The Girl from Berlin: War Criminal's Widow Read online

  “I understand that. Who in the head office?”

  “I wouldn’t know, I swear! I’m just a simple agent, I’m not even an active cell, as they were calling the others. Those were even trained differently. All the orders always came from the top.”

  “Who supplies your head office with information from Germany? It was a sudden operation, no one knew that I was supposed to be here. Do you have people infiltrated inside the RSHA?”

  “I don’t know… I don’t think so… From what I heard from my superiors, sometimes regular Germans tip them off, like the ones from the Resistance.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Ernst raised his voice again. “Nobody knew that I was going here. Except for… Son of a bitch!!!”

  “What?” Otto stepped forward right away. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Get her out of here, she doesn’t know anything anyway.”

  “What shall I say to the Gestapo?”

  Ernst turned to the girl again. “Do you want to dangle on the rope in just a couple of hours, or would you rather work for us?”

  “I’ll work for you! I’ll do everything you want, I promise!”

  “Good girl.”

  Otto was already untying Reika’s hands, smiling at his friend. After he led her out, I walked up to my very concerned looking lover.

  “Who knew about the trip?”

  “Schellenberg. He was the only one who knew where I was heading to.”

  “Maybe he told somebody else,” I suggested. Despite all the hatred the two shared for each other, I seriously doubted that my former boss would go as far as assisting in killing his chief. “He wouldn’t do something like this…”

  “We did. With Heydrich.” Ernst reminded me quietly. “And no, he couldn’t possibly tell anybody. This training camp is a secret object, and I gave him strict orders not to inform anybody about my destination point. The only reason why I told him where I was going was because he is the Chief of SD-Ausland, and I need to be in constant contact with him wherever I travel. He constantly sends me reports and messages concerning the latest intelligence.”

  As soon as Otto returned, we quickly filled him in regarding our theory about Schellenberg’s participation, and to my surprise he agreed with Ernst.

  “It actually makes sense. Who else if not him has all the means of quickly sending a short message to his British contacts right from the radio room in the RSHA? Nobody would ever know.”

  “I understand that he hates Ernst, but he wouldn’t want him dead just because of that,” I argued.

  “You wanted Heydrich dead just because you hated him,” Ernst said once again.

  “Oh, will you stop it with Heydrich?! He was guilty of my brother’s death! Are you guilty of Schellenberg’s brother’s death? Or did you sleep with his wife maybe? Because to murder somebody you need a bigger motive than plain dislike of someone.”

  “Annalise has got a point.” Otto looked up at Ernst. “Or maybe you did sleep with his wife? You know, got drunk one day and couldn’t even remember it the next morning?”

  Ernst made a face at Otto’s joke. Even I found it funny and laughed. But then the Chief of the RSHA inquired with a pensive look on his face, “What if he does have a motive, and we don’t know about it?”

  We all went quiet.

  _______________

  After the three of us shared a dinner in our hotel’s restaurant, Otto wished us a good night and headed to his room, right next to us. As we entered ours, Ernst went to a small table near the window to pour two glasses of whiskey, mine generously watered down with ice and tonic since it was the only way I could drink it. As I sat on the bed, he toasted his glass with mine and started to unbutton his military jacket.

  “That’s the second time you saved my life.” He smiled and threw the jacket on the chair where Reika had sat just hours ago.

  “And I still owe you for all the times you saved mine,” I smiled back. “How did she find you anyway?”

  “Otto said she was watching the local RSHA office after she received the message and followed me into the bar. Besides, it’s such a small town, everyone is in plain sight.”

  He took another sip of his drink and walked up very close to me. I had to lift up my head very high to maintain eye contact with my gentle giant. Not so gentle with that poor girl, I thought.

  “You wouldn’t really hurt that Hungarian if she refused to talk, would you?”

  He gave me a strange look, and then grinned. “It depends.”

  “It depends?” I asked, watching him place his drink on a bedside table and take his tie off.

  “Yes. Mostly they get persuaded in my intentions just by my look and the tone of my voice. But if not…” He inspected the tie in his hands and shifted his eyes back to me. “I take other measures.”

  In the dim light of the room his eyes seemed almost black, and the scarred side of his face together with that half-grin made him look like one of those sinister Dante’s demons, breathtakingly beautiful in their mercilessness and just as deadly. I never liked looking at saints in churches; it was always the evil side that mesmerized me, and I would stare at the stained glass with hell on it for hours. There was something very wrong with me if I found it fascinating.

  “What if I tried to kill you?” I asked as he took the untouched glass from my hands. “Would you torture me if I refused to speak?”

  “Most definitely.” Ernst put his knee on the bed right next to my hip and slightly pushed me down.

  “I wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  I moved from under him closer to the metal headboard of the bed, but he moved right after me and sat on top of me, pressing me down with the weight of his body.

  “Get off me, you’re heavy!” I playfully tried to push him off even though I perfectly understood how useless it was.

  “Now you have nowhere to go, do you?” Ernst caught my wrists together and quickly tied them together and then drew my arms over my head and started tying them to one of the bars of the headboard.

