The Knife-Edge Path Page 9

  “Unless I’m up and dressed before you.”

  He grasped his knees and got up abruptly. “Come along. I’ll show you where you’re going to sleep.”

  9

  She heard a sudden movement in the other room. Her watch had stopped, but sunlight lit the hallway. There was a moan that sounded full of pain. She threw the covers off and made her way around the corner to his room. He lay there in a sweat, one arm thrown across his forehead. She took a few steps in. “Kurt, are you all right?”

  The arm swept off his forehead. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t you remember? You wanted me to stay the night.”

  He sat up suddenly, bracing on his elbows. There was a wild look about his face, stricken there like some grimace he had no control of. “God, what time is it? I’m late.”

  “I thought you’d gone already, then I heard -” She stepped over closer to him. “Are you ill, Kurt?”

  He waved one hand dismissively. “It’ll pass.” He made a move to swing one leg over the side of the bed, fell back. “Damn it!”

  “Kurt, I think you’re ill. Is this how your diabetes -?”

  He waved his hand again. “If I don’t make it to St. Anne’s by half past nine, they’ll go.”

  “Let me go and tell them that you’re not feeling well.”

  He sat up suddenly. “No! All I need is - Frau Hintz left some muffins in the breadbox.”

  “Stay where you are, I’ll get them.”

  He struggled to his feet and stood there, reeling.

  She made a quick move toward him, caught him in her arms. “Lie back and rest, Kurt.” She eased him onto the bed and he stared up at the closeness of her face as if he didn’t know her. She said, “I’ll be right back.”

  She found the muffins stacked in the breadbox, started some water boiling for coffee. She was getting down two cups from the cupboard when he came into the doorway. He was still sweating and his face looked ashen. She picked up the sugar bowl, saying, “How much?”

  He shuffled toward her. “Make it two lumps.”

  She dropped the sugar in and held the cup out to him, pushed the plate of muffins on the table toward him.

  He picked up one, bit into it, slurped greedily from his steaming cup and blew a sigh into the cold air. “Thank you. This usually does the trick.”

  “You’ve got to see a doctor. These episodes aren’t going to stop.”

  He had his watch on now, and looked at it.

  She knew what was coming next and said, “Listen, Kurt. This trip to Finland. Why not put it off until you feel up to going?”

  “No, I’ve got a plane to meet and they won’t leave until I’m on it.”

  She stared at him, holding her breath. “All right. I guess the war won’t wait for the sick and the halt.”

  “That’s what they tell me,” he said caustically.

  She swallowed, forcing a smile. “So you’re off to St. Anne’s? I’ve got a shoulder you could lean on if you like. Or would I slow you down?”

  “No. I’m going now. If you would be so kind as to lock the door on your way out.”

  “I will. I have only to get dressed. When shall I see you again?”

  He looked at her. “Why?”

  “To check up on my patient, if you like.”

  He hesitated too long, and she went up to him. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just a moment. Your top button.” She reached up and fingered the undone topmost button on his tunic, fastened it and looked at him. “There.”

  The moment trembled like a vase that might or might not topple to the floor, and she went up on tiptoe, leaning toward him. “Hold still,” she said, “while I kiss you for good luck.”

  She thought he was going to shy, but he didn’t. She moved her face toward his. She laid her fingertips on the scar above his eye, slid them lightly down to the corner of his lips. She was afraid. He didn’t pull away, and something made her want to cry.

  10

  The day outside was gloomy and the stairway dim. Geli trudged upward, thinking she would climb right into bed and sleep some more. Frau Hintz’s lumpy bed had been little better than a cot. She’d grappled with the thought of hurriedly getting dressed and rushing in a taxi to St. Anne’s, looking to pick Kurt up, but she could hear Ubbink snarling, ‘Her again? What’s she doing here?’ Routine flight, Kurt had told her, on a Heinkel for Finland. He could be gone for up to a week.

  She’d laid to rest the word Helsinki in her mind, some plot afoot with those two Dutchmen, but now she wondered whether she could keep it there, the next time she saw Stumpff’s eyes on her expectantly. It was too soon. She didn’t know enough, yet. Whetting Stumpff’s appetite could only send him off half-cocked, then where would she be?

  There was a clumping on the landing just above. Around the corner suddenly shambled Corporal Obermeyer.

  She stopped dead in her tracks.

  He lowered his foot onto the next step.

  She tried to slip to the side of him just as he moved enough to block her way. “Keeping late hours, I see,” he said.

  “Please let me pass.”

  He didn’t move, looking brand-spanking new in a black uniform of the sort the Storm Troopers used to wear. Sam Brown strapped across his chest, bright Blutfahne cinched around his left arm and a holster, too, containing a gun. She’d never seen him wearing a gun. A paper sack dangled from one hand.

  “A lady shouldn’t be out so late at night, all by herself. It’s not safe. Of course I’m a night crawler myself. Herr Stumpff and me – the miles and miles we drive at night on our long trips to Poland. I always find ways to entertain myself while he sleeps like a baby in the back seat.” He stopped and gave her a long, lascivious look, eyes shining. “He’s gone to Poland on the train this time, you know. Should be back tomorrow, but in his absence he thought it best for me to place myself at your disposal with the car.”

