Messenger from Munich

by

NOEL PIERCE

         
A SIGNET BOOK from
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY


Published by
THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
OF CANADA LIMITED
                                  
In revenge -and in love woman is more Virtuous than man. -Friedrich Wilhchn
 Nietzsche

 Copyright (C 1973 by Noel Pierce

 All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in
 any form without Permission in writing from the publisher. For information
 address Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York,

 New York OGl. This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published
 by Coward, McCann & Ccoghcyan. Inc. The hardcover
 edition was published simultaneously in english by
 Longman Canada Limited, Toronto.

 First Printing, July, 1974

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

 PRINTED IN CANADA

 COVER PRINTED IN U.S.A.
 The little clock ticked the seconds away. It sounded too loud in the
  silence. Felicia turned it on its porcelain face and leafed restlessly
  through the newspaper. Her name jumped out at her. She saw herself with
  Grandfather entering an opera box. "Felicia Eliot Schuyler, granddaughter
  of former Ambassador Jared Eliot, wearing Austrian court jewels at the
  opening of Carmen. Her husband is a specialist in criminal law for the
  Justice Department."
  Paradoxl She smiled ruefully, fingered the locks on her jewel case, spilled
  out the emeralds, green and square as one-cent stamps. Not these on an FBI
  agent's salary. But . . . Grandfather doted. ft was her birthday.
  She picked up a cuff link of Rob's, a ski sweater, a gold lighter, an
  extravagance of fondness which he forgot to use. When did we last ski
  together? Go dancing? Hear music? Sitting without him in the grand tier. Is
  he out on the river in a police launch? In the lab squinting at the
  thumbprint of a criminal? Clapping. "Yes, Grandfather, a splendid aria."
  The sweater had a moor smell. She pressed it to her cheek. The welling up
  of doubt began again.
  She switched on the stereo, riffled the discs like a deck of cards. Dance
  without a partner. Snap your fingers at melodies remembered. Push the
  silence back. Rebellion prickled at the roots of her chestnut hair. She
  reached for a brush, ran it crackling through the springing weight, wanting
  Rob's hands to wash through the waterfall instead.
  There was a silver-framed photo of him 'riding in an open car with a
  "Famous Personage." Agate eyes stared directly at her. She had seldom seen
  a colder stare. It was the probe of the supercop, the watcher, the
  interrogator. It dissected the observer. She blanked it with her hand.

               5
6         Noel Pierce

 These eyes had warmed on hers. This stern mouth dissolved on hers. This
 fine, hard body had taken hers. Why share so little with her now? Suppose
 something happened and she had to blurt out a stiff-upped, stammering lie to
 the children?
  To drown out uneasiness, do the wifely chores. Count shirts. The twins'
  jeans. Start a kettle purring. Rub up the silver. Rub down the skin. Yours
  glows, he said. Answer invitations. Without Rob. Snap on the TV. Order a
  crown roast. Apologetic dinner parties without my host.
  Does he need me? Or am I merely the stop, go, stop, go of what makes a
  marriage tick, like this blasted clock?
  All he had said was, "Flix, I'll be on surveillance on the East River
  docks. There's a flap on." Remote from the "flap" in their high rise above
  the river, Felicia supposed it had something to do with vice areas, graft,
  what Grandfather called "shady characters."
  Restless, moving like that lady lioness in the park zoo, measuring the
  cage, working her claws, pacing, waiting. Tabitha, the bold twin, said,
  "She looks like you, Mummy. Tawny." Tessa, the quiet one, "But Mummy
  doesn't have claws." She went to the empty nursery, picked up crayons,
  chalk, a glob of marshmallow, toys stashed helter-skelter. Methodically she
  sharpened pencils, broke a nail, remembered love in the afternoons, odd
  hours when she didn't expect him, while their bedroom fire crackled and
  Tabitha and Tessa did their messy sums, using their teddy bears for desks.
  In the mirror she caught sight of herself-tall with full, high breasts, an
  arrogance, a defiance. Something almost predatory in her stance. The
  chestnut hair swept back. She listened for a key in the lock. There were
  too many locks. The children's, door, their door, the front, the service
  door. What use were, creature comforts if not to roam through freely? The
  Bokhara carpet, silky to bare toes. Deep lounges, crystal chandeliers, the
  whiskies he liked, the game birds from Grandfather's quail shoots.
  The electronic lock unnerved her. It made threatening little hissing sounds
  like geese when she fumbled for the correct decibels and hit the wrong
  ones. The eagle-shaped lock on his bedside security phone that no one in
  the apartment ever touched. But her body, which was open and joyous in
  receiving him, had no locks. Except when Rob's work shut her out. She saw
  the scar across his ribs,
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH     7

 the knicks on his body. "Daddy, who hurt your leg?"' "A bear scratched me."
  But I am unscarred. I am what he comes home to because here is the welcome
  I give without question. Maybe it's time 1 asked a few. She sent the
  curtains rattling aside, opened the casement. Deep below she heard the
  on-off siren clamor of alarm. A policeman sent his bullhorn bellowing
  through the tenements. A woman shouted obscenities from a fire escape. A
  flowerpot crashed. Hopscotch kids ducked for cover. Dogs burst up, baying,
  from basement stairs.
  Who was that other lady in her tower looking down? What nonsense! Felicia
  laughed. All the same... "1 am half sick of shadows," said the Lady of
  Shalott . . . . She went to the hall closet, opened another lock, brushed
  Rob's coats. On the top shelf was an old hatbox shoved far back. She
  reached up and dumped it down. The lid fell off.
  A switchblade knife and a gun lay on the Turkey carpet. She lifted the
  heavy revolver, a .38 Police Special. It smelled of cordite. Gingerly she
  picked up the knife. The eight-inch blade shot out at her with an oiled
  sigh.
  On the staghorn handle was printed: Auf Wiedersehen.

              2

  The black car probing the neighborhood looked like a secondhand sedan that
  had stood too long in the rain. Moist river air seeped through an old
  bullet hole in a corner of the plexiglass windshield. From its high-voltage
  diesel innards came a bucking snarl at being throttled down to cop
  cruising.
  The driver pointed the bureau car's armor-plated snout down another side
  street, hunting for something. He had a watchful, craggy face, a metronome
  precision to the eyes flicking back and forth. The car cramped his legs and
8         Noel Pierce

 shoulders. His hair was clipped short with a shaggy gloss like a dog's coat.
 He looked down at his big hands, the knuckles whitened with exasperation,
 and pulled in a breath. The puffs of air coming through the old bullet hole
 had a brackish reek like some backwater decay from a Venice canal.
  Rob joggled the wheel as the tires bounced over rough, random-laid
  cobblestones. Cutting the ignition, he drifted to the curb and sat
  listening to the stillness.
  He was in the middle of a dead-end street in a Yorkville slum. This side of
  the fireboat slip an obscure alley bent west of the waterfront to elbow its
  way around a turn, past a broken chimney stack.
  He smoked a cigarette and thought about what they had given him in the
  briefing room. "Look for a watchman's shack by an abandoned brewery near
  the East River docks."
  The tide slapped along sullenly, clawing at the bulkhead pilings. Gulls
  shrilled in scolding dives over a garbage scow. Two Harbor Police boats
  churned the river lane, yawing across Hell Gate rip.
  "You'll see some demolition signs. There should be a passageway through old
  stable frames."
  Could this offshore flurry of river police have some bearing on the
  assignment, Rob wondered? The order had come abruptly. The liaison with CIA
  disturbed him. It was a connection neither side liked and both usually
  avoided--except for some urgent security reason.
  Suddenly everything had gone red on the bureau's Yorkville Control watch
  board. Angry little bleeps flicked across the teletype screen like
  scurrying bugs. "LYC-5" . . . "LYC5" . . . his security tag.
  He thought briefly of Flix and the children, knowing that Tabitha and Tessa
  would be sluicing their plush puddle ducks in bath water and singing out to
  their beautiful mother: "Is Daddy coming home soon?" She would be rubbing
  them down with a pink bath towel, saying with her bright, anxious smile,
  "No, Daddy won't be home for dinner tonight. Business keeps him hopping."
  At the far end of the block he saw the peddler's stand. It was like seeing
  a speck at the wrong end of a telescope. The peddler stuck in his mind like
  a giant thumb.
  What did a junkman hope to sell here among GARAGE TO LET signs and vacant
  lofts? Why pitch his stand in a
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH     9

 desolate neighborhood? On the fringe of the Yorkville tenements old people
 loitered, gossiping on stoops. A line of cheap neckties flapped on a string.
 A goat's bell tinkled from the cart. Rob got out of the car and walked
 toward him. The old man is blind. Is he? Is he expecting me? Is he some kind
 of Judas goat, a stakeout? A point man? One side to watch the other?
  Behind his blindman's glasses, the peddler watched him coming. The old man
  began to tremble imperceptibly in the east wind.
  "Your business is good here?" A very tall man smiled down at him.
  "Bitte?" The peddler's hand lifted to stroke the air where the voice came
  from.
  "You want me to buy something from you? Is that it?"
  "Nein." Uncertainly, peering. The seamed face turned sidewise the way the
  sightless listen. Rob maneuvered to stare down into the black lenses. A
  flicker narrowed the irises. "Ja, you buy something?"
  "What have you got to sell me?"
  "A necktie? A pretty neckpiece for der wife, die Kinder?"
  "I'll take the tie."
  "Of the best. See?" The peddler displayed them on his arm with a wheedling
  gesture.
   "Which shall I buy? The red? The green?"
  Fumbling, but seeingly, the peddler selected one and held it out. "You take
  this one," he said, "the green."
  "Wieviel kostet's?" Who told him to push the green one at me?
   "Funfzig Cent, bitte. Danke."
   Rob dug through his pockets, $10, $S, and 6 cents.
  "Six cents, peddler. For an honest man like you it's not enough."
   "I take what you have. It will be enough."
  The peddler looked away through his black glasses, listening to the coins
  falling.
  Rob pulled off the tie he wore, that Flit had given him. It was a Thaibok
  silk with chess pieces woven in the gold strands-pawn, rook, king, queen,
  knave.
   He thrust it in the old man's hand.
   "Was ist das?"
   "I don't know, but I'm damn well going to find out."'
   "Bitte? Versteh' nicht." But the old man understood the
10       Noel Pierce

 importance of the contact. It was why he was here on the dead-end street. He
 could not control the trembling that agitated him in waves so that
 everything on the cart was shaking with him, the goat's bell, the cheap
 neckties, and the rich, handsome one in his hand.
  Rob was knotting the green tie under his collar; he tucked. the ends in his
  shirt.
  The old trash vendor hung the chess piece Thaibok silk on the swaying line.
  Ringing his goat's bell like a leper sounding a warning, he wheeled the
  pushcart off.
  "Go down toward the waterfront," the briefing agent had said. ""Turn left
  by the scarlet fireboat pumper. She's tied up at Marine Station Five. Swing
  back up the next street. Stop beyond the dynamite zone."
  No one had briefed him about the peddler.
  He eased the heavy black car around the next corner bordering the dock
  front and drove up the side street. There it was. A sign nailed to a post
  read: DANGER. DYNAMITE ZONE. KEEP OUT. In smaller print he read: JASON
  DEMOLITION CO.
  Jason was the name they had given him.
  He walked into a rubble-strewn yard where vacant stable frames yawned
  around the rat-ridden structure of a huge old brewery.

               3

  A dank, sour smell of stale hops, mildew and decay rose from the massive
  huddle of 1890 archways. Rounded buttresses with holes where bricks were
  gaped at him like stumps in a vacant mouth. His pushcart tie stuck out
  greener than the grass pushing up through the crevices.
  Once the harness-up heyday of the brewer's big horses, the yard was
  arranged like a phony construction area amid rusting barrel hoops. A
  watchman's hutch squatted like an armadillo in the far corner. A fence
  enclosed it, topped
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    11

 with charged wire. Rob saw the tail of a laboratory truck, used for crime
 test apparatus, garaged in a shed.
  If this field sector was part of CIA's network, it would be known-but
  carefully not known-to criminal detail officers and the Manhattan East Side
  Homicide Squad. The place looked untenanted.
  He walked over to the shed and moved his hands across barred wooden door
  slats. A rat came out from under a stable frame and blinked up at him, its
  pink tongue flicking between pointed teeth. Rob snuggled a loose brick in
  his hand. Sliding it down his leg, he crushed the rat's skull.
  The shed door swung open. Inside was a riveted steel wall. He laid his ear
  against it. His feet vibrated to generator's humming underground. He felt
  around the top of the steel door, found the electro cell and gave it a
  sharp rap.
  Deeper in, a complex of lights flicked on. A computer bank was punching
  out: "LYC, red. LYC, red. Local Yorkville-5, Yorkville Control-5."
  Two levels below the street a pair of eyes as hard as pebbles studied the
  computer bank thoughtfully. Triple red said, "Yorkville-5 delayed. Peddler
  interception. Peddler followed."
  "Let him in," Jason said.
  He pressed a numerical code on the dial at his desk and took up the
  dossier.
  "Robert Schuyler. Special intelligence officer for Yorkville Control.
  Background-criminal law. Twin daughters, age six. Tabitha and Tessa. Wife,
  Felicia." Jason penciled in the margin, "Felicia means `happiness'?"
  "Wife's grandfather is a retired diplomat. Our ex-ambassador to an Austrian
  border duchy between the wars. Made millions on the Australian mining
  market. Agent is said to be too fast with guns. Shoots first, talks later.
  Two attempts on his life. A calculated risk."
  On the whole, Jason thought, not bad. Take the risk.

  Rob stepped into a concrete corridor and walked down a ramp past setbacks
  housing the generator room, a microfilm lab, an arsenal. In a glass-covered
  slot plastic ropes of explosives were coiled like nests of gray snakes. He
  passed a power plant with a feed supply to automatic relay and repeater
  stations. There was an X-ray room, a trouble turret, an area set up for
  automatic photo receiving, a
12       Noel Pierce

 quick-print identity of. finger, palm and footprints, with speed
 transceivers.
  What he saw could milk a man's heart out of his body, explode his brains
  and paste his spinal cord against the building across the street. It was
  cool in the arsenal and smelled pleasantly of lemon oil.
  Rob paused in the silent corridor. Drops of sweat had sprung along his
  hairline. There was the story about the sailor. That with equipment like
  this, CIA had traced and identified a sailor's hand, gutted from the belly
  of a shark off the Newfoundland Banks. Had uncovered tattoo dye, a mangled
  wedding ring, pinpointed the sailor's name, his rank, his ship, and had the
  "remains" sent home to an aghast Sicilian family, who buried the hand under
  a7marble dove. An anonymous young man in a dark suit came toward him.
  "Down this hall. Follow me, please."
  Ahead was an open elevator platform. They stepped in. The platform settled
  below street level.
  The man had a smooth-shaven face and flat mousecolored hair. A troglodyte
  child with pale lips and icy courtesy.
  "Wait here, please." He left Rob in front of another door.
  Overhead a Cyclops' eye watched him. The electro eye showed a mean, glaring
  white light. It was like a wildcat poised up a tree, probing the man below
  for metal, sharp edges, weapons. Rob waited while it photographed him on an
  instantaneous print screen somewhere in the agency labyrinth. Cyclops
  blinked at him coyly, fingering invisibly under his shirt where the gun
  was, moving over his loins like an avid old woman exploring a naked body.
  Would it let out a snarl when the ray found his watch?
  It had a sun, moon and stars on the dial. Tabitha and Tessa, eyeing its
  calendar, said, "Daddy, what time is it in Africa? Does it snow there? Do
  the chiefs wear long drawers?" There were other mechanisms sealed inside
  the watch casing.
  Something hung over him. Some doubt from the man inside? Something
  glistened, suspended in Cyclops' eye.
  The dark man came hurrying back. He held out his hand.
   "What do you want? My ticket for the arsenal picnic?"
   "Your gun, sir."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    13

 6.VVhy?,1
 "Cyclops doesn't like metal."
 "What does it eat for breakfast, brass knuckles?"
  The troglodyte child clenched his lips whitely. "Orders, Sir."
  Rob laughed suddenly. Unfunny joke. But every security branch had its merry
  ways of goad-and-probe. Gritting his teeth, he handed over the gun.
  "Clean it while you're at it, kid. And let me know how I look in the frames
  Cyclops took of me. I'd like a souvenir snapshot."
  But the hand still beckoned.
  "What else do you want?"
  "Your watch."
  Rob hesitated. He thought about the old watch expert in Zurich who had
  spent months perfecting the intricate mechanism that hummed against his
  wrist. It was an alarm system linked to remote radio control.
  The hand that beckoned made the mistake of snapping its impatient fingerL.
  A fist shot out.,The young man was spun around, lifted o$ his feet and
  slammed against the wall. He made one whimpering mew, then took the pain
  silently.
  "Listen to me, you son of a bitch. I'll give you one second to push
  whatever button you have to, to let me through that door. Now get
  cracking."
  Overhead, the Cyclops' eye went out.

               4

  Compressed air whooshed the door open on its metal track. The room had a
  businesslike desk, office files, a wall of city maps. The ceiling lights
  were white like an interrogation room. In a pewter jug were hothouse
  freesia and a cluster of dianthus. The scent of flowers came faintly
  through an aura of guns and chemicals.
14       Noel Pierce

  The man behind the desk was beefy, blunt-jawed. A semi-legendary figure of
  calculated terror for foreign spies. Into Jason's maw had been sucked,
  vacuumed, pulverized and annihilated half the terrorist fringe out of
  Europe and Asia. He closed both ends of the tunnel. The agency chief was
  the spearhead of Operational Division J-Branch. Recalling what he knew of
  J-Branch, Rob thought, this is going to be the bad one.
  Jason got up unhurriedly. "Thanks for visiting us so promptly."
  "Not at all. Glad to oblige."
  They shook hands briefly, and Rob looked into eyes reddened from lack of
  sleep. Jason wore gray flannels and a Donegal hacking jacket with suede
  elbow patches. Everything about him had a chunky, muscular bulk,
  expensively clothed. On one weathered hand was an old seal ring. He smelled
  of wood leaves and good tobacco. He pushed a decanter forward, ice, goblet,
  and a cigar case of Willem 11 panatellas.
  Rob mixed himself a stiff scotch and took a leather chair across the desk.
  Jason looked up from his notebook.
  "You interest me very much, Mr. Schuyler. Your background is law, yet you
  broke the back of a rapist escaping from the scene of a child murder. You
  lifted him over your head and broke him on a fence. You speak French, Czech
  and German. Your wife's grandfather, the exambassador, has two hobbies-your
  little girls, and a priceless collection of sword canes."
  Rob nodded. "On rainy days my kids punch holes in a paper dragon with
  Grandfather's Taipei spike cane."
  "You have a notable skill with rifles and handguns. You can kill a swallow
  on the wing. You blew the face off a running criminal, from a tower."
  "Just flukes, both shots," Rob said, "and some luck."
  "The swallow?
  "To win a bet. My wife said I couldn't do it. She cried."
  "What did you use on that criminal, shooting from the tower?"'
  "A Remington pumper. An autoloading job with a Lyman twenty-five-power
  scope." Rob shifted uncomfortably. The killing shot had twanged in his ears
  like a guitar string.
  Jason tore up his notes and burned the scraps in his ashtray. "Mr.
  Schuyler, I know CIA's methods are an
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    15

 abrasive to your branch of the national security. We don't make good
 bedfellows. But anything of extreme urgency concerns us both. I put you over
 some bad jumps out there. I had to be sure."
  "You've got enough juice under wraps around here to blow up a city block."
  "It's an experimental sector."
  "Right, we know that. But nobody from the bureau's actually seen your
  Chamber of Horrors yet."
  "We get some unexpected visitors. Some are warm and breathing, others not.
  There's an interrogation room. A mortuary for unpleasant little queries we
  need to tidy up before Homicide gets the body. Some have jumped ship from
  alien shark boats. They hide under wharf pilings. A few drown. All
  permissible, Mr. Schuyler."
  "Got an autopsy room?"
  Jason nodded.
  "What do you expect from the East River? The Spanish Armada? I have a
  special duty surveillance out there now."
  "That small bulkhead at the end of the dock where fishers cast for eels is
  suspect. The enemy's launch gets close in by night. A man scrambles up the
  low wall, papers, passport, money, knife, gun in his kit. Ten minutes later
  he's having a schooner of suds in a beer stube."
  "Who are you looking for around here?"
  "A schizophrenic killer somewhere in Yorkville."
  "Is there a victim?"
  "Not yet, Mr. Schuyler. That's where you come in."
  "If this is a threat to security, why don't you do your own police work?"
  "Strategically, the agency must keep out of it. You know the local scene
  like the palm of your band."
  "These people in the tenements resent a criminal search. No one gives
  anyone away. The old ones are still Gestaposhy. They have Austrian, German,
  Hungarian, Slavic roots. Prejudice is strong. When did you get a tip on
  this main?"
  "Yesterday. Although it's been brewing in bits and pieces before. A code
  dispatcher flew in from our combined Munich and Bonn chiefs. It's top
  alert. The man we want has been infiltrated here by a Munich-based secret
  NDP force. :He is a terrorist of the new German nationalism. His Munich
  control is powerful. We have to keep upwind of them at all costs, to keep
  our intelligence open. Their network, on the other hand, has not got wind
  of you."
16       Noel Pierce

  Rob sifted the cagey double-talk. He looked at the chinny face, the
  unblinking, sleep-harried eyes. There was a lot here not said.
  "Any smart foot cop could do what you want done."'
  "You and I are both smart cops, Mr. Schuyler. One of us may be dead before
  we flush him out."
  Jason pressed the colored dials on his desk. The wall screen lighted up
  with a sectioned grid map of the Yorkville sector. Red pins marked Rob's
  LYC Division. Green flags pinpointed district police units and city
  precincts. There were small-scale graphs of buildings, residential,
  factory, brewery, luxury condominiums bunched by tenements. He saw the
  river park, the carousel where Tabitha and Tessa rode pink horses, the high
  rise where Flix wouldn't be keeping the dinner hot tonight. Around the
  corner was the ramshackle walk-up where their maid and child sitter-Mrs.
  Sunbeam (for want of an unpronounceable Slovak name to his children)-had
  her furnished room. He wondered why Interpol had taken so long to clear
  Olga Czhenzunska's entry papers when he had asked for a routine security
  check.
  "In this section"-Jason jabbed a shabby Yorkville quarter with his
  thumb-"the enemy is presumed to be. He has a specific assignment."
  "Is he recruiting for the neo-Nazis?"
  "Oh, he sings the glories of the fatherland, all right. They all do. Our
  information is that he's sports crazy. A carefully worked-out cover.
  Betting on the soccer matches, the bowling clubs. Praising the muscle boys,
  weight lifting, gymnastics, following the cult of the Austro-German ath-
  letes. This, to obscure his real imperative."
  "If I find him among all the sports bums in the side street bars-turn him
  over to you?"
  "Yes. He's not exactly going to be a bag of groceries."
  "Clues? Prints? Passport photo?" .
  "Very little. We can only give you the skinny stuff. We've just broken his
  code name. It's a surname combination beginning with two g's. Munich
  intelligence says it's always lowercased in the enemy's code dispatches,
  and reads like this." Jason scribbled on his pad: gg.
  "There's a rumor that he's a nobleman from a family of barons, counts, with
  lands, baronies-something of a myth, all concealed in mists, in a splendid
  manor with good shooting and bad plumbing. It's a mixed-up legend of a
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    17

 dashiniz, dissolute family. He's the only son. Far too young to have been in
 a showy regimental unit. But his grandfather commanded a duchy regiment,
 pledged to royalist tradition. A family steeped in world conquest. Gg is the
 grandson, drilled in the old sick dream of imperial Austria."
 "It sounds like a shovelful of Graustarkian bullshit."
  "There is shit on the shovel, Mr. Schuyler. You would be foolish to
  overlook it."
  A prickle went over Rob's neck. He rubbed it, seeing the rat's grinning
  face in the brewery yard. Hearing the crunch when the brick hit.
  "Can you give me one physical characteristic?"
  "His right hand appears to be webbed, up to the first knuckle of three
  fingers. A genetic fault, like the Hapsburg lip.þ
  "He shouldn't be hard to spot."
  "Don't underrate him. He's no flashy operative. He won't perform that way.
  He's not working on his belly, but as an aristocrat. A brilliant intriguer.
  Extremely devious and dangerous. A highly trained organizer in murder,
  seduction. He may be a great deal smarter than either of us. "
  Rob watched a tremor of tension in the hand holding the cigar. Over Jason's
  face a flicker of anxiety fled like a night shadow.
  "What's the 'if' about this job?"
  "That members of your family may be in danger."
  "Felicia? My kids?" Rob started up. His heart seemed to hang empty in his
  chest.
  "I must warn you that there may be an attempt by gg to harm or contact your
  wife's family."
  "Her grandfather?"
  "Yes. He is thought by our intelligence to have a furious grudge against
  the old man. We think personal vengeance of some sort. An old score to
  settle."
  "That mild old man? You've got to be kidding." Rob was pacing. "My wife's
  grandfather was our ambassador to a cream puff of a duchy no bigger than my
  hand. Castles, parades, court balls, that kind of thing. Just a comic opera
  border spot."
  "A trouble spot. Like all small catastrophes when things began to nimble
  between the wars."
  "For Pete's sake, what did he do?"
  "He got himself involved in controlling a ground wave
18       Noel Pierce

 of regimental intrigue. It was the beginning of an abortive uprising by the
 high-born Prussian officers, fanatically determined to pledge their military
 control of troops to world conquest. Almost single-handed, with some of his
 stag-hunting cronies and embassy guards, he stamped out the trouble."
 "The old man wouldn't hurt a flea."
  "He was a little more effective then, Mr. Schuyler. The body of a Prussian
  general, the old Count von Gottfried, was found in the Isar River. His
  skull was crushed. The man we are looking for is his grandson."
  The room stifled. Rob worked his collar loose and in dismay looked down at
  the peddler's green necktie. .Cast out a lure to make the shark bite? Now
  he saw its teeth. Who had the chess piece now? Happy birthday, darling.
  Flix, forgive me.
  He tried to recap what he knew of her grandfather. A Teddy Roosevelt
  diplomat. "Walk softly and carry a big stick." He remembered something
  Grandfather had said on a Carolina quail shoot. He had brought his working
  dog so fiercely to heel that the big liver-spotted retriever yelped. The
  old man, glaring down, said, "Take your bird with a soft jaw, Rob. Don't
  break the spine."
  "But my wife . . . what about her? And Tabby? Tess? Two little kids who
  think their great-grandfather's the biggest thing since Santa Claus . . .
  ." He was jolted by this threat to them. Angered at the box Jason had him
  in, knowing he couldn't give this job to any other agent. These were his
  own. They cared if he came home tired, got his feet wet, forgot to phone.
  "Now look here, you can't crook your finger at me from this safe slot and
  say, `Jump. Catch the effing rabbit. We're not going to do the hunt work.
  You are. So snatch this schizo before your missus gets mugged and your kids
  get the living Jesus scared out of them by a crazy Prussian with a chip on
  his shoulder because someone dumped his grandfather in, the Isar."'
  "The enemy remembers, Mr. Schuyler."
  "But . . . generations ago?"
  "Yes. And apparently the blood oath was never forgotten. The boy was
  brought up on it. Determined to avenge the disgrace to his family."
  "Was it a crime?"
  "Not really. Invasion of an intruder in U.S. territory
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    19

 anywhere in the world is to be resisted. The ambassador had a right to do
 whatever he had to. His embassy was U.S. terrain. He struck back one night
 that he has never told about. That's all we know. But the avenger is in
 Yorkville tonight."
 Rob said, "He'd have been a child."
  "Six years old. Disturbed and lonely," Jason replied. "No one he admired
  but the old count, his grandfather, and a nurse. A sexually obsessed
  mother, the baroness. The Markgraf, his father, a cuckold. Hate grew in the
  boy. He wanted power, command, money. Blood vengeance is strong. He was
  recruited into the Jugend, game for every trick they taught him. A real
  survivor. Then, with the postwar terrorist upsurge in the NDP and its
  Neo-Nazi portent he got his chance. He seized it. He came up through the
  tough Munich command. Believe me,"' Jason said, "nothing you know about
  commando training can equal the controlled ferocity of this man's nature
  now."
  "Is there a chance he may kill my wife's grandfather?"
  "Yes. Fanatical grudges trigger the schizoid syndrome. _ He can harm the
  ambassador, terrorize him."
  "And my children? Felicia?" Their names thick on his tongue. "Will he turn
  on them?"
  "Because of your family we're not taking any chances. Find him," Jason
  said.
   Rob looked at him bitterly. "Take him alive?"
  "Don't kick him to death, Mr. Schuyler. Take a soft line."
   Take your bird with a soft jaw, Rob thought. "Why?"
  "It is vital to international security that we take him alive. We want to
  interrogate him."
  "What for? Isn't this a job I can finish off right here in my territory?"
  "No. You see, he's an assassin."
  Rob looked at both sides of the wedge. Flix, the children, Grandfather. The
  avenger in Yorkville.
  "What's his real mission?"
  "He's the crack executioner in the Party's cupboard. His target is a U.S.
  judge of the Nuremberg Tribunal at the war crimes trials-and now a
  world-renowned justice of international law. The judge is to be honored on
  his retirement, at a high court dinner in Washington."
   "When?"
   "Next month."
20        Noel Pierce

  "Why would his Munich control let him hang around here to settle a grudge?"
  "It can only be his deal," Jason said. "'The price he demanded for his
  recruitment. Figure it out, Mr. Schuyler. Two crimes, back to back. A
  distinguished old diplomat is bludgeoned in his Park Avenue apartment. A
  judge of the Inter-Allied Tribunal is eliminated in Washington. The
  nation's in an uproar. Who's going to look for a sports addict making a
  soccer bet in a Yorkville bar?"
  The intercom buzzer sounded. "Not now." He snapped it off.
  "I've got to keep my kids out of this. Keep my wife safe." Rob felt a cold
  dread for them. His throat was dry. He sloshed some scotch down. His head
  had begun to throb.
  He was thinking, Yorkville streets are full of sports fanatics who glorify
  muscle boys, drive foreign cars, live it up in a gemiitlich pad, chase
  women. It was an impossible assignment. There was no time.
  "There is no way we can extricate your family," Jason said, "but well
  saturate them with protection. One man will ride the school bus with your
  children. One to know your wife's whereabouts. Have you a man to detail for
  ?"
  "Yes. Harris. He has a crippled leg from stopping a bomb in a department
  store. He drives for me."
  Jason scribbled the name down. Rob picked up a pencil, broke it in two,
  looked at the jagged ends of the wedge and flung them on the floor.
  "Let me have the whole bloody thing."
  "The Secretary of State is hosting the high court dinner next month."
  "Has he been warned?"
  "No. If the government withdraws its invitation to World Court judicial
  dignitaries, then the Munich terrorists are on to us."
  "That's my timetable?"
  "You have less than a month. The price Qf delay the assassin exacted."
  "How does he kill?"
  "By strangling."
  "Hands, rope, scarf, wire?"
  "He uses a garrote. A nylon noose curled in his palm like the strands of a
  woman's hair."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    21

  Rob looked down at his knuckled hands, thinking of chestnut hair that
  crackled through his fingers, thick and shining.
  "He has lightning speed," Jason said. "The criminally insane mind takes
  pleasure in the performance. His execution is silent. This kind of garrote
  is threaded with steel pins. The pricks - are probably poisoned. Gg's a
  snare master. He's done his fancy rope trick before. We've seen the marks.
  Three unsolved murders in Bonn and Munich. Obscure stranglings on
  riverbanks in foreign entry ports. A woman's body floating in a Dutch
  canal. She'd been raped. She was working for us."
  Rob wedged his knuckles tighter. Into his mind came the familiar face of
  Mrs. Sunbeam, the children's nurse, saying, "Gute Nacht, meine Kleinen . .
  . . Schlaf gut." This was what he had to make sure of. That they were to be
  kept safe.
  ". . . Some of our best men lost that way," Jason said. "Very costly to
  security."
  "At the dinner, can't you surround the judge with enough security to stop
  it? Knowing the time, the date, the hour?"
  "Two sons of a nice family who aspired to be President of the United States
  had their brains blown out for their trouble. One from a window on a public
  street. One in a hotel kitchen. No. We can't necessarily stop it. You can,
  here."

