Michael Wenberg - The Last Eagle

“Yes, yes,” Ritter said recklessly in German, blowing the woman a kiss. “ Auf Wiedersehen .”

His men were waiting in front of the hotel, smoking cigarettes, ignoring all the commotion with professional disdain.

“What do we do now?” said Helmut Bergen, his short blond hair pulsing blue from the flickering neon light above them.

Ritter stared up at the sky. The glow from the city lights washed out any stars. Too bad. He would have liked to see the stars on this night. He wrinkled his nose. He wished for stars almost as much as he now wished he had taken time to shower. He stank with the musky scent of the woman. It clung to him like stale beer. He wondered if his men could smell it, too. A mistake to have the woman in his room, but Ritter had figured that he deserved a little reward and recreation before the delicate part of his plan began.

Ritter gestured with his hand. Helmut offered his cigarette. Ritter inhaled, held the smoke until he felt dizzy, and then exhaled. “After all of our hard work, it would be a shame to let the Luftwaffe destroy our prize, eh?” he said with a cough, handing back the cigarette. “But this attack might help make our task all the easier if, of course, we don’t get killed in the process.”

Bergen and the other Kriegsmarine officer, a stocky engineer by the name of Jörg Kolb, weren’t too nervous to laugh at his joke. That was a good sign. Yes, indeed, well-trained, good men, the best of Germany.

“ Ach so ,” Ritter continued. “And like the good, thoughtful and brave Dutch engineers we are supposed to be, let us go see if we can’t help get our submarine underway without shitting our pants in the process, shall we?”

Kate McLendon lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, puzzled by why she was awake.

She heard the door handle jiggle, and then someone pounding on the outside. “Kate, for chrissakes. You in there? You all right?”

Kate grabbed her head and groaned. She needed to cut down on the vodka tomorrow night. And then corrected herself. Tonight. It was already a new day.

“Hold on,” she croaked, flipping on the light. She pulled on her robe, crossed the room and opened the door.

Reggie pushed in, waving his hands in the air. “My God,” he said, lighting on her bed for a moment, and then scuttling over to the window, pulling aside the curtain and glancing outside. “I can’t believe it.”

“What the hell is going on,” Kate said, scratching her head and yawning.

“You didn’t hear? I mean, you didn’t hear the racket and the—” Reggie made the sound of an explosion, his hands waving above his head like a small child.

“I sleep like a train wreck,” Kate said, aware now of the noise in the hallway outside her room, the distant wail of sirens. She pushed Reggie into a chair. “Sit,” she ordered, suddenly wide-awake and serious. “What’s going on?”

Reggie took a deep breath, adjusted his rimless glasses. “I woke somebody up at the American embassy in Warsaw. He encouraged me to do something to myself that is anatomically impossible and then hung up. Tried the provincial governor, the mayor’s office here in town, too, and nothing.”

Kate took a deep breath. “Well then, Reggie,” she said evenly. “What do you know?”

There was a muffled sound of explosions in the distance. Reggie began twisting his hands. “I heard planes and then explosions. The sound of gunfire. A woman in the lobby said it was the Russians attacking. She’s the wife of someone in the Polish military, I believe,” Reggie added.

Kate chewed on a fingernail. “Russians?” she said. “I can’t believe Stalin would attack? Hitler would see it as a provocation. He wouldn’t sit idly by and let the Red Army run wild.”

“I don’t want to be in the middle of a war,” Reggie moaned. “My wife will kill me.”

“Of course we do,” Kate corrected with growing excitement. “Don’t you see? This is the break we’ve been waiting for. War reports from the front lines. If we can produce some good pieces, you know, eyewitness reports of the motherland under attack and all that goes with it, and then get them back to London, that asshole who calls himself a bureau chief won’t care that it’s coming from a fluff female reporter and a Jew. He’s going to get it out on the wire. Every news service in the world will pick it up. That’s money in the bank.”

Reggie cocked his head in interest. “I see what you mean,” he said. “And maybe I can lay hands on a movie camera? Forget Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. They’d crowd into the theaters to see my footage.”

As Kate slipped out of her silk robe and begin to dress, Reggie couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Take advantage of the opportunities when they come your way, old boy, Reggie thought. And his partner was a beautiful woman, despite the broken nose. Not full-bodied like his wife, but with firm legs that seemed to go on forever. Narrow waist. Well-muscled arms. He half closed his eyes, imagining her grabbing him by the neck, pushing him over to her bed and ordering him to take off his clothes.

“I can make you be a gentleman,” came the words with soft menace, interrupting his daydream. She was standing there in front of him wearing nothing but white panties and a bra. Reggie didn’t notice. Now he couldn’t take his eyes off the clenched fist waving ominously under his nose.

“Oh, have it your way,” he frumped. “No harm in looking, is there?”

“That isn’t the point. Turn around.”

“All set?” Kate asked forty minutes later.

Reggie had just finished setting up his camera on the street corner. He was about to begin taking photographs of the burning warehouses across the harbor when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, Christ,” he moaned.

It was just a handful of men. Dockworkers, by their looks, Kate thought. Drinking late. Roused by the nearby explosions. Maybe they were hustling down the street to help fight the fire?

“Fucking spies,” shouted a short, pug-faced man in the front of the group.

“Scratch that thought,” Kate murmured to herself, suddenly feeling very alone and exposed. One man, she could handle. A mob was something else.

Reggie pulled his camera off the tripod and held it protectively in his arms like a child.

“We’re Yankee reporters,” Kate said in passable Polish, stepping forward to meet them though she was terrified, forcing her warmest smile.

That gave them pause. The pug-faced man walked up close and smiled. His breath, reeking of beer and cigarettes and God knows what else, made Kate’s knees weak. “Not a spy,” he said, breathing hard through his fat nose, staring Kate lewdly up and down. “A German whore!”

Kate didn’t hesitate. She kneed him in the crotch. As he crumpled forward, his face a mixture of surprise, pain and anger, she grabbed the back of his head just like her father had taught her long ago and brought up her knee again, feeling a satisfying crunch. No time to admire her work, she wheeled to the right, arm cocked, but that was when two men grabbed her by the shoulders and ran her backward, slamming her against the side of a brick building.

“Not the camera,” she heard Reggie squeal. There was a metallic crash and the sound of breaking glass.

“Hold her,” said one of the men. “Let’s see how she looks underneath all this.”

Kate couldn’t move. No one was even close enough to bite. She felt a hand on her crotch, closed her eyes and peed, surprised that she remembered something her mother had said when she was a teen about stopping boys who might be getting out of hand, thankful for the cup of coffee she had had finished earlier.