  “I know that, Obermeyer. I told him I wouldn’t be needing your services, or the car.”

  He toed the step, looking downward at his boot, kicked at the step in front of it. “I’m quite a good driver, you know. Herr Stumpff calls me a marvel, staying awake behind the wheel for all those miles across a land as dreary as any land you’ll ever see. That’s Poland for you – the Mazovian Plain. Have you ever been to Poland, ma’am?”

  “No, I never have. I’m very tired, Obermeyer. Please let me pass.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder, ma’am - your being tired, keeping such late hours.

  She looked up and saw some secret being kept in his leering, gray wren’s eyes. “That’s really none of your business, Obermeyer.”

  He shambled aside, saying nonsensically, “Yes, ma’am,” and she started up the few remaining steps to the landing.

  She heard him coming up behind her.

  “Just a moment, ma’am. I‘ve got something for you here.”

  She stopped to look back down at him and the sack he gave a shake to at the end of his outstretched arm.

  “What is it?”

  He shook the sack at her again. “Here, open it.”

  “You shouldn’t be giving me things, you know.”

  “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He thrust the sack at her. “Come, take a look. Herr Stumpff told me.”

  “I’m going in now, Obermeyer.” She turned away, now she was on the landing and she hurried across to her door, with trembling fingers fishing the key out of her coat pocket.

  “I wouldn’t do that just yet, ma’am.”

  She was fumbling with the key, it flipped out of her hand and fell clattering on the floor. She stooped to pick it up, his boot came into view beside her hand.

  “Here, let me get that for you, ma’am.”

  “No!” She snatched up the key, crowded the door as she stabbed it at the hole with shaking hands. The latch clunked, she turned the knob and heaved
herself against the door and lunged inside.

  She was just swinging it the other way when Obermeyer stepped across the threshold, forcing her back. “I need a word with you,” he said, then quietly turned and shut them both into the room.

  She’d left a lamp burning, but the air was ice-cold. Fear gripped her throat, her heart began to pound. She had to break his train of thought. “Why don’t you leave that sack with me? Here, let’s see what’s in it.” She looked into the sack, seeing the cigarettes she’d half expected. She looked up, just managing to smile. “Tell me, Obermeyer, do you smoke?”

  He eyed her, growing a frown between his eyes. “Cigarettes are very hard to come by, ma’am. My mother’s saved some from before the war. She’ll smoke one halfway down so she can have the rest some other time. You know she lives right around the corner. Same little house we’ve lived in all my life.”

  “Well, why don’t you take a pack of these to her? Keep one for yourself.”

  He scowled at her as if she’d caught him in some lie. “I bought these with my own money, ma’am. If they weren’t all for you, I wouldn’t have.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Obermeyer. You did get permission from Herr Stumpff.”

  He cocked his head and squeezed a puzzled look into a squint. “Yes, but I used my own money to buy these.” She smiled at him the way a teacher would chide a boy for bringing her a big bouquet of roses. “But Herr Stumpff gave you the money.”

  “Oh, no! No. I knew how much you liked to smoke.”

  “But that’s not your responsibility.”

  He shrugged. “A cigarette’s a cigarette.”

  “But taking it upon yourself… ”

  A devilish grin broke out on his face. “Why should he have to know?”

  “You wouldn’t want to keep any secrets from him, would you?” She stumbled a little as her backward-moving heel caught on the rug.

  “Herr Stumpff instructed me to look out for you while he’s gone, ma’am. He told me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Did he? I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

  “That may be. But you see, I never disobey an order.” He stopped and let his eyes crawl around on her face, like ants bumping into things to nibble. “I waited for you last night for quite some time, but you never came out. I didn’t how what I was going to tell Herr Stumpff.”

  “You waited for me where?”

  “Outside that tenement on Bulowstrasse. Where you went in, but didn’t come out. There weren’t a lot of people going in and out at that hour. Except for two strange men. Strange because, in the first place, they weren’t German.” He suddenly thrust a finger in the air and shook it. “I may not be a world traveler, but I know a foreigner when I see one!”

  “Just what foreigners are you talking about?”

  “The ones I saw go in. Two of them.” Obermeyer led with his stiff finger as he crowded her. “Then I began to worry, because these two looked shifty. Especially when they came back out and you were still in there. I followed them. I tailed them all the way to St. Anne’s, thinking to myself, what were a couple of foreigners doing, going to church at that late hour of the night?”

  “So you saw two men come out of the tenement. What are you getting at, Obermeyer?”

  Obermeyer toed the floor. “Herr Stumpff will want to hear about it.”

  “Why?”

  “I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell him,” he said doggedly.

  “As right as telling him about the cigarettes?”

  He ignored her. “Not with you still in there. Staying the whole night.”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Obermeyer, first you call these two men foreigners, then you think they’ve got something to do with me, without having the slightest idea which flat they went into, if any.”

  Obermeyer’s grin twitched across his thin, uneven lips. “They were in there much too long to not go into one.”

  “Perhaps, but you couldn’t possibly know which one.”