  "It could happen like this," Jason said. "The judge huddles down a hallway
  packed with itchy, bunching guards. He's anticipating, excited. He has to
  empty his bladder. There's a door to the washroom. A corridor. He has to
  put on his evening clothes. He's alone. There's a valet, a service
  entrance. He has to take elevators. Now
22       Noel Pierce

 he's shaking a lot of hands. Dignitaries push closer. There are more
 corridors. He stops in a crowd . . . maybe an autograph? Gets shuffled off
 along a packed hall, speakers blaring, lights popping, TV cameras turning.
 There'll be a diversion. Perhaps a confederate. A waiter with a tray of
 drinks is tripped up. Crash of glassware. Maybe a woman faints. People push,
 shove to get out of the way. A small stampede . . . anything serves. Along
 the hall, toward the banquet room, the judge grabs up a drink, gets rushed
 along."
  "But there are the guards, the Secret Service, your agents, ours."
  "Yes, they'll be there," Jason said. "So will a strangler in dinner clothes
  with a snare in his palm."
  In a hall, Rob thought, in a service entrance, in a washroom, in a
  corridor. In a crush around seating arrangements at the banquet tables.
  "Someone jostles the judge, throws him off balance. The assassin's so close
  he can see the hairs in the doomed man's ears. His hand comes up to steady
  him. One split second to throttle a throat and snap a windpipe. Prosit!
  Sieg Heil!"
  "You see"-Jason stoppered the decanter-"it's the unexpected kill.
  Everyone's looking for a bomb, a handgun, acid. The faintest shove in that
  packed crowd of judiciaries and the man with his high honors is laughing
  down his martini. The next, he's finished."
  "How could the assassin get to the dinner?"
  "Forged credentials. How do murderers do it? They have. They do. They will
  again. You stand between us and that answer."
  Now the wedge had teeth. Like the jaws of a clam digger. Jason was the man
  in the box who pushed the levers until the wedge snapped with a crunch.
  Rob jumped up, gripping the desk. He kicked a chair aside and straddled it.
  "So I'm to go out there and set him up for you. Well, by God, it isn't your
  wife. Your children. Your old mutton chop of a grandfather. It's my whole
  family up for grabs. You've put me in one hell of a dirty spot. Sure. I
  know what you want me to do. Tenement door crack listening, hoof work. Look
  for strangers in Yorkville bars. Go after call girls, betting syndicates,
  crooked sports promoters, local housewives who may fraternize with him.
  Crowd the man in pool halls, ball parks, bowling alleys. Buy him
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   23

 some schnapps in a joint that stinks of soccer sweat. But keen him pretty
 for you to interrogate. Just bring him down here and lay him out in
 thumbscrews. Well, let me tell you one thing. I don't care what happens to
 that judge a month from now. You can take your security and screw it. If he
 scares my kids or harms one hair of my wife's head, I'll take him apart like
 ants working over a ham sandwich at a picnic. You won't have enough skin
 left in your mortuary to write the Lord's Prayer on."
  Jason blinked sympathetically. He put a match to his cold cigar. "How many
  well-bred men walk city streets who snuff out lives? Not mad, but close to
  it? The woods are full of men like gg. So are the criminal police ledgers.
  So are. the bodies of little girls under a pile of leaves. You see, Mr.
  Schuyler, no matter how dangerous he may be to your family, to your wife,
  her grandfather and your children-you will take him for your reason. We
  want him for ours."
  Jason took out a wafer-thin watch, wound it and listened rather fondly to
  a chime that sounded Swiss and wintry as a mountain air chanted by children
  with red noses, schussing to school on a snowy hill.
  Tabitha and Tessa, with Mrs. Sunbeam beating time with a wooden spoon on a
  saucepan, sang singsong nursery rhymes. One of them crashed in Rob's ears:
  "Dilly, dilly, dilly, won't you come and be killed?"

               6

  They were spooning pate out of a Strasbourg tin Jason produced, spreading
  it on pilot biscuits, washed down with ginger beer and a splash of scotch.
  Rob phoned the bureau for Harris to pick up his cAr. Ile wanted to walk.
  Then he dialed Flix.
  "I know it isn't news, but I'll be very late again. Are the kids asleep?"
24       Noel Pierce

 "These many hours."
 "And you, are you all right?"
 "I went to the films."
 "Good show?"
 "Nothing really is, darling, without you."
 "Now, Flix, please, listen ... ."
 "Where are you? I suppose you can't say?"-
 "No."

  "Oh, darling, don't be cross. I've had a rotten time, missing you."
  "You shouldn't have waited up for me."
  "One of these days I won't."
  Flix hung up.
  There was an edge of tension in her voice, refusing to demand anything of
  him. Rob knew what it cost her, sitting up, nervy, edgy, playing records,
  smoking too much, waiting in the silent apartment, listening for a key.
  Wondering if some night he wouldn't be there.
  "Who is gg's Munich control?"
  "He's a former commandant of the SS Elite Guard operating from a house on
  Prinzregentenstrasse. A professional manipulator-like me. Black moves
  first. One body cancels out another. Then red begins to show."
  "You mentioned a confederate," Rob went on. "He would have to use someone
  to stake out the ground. Report on the old man's comings and goings."
  "Around the Yorkville bars. A pretty muscle boy. Drives a beat-up MG. About
  as mild as a scorpion. Name of Rudi. Another name was fed in by our Bonn
  office. Batfowler. It means to catch birds at night by dazzling them with
  a light, then taking them with a net."
  "A woman?" Rob said.
  "Why do you think so?"
  "Women lure. The victim trusts her. Her net . . . is herself."
  "Your typical Mata Hari?" Jason said.
  "No. It could be a new type has come in. Quiet, gray, anonymous. An old
  wren with cyanide in her beak."
  "The net?"
  "She'd set it at night when the birds are asleep."
  "Birds, Mr. Schuyler?"
  He had thought of his children. Of Mrs. Sunbeam bending over them with a
  flashlight, "a dazzling bright light," saying: "Gute Nacht, meine lieben
  kleinen Mddchen.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    25

 . . Schlaf' gut." Then the flash snapped off as he came into the nursery.
 "Are the children all right?"
  "But of course, Mister." An indignant sniff. "Why not, since it is I who
  watch over them?" In the dark?
  He'd been out of the country when Flix first hired Mrs. Sunbeam from Europa
  Domestics on York Avenue.
  I'm getting jumpy, he thought. She's an obsequious selfeffacing widow, poor
  as they come. The kids love her; better, they obey her. She had Slavonic
  cheekbones. A skin graft on a chicken bone wrist-her left one? Prison camp
  number erased? Who had paid to have it done?
  The name Olga Czhenzunska went out on the classified overseas wire to
  Interpol, the international police organization, with his query. Were her
  papers available? Months later a checkout came back through Polcod with an
  NDD stamp: "No Disloyalty Data." They had taken their time, like Interpol.
  Jason's face was a waiting question mark.
  1 have only to tell him what I-Then? I could blow the bird, blow the
  Batfowler with both barrels before a snare is set. If I'm wrong? No. It's
  complete damn nonsense. But -Use my children for a lure? She's in my home.
  I see her every day. Where better to watch? Trust Flix. But I can't ask
  Flix to . . . .
   "I'm sorry your wife was worried."
  "She'll be okay. We have a Polish nursemaid for the girls. Olga. My
  children call her Mrs. Sunbeam."
  Did he imagine it, or was there a sudden stiffening in the face across from
  him?
  Jason thumbed some papers. "This `Mrs. Sunbeam"-a penciled scribble read:
  "Europa Domestics" . . . a front for foreign prostitutes?-"is her
  employment with you satisfactory?"
  "Yes. My kids love a Hansel and Gretel nurse. She's just some old crone
  from the neighborhood. Interpol ran a tracer on her for me. No known past."
  "Good." Jason flipped the intercom switch. "Be so kind as to bring Mr.
  Schuyler his gun."
  The chubby man who came in could have stepped out of a Rubens canvas, worn
  velvet over a dumpling frame. There were networks of broken capillaries in
  his fleshy nose and broad, flushed cheeks. The eyes, set in the midst of so
  much pink and white, were flat and cold as blue
26        Noel Pierce

 glass. An ugly scar puckered his jugular vein. The gun looked like a toy in
 ham-like hands that were fussily manicured. He said nothing. Rob dropped the
 gun in his pocket. Maybe whoever had worked over his neck had taken his
 voice along with it.
  Jason got up as Rob turned to leave. He said to the pink man, "Wait."
  Rob went out. The same young man in the dark suit fed him through the
  pipeline to the brewery yard.

  Jason turned to the pink man. "Well?"
   "We found the peddler."
  "Where?"
  "Stuffed in a garbage can by the Harlem River docks. A kid rummaging for
  trash saw a hand holding his fake glasses."
  "The pushcart? The neckties?"
  "No trace of the cart, unless you want to drag the river."
  "Any fingerprints?"
  "No. Prints lab says the peddler's finger lobes were burned smooth by an
  old acid job. But the necktie, yes. He had this silk one with the chess
  pieces around his neck. He was strangled with it."

               7
              -0

  Outside the air was moist. The dark street with its few lights was silent.
  Curtains were drawn over rows of tenement windows.
  Rob walked away from the brewery yard. He hurried down the street and
  turned the corner. A sports car shot out from behind a parked truck and
  drove straight at him. He leaped back, scrambling to get out of the way,
  hurled himself sidewise, tripped over the curb, fell sprawling.
  The driver hammered the car, accelerating to a roar. Knees crouched, Rob
  covered his head. Bucketing, rocking,
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    27

 slamming, the car came at him with a blast of hot air that fanned his skin.
 Swaying violently, it skidded past him, cut around a fire hydrant and
 screeched away. He lay gulping breath against his arms.
  Shaking, his shirt wet against his spine, he pushed himself up. Blood
  trickled down his cheek. He dusted himself off, lungs pumping. Fumbling for
  a cigarette, he couldn't light it. These jumping things were his hands. He
  seemed to have no wrists. He fought to fix an impression. Someone young,
  cocky, a sneer. The flung-back taunt in German. "Schweinhund?" An obscene
  gesture. Black leather coat, thick hair, feral eyes. Some punk high on pot?
  Identity mistaken? No. The peddler had staked him out and crooked his
  finger. For what? Warning? Look out next time?
  There wouldn't be a next time.
  One shovelful of shit had nearly hit him tonight. Walking uneasily, he
  breathed in a dread that training and luck weren't going to be enough.
  Something would happen to Flix and the children. It made the Yorkville
  assassin twice as dangerous. Because of her grandfather, Flix must have no
  suspicion.
  The jigsaw of gg's duality clouded; a criminal manhunt still too raw to
  plan. A hole-in-the-corner job, less a pincer action than footwork. Maybe
  both. He bad to set up a logical search pattern and pinpoint the loopholes.
  The usual bunt methods--surveillance, stakeouts, using paid informers,
  ringing doorbells, cordoning off blocks, punching pins into narrowing
  sections of city blocks-were obvious. None of them would work. The
  paraschizoid deviousness of the assassin was about as simple as sifting one
  grain of pure, admissable evidence through a sieve as loose as sand.
  Jason wants him taken "with a soft jaw." CIA wants enough of him left to
  interrogate. So that somewhere in the United States the "Honored Justice"
  could write "Pauses for laughter" in his speech.
  Don't hesitate. Take him your way. This is your family. This is all you
  care about in the whole world right now.
  Worry for them pointed like a pistol at his head. He couldn't take any of
  the usual backups; recruit anyone from the bureau; alert any agent he'd
  worked with before. That line was too loose. He couldn't control it. He
  knew he could depend on a strategic backup from Jason's men
28       Noel Pierce

 in the Hutch house. The Rubens man and the neat dark one should have very
 busy uses for their pink and pale hands in the next few weeks.
  In the Yorkville cell who were gg's confederates? Rudi and someone called
  Batfowler. Jason had mentioned an aging Viennese cafe manageress of a
  Yorkville restaurantbar. "She's a procuress. Her cafe may be an information
  drop. Her specialty is old men in high places who know too much. Our Bonn
  office thinks she's an old flame of your wife's grandfather."
  Jason had shown him a photo print of a driver in the service pit of a Le
  Mans racing crew.
  "Rudi's the good-looking grease monkey, just raising the wrench to smash
  the camera out of our man's hand. That struck us as odd. Rage at having a
  camera on him, since they all crave publicity. When we got this photo, he
  was crewing for the Porsche entries financed by a West German combine. We
  think he's a neo-Nazi cast-off of a wealthy family. Nineteen, I'd say. He
  got some rough training from the NDP youth league. Thug stuff. Then he
  became a sycophant of Herr Baron. His kick is hopped-up sports cars, drag
  racing, wrestling."
  "Strikes me as a pretty flamboyant front," Rob said.
  "Believe me, Mr. Schuyler, what they are doing-no matter how flamboyant-is
  why you must deal with them as they are." Again that flicker of anxiety
  fled across Jason's face. "Everyone you suspect, like Rudi, performs a very
  subtle, dual function in the killer's master scheme. They are terrorists."
  Flix was known to them. Tabby and Tess were known to them. The more heat he
  put on, the more vengeful the wedge around his family. Who were Flix and
  the children to rub shoulders with tomorrow?

  Flix was dressed for the evening, over her shoulders a coat of frosted fox.
  The Empress emerald on a pendant cast green shadows in the hollows of her
  throat. This elegant woman he had managed to marry in the teeth of her
  grandfather's opposition-seven years of Flix. Two lifetimes weren't enough.
  There had been an avalanche at Zermatt. Meeting her for the first time on
  one of his rare holidays, time was forgotten. A blizzard packed deep drifts
  on the ski runs. They didn't want the snow to stop.
  "I'm a ski bum, like yourself."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   29

 "What's your job, really?"
  "I'm in securities." They were dancing. A log fire blazed in the chalet
  fireplace. There was an accordion. The Alpine sun had bronzed her face and
  shoulders.
  "Securities? Wall Street?" Grandfather would approve! "You haven't met my
  grandfather. He's been my guardian since I lost my parents."
  "It's time I did." For by now he wanted her.
  "He's over there playing cribbage with the Rumanian Minister." Flix took
  Rob to be presented. "He's bright with figures, Grandfather," she had said
  later.
  "Yours?" the old man grunted.
  The antagonism had begun then. She, with her will to have. The old
  diplomat, not sure about this young man she had chosen, got on the
  transatlantic telephone. "He's a professional police agent, Felicia. What
  kind of a homelife could you count on? I don't like it. Securitiesl" Grand-
  father snapped his fingers. And in his face she snapped hers.
 Seven years. With the twins as hostage to Grandfather.

  Flix went to the living-room bar. "Time for a drink?"
  "No."

  "Will I see you later?"
  "I'll try to get back."
  Her hand clenched. "Rob, is there something going on I should be told
  about?"
  No.
  "Full of negatives tonight, aren't you?"
  "Yes."
  "Well, at least that's one positive I'm sure of."
  "Not sure of me?"
  "I'm never sure I'll see you back, when I come in."
  "All right. I promise I'll be home later tonight."
  "Grandfather would like to see you now and then, Rob. Can't you ever, for
  once, break the rules?"
  "Not this time."
  "I hate your job, darling."
  "I know." He ran his hands through her hair and looked down at his cupped
  palm. A hair lay there.
  Chestnut-colored, a silk thread. "A nylon noose . . . like strands of a
  woman's hair . . . ." Rob shut his fingers on it.
  "What is it?" she said. "Something's wrong between us. Tell me. Everything.
  Just for once. Please."
30       Noel Pierce

  "You know I can't, Flix. Stop making me out some kind of sanctimonious cop
  in my own house."
  "I want you home nights. I want you to take me out to dinner. I want you to
  behave like an ordinary guy in an ordinary way."
  "None of it is ordinary and that's not why you married me."
  "Something happened to you when you touched my hair. Your face turned
  ugly."
  "I want you to stay away from the river, Flix. Don't walk by the docks."
  "Oh, God, can't we ever have something peaceful and happy between us-not
  these stuffy warnings? You think the docks scare me? You think that
  anything you're working on scarces me?"
  "No. But someone else can."
  She was silent for a long minute.
  "Someone hunting you? Or are you hunting him?"
  "A bit of both."
  "Oh." She thought of Tabby and Tess. "The children play in the river park.
  Isn't it all right? I mean, they have Mrs: Sunbeam."
  Flix saw him hesitate. He was seeing the sudden change in Jason's face at
  the mention of their nurse.
  "Just for a while," he said casually, "be sure you know where the kids
  play, and keep away from the riverfront. We have police boats out there on
  patrol. This is a colorful neighborhood but I think it would be wise if you
  don't shop the Yorkville storekeepers. Okay?"
  "Okay, boss." She gave him her crisp smile and went out.

  High up over the city, Grandfather's terrace windows stood open. It was
  still mild enough to sit outside. At dinner, served by his houseman, they
  had poached salmon and a vegetable aspic that tasted like pickled field
  sorrel. The cherries jubilee refused to flame. Grandfather rummaged in his
  library for brandy, among framed diplomatic citations and portraits of
  uneasily crowned heads staring down at his collection of dirks and sword
  canes.
  Flix rattled the backgammon dice, quenching a troubled yearning for Rob. On
  Sunday nights, Mrs. Sunbeam had charge of the children. "You have need of
  the Sonntag, Madam, at the Grossvater'.--where is peace and quiet. I
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    31

 will see to die Kinder. Please make my respects to-Herr Minister." She had
 added this with a queer, stiff intake of breath. Her bristling politeness
 puzzled Flix.
 "He's not an ogre, Mrs. Sunbeam."
 "Bitte? What means-"
 "Oh . . . I . . . nothing."
  Grandfather fussed inordinately about whomever she employed to take care of
  the children. Realizing that a poor, threadbare old woman from the
  tenements would make him nervous, she had yet to introduce them. Sufficient
  unto the day.
  The Japanese willow rustled on the terrace. The poodle at the old man's
  feet yawned. "Eat your nice bone, Suzy." Grandfather nursed his brandy. He
  stole a look at Felicia. She was on edge tonight.
  "Have you got a capable nurse for the girls?"
  "Yes." She touched his gentle hand. "A foreigner. Someone new. You haven't
  met her."
  He frowned, thinking, to get them out of this, her and the children. Lawns
  and swings. A house in the country. Somewhere safe. But with all his money,
  she was obstinate. `7 make a home where Rob needs us."
  Prideful, powerful, lonely, the old man expressed in his silence his
  dislike of "that cop you married."
  "The girls are to watch Lassie tonight. She traps a leopard up a tree.
  Special stay-up treat."
  Not once, all evening, had he asked for Rob. And if he did, what was there
  to say? Does marriage slowly break up like this? Fighting with the in-laws?
  She went on chatting, aware of Grandfather's brooding concern. Be sensible.
  Rob's somewhere out there across that line of lights. Farther north is
  Tessa with her raggedy teddy bear. Tabitha with a dog-eared storybook. Mrs.
  Sunbeam, massaging her bunions. And there is this-the few people she
  belonged to. She held out her empty glass.
  "Me, too, Grandfather. A bird can't fly home on one wing.'
  The moon slid behind a black tower. The air grew chilly. Mist lurked among
  the tall buildings. Flix went to the terrace railing, held out her hand as
  if to ward something off. What was it? Below, under the white arc light she
  saw a heavy foreign car move to the curb and stop. No ore got out. It was
  the same car she had seen before. She finished her driak too fast.
32        Noel Pierce

 Behind her she heard the houseman say, "I don't know "Did you take it at the
 door?" who delivered the note, sir."
 "Someone tipped the elevator man to give it to me."
 "Anything wrong, Grandfather?"
  He shook his head. The engraved card said: "Cafe Liechtenstein. Bavarian
  Specialties. By Reservation." Across the creamy square in a dashing hand,
  she had written: "It would be good to see you again. For old times." There
  was no signature.
  He had known her hand at once. He was increasingly uneasy. Liese, running
  a Yorkville cafe.
  He crumpled the note, spread it out, put it down. The hurtling years had
  come to a halt. How to handle this?
  "I must go," Flix said. "It's been great fun." She was straining to get
  home. Rob might be two blocks away, or irrevocably gone. He could be knifed
  again. She had to know. Her mind jerked around, batting at apprehension as
  a moth bats at a fight. Music made it worse. She snapped off the stereo. A
  Valkyrie faded on a smothered shriek.
  "What's Robert working on now? An exciting case?"
  "Security, Grandfather."
  "There's nothing that can't be left to the generals."
  "Don't pontificate."
  He glowered. "Cloak-and-dagger stuff."
  "Oh, sure. Behind the protection of his good Brooks shirt."
  "He ought to be in a corporate law firm. Looking after you properly."
  "He spent years on intelligence service in Europe, put himself through law.
  Crime work isn't a dirty trade. Someone's got to do it."
  "You shouldn't be living in that cooped-up Yorkville district. Bars.
  Tenements. Disreputable characters."
  "What do you want me to do? You wrap me in mink, spoil the children. I
  don't want a privileged life, a husband with money and status. I just want
  him home nights."
  The old man thought, Something's wrong between them.
  "I'll get your wrap." He stood up heavily, the note from Liese burning in
  his pocket.
  Flix watched a thick cloud like a sooty puffball move over the moon and
  smother it. A half-forgotten line tangled in her memory: Everyone is a moon
  and has a dark side . . . which he never shows to anyone. Hang on, she
  thought,
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    33

 be kind. 1 have a job to do, too. Rob, out there. My drowsy daughters, north
 by the river.
  "Felicia, don't take life so hard. I'm well off. I'd like you and your
  family to be, too, before I-" Grandfather took her elbow firmly. "You're
  the world to me. What I don't like is this Paul Pry occupation of Robert's.
  Ringing doorbells. Nosing into strange neighborhoods, scaring a lot of-"
  "Don't say it, Grandfather. .. innocent women and children."
  It was the usual Sunday night inquisition. A cat-andmouse game with the
  money trap sprung. Break this smug attitude. Blast him with the anxiety she
  lived with. Make him quit sniping at Rob, at their marriage.
  "Wives of security officers are a breed apart, Grandfather. It takes so
  much out of Rob and me to level with each other .... Don't you see?
  Crime-hunt work-is dogeat-dog. No money, no glory in it. Yes, he does his
  job in bars and back alleys. Yes, he works with the dregs of humanity. Yes,
  he's been shot at and knifed. If you want the image of my man, he comes
  home dirty, tired. He smells of booze, sweat. Once I washed him all over
  when he was dead beat on the bed, on our tapestried bedspread that you
  brought out of a Venetian palace. And if my hair was as long as that girl's
  in the Bible, I'd have dried his feet with it."
  Grandfather spilled his brandy. Dark drops stained his cuff. The toy
  poodle, Suzy, gave a snarling yap. The old man slapped it furiously. "Shut
  up, you pampered little bitch."
  "Right now everything Rob does seems to be around here, where we live. I
  think he's looking for someone the government wants to get its hands on. In
  his way he's warned me. About a few places I don't walk too close to, after
  dark."
  He looked at her, confounded. "That you-with all my contacts-should have to
  watch your step." And the children, he thought, my darlings, Tabitha, Tessa
  . . . . "Look here, Felicia. Bundle up the children. We'll fly to Greens-
  boro, take walks, play games in front of the fire. Get rid of that foreign
  nurse. Be sensible."
  "Grandfather," she said with a curious wistfulness, "haven't you ever loved
  someone with the whole sum of yourself?"
34       Noel Pierce

  He put her coat around her shoulders. "I've ordered the car for you."
  "Cancel it. I drove myself."
  "Felicia, I don't want you in any danger."
  She shrugged at the notion. "It's hardly likely." Flix kissed him. "That
  note you got?"
  "What about it?"
  "You seemed upset."
  "No. It was the salad dressing. It gave me a bit of a pain under my heart."

  One of his pleasures was to make sure Felicia got to her car safely and
  drove home. Love, he thought, has the last glance, seldom the last laugh.
  Park Avenue, whitened by traffic lights, had a blanched clarity. The old
  man took up his high-powered binoculars and screwed in the night lenses.
  They were finely ground to filter out infringing rays so that through the
  magnified scope his optic nerves could pierce the darkness, as he had once
  sighted the movements of hart and roebuck in the rock shadows of an Alpine
  crevasse. Peering through the eyepiece, he saw his granddaughter leave the
  doorway and turn. The lenses pulled Felicia up to him, close as his hand.
  He saw her walk to her car with that glancing air of pride that set off her
  fineness. Clear and definitive in the night binoculars, he paced her.
  Then, behind her car moving out from the curb, he saw a tall man leave the
  shadows of a building and swing his long legs into the driver's seat of a
  vintage Mercedes-Benz. He sent the big German car prowling alongside her
  small lemon-colored Javelin, cruising with it. She wrenched the wheel over
  hard. But she had no chance to cut out around the other. Grandfather saw
  the gritted, amused smile, as the man turned his face fully on her. He had
  fair hair, high shoulders. He was smiling.
  Skillfully he swung the wheel to block her again at the traffic light. The
  two cars stopped, inches apart. In the overhanging arc light they turned
  and looked at each other, face-to-face. Then with a flicking wave of his
  hand to her the driver exploded the Mercedes in a roaring fade.
  From the top of the parapet Grandfather had seen him plain. The atavistic
  Prussian face. The strong, muscular hands that could control a racing car
  through trafc, make a fencing foil whistle, skin an animal as quick as
  stripping
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    35

 off a glove. He knew the type well. They were a race indelibly bred,
 generations old and cold-a race stamped with brutality, conquest and
 destruction. He had seen the skull. Had she? Under the well-bred skin, seen
 what grinned out at her?
  Why should this one track his granddaughter? Why her? If done deliberately,
  who was the informer? Who had told the man who Felicia was? Who, for that
  matter, he himself was? Who else had known her plans for the evening?
  Someone did.
  That foreign nursemaid? The one who watched the children?
  Had he, perhaps, done something fatally stupid, to involve Felicia and the
  little girls?
  Remembering the note in his pocket, he linked the driver to Liese, and knew
  he had better not see her.
  The timing, tonight, was too blatant to deny.
  Shuttering his binoculars, he snapped off the night lenses. His chin
  brooded on a starched shirtfront. Old ambassadorial years in foreign
  countries unwound like a color travelogue at an Austrian village carnival.
  It was not coincidental, he knew. Something constricted his throat, things
  not to be remembered but to be bitten back. If, now, he took stock of past
  grudges people held against him, he'd end up with the whole sorry lot in
  his hand.
  But why now? What had he done in those years that tonight Felicia should be
  followed by this arrogant young man, emerging out of those far-off times?
  A few tight corners, yes. But-years past. He mustn't get the wind up. Not
  after all this time. Surely it had nothing to do with him. Yet this man was
  following her. An enemy with a reason.
  He went back into his library and turned up all the lights. He looked for
  a thoughtful minute at his Prussian museum prizes, dirks, regimental
  swords, the Franz Josef walking stick with the dagger in the spike. Then he
  went to his desk and took up a bronze paperweight with an ancient Austrian
  seal. One corner was faintly stained. He rubbed it speculatively, working
  between his fingers a memory, a night of terror. A story he had never told
  anyone.
  But the past does catch up. And there went that pain under his heart again.
  The royal regiments are gone. The German High Command is no more. But it
  never forgets.
36       Noel Pierce

 The world is still full of beasts on a wild mountain. One had come down the
 mountain tonight, roaring in a highpowered car.

  How did he know where 1 would be? Flix thought, walking from the garage. Is
  he someone who knows Grandfather? To race me to the green light, turn, and
  smile, and stare. Why me?
  In the lobby foyer, Harris saw her coming. He stood firm on his crippled
  hip and half-started 'to tip his hat to the chief's missus. Then remembered
  that she was not to know she was being safeguarded. Something fresh and
  fernlike passed him. He caught a scent of spring, as if a heel had trod on
  moss and released its fragrance of wildflowers.
  Flix moved by him. Under her lowered eyes she thought: He's someone
  familiar. It unnerved her. He was a bureau man, somehow involved with Rob.
  She put her keys in the security locks. The rooms were silent. She switched
  on the lamps, seeing in each the glint of strange eyes, the blade of jaw
  turned on her. Something imperious in his amusement angered her. As if, in
  her small yellow car, she was something he could break in his hand. She
  drew her palms up along her cheeks and shivered. The stillness told her Rob
  wasn't home. Mrs. Sunbeam would be catnapping in the guest room, Tabby and
  Tessa in the nursery. Why don't I run to them? I'm afraid. Nothing can
  touch them, no one can harm them. I'm afraid. Why? Grandfather crunched
  fear in his pocket tonight when he got a note from a stranger. Why do I
  think Grandfather is threatened by something? Why did this man send that
  car thundering through traffic tonight to cut me off?
  Rob, why aren't you home when 1 need you?
  The first call came through on the extension phone as she was getting ready
  for bed.
  "Hello? Yes? Who is it?"
  He told her.
             8

  Having berthed the old Mercedes in its slot at the Kaiserin Garage, he spun
  the windows up, locked them, took out an Olympus Auto-Rektor camera with a
  thickened lens frame. He ejected a bullet the size of a nail head and froze
  the firing mechanism under the lens. Beneath the dash he unscrewed the
  magnetic grips holding a blue steel Walther .28.
  There was a cable wrapped around it with a rubber band. His hand checked
  sharply. When had Rudi used the message drop? He ripped it open.

  DEAR SON DO NOT OVERSTAY VACATION CONFIRM DATE

  OF DEPARTURE REPEAT CONFIRM STOP FATHER.

  It angered him. Herr Direktor had accepted this stopover. It was his price,
  wasn't it, for the mission ahead? He could have asked for much more from
  the Party. But that power would come later, on return to Munich. He would
  have to put them off again, transmit from the rooftop wireless. Don't crowd
  me, he thought. His face was ferocious as he shredded the cable.
  Tonight he had been tempted to put the meddling old swine out of business,
  up there on his parapet. His fingers closed around the tiny bullet in his
  pocket. Tonight-But, no. The girl was more interesting, the means more
  certain. Keep the old man on ice. Let him fatten on his musty honors, play
  with his great-granddaughters in the park. There were other kinds of
  revenge. Other ways-more desirable. He stiffened when he thought of the
  girl. "She is after all exciting, beautiful, and of an innocence that does
  not suspect who I am."
  He kicked off his hand-sewn Belgian loafers and from

               37
38        Noel Pierce

 under the driver's seat fished out a disreputable pair of thin European
 shoes. They were muddied and worn. He wriggled his narrow feet into them and
 pulled a turtleneck jersey over his head. Embroidered on the neck was a
 small gold crown. He rolled the neck down to cover it. Then he worked his
 powerful arms into a frayed wool jacket. Olga had darned a rip in the
 pocket. It looked right to him, shabby. He squinted in the car mirror, gave
 an amused scowl, then combed his short, light hair down in front. He fished
 out a corduroy cap and pulled it over the Caesar bangs.
  Going around to the back, he unlocked the trunk, clawed out a storm coat
  and belted himself into it. It had the flair of a full-skirted officer's
  greatcoat, worn on army maneuvers by a titled commandant. The threadbare
  cloth was steeped in Grunewald mists that had dripped down through the
  beeches, linden and high pines of a time when great trees stood like
  sentinels before battle.
  It was his grandfather's.
  It had been worn around a brave man's shoulders, who, in the last numbered
  days of the elite regiments, saw the blight begin to blacken the pride of
  the old fatherland. Rebellion in the ranks, starving officers, deserters
  everywhere. Commanding his shattered regiment, the old Count von Gottfried
  had made one furious sally, invaded the embassy. That flag-waving swine,
  the Herr Minister, had snuffed out tfie night foray. Gg tensed as he
  thought of it. The body of his grandfather-his only friend-flung like
  garbage in the Isar.
  Balling his fists in the old count's greatcoat, he felt a small wad of
  paper in a pocket. He waited until Willy, the Kaiserin manager, was vetting
  a hot car for a black market buyer. He spread it out.
  It was a news photo.
  The face of the girl looked up at him, entering the opera box. The despised
  Herr Minister in white tie and tails. The court jewels around her neck. He
  had looked into this face, inches apart, not half an hour ago.
  But what riveted his eyes was a single newspaper line underscored by Rudi's
  thumbnail. "Her husband is a specialist in criminal law for the Justice
  Department."
  The first whisper of trouble touched him.
  Ja, they had warned him-the Herr Direktor, all of them in the house on the
  Prinzregentenstrasse-to keep his
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    39

 nose clean, to guard his flank. Had they known about this one? Was he the
 reason for the Herr Direktor's anxious cables? No matter. It would not
 deflect him from his determination to avenge.
  And where better to begin an act of vengeance than with the granddaughter?
  It had amused him to intrigue her with a little wolf hunt on the side,
  tonight, when she left the home of der alte Herr Minister. To meet her, he
  thought, attack the Grossvater through her. And through her to frighten her
  children and alarm the family.
  But he had not reckoned on the husband.
  He left the garage, whistling defiantly a mountain air that had drifted
  down from the Austrian Alps in the early mornings when the air was thin and
  icily cold. The snow powdery white, the sun glistening, the birds
  lightweight, still warm in the blood pocket of his hunting coat. To kill
  was a way of life. To eliminate an enemy a political duty. His business
  with the Grossvater would come. Now there was the pretty wife.
  A good plan. Olga was in the household. The old Polska was loyal to him.
  Often reluctant to let slip the comings and goings of the wife, the
  children. He frowned. Why hadn't she informed him about the exact nature of
  the husband's business? Olga was getting careless. He must watch her. His
  tenement windows and Olga's faced over the backyards of the expensive tower
  where the wife lived. He had arranged for her to send a signal from the
  kitchen window now and then, to keep her sharp.
  And the peddler? Gg stopped and thought about it. He had planted the
  peddler near the riverfront where some security activity was going on.
  "Push the green necktie at anyone who goes in and out, past some demolition
  signs." He had informed well. But the peddler did not die well.
  Some of the paid informers did not give up without a great deal of noise in
  the strangling. Rudi had been clumsy. The boy was all thumbs and heaving
  gut. Had he invested too much in Rudi? He stopped to consider it. He took
  out and lighted a Ramesis cigarette. The snapping off of the lighter
  suggested what be might have to do to Rudi.
  And what of the tie swap? The man in the old black car who had come into
  the demolition area had made the peddler a present of his own expensive
  necktie. Gg frowned. He could not find the reason. There was some-
40       Noel Pierce

 thing contemptuous in the gesture of the tie swap that he mistrusted.
  Rudi craved it. He had not wanted to use the silk tie on the junkman. The
  boy was a scavenger.
  "Nein, pretty boy. You are not the type. I have decided it will be an
  adornment for the peddler's neck. You know how to tie knots, Rudi? Now you
  will show me."
  Security would be giving the peddler much thought tonight. He hoped it
  would keep them busy for the time he needed to settle his old score.
  Should he pursue the wife? Probe through her? If he could induce her to a
  cocktail bar? To visit him? If he could by scare, blackmail, or an
  infatuation-frighten her with a threat to harm the Grossvater, endanger the
  children? Perhaps. Or if-let him imagine-he could lure her to Olga's
  tenement, on a pretense of the old woman being ill? If he could give her a
  drugged drink, in an hour of intimacy? Use her? Ja, why not?
  He mustn't foul up his timetable, as the Munich cable insisted. But there
  was enough time left for this agreeable hunt. Still two weeks were left to
  blast the family apart, to avenge the head of the House of Von Gottfried
  before the hour of the immense and total achievement of political
  assassination. Like snaring animals as a boy, it was his one consummate
  skill. To kill the Herr Minister! And in the higher mission, when he
  lowered the judge executioner to the banquet hall floor, he would have
  avenged them all.
   Between this triumphant image came her face.
   He checked himself sharply.
   But-if there were time?
  Gg hit his fist into his palm. Stop it here and now, this burning between
  his legs, this craving that wanted to see her again.
  He stopped and scanned the street. The arc light cast a greenish sheen on
  figures passing by. A woman in a babushka with a ratty fur coat over her
  nightgown was watering a schnauzer along the gutter. Bongo drums crashed
  from an open window. The woman spread her coat open as he passed. He saw
  the breasts, the thick belly, the practiced smile. He said in his slow,
  accented English, "Und the little hound, he is the procurer? We are to
  taste -how do you say W-the jelly roll?"
  She yanked the schnauzer in glaring at him. "Shut your dirty mouth, you son
  of a bitch."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   41

  "Ja, gnddtge Frau, you wash the dog. For your mouth it is too late."
  She spit at him. He gave her fleshy arm a sharp, gouging pinch as he
  passed.
  She jerked the dog in. "Now stop that yap, Fritzie. Piss or get off the
  hydrant. Mother is freezing out here."
  Across the street a fleshy man was reading a road map by a parked car. He
  was pink as a Westphalian ham. Under the street lamp a thin young man in a
  dark suit was checking a racing form. He toted the handicaps, biting the
  nub of an uncertain bet.
  The pink man and the younger one glanced at gg indifferently. They were
  waiting for a radio call from the federal man, Schuyler. None, as on the
  past few nights, came in. They had decided he wanted to work alone. Neither
  of them liked him.
  With no more than a tensing at the back of his neck, gg felt~the cop behind
  him.

