1944: There is something wrong about her man’s smile. Pushing through the door, he perches his trenchcoat on the peg and glances across the drinking hall. Are his eyes twinkling because he genuinely cares, or is he looking through me? The tilt of his head and the angle of his smile offer a clue, but just a hint of the subterranean world beneath his exterior.
Certainly others in their line of business are meeting on New Year’s Eve, and while she has been awaiting his arrival with a mix of anticipation and dread, she can imagine worse. She sits in the far corner, her coat unbuttoned, surveying the room. German officers and men in natty suits chat with frauleins in sequined gowns. Laughter and the tinkling of glasses only heightens her tension as the piano player sings softly through the din, I’ll fly away, but I think I’m falling for you.
She takes a sip of wine to calm herself. She’s well acquainted with him, of course, at least at some level. He’s been a reliable source for movements of troops and armaments over the past nine months, and yes, they’ve shared pleasurable times. But did she charm him, or was it the other way around, or both?
The unwritten counsel is to avoid real intimacy, but there’s a reason it’s unwritten. While emotional entanglements could compromise an operation, pillow talk can lower a contact’s threshold for sharing intel, particularly with a deep feeling of trust. That is tricky, if not treacherous to navigate though when sharing must seem to flow in both directions, and confidence walks hand-in-hand with deceit as the common currency. Perhaps this is why the best in the business are just clever sociopaths, she thinks. But what was it she said when they lay together last night entwined in twilight consciousness before falling asleep? It disappeared in a mist at dawn but had gnawed at her all day.
As he swaggers over, she detects a twitch at the corner of his mouth — evanescent, but there, in his cheek just above the crease. Few would have noticed. Her heart thumps in her ears; a tingle in her scalp sharpens her awareness. Instinctively, she smiles back while her eyes absorb the periphery.
A muscular man with a thick neck she had not noticed before stands by the rear hallway. Is there another behind him? Her left hand reaches into her coat and clutches her Walther P38. She could take the one thug out and exit that way now, or she could wait for her man. She wants to be sure.
Her man leans over and kisses her without taking a chair. “What’re you drinking?”
She holds up her half-empty glass. “The usual Rhine white.”
“Happy New Year then,” he smiles. “Let me get something from the bar, too, so we can toast.”
She watches as he slips through the crowd, past the piano player, and leans across the bar. The bartender tilts his head, then glances at the man at the back.
With that, she rises quietly and starts moving around people toward the front. Three strides from the door, her lover sweeps around her waist and catches her left forearm. A heartbeat later, the heavyset man locks her other side, sandwiching her. She still holds her forefinger on the trigger but can only point it ahead as they usher her through the door.
