Frederick Forsyth: The Odessa File

He carried the portable transistor radio into the bathroom, closed the door so Sigi would not hear it, and listened to the news while he showered and shaved. The main item was that a man bad been arrested for the murder of President Kennedy. As he had supposed, there were no other items of news on the entire program but those connected with the Kennedy assassination.

After drying off he went back to the kitchen and made more coffee, this time two cups. He took them into the bedroom, placed them on the bedside table, slipped off his robe, and clambered back under the cushion beside Sigi, whose fluffy blond head was protruding onto the pillow.

She was twenty-two and at school had been a champion gymnast who, so she said, could have gone on to Olympic standing if her bust had not developed to the point where it got in the way and no leotard could safely contain it. On leaving school she became a teacher of physical training at a girls’ school. The change to striptease dancer in Hamburg came a year later and for the very best and most simple of economic reasons. It earned her five times more than a teacher’s salary.

Despite her willingness to take her clothes off to the buff in a nightclub, she was remarkably embarrassed by any lewd remarks made about her body by anyone whom she could see when the remarks were made.

“The point is,” she once told an amused Peter Miller with great seriousness, “When I’m on the stage I can’t see anything behind the lights, so I don’t get embarrassed. If I could see them, I think I’d run offstage.”

This did not stop her from later taking her place at one of the tables in the club when she was dressed again, and waiting to be invited for a drink by one of the customers. The only drink allowed was champagne, in half bottles or preferably whole bottles. On these she collected a fifteen-per-cent commission. Although almost without exception the customers who invited her to drink champagne with them hoped to get much more than an hour of gazing in stunned admiration at the canyon between her breasts, they never did. She was a kindly and understanding girl, and her attitude to the pawing attentions of the customers was one of gentle regret rather than the contemptuous loathing that the other girls hid behind their neon smiles.

“Poor little men,” she once said to Miller, “they ought to have a nice woman to go home to.”

“What do you mean, poor little men?” protested Miller.

“They’re dirty old creeps with a pocketful of cash to spend.”

“Well, they wouldn’t be if they had someone to take care of them,” retorted Sigi, and on this her feminine logic was unshakable.

Miller had seen her by chance on a visit to Madame Kokett’s bar just below the Cafe Keese on the Reeperbahn, when he had gone to have a chat and a drink with the owner, an old friend and contact. She was a big girl, five feet, nine inches tall and with a figure to match, which, on a shorter girl, would have been out of proportion. She stripped to the music with the habitual supposedly sensual gestures, her face set in the usual bedroom pout of strippers. Miller had seen it all before and sipped his drink without batting an eyelid.

But when her brassi6re came off even he had to stop and stare, glass half-raised to his mouth. His host eyed him sardonically. “She’s stacked, eh?” he said.

Miller bad to admit she made Playboy’s Playmates of the Month look like severe cases of undernourishment. But she was so firmly muscled that her bosom stood outward and upward without a vestige of support.

At the end of her turn, when the applause started, the girl had dropped the bored poise of the professional dancer, bobbed a shy, half-embarrassed little bow to the audience, and given a big sloppy grin like a half trained bird dog which against all the betting has just brought back a downed partridge. It was the grin that got Miller, not the dance routine or the figure. He asked if she would like a drink, and she was sent for.

As Miller was in the company of the boss, she avoided a bottle of champagne and asked for a gin fizz.

To his surprise, Miller found she was a very nice person to be around and asked if he might take her home after the show.

With obvious reservations, she agreed. Playing his cards coolly, Miller made no pass at her that night. It was early spring, and she emerged from the cabaret, when it closed, clad in a most unglamorous duffel coat, which he presumed was intentional.

They just had coffee together and talked, during which she unwound from her previous tension and chatted gaily. He learned she liked pop music, art, walking along the banks of the Alster, keeping house, and children. After that they started going out on her one free night a week, taking in a dinner or a show, but not sleeping together.

After three months Miller took her to his bed and later suggested she might like to move in. With her single-minded attitude toward the important things of life, Sigi had already decided she wanted to marry Peter Miller, and the only problem was whether she should try to get him by not sleeping in his bed or the other way around. Sensing his ability to fill the other half of his mattress with other girls if the need arose, she decided to move in and make his life so comfortable that he would want to marry her. They bad been together for six months by the end of November.

Even Miller, who was hardly house-trained, had to admit she kept a beautiful home, and she made love with a healthy and bouncing enjoyment.

She never mentioned marriage directly but tried to get the message across in other ways. Miller feigned not to notice. Strolling in the sun by the Alster lake, she would sometimes make friends with a toddler under the benevolent eyes of its parent.

“Oh, Peter, isn’t he an angel?” Miller would grunt. “Yeah. Marvelous.” After that she would freeze him for an hour for having failed to take the hint. But they were happy together, especially Peter Miller, who was suited down to the ground by this arrangement of all the comforts of marriage, the delights of regular loving, without the ties of marriage.

After drinking half his coffee, Miller slithered down into the bed and put his anus around her from behind, gently caressing her crotch, which he knew would wake her up. After a few minutes she muttered with pleasure and rolled over onto her back. Still massaging, he leaned over and started to kiss her breasts.

Still half asleep, she gave vent to a series of long mmmms, and her hands started to move drowsily over his back and buttocks. Ten minutes later they made love, squealing and shuddering with pleasure.

“That’s a bell of a way to wake me up,” she grumbled afterward.

“There are worse ways,” said Miller.

“What’s the time?”

“Nearly twelve,” Miller lied, knowing she would throw something at him if she learned it was half past ten and she had had only five hours’ sleep. “Never mind, you go back to sleep if you feel like it.”

“Mmmm. Thank you, darling, you are good to me,” said Sigi and fell asleep again.

Miller was halfway to the bathroom after drinking the rest of his coffee and Sigi’s as well, when the phone rang. He diverted into the sitting room and answered it.

“Peter?”

“Yes, who’s that?”

“Karl. His mind was still fuzzed, and he did not recognize the voice. “Karl?” The voice was impatient. “Karl Brandt. What’s the matter? Are you still asleep?”

Miller recovered. “Oh, yes. Sure, Karl. Sorry, I just got up. What’s the matter?”

“Look, it’s about this dead Jew. I want to talk to you.”

Miller was baffled. “What dead Jew?”

“The one who gassed himself last night in Altona. Can’t you even remember that far back?”

“Yes, of course I remember last night,” said Miller. “I didn’t know he was Jewish. What about him?”