               9

  The wind cut around the corner with a knife edge. The night was suddenly
  much colder. Rain came in gusts, chilling Rob's face. As he walked past the
  tenements, it plastered his hair, trickled down his neck. Wet papers flew
  up from the gutters to smack his ankles. His eyes slid from the vacant
  stoops to the side alleys. The enemy is faceless; is he walking down this
  street? Rain flushes an animal to seek dryness, warmth, cover. He wanted to
  see who stayed out in such a rain and to know why. Walk. Keep the pressure
  on.
  Out on the river he had finished a reconnoiter in a patrol boat. Marine
  Intelligence had briefed him on buoys, markings, channel lanes, reefs. He
  took a speculative look at the bulkhead where Jason said the eel fishers
  sat, angling. Pier pilings stood out from the dockside. It was made to
42       Noel Pierce

 order for contact drops, for shark launches, running without lights.
 "What do you want us to do, sir?" the helmsman said.
  Rob told them, "I want a couple of fake capstans set up on the dock where
  the fireboat pumper ties up after her patrol runs."
  Marine Intelligence said, "Why fake?"
  "I want the capstans to conceal floodlights that can be wired to control
  circuits and be turned on, at signal. Angled to the bulkhead along the
  fishers' dock." He described other things he wanted done, like "getting a
  repaint job on the fireboat station roof,"' using security men as a screen
  for repair and maintenance.
  Marine Intelligence was fussy. He was up against the rule book. "You'll
  have to get an order from the Manhattan Waterways commander for that."
  He said stubbornly, "I want it done."
  "On whose authority?"
  "J-Branch," Rob said.
  The Navy's man looked at him. His face had a strained, sober concern.
  "I see. Something up we don't know about?"
  Rob flexed his chilled hands. "Yes." He knew he was going to get the fake
  capstans, the floodlights. He would need them if it came to shooting.
  From the middle of Hell Gate rip, astride the pitching gunwales, he had
  focused his binoculars, to get used to night images on the river. Seen from
  offshore, the figures on the bulkhead looked like matchsticks with white
  blobs for faces.
  There had been a stir on the bulkhead. Someone moved over to let someone
  else sit down. A reel was cast. The two fishers did not fish. They sat
  there, talking.
  The helm turned the wheel and the boat began to answer. It was so fast it
  seemed to leave the water.
  "She's the fastest on this patrol run," the helmsman said.
  "The small boat I'm thinking about is faster."
  "With enough power to cut across this chop without lights?"
  Rob nodded. He had seen enough to realize what an offshore operation would
  cost. If gg planned to use this dockside for an escape route, nothing but
  a high-powered rifle with a sniper-scope could stop him.
  He saw the rocks below the East River Drive. Jagged
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    43

 as teeth with angry froth spitting between them, high-rise buildings above.
  He signaled for a change of course. "Take her in. That's all, and thanks."
  They dropped him off below the fireboat station.
  Out on the docks his stomach churned from the pitching and wallowing. He
  walked head on into the rain. He was hurrying. It was getting late. Flix
  might still be awake. They must make it up, another of those gut-aching
  quarrels that these days they couldn't seem to help.
  He walked faster to get away from the river toward the familiar traffic
  roar, street noises, people hurrying by. Where did she say she was going
  tonight? Oh, yes. It was one of her Sunday night dinners with Grandfather.
  He took out a palm-size, two-way Sony transistor and revved up the call
  signal. Better check in and let J-Branch know where he was. Ahead was an
  archway between two buildings. Wet wash flapped from the fire escapes in
  the downpour. Why is it whenever a man gets his pants pressed, or Mom does
  the washing in these tenements, it rains? Under the archways an alley
  twisted, disappeared into meandering backyards. He stepped off the street
  in the shelter of the alley and fiddled with the two-way radio.
  "LYC-5 to Hutch. Over."
  In his parked car the pink man yawned, stirred his huge bulk and folded
  away the Exxon map. To keep awake, he had been doing acrostics with
  "Nutley, New Jersey" on the map. The signal came. He answered promptly.
  "Hutch to Yorkville Control. Where in the jumping hell are you? Over."
  Rob grinned. So Tubby had a voice. It was deep, harsh, gritty. As if
  whatever had worked too close to his jugular had left an echo.
  "LYC-5 to Hutch. I'm walking while you sit on your fat bottom. Make
  something of it."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. Cocky bastard, aren't you?"
  "LYC-5 here. No. Repeat. Not cocky. No."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. How are you proceeding? Over."
  "Holding up a wall in a back alley."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. Take a look around your way for a guy who looks like
  Caesar in a corduroy cap. Over."
   "I'll do that. What's bad about him? Over."
   "What's good about him, chum, is he's dressed like a
44        Noel Pierce

 bum with a gold cigarette lighter. Nothing else where we are."
 "LYC-5 to Hutch. So go home."
 "J says no."
  Rob shrugged. "Okay. Any foreign car garages where you are?"
  "Hutch to the Fed. Only about one every block. Why?"
  "LYC-5 to Hutch. Will you check out the slots? See if there's a
  stripped-down MG anywhere around. Somebody tried to ram me with it."
  There was a pause. The harsh voice warmed up a little. "Blood on the
  bumper?"
   "No. I've got a head like a concrete block."

  Gg shook the raindrops off his skirted greatcoat. In the guise of the
  downpour he felt at home. Behind streaming windows the crowded bars
  beckoned. He pulled in the damp river air, remembered swollen forest
  streams, in the spring when the earth stirred and the sun warmed the high
  crevasse. And that queer stirring started again in his loins. There was her
  face again, between his wariness, his caution.
  One deploy he had made tonight, to warn Herr Cop. The throttling race in
  traffic, bucketing along by the side of the small yellow car. "Sie sind so
  sch&n." He said it aloud, teeth bared to the spitting rain. "You are
  beautiful." She was.
  Tantalizing, to bait her. Would she tell the husband? He did not think so.
  Nor would she be allowed to forget him.
  Now to seed the trail over his shoulder, for the cop somewhere behind him.
  He laughed into the downpour. It washed out all sound. Yet slowly behind
  him he sensed there were other footsteps.
  Cop, why do you push so hard? Because you want to get in out of the wet and
  take her to bed? A beast is more careful to leave no spoor-unless you
  trouble the lair. Then comes the attack. A man of high order like himself
  is careful to seed tracks in all directions. Or is it the reverse? For
  suddenly he stopped and slipped into a dim passageway. Here was only
  emptiness, shadow, silence. He waited in angry hostility at himself for
  ducking like a rabbit. Although he could not hear it, he knew that some-
  thing implacable pressed behind him.
  In his stubborn tracking the agent had managed to
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    45

 crowd him. How much did they know about him? How much suspect? Of what was
 to come? Nein. Most certainly nothing, his Munich contact had assured him.
 But if behind him tonight pressed the government cop?
  Where to hole up when cover narrowed? For the first time he felt a prong at
  his back. It prodded him uncomfortably. He lowered his head, glared through
  the thudding rain. Spotting an exit between two boarded-up storefronts he
  edged between and worked his way out to the far end of the street. One
  wrong turn and-But the cop has not laid eyes on me; he works by the rule
  book.
  He paced faster, slowed, half-turned, thought: Hole up. Be quick. In
  snowbound Alpine villages, nudging the open slopes of the Bavarian peaks,
  people huddled up before the warning of an avalanche. Deer herded. Chamois
  leaped to protective rocks and froze. The man should now be moving in the
  opposite direction. Gg felt near enough to his own street to be safe. Olga
  would be waiting with her endless knitting. She would make the bitter
  strong coffee laced with steaming milk and brandy.
  Gg thought about Olga Czhenzunska, whom Herr Cop's children called Mrs.
  Sunbeam. What a delightful tendresse for the old woman, securely settled in
  the cop's home. How easy it had been to keep contact with her, in this
  country. How close she was in the confidence of the wife. Not proven too
  useful yet, in matters of more effective work. But that would come. She did
  not suspect his greater mission. Around his arrogant mouth stretched the
  grimace that had alarmed the Grandfather. It was one of rapacious
  satisfaction.
  Encircled in deep forests, pressed by guns behind them, gazelles have a
  flaring white of eye. Tracking her up Park Avenue, cutting her off at a
  corner, racing her small car to a green light, she had turned that flaring,
  narrowing gaze at him; then, eyes lowered, shot ahead. Their faces had been
  inches apart. She was clean as an arrow, driving past him, awareness of him
  in her face. '
  Gg laughed up into the drenching sky. He knew where the cop behind him was
  vulnerable. In the soft body of this wife.
  He took out a blue morocco leather address book. A small gold crown
  encrusted the corner. He thumbed the pages. They were covered with
  interlocking ciphers and symbols that meant nothing to anyone but himself.
  Toward
46       Noel Pierce

 the end pages he found the number he wanted. Olga had objected to giving it
 to him.
  "No. It must not be this. You must not get mixed up with them . . . with
  her . . . the missus . . . die Kinder. . . . Leave them alone .... Isn't
  the Grossvater enough?"
  He had been forced to persuade her. It hadn't taken long. She did not want
  to go to her employers lookiaglike that.
  Down the corner from his tenement was a public phone booth. Dropping a coin
  in, gg waited for what seemed a long series of ringing.
  Then he heard her voice.
  "Hello? Who is it?"
  He told her.

              10

   "Bitte, you are? I have perhaps a wrong number?"
  "I don't know. Who do you want?" Their number was unlisted. Flix waited. A
  Prussian voice, correct, resonant. How could he have known? The realization
  jolted her.
  "What is it you want?" she said crisply. Kicking out behind her, she eased
  the door shut between the kitchen and the hall.
  "Do not, please, be provoked with me. You see, I apologize."
  "For what?" Pretending not to know who it was. "There is nothing to-" She
  hesitated, alarmed that he had got hold of her number. Like a glint of
  lamplight outside her area of vision she recalled the , pale blue eyes
  slanting at her from the Mercedes. The amused, aristocratic smile.
  "Do not be angry that I cut you off from the traffic light. My car is so
  big, it is snorting to get away." He went on agreeably, saying slow,
  distracting, courteous things to keep her listening, while she thought in
  dismay: This is dangerous! Rob would be furious. 1 mustn't. But how had
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   47

he managed it? Listen to him. Nestion. Try to find out .... Rob let himself in
 and checked the security locks. His footfalls were soundless on the red
 Bokhara carpet. She'd be in bed. He stretched, feeling dead beat, balked.
 The nursery door was shut. A night-light burned under it.
  On a table Mrs. Sunbeam bad left a note. "Order Milch. Roast beef. Baba mit
  Rum. Tessa has her toot-ache. Seh' the Zahnarzt-Doktor Renheimer, nach die
  Schule. Madam. Damenfriseur, vier (4)." It was surprisingly literate. He
  studied the Old World script, precisely formed. Where had their tenement
  day maid learned to write like this? He frowned. Tomorrow put "Olga
  Czhenzunska" out again on Polcod's urgency tape. Too much was inconclusive.
  What about the Europa Agency? What kind of dump was it, anyway? Come to
  that, who runs it? Does CIA know? Would a "Batfowler" who found victims by
  blinding them with a light give a damn if a kid was in agony with a jumpy
  tooth? Come to that, what do I really know is safe? Except Flix, Tessa,
  Tabby-and Mrs. Sunbeam? Who could get in here? It's my home and as secure
  as I can make it. But he was worried. He prowled the living room, eyeing
  the windows, the trajectory distance to doors. Past the fine brasses, the
  Paduan bronze. Past the Utrillo, the Monet, the two Constables framed over
  the fireplace, past the good and the bad Picasso. Ile had been their first
  quarrel. Past Grandfather's princely gifts, scooped up from impoverished
  duchies in his diplomat years. ("Enjoy them while you're young and I'm
  still around . . . .") He had to keep the old man "still around."
  Rob fingered the combination to the security closet. He got rid of the .38
  Police Special on the top shelf. A long day's night and a bad job jobbed.
  Should the gun be kept in there when two little kids were hiding and
  seeking? Once he had torn the shelves apart.
  "Flix. For Christ's sake where's my gun?"
  "Under the mattress, darling. Why?"
  He had glowered at her, speechlessly.
  "The children are having a Halloween party. I had to hide anything they
  might grab to scare each other."
  "How many times do I have to remind you to keep this closet locked?"
  Silently, defensively, she went and got the gun and gave it to him. She had
  slender, magnetic hands. Faded flowers, dogs, droopy children brightened at
  her touch. Tonight it
48        Noel Pierce

 was all he wanted.
  Starting for their bedroom door, he heard a low murmur. A sound started up.
  Broke off. He spun around. It was muffled by the door to the kitchen wing.
  He moved down the long, narrow hall. Flix was in there, saying something on
  the extension phone. Or perhaps the.house phone? She must be talking to the
  doorman. Either way-take it easy. He caught himself wanting to eavesdrop.
  It disturbed him to mistrust her. But-at this hour? Who?
  She had her back to him. Her mouth was pressed against the rim of the
  phone. One hand was pushing back her hair. A slipper had been kicked off.
  She wore a long, palelemon nightgown swaying around her ankles. She was
  listening intently to sqmeone talking.
  He stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Flix stiffened.
  Her skin felt cold under his hands. She stifled a gasp. They stood locked
  together. Bristly cheek to her neck. A straining hunger she wasn't ready
  for. No one spoke.
  Then the Prussian voice in her ear, fading now, said, "You are not alone."
  She shook her head mutely at the telephone. Then, said a single word, "No."
  There was a click on the line. The man hung up.
  "Who was that?" Rob said.
  "I don't exactly know."
  "You don't exactly know?"
  "Oh, Rob, for God's sake"-raggedly-"don't badger me." She put out her hand.
  "Not now. Not for just a minute."
  He was suddenly blazingly angry. What a welcome after the day, the river,
  the bars, the back alleys. Don't let it start again, the quarreling. But he
  spun her around roughly and tried to pull something evasive back into his
  arms. He kissed her. The silent mouth did not respond. Through hours of
  more talk with Jason, consultations, check-ins at the Hutch, hours of
  footwork on the streets, prying, feeling, climbing stairs, following bad
  leads he had waited for a sign from her that wanted him when he came home.
  Flix pushed him back.
  `Who was that on the phone?"
  "Oh'"-don't alarm him now-"someone from the garage in a fuss about parking
  the car. Where have you been?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    49

 "Why?"
 "Never mind. I know you won't tell me."
  He cupped her face, looked into flyaway eyes that eluded him.
  "Why?"

  His hands hurt her jaw. She couldn't move her head.
  "Darling, why don't you shower? I'll fix you a bourbon."
  "Stop it. Don't pull away from me."
  "I was just-Oh, Rob, must we quarrel again tonight? III settle for a
  cigarette."
  He jerked out two, lighted them. Standing in the dim corridor between
  kitchen and bedroom wing, he felt like a trespasser. She was a stranger
  whose cigarette he lighted.
  "What's wrong with me, Flix? Are my feet bigger than my eyes?"
  Forcing herself to show concern, with no time to sort out her panic, she
  stroked his face.
  "You reek of all the bars in Yorkville . . . beer, kraut, oh, sweaty,
  steamy . . . ." Tiredness of all day in the same shirt, and some rank cigar
  smoke that repelled her from his unshaven skin. Yet she'd defended him to
  Grandfather. Armies march ;on food. Fix him something. Make him
  comfortable. "After you've showered, I'll whip up some eggs and that good
  Canadian bacon you like. It won't take long." She wanted to get away for a
  minute, to get control of the thoughts battering away inside.
  He locked his hands tighter around her wrists. "If something's going on, I
  want to know."
  "Don't say things like that. You know me better."
  "Keep your voice down. You'll wake the kids."
  "Who's yelling now?"
  "Who was that on the phone?"
  "I told you. No one."
  "Don't lie to me."
   "He didn't leave his name. Does it matter?"
  He.
  Yes, Rob wanted to shout at her, yes, it matters whatever strange voice
  calls you on an unlisted number. Yes, it matters.
  She knew every mood, every nuance that affected their relationship. She
  could sense his explosive need, his bitter weariness. He was up against
  another blind alley. Faced with the bomb that telephone call had been, she
  was determined not to anger him.
50        Noel Pierce

  He wandered to the living room in silence, trailing smoke behind him. She
  followed, restlessly kicking the pale-lemon nightgown, shimmering in
  moonlit stabs around her chilly legs. On the sofa Flix caught up a soft
  yellow wool robe and belted herself into it.
  "If you would just once blurt out who you saw, where you went, what you did
  . . . ."
  He checked her with a shrug. They'd been over this so many times.
  She went to the bar. Ice clinked in glasses. She sloshed in the bourbon for
  him, scotch for her.
  "The happy couple, sharing a nightcap while the children sleep."
  He let that one pass, sitting on the sofa, knuckling his eyes.
  "I'll make an omelet . . . ."
   "Do me the kindness to shut up, will you?"
  Rebellion filled her, protesting against this stringent "cop's wife" way of
  life, keeping everything locked up, intent on being loyal, without knowing
  anything. Expecting no information about his work, she supposed she helped
  him most. It wasn't human. No matter how she defended him, it was poor
  exchange. To make so many allowances for their differences that she felt
  bankrupt.
  "All right, Rob." She tried again, saying all the wrong things. "You've had
  a rough time. I can see it and smell it all over you. Every time you come
  home at odd hours am I supposed to spray myself with perfume? Turn down the
  be($ Put on the music, pretend this is all I've waited for, all- day long?
  I have a house to run. The children's meals to get, their homework to help
  with. And Grandfather to worry about. Things to see to, just like you."
  "Oh, my God." He got up and flung a book across the room.
  "Can you stay tonight? Get some sleep?"
  He hesitated. "I don't know."
  "Every time you come in at any old time and want to make love to me I feel
  like a tart."
  "I was crazy about you when I came in," he said finally. "Like the first
  time, when I could hardly wait to get your clothes off. I wanted to take
  that filmy thing you're wearing and tear it with my teeth to get you out of
  it, and make love to you right here on the living-room floor." He stared
  down at the red Bokhara carpet. Bloody
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    51

 battlefield. "But you lied to me about that phone call. Right now I wouldn't
 touch you with a barge pole."
  She said hotly, "You weren't home yesterday, or the night before. I had no
  message. No one tells me anything."
  "Harris was out on a job for me."
  "You've got the whole bureau building to leave word with."
  "Not this time I haven't."
  "What do you mean?"
  "I . . . oh, it's nothing. I've been detached on special work. That's all."
  "Who are you working for?"
   "I can't tell you."
  "Yesterday I called the bureau twice. No wonder they put me off. But why
  didn't you say?"
   "I couldn't."
  "Your office said you were out of town. On some government business. A very
  sharp type gave me the runaround."
  She got up, knotting the sash of her robe tight enough to cut her ribs,
  rattled out more ice, filled the drinks.
   "If you're not in the city or out of it-"
   "I was out on the river."
   "Couldn't you get word to me?"
 .. þ
 No.
  "What shall I tell anyone who calls? Mrs. Sunbeam was anxious to know where
  you were."
   His head came up. "Why was she?"
   "Oh, God. How should I know?"
   "What did you tell her?"
  "I invented some nonsense. Don't I always?" She came over to him, pounded
  his shoulders with her fists. "What do you think it's like for me?
  Wondering where you are, thinking of you, jumping at every sound, wanting
  you home, when it rains, wanting to say, 'Keep warm, keep dry.' Why won't
  you tell me? What a fool I felt, not even to know where my own husband ...
  ."
   He got up decisively. "Get into bed. I'll be along."
  But the bed was, as he had expected, chilly and vast. He punched the
  pillow, started to reach for her, but sleep claimed him, spiraling him down
  into a deep, blank tunnel.
  Flix lay pretending sleep, reliving that drive home from Grandfather's. His
  face in profile was hawklike, arrogant,
52       Noel Pierce

 compelling. The vibrance in his voice still echoed, as she furiously denied
 it. Next time, hang up. Next time?
  The S6vres clock struck four. Rob woke, his mind pounding. He slid out of
  bed, went and rinsed his teeth, drank a glass of water. His face in the
  mirror was mutinous. If only she . . .
  Back in the room, with the light on, Flix was pattering about. She had got
  a tray, biscuits, milk, cheese.
  "Eat, Rob. We have to talk it out."
  Side by side, they crumbed and munched through the night snack.
  He wiped his mouth and kissed her cheek. Brotherly love. Crumbs.
  "Now.,.

  The anger between them was out. And carefully Flix stepped her way around
  the danger points. In this erosive wearing away of marriage ties she only
  managed to push him further off by delving into the one area he found
  hardest to defend.
  "When I came in from Grandfather's I thought I recognized that crotchety
  old driver of yours . . . waiting in the lobby."
  "Harris?" Invent something. "Oh, yes, be left a message for me with Gus,
  the night doorman."
  "But I've seen him before, hanging around downstairs when I go out."
   "You imagine things."
  "One thing I don't imagine is what Tess and Tabby told me when they came in
  from school."
  He pulverized a dry biscuit in his teeth, smiled a gritty smile.
   "Is a man riding with the children on the school bus?"
   "I don't know. What's so odd about that?"
   "Mrs. Sunbeam is alarmed about him."
  He turned quickly. "The old lady? What worried her this time?"
   "It's the same man. He sits behind the children."
   "What does he look like?"
   "Tabby says he's a pink and white cream puff."
  Rob considered it. Then Jason had assigned the Rubens man to be security
  for the kids. Shouldn't Mrs. Sunbeam be grateful rather than alarmed? Why
  was she suspicious?
  Flix kept at him about it. "Has he been told to guard them? Is Harris
  keeping tabs on me, too?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   53

  "Flix, this is the damnedest nonsense. When have I ever put security men on
  my own family?"
  "I think I always knew when I married you that a time would come."
  "When what?"
   "One of your spy jobs would involve the girls and me."
  He sat back. There was nothing to say.
  "He's big and tubby, pink and white, the girls tell me. And Mrs. Sunbeam.
  . . ."
  "Has Olga mentioned her suspicions of him?"
  "Isn't that what we pay her for? Is what you're doing on Ois job putting us
  in a nasty spot so that you have to have us followed?"
  It was out now. And it was ugly. He saw the red spots flare on Flix's
  cheeks. The way the gripped hands rode up and down her thighs. Shoulder to
  shoulder, the tray between them, they faced a blank wall.
  "Why must we have watchdogs without your confiding in me?" She began to cry
  without making a sound. Tears stinging behind her eyes spilled down and wet
  her cheeks. Flix dashed them away.
  He was thinking clinically, Harris and the pink man will have to alternate.
  1'11 get word to Jason. We can switch the young man in the dark suit with
  the mouse-colored hair to the school bus so that Flix and the children get
  less jumpy.
  "You haven't answered me, Rob. Are we in trouble?"
  "No." He said reasonably, "I wouldn't lie to you any more than you did to
  me, when I asked you who was on the phone. You said, `Just someone about
  parking the car.",
  "Okay. Put some trust in me." But he knew she was concealing the voice on
  the telephone. Bitterly exasperated, he could see what would follow. A
  painstaking hunt, clouded and distorted by too much concern for his family.
  Wanting to get his mind free, yet so up-tight with concern over Flix and
  the kids that later he was to suspect every passerby who stopped to light
  a cigarette under the apartment house canopy. Watching every stranger
  within the radius of their block. At home, silent, edgy, barking at the
  little girls like a dog with a sore paw. Bottled up. Roused to an
  inexcusable yelling when the prattle of playtime noise shrieked with kids'
  laughter from the nursery. Shouting, "Shut up in there." The silent "Hush"
  from their mother, before the twins' sobs began. "Daddy's cross. He's
  tired.
54       Noel Pierce

 You must be quiet." As convulsive gulps of hurt, bewilderment and separation
 rent the children. A stranger in his home. The cop knocking at the bedroom
 door. "Madam, do you want me to show my gold eagle badge before I identify
 myself? Surely a smile, surely something welcomes me?"
  Nothing did, now. He began to hate the unknown voice on the telephone. When
  he held her, sweaty, tired and angrily anxious for her, he could remember
  nothing except that she had shaken her head at the silent telephone. To
  some question a man had asked her, Flix had said one word: "No."
  Little lies that spark the big ones.
  But this was one they could not sleep on. Jason had said, "You're going
  home?" (Yes, to the big, vast, chilly bed, no matter what happens.) "I'm
  sorry your wife was worried."
  "She'll get over it." And it was then that he had told Jason about Mrs.
  Sunbeam, how good she was with the children, how his wife trusted her.
  Batfowler. What a hideous name for a possible traitor to his household.
  From a long way off, her voice cool and faintly coming to him across a
  distance, Flix was saying, "I've been mean to you, darling, and I'm sorry."
  Her hand went out. "Any time can be a good time for us."
  But afterward he lay awake for a long time. This time ft had been like
  making love to a stranger. And there was a stranger, someone without a face
  who stood between them.
  The pale-lemon filmy thing was on the floor where she had tossed it. He got
  out of bed silently. Rain tapped the windowpane. Take the morning up and
  load it on your shoulders, he thought. It's not a good day. But it's the
  only day we've got. He looked down at Flix, sleeping. His bare feet gritted
  on something. Crumbs.
11
  The labyrinthine backyards and tenement byways of East Yorkville off the
  upper reaches of the river are interlocked with a few old stables.
  Plastered-over walls of brick with flat roofs are now mostly small paint
  shops, tool and auto parts shacks, shabby offices of local tradesmen,
  produce sheds, Hungarian goulash carry-out counters, yard goods and carpet
  slipper shops pushing a cheap line of Mittel Europa imports.
  Little in the rear of the stable layouts has changed from carting years.
  Like old wagon horses standing immobilized in dying pastures, these are
  brick pastures now, awaiting the grind and smash of demolition.
  Behind the shop fronts, an occasional narrow tunnel bends. A few so narrow
  at the backs behind the fences that here horses had once been tethered to
  forage on sparse grass in rear yards. Along these backyard paths, animal
  hindquarters had once worn walls down to rubble. There a dray horse kicked
  out a semicircle to settle down and die in. Here another rubbed its
  harness-raw neck to ease off itching flies. At the backs of the alleys some
  whittled-down junk sheds slant, leaning akimbo amid discarded trash. Some
  not high enough for a man to stand up in. All these backyard escape routes
  are roughly drawn in the minds of police and the lawless. Any man's body,
  agile enough, could move quickly along the rear alleys worked for them a
  long time ago by plodding horses.
  As a boy in the old manor on the Staraberger See, gg had been cautioned by
  the grooms never to stray into stag tunnels made in the pine forests by
  running hart and deer herds. Every animal has its lair. A smart man uses
  them the way a deer, bucking and knee-hobbling through its maze of natural
  tunnels to elude the tracker, has scent, noise, instinct to guide it.
               55
56       Noel Pierce

  In the dim maze behind a baker's shop cum stable, gg was at home. These
  horse paths were essentially stone woods. Far at the front of the shop, on
  the street, night delivery trucks back-fired, traffic soughed and roared.
  The brick sidewall where his face pressed was hot with baking. He could
  hear the long bread shovels go slamming into deep ovens. He could smell the
  fresh-baked loaves, yeasty and appetizing. He splayed his hand along the
  wall to work around a corner and find the rear yard. He pulled in his
  breath.
  The cop was not far behind. You could tell about a man tracking you-if he
  was "gun first, think later." Perhaps both. This tracker was both. So, look
  out now. Move carefully. Remember the cop's hands are fast. He is trained
  to shoot. His stalk is silent, well planned. He wants to capture to
  interrogate, not to kill.
  This much 1 know about you, gg thought. While he savored the relish of
  fresh-baked rolls, Hungarian potato bread, Vienna pastry, pungent KabJee
  and Schokolade, on cool mountain mornings when the vast kitchens stirred.
  When, up on the crenelated north tower, in her lavish suite of rooms, his
  mother would be turning out a lover from rutting sheets and ringing
  impatiently for Olga to brush her hair.
  While down in the pine woods, warned against it by a worried gatekeeper, a
  small boy with a bird snare burrowed his dusty face up through a roebuck
  tunnel.
  That young, gg thought, you don't know that you may have to crawl around
  for hours, lost, and perhaps desperately look for a way out that you could
  never find again.
  But I know my way out of this, or any, tunnel.
  And you, sod of a cop, have to bang your nose against another dead-end
  alley wall I've made for you.
  Welcome. Willkommen to fresh bread and old horse droppings. He reached in
  his jacket and took out a heavy gold pen.
  On the horse-worn brick he printed in large, chiseled script: "Auf
  Wiedersehen, Herr Cop."

  Minutes later, one block farther north, he rounded E, corner and pushed
  open the door of the AlpenstockEdelweiss Bar.
  A1 and Lottie watched him come in. He rapped on the damp counter. "Ein
  Bier, bitte."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    57

 The proprietor and his wife flagged eyes.
 "So? What do you wait for? I am thirsty."
  It is the man, their eyes said. He is thirsty for something else. Perhaps
  not for beer but for blood. Serve him. Schnell. Quick. For this he can pay.
  But for blood? No, Herr Sir. We do not serve that here. Everything else,
  ja. Anything you want. Anything warm and breathing you want we provide.
  Blood? No . . . not even in a sausage. Shed your own. But not on these
  premises. A1 and Lottie were very correct. Very afraid.
  "Gute Nacht, Herr Sir. It goes well with you?"
  "Is there a message from Rudi?"
  Silently they handed him a folded slip of paper. He gave them money, and
  left.
  In a tenement halfway he stopped and decoded the frame of numbers Rudi had
  written down. They had cabled again. He stiffened.

 DEAR SON CONFIRM TIMETABLE FOR TRIP LIMIT YOUR

  STOPOVER WEATHER CHANGES FATHER.