  “I told you I followed them to St. Anne’s.”

  “So what?”

  “Do you know who the pastor is in there? My mother does. Thanks to her, that man is being watched.”

  “A man of the cloth? Did she say you should watch him?”

  “Oh, no! You don’t make fun of my mother. If you knew what that priest is suspected of, you’d know why I got on those two men’s tail – all on my own, ma’am. No, I take that back. Under orders.”

  “I don’t believe you, Obermeyer.”

  Obermeyer frowned. “That’s not at all nice of you, ma’am. You wouldn’t ride with me, so Herr Stumpff told me to keep an eye on you. He wouldn’t, unless -”

  Suddenly a few packs of cigarettes tumbled out of the sack onto the floor.

  She stooped for them, but Obermeyer was quicker. He handed over two packs, kept the last one and began to peel it open.

  “Just take it with you, Obermeyer,” Geli said.

  He tapped out a cigarette, held the pack out to her.

  “Please go now, Obermeyer. I’m in no mood to smoke right now.”

  “Go ahead, ma’am. Let me light one for you like a gentleman.”

  Her fingers trembled as she took the cigarette and heard the snick of a lighter.

  She leaned toward the flame, feeling idiotic as he took her through the motions, snuffed out the flame and gave the pack an underhanded toss onto the sofa behind her, saying lazily, “I could change my mind, you know. Maybe I don’t need to tell Herr Stumpff anything about your staying the whole night with that man on Bulowstrasse. I could forget about those two foreigners, too. After all, they only looked suspicious. My mother tells me all the time I let my imagination run away with me.”

  She looked at the door behind him. She couldn’t remember if he’d locked it.

  He said in a breathy confidential tone, “It’ll be our secret.”

  She looked down at the burning cigarette as the trembling of her hand shook ash off the end and it fell onto the rug with sparks enough to step on, which she did. “You’ve been very kind, Obermeyer, but I think you’d better go, now.”

  “A couple of extra minutes wouldn’t hurt, now would it?”

  “Minutes for -”

  “Nobody will know, ma’am, if you decided to be nice to me.”

  She looked at him. “How nice, Obermeyer?”

  He blinked at her as if in hopes that her mind was as thick as his. “You know my first name is Klaus, ma’am.” A hideous grin broke across his rawboned, sallow face.

  “What good would a little kiss do, Obermeyer, if you knew I didn’t mean it? What would your mother say?”

  His face darkened. The grin shrank. “You’re mocking me! You’re going to be sorry you didn’t let me drive you, like Herr Stumpff wanted me to do, to keep you out of trouble!”

  “But if you tell on me, Obermeyer, then I might have to tell on you.”

  His head listed toward his shoulder as he looked at her. “You’ll be sorry, ma’am, that’s all I’ve got to say!” He stood there rigidly, as if the sight of her sickened him, then spun around, jerked open the door and stormed out, leaving it wide open.

  She stood there as another plug of ash fell from the cigarette. They were a nasty Turkish brand. Or was that just the taste of Obermeyer on the kiss he’d wanted her to plant on the slit of his repulsive, fetid lips. The little kiss he’d use to haul the rest of her into his clutches, fumbling with her limpness like she’d fainted dead away to keep from fighting him.

  He’d left the door wide open. He’d be a fool to say anything to Stumpff. But then fools say all kinds of things, thinking they’re not. A fool with a gun now, too. Make him a big man and you might not get away with telling him watch out, Obermeyer, that thing might go off.

  11

  Stumpff was due back any day now. Obermeyer plagued her mind, stuck like a leech to every waking thought of some escape. You couldn’t count him out for being dumb. That kind of dumb got smart when survi
val was at stake.

  She got her coat, hurried out and didn’t care what time it was or where the underground was stalled or, when a tram broke down, how much farther on she’d have to walk. She got there on a blur of will and suddenly she was standing in his doorway.

  She found him in a foul mood.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Kurt,” she said breathlessly. “How was your trip? Did you just get back?”

  “Frau Hintz died in the hospital while I was away,” he said.

  “Oh, God, no! I’m so sorry.” Her hand flew out to touch him, fell short of his sleeve.

  He didn’t move. “Her body has been sent to Bornichen where she’ll be laid to rest tomorrow. I’m leaving in the morning.”

  She hardly thought before she said, “Take me with you.”

  He looked at her. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “But I was so fond of Frau Hintz. Besides, I -”

  “You barely knew her.”

  “But I promise I’ll stay out of the way.”

  “No, that won’t do.”

  She felt angry, suddenly. Now was no time to falter. So he was trying to shore up his grief, but the iron was hot.

  “All right! Remind me of how little I knew of her. Maybe I just thought you might not want to be alone at such a time.”

  He stood back with a sigh, began to shake his head. “I haven’t thanked you for the other morning. You were kind.”

  She let herself relent a little. “You forgot to promise me you’d see a doctor.”

  He gave her a long look. “Some people at the funeral are sure to look askance at you.”

  “I couldn’t be that bad, being with you.”

  He got off a careless smile. “It’s quite a long trip. The train pulls out in the morning, early.”

  “I’ll be there,” she said. “What time?”