  “What are you doing?” I started protesting when it was already too late.

  “I told you, I’m going to torture you,” my Austrian executor answered unfazed, standing over me on his knees and unhurriedly removing his cuff-links with death heads on them. “Shouldn’t have tested me, sugar.”

  I knew that he was joking of course, but I still didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t move my hands. “Ernst, I’m serious, untie me.”

  He shook his head and placed both cuff-links on a bedside table, next to our drinks. “No. I like you better this way. I don’t know why I never tried it before.”

  He was watching me like a cat who’d just caught a mouse and dug his claws into its tiny tail, deciding what to do with his prey next. I noticed how my pulse quickened under his stare.

  “So, what shall we start with?” He looked me up and down, and reached for the buttons on the simple white top I was wearing. He slowly unbuttoned them one by one, pulled the blouse from under the belt of my skirt and undid the rest. The muscles on my belly tensed under his fingertips as he slightly stroked it. “Much better. But still not good enough.”

  Ernst got off me, and with the same leisureliness undid my belt and took my skirt off. I was looking at him expectantly. He was always so impatient to get me into his bed, but not tonight. Tonight he wanted to play with me first. A big cat indeed.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He nodded appreciatively at my half-undressed body and got back on top of me. “So you refuse to talk, huh? Let’s see how fast I’ll make you change your mind.”

  Ernst picked up the front of my bra and pulled it up, baring my breasts. He grinned with satisfaction noticing how fast my nipples got hard under his fingers. He had trained my body to respond quickly to his very first touch, and now he was clearly enjoying the fruits of that training, watching me lick my parted lips in anticipation of his next move and observing my cheeks, flushed from excitement.

  He hadn’t ev
en kissed me once yet; I swallowed hard thinking what power he had over me if he made me want him so much just by almost innocent touching. The Austrian meanwhile moved his hand lower down to my belly, slightly scratching the sensitive skin with his nails right over the top of my panties. I held my breath as the tingling sensation spread all over my tense body.

  “I know how much you want me to fuck you.” He grinned, got off me again and traced his fingers on top of my thigh. “But I haven’t even started with you yet. It’s going to be a long night, sugar.”

  I was almost happy when he took my underwear off me, together with my stockings and suspender belt, one by one, intentionally slowly. But even then he didn’t touch me where I wanted him to touch me most. Instead he laid on top of me, still dressed, and started teasing me again, this time with his lips and tongue.

  To say that Ernst was a skillful lover was an understatement. Not only did he know where and how to touch me to make me shiver under his hands, he was doing it all at once, with his hot mouth on my neck, one hand on top of my breast squeezing my nipple harder this time, and another hand caressing my thigh. I moaned when he moved lower and slightly bit on my nipple, so sensitive after all the previous stimulation. He was right, I was extremely aroused by that point and if my hands weren’t tied to the bed, I would have most likely started touching myself where he still wouldn’t touch me and where I wanted him to touch me so much.

  To trick him into it, I moved my leg in between his and started rubbing him there. He was already very hard, but still pushed my leg away and pinned it down on the bed with his hand. “I don’t think so, sugar. You’ll have to wait for that.”

  “I hate you.”

  “You do?” He pushed my legs apart and slightly squinted his dark eyes at me, finally moving his hand in between my legs. “Why are you so wet then?”

  “Ernst, please…” I begged him, pressing myself harder against his hand as far as my tied wrists allowed.

  “Please what?” he asked innocently, playing with me as slowly as before and driving me insane. Torture, that’s the right word he used defining what he was going to do to me.

  “Please, fuck me,” I whispered quietly, ashamed and closing my eyes. I never used that word he liked so much, but at this point I would say anything just to make him do it.

  “Mm, even though I like the proposition in general, we’ll have to come back to it later. As I said, it’s going to be a long night and I’m not done with you yet.”

  “Ernst!” I yelled in frustration, but he slid his fingers inside of me, and all my yelling turned into moaning.

  “You like that, don’t you?” He laid next to me slightly rubbing himself on my hip. His cotton shirt and even the woolen material of his uniform pants felt cool against my burning skin. “I know you do. I’ll make you feel so good tonight, like you never felt before.”

  I believed him. I lay there with my eyes closed, completely engrossed in the familiar warm sensation numbing all the other feelings in the body except for the heat building up down low in the abdomen as he was moving his hand faster. I was moving together with his hand and readily opened my mouth when he covered it with his, getting me closer and closer to the edge. But when I was almost there and started arching my back slightly, he suddenly moved his hand away from me.

  I opened my eyes wide at him and even gasped in protest, but he silenced me with another deep kiss.

  “You didn’t believe me when I said that I would torture you, did you?” the smirking Austrian asked, sitting up next to me and unbuttoning his shirt.

  “That’s cruel!” I screamed at him.

  “Now you’ll see how I felt all the time near you, sugar pie.” He removed his shirt and boots, but left his pants on. “How do you think I liked walking around you thinking that my pants are about to rip? How do you think I felt trying to concentrate on my meeting, seeing you bending over some papers you dropped and missing half of the reports, do you know why? Because I was busy imagining how I’d fuck you in every position I could only think of and on every surface I could think of in that goddamn office!”

  I couldn’t help but giggle at his fake angry look and also because it was the first time he confessed to something like that. But then he put his hand between my legs again, reminding me who was in charge of the situation and that it was payback time for me for all the ‘sufferings’ he endured.

  “But it’s not fair,” I moaned in protest when he started tormenting me again, knowing that he would stop again at the most important moment and leave me unsatisfied on purpose, angry but desperately longing for more. “I gave in to you after all.”

  “No, you didn’t. I took you myself when I couldn’t wait any longer. Thank God I got drunk enough that night and finally did it, otherwise you’d still be walking around and teasing me like you used to.”

  “You got drunk on purpose?”

  “Of course I did. I would never get into you bed sober back then. You wouldn’t let me do it to you, and if I was sober, I would walk away. I never had to force a woman into sex, you know, and never planned to start, until I met a certain Jewish one, who kept playing hard to get with me.” He slightly bit my lip and firmly pressed his thumb against the most sensitive spot on my body. “But now she’s mine and I can do whatever I want to her, and as long as I want.”

  I exhaled through my open mouth and closed my eyes as he intensified his moves again. I lost count to all the times he repeatedly drove me insane in the same ruthless manner, until he started persistently touching himself through his uniform pants while touching me as well. I knew then that he couldn’t wait any longer.

  I opened my legs impatiently when he got rid of the rest of his clothes, but instead of laying on top of me as I expected him to, he gave me one of his menacing grins, slowly put my legs on his shoulders and then entered me in one strong move, all the way in. I arched my back and screamed with pleasure from the so long awaited release, clenching on my ties.

  When he promised me earlier that night that he’d make me feel like I’d never felt before, he underestimated himself. The whole following process, during which he was roughly moving inside, turned into one never-ending orgasm, and I was glad that I was tied to the bed because I would have definitely scratched my wild lover’s back all over.

  He did untie me later, when he wanted to continue standing up against the wall, and then bending over the table, and then on top of the table, even on the windowsill when we almost broke the window glass, until both of us were sore and couldn’t move anymore.

  Otto looked very tired the next morning unlike jolly us, and to the question about his night he only rolled his eyes and said that he’d never sleep next to our room in the future. After suppressed giggles and pushing each other with elbows under the plane crew’s confused stares, we finally got serious again. After all we needed to solve a new puzzle: why Walther Schellenberg might want Ernst dead.

  Chapter 3

  Berlin, May 1944

  Ursula and I were spreading the blanket while our husbands were taking the food out of the car. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a perfect day for a picnic just outside the city. Even though the ground was a little cold and the air chilly, we were still looking forward to enjoying our time together on a peaceful day off; both Heinrich and Max decided to ditch their uniforms and just for one day to feel free again.

  However, no matter how hard we tried not to talk about the war, the recent events on the Eastern front couldn’t be ignored. The Soviet army completely drove out our forces in the Ukrainian city of Sevastopol, even though the Führer kept slamming fists on the table, demanding to fight to the last man and rather die than surrender. And three days later they liberated Crimea. The Eastern front was quickly moving to the west, and all the Minister of Propaganda Dr. Goebbels’s speeches and articles about the ‘undefeated’ German army didn’t conceal the fact that the collapse of our country was just a matter of time now.

  The regular citizens were kept in the absolute dark con
cerning the current situation. They were fed the same stories about the undoubtable victory of the great German nation, about our recent ‘successful’ operations on the Eastern front, about the bravery of our Luftwaffe pilots, even though several months ago the American aviation joined their British allies in bombing our ammunition factories.

  In February, when they dropped the first bombs, Heinrich and I ate our dinner in silence; the truth was that they were able to easily locate all the factories thanks to my husband, who had copied the maps in Ernst’s office a month prior to that. And now we didn’t know if we should be happy or once again feel like traitors of our own country.

  “We have just occupied Hungary.” Ursula tried to somehow lighten the mood. She put more jam on a piece of bread, while her little daughter Greta was patiently waiting for it. “It means that the situation on the Eastern front is just a minor setback, isn’t it?”

  All three of us, Heinrich, Max and I, who were all working in the department of the external intelligence, or SD-Ausland, exchanged looks. We knew very well what was really going on.

  Nevertheless Max petted his wife’s hand and smiled. “Sure, sweetheart. You’re right.”

  “See? You should have listened to me in the first place. Remember how you almost joined some conspirators who were going to kill the Führer because you thought that it’s because of him we’re losing the war? Aren’t you happy that Heinrich and I talked you out of it?”

  “I certainly am, honey.”

  Back home, Heinrich put the radio on loudly so we could talk discretely.

  “I’m worried about Max. He’s still with those people.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, he wouldn’t tell me anything so as not to incriminate me in case if something goes down. But they’re still plotting against Hitler, I know it.”

  I thought about it for a moment and asked, “Shall we tell somebody?”

  Heinrich shrugged. “We don’t know their names or what exactly they’re planning to do. I’d say we better stay out of it. It’s not our game, and besides nothing good will ever come out of it.”