              12

  It was not her real name. But when the little girls could not pronounce
  Czhenzunska and came home with her after Sunday school skipping around her
  and hollering "lee-zus wants me for a sunbeam," this became their special
  name for her.
  She was congenitally mournful. Tessa and Tabitha loved her for this, as
  children have a fine relish for anything funereal. In the ebullience of
  their pranks, Mrs. Sunbeam was their gray wren, long-suffering, forbearing.
  She bore with them more patiently than other maids before.
  "Are Mrs. Sunbeam's lungs a different color from ours, Mummy?"
   "Why, Tabby?"
58       Noel Pierce

 "She says she is getting to be full of bugs and microbes." Tess said
 dreamily, "If we stick a straw in Mrs. Sunbeam, will soot come out?"
 "What little beasts you are."
 "Daddy doesn't like Mrs. Sunbeam."
  Flix said sharply, "You think too much. What's important is Mrs. Sunbeam
  loves you and watches over you in the park."
  "Why must we be watched over? Like the fat pink man on the bus?"
  "Because you are little and naughty."
  They chewed this over, heads cocked, eyeing their mother. They were about
  as predictable as a sleeping porcupine.
  "Is the pink man on the school bus every day?" Flix said carefully.
   "Yes, Mummy. He's covered with freckles."
  "And he has a big scar on his neck that he tries to hide with his collar,
  poor man," Tessa said.
  There was raspberry flummery for dessert. Tabitha made a puddle in the
  middle, stirring into it her perplexities about Mrs. Sunbeam's wig.
  "Mummy," she said, as Flix dressed them for school next morning, "she is
  losing her hair. We can see clear to her scalp."
  "All right"-combing their taffy-colored bangs-"all right, she's
  unfortunate. Will you please stand still?"
  "Why did her hair stop getting glossy and wavy like yours?"
  "Bad food, a different metabolism-stop wriggling, Tessa -not enough adrenal
  vitality, low thyroid . . . ."
   "Mummy, what are you talking about?"
  Flix jerked the comb. Tessa yelped. She knew all at once that Mrs. Sunbeam,
  under another name in Europe, had starved. Flix put the brush down. Her
  springy, thick hair accused her.
  She was thinking, Mrs. Sunbeam, under another name? Am I right to keep her
  here? But she is loyal to us. Why do 1 think so? Because she protects my
  daughters. Like the pink man?
  The little girls gazed back at her, aware of something strange and
  frightened in their mother's face. Needing to be sure of the constant in
  their life, they waited for her
         MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    59

    to say everything is all right. Don't go away from us, Mummy, their faces
    pleaded.
     "We have decided," Tessa said, "that Mrs. Sunbeam looks pretty in her
     wig."
     Instinct jumped in Mix. She said casually, "Does she wear it often?"
      Tabitha said, "Only in the park."
      1 wonder why?
      "What color is it?"
      "Ashes color, Mummy," Tessa said admiringly.
      "Wispy. Sort of uncombed."
      "Her makeup looks different, too," Tabitha said.
     "Makeup. Mrs. Sunbeam? Darlings, you're making it up.þ
      "Honest Injun."
     "She puts on something that makes her look tan, like you and Daddy in
     the summer."
      "She gets the whole idea from television," Tessa decided.
 `"I'm sure you're right, Tess. Now nun to school."
     After they had gone, Flix reconstructed Olga Czhenzunska. .A wig?
     Makeup? That gray little thing in her black cotton gloves? She. got a
     strange blank like an incomplete passport. The wig. Frippery. A younger
     face? 1 can't hurt her, Flix thought. But this is someone I can
     discover. Rob can't. Is he investigating her?
     How long was it since Mrs. Sunbeam had asked her in for coffee and
     pastry? "To see my room, Madam. My geranium is nice. But it doesn't get
     the sun."
     Where was her room? Around the corner, in that dreary tenement block.
     Flix decided she'd drop in. "If anything goes wrong," Tabitha had
     offered, "Mrs. Sunbeam says she will take on the blame."
     "Mummy, what could go wrong?" Tessa was the timid twin.
     "Nothing your father and I can't take care of." The blame-for what?
      "But wasn't it a funny thing for Mrs. Sunbeam to say?"
      "No, darling."
     Flix didn't want to think about it. They were so small, uncannily hunchy
     and aware. Once on a camping trip they had watched a fish carried a long
     way on the surface of a stream. A snake had attacked it from below the
     current and held it captive, as it splashed frantically on the sunlit
     surface. They had watched it drown, not understanding.
60        Noel Pierce

 What an odd thought, that this reminded her of Olga.
  What tentacle from the past gripped Mrs. Sunbeam and carried her into the
  stream of their lives?
  Victim? Enemy? Friend? 1 must know.

  Born an unreconstructed Pole on her mother's side of the Sudeten border,
  going into domestic service as a girl, fleeing the rising tide of Nazism,
  captured, imprisoned, released, brainwashed and indoctrinated by a
  terrorist group, Olga Czhenzunska had made her way to Yorkville, U.S.A., by
  means which she kept quiet about. Here she lived anonymously. No known
  past. No record of yesterday, or today, that anyone knew. She was here, she
  did her work, no questions asked, a part of the pork store trade and
  katzenjammer shenanigans of the foreign-speaking neighborhood. A
  respectable widow, her first interview with Flix, months before, had been
  mutually satisfactory. She had known what not to say.
  At apartment No. 24 she worked in daily sufferance of "the Mister," with
  whom, Gott sei Dank, she need have no truck. Once she had found a revolver
  wrapped in his dress shirt. He knew she had found it. They said nothing to
  each other about it. She was servile, freezingly polite. Her business, her
  devoted daywork in the big apartment, revolved around the missus and the
  little girls. It was her habit to get down to work the minute she let
  herself in at the service entrance.
  This morning the key stuck.
  Mrs. Sunbeam stepped back. Her cold eyes raked the landing, service stairs,
  hallway. The lighted elevator signal showed BASEMENT.
  She took a bone hairpin out of her neat. plaited bun, unscrewed the end,
  took a needle from the hairpin funnel, inserted it up under the top of the
  double lock, retrieved a minutely folded tissue paper, rolled the tiny tube
  around the needle, put it back in the bone hairpin shaft, screwed the end
  on, tucked it in her gray hair, patted the bun tidily, and let herself in.
  Contact, drop, cover: thirty seconds.
  Flix was waiting for her, with a cup of coffee.
  "Good morning, Madam."
  From the kitchen window, Flix had been listening to a strange birdcall in
  the yards at the rear of the building. It was a short, croaking screech
  repeated at five-second
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    61

 intervals. She had got out her Peterson Guide for descriptions of migrators.
 One such tropical bird far off its flight course after last night's high
 wind and rainstorm must have taken a breather in the sooty ginkgo tree
 across the backyards. That would be about where Mrs. Sunbeam's tenement was.
  "You must have heard it, Mrs. Sunbeam? Near your window?"
  She described the screeching call. Mrs. Sunbeam listened with gathering
  alertness. Her small, pale eyes glistened. "But stop, Madam. You need not
  to describe this bird. He is what you call-a rara avis?"
  So it's Latin we know? Flix thought. Odd.
  "Rare bird, Mrs. Sunbeam?"
  "But, yes, surely"'-eagerly, nodding and breathing rapidly, ear cocked,
  listening-"yes, certainly that is him, or her, as it may be." Then she
  looked at Flix, full of a silent spasm of laughter. "It is not what you
  think, Madam. Not something that will enchant the little girls."
  "You mean there's a bad bird out there that the Audubon Society should get
  busy about? Keep this bird away from children?"
  Almost pityingly, Olga Czhenzunska laid her small, birdlike claw on Flix;
  placating, being sorry, the hand said, in its tiny white gristle of flesh,
  sinew, bone. Flix looked down at it. Mrs. Sunbeam was chary of contact.
  "Do you know this bird?"
  "Ja, Madam, since here in the tenements."
  "What is it?"
  "You have heard the pulley bird."
  "You mean . . . the wash lines?"
  "All women in poor homes are mothers of the pulley bird. It is the creak of
  the pulley when we pull the wash line in."
  "There it goes again." They listened to five creaking jolts, followed by
  two, then one.
  "It's like a smoke signal." Flix was laughing.
  "Please, Missus?"
  "Indians out West signaled that way from ridge to ridge. Fanning a green
  applewood fire so it would rise and puff, and speak to a friendly tribe or
  warn of an enemy." Five times, two, one.
   Mrs. Sunbeam shook her head dumbly. "Versteh' nicht."
62        Noel Pierce

  "Maybe the pulley bird is sending a message across the backyards." Flix was
  amused at the fancy.
  "la," dully. "One smart bird to do that." Mrs. Sunbeam gave a mirthless
  laugh. "But we are all friendly here. It is just some Frauen mit a heavy
  wash load."
  "Look, Madam." She went to the window. "See in the backyards where the poor
  live."
  She swept the kitchen curtain back with a wrench that sent the rod
  rattling.
  But across the rear yard fences, looking down from their high tower, Flix
  saw the wash lines empty. The windows were closed. Pulleys sagged on rusty
  wire. No one had hung out any wet wash today.
  "That pulley bird must know you, Mrs. Sunbeam."
   "Me? How?"
  Flix said slowly, "He starts his song as soon as you put your key in the
  door."
   Olga tied her apron in a sudden, hard knot.
   "Can I see your window from here?"
  "la." Toneless, the gray head bent, counting, sorting laundry. "la. Over
  there is where I have my room." She hesitated. "Please, Madam. For favor.
  Have the key changed. It is loose, not safe anymore, the double lock." She
  wiped her forehead, sweating in the cool room. She was very pale.
  Flix watched her, uncomfortably puzzled. "The service lock my husband
  installed is a security lock. No one can break it."
  "I will take the laundry."
  "No, you stay and clean up. I want to speak to Charlie about not starching
  my husband's shirts."
  Mrs. Sunbeam, agitated, grabbed the bundle. "Nein, bitte. I will take the
  load."
  Flix hesitated. Everything about her was so poor, drab and gray. As if her
  physical cloak of security was just this -a figure you wouldn't remember
  seeing, because of her careful, fading stillness. She was a gray mist
  behind the sheen of the kitchen's bright, shining appliances; a shadow on
  a brilliant street. Everyone bustled. She was the one who did not stir.
  What had turned her so white?
  "I won't be long. Back in time for you to get Tabby and Tessa at school."
  To her surprise, Mrs. Sunbeam wrenched the shirts from her and stalked to
  the door.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    63

  "I don't think you heard me, Olga. Put that bundle down."
  Again the diminishing shrink.
  "I want to spare you some extra steps," Flix said firmly. "To save you a
  little work."
  "But, Madam, that is why I am here. To save you."
  It was such a curious remark.
  Mrs. Sunbeam faced her. Sparse smile. Chilly, light eyes. Implacable as
  ice. Combed gray wings laid flat on the small, boned head. The plaited bun
  tucked by bone pins with every hair in place. Her only adornment a worn
  European peasant-art brooch of ebony and chipped garnets. Tidy, clean,
  mended with invisible darns-inward as well as out.
  Flix felt her throat catch. ("That is why I am here to save you.")
  "Don't let servants drive you," Grandfather often said. "Show them who's
  boss from the minute they present their papers."
  Olga Czhenzunska didn't have any papers.
  Anonymous wren. Screeching pulley bird. "Madam, change the lock on the
  door." Why? Smoke signals. "We are all friendly here."
  But there was nothing cozy about this silly, domestic fuss. A defiant maid.
  A clutch at Rob's shirts. Tug-of-war without dignity? How stuffy can I get?
  ("Establish control with them, Felicia. That way they know.")
  She touched a buzzer under the counter and waited as Rob had told her to
  do. Now the mechanism of the government security lock would click into
  place as she let herself out.
  "I'll be back soon. Will you get out the Danish silver to polish and the
  ironstone place settings for twelve. I want to use crystal, the Tiffany
  stem glasses. It's my grandfather's birthday dinner. I've hired a butler.
  He'll do the wine. Six bottles of Piper Heidsieck on ice. Lay them on their
  sides to chill. We'll have caviar. Lobster tails to start."
  "Please, Madam. I do not serve at the dinner for the Grossvater."
  "Of course you do. Why not?"
  "If a butler-I will not be needed. Besides, I have not the uniform."
  "I'll get you one tomorrow."
64       Noel Pierce

  "No. Nein. . . . He is-how you say?-accustomed to much service from the
  diplomatic life, and I . . . ."
  "You're afraid you'll spill the soup?"
  Flix looked at a face that was strained, as if Mrs. Sunbeam stared beyond
  her at something on a collision course. "The butler will show you what to
  do."
  The thin lips set. The old woman gave a curious bow, wholly unlike her.
  The notion came to Flix of a young girl in a palace kitchen, receiving a
  list of inflexible orders for a court banquet. So might a novice maid obey
  an imperious command. It was the faintest genuflection of the bowed neck.
  "Order the lobsters ahead, from Oscar's."

  Recovering her composure, Mrs. Sunbeam stepped stiffly aside. She listened
  for the drone of the elevator. Heard Madam's greeting to Gus, the operator.
  Then she took the pin out of her bun, unscrewed the slender shaft and
  prised the rolled tissue out.
  "Du hast die Uhr nicht aufgezogen."
  Olga Czhenzunska looked at it for some minutes.
  She weighed the tissue in her hand. Then she went along the hall and
  flushed it down the toilet. After that she wept.
  The pulley bird screeched its monotonous, rusty call to her: five, two,
  one. Next time she must tell him to hang some clothes on the empty line.
  Going to the kitchen window with an air of purpose, she swept the curtain
  back.
  He was up on the skyline roof. Just the level of a brow. The flaxen hair,
  the unmistakable eyes.
  She stood there imperturbably. Looking at nothing, she let herself be seen.
  And closed the curtain.
  Then she set about preparing supper for the little girls.
  ("Mrs. Sunbeam-"
  ("Ja, Tessa. VVhat is it, Tabitha?"
  ("Why do you put on your wig in the park?"
  ("So that I will look pretty like die Mutter-your mother."
  ("Look like Mummy? Like Mother?")
  They had thought this so hilarious that they rocked with fun, laughing
  around her, hugging her till they all tumbled down on the grass bank and
  rolled together. She was
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   65

 caught and hugged by damp, skinny little woolen arms that poured affection
 into her starved bones.
  Meine Kleinen . . . little ones.... Ja. This time I did not "wind the
  clock." It is for them that I did not. Herr Baron, yoti would not
  understand love. What it can do.

             13

  Griselda Court, a down-at-the-heels, double-fronted tenement off First
  Avenue, wore the sour face of a onceproud respectability.' Its pitted
  granite was fringed with garbage cans. On either side of the stoop were
  gargoyle columns of chipped sculpture showing a bearded face garlanded in
  stone swags on one side; a gritty Brunnhilde in battle helmet on the other.
  From the inner court a sagging awning on a rusty frame hunched itself out
  to the curb like a tired camel, its canvas hide riddled with holes from
  indifferent time and burnt-out cigar butts tossed through open windows on
  sultry nights.
  Flix stood uncertainly on its stoop. A cluster of mailboxes lined the
  entry. She looked for "Czhenzunska." The peeling plaster above was scored
  with obscene graffiti. Mrs. Sunbeam hadn't turned up to take the children
  to the park. She had no telephone.
  Walking from East End Avenue around the corner and over toward First, Flix
  decided to leave a message under the door. If an illness, she scribbled
  their doctor's phone number. She sealed this in an envelope with some
  money.
  In front of Griselda Court an enormous fat woman scratched her armpits and
  sniffed the day warily.
  "Angel Face," she shrilled, "you listen to Momma. Get up on this stoop or
  IT spank the shit out of ya."
  A thin blond child, daintily dressed, went on skipping rope. "Aw, shut up."
  She counted breathlessly. "Onesytwosy, :1 choose yousy. Onesy-twosy. . . .
  An old man wearing a white sailor cap, a harmonica
66       Noel Pierce

 gripped between his teeth, wheeled a baby carriage past. Inside sat a red
 and green parrot in an ornate cage. Through the harmonica he blew the
 strains of "Cielito Lindo."
 "Hey, Pop, you gotta good word from the parrot?"
  "Yeah, Momma." Angel Face skipped up on the stoop. "He says the gypsy's
  gotta good fortune for you today."
  "That bitch." The fat woman scratched herself disgustedly. "She don't know
  which card is up."
  "The gypsy?" Flix turned. "Does she live here?" Tabby and Tessa had told
  her about the gypsy, a neighborhood curiosity.
  "You wanna find her, Missus? She's shacked up wid some fella in Five B."
  "Thank you. It's someone else I'm looking for."
  "Mind the stairs. It's a climb."
  Flix looked for Mrs. Sunbeam's bell. The air smelled of foraging tomcats.
  Angel Face skipped back to the curb. The fat woman slapped her hard.

  There are two kinds of fire escapes within half a block in the Yorkville
  district. One is a cinderblock "gallery" paved with white subway tile, in
  the high-rise luxury complexes lining the river. A scant six by eight feet,
  they are framed in fake grapeleaf scrollwork, furnished with tubular chrome
  deck chairs with checked plastic webbing, a cocktail table, cushions,
  magazines, red rubber geraniums in plastic pots, drink setups, and
  sunglasses. Down the street, tenement fire escapes are furnished with a
  mop, fresh houseplants, and a pillow to lean the elbows on when the street
  doings get hot. Both have one thing in common: What's going on with the
  neighbors?
  The gypsy, Angel Face, Fat Momma, Mrs. Sunbeam. These are the neighbors in
  this crummy place. Climbing, she looked at the scarred wooden doorways. No
  bells. No nameplates. Should she knock? Where?
  Going up the stairs, asking, people kept pointing indifferently. No names
  on the doors. Anonymity? (Why, Mrs. Sunbeam?)
  "Lady, go up there."
  "Czhenzunska?"
  "Up there, somewheres."
  Voices said through door cracks, "Niemand wohnt hier
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    67

 unter diesem Namen." . . . "But surely I couldn't have the house number
 wrong'?". . . "Wo wohnen Sie, Frauen?" "Take it easy, lady. Maybe Sie ist
 nicht hier?" "Of course she's here." More knocks on blank doors. "Wer
 spricht, bitte?" "Was wiinschen Sie?" ` . . . Just to leave a message for my
 baby-sitter." "Bitte?" "Please, what means?"
  Every landing on the stairway had its Judas eye, a slit of light, closing
  as she turned. Spurts of accordion music, babies wailing. An explosive "Du
  lieber Gott!" A thuddedoff slap, a scream, a giggle. The aroma of kraut
  simmering with bratwurst. Tenants sidled downstairs, hair curlers mounded
  under babushkas. Dogs sniffed.
  "Now cut that out, Schatzie. Stop yappin' at the lady." A foot nudged the
  dog's nose inside.
  "You lost yourself, Gnadigste?"
  "In a way I have. Yes."
  "I think maybe I know you from the supermarket?" Crinkly eyes like currants
  in a plump good-natured face.
  "We live down the street, around the corner."
  "Oh, sure. On East End? How's with you today? I'm Mrs. Schultz, your
  neighbor."
  Vaguely, they were always a Mrs. Schultz, and always her "neighbor." With
  compunction she remembered that she had cautioned Tabby and Tessa "not to
  play with the children in the tenements."
  "You remember, when you moved in, like I tol' you, allus keep the window on
  the fire escape locked."
  "Yes. Thank you. But we haven't anything that they can steal." (Nor any
  fire escapes.)
  Mrs. Schultz gave a bawdy, hand-to-mouth laugh. "They can take you, lady.
  That is something to steal."
  "My husband, we--I mean, naturally we have bolts on the door."
  "So." The round shoulders shrugged. "A man, he wants something, he kicks
  mil die door in."
   "But a double lock--"
  "Yah. Is good. That way no one get in." Mrs. Schultz looked Flix up and
  down. "You," she said slowly, "you have you. And that they can take. So, be
  careful, lady." She looked behind her, up the stair.
  On the floor above, there were two on the stair landing arguing.
   "But, Mrs. Rasmussen'=it was a thin voice, punctilious,
68        Noel Pierce

 polite-"I tell you that he is simply following out his intent."
  Good, Flix thought, turning the landing and starting up. How nice and
  normal it is to know neighbors in a tenement who have an "intent." I'll get
  somewhere now.
  ". . . his intent perhaps to kill you, Mrs. Rasmussen."
  "Me? To actually kill?" Soft, smothered laughter sounded on a high note.
  "You can't be serious, Mr. Heinle?"
  "Assuredly, yes." As Flix rounded the landing he went on, reasonably,
  puffing on his small cigar. "Yes, yes, my dear Mrs. Rasmussen, merely and
  entirely following out his intent to kill you. Unless, natiirlich, you
  submit your charms to him."
  "Me?" the woman said, excited by the importance the promised act gave her.
  "Me, Herr Heinle? Are you sure?"
  "But of course." The voice described its polite case for murder.
  "How reasonable you are. How understanding."
  "As a tenant I am merely doing my duty. I also desire you, Mrs. Rasmussen.
  For myself."
  "It is good," she said, "to be aware of these things."
  They stepped back from Flix on the landing, smiling with quick, suspicious
  politeness. She bowed. They bowed. There was no sound but her steps going
  up. Above them she stopped. Was it here, on this next flight, the anonymous
  brown door above?
  "Do not forget, my dear Mrs. Rasmussen," eagerly, politely, ". . . merely
  trying to kill you, therefore following out an inescapable intent."
  "Oh, thank you, Herr Heinle, for explaining to me so clearly the intent of
  my Hans."
  "You go to him, in spite of this?"
  "But of course. It is, after all, our home."
  Flix leaned over the railing and looked down. Mrs. Rasmussen, a veteran of
  many such entries, opened her apartment door and composed her face for the
  blow. A fist squashed full into the soft round jaw. She gasped. Her hoarse
  sobs sounded louder than the impact of fists on bone. It was, after all,
  home.
  No one interferes. No one calls the cops in Yorkville. Let me understand
  this, Flix thought. This is a place where the gypsy lives. Where Mrs.
  Sunbeam says she has her furnished room. Once inside that door down there
  and up these flights of stairs it's no one's business. Herr Heinle
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    69

 has shut his door, as Mrs. Schultz did hers. They will keep their dogs
 inside until I'm gone. A muffled scream against the wall is no more than the
 slam of a garbage can. Below me Mrs. Rasmussen is being beaten. She does not
 ask for help. Because by now he has fallen insensible on the linoleum to
 sleep it off. Or the soft rocking motion of her body is taking his fury into
 herself. Either way, she gives him the only peace they know.
  On the top landing a narrow door led to a skylight. She paused there.
  Her first thought when the roof door opened was: I've seen him before. He
  had followed her home from Grandfather's.
  He was deceptively young-looking. A brilliant sun shaft bathed fine lines
  around his mouth and eyes. The strong hands carrying his rolled-up sun pad
  were so brown the nails looked white. Bare-chested, in faded jeans and
  spotless white sneakers, he stood above her smiling down like someone
  leaning on a sword. Flix looked him over curiously. Around his neck was a
  slim chain of twisted gold rope. From it hung an emblem that looked like a
  crusader's cross. On his chest over the heart was a small, lettered tattoo:
  A E 1 O U. He had an almost disdainful elegance casually at odds with his
  shabby dungarees. She remembered Grandfather in a disreputable old hunting
  coat telling an immaculate houseboy to "bring the drink tray in."
  "You have lost your way?" It was the same voice as on the telephone.
  "Yes. So it seems."
  "Six tenement flights to climb are a long way to lose yourself."
  She shrugged. "Perhaps now I've found what I came for."
  "And that?"
  "Yours is the voice that broke our unlisted telephone number."
  "Meine? So you remember? I am-how- do you say it? -complimented."
  She had not told Rob. She had not had the number changed.
  "Don't try to call me again."
  "I will," he said.
  "You had better save yourself a lot of trouble."
  "Bitte," he said, "for favor, speak to me again."
70       Noel Pierce

  It was then she saw the cat. It was hugged under his arm. Now the face
  crept out.
  "You are looking for me?"
  "Hardly. I don't know you. I've been trying to find my children's nurse."
  "Why look here?"
 "Because Mrs. Sunbeam. . . ."
  "Bitte? I do not know this name in the building."
  "Madam Czhenzunska."
  "Ah. To be sure. The old Polish lady?"
  "Why isn't her name downstairs on the boxes?"
  "Because they are broken into and robbed."
  She started to go.
  "Wait-eine Minute-wait."
  "Why?"
  "I can help you."
  "How?"
  "Explain about the door boxes."
  She faced him. "Explain about the telephone call?"
  He put out his hand. "Do not be angry with me."
  "How did you get our number? How did you know?"
  Disjointed facts were swarming all over her. Her mind clawed at straws to
  piece them together. Rob, detached from bureau work, to look for someone
  around here . . . . Grandfather, getting a note Sunday night that had so
  disturbed him . . . . Rob, colder and edgier than she had ever known him .
  . . coming in exhausted from prowling the neighborhood like a beat cop,
  dealing with sordid, dirty people, dangerous people. Saying nothing about
  it. Was it here? Now? This confrontation? Five steps above her? All right.
  Go along for the ride.
  The smile that lifted to him caught his breath. She moved up a step, her
  lowered eyes focused on the tattoo. The barrel chest sent it beating. She
  looked at the small Iron Cross emblem. Was he a cultist? Some kind of Prus-
  sian fanatic?
  "Bitte," he began carefully. "We could meet again?"
  She was silent, thinking.
  "I have many things to say to you." Yes. 1 don't doubt you have. And now I
  want to hear them.
  "I have seen you walking on the-how you call it?river promenade."
  "I often walked there."
  "We shall make contact?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   71

  "Why not?" The swarming had cleared. Her mind felt like a biting, polished
  cutter, diamond-hard.
  Flix threw him a barb. "You are not to call me again."
   He laughed. "That is no longer a problem."
   "Why not?"
   "You will meet me when you want to."
   "You're very sure of yourself."
   Sure of you, his eyes said.
  All right. Let him think so. Find out who this man is. Everything about
  him.
  "I walk, I take photographs of the neighborhood," he said. "It's quaint,
  like a foreign quarter, don't you think?"
  Two yellow cat's eyes glittered at Flix. Ragged ears pricked. Writhing
  under his arm, the cat spat, hissing.
  "Be still, meine Katze." He hugged the cat and came two steps down.
  "Do not be afraid of Grimalkin. She is an old she-cat. Like the other
  ladies in this elegant establishment she is jealous, naturlich, if there is
  one more beautiful."
  Fiix said, "She is evil-looking."
  The man laughed, stroking the alley cat fur. A low guttural purr answered.
  "She is a witch." He smiled, stroking the cat. So suddenly that Flix
  gasped, he tossed the football of fur in an arching throw down to the next
  landing. The thud went through Flix. Purr of adoration became a stunned
  wail. The cat dragged. itself off. Flix started after it.
  He leaped down to stop her.
  "Nein. Nein! Don't touch . . . it is dangerous. She will bite, claw,
  scratch out die Augen." He reached her on the landing, checked her, took
  her hand. The contact burned. She pulled away.
  "1 suppose when you were a boy you crushed birds' eggs with your bare toes,
  shot rabbits, skinned squirrels."
  Va. I did that. To shoot well." He shrugged. "It was how we lived."
  Flix said nothing. There was a streak of madness in him, she realized. He
  had animal eyes, like that poor, dragging cat below the stairs. Smoky and
  strange.
  "Meine Katze-she knows. In my language we have these words for the
  she-cat-and for the woman. There is war between them."
72       Noel Pierce

  "Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm like that alley cat. Do you often
  throw her downstairs that way?"
  He thought a minute. "But yes. She can always run away."
  "Can't you control her in any other way but punishment?"
  He frowned, angered. "There is only one way. Force." His face hardened.
  "Control." He said it in harsh German. "Kontrol."
  "Even a mangy cat?" What is he so frightened of in
 hirnsel f.'
  He drew himself erect in a kind of hauteur that would have been ridiculous
  in a man less impressive to look at. What was called in Victorian times a
  princely bearing was completely natural to him.
  It was the last time she was to think of him this way. Later it seemed to
  her that he had wanted her to see him in precisely this guise. As a poor
  Prussian aristocrat, living without funds in a tenement. Keeping himself
  proudly. Showing a fine contempt for mediocrity, ordinary standards. Trying
  to shock her with Grimalkin-with a casual cruelty. (This is how 1 do
  things. With kontrol.)
  The roof door opened above them. A younger man came down from the roof,
  with the same rolled-up sun pad. He came slowly down to the landing,
  frowning.
  "You made me wait."
  "So, Rudi? This is too much for you?"
  Rudi wore the identical gold neck chain. He was goodlooking in a flashy
  continental way, but shaggy and unkempt as though he seldom washed. He gave
  Flix the same baleful glare as the cat. Both possessive, like animals when
  their territory is threatened. Rudi's sulky petulance told her what a
  threat she was. The three on the stairs stood still.
  Gg looked from her to Rudi and laughed silently.
  "What a charming household," Flix said. "Boyfriend, and mama Katze curled
  up on the tenement hearth together."
  The taunt sent the blood flaring into his face.
  Rudi said something in rapid German; it was in a dialect she couldn't
  catch.
  Gg flung the hand off. "Not now. 'Raus mit dir. Get lost."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    73

  Humiliated, the younger man went furiously past her down the stairs.
  "Do not mistake this."
  "Why should I?"
  "Rudi is a boy who drives for me."
  "Did I ask?"
  "Your eyes asked."
  "Why should I care?"
  "I care that you should know. He is . . . eine mechanic . . . .
  "What of it?"
  "Rudi is very good at his work. He has crewed in the Grand Prix for Le
  Ma,is."
  Flix turned to go. Her feet wanted to rush. Her will said, "Wait."
  Standing above her, he watched her go down the stairs fast. He called after
  her. "Do not forget. The river promenade."
  She hurried, then remembered that she wanted to lead him a little snore.
  He was eager, more sure of her. "If you should be walking any afternoon by
  the Ninetieth Street dock-that is where I do some fishing."
   "For what?"
   "A few cod, an eel. Just to take the air."
  It was so patent a pretense that she wondered what he was covering. What
  does he really do here? Why did she feel compelled to force herself
  perversely into it? To uncover it? Entrap and control his deviousness? And
  instantly she thought, This is what Rob does. So that on a parallel course
  Flix seemed to look two ways: into the safe security of everything Rob
  protected her from; and this beckoning of danger. Once and for all really
  to know.
   "It is the bulkhead by the firehouse. A Marine station."
   "Yes," Flix smiled. "I know the place."
  He jumped down the five steps to put his eyes on a level with hers. But as
  be reached out for her, she was frightened. Rushing, she turned, made the
  fifth landing, the fourth, down and around, fast, fast.
   The amused laugh followed her.

  He was leaning from a window ledge, chin jutted on brown arms, watching
  her.
74        Noel Pierce

  Fix mingled among the children on the sidewalk, jostled and jerking away
  from the ball game, the skipping rope. She felt she took some perilous
  protection from the children. Yet, there was none.
  He was up there, staring down into her lifted eyes.
  Dropping her head, shaken, she turned to walk quickly away. Lower down, at
  the front of the building, her eye tailed the image of a birdlike face
  behind the curtains. A glint of silver combs, a lace collar, a brooch. A
  window shade fell. Flix shivered, hurrying away.
  Mrs. Sunbeam had been at home, after all.

             14
  From the beginning, the way the birthday dinner started for the Herr
  Minister, it had gone wrong for Mrs. Sunbeam.
  Perhaps because of nerves, fumbling through the laying of the silver,
  getting the salad forks mixed with the fish forks, she had at the last
  minute fled to the kitchen wing, slapped makeup on her plain face, and put
  on her wig. She had marched in bearing-the soup plates. Under the thin,
  silvered hair the formal cap of wig curls pricked her scalp. She saw
  Madam's eyes widen, startled; the Mister with cocked head, thinking his
  cop's thoughts. The old man gave her one piercing stare.
  When it was over, she had snatched off her apron, caught up her coat and
  run for the elevator.
  Gg was waiting for her, in her room.
  "You are doing well, Olga. I am pleased with you."
  She said in fierce German: "I hate myself." And caught up her knitting,
  clicking away with the needles.
  "And Madam, how did she look tonight? What did she wear?"'
  "Her jewels." Stab . . . stab. "Cloth of -gold . . . ." Stab,
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    75

 click, stab. "Do not ask me. I have had enough." She put the yarn down and
 sighed.
  "You have just begun."
  "You must stop. She is too good. Leave her alone. Do not involve the wife,
  I tell you."
  "Who are you to tell me?"
  "No. There is one time in your life when you cannot have this."
   He laughed and went on smoking.
   "Make the coffee."
   She got up and put the pot on the stove.
   "Where is the schnapps?"
  She went and got the decanter, poured it in his cup. It was the cup she
  kept for him, with the gold crown encrusted, as on his cuff links, his
  wallet, his sweaters, his pajamas, his sports shirts.
   He said again, "What I want I will have."
   "You are mad if you think you can."
  "Very well." He laughed. "Das ist wunderschon, this kind of madness."
   "He will kill you if you touch her."
  "My poor Olga, who is to know? She will not tell him. I promise you. She
  will say nothing."
  He went on smoking, satisfied. The clicking needles stabbed harder. To
  placate her, he reached out for a stracid
 of yellow wool. "What is it you do?"'
   "A mitten. For the--for the little girls."
   "I have seen them with her, in the park."
  She stopped knitting. "You watch them?"
  He shrugged.
  "I will not have it," she said fiercely.
  "Who are you to tell me what you will not have?"
 She put away the knitting and folded her hands tightly. "So," he said, "we
 start on die Kinder next."
 She thought rapidly. "With whom do you plan it?"
 "The balloon man. Like the peddler, he will cooperate." "Do not do to him
 as you did the peddler."
 "So, Batfowler, you get a soft heart in your old age?"
 "It is for the children. So small to be afraid."
  "We do it so they are not harmed. I would not harm her children."
  "But her-madam-you would harm?"
  "Nein. Never. She is too pretty." He looked at her sharply. "You are
  concerned?"
76        Noel Pierce

  "They are in my charge."
  "Do not worry." He looked around the cheaply furnished, clean, bare room.
  "You have sacrificed for me. I do not forget my old one." He was about to
  kiss her cheek and say gute Nacht when-at the contact-she drew back with
  aversion. He stood over her, frowning, then went out and shut the door. She
  locked it, pressed her face to the boards, gripping the yellow wool mitten.

  The big bed, this tune, was neither vast nor chilly. Rob, wearing the
  domino silk pajamas Flix had bought him, was leaning on his arm watching
  her scribbling away on a pad. She was an avid puzzle fan. He watched the
  lamplight on her hair.
  "Ask me some words. I'll fill you in."
  She was seeing a sunburnt chest above her on a tenement stair. The small
  blue letters tattooed on it.
  "What is an acrostic that all the vowels, put together, stand for?"
   "Dunno." Sleepily, "Never heard of the beast."
  "Five vowels." She prodded him with her elbow. "Don't yawn. Think."
  "Can't. Too much brandy on top of champagne, on top of you."
  "A E I O U," the pencil scribbled. "Don't be coarse, darling. It was a good
  party. Don't you think Grandfather enjoyed himself?"
  "I thought the old man looked like he'd been shot through a cannon when
  Mrs. Sunbeam served the soup."
  "It must have been that wig," Flix said. "It put me off."
  "Don't you know the refinements of the old by this time? Sad little
  sprucers-up? A false fringe, a red hat, a sprig of flowers on May Day. It
  peps them up like wearing lace drawers to mass."
  "Or just wearing drawers." Flix laughed. "She looked a fright. I was
  furious with her."
  "It meant something to her," Rob said. "She wanted to be in-some sort of
  disguise." He wondered why.
  "Tabby says she wears the wig in the park."
  "What for? Who's she fooling?"
  "To look different. Doesn't everybody?"
  Who did the old woman want to look different for? He thought it over,
  uneasily.
  Side by side in the wide bed they pursued their sep-
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   77

 crate thoughts-he, busy with conjectures, his mind knocking at other doors:
 Mrs. Sunbeam, who didn't you want to see at the dinner tonight? He went over
 the guestselderly, monied, diplomatic staff wives, old crony husbands, a
 banker, a lawyer. a Senator, a young couple he and Flix bridged with. Rob
 checked them off, knowing from the start it was Grandfather the old Polish
 woman confronted.
  Flix was thinking: He lives in a tenement in pseudo poverty. He got our
  unlisted number. He calls me on the nights Rob is out. She saw him again
  smiling down at her.
  Rob was summing up an odd encounter with the patriarch. After the party
  guests had gone, leaving him to a cigar with Grandfather and an old brandy,
  Flix bad gone out in the kitchen to speak to the butler.
  Rob had waited until the old man got his cigar going.
   "Sir, what were you like as an ambassador?"
   "I am not `sir,' Robert."
  "Okay, Grandfather I'm holding out a hand to you. I advise you to take
  it."'
   ..Why?,.

   "Because you're in some kind of danger."
  The old man was silent.
   "What was it like, then? Your life-"
  "Oh, like any wealthy, minor diplomat in those daysthe 1930's. I was posted
  to a small country that people can hardly spell anymore. I had a marvelous
  time. I had my wits. I was resourceful."
  "What did you have to be resourceful about?"
  "Oh, bits and pieces. Nothing came up locally I couldn't handle."
   "You aren't telling me anything."
  "Am I meant to?"
  ..Yes."

  "Why, Robert?"
  "You worry now about things that must have begun then."
  "Nothing happened. It was just . . . a charmed world, before the Nazi
  invasions. You know your history. I came home, with a few honors,
  comfortablv retired."
  "I think you went through something you won't talk about."
  "Doesn't everyone?"
  "I'm a government agent, Grandfather."
78        Noel Pierce

 "Well, I'm not under oath."
 Rob grinned. They smoked.
  Grandfather said finally, "What is there to add? It was a world of lavish
  spending, titled heads, grand dukes and duchesses-the great house parties
  and balls. Artificial, yes. You had a foreboding that under all the
  trappings there was something ugly. Something that could haunt ydu. But I
  was a head higher, shrewder than the blooded, stupid, aristocratic crowd I
  shot with, danced and did diplomatic business with. That's how I kept my
  job."
  "What was your particular business?"
  The old man's cigar ash wavered, fell. "To listen to everyone, and keep my
  mouth shut, keep the protocol peace. Isn't that the diplomatic round?"
  "You must have seen and heard things that appalled you."
  "Of course I did. Troops deserting, the generals plotting, everyone
  jockeying for power."
   "Were you involved in any of it?"
   "No."
  "Sure?"
  "My boy, life is too subtle and painful to live it as God and the State
  Department want us to. Why can't you take things as they come? I did.
  That's all."
   "All you'll tell me?"
  "I'll see to my own affairs."
  "There's something you want to get off your chest that you can help me
  with." You stubborn old bastard, he thought. "Why won't you trust me?"
  "Very well. I'll help you in the only way I can. Some woman in this
  neighborhood keeps calling me, to make a date with me."
  "You know who she is?"
  "I think so, yes."
  "You'd better keep out of it."
  "No. I'll settle with Liese my way."
  Liese-the name clicked. Rob heard Jason saying, "One of gg's confederates
  runs a cafe-we think, an old flame of your wife's grandfather . . . . 11
  "If you see her, let me know."
  "Perhaps."
  Rob took out a card and wrote a number on it. "This will reach me day or
  night."
  Grandfather tucked it in his pocket. He had a little
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    79

 trouble heaving his bulk up. He looked at Rob and hesitated. "This . . .
 waitress you had tonight. Who is she?"
  "An old Polish woman from the neighborhood. The children's nurse."
  "I see."
  "What did you see?"
  "Even in that frowsy hairpiece . . . she reminded me of a much younger
  face."
  "Who would that be?"
  "A slender young girl, a slip of a thing, with an air. . . :'
  "Of what?" i "Watchfulness."
  "Who did she watch over?"
  "She'd. have been-let's see-a house servant to an old royalist family ....
  No, it's fantastic."
  "You knew the old Prussian families like the palm of your hand."
  "Dozens of them."
  "And the sons, too?"
  "Yes, the sons." He thought of the Prussian face of the driver of the
  vintage Mercedes that had tracked Felicia. "They were cynical,
  self-indulgent, with extravagant tastes. A wild lot. Utterly dissolute. No,
  this old woman could not possibly be-" But he stopped.
  Between her thumb on the soup dish, and her averted glance, standing beside
  his chair, he had looked up hard and stared directly into Olga
  Czhenzunska's pale face. It was a flashing instant. The thumb settling his
  turtle soup under his snooping nose. Every sleeping gun on the duchy border
  had roared in his ears. He was back again in an hour of terror, fighting
  for his life. Filled with a kind of old, piercing shame, he had sat with
  lowered eyes over his soup plate, watching he: hand tremble as it moved
  away.
   "No," he decided, "it was nothing. I was mistaken."
  It had been a trick of the eye, he decided. As though, staring hard at the
  old waitress tonight, across the flowers and the candle flame he had seen,
  metamorphosed, the face of a young woman. A pert, triangular face,
  fine-boned as now. But then she had vivacity, a lightning command of a
  precocious child, scolding, cuffing him like a puppy who had wet the rug.
  What had she worn? Some kind of stiff, starched uniform with black
  patent-leather shoes and old-fashioned buttons. Once in a sleigh, with a
  coachman on the box-as he was getting into his long black official
80       Noel Pierce

 limousine he had seen her drive out with the child. She wore a kind of
 cloak, a cape. Emblazoned on the armband were the feudal colors of the Von
 Gottfrieds. And in her hat a jaunty cockade. ,He had stood in the snow and
 waved at them . . . entrancing picture, like a foreign postcard: "Alpine
 sleigh ride amid snow-laden pines." Had they waved, looked back? No. Her
 lifted chin had seemed to cut the winter air like ice. As it had tonight.
  It would have been about then, he remembered, that his affair with Liese
  began.
  And trying to equate the old waitress with a servant from the Von Gottfried
  schloss-doubly compounded with the disturbing note from Liese, asking him
  to meet her again -he felt a deep alarm. It was too close. He had better,
  after all, warn Robert and Felicia. But- Nothing might come of it. Let it
  alone. In his car, going home, Grandfather jerked out a pill and swallowed
  it. Dyspepsial No. He bad a bad stomach from life.

  Rob woke up again between swoops and falls of queasy sleep. "Candy is
  dandy, liquor is quicker." . . . "Wine and whiskey . . . makes a man
  frisky." (Well, it had.) What was the rest of it? Some old barman's bible
  that said: "Gin and girls, wine and women, brandy and boys . . . ." The
  three ages of man. He reached for the water carafe, rinsed away a taste of
  metal. What was it that nagged on the edge of memory?
  Flix slept. The pencil lay on the bedspread, with the pad. He leaned over
  her and stared at it. She stirred.
  The vowel letters of her puzzle went jigging across his mind like a kid's
  .alphabet.
  He said in her ear: "Wake up. I've got it. Your anagram."
  "What is it?"
  "A 1; 10 U."
  "What does it mean?"
  "Austrian est imperari orbi uiuverso."
  Every pore listened to him.
  "Which means?"
  "Austria's empire is overall universal. She lives forever."
15
  
  On that day a fat man with bandied legs and a ready smile drifted from
  nowhere over the parched grass carrying balloons for sale.
  A black one, a shiny licorice tied with a yellow feather, bobbed sluggishly
  among the rainbow-colored ones. It floated slightly lower than the rest.
  ("Don't buy them any popcorn or balloons, Mrs. Sunbeam." "No, Mister." Flix
  had protested. "But the girls collect the Cracker Jack prizes. They swap
  them a! school." "They can ride the pony or the carousel. But I don't want
  anything 1 don't know about rubbing off on their skins or filling their
  bottomless tummies. Okay?" Sobered, Flix had given this edict some anxious
  thought. Popcorn could be-poisoned. Balloons? How could they harm a child?)
  As the twins came in with Mrs. Sunbeam, Tabitha bounced with impatience to
  tell her bubbling nonsense about their antics in the park. "Mummy, where
  are you?"
   "Here, button nose." She peeled off Tabitha's jumper.
   "We saw you in the park, Mummy."
   Mrs. Sunbeam watched her.
  "You saw someone else. I was at a scout meeting. Remember den mother?"
  Tessa weighed the chances of a fib, "Mummy, she was you." Flix jerked a
  boot off, stilled her shaking hands, and retrieved a button. Mrs. Sunbeam
  watched her.
   "Gute Nacht, Madam." Her eves were cautious, sad.
   "Good night, Olga." Flix looked at her, looked away.
  Quiet Tessa waited her turn at being peeled. "The mayor wasn't up yet."
  Flix turned, grateful for the diversion. "What a dirty, adorable daughter
  you are."

                81
82        Noel Pierce

 "Mummy, you don't listen."
  "All right, Tabby. How do you know the mayor wasn't up?þ
   "Because the shutters to his window were closed."
   "There were a lot of cops in the park," Tessa said.

  A lot of cops, she thought, wth a nervy jerk at Tessa's sleeves. "How do
  you know where the mayor sleeps?"

  "Oh, everyone in Carl Schurz Park knows. The kids and the hockey boys don't
  yell outside his house. The guard in the booth shuts us up. He knows who we
  are."
   "How could he?"
  "I mean-he knows whose kids we are. He knows Daddy."
   Tessa said, "Daddy isn't home much."
   "No more than the mayor is, I expect. Busy men."
   "Where is Daddy now?"
   "I don't know. Stand still."
   "You pulled my hair."

  Flix sat back, her nerves hammering, and brushed the two blond heads more
  gently.
   Casually, "A lot of cops around the park?"
  Tabitha kicked off her drawers. "Yup. The caps' cars were all in a circle.
  The sirens screamed. Tess and I screamed too. Then we went to Eighty-sixth
  Street."
  Flix said mechanically, "What were you doing way over there?"
   "Mrs. Sunbeam took us to a shop."
   "Why?"
   "She had to make a telephone call."
   "What about?"
  They didn't know. "But she bought us a bag of marzipan to eat while she was
  on the phone."
  "But I told her-she was never to take you .... I mean, you are not to eat
  things from a strange store."
  The little girls, naked, pink-skinned waiting for their bath, looked at
  something haggard in their mother's face. They suffered the combing,
  restless hands that hurt their scalps. They loved her and were silent. This
  was Mummy. She could hurt them. But that she could be upset was a fear that
  locked them in queasy silence.
  "I expect the mayor wanted to sleep. He's tired."
  "Like Daddy?"
  "Things get him down, too." She picked a gold hair from the comb and wound
  it around a nervous finger.
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   83

  Tessa, the practical: "But why didn't the cop car sirens wake up the
  mayor?"
  "I don't know, darling. Perhaps the alarm wasn't for him." Then for whom?
  Tabitha, the extrovert: "Were the cops looking for someone?"
  "I don't know, darling." But perhaps-
  "He's someone," Tabitha decided, "who lives around here."
  "There's roast beef for dinner. Yorkshire pudding. Applesauce and
  gingerbread men." But their appetites didn't rise to the bait.
  "Maybe," Tessa said, "everyone in the mayor's house was hiding under his
  bed."
  Tabitha nodded. "I'll bet they were scared. Like we were, Mummy."
  "Of what?"
  "The tall man who came up to us. He wanted to buy me the black balloon. And
  a pink one for Tessa."
  Did he know the children? Had he tried to buy them thins?
  Flix said sternly, "You mustn't ever take anything from strangers."
  Chilling thoughts troubled the secure living room. A black balloon among
  the pink ones . . . black beast . . . bete noire, the old tales called it
  "thorn in the side" . . . "bitter in the cup" . . . wasn't there an old
  superstition that the black sheep bore the devil's mark? Her children had
  been touched with something dark on a bright afternoon.
  Little girls should dance in pink ballet tights, carry rainbow pinwheels,
  munch Cracker Jack, feed robins . . . not be frightened, tempted by
  strangers.
  "What did the tall man look like?"
  Tabby said, "Like a prince. He had a bee-utiful gold chain around his
  neck."
  "You didn't take anything from the balloon man?"
  She spread their palms open as if to scrub off stigmata. And again the
  girls watched something haggard and strange in their mother's face.
  "Silly Mummy." Tabitha was the first to reassure her. "I told him the pink
  one was much prettier." She prattled on to try and make Mummy not look so
  puckery and white.
  "But before he could give the pink one to Tabby," Tessa said, "he opened
  his hand and it drifted away."
84       Noel Pierce

  So might a stray leaf flutter on a jumping pulse. He had let the pink one
  go. Why taunt and tease her children?
  "Your father and I have told you girls never to talk to anyone loitering on
  the street."
  "But we don't, ever, Mummy-except the tall man was so nice and friendly."
  "And where was Mrs. Sunbeam?"
 "She'd gone to the ladies' room='
  "She has a bladder complaint," Tessa said, reasonably.
  "A weakness of the kidney," Tabitha said, reasonably.
  They were watching her.
  "He wasn't strange to us, Mummy."
  "No? Why not?"
  "Because all the kids and old people talk in the park. It's where we play.
  Gee! What's a fun place without a balloon man? He sells all colors. Like a
  rainbow."
  "Did he speak to the man . . . the one with the gold chain?"
  "No, Mummy. He was just walking by."
  "Did the man speak to Mrs. Sunbeam?"
  "No .... Yes. He spoke something to her in a foreign language. She was
  mad," the children remembered. "We thought she was going to hit him with
  her handbag."
  "Except there was the black one." Tabitha made a face. "Such a funny color
  for a balloon. He made me hold it."
  "The yellow feather tickled Tabby's nose."
  "I didn't like it."
  "Why not?"
  "It didn't dance like the others."
 "Why do the pretty colored ones fly so high, Mummy?" "Because the balloon
 man fills them with helium."
  "The black one felt sticky," Tabitha said. "Funny, kind of. I gave it a
  shove. It bounced. sort of. The fat man laughed. He scooped it up and went
  away."
  "What did he do then?"
  "He blew a whistle," Tessa remembered.
  "What kind of a whistle?"
  "A piping sound."
  "Did anyone answer?"
 <. þ No.
 "Yes."
 "Make up your minds."
 The children tried to remember.
 "He made a sound like a bird signal."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    85

 "Who answered?"
  "The prince," Tessa said. "Then he wasn't there anymore."
 "And all this time.. . Mrs. Sunbeam='
  "She was grabbing us close to her and getting mad."
  "Tabby, what did the balloon man look like?"
  The little girl frowned. "Like one of his balloons, Mummy. Fat, round,
  dark, colored red, bouncy, sort of dancing on his heels. Then he seemed
  small and niggly. Dark in the face, then . . . gone off."
  "Why didn't you take the black balloon?"
  Tabitha looked at her mother with enormous eyes. "Because I was afraid."
  She began to cry.
  Later, when Flix went to the nursery, Tessa was wide awake in the dark.
  "Mummy," she whispered, "come here."
  "What is it, love?"
  "The tall man . . . the prince with the gold chain?"
  "Yes?"
   "He spoke to you. Why did you fib to us?"
  "What made you think it was me?"
  "Because you were walking Suzy."
  "It's nothing, Tessa. A bad dream."
  But .she had known she was followed. And that Mrs. Sunbeam knew it, too.

              16

  This time Flix sought him out deliberately, angered by the fat balloon man
  for frightening the children. She was up early. There was a snap in the
  wind, the air winelike, sparkling and dry. A sense of urgency hurried her,
  furious at this hounding of the girls. She started out for the bulkhead
  where, among the fishers, she might hook something for which the bait was
  herself. She scooped up the little poodle (Grandfather was in Greensboro
  for a turkey shoot,
86       Noel Pierce

 and they were baby-sitting Suzy). In the hall closet she rummaged for a
 spinner rod in a case, and with the dog on the leash walked over to the East
 End promenade. Roasting coffee beans wafted from a tenement window as she
 passed, mingled with the aroma of boiling molasses. She crossed the wide
 walk decked out over the River Drive. It was lined with strollers, bench
 watchers, baby carriages. Waves churned by tugs and patrol launches slapped
 the rocky shoreline.
  Opposite 90th Street a rough chop of brackish tidewater agitated currents
  ripping in from the distant Sound. ale said, "1 fish along the bulkhead."
  What did he fish for? Here by the Marine Station the scarlet water pumper
  batted slowly at its hawsers.
  She saw the short span of wharf piling. Along the bulkbead 'sat fishermen,
  small boys and old men. They fished with fly casters, bay rods, spinners,
  bamboo poles. Salt rind, bacon scraps, bloodworms, herring, tiny plastic
  belly dancers on a hook, rubber snakes bobbed and trolled. The fishers came
  except when rain drove them off. The salty backwash tossed up a few pale
  tomcod. The little dog barked excitedly.
  Flix buttoned up her coat and, hugging the poodle in, sat down among them.
  They gave way grudgingly. She baited her hook with a chunk of swordfish,
  let the line spin out, and smoked a cigarette.
  "You fish much here, lady? You looking for something?"
  "Why?"
  "It's better walking the dog-up there"-a finger pointing to the hill.
  She passed cigarettes around. They eyed her sullenly.
  After a minute . . . "You looking for that fellow?"
  "Which one?" She let her line run, fingers slack on the reel, waiting.
  "A big guy. Wears a cap."
  "Did he ask for me?"
  A chin-slack teen-ager in a dirty sweat shirt said: "He said to tell him if
  a lady come round."
  "Get your goddamn mutt off," an old man shouted. "He's scaring the eels."
   Flix said, "If you see my friend, tell him I was here."
  She packed up her rod and walked up the curving ramp. The wind had hauled
  and drove in, cutting from the east.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    87

 There were a few bundled-up nursemaids out with toddlers, a roller skater,
 the hockey players. Through the park trees she saw a balloon drift, pink and
 high. She leaned on the railing watching small waves crest below. The little
 dog pressed against her heels. Suddenly it whined.
 "Catch anything?"
  He leaned his arms alongside hers. He had come up silently.
  "What do you call bcr-der Hund?"
  "Suzy. She belongs to my grandfather."
  "Ah, yes. The Grossvater."
  Now I have caught something, she thought.
  "There are legal limits for fishing," he said, amused, "from what can be
  caught. Did you have-how you sayluck?"
  Maybe bad luck. He knows who Grandfather is.
  "There are limits," Mix said, "to what can be taken."
  "Taken?" He stiffened.
  They watched a passing freighter belch smoke at the veiled sun.
  "You know who my daughters are," she began, levelly. "You try to buy them
  things, entice them, talk to them. I won't have it."
  "Die Kinder? It could be anyone who spoke to them. The park is full of
  them-all alike. Why do you say this? You know nothing about me. We meet by
  chance."
  She flushed angrily. "You are causing me a lot of pain and trouble. I wish
  you wouldn't follow me. Why seek me out?"
  "No," he said slowly, his English carefully correct "I should not he doing
  this. But I think of you. I wanted to see you again. It is true I am
  involved here, some work for my country. But I cannot think what it has to
  do with meeting you."
   "I'm beginning to think it has everything."
   "What gives you this information?"
   "Do you think I would tell you if I knew?"
  A sloop clawed its way, keel heavy, across the Hell Gate chop. They watched
  it pass.
  "Let it alone," he said at last, "whatever you are thinking.þ
  "No. I won't let it alone. Don't speak to my children again. Don't follow
  me. Don't foist that dirty old man on
88       Noel Pierce

 them with a black balloon filled with gas. It's dreadful . . . shocking."
  "Do not let us quarrel. We have met. I am in your fife. You do not want to
  be in mine. That is understood."
 Something in his German arrogance affronted her. But 1
 am here. 1 sought him out.
 Her clenched hand lay on the railing. He covered it. "Sie
 sind .so schon."
  The words went through her. She didn't speak or turn. Warm metal lay on her
  hand.
  "You are like Gerda, the daughter of the frost giant, Gymer. Her naked arms
  are bright as sea and air. When I was a small boy-never mind where--I used
  to dream that one night in a room black as velvet, lit by moonlight, I
  would walk over the bodies of women like you, with breasts like yours. Each
  would be a cushion that I walked over in my bare little boy's feet." He
  hesitated. "It is odd. Why should I tell that dream to you?"
   "Have you told it to anyone before?"
   Yes, he thought. To Olga.
   "But I talk too much of me. Tell me about yourself."
   She said coldly, "What is there to say?"
   "Everything or nothing. Whatever you like."
   "What do you think?"
   "That we are alike as two blades of a sword."
  Flix looked at him in astonishment. "You? How could we be anything alike?
  I'm not cruel, as you were to your cat. And as I think you are to people.
  I think you feel terror that something soft and vulnerable-like a woman you
  can beat up-makes bearable. I am fully, happily married. In that way, I am
  whole. I don't think you are."
  "Let me speak my thoughts about you," be said. "You are of great
  refinement. You have breeding, culture, as in the continental elegance of
  the old Europe. Accustomed to life of privilege and gaiety. Then you make
  a marriage with the cop-you are surprised that I know?"
  "He isn't a cop," Flix said. "He's a high officer of the government."
  "Ja, I know. You marry Herr Cop against everything you are accustomed to.
  You live now a dull life with one who is a hardworking police official. So?
  You give up the gaiety, the diplomatic parties, the privilege of being the
  Herr Ambassador's granddaughter. Do you look back? Do you rtriss the grand
  life?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    89

  "And you?" She turned. "What is it you do?" Or pretend to do?
  "Me, I have many interests. Mostly it is history. From Munich, nova and
  then, a little money comes. My tastes are expensive"-he laughed-"but like
  many of my country, when the old Prussian aristocracy is-how you say broken
  apart"-he snapped his fingers-"I live in the foreign quarter. Here in
  Yorkville where they speak the langua,ae, I am at home."
  It didn't come off. He was too dismissive of his "poverty," too modest.
  Flix had seen the gold lighter, the Turkish ovals. knew the cut of a
  custom-made jacket around high, muscular shoulders. She had seen him drive
  the big Mercedes.
  Now she noticed his fishing rod, propped against the railing. It had a
  peculiar, thick middle rib section, a heavy tip. The cylindrical handle was
  imbedded in a tube of metal-bound cork. Strange gear to use for sluggish
  cod in shallow water off a city dock.
  Mix reached for it, curious. He struck her hand quickly aside, sheathed the
  rod in a leather case, and stood it away from her.
  "In seven seas I have fished with this one, the Atlantic, Pacific, Baltic,
  Caspian, Adriatic, Mediterranean, the North Sea. There I hit into the big
  fish. I like even to shoot garfish with the steel-ribbed arrow." He laughed
  with sudden pleasure. "It rips the gut out of them."
  "The compleat mangler."
  "Pardon?"
  "Nothing. A bad joke."
  Between their heels, drooping at being ignored, the poodle backed away from
  him and barked in piercing yelps, snarling up at him, her teeth bared.
  Flix pulled her in. "Shut up, Suzy."
  He didn't mind. "Except I detest the breed. Once your poodle was of the
  circus dogs of old Europe, eating from the garbage, stealing a bone from,
  a hungry performer. Now look at her, sniveling if I touch your hand. In
  Bavaria we have brave animals, the Weimaraners, mastiffs, the great Hund
  breed, the shepherds. They kill. They are huge, with bone and muscle and
  great heart."
  "You admire courage."
  "Naturlich."
  "I understand you better as you are."
90        Noel Pierce

 "How is it I am?"
 "Sick with same fear of yourself."
  "Bitte?" He was startled. A hard blue stare swept her face.
  "Inside you are afraid," Flix went on. "Too careful. Too correct.. What you
  are hiding?"
  "I? Hide?" His caution wavered.
  "I think you want to find something, kill something, someone."
   "For what? Who?"
   "How should I know?"
   "But you said-"
  He gripped her hand. The contact flowed through her. He turned her palm
  over and pulled it up to his mouth.
   At their feet the little dog panted, darting eyes watching.
  He let her go. "You wanted me to touch you. The little dog bitch, she knew
  it."
  Flix closed her burning palm.
   "I feel like a bitch myself."
   "Come back to my place. Let us talk more."
  "There is one thing I want from you."
  "I will give it to you. Anything. Meet me again."
  "I must think how to manage it."
  "What is it you want of me?"
  "I want to know why you lied to me. You're not poor. This expensive
  camera." She flicked it. "This big rod from seven oceans. Your jacket. The
  gold neck chain. The Mercedes. What about that tenement you pretend to live
  in? This pretense of studying history when you're up to your neck in
  something else? Your sly digs about my husband .... Your mention of my
  grandfather . . . that you knew he was an ambassador .... The way you've
  hounded me and my daughters in a public park .... How did you get your
  hands on my unlisted number? One my husband doesn't know you have? This is
  what I want of you." She flung out her hand. "I don't even know your family
  name. But you know ours. How do you think this makes me feel? Scared? That
  a person like me should have anything to do with you? Well, I shock myself.
  If you want to know the truth, I think I will see you again."
  He stood back from her. His heels came together. He bowed. "When?"
  "On my time," she said as coldly. "I will arrange it." And walked away.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    91

  Harris, on his bench, behind a copy of the Irish Echo, watched the chief's
  wife swing down the river walk, head high, the poor little panting poodle
  scrabbling to keep up. He clamped his jaws in dismay. Couldn't Mrs. Rob at
  least stay home and get a hot meal on the table when her man was on this
  son-of-a-bitching case? Tag her as he must, he hadn't counted on her
  meeting some man on the side.

             17
  Rain hit the darker=ing streets with a drumming smash. Rob slid silently
  out of bed, dressed rapidly in an old shirt and drill jacket. He buckled on
  a storm coat, took his Smith & Wesson .38 from the wall safe, picked up a
  bullet clip and let himself out.
  Yorkville spread out block by block, like Jason's map. Hairline crosses
  intersected where backyards meandered past dark cellars and basement exits.
  The man lived in one of these blocks. Rain like this would empty the
  streets and fill the local bars.
  He walked past cluttered entryways. The downpour smacked between his
  shoulders like a shower of water flung from a pail. Hunch drew him. He
  hesitated as a man at a strange crossroad pulls instinctively to right or
  left, not knowing why.
  Between two dilapidated tenements with boarded-up windows he stopped again.
  A feeling of encounter prickled.
  He sighted down an alleyway fit by a misty light at the far end. A
  sho`'ulder turned, a bulk fattened against wet brick. A cap jerked down.
  Long legs vaulted a rear fence. Then the wet curtain fell.
  He stared down between the dismal areaways. No one was in sight. A spotted
  Dalmatian coach dog gnawed at the rim of a trash can. Rob whistled softly,
  snapped his fingers. "Here, boy. In. Heel." The dog scented something, a
  man smell it sought.
92        Noel Pierce

  He combed the lonely block. The dog followed him. The man might be. in a
  hundred different places. He took out his two-way radio, revved up the call
  signal and heard staccato beeps of static. He checked the impulse to talk
  to Jason's team. Although this was a priority network intensely concerned
  with him, he wanted to work out the problems for himself. Far off a braying
  laugh sounded. What's the joke? he thought, walking the gutter-rushing
  streets.
  He made himself an emptiness. Think of nothing. Make this total
  concentration an open, listening cell. Follow the dog. Around the next
  corner, halfway down the dark block, a jukebox blared. The raucous blast
  rose and fell with the open-shut of a door. It came from a bar nearby. The
  coughing explosion of a sports car shot past and skidded to a stop by the
  far corner. No one got out. Between his heels the thin Dalmatian whined
  hungrily. He shoved it off. The hound butted at him. Why? Animal need. For
  what? Companionship, love, a full belly. Follow the forlorn, lonely dog.
  Rob stroked its spotted ears. "What are you trying to tell me?" The wet
  muzzle took his skin smell, jerked away disconsolately. "Okay. Not me. Who
  is he?"
  Where would a suspect go, not knowing he was on the wanted list? To
  someplace warm, communal. To a bar. A place where damp customers steamed
  out. Wet night for ducks, mister. Move over, Joe. Pour me another, missus.
  The rain is rough. The tap is full. The heat is on. Rock music blares. In
  the back room the local hoods dance with the pale, scrawny tart kids o$ the
  stoops. He eyed the flashing signs.

  MIKE'S COUNTER, HAMBURGER HARRY'S, FRITZIE'S FISH

  FRY', YOU RING, WE BRING. THE TEXAS CHILE JOINT,

  NEVER A DULL LULL.

  The dog had stopped. Rob stiffened as if at a jab in the back. He was in
  front of Al and Lottie's AlpenstockEdelweiss Bar.
  Husband and wife were two white, suet pie faces staring at him out the bar
  window. They made absurd Grant Wood caricatures. No devil held a pitchfork
  between them but a seamy concupiscence flattened their expressions. A
  rubber stamp canceling out goodwill. He stared in at them. As married
  couples are said to grow alike, Al and Lottie
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    93

 had a complicity of beaming greed for the ring of the cash register.
  He pushed open the door and looked around. Over the bar a sign garlanded
  with gnomes and edelweiss said:

  A GOOD PLACE FOR NICE PEOPLE. LADIES WELCOME.

  BRING THE KIDS. NO CHECKS CASHED.

  Blinking, he put on thick-lensed glasses, shaking off a sluice of
  raindrops.
  "Some night for ducks, mister."
  Lottie waddled up to him. Her mean little eyes glinted.
  "You want a nice table? Meeting someone?" Shrewdly she worked him over.
  Motherly Lottie was about as harmless as a nursing snake adder.
  "The bar's okay. I'd like a draft beer."
  "We have a nice girl. My husband's sister's niece?"
  "Some other time."
  "You working tonight?"
  He nodded, peering around. The crowded bar was Lshaped. .At the far end two
  customers were arguing. One in a black leather motorcycle jacket, and a
  tall man with high shoulders.
  The spotted coach dog had slithered in behind him, sniffing legs until it
  reached the far end. The dog laid its head back and let out a belling call.
  Rob saw a leathergloved hand jolt the wet snout shut with a hard chop.
  Al, tending the beer pumps, shook his head. "The Hund, he don't like
  Lottie's pooch. That's why he makes such a hell of a. blunderbuss."
  Al had a deep, sepulchral tone. He rubbed hamhock fists on a dirty blue bar
  apron. Then, prissily, fed Lottie's dog hunks of kielbasa. Lottie cushioned
  her fat little mutt under a massive armpit. "Lover Girl likes you, mister.
  You want to buy my little one a dish of something?"
  "Okay. Sure." Rob fished in his pocket for a dollar. Lottie worked down the
  crowded room, joshing the customers. Steam clouded Rob's glasses. He took
  them off and wiped the lenses. He put down his beer and went to the
  cigarette machine. He inched along the bar counter.

  "Mister, you want another?"
  "Draw him off a schooner, Al," Lottie yelled. "Poor fellow, he don't see so
  good." Money disappeared in her red-nailed maw. Forget the change, her
  glinting eyes said.
94       Noel Pierce

 She read him for a shabby workman down on his luck. Among her regulars he
 wouldn't start a row. Lottie knew her types. He was a guy who wanted to get
 in out of the rain and get whatever monkey was riding him off his back.
  The tall man turned his head and looked at the newcomer.
  "I'll have a sandwich." Rob chomped at the coarse black bread and spicy
  sausage Lottie plunked down. The bureau had a file on places like this off
  the docks. But nothing conclusive. Essentially the Alpenstock was on their
  WPOW file (who pays off, why?). They would keep their noses out of A1 and
  Uttie's place until something hit the fan.
  Nothing had. Rob recalled that the bartender, Al, had an agitator
  rock-hurler record, during the old brewery labor strikes. Somehow he and
  Lottie had scrounged the capital to open their bar and grill. On city rent
  books they owned this building between a laundry and a grocery. It was a
  meeting place for seamen's clubs, soccer teams, and backroom betting pools.
  All clear as mud. Working with information from local vice squad cops, the
  results were negligible. Let something break-but nothing had. A lighter
  flicked on. He saw a head bend to a fiat, Turkish cigarette. What had the
  pink man said? "Caesar haircut, a bum with a gold lighter. . . expensive
  tastes, shoddy clothes . . . ." Rob blinked thoughtfully into his beer.
  Arrogant elbows blocked space on either side to other customers. Who did
  dog and man wait for? Why did the spotted hound, quivering and eager, get
  its snout belted shut?
  "Ein cognac?" Al said. "Coming up." Rob watched the schnapps move down the
  counter to a disdainful hand. And again the man's eyes drifted over him
  casually, slid away. He chewed his hot Polish sausage, rinsed it down.
  One Turkish cigarette lights from cork butt tip of the last. Space in the
  jammed barroom is still held open. No one argues. Or money has been passed.
  Who is afraid of him? Look them over. Panderers, local toughs, pimps for
  sex kicks, you buy it, mister, they do it with their boots on. There is
  nothing gemftlich about Al and Lottie's "good place for nice people,"
  reeking of boiled kraut, pig's hock, beer taps, sweat, urinals, damp
  raincoats, musty woolens. Of shawls die Alten wear, and rumpled codpiece
  pants of the young construction workers out with their busty girls in
  turtlenecks and hip-huggers; the nightly cult of the un-
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    95

 combed. Seamy but workable cover. Easy payoff bets among the
 semiprofessional athletes, hookers, pimps, hustlers, bookmakers for the
 sports clubs. Suds flow, washed down with boilermaker schnapps. Reassuring
 parched throats that, while it's wet outside, here in a bucket of Pilsner
 and raw whiskey is a letup from a thirst for something to fill the grind of
 boredom and poverty. As Jason said, "A good cover."
  But oddly, there are nice people here, of the neighborhood. The old ones.
  Drink a little, laugh a little, pass the crummy night away. The
  foreign-tongued housewife in her hair rollers and platform pumps, enjoying
  heavy bottom pinching with the janitor next door. Sailors off the freight-
  ers with their giggling, perspiring pickup girls. And, Rob was sure, foot
  police in plain clothes. In from the rain for a quick one, pig's knuckle
  and red cabbage in the back room ("It's on the house, boys, drink up, eat
  up good.")
  Someone drew them here. Someone attracted them. Someone paid for the side
  bets. And when the betting stopped? When an honored justice who pronounced
  the death sentence on Nazi war criminals puts on his dress clothes for a
  last State dinner in Washington? No west wind could blow and clean it up by
  then. It was dirty here, blowing a death reek from the east. And the
  assassin's timetable running out.
  The front door swung open. He looked up. Rudi stood in the doorway.
  The face looked older than the photo Jason had showed him. He was a mixture
  of flashy savagery, a seaman's knitted cap, blue turtleneck, an expensive
  black leather cycle jacket, silver studded, with zippered pockets. Al and
  Lottie tailed him, making joking diversions. At the sports club tables
  greetings were shouted, a thumping of beer mugs. The dog pelted to Rudi,
  its frantic tail whacking against black-booted legs. Saliva dripped in a
  joyful bark. Rudi knelt and put his arms around the Dalmatian. He said in
  German, "Do not start another fight with that stupid bitch of Lottie's.
  Stand. Behave. Look. I feed you now." He flung down a wedge of sausage, and
  turned to his companion.
  The privileged space was filled. Rob moved closer to them. A draft blew
  from the exit door at the back. The older man put a threadbare greatcoat
  around his shoulders.
  Think about the coat. Most Yorkville bar regulars wore
96        Noel Pierce

 foreign or domestic army issue, like a kind of crazy kids' masquerade
 patchwork outfit. Jackboots, yachting caps, ersatz guardsman mufflers,
 Carnaby jackets, bell-bottomed pants, wide belts, bristling with metal brads
 and buckles. This had the swagger of a bygone royal regiment. Worn for
 kicks, it was a curiosity. Worn with grace as this man did, it had command.
 The coat told him something. In the musty cloth, a decay. The way he could
 tell from rotting leaves if a dead child underlay the innocence of fern. In
 tracking suspects he had sensed it before-this peculiar smell about humans,
 animals. It was primitive, unmistakable. It spoke in sweat glands that
 invite or reject. An odor of blood that to trained intelligence was
 irrefutable. As evidence in court, it was hogwash. .
  But the coat, like a piece of goods in his hand from a European flea
  market, tried to inform him. The man down the bar had a bronzed, patrician
  face. He looked freshly healthy. He would use pine soap, European tobacco,
  English cologne. About him was a look of cruelty.
  Rudi was on his second double cognac. The spotted dog had worked on its
  haunches to lay its jowl on the toe of a polished jackboot. It hadn't
  touched the sausage.
  They drank, not speaking. The man was still, as if his nerves listened. He
  shifted the coat on his shoulders. Rudi reached for his hand. Impatient,
  flushed, eager, he threaded his companion's gloved fingers.
  "So? Brfiderschaft." They drank. Rudi's blue-eyed pettishness slipped.
  Hunger, adoration raised to the older man.
  In an almost womanish caress he dropped his palm fiat and stroked the
  other's groin.
   Something happened in the contact.
  It was a lightning revulsion that shot pain into Rudi's hand, smashing it
  flat on the bar. He grunted. Sweat beaded his contorted face. He forced
  himself to smile. He sucked his swelling fingers, tasting the pain,
  watching his companion.
  Lottie, the peacemaker, jostled up and linked her fat arms around them,
  setting Poochie on the counter between them.
  "So? We are all one nice happy family, boys," she said uncertainly, "Look
  now mein Poochie she wants to be friends, no?"
  The older man laughed, his neck swelling. With a contemptuous flick he
  batted the poodle off the counter.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    97

  Al's anxious face bloated. He stepped back slowly. Lottie squatted and
  picked up her stunned pet, cooing to it. They continued to back off from
  the man. As if to say: "It is all right for now. Just do not do anything
  more." He ignored them. Rob watched them subdue their pain and fear, as the
  dog had done to its jaw, and Rudi to his smashed band.
  Rob worked the last of his beer along, ran the malt over a tensing of his
  mouth. He took out a flat tin box of Holland sigaren-Schimmelpennick Duets,
  with a painting of a Dutch maiden bordered in a wreath of tulips on the
  lid. It was minutely perforated. Inside was the tape. Rob gave the lid a
  flip and began to count how long the tape would run.
  They started to argue, low-voiced, using an Austrian village dialect. He
  strained to catch the phrases, over the beat of rock.
  ". . . Next, the Syrup Man. He would not do as directed. We cannot use him.
  You must shut his mouth, Rudi. Close his shop. You know how I wish it to be
  done?"
  "No . . . nein. Ich cannot."
  "You do not do as directed. The Syrup Man is next."
  "And you? . . . It is crazy . . . she will get you into bad trouble . . .
  ."
  "You are jealous, pretty boy. I know what I do."
  "No, nein . . . you should be out of here. Why do you delay for the wife?"
  "She is giving me many useful things about them . . . about the location,
  and if they are drawing close to me . . . ."
  "But this you know. We have it from Munich."
  "Nein, Rudi, she will give me all when I am through with her, the facts of
  where they try to track me . . . ."
  "I tell you he will kill you, the spying shit of a cop. He will shoot you
  if he finds out that she-"
  "Shut your verdammte mouth. Do not tell me my business."
  "But I must. . . I could kill her for this, myself. Maybe I will track her
  down, wring that neck. If I could get my hands on her, I would . . . ."
  "Your jealousy is tiresome. It is you, Rudi, who should be out of the way."
  "Then they will know in Munich what you do to me, that I have tried to warn
  you . . . to stop you. la, you have
98        Noel Pierce

 women before on a job. They know, they expect .... But she? Bitte, for God's
 sake not the wife."
 "What harm can she do?"
  "You cannot see it? To take her and screw her, la .... But do it. Get the
  fucking over with. If you do not you will get us blown. It is set, the time
  is set. To kill die Grossvater Munich permits it . . . it was the price
  .... But we sit here while you delay-for what?"
  The young voice contorted with rage, the tape winding. "It is arranged. She
  will meet with me at a time of her selection . . . ."
  "And you? You let this happen? You defy Munich? You delay to let this
  cold-blooded bitch in heat destroy you? Wreck the operation?"
 ' "She is not like the others, pretty boy. You have no love for a woman. You
 do not know what it is like. You do not know what it is to burn, to listen
 for the phone ringing, ringing, then it is her voice . . . cool as mountain
 air-but underneath, the heat. So, fa, it is true, I wait. For her I will
 wait .... What better to do before the time when I leave this stinking
 place?"
  "There is me. If this is what you want, this time I will behave. Don't
  leave me."
   "I do not trust you anymore."
  The tape had finished. Rob reached out heavily for his Dutch cigar box. He
  felt dry and empty. He took a knuckle out of his teeth. It was bleeding. He
  looked at the blood stupidly.
  Sour bile kept rising. He wanted to be sick. He swallowed bitterly, chewed
  a pretzel. Salt stung his lips. Waves of suspicion of M washed over him. It
  was like drowning. Cold sweat ran down his armpits. He told himself that
  she could not, would not, make contact with the man. But suppose she didn't
  know this was the man they were hunting? And that Jason wanted? How in the
  hell could she know, when he hadn't been able to tell her anything? He
  forced himself first to deny that "the wife" on tape was not his.
  He forced himself to think, "Don't kick him to death, Mr. Schuyler." Of
  Grandfather: "Take your bird with a soft jaw." Of the rapist, the murdered
  child. And he, flinging the body-up, smashing the rotten world on a fence.
  "Don't break his spine, Mr. Schuyler. Use a soft line." Jesus/
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH    99

  Rudi continued to quarrel bitterly. There was no reply. His companion hit
  him a backhanded slap across the mouth.
  Rudi kicked out viciously at the Dalmatian, stomping his rejection into the
  dog, then hurtled through the packed room, crashing glassware, scattering
  cutlery, knocking over chairs. He burst through the door and flung himself
  out into the rain.
  "What's with the boy?" Al's gravel tone. "You pay for your friend again?
  For the breakage? Lottie and I, we run a place for nice people here."
   "Natiirlich. I pay for him."
  Al laughed. "He should be a girl, that one. For what you pay for him."
  He took out a black seal wallet with a small gold crown. Al counted the
  money under a damp thumb. Not much, to leave a pile of broken glass, hurl
  Poochie from the bar. He made another mistake.
  "We have a nice girl, Herr Sir. My niece on Lottie's side, she is ready for
  a slap, a tickle? It will settle for the bill."
  The disdainful hand shot out in a jabbing nudge that jolted the bartender.
  "Get away from me, you pig."
  Rob looked around. Except for themselves there was no one left at this end.
  The bar had emptied fast.
  The man looked away from him absently. Their double image, reflected in
  glass, gave each a sense of remoteness. It was a mirrored confrontation in
  which they could act separately.
   The man chose his first.
   "Smoke? Ja, you have one?"
  Rob thumbed a Dutch cigarillo carefully from the tin box; and put the box
  in his pocket.
  "Allow me?" A glove stripped off. The gold lighter flicked on, off.
  "Thanks." He removed his glasses, laid them down. A long hand reached for
  them. The membrane showed between the end fingers of the right hand.
  The man banded the glasses back, saying, "Clear glass." He smiled. "Why?"
   "I'll ask the questions," Rob said.
   "You think I will answer?"
   "Yes."
   "You know me?"
100      Noel Pierce

 "I wasn't sure."
 "Who am IT"
  "You have shown me how you use your hands. Chopping the dog's snout.
  Lottie's mutt. Rudi."
  A stare caught him in the mirror, the smoky eyes hot. "Rudi? Ach, on the
  tin cigar box? It was a tape? How stupid of me. Well, then I must take the
  tape from you."
  "You would be foolish to try."
  "Cops?" '
  "All around the area."
  The man shrugged. "You clutter of cops." He spat.
  "If that's my wife on the tape I'll kill you."
  "I know many women. Your wife is not one of them. Listen. I will make a
  bargain with you."
   "No bargain."
  "I have ways of persuading you. Lottie," he called, "ein cognac." The glass
  came down the counter. He let it sit in front of him.
  "The gun in my pocket is five inches from your spine," Rob said. "If you
  move I'll blow the spinal cord. It will paralyze you-except for the throat.
  You are going to talk to us."
  "You are crazy to threaten. What have I done?" The hand waved dismissively.
  "We have a drink at a bar. Bitte, what is it here that disturbs? So? Ja, I
  do a little betting business with the sports clubs, the athletes. To die
  Alten, we talk of the greatness of their fatherland. Is this a crime? On
  what could you hold me?"
   "Assault. Disturbance. Any minor misdemeanor."
   "Bitte, if you please, let us speak openly."
   "Go ahead. Talk."
  "Good. That is best." Nibbling delicately at a piece of bar herring, the
  man put it down and wiped his hands, sedulously cleaning the webbed
  membrane as an animal cleans what it has soiled.
  He was calculating how much was known. A shine of sweat had started on the
  brown skin. Under the color of sun was a pallor. Did they want him for the
  assassination? He weighed his chances.
  "Each of us, you and me"-there was polite hesitation, to find the exact
  words= `cancels-"
   "Wipes the other out?"
   'Va. How will we do it? Each to other, first?"
   "By,jdlling? You would prefer that."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  101

 "Naturlich."
  Rob shook his head. "No shootout. We want you warm and breathing. Get off
  the barstool and we'll go."
   "What makes you think I will?"
  "I haven't got all night. Make up your mind. You stink to me. Shooting you
  is clean. But I have to deal with you from the neck up."
  "Bitte, Herr Cop," with chilly amusement, "you are like a bear with-how you
  say?-the sore paw. I think I must put you out of this misery. I do not know
  your wife for whom you have this jealousy against me. I do not know
  what,papers you have that can charge me. You say much you cannot support in
  law. How will it look when you are examined by lawyers? How do I know your
  government gives you authority? What kind of an agent would make such a
  dummkopf of himself?" . . . Picking up the cognac glass and turning it,
  sipping, turning it . . .
  Rob turned. With a slam the bar glass crashed into his head. The bar lights
  went out. The stool under him was kicked over. He fell heavily; the floor
  thudded up, cognac and blood spurting into his eyes. His hands slapped and
  mauled the slippery body that beat him in the dark. He threw his knee up,
  lunging out. His foot kicked up into a groin. Something snapped his chin
  back. Blood rushed through his gums. He rolled over, gasping, his wrist
  bent back to the breaking point, and dropped the gun. It rattled away on
  the pitching floor. Four hands scrabbled for it. He heaved the hammering
  body off, thrusting it up with both feet, swiveled, butting up with a
  surge. A hand found his neck. Steel thumbs clamped on the pumping vein. He
  swung-his face with a wrench and bit deep. The hand fell away. His throat
  pulled breath in. Hands raked his clothes, pounded his sides, jerked at his
  pockets, to get the tin cigar pack with the tape. He hurtled himself over,
  facedown, and felt feet live hooves stamping on his spine.
  He braced for leverage to fling off the weight. Arching his back, he rolled
  over, kicked out with both heels together, grabbed a leg and brought the
  body crashing down. They lay gasping in a convulsive tangle.
  Then there was nothing but a white emptiness. Lights exploded in his head.
  He flopped on the bar flood like an exhausted fish, breathing a rush of
  damp, cold air. It came from where? Back door . . . the rear exit. He lay
  shuddering on his arms. Shame, chagrin, fury welling up . . .
102       Noel Pierce

 loathing . . . betrayal . . . memory of a dry voice saying, "There is shit
 on the shovel, Mr. Schuyler . . . When he gets through with you. . . "
  He rolled over. Nothing broken. Heaving up with one jump, he ran out the
  rear door into the alley. Dim shouts behind him, a woman yelling for the
  cops. He picked glass splinters out of his skin as he ran, fumbled for a
  coagulant packet and crammed it into the wound. Pain stung; flesh
  contracted; blood-stopped. His legs pounded after gg.
  The street ending at the river's edge was empty. Rob peered at the gutters.
  Dirty currents inched dregs into a rushing grate. The stillness was eerie.
  He could hear nothing, see no one. But Rudi-Rudi would be-
 A cop siren hee-hawed. Squad car signals were going in all directions,
 trying to pinpoint him. Rudi must be.... He had to be. . . . The pavement
 tilted dizzily, a crazy quilt of stoops, basement entries, alleyways. Hiding
 in which one? Where?
  Every window light along the tenement street was turned off. He was furious
  with himself at losing the suspect. He leaned into the el of a brick wall.
  His back felt as if rivets had worked it over. Then he saw a rabbit figure
  ducking, bounding, running zigzag, sobbing as it ran.
  He started running after it.
  An arm reached out and snatched at him from behind. He had a yard of speed
  and, flinging both elbows bacck, dropped to his knees. He hit the gritted
  pavement as a knife whanged over his head. After a minute he got to his
  knees. There was no one to right, left, or behind him.
  He heard a muffled shout, the staccato jolt of two shots. He scuttled,
  running low, squinting through caked blood at the cracks in the pavement
  that canted up at him.
  An old crone rose like a bulk of gray trash from her basement area. Peering
  up, she pointed at the running rabbit.
   "Er ist besolen," she cackled.
  Drunk? Rob watched him. He was yawing without direction. His legs slewed
  from side to side. Had the wild shots hit him? Attempting to turn about,
  the man staggered, shuddered, and gradually heeled over until he sagged on
  the gutter strip.
  "It serves him right," the old crone cackled.
  The rabbit lay still. Rob nudged the lifeless body with his foot. Rudi's
  pale-blue eyes looked up at him in dull
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   103

 surprise. He had a couple of minutes to work before the big red dragon's
 eyes with their banshee screams came down the block.
  Crouched on his knees, he flooded gg's pretty boy with his flashlight. Not
  pretty now. You have fouled your pants, Rudi. Live sweat rises to soak your
  dead pores. What can you tell me? He felt the throat, pressed the lungs.
  Oxygen expels as the lungs collapse. There is no ring on your finger. You
  didn't like women. Did you want to wring my wife's neck? In a wounded
  animal the death charge starts erection and ejaculation. Nature saying "I
  live." . . . No, you don't now. Did you shoot live seed from dying testes?
  Jason's lab boys will tell me that.
  There was no blood. He had not thought there would be. The knifing was low
  down, through the liver. By someone face-to-face? He drew the knife out and
  folded it in a strip of plastic. Carefully he went over the clothes. Prod-
  ding, searching, he found a thickened welt along the coat lining and
  pricked it out with a pocketknife. It was a garrote.
  Then with both hands he ripped the shirt open. Across the chest his beam of
  light found the tattoo: A E I O U.
  He snapped off the flashlight and leaned shivering in the dark over Rudi's
  body.
  Unquenchable tides came flooding back. Lamplight had shone on her hair, her
  pencil busily working out the acrostic . . . . "Darling, what do all the
  five vowels stand for?"
 He gritted his fists, said miserably over Rudi's body,
 "What do they mean to me now?"
  The tape in his pocket. Rudi's furious jealousy about "the wife." Where had
  she seen that tattoo before? What guilty knowledge did she have of it? Did
  she know this dead punk? What contact had she made in this neighborhood
  that she was hiding? Who was the man on the extension phone that night? To
  whom had she said that single word, "No." And hung up, turning to him.
  Since then-distance stretching between them like a frozen field
  . . not wanting to break their hearts trying to reach, to find, to be sure
  . . . that fumbling night of everything going wrong.
  Rudi, knifed by a man he loved, had filled in a lot of gaps as he lay
  dying.
   Flix, he thought bitterly, Fhx would tell him later.
104       Noel Pierce

  There was a roaring ache in his head. In a minute the cops would be as busy
  as beetles. Jason's boarding house would have another customer to keep the
  peddler company.
 He revved up his two-way radio.
 "LYC-5 here. Over."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. How are you proceeding? Where are you? Over."
  "LYC-5 to Hutch. North of the fireboat station, this side of docks."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. Where is gunfire area? Repeat. Gunfire area?"
  "LYC`:5 here. Suspect followed to Alpenstock Bar. He has escaped; repeat,
  gone. Cover blown. Over."
  "Precinct Nineteen to LYC-5. This is Lieutenant Justini. Come in, please.
  Give estimated direction of two gunshots."
  "LYC-5 to Precinct Nineteen. Lieutenant Justini, do not converge for
  gunfire. Repeat. Gunfire a decoy. Save your gas.
  "Justini to Local Yorkville Control 5. What do you mean decoy?"
  "What I said. The gunshots were to scatter you, repeat, scatter squad
  cars."
  "Fake?"
   "Yes. Fake."
  "Hutch to LYC-5. Give your area. Repeat your location. Out."
   Rob spelled it out.
  He saw pinpoints of revolving red lights sweeping down the block. Squad
  care sirens singsonged their splitting decibels. He stood away from Rudi's
  body and revved up the call signal.
  "LYG5 to Hutch. I have Rudi here. Repeat to Jason. It is Rudi."
  Jason's voice sounded loud and anxious. "LYC-5, Jason here. Use a soft
  line, Mr. Schuyler. Do not-"
  "Get a meat wagon over here," Rob said. "He's dead."
18
  The peddler lay on a slab in a boxlike room with freezing white vapor
  dripping down the wall pipes. It was so cold the cop from Homicide kept his
  hat on. He looked, as Jason said, like Max the butcher over on York Avenue,
  minding the pork store when business was slack. The peddler had for company
  a neighbor asleep under a canvas sheet. He and Rudi had known each other in
  a livelier time.
  The peddler's rest was interrupted from time to time. A man in a white coat
  that smelled of formaldehyde shone a probe light in his now legally
  sightless eyes. Another man from Prints looked at the blank lobes of his
  fingers. The acid that had once erased the whorls of his identity had
  puckered the flesh into white hemstitched pleats. The man finished his lab
  report and went out, saying over his shoulder, "Enjoy the wake. Don't smoke
  in here."
  "Stuff you," the cop said.
  Jason scribbled on his desk pad: "Both aliens; no prints record; no known
  kin." He could not hold his star boarders much longer. He was reluctant to
  turn them over to the Medical Examiner, whose deputy assistant was parked
  around the corner in the morgue. meat wagon van. The peddler and Rudi had
  already told him much. Chemistry Section had run a benzedine check for
  bloodstains, hairs, animal and human. A serologist and toxicologist had
  typed and analyzed their final distillations-heroin, alcohol, tattoo dye,
  nicotinic acid, low-grade semen smears. Every pore in their bodies had been
  under microscopic scrutiny. They had been docile at certain indignities.
  But they couldn't talk back. A pity. The strangling of the old junk vendor
  had been so clumsy that it wasn't gg's style at all. Very likely Rudi had
  done it. There was no motive.

                105
106       Noel Pierce

 And the knifing of Rudi was contrary to the Prussian's usual method. Both
 factors puzzled Jason.
  Well, no matter. The autopsy surgeon's experts would find scant pickings.
  Between CIA's methods of criminal examination and local police procedure
  was an internecine struggle. There would be little for the DA's district
  office, where J-Branch security rarely penetrated.
  Dispensing tact, booze, and cigars, Jason had had them all in for briefing.
  A precinct squad commander, acting captain, a lieutenant inspector,
  detectives from Homicide, the Riverfront Squad, technical Emergency
  Services, and the Marine commander of Manhattan Waterways Patrol. An
  overhead detonation blast had startled them in the conference room. A
  realistic touch Jason maintained because of his DEMOLITION, KEEP OUT signs.
  Knowing who he was, charged by law to expedite the national security by any
  means he chose, they recognized his authority to give hostage to his
  "boarders" for a reasonable time as absolute. This was J-Branch under the
  eye of Defense Intelligence. It was a fuming truce with local authority.
  He pressed the numerical signal on his desk and set out the scotch
  decanter. Rob came in with the forensic report.
  "Rudi had cat hairs all over him. Funny thing. It doesn't figure: He had a
  Dalmatian that licked his face. But he cuddled up with someone's cat."
  "What else?"
  "Dirt and specks from the peddler's shoes have trace elements of manure
  from an abandoned brewery stable around here. Some pad he slept in."
  Jason pushed the whiskey at him. "You look as if you could use some sleep."
  "I'm all right. You'll release the bodies?"
  "Yes." Jason spoke into the intercom. "Someone tell the police van to pick
  up a load." He poured a shot.
  "Mr. Schuyler, we are running out of time in an ugly situation. It had
  better not get out of your control. There is an escalation here that I
  don't like. The two murders. Some obscurities."
  "Like what?"
  "Your offshore patrols. They don't want you out on the river. The Waterways
  commander says you've ordered fake capstans with concealed floodlights set
  up on the Marine Station dock. Why?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   107

  "If I can bottle up the enemy in a couple of blocks around here, and drive
  him hard enough-seal off his contacts, make this neighborhood too hot-then
  that eel fisher's bulkhead is where he'll drop off," Rob argued. "You said
  so yourself. One fast launch running without lights is all he needs. And I
  want what's in the launch, too. Now that I've seen him, now that I know
  he's delaying, I think he'll hole up."
  Jason shook his head. "What you're gambling on is that with luck you can
  siphon him off. The assassination blown, and he goes back to his Munich
  organization?"
  "Something like that, yes."
  "You forget. He was carefully selecte$, trained by fanatical NDP
  terrorists. The Party's crack hatchet man. If he fails and tries to get
  back, they won't let him live five minutes."
  "I just want a little more time to push him so hard that he'll make one
  fatal mistake." Rob flung up his hands. "A delaying action."
  "Compromise, Mr. Schuyler? How unlike you."
  "You said . . . 'a soft line."'
  "So I did."
  "You don't want him balls up like Rudi on a slab."
  "No."
  "You want the living, speaking man."
  "Yes." Jason thought over the alternatives. "If you succeed, Mr. Schuyler,
  I agree, he will try to get away off the waterfront."
  "One of their shark boats will attempt to pick him up. That's why I'm
  concerned with this area. We want to stop the attempt. Cut the boat off. I
  have a kind of vague plan that involves the location. Nothing I can explain
  yet. But it's why I'm slogging my gut out to make it stick. Did you okay
  the fake capstans?"
  "Yes."
  "Good. I've got my driver Harris bumming around the bulkhead."
  "I know," Jason said dryly.
  He had some saturation controls of his own. One was the fat layer of
  protective governmental wool he had wrapped around this man's little girls.
  But there was nothing he could do about the uneasiness he felt about
  reports sifting in concerning the wife. Whatever she was up to was her own
  private business. Another man? Perhaps an ugly
108      Noel Pierce

 personal business that Schuyler would have to contend with in a
 bedroom-to-bedlam battle. None of the CIA's affair. Whatever she was doing
 in her evasive daytime dashes around the town, they couldn't stop that. Mr.
 Schuyler's exceptionally attractive wife played it cool.
 "And your wife, how's she taking things?"
 "She hates being harried by protection."
  Jason felt rather like a surgeon who could not leave this cutting operation
  to a subordinate. He selected another scalpel, "Mr. Schuyler, you are
  careful, obstinate, tough. A professional. Hardheaded, persistent, a
  machine that, if anything, is too rigidly controlled. As director of a
  secret intelligence service I have to pull some uncomfortable strings. Will
  you jerk? Break? No. You know your work. Too much of it you keep to
  yourself. You've given me correct, regimented facts, an unhappy brawl at
  the Alpenstock Bar, and a curious evasion on touchy points. In short, Mr.
  Schuyler, the gaps. I want those gaps filled in." Rob blinked, not saying
  anything.
  Jason got up and went over to a turntable. "Let's hear this Alpenstock
  playback again."
  Rob listened to the low, urgent voices, quarreling furiously, punctuated by
  the shrill voices of the bar girls, the blaring jukebox. "The pretty wife
  . . . . You are meeting her .... Get the fucking over with .... Do not
  delay. . . . You are blowing us, here . . . . Do not see her again . . . .
  Do not make contact . . . ."
  Jason watched the face across the desk fall apart and freeze.
  "Well, Mr. Schuyler? There is some woman who is informing, perhaps not
  knowing that she is. But she would seem to be telling gg `about the
  location' and if we are `close' and `who is in on it.' "
  "I don't believe it." Rob wet his lips. There was a queer breathlessness in
  his chest. "It's just a lot of crap gg invented to make Rudi sweat." Rob
  hit the desk. "So gg's having a fling with some local woman in the
  tenements. So what?"
  "So she is the reason he's hanging on here. She's the jolt to the
  assassin's timetable." Jason left it there, balanced on a shelf of doubt.
  Let's not look over the edge yet, he thought. Give Mr. Schuyler time to
  come back from some nasty thoughts.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   109

  "So okay. He's infatuated with her. But he still has a date in ten days'
  time with the judge in Washington."
  "Don't you see?" Jason said. "These are our pluses."
  "What's good about it?"
  "nat your man has hung himself up beyond the business of settling his score
  with your wife's grandfatherby someone he wants here first."
  "Do you know who she is?"
  Jason turned away and took out his cigar case. He bad some trouble getting
  the cigar going. "Her identity isn't important. But because of"-he turned
  the cigar slowly"the wife mentioned on that tape, you've got some borrowed
  time."
  Rob thought about it. "You still want him alive."
  Jason looked at him with curious intentness.
  "You are too impulsive with guns. You blast your legal way out of messy
  circumstances. We've known that about you all along. But when I first
  assessed you for this job, it was the one flaw in your record I felt I
  understood."
   "Now you're not sure?"
   "I'm still sure."
  Rob didn't say anything. It surprised Jason, who was accustomed to being
  thanked by younger men on their way up. He realized he missed this in the
  man in front of him.
   "Those gaps, Mr. Schuyler?" Glancing at his notes.
  Yes, Rob told him, he was at A1 and Lottie's Alpenstock Bar. No, he didn't
  know what made him stop there. Except to get in out of the rain.
  Yes, it was on the bureau's suspect list as a volatile meeting place for
  Bund athletes and maritime union radicals.
   "Did you recognize the suspect?"
   "Not at first."
   "You saw Rudi come in?"
  "His dog bad been following me. I wanted it to lead me."
   "You trust animals, Mr. Schuyler?"
  Rob nodded. "Mostly they're smarter, cleaner than people."
   "You don't have much opinion of the human race?"
   "In my work why should I?"
  "You don't like me, do you, Mr. Schuyler?" No.
110       Noel Pierce

 "Why not?" Jason was miffed and amused.
 "Because I have to come up to you for orders."
  "Yes. You most certainly do. Have I made you feel you are expendable?"
  Rob looked at him speechlessly. Why not have said "admire"? "Respect"? Both
  of which he felt. Too late now. He had banged the door.
  "You think I'm a pompous old bastard jumping you through the hoop."
  "No, you're like a head surgeon who cuts well and leaves the sewing up to
  juniors." Rob bad said 'the uncannily right thing without even knowing he
  was going to.
  Across the silence a stray warmth stole.
  Jason picked up his notes. "When you were in the street, running from the
  Alpenstock, you say there were two shots. Describe them."
  "The gun was a short-trigger eight-mm Mark Four. It sounded like they do.
  Two spitting stabs."
  "What was the trajectory course?"
  "Obscure. I was running for the rabbit."
   "Who?"
  "Ruth. There was mist, fog. Visibility lousy."
  Had the knife been thrown at him or at Rudi? From what angle?
  "Behind me. Over my bead. I was flat on my butt on the pavement. The shots
  were meant to scatter the cop cars."
  "Who fired them?"
  "How do I know? It had to be the Prussian."
   "But the knife that killed Rudi?"
  "Was banged into his gut. Belly against belly."
  "Not an attack? He didn't suspect it?"
  "No. Yes. No. It had to be close as skin."
  "An embrace by a man he knew?"
  "Sure. Then he stuck a knife into Rudi's belly to get a jealous nuisance
  out of the way."
  "Mr. Schuyler, you sat with him at the bar. Did you talk to him?"
  "Yes. After I suspected who he was."
  "How did you know?"
  "What your fat boy with the pink face told me before. Caesar bangs, old
  Hassar greatcoat, expensive cuff links, gold lighter. When he took off his
  gloves, I saw the bat stuff."
  "The what?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   111

  "The animal webbing you described to me-on the right hand."
  "How did he get away from you?"
  "I told him I had a gun. That I'd shoot to paralyze him so he could still
  talk."
  "That's the sort of dual threat a schizophrenic understands."
  "He made some kind of signal for a blackout in the bar. Then he whacked me
  on the head with the whiskey glass."
  Jason looked at the purple crease on the forehead across from him. Most
  agents would mention a wound. This one hadn't. The stitching, which he knew
  had been done hastily on a dark street by a police ambulance intern, left
  pinpricks running into the hairline.
  "What do you think was his motive for the stabbing?"
  "Like I said. To get lover boy out of the way."
  "Of what?"
  "Some jealous quarrel."
  "It isn't enough, Mr. Schuyler. I think Rudi knew the assassin's
  imperative. If he wasn't told it, he guessed something important lay ahead
  for his idol. Knew that if gg got-mixed up with a woman here in Yorkville,
  he was recklessly, compulsively throwing away his mission. Either one would
  trigger the man's insane impulse . . . to get Rudi out of the way. Rudi was
  getting dangerous. He knew too much. He was a sexual nuisance.
  Unpredictable. Jealousy in a homosexual male is uncontrollable. That the
  object of desire can prefer a woman is unbearable. For a woman to be more
  attractive-in this case the `pretty wife' as Rudi called her-is an
  impotence, a horror. That's why, next door in my boardinghouse, Rudi has a
  slit in his belly. Gg had to kill him. Or Rudi would have attacked the
  woman involved. And believe me, she can be no tenement whore. She must
  certainly be extremely desirable, a woman for some reason almost
  unattainable. You are lucky, Mr. Schuyler."
  .6AV%7hy me?"
  "Because you don't have a wife killer to deal with." Or do you? Jason
  thought.
  Rob sifted the remark, working his fingers together nervously. There was
  something coming he couldn't see.
  Jason eased the pressure slightly. "Doesn't it strike you that a crack has
  begun to show? I think your persistence has goaded him. He has demonstrated
  an uncontrollable
112      Noel Pierce

 desire to kill. Look. We know he's a seducer of women . . . the rich,
 pretty, cultured, more worldly ones. His lovehate psychosis is clear enough.
 His orgiastic kick is in killing, strangling. It's a sexual urge. It masks
 his impotence, a terrible threat to his ego. In the knife stabbing, which I
 agree with you is the classic knife-penis penetration, he could not control
 himself. It was compulsive murder. He lost control. He got rid of a threat
 to himself -in a jealous boy-and handed us a dead body. He's certain that
 will distract us, as he was sure the.peddler would, leaving him free to take
 what he wants here and move on. But the crack in his mania's clear. He's not
 going to realize it because he is a law unto himself. He has a justifiable
 reason for everything he does. He can never be wrong. If he had to admit he
 was, it would shatter him. The supreme penis domination that stems from a
 fear of impotence. What you must keep in mind now is that from here on he's
 unpredictable. This can be very dangerous for the woman he's pursuing."
 "How?"
  "Because, Mr. Schuyler, the appetite may hate what it feeds on. He knows
  she compromises his timetable. If he cannot possess her, he may turn on
  her, even strangle her."
   Rob didn't say anything.
   "What are you thinking, Mr. Schuyler?"
   "That you do a lot of guesswork."
  "No." Jason said again, "That isn't what you were thinking, Mr. Schuyler."
  "All right. I was thinking, if I have to bite the bullet, I'll go ahead and
  do it."
   "Good. But something else?"
   "Yes."
   "What is it?"
  "You wanted the gaps filled. Here's one. I found this in Rudi's jacket
  lining."
  He laid it on Jason's desk. It was a nylon snare. Jason prodded it open
  with a penpoint. The threads were twined and weighted at both ends. He
  pressed a light on his dial. A lab technician came in. He took the slender
  garrote in pincers and passed it to him.
   "How's the weather out your way, Ben?"
  "My kids say it's freezing over. But the wife wouldn't know. She's playing
  Bingo Go for Broke."
   "She win anything?"
       MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  113

  "A two-dollar spice chest."
  "When you get this off your chest, report."
  "What am I to do with it, sir?"
  "Test it for blood. The ends are probably poisoned." He picked up an
  attache case and began to cram his papers in it. "I've got to make the
  shuttle flight to Washington." Jason turned back abruptly. "That tattoo on
  the corpse."
    "What about it?"
  "What does the damn thing spell? Have you figured it out?"
    "No," Rob said, "but when I get home I'll ask my wife.
  She's good at puzzles."

              19
 SYRUPS FOR ALL OCCASIONS, the sign in the window read.
 CORDIALS. ESSENCE OF SWEET OILS. RARE HERBS. PERFUMES.
 DISTILL YOUR OWN FRAGRANCE.
  Hearing the cough of a Honda stop by the curb, the Syrup Man looked out at
  her from behind his chemist jars. She had a shopping bag, a pencil. He did
  not get much trade here. It was too close to the docks and the tumbledown
  brewery. What did this one want? Raspberry syrup? Perfume? A love potion
  for the husband? Usually it was one of the three. He had to be sure.
  "Sweet Oil of Almond," Flix read.
  "Oil of Turtle, Tamarinda, Wild Crepe Myrtle . . . Ginger Lily, Sandalwood,
  Vetiver and Lime, Lemon Blossoms, Wormwood, Patchouli and Thyme ...." What
  a quaint manl He had rhymed them. The Syrup Man's shop was unique, a narrow
  storefront wedged in between a shoe repair and yard goods shop. Printed
  cards in a cramped foreign hand identified exotic herbs and fragrances. A
  small vial of colorless fluid stood by itself. "Vervain," she read,
  "(Verbena officinalis), a holy herb in ancient rites . . . . Sometimes
  Juno's Tears and Simpler's Joy . . . . Said to
114       Noel Pierce

 cure the bite of rabid animals and to arrest the diffusion of poison ...."
 A small shiver touched her. Like finding a spider crawling in a rose.
  What drew her here? The names of strange herbs in the Syrup Man's window.
  Go in, take a journey to far-off places, standing still. "These Sweet Oils
  Bring Out Your Personality."
  What did she want? Why linger, with night coming down? What to buy?
  Cordials for ice cream. Oil of verbena. Orange flower water. Cedarwood. A
  scent of something charming and elusive. Like the little shops in a French
  market town, in Grasse, in the flower provinces in the south of France, the
  Midi .... Something special? For bath oil? For kicks? No. A lure drew her.
  She couldn't say why. And against Rob's explicit instructions, too.
  Perfumes listed to bring out her personality were Breath Snatcher, Nights
  in Spain, Tantalizing, Never Say No, Jet Stream Jasmine, Sweet Sorcery, Not
  for Morning, Temptress, Must You Go, and Once Is Not Enough.
  Impulsively she jotted them down. Through the window the Syrup Man watched
  her pencil hurrying. Moving quickly along the shelves, he scrambled the
  arrangement of certain cordial and herb labels. Pretending to dust them, he
  crept to the back and watched her. Who had pointed her to his shop? He
  could not decide. She was wearing a saffron pantsuit, a handcuff of gold
  bracelets, a yellow head scarf. She was alert, curious, like well-born
  women fn the old European cities who shopped the native quarter for kicks.
  It was late. He should turn out the lights, close the store. He waited. He
  was afraid. He had to be sure.
  "Attar of Roses, Anise, Sweet Grasses," Flix scribbled down, "Meadow Rue,
  Oak Chips, Spanish Moss, Anise, Tilleul, Lime Tisane, Lemon Balm (for
  tea?), Eglantine. "
  Behind her the Syrup Man saw an old-model Mercedes drive slowly past. Cold
  sweat broke out on his palms. He rubbed them anxiously. What was he to pass
  to her? No word had come.
  He saw her stiffen. The pencil stopped. She was staring from a label to
  what she had written in her hand.
  "Anise . . . Eucalyptus . . . Incense . . . Orange Oil . . . Unique. . . ."
  Printed in black ink. But the capital letters were lightly underscored in
  red.
  The acrostic leaped out at her so suddenly it was as if a
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   115

 fist beat on the window. From inside, she knew she was watched.
  Fumbling around in her shopping bag, lighting a cigarette, she flagged one
  more label and saw the underscoring.
  "Japonica . . . Almond . . . Sassafras . . . Ormonde . . . Nectar. . . ."
  Just a name. "Jason." It meant nothing to her. So go in and buy something.
  But look out for a spider in the rose.
  Flix opened the door. A bell rang. There was no clerk in sight. Rapidly she
  scanned the jumble of bottles, sniffed a dusty smell, cool and dry, of
  distant spice islands.
  A small man came from the rear.
   "Are you the proprietor?"
   "Ja. What can I do for you, Missus?" '
  He had an almost simian hunch, his large head cocked to one side.
  Something, somewhere, had broken his nose. He was threadbare and clean,
  with a curious dignity.
   "Have you some oil of peppermint?"
   "For a sick tooth, maybe a sick husband?"
  His hands brushed over the counter, rapid as animal paws. Thick black hair
  sprung on his knuckles. Unobtrusively he felt for the tape recorder under
  the counter.

  "Yes, for my husband." Flix hammed it up. "Something to pep up his food."
  She smiled.
   "Peppermint in the food, lady?"
  "Perhaps, sometimes. I mean, if I roast a lamb, or need an essence to-"
  Pretense, evasion, her quick eyes flicking over the labels behind him. He
  blocked them with a swing of his shoulders. "Missus, you are too nice to
  say what I think you mean. You wonder if these pretty jars contain a love
  potion?"
  They shared a laugh.
  "Lady"-he spread his hands-"this is a respectable place of business."
  "That's why I came. You were--recommended."
  Quickly, "Who spoke to you of me?"
  "Oh, neighbors..." she invented. "A . . . Mrs. Schultz."
  "Ia. I see." Knowing there was no Mrs. Schultz. "Maybe . . . a sweet syrup
  for . . . die Kinder?"
  "I want something different, a new flavor to make my husband remember some
  particular dish."
116      Noel Pierce

  "Lady, you look like a particular dish your husband don't have to knock
  himself out smacking the lip over."
  She laughed, lowered her eyes. Give him the kind of demureness he expects
  in an anxious wife.
  "I will show you my wares."
  "Please do. I've made a list."
  "List?" He gave an agitated thrust of a swinging arm across his chest. "You
  write things down about my shop. Why? Someone told you to?"
  "No one told me to," she said. "Why should they?"
  He looked at her, thinking: Total innocence? He could not decide. He was
  puzzled, disturbed by something.
  "I love to cook," Flix said. "Everything you sell in here is so different
  from all the things in ordinary food shops." She was around the counter,
  lightly fingering and running through flacons and flasks of colored fluids.
  Featherlight touches, murmuring comments on "Raspberry, Aromatics, Caramel,
  Essence of .. . ." (Race? No.) . . . Laughing and chatting with the
  flustered old man, "Fluorescence of Orange, Rose ...." (For?) Go on, flirt
  with him .... "Tincture of Almond, Lemon, LICOriI;e, Mandarin, Anise." And
  there was "Nectarine." (Man? Tall Man? Rob was tall.)
  "It would be better if you do not disarrange the bottles."
  Better for whom? Why do they seem to spell something? To mean something
  else? No. It's just coincidence, she thought. A haphazard lineup of bottles
  on a shelf. But under her nose a small sign read: "Try Sweet Oil of Orange
  Now." (Soon?) She reached for it. The Syrup Man was quicker. He turned it
  facedown and leaned his elbows on it.
  "Lady, you look like you got a problem." He patted her hand with his dry,
  cool animal dabs. It was like being touched by a dog. How friendly was the
  Syrup Man?
  "You live around here?" He knew she would be followed. He was worried. How
  to get her out?
  Flix nodded. "I want Essence of Raspberry with a big fat dollop of
  marshmallow whip on the side."
  He took down syrups, made an assortment. Behind him she said, "A treat for
  my children. Mostly they get junket for dessert."
  "Yunkit?"
  "A kind of custard."
  He remembered his children. A hard, clotted knot of sorrow rose in his
  throat. He swallowed past it, eyeing the
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   117

 mishmash she had forced him to make of his shelves . . . a delicate check
 and balance of labels in a system it had taken him months to set up,
 manipulate and control. Gone.
  He took out a handkerchief, wiped a fleck of rage at the corner of his
  mouth. Smile at the pretty customer. Pretend.
  "Look, Missus. It is not the custard? It is not the husband?"
  He leaned over the counter. Something frightening looked at her from a
  commonplace face.
  "You seek me out. Why?"
   "Because this is so offbeat, original . . . ."
  "Who else could I count on for my trade except word of mouth? The little
  wives like you ...." Abruptly, "Who told you of me?"
  She shook her head. The shop smelled vile, the furtive flacons evil. She
  began to shiver. Stop it. He is just an old man who has a syrup shop. But
  she knew he was a professional.
  Under the counter he touched the tape recorder. A minutely faint slur, a
  click, and as he coughed over it the Syrup Man clapped his hands with
  inspiration.
  "Now then. We are friends, no? To business. A pretty girl like you, waiting
  for the man at home, I...:'
  "No. I'm late. I've spent far too long ...."
  "Ach," he checked her. "Not before we have sweets for die Kinder, and
  something special . . . for you."
  Humming, he began to select, rotate, discard flacons, pick one up, shove
  another away; push it back, move another siphon forward until, as she
  watched, everything she had jotted down was obliterated.
  Bobbing back on his heels, the Syrup Man beamed at her.
  "You are not pleased?"
  She slowly tore up her notes and fluttered them between her fingers. They
  fell like snow on his hands.
  "Thank you. I've enjoyed my visit so much." Her soft laugh was in tune with
  the warning bell on his door. He looked past her. Flix spun quickly. There
  was no one there.
  The heavy foreign car slid past the window again. He felt a silent, inward
  explosion of alarm. It thundered and settled inside his old body, leaving
  him limp.
  Flix faced the old man with a queer pang of concern. What was the meaning
  of the anxious animal paws that touched hers? What peril had she started?
  Stay with me a
118      Noel Pierce

 minute, his old eyes begged. Telling herself to run, she stayed.
 'I'd like to distill a perfume of my own."
 "To express the hidden charms. Ja, that I can do."
  But what had he hidden, mixed up, which she could sense, bad almost seen?
  The proprietor looked from apothecary jar to flacon to small bottle
  tinctures. He spun around. Bright eyes glinted at her. His short, simian
  arms spread wide.
  "Wait, lady, I've got something lethal for you." He darted into the rear
  room, came back with a glassstoppered vial. If she was to pass a
  "distillation" to the driver of the car out there, now he would know.
  "What is it?"
  "Vervain-the sacred herb. She is Juno's Tears. She arrests the killing of
  a poison," he said.
  Flix wetted a dry mouth, smiling. Killing? "Something deadly?"
  "But, no, Missus," he said, astonished. "It is to narcotize, to charm." The
  liquid had a faint dark tinge. "You will be safe with it," he said. "Pass
  it," he said carefully, "to a friend."

  She took it gingerly. "Pass it? Why?"
  "It costs much money to import. Be careful."
  "All right. Can I taste it first?"
  "Taste it?"
  As she pushed the stopper up, he struck it from her hand. A tinkle of glass
  splintered. The vial shattered and spilled.
  "Why did you do that?"
  "Missus, it was not for you."
  "Who was I to pass it to?"
  "You don't know?"

  "Why should I?"
  She looked at him helplessly and shook her head. "I don't know what you're
  talking about:"
  The blood had shrunk from his skin, turning him gray and old.
  "Juno's Tears"-why did her eyes fill? She felt a wave of sadness for the
  Syrup Man.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ...."
  "No matter."
  "Why didn't you want me to be harmed?"
  "Please?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  119

  "Something happened here that was dangerous. What was it?"
  "Nothing, Missus. I have many good customers in the neighborhood. I hope
  you will come back."
  "If you were to mix a perfume for me, what would it be?"
  "Mimosa . . . and gall."
   "I'm afraid you wouldn't sell much of that."
  "No. Since there is only one like you." He hesitated, listening. "I had the
  impression that someone sent you to me?"
   "No."
  "Do not come back again." Through the window the driver's face looked in at
  them. "I close now."
   "You look ill. Is there anything I-"
   "No. Nothing." He gestured her aside.
   "Are you in trouble?" Flix said. "Can I help you?"
  "No. Please. You must help yourself. Out of here. Hurry. Now. Lady, you are
  in danger of something. Please believe me. Go. Give this
  peppermint-schokolade syrup to -the little girls."
   "You know about my daughters?"
  "Ja, lady. And you. Please before God, get out of here. I must close now."
   "Of course."
  Flix turned back. "Now I know what this reminds me of."
  "You think of what?" He wanted to hear her voice once more. The kindness.
  She looked around. "Sweet Oil of Almond, Oil of Turtle, Eucalyptus,
  Tamarinda . . . and Wild Crepe Myrtle . . . ." Thinking of schoolgirl
  Masefield, of something that flashed through her from Kings . . . the Old
  Testament. . . " `Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing
  gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks . . . . Bringing sandalwood
  and spices . . . and sweet white wine... : "
  "la, lady. That is from the First King. There is another. He, too, brings
  a cargo. A bad cargo."
  "Who?"
  "Herr Sir. He sent you to contact me?"
  She said with mouth freezing, "I never heard of him."
  "Lady. Bitte. You go. Go."
120       Noel Pierce

  Through the window he watched her unlock the scooter. She kicked the
  starter fast. Night had come down.
  He faced his cluttered shelves. The letter scramble broken. Control blown.
  A double agent had a double peril. He could not explain her visit. Gg would
  not believe him. He was finished.
  When the door opened he felt a cold wind at his back. He didn't turn
  around. Pushing a switch to wipe out her voice on the tape, be turned out
  the lights. It was all he could do for her in her blundering innocence.
  He wondered which one it would be.
  ("Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One . . . . Now at the hour
  of my death, O Israel, forgive me that 1 did not finish, did not avenge in
  time, . . . for my darling wife... my poor little bones of children ....")
  There was a whistle of air. Behind him the garrote swung delicately in the
  black gloved hand.
  One step ahead of the assassin, he reached for the flacon labeled
  "Vervain." He saw the label fade as numbness chilled up into his clotting
  bloodstream. "Supposed to cure . . the bite of rabid animals . . . and
  arrest poison . . . ." A good spy dies where he stands . . . for . . . die
  Kinder. "Can I help you?" . . . Yellow head scarf . . . scent of mimosa .
  . . kindness.

  They were following Schuyler's wife on the scooter. The pink man was
  driving, the dark young man beside him, checking.
  "Turn around," he said. "Go back. Go back."
  "For God's sake, what for?"
 "I've thought of something."  _
  "You're not paid to think."
  "Shut up and turn around and go back."
  ..'Why?þ
  ". . . That tape Schuyler got at the Alpenstock Bar."
  (Rudi's voice, high, scared, saying: "Ja. At the Syrup Shop. The Syrup Man
  would not do as directed.")
  They braked, skidding around the next corner, spun on screeching tires, and
  shot the car back along York Avenue.
  They kicked the door in, fumbling around in the dark. The wires were cut.
  They worked by flashlight.
  "Damn place stinks like a Spanish harem."
  "They don't have harems in Spain. Only the rain on the plain. Where is he?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  121

 "Under the counter. He's dead."
 "Meddling bitch. Why did she come here?"
  "Bored. Lonely. Out for kicks. The old man would know she was followed. I
  guess he couldn't shake her off."
  "What do we do with the body?"
  "Homicide?"
  "Not yet. The boss'll want him in the boardinghouse. Overnight guest. Do a
  fast autop and get his prints."
  "Okay. Let's go. Find his hat."
  "Are you crazy?"
  "No. He was a good kraut. We met him in a bar. Get his hat." It was an old
  greenish Homburg on a shelf. They put the glass splinters of the Vervain
  vial in a paper bag.
  "Let's get him in the car."
  "Right."
  They bent down and looped the Syrup Man's arms over their shoulders, jigged
  him out jovially, across the curb. The pink man broke into a sweating
  yodel. Weaving and waving, they butted into an old woman on her way to
  mass. She crossed herself.
  "You see? He got a blessing."
  They propped the hunched figure between them on the front seat, draped a
  muffler around him and set the Homburg on his lifeless head.
  The pink man pushed the starter, butting the car down the cobbled hill
  toward the Hutch. The Syrup Man nodded his head gravely to each red light.
  "Stop him doing that."
  "I can't. He's dead."
  "Then set his hat straight on his head."
  The dark young man made the adjustment, .fussily.
  They were trying to bang and honk their way around a sanitation truck.
  "He smells lik8' lemon," the pink man said. "Take his face out of my neck."
  The dark one obliged. "Correction. He smells of Vervain. The holy herb.
  Juno's Tears. Poison."
  Waiting for a green light, the driver touched the Syrup Man's cheeks. They
  were damp. He wiped tears off on his leg and bunched his huge arm around
  the small, stiff shoulders.
  "That's a fine Homburg. I suppose he wants to be buried in it."
  .Why?þ
122      Noel Pierce

 "Most spies like a good funeral. Let's see he gets one." "Was he working for
 us?" "He was an informer. I think he had something for us." The pink man
 turned into the brewery yard and parked by the flickering lantern. "Jason
 will be sorry."

             20

  After Jason left, he sat thinking of her. The soundproof room was still,
  like the deep, cold silence that lies under black water at the bottom of a
  pond. Rob heard the faint ticking of his watch. The sweat band was damp,
  his face wet and grim. The stitched gash along his hairline pounded. That
  playback of the tape at the bar. That criminal? Make contact? With Flix?
  Something wild was trying to break out that he had to control.
  "Rob," she'd said, "we're pulling apart, hurting each other . . . .
  "You and the kids are all I've got."
  He had stroked her hair back, .lifted her face. "It's not me you want," she
  said.
  "Now stop that kind of talk. Here, you, I'm sure of."
  `1'o be taken for granted is never enough."
  "What about me?" he flared. "What about me?"
  How to bring some warmth into this special face, when the one unbreakable
  rule was to button up tight?
  "Don't you know how often I want to tell you about it?"
  (Jason, the Hutch, the peddler, the arsenal, underground snakes in their
  plastic nests, the necktie swap, Olga Czhenzunska scratching a living from
  hand to mouth, yet writing that stabbing, elegant, High German script . .
  . nursemaid Olga out on the hush wire of Europe's secret
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   123

 Polcod, queer fun and games at the Alpenstock, Rudi, a knife in the gut, the
 Yorkville assassin . . . .)
  "Everything's so half-said, Rob. Never mind, darling, I suppose I'll get
  used to it."
  "But you're afraid."
  "Yes. For all of us."
  He had stared down at a knotted thread in the crimson Turkey carpet.
  Everything between them now was knotted, tangled. Like the wrong color on
  a good loom. There were fine colors that wove through and under and around
  the dim shades in their tapestries. You could follow a gold thread, a blue,
  a green, a red, and because this was a familiar pattern with the true Flix
  colors, you did not lose track of what was desirable and steadfast in the
  truth of the tapestry. It had a tag on it: Love. Not for sale.
  If this was a good marriage, you did not get lost in the dark, eel-green
  and toad-gray corners where the strange, thorny-humped beasts prodded,
  doing their bellowing and snorting as the old tapestry masters wove them to
  do. Because if you, he thought, were one of those absolute, primary colors,
  then you, and another color like you-Flixmade the pattern on the good loom
  come out whole.
  Not for sale? Gnawing doubts started. He tilted Jason's whiskey decanter,
  feeling the shot sting on the back of his tongue. Sometimes the alarm
  buzzed when Flix kneaded his shoulder to shake him awake. He batted around,
  feeling for pants, shirt, gun.
  "When will I see you?" Squeeze her hand; don't answer. You don't know.
  And there were the other things he couldn't explainlike ugly temper,
  clasbes with the children. Like the other morning, shaving. A mischievous
  little kid with her drawers buttoned up wrong watches Daddy scraping a dull
  razor over his chin at five-thirty A.M.
  "I don't want them in here peering at me," he yelled at Flix, viciously
  tired, flinging the towel down. "Keep them away from me."
  Tessa had peered up at him through her thin lacework of fingers. The father
  in him thought, "She's like a fan with jewels for eyes." Another part said,
  "Why am 1 in a slot where 1 could smack my little girl into a pulp because
  I am after a killer?"
  "Daddy, can you see me?"
124      Noel Pierce

 Oh, for God's sake, shut up.
  "I see a pixie shadow on a shower curtain." He cut his chin.
  "Silly, I'm me behind my fingers."
  "Sly minx." Dully: dabbing blood.
  "What's a minx?"
  Rob slapped the razor down. Control yourself, she's only six.
  "A minx? It's something that eludes you. Gets away. gets skinnying off by
  itself." The way gg gets away. And Flix eludes me, with what she doesn't
  say.
  Tessa gazed up long legs, saw a white, angry, unfamiliar face glaring at
  her in the mirror.
  "Daddy, it was a game." He hardly heard her. "Don't you know me?" Small
  face puckering. "It's me, Tess."
  "I was thinking," her father said thickly, unseeingly, "of something else.
  Now get out of my way."
  After that the children stepped gingerly around him. Mummy said to. ("Daddy
  is a businessman, he has to go out and earn money for the hamburgers and
  the popcorn and the rent.") They were diffident, subdued. Until he came in
  unexpectedly when they were in the kitchen with Mrs. Sunbeam, singing their
  clap-clap sing-a-song. Rob stood in the doorway, listening.

  In the dark of night on a sunny day [clap-clap]
  Two little bad girls started to play [clap-clap].
  Two headless giants came on the run,
  Shot the little girls at their fun [clap-clap].
  If you were there, you saw them fall [sang Tabithal.
  Go ask the blind peddler [sang Tessa]. '
  He saw it all [clap-clap, clap-clap] l

 He came in so fast with his big first banging down on the range that a pot
 lid clattered. The giggling and clapping stopped short. He grabbed the twins
 by their elbows and plunked them in front of him.
  "Where did you hear that? Come on. Talk. Who taught you those words?" He
  shook them. "Answer me. No fibs. Spit it out."
  "Daddy, please, you're hurting my arm . . . . It washe was . . . the
  balloon man in the park. He gave us the singsong. Look . . . see? Right
  here on the paper. Please, we didn't know it was wrong." The twins jerked
  away
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   125

 from him and ran out the door. He had wrenched Olga Czhenzunska around. She
 looked at him stolidly.
  "And you, Olga. What kind of a nurse are you to let some dirty-minded slob
  in a public park push this garbage on my kids?"
  "Bittc? Versteh' nicht . . . ." Her fingers pressed her bloodless lips.
  "Forgive . . . I did not know what they . . . when the man . . . passed the
  verse to die Kinder . . . . Look, when I am baking the Leb-kuchen, I do not
  hear everything that is said by the little ones, Mister. I cannot be every
  place at once mit my head in the oven."
  "You can stuff it," he said. "That's where your dumb Polska bead belongs.
  If you let this happen again, you're fired. Now put the coffee on and shut
  up and start the dinner. Where's my wife?"
   "Madam will be late is all I know."
  Even then, as he was to look back on it, Rob knew he must have sensed the
  two different ways she had of speaking. Mrs. Sunbeam talked often in a
  comic strip katzenjammer lingo of phonetic German-English. Hamming it up
  with phrases like "die Kinder," the foreign-born domestic, an illiterate
  old woman "scrupulously polite with her fractured sentences. Laying it on
  heavy. But now and then a correct, distinctive phrasing crept in-as the
  governess in the sleigh, with baronial colors on her cloak. A young girl
  with a cockade in her tricorn hat, as Grandfather recalled. Now he didn't
  hear it.
  The little girls' rhyme was cheaply printed on pulp paper. Rob put it in
  his pocket. In the morning he had walked over to the river park and caught
  the watchman checking out by the gate booth at Gracie Mansion. A lopsided
  grin of recognition lifted one side of his seamy face. He had known all the
  mayors way back to Hylan, and the scandals that had rumbled through the
  belly gas of city wards.
  They stood looking at sandboxes, seesaws and swings. There was a pony
  track, a mini merry-go-round.
  "That carousel over there, where my kids play . . . ."
  How wide open was it to punks, predators, molesters? To a fat man who
  picked Tabitha and Tessa out of all the others? Any child who caught the
  brass ring on the carousel could end up a sack of entrails on a splintered
  horse.
  "How many queer characters hang around here?"
126       Noel Pierce

  "Not so many as you'd think." The watchman shook his head. "Security's
  tight on account of the mayor. 'Course, there's them crummy fishers that
  take eels outa the harbor. But mostly we get junkies, and couples screwing
  under the bushes after dark."
   "Anyone you remember seeing before?"
  "One fellow hangs around trying to sweet-talk with some classy-lookin' doll
  who walks her dog."
   "What's he like?"
  "'Bout as tall as you but not so big. All hung with cameras, takes snaps of
  the kids and the harbor. Has haycolored hair like a Dutchman."
   "Who's the balloon man?"
  "He has a Department of Parks permit. Don't know the name. Kids climb all
  over him. Passes out rhymes free with the balloons. Holds back a black one
  to make the kids guess who's gonna get it next."
  "Clap-clap," sang Tessa. "Clap-clapl" shouted Tabitha. Rob felt in his hand
  the empty sting of the slap he'd wanted to give Mrs. Sunbeam-stolidly lying
  to him. Stolidly refusing to explain the unexplainable. Was she working for
  the enemy? For gg? Was the balloon man one of them? As he left the kitchen
  he felt her resentment fan over him like a hot blast from the oven. He
  turned and saw her stab the gingerbread loaf with a toothpick, stabbing,
  stabbing. Head bent. Crying?
  Nursery rhymes with ugly meanings crowded at him as if a tree of black
  ravens stared down at him. Fright is a rebus told in rhymes to Tabby and
  Tessa. Harmless pleasure that a little girl feels is something to be
  manipulated, twisted to some depraved end. What is it? How to stop it? What
  did they mean to do? Was it Fla by the river walk? How much did Jason know?
  But Jason wanted only one thing: stop the assassination.
  Sitting there, working the whiskey around, he could feel the painted
  carousel horses pumping and charging up and down, with a little girl
  hanging onto a wooden mane while her golden braids flew in the wind and her
  hand strained to reach for the free brass ring that meant the next ride
  wouldn't cost her a penny and she'd be home safe. Safe?
  Somebody in this neighborhood had set his children up as targets for a
  vicious crime. Had pushed on them the "clap-clap" song of headless monsters
  gunning them down. What was the ending they had chanted so trustfully?
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   127

 "Go ask the hlind peddler. He saw it all."
  That had to mean the old tie vendor. This was another way of telling him
  they knew his family. Knew where and how he operated, where he lived, who.
  his wife was. For the hundredth time he dealt with his rashness in encoun-
  tering the peddler. Judas bell, ringing its signal on the old junkman's
  line. The balloon man. Olga, with her light flashing in the nursery.
  The more Rob thought about it, the more something sticky raised its
  unrecognizable head. Like a late-night Grade-B borror film in which, while
  you, half-asleep, laugh at it and drink your beer, you are watching a hill
  of moss.
  Suddenly the hill begins to crawl toward you.

  Flix slept in snatches. Hearing the Syrup Man's voice: "Lady, you are in
  danger of something. Go, you must go . . . . Run . . . run from danger . .
  . ."
  The bedside clock dimmed, glowed, dimmed. She plumped the pillows, tugged
  at the wide sheets, veered restlessly between wanting to hold in her arms
  a man too remote from her and fighting another man too close by. Saying to
  herself all the logical, sensible things. That Rob was in the city. Busy
  with something undercover. And dangerous. She had tried to hide her
  anxiousness from Tabby and Tess. But the little girls sensed her
  distraction. Mummy was-nervy. They went about their school lessons,
  listless and quiet. Their playtime was forced, games fizzled out. Mrs.
  Sunbeam wore her dragon look. Twice she smacked them. She sniffed her
  bitter tears in the kitchen towel and bribed them with gumdrops. They said
  nothing to Mummy.
  Another man. The ugly fact pursued her-as he did. Temptation . . . to lure
  . . . to gain power over . . . the biter bitten, the hunter hunted. To find
  out if he was the one the old Syrup Man was mortally afraid of. An excuse?
  To see him again?
  Waking, she would think of his bay rod, the fireprotected handle, the
  random camera shots clicking away at the waterfront, the high-powered Zeiss
  close-focus square-18's, slung over his shoulder. The odd web between his
  fingers-the right hand only? Why that leap in her blood when the hand
  touched hers? Flix clenched her accusing palm, scrubbed it on her thigh.
128      Noel Pierce

  She saw his flaxen hair. Eyes so light blue that the bluish-white eyeballs
  and icy color with the hot glare of sun on them appeared to be all one,
  rimmed by the black circle of the irises. He had a square chin and the
  short, broad warrior's neck of rippled cords that are exaggerated in
  statues of soldiers and war-horses.
  She thought, it's like sunstroke, a coup de soled . . . to get herself into
  this foolish schoolgirl flap. The hurrying pulse rushing to meet something
  while her body pulled back. Ridiculous in a young married with two hefty
  sixyear-olds. But between waiting up for Rob, making coffee, riffling the
  magazines, stacking records on the turntable, lying awake, a kind of white
  night brushed her eyesla nuit blanche the insouciant French called it.
  White as moonlight, luminous, beckoning, with desire. Not like first love,
  this was a sensuous stirring, a strange languor, a restless turning before
  morning.
  She drove herself to think about the black balloon forced on her children
  to bat around like a dirty ball. Was he scaring them because they were
  Rob's? And had she was she involving herself recklessly in "cop's
  business"?
  Then choke it off now. Tell Rob. Look, she took herself firmly in hand.
  Tell him about the meeting by the river walk? She could hear Rob saying, "A
  prowler follows any girl he sees. City streets are jungles. Watch
  yourself." Tell him that Mrs. Sunbeam took the girls out of the neighbor-
  hood, into a store, bought them candy while she made a phone call she could
  have easily made right here in the kitchen? Now wait a minute. Are these
  the small nuisances to rasp his patience someone desperately intent on a
  job that is urgent and none of your business?
  What's the use of pretending? It is myself alone I have to deal with now.
  Gripping the pillows, Flix turned over and lay stretched out flat. Her body
  burned, grew cold. Infatuation is a madness. She hit the pillow, fists
  clenched. What the senses burn for, common sense rejects. She despised
  herself for it. Seeing, sometimes during the lonely, uneasy nights, the
  imprint of a different head on the pillow. Furiously starting up, she would
  be stung by disloyalty.
  Half imagined, half wanted, half nightmare . . . there was nothing held
  back in that pale-blue demanding stare. It was feral, vulpine. The
  playing-with-fire image would
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   129

 not leave her. Nor, she realized, would he. Not knowing why he followed her,
 nor why he was here. Implacably stubborn. Determined to have her. He waited.
  The little %vres clock busily ticking away gave her its mechanical answer.
  Tune passes. Rob is gone. He doesn't come. Too late. She shoved the
  clockface down. Life's not fair, the busy ticking said, not fair, not fair.
  Then she heard the footsteps in the hall. Immediately the clamor along her
  nerves set off a jangling, as if the delicate little clock, in disgrace on
  its side, had shrilled a loud alarm.
  Who was out there? She scrambled up, grabbed and knotted her robe, groped
  in the bedside table for her small gun. Moving along the wall, she reached
  the door and lifted the gun.
  It was Rob. She looked at him for a spinning moment and tossed the gun on
  a chair. Flix ran to him.
  "Darling, I'm so glad to see you. You don't know how I-Oh, I know. You're
  hungry. I've got some soup waiting. It's chicken, made from scratch,
  peasant style. . .
 Rob, sit down, kick your shoes off, give me your coat. Relax, while I fix a
 tray. Do you want a drink?"
  He didn't move. It was trying to make a tree bend to her. "Rob, what is
  it?"
  She looked up at his head, pushed back the dark hair that fell over a
  jagged gash. The stitches on the reddened flap of flesh looked painful.
   "Who hurt you?"
   "Some punk in a bar."
   "I'm so sorry, darling. Let me at least do something . . . ."
  "I'm all right, Flix. There's something I want to ask you. What newspaper
  was it that you had that night?"
   "What night?"
   "After the old man's birthday dinner."
   "What are you talking about?"
   "That anagram thing."
   "Rob, I don't know what you-"
   "The acrostic you pretended to be doing."
  "Oh. That." She blinked. "I remember now. I-I asked you questions about
  it."
   "What newspaper did you see it in?"
   "But, Rob, what difference--
   "It makes a difference, Flix. Go on. Tell me."
   "There wasn't any particular paper," she admitted. "I
130      Noel Pierce

 was just scribbling on a pad, I guess . . . . Some combination of letters I
 was curious about."
 "Where did you first see those letters?"
 She thought, on a man's chest on a tenement stair.
 The blood left her face.
 "What made you curious about them?"
 "Something I read, I suppose."
  "You turned over in bed and asked me what A E I O U stood for."
  "What if I did?"
  "Did you know it's a password among terrorists in this neighborhood?"
  "How could I possibly know that?"
  "Five blocks away from here a German criminal was murdered. Somebody
  stabbed him. He had your fancy anagram tattooed on his chest."
  She thought, then he is dead. That's the end of it. Her knees were shaking.
  She drew herself taut. Her face showed nothing.
  "Oh, yes," Flix said indifferently, "the letters meant `Austria lives
  forever.' What has it got to do with me?"
   "That's what I have to find out," Rob said.
  Something onrushing had passed her by. She took Rob's hand and warmed it.
  "You look so tired. With such a belt on the head I don't wonder you get
  silly ideas .... Let me get you that drink."
  The phone rang while Flix was in the kitchen. She sprang to answer it. Rob
  waited a minute, then took one silent stride to the desk phone and eased
  the receiver to his ear.
  "Hello?" Flix was saying rapidly, as though to cut in on something the
  caller had said but had not said. She invented quickly to the low, measured
  breathing on the other end of 'the line, "No, Mrs. Czhenzunska went home
  hours ago. What? Oh, I think to play Bingo, she said. Not at all. No
  trouble. Good night."
   He was alive.
  She felt a surge of frightening relief. Like a rush in her blood from a
  drug. Color flared in her face, exhilaration hammered through her. Flix
  wrapped her arms around her shoulders to slow her breath.
  Rob had silently replaced the receiver and crossed the room quickly to
  where he stood before.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   131

  Flix came back to him, said casually, "This-murder you were telling me
  about?"
  "Yes."
  "When was the stabbing?"
  "A couple of nights ago. Why?"
  "There was nothing about it on the television."
  "No. Not until we release it to the press."
  "You?"
  "I found the body."
  He picked up FIix's gun where she had dropped it and hefted it in his hand.
  "You were frightened of something when I came in. If someone broke the
  security locks, would you have shot him?"
  "Yes. No. I don't know. I suppose so. With the children asleep . . . yes.
  But it's never come to that, has it?"
  He had found the false note in the setup now. Not in the way Flix spoke-but
  in how she looked. The sudden change. Because of the phone call. The caller
  had not had to say one word.
  "Who was that on the phone for Olga?"
  "Oh, just some neighbor," Flix said. "A-Mrs. Schultz."

          21

       She had had coffee in Mrs. Sunbeam's small furnished room.
       A cheerful, pleasant hour. The philodendron admired. The little
       nonsenses that make a social call. The tidy room was cozy,
       without a past-except for a faded photograph of an Alpine snow
       scene. In a gaily bedecked sleigh a small child with flaxen hair
       in a fur-collared coat sat stiffly beside the coachman. In his
       hand was a curled whip lacing out in the wind to flick the glossy
       rump of a horse floundering through deep drifts: Behind them the
       sun glinted on turrets of a great house. That was all. There
132       Noel Pierce

 was nothing else personal here but Mrs. Sunbeam's coffee tray, some foreign
 magazines, her knitting bag.
  "So honored that you came . . . . Mind the stairs going down."
   "Thank you. I enjoyed my visit so much."
   "My pleasure. Danke schon."
   "See you in the morning." Flix took her hand.
   "la, Madam. Auf Wiedereshen!"
  One flight down on the landing after the door closed, Flix stopped and
  looked up at the skylight landing where his room was. He had telephoned
  again, seeming to know the exact times she was alone, and where she was
  going, whom seeing. "I would like soon to give you an apertif or tea if you
  prefer?" He had a clipped, anxious determination. She could not hear any
  buzz or click from a wire tap. He did this boldly, as if knowing there was
  no monitoring device attached to the phone. Who had informed him?
  On the silent landing, her suspicions aroused, she decided to visit that
  rooftop room. To examine the heavy rod with its peculiar shaft, the
  thickened camera lens, the powerful binoculars. Linking this up with his
  hatred of Grandfather, she thrust conscience aside, with an embattled
  protectiveness for Rob and the children; an uncanny hunch that she held a
  control the security agents did not have. Intent on what she knew was an
  extremely rash, dangerous mission-one that could hamper a complicated
  operation-Flix was certain that alone, in her way with him, she was close
  to a discovery. She knew she impinged on the bureau. She'd opened her life
  to the very part of Rob's that he'd denied her. But it was sticky.
  Was the man insane, or was it fear that made him so, and could she
  dissemble, break down his aggressiveness, reach some final truth in him
  that would immobilize, perhaps shatter him?
  She could make no case for herself, find no excuse. Treason to Rob-but, was
  it?
  As if he had been waiting up there, he came lightly, silently, around the
  landing, with a blaze of pleasure when he saw her. Taking her arm, his
  finger on his mouth, he said, "Come with me. Please to visit me, brighten
  a dull day."
  Door cracks opened as they climbed; there were whispers. She was like other
  women who had gone up with him.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   133

  His was like an officer's room. There was a studio bed, a table, two
  armchairs, stereo equipment.
  He took her furs, gloves, handbag. "Wilikommen. Sit down, please. I will
  get you something in a moment. It is charming, this little conspiracy, no?"
  She touched the fine leather of a flat-black oblong case with bronze-etched
  clasps. The highly polished nameplate bore the telltale inscription: "A E
  I O U."
  Flix stared down at it with a cold, inward drenching. He watched her.
  "So. You think you know this one?" He was amused.
  "These are our English vowels," she said indifferently.
  He pressed his hand down hard over the nameplate, lingeringly, thinking of
  Austria.
  He was very pale. She saw the curious blue glitter of eyes far away where
  nothing reached him. Then he lifted his palm off the lettering.
  "What is it?"
  "An ancient saying of my country. `Austria lives forever, is supreme.'
  See?" He bared his chest.
  "A family heirloom?"
  He laughed. "Heirloom? Nein. Nein. It is nothing dead. That I can assure
  you." She thought with a chill of the German criminal who Rob said was
  stabbed near here. It was, he had said, "a password for terrorists."
  Wanting him to open the case, she turned away with a small shrug.
  "Sit. There. Now. I will show you." He settled her in a chair and laid the
  case on her knees, snapping the locks open.
  What had she expected? The rifle, stock and barrel, lay on its satin bed
  like a sleeping viper. It was a beautiful self-loader with intricately
  engineered sections. Her little finger could snap the safety catch. It had
  a cradled, contoured menace.
  She was a fair shot, on wild turkey shoots with Rob and Grandfather, in
  Greensboro. But she had never even imagined anything like this. In the
  casual minute her eyes scanned it, touching no part, pretending a silent
  admiration, Flix compared it with the trapshooting rifles she knew. And a
  few of the new ones Rob had described. They were archaic as the dodo to
  this sniper shining up at her with its cold bare snout. This, she sensed,
  was a masterpiece of recent invention, of strange caliber and
134      Noel Pierce

 velocity. Every inch was engineered and contrived to fit the exact
 impressions of an old hunting gun from an Austrian trophy room. The antique
 look was a fake.
  She smiled dryly. "Beautiful. So old. Wonderfully cared for."
  He appeared satisfied with the enthusiasm she tried not to lay on too
  broadly.
  "What is this?" Flix gingerly touched the end caps of the telescope sight.
  "A clever telescope with which we see the bird more clearly. We get him
  magnified from five hundred yards off, into a sitting duck no farther than
  your elbow. It is made, see, so that we draw the bird into a hairline
  crisscross. Then, squeeze the trigger. You shoot?" -
 "NO."
   "Good. It is not a sport for girls." He looked at her.
   "What have you shot with it?" Who? How many?
  "I? Nothing." He closed and locked the hasps. "It has not been used for
  many years. Why?"
  She shrugged off the question. Inside the satin rifle bed was a smell of
  gunpowder. The barrel was newly oiled. Her throat contracted with fear. She
  saw the crisscross bisecting Rob's face.

  "What a charming antique. Thank you for showing it to me.'.

  "Would you like an espesso? No? Then a cordial." He took out some bottles.
  "Urzata . . . Tamarinda . . . Ginger schnapps?"
  Flix heard the clink of a crystal stopper. He set cordial glasses on a
  tray. Strains of memory of the Syrup Man stirred under a Haydn quartet on
  the stereo.
   Gg held a fragile bottle up, sniffed it approvingly.
  Something ancient and evil had looked out at her over the glass stopper. It
  crackled the roots of her hair. She settled herself warily.
  Gg said, "Before food, a good drink for the stomach's sake? You will like
  this cordial." He smiled. "Especially for a lady."
  Flix watched him. It was still, outside on the tenement roof. Early evening
  stars stabbed at the dusty window. He offered her a small crystal glass of
  amber liquid.
   There was only one on the tray.
   "And you? Not drinking?"
   "No. I have work to do. Research. But you are my guest.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   135

 You will like it. I have it from an old man in the neighborhood. He had a
 spirits shop. But it is closed now."
 "What happened to him?"
 "He fell upon bad times. He is dead."
 "Poor old man."
 "Ja, poor alte. He was a distiller of poisons, they say."
  "They say someone else was knifed to death near here the other night."
  "How did you hear this? It is not on the wireless. In the papers."
  "From my husband-you recall-the cop."
  He frowned. "We do not speak of him, bitte. Only ourselves,."
  Flix wet her stiffened lips on the cordial rim. It was not sweet but a
  strange essence, as if something fiery hot could be cool and enticing. A
  whiff came to her of crushed ginger. She said:

   Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny
   Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood,
   cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

 "What is that rhyme?"
 "A verse of Masefield's I sing to my children."
  His hand slapped down hard on the table. "Please. We speak of us. Here. You
  and me. Of no one else."
  "I only meant to tell you," she began, and slightly held her breath because
  be was dangerous now, "that I think I knew your little man at the spirits
  shop."
  "So?"
  On his feet a quick upward thrust, he was so tall she strained back to see
  him.
  "What is wrong?"
  "Knew him?"
  "I used to visit his shop."
  "Visit?"
  "Talk to him."
  "Of what?"
  She went on casually. "Oh, of perfume, herbs, raspberry syrup, peppermint,
  sweet grasses, pipsissewa. That is something they use in soft pop drinks
  like sarsaparilla .... It goes back to our American Indian times. He had a
  fas-
136      Noel Pierce

 cinating shop. A distiller of poisons . . . imagine."
 "You forget. He is dead."
 "Then I'm sorry."
  With a lightning shift, gg laughed explosively. "Gott im Himmel, what makes
  this dreary mood?"
  "You started it."
   "Always the man's fault?"
   "Yes."
  "We should be enjoying ourselves. Instead, a lot of foolish talk I could
  get from any slut on the stairs. And you-you are a very continental girl-of
  great chic. And so lovely. Look"-he spun around-"I have bought flowers.
  Carnations. Roses. The yellow ones, they are soft and scented like you.
  With thorns, like you."
   "How did you know I would be coming today?"
   "Like your husband, I have my informers, too."
  He put a flower in her hand. Flix sipped the amber drink. She had known it
  was a drug. Probably a mild aphrodisiac. Braced as she was, with Olga's
  strong black coffee, it might dull but not stultify her wits. Determinedly
  she fought it with strong, conscious adrenal energy. Ginger lily,
  sandalwood, vetiver and lime, 1 can meet this, if 1 take my time. if 1 tell
  myself the rhymes Tabitha and Tessa splash in the bath with, 1 can beat
  this if 1 singsong to myself: "Sweet oil of almond, oil of turtle. Then
  eucalyptus, and wild crepe myrtle . . ."
  Flix jerked up, shook herself, heard a wild, soft laughter. Hers. Plunging
  up, she reached for her furs, saying slowly, from a great distance, "I am
  late. I must go."
   But she had not moved at all.
   The voice that was shouting "Hurry" was inside her.
   He held a silken cord.
   "Do not struggle. It is no use to fight me."
  The way lightning fingers wove a snare, her hands, shoulders and throat
  were bound. She felt nothing; one minute the urge to reach for her furs,
  the next, in this web of gossamer and thong. Whichever way she turned,
  cords bit. No use to struggle, but explore. She put her hands together,
  folded them.
  She said slowly, "Why don't you shove a gag down my throat?"
  "Your smile is beautiful. I do not want to lose the shape of your mouth."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  137

  "You never had it. Me. Or my beautiful mouth. You never will."
   But fear crept back.
  "Don't be afraid," he whispered again, and bent, tightening his arms around
  her. Her hair was glossy and thick and splendid, strand by heavy strand he
  sifted it through his fingers, then turned and enclosed her mouth in his,
  murmuring and gasping. His teeth tasted her hair, a few strands that were
  glossy and intertwined, like his interwoven garrote.
  She was passive, utterly still. It angered him. He taunted her. "Now I can
  control you completely. I can touch you, kiss your mouth like this . . .
  and this"-nuzzling her throat, seeking downward to the curve of
  breasts-"uncover you, stroke you, arouse you. I can undress you, caress you
  all over . . . ."
  "A normal man would get on with it," she said scornfully, "not talk about
  it. What are you? Impotent? A voyeur? Do you have to get whipped to get
  your kicks?"
  He leaned forward and with deliberation gave her a flicking slap across the
  face.
  She made herself laugh up at him against the smarting sting. "Chat, too,
  you had. to do to get your pleasure. So all right. Beat me up. Rape me. Go
  on. Get it over with. I suppose the only sexual satisfaction you can get is
  to stab, torture, kill."
  He pushed his hot face closer to her throat. The fear that had been licking
  at her filled her now so that her womb contracted. But in a strange way she
  was glad to let him know the truth about himself.
  She could wear off the drug, wrenching, twisting. But the cord hurt.
  Hurting was good. Work now. Work against it. You walked into this. You put
  your head into a snare. Now work.
  Flix sat back, feeling her hands together as friends. Palm on palm, this is
  me. Let him pry them apart, these are still me. Rob, 1 am very terrified.
  Please, Rob, 1 am very, very afraid.
  Gg walked around her, took up an end of the nylon fetter around her throat.
  "This is the chain by which the wolf Fenrir was bound."
  "Never met that kind of wolf. But I could tell Fenrir how tricky this one
  is." Her mind was smoking, her words
138      Noel Pierce

 slow. The cord rubbed cruelly. "Can't you invent a more comfortable kind of
 rape?"
  He laughed. "You think I am so crude as to rape you? You women have only
  one thing on the mind."
  "I have only one thing on my mind: to get out of here and back to my
  husband and my daughters."
  "Your husband"-he shrugged-"is of no importance. At any time I scrub him
  out. And natfrlich you cannot tell him you were in my room."
  "Then why are you jealous of him?"
  "Because he goes to bed with you. You belong to him, not me. Do you know
  what jealousy feels like? It is a weakness. It destroys the things a man
  is. I despise it in myself."
  "I thought to a Prussian like you God is always on the side of the strong.
  Shoot first, explain later."
  "A Prussian-like me. What am I? Tainted?"
  "You said it. I didn't."
  He knuckled his fists not to strike her again. He came back and stood over
  her.
  -Be still now, she thought drowsily.'Be very quiet and indifferent as in
  the presence of someone fearfully disturbed. His derangement is the only
  form of sanity in which 1 can reach him.
  As if her calmness soothed him, he sighed. She felt his mania recede.
  "This chain by which the wolf was bound is extremely light but strong. It
  is made of the thunder of mountains, the sinews of beasts, the breath of
  birds, the spittle of snails. And now by the taste of honey on my mouth."
  He kissed her again. This time with a gentle, pleading need.
  His lips were startlingly sensitive and warm. Under them her mouth grew
  cold. But something stirred in her body that was not in the rope's control.
  She shuddered.
  A strange sigh shook him.
  "When the chain breaks, the wolf will be free. The end of the world will be
  at hand."
  But which of them was bound?
  He knelt beside her, at eye level, and made a loose circle of his arms
  around her. She felt his attraction, compounded by fear and dismay. He
  said, finally, stroking her, "The French have an expression for what we
  feel. You,
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   139

 too, feel it. C'est une question de peau. A question of skin, of touch."
 "And for a girl you want, you have to tie her up?"
  "I use the garrote to keep you here longer. By my will. I want you badly."
  "Badly, yes. You can't imagine you could have someone of her own free
  will."
  "I have never been refused anything I want."
  "Oh, yes, you have. That's why I'm in this silly truss." She laughed at
  him.
  Something mesmerizing in his low voice began to lull her. Flix gouged her
  nails into sweating palms; jerked alert. He was saying, "In the old castle
  of my grandfather's people there was a room walled off from the
  battlements. It was the waiting room. Not for emissaries, but for the court
  mistress. She waited there for the baron when he desired her. If it were
  now mine, I would come straight to find you from boar sticking."
  "I suppose you would not wait to wash? To take off your gloves-filthy with
  blood?"
  "No. Certainly I would not wait. Nor take my gloves off. But run to take
  you as soon as I came in." He imagined it. "You would like me that way."
  Chin to chin, her stare fought him down. He blinked at some impossible
  light.
   "Perhaps then," Flix said. "But not now."
   "Because you are fettered? That is more exciting."
  "How must it be for me? Or don't you Prussians think of women in any terms
  but bed? Taking a live animal after you finish with the dead ones."
  He fought her stubbornly. "Can't you be gratified that a man must want you
  so much he must run to you from anywhere? That he would shoot the stars out
  of the sky, kill anything that got in his way to get you?"
   "No. You horrify me."
  It was the wrong thing to say. She had lost control of him. He whitened,
  turned idly to a table drawer, took out a horn-handled knife, sprang the
  blade.
  He took the inside of her wrist, turned it, and like an unhurried surgeon,
  cut it.
  Flix bit back a whimper. She watched him cut his wrist with a crisscross,
  and as he pressed it against the blood running from hers, he said, in- a
  thick, choked way, "Now
140       Noel Pierce

 we have mixed our blood. You are part of me. I of you. Mingling is good.
 Making love is better still."
  "Raping," Flix said bitterly. "Rape of me, rape of my blood, of flesh, of
  mind-what difference does it make what you call it? It means violation of
  rights without consent:"
  "I could make such love to you. New ways to do it."
   "Sleep with someone who despises you?"
   "It would not be like that. You want me."
   She turned away miserably.
  Was it true that a woman controls her state of permissive violation? She
  saw herself objectively in a shattering second as what she was: bound,
  half-drugged, conversationally violated, skillfully caressed, entirely at
  the whim of a psychotic killer whose touch was seductive. She was afraid of
  his hands. Not from violence or pain. But because his touch was disturbing.
  And, head hanging, she held her breath, not to show pain, wanting, dread,
  or what it was-horror. Horror of herself. Of him. Of corruption. Of desire
  to be shocked into this consummate evil
  She said, "To be a male is like an animal. To live wholly as a man is as a
  human. Don't you know you are inhuman? Not even clean and direct as a
  beast, to want to mount a woman like an animal?"
  He considered it carefully. It was so alien to this thinking of women that
  she could sense his slow translation from English to German.
  A frown leveled down at her; he nodded. But she saw the staring pinpoint
  eyes, perplexed.
  Her last attack was the obvious one. "There must be something more to
  you-something I haven't discoveredthan wanting to couple-screw, if you
  will-a girl you tie up in knots. This way, I'm not a name, a personality to
  you. Just a two-minute whore."
  He jerked away, distracted. She went on. As if this intercourse were over,
  and now they could turn on the pillow and talk about it.
  "And when I've gone? Then do you contemplate the shape of my breasts, the
  easy or hard entry to me? The guilt or peace that follows the orgasm?" If
  he could achieve his, which she now doubted.
  "Why did you say `guilt'?"'
  "Because you're not all that tough. If you were chasing
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   141

 me -around that old castle, and if I were a lady, you wouldn't use me like
 a village tart."
  She had caught him now. The pale shining insanity left his eyes. "What
  would I do?"
  "You would be subtle. Stir my mind. Read poetry to me. Play music. Make me
  a gift of your intelligence. Think about it."
  He humored; her. "A gift? Yes." He paced the room, jerked open the bureau
  drawer, sifted papers.
  Flix moved her neck painfully against the nylon snare.
  "Here is a work I have written in Gothic German verse. As a boy I
  translated this war cry, old since the Guelphs and the Ghibellines." He
  held out a red morocco book, gold-embossed, with a crown oh the cover.
  "Here it says that what I translated was sung at the Battle of Weinsberg in
  1140."
  "You talk like some minor prince who still keeps castles on the Rhine."
  It was a shot in the dark. But it jerked him upright. With a rapid heel
  clicking that was more a goose step, he crossed the room to her.
  "This is given in my family, from grandfather to youngest son."
  She heard him wearily. A faint mist was wavering. She thought: Dear God, he
  is going to declaim some sentimental fatherland verse. If he lets me go
  alive? Swear never again to get into such a frightening muddle? Swear to
  Rob and to God to forgive my meddling?
  Trying to concentrate on what he was saying, her heavy eyes fell on the
  face of his clock. Why didn't 1 see it before? Too scared, drugged, to see
  it? Where the customary numeral of XII noon was, she saw the Iron Cross.
  Pointed at twelve.
  Look away from the clock. Be totally indifferent to what you see. For what
  you know now are these things. He has an explosive fishing rod. A camera
  with a peculiar lens, a trigger attachment that could conceal a bullet. A
  twenty-four-hour clock with an Iron Cross where twelve is. And the sleeping
  viper rifle with a sniperscope.
  "You are not listening."
  "The thong is cutting into me."
  "I will release you."
  "Soon. Please. Very soon."
  "I do not wonder that-du magst mich nicht."
142      Noel Pierce

  The understatement of all time. "Oh, yes. Sometimes I like you. You know I
  could like you."
  "Then hear me. I am paying you a great honor. My English is not so good.
  But I will translate so that you will know. Who I am. What 1 am."
  He finished reading some old bristling Gothic German war song harshly, with
  pride and defiance. It made no sense, nor did she care. She felt too spent
  to understand it. Having sat erect in the trussed chair for an endless
  hour, she gave up to an immense need to slip into oblivion. Am 1 going to
  faint? she thought. That would be no protection now.
  Terror is a shroud. It settles over me. Pin myself on something clean. The
  rape was not. We have passed that danger. But he has revealed himself to me
  in other ways. If the mania comes back now . . . if there is to be the
  killing? 1 am bound. My mind is free. 1 can look up at the stars.
  As she sought them, a shadow obscured the rooftop.
  A passkey whispered in the oiled lock.
  Gg spun around, his switchblade open, the knife rising.
  "Who is it?"
  Mrs. Sunbeam stood in the doorway.
  She looked once at Flix. Then, as she would have snatched a bad child from
  cruelty, she reached and slapped gg furiously across the mouth, jerking the
  knife out of his hand. Flix saw her whip his head contemptuously from side
  to side, cuffing him.
  "No," she said in a low voice of biting scorn. "You cannot have her. I have
  told you. You cannot have her." She pointed with a stabbing finger. "Out."
  Harrying him, she snapped at him like an enraged terrier at a mastiff.
  He made a whimpering sound under his breath. "Leave me alone." As a boy
  punished he buttoned his shirt, ran his hands over his dripping face.
  "No, I won't. Get out fast. Leave the lady to me. Mach schnell."
  "Grendel, you know what to do?"
  He hesitated. She spat at his feet.
  "I know what to do. Mop up this evil mess you have made on the world's
  clean floor."
  She was releasing Flix, snipping rapidly, with the knife point.
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  143

  "Madam, oh, Madam." Cool, precise, with distracted tenderness, she touched
  the bruised throat.
  "You know I will kill you for this," he said.
  He pulled on a sherpa-lined jacket, slung the camera over his shoulder.
  Then he screamed at her, "Batfowler!"
  Mrs. Sunbeam indignantly shoved him to the door. Her teeth were rattling
  with anger, her cheeks pink. "My death can wait. It has waited a long time.
  There is no time left for you now. Get out."
  The doorframe was empty. Padded rubber soles took the landings at a jump.
  "Mrs. Sunbeam . . . thank you." Flix gagged silently. Tears stung her eyes.
  She fought them back.
   "How did you know I was here?"
   "I watch from the window."
  "Did you know I-?"
  "He is mad for you. Ja, I knew."
  "Thank you." Flix flexed her aching neck, rubbed her throat. The room had
  ceased to rock. She stood up.
  "It is nothing, Madam." The old woman spread her hands emptily. "Or you
  might say-it is everything."
  In a flash she remembered the faded photograph of the sleigh.
  "Mrs. Sunbeam, who are you?"
  "I am his governess."

             22

  On Thursday mornings they ironed. Mrs. Sunbeam sorted and starched. Flix
  laid out the girls' pajamas, their pants and ruffled slips, checked for
  mending. The iron steamed, the coffee was on-a heady aroma perked from
  Mocha, Java and chicory ground from roasted beans. Rob liked the heavier,
  slightly bitter mixture Mrs. Sunbeam brought fresh from a Yorkville coffee
  store.
144      Noel Pierce

  "Leave the shirts," Flix said. "I like to do his cuffs and get the collar
  soft enough, not limp." She picked up a rumpled one and bunched it against
  her face. Sweat, love, homemaking . . . one man who is better than all the
  rest.
  Holding something Rob had worn, she heard the harsh cry of "When the chain
  breaks, the wolf will be free." She sank her fingers in the shirt. Men wear
  other kinds of armor.
  Facing each other today, across the ironing board and over the eleven
  o'clock coffee "mit Strudel," there was a truce of complicity. Doing
  something peaceful and practical with their hands had cemented a mutual
  understanding to say nothing. Flix knew Mrs. Sunbeam respected Rob's work,
  meticulously treated her as "wife of the Mister." This morning-in fact,
  since she had appeared in the tenement doorway-she was more than ever
  rigidly austere in her direction. Domestic hustle-bustle went on as before.
  They were a little too pale, a little too careful with each other. That was
  all.
  Mrs. Sunbeam filled the coffee cups. "Am I"-her voice shook hesitantly-"to
  pick up the girls at the Schule?"
  "Of course." Flix looked up. "Why not?" Won't they be returning safely
  unless the governess is there? Governess to whom? To a boy in an Austrian
  schloss with a family crest on the coffee cups? The one she held shattered
  on the kitchen floor. "How clumsy of me, Mrs. Sunbeam . . . I was thinking
  of something else."
  Who was Grendel? Why did the name stick like a burr? Why had he called her
  that? The clue ended. Just as many such clues must elude Rob. Track, track
  it down. All right Now. Go back- to English lit and dig. Pretend it's mid-
  terms and 1 must come up with the answer.
  Beowulf, her mind said. Think. All right. Grendel is the half-mythical,
  half-human monster in Beowulf who raids the King's hall and slays people in
  their sleep. But how could she be Batfowler too?
  Flix stood up and, putting down Rob's shirt, said, "You know my husband is
  a special intelligence agent for the government?"
  "Ja," dryly. "That is why I asked if I was to get the children as usual
  from the Schule."
  "You were afraid we wouldn't want you anymore?"
  Mrs. Sunbeam automatically tested the steam iron with
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   145

 a licked forefinger. Then, leaning her face down on the ironing board, she
 wept.
  Flix touched her shoulder. "I'm here. Take your time." She sat down, picked
  up a book, turned the pages, waited. Mrs. Sunbeam, with eyes screwed shut,
  felt her way to Flix's chair and knelt with her wet face on Flix's hands.
  So they rested. A clock struck. A garbage truck churned its refuse. A
  motorcycle gunned in the street.
  Whoever she is now, whoever she might have been, this, Flix knew, is a
  woman who has defected to Rob.
  Such victories are tired. So much has been fought before.
  "Why, Mrs. Sunbeam?"
  "It is many things, Madam. Perhaps because of this name the little girls
  call me. As if there could be sun in me, anywhere."
  "You have defected to my husband. To our government?"
 " Ja. I will do it."
  ..Why?"
  "I decided. Because you and the Mister are . . . kind. Because I want
  justice done. To protect the children and you-from him. Even when as a
  small boy I knew he was cruel. A fanatic. To give all for something he
  wanted."
  "Dedicated?"
  "How do you say- 1n dedication, like on some altar of the devil." She moved
  jerkily, touching the walls, the pine cupboards around her, with the flat
  of her hand, to find a substance she could explain to Flix. "In a village
  where I lived in Poland there was a blind woman who felt each knocker on
  the doors of the houses, to find her familiar one. She would creep along
  the paths feeling her way blindly. Then she knew she had come home. Forgive
  me, Madam."
  "I forgive you, Mrs. Sunbeam." Can you forgive me?
  "But here is a home I. know. Four walls. It is safe. An enclosure. But
  he-he wanted to blow things up. To trap animals. He would go with the
  gamekeeper to track and take the fox cubs from the mother. A boy no higher
  than this, he smelled at night of animal blood. He would burn me with hot
  embers as I went to put him to bed in the residence."
   "Where?"
  "But surely you knew, Madam? He is Gerhardt, the
146      Noel Pierce

 Baron von Gottfried. Once a great barony-then squandered away."
 "No. Where was this?"
  "A province on the Austrian border. His mother, the baroness, would be with
  her lovers." Mrs. Sunbeam held fingers out as if counting. "Maybe the
  footman, the gamekeeper, a steward-how many I cannot count. He knew. He
  would come upon them. The tumbled, dirty silk sheets, the stale champagne,
  his mother, the baroness, naked in the door, ruffling his hair with her
  drunken fingers . . . . I would hear him crying, being sick. Only a little
  boy . . . . He burned me to cauterize his shame and pain."
  "And your pain? Where was his father?"
  "The Markgraf? Away. In Biarritz . . . Cannes . . . the Crimea. Weak,
  hating the baroness, letting the boy run wild. He was called up with the
  regiment, the Thirteenth Hussars,. Then when members of the Imperial Guard
  were shot, he escaped to the mountain passes." She spoke wearily, as if
  adding up an old score known by rote.
  Then she pulled her lace collar to one side. "You see, Madam." White scars
  dotted the cords of-her neck to the breastbone. "Er hat mich verbrannt."
  "Yes, you have been burned," Flix said. The scars traced a stigmata of
  cruelty. She stood up decisively. "It's time to put lunch on. I'll do it.
  You go get Tabitha and Tessa from school."
   "Oh, Madam."

             23

  In an alt-night diner over his third cup of coffee, Rob unfolded a piece of
  the grid map of Mrs. Sunbeam's rooftop. He had sent up an aerophoto
  specialist in a helicopter ostensibly covering transit patterns. The
  eye-in-the-sky man had handed him a bunch of film clips that looked like
  dirty postage stamps studded with chimney pots, air shafts
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  147

 and wash lines. One down-shot chimney stack was topped with an onion dome
 ventilator, ornate as the Black Queen's headdress. Just under it appeared to
 be a thickened wedge snuffled around the stack as if an old bull elephant
 had wrapped its trunk there to shake it loose.
  He had peeled off sections of the grid map down to a few neighborhood
  