boy," Joe laughed, fishing for a cigarette, "Say ... how about one of those. I'm all out."
"Of course, darling ... Oh ... I'm nearly out myself," she said in surprise, "Can't you get some on the way to work?"
"Yeah, sure," he dismissed it, giving her a quick kiss, "I'll see you at eight."
When the door closed, the redhead gave a long sigh of relief, then pulled the package of long-filter Russian cigarettes from her purse.