David Healey - Winter Sniper

Fleischmann’s breath came out in a little gasp and he hurried to tug off his clothes. “Best get under the covers, my dear, before we freeze to death.”

Eva wished she could ignore what her body felt, but the colonel was hardly an indifferent lover. He kissed the length of her body, then gently spread her legs and got busy with his tongue. By the time he was finished, Eva was hanging onto the spindles of the brass headboard and writhing on the mattress. Fleischmann slid himself into her and then shuddered after a few hard thrusts. He rolled off with a deep sigh and settled himself next to her. They didn’t spoon exactly, not like lovers, but the colonel cupped a proprietary hand around one breast. The fact that he made her feel so good made Eva hate him all the more. Wide awake, staring at the ceiling, Eva waited for the sound of deep breathing that meant he had fallen asleep. He always did after making love. And then she forced herself to wait a little while longer.

Finally, she slipped out of bed, feeling cold and clammy. Ill-used. Had she come all the way from Germany, given up so much, to be a whore for the likes of Fleischmann? No, Eva warned herself, she had to think beyond that. Eva slipped on a robe and tip-toed out of the bedroom. With a last glance at his shape under the blankets to make sure that he was sleeping, she went out into the hallway and shut the door. It was later than she thought she could not hear Petra or even so much as the whisper of a car outside. The only sound seemed to be Fleischmann’s heavy breathing.

Her one hope was that she might be able to warn Berlin that she had been found out. She had some real information to transmit as well, which was that Eisenhower was planning an invasion. Her masters in Berlin already knew that, but what Eva offered was further evidence. There was also the possibility that she could turn the tables on Fleischmann and the OSS. If Berlin planted false information through her, it might work to their advantage. It was all almost too much for Eva to grasp, but the spymasters in Berlin were experts at this sort of thing.

Eva padded down the hall to the doorway leading to the attic. The door was locked; she took an old-fashioned key from a pocket of her robe. When she opened the door, a stream of cold air spilled down the stairwell and Eva clutched the robe more tightly to her chest. Even in winter, the enclosed space smelled of dust and mice. Stepping into the stairwell, she pulled the door shut behind her. There was a light switch, but she did not turn it on. No point in calling attention to the attic if anyone was watching from the street. Instead, she reached for a flashlight that sat on the third step.

Eva moved quietly, easing her weight onto each step to avoid making creaking noises. The steps were not particularly wide, more like a ladder than a proper stairway. She felt a chill breeze as she passed a pane of wavy glass that looked out over the street. An old cotton curtain swayed like a ghost in the draft. Cold in winter, hot as an oven on a summer’s night and often buzzing with a stray wasp or two, the uninsulated attic was not the sort of place that invited visitors. That made it the perfect lair for a spy, the only place in the house where she could truly drop her act to become the real Eva Von Stahl. As for Petra, the girl had never shown any interest in the attic since Eva had hinted that it was full of bats.

Behind an old dressing screen that hid them from view, Eva had set up a table and an upholstered chair from the last century, both of which she kept covered with a quilt. She swept the quilt aside to reveal a shortwave radio on the table. The radio was a special unit designed to fit inside a suitcase; indeed, that was just how she had smuggled it into America.

Eva lit a stub of candle, switched off the flashlight and settled herself on the chair. She opened a drawer and took out a Walther PPK, then set it on the table.

When she turned on the radio, two dials came to life with a warm orange glow. One dial showed a range of frequencies that Eva could adjust from night to night or week to week, dodging around so that the Allies could neither pinpoint nor predict the signal. The second, smaller dial had a needle that danced to and fro based on the strength of the incoming signal. Eva found the second dial impressive-looking but useless; one either heard the radio signal or not. She put on the headphones and tuned the radio to the proper frequency.

Messages arrived in relays across the Atlantic, finally sent again from a U-boat somewhere off the American coast. When she sent a message, it traveled in the same fashion, but in reverse order, all the way to Berlin. This was not one of her scheduled broadcasts, so she hoped some radio operator would be listening at his post on the U-boat. How to explain herself? The news they wanted to hear in Berlin was that General Eisenhower was dead. The message she planned to send would not be as welcome; she just hoped that someone in the Abwehr had the good sense to use the information to Germany’s advantage.

She clicked on the microphone, ready to speak, but stopped when she heard what sounded like a creaking floorboard. The back of her neck prickled. Some sixth sense that she was being watched.

Eva whirled in the chair and saw Colonel Fleischmann standing just beyond the screen. He looked like some ghostly apparition, wearing white boxer shorts and T-shirt, his legs and arms pale and goose fleshed in the cold attic. The colonel looked huge in that small space. He stared at her in amazement.

Eva snatched off the headphones. “What are you doing?”

“So this is how you do it,” he said. “A radio. Of course! I should have guessed. I just assumed you had a contact somewhere in the city.”

“You are supposed to be asleep!” Eva said uselessly. She felt violated. She had meant to keep the radio secret from him for as long as possible. He had come into her most private space that she kept hidden from all the world.

Fleischmann only laughed. “What a prize! I would have found it eventually, you know, but I never expected to find it so soon. Frankly, my dear, I’m a bit disappointed.” He slapped his hands together and rubbed them enthusiastically. “They’ll make me a full colonel for this! Now, what messages are we going to send tonight to Berlin?”

“Only this one,” said Eva. She picked up the Walther and aimed it at his heart.

“Come now, Eva. We’ve already been through this downstairs. We both know you haven’t got the nerve.”

Eva pulled the trigger.

The noise in the cramped attic was like a thunderclap. Her ears rang. In the candlelight, she could see the round, neat hole in the front of his white T-shirt. Fleischmann looked down at the hole, then at her, wide-eyed. He put one hand over the wound and held up the other toward her, palm out as if to ward off bullets. This time she put two hands around the pistol grip, took careful aim, and shot him again.

Fleischmann stumbled backwards, reaching for the antique dressing screen to catch himself, but it was too flimsy and he only succeeded in knocking it down, sending up a storm of dust from the attic floor. He sank to his knees, his mouth moving noiselessly like a fish gasping for air on a riverbank. His eyes turned glassy. Then Fleischmann slumped forward and didn’t move, his face buried in the pit of one arm that was flung out as if to break his fall. He had the unnaturally limp look of those dead animals one sometimes saw by the side of the road.

Eva turned back to the radio and switched it off. The orange glow faded. She put away the pistol, then covered the table and chair with the quilt. Berlin would have to wait.

Now, what to do with Fleischmann?

From the bottom of the attic stairs she heard Petra call out in a frightened voice, asking if everything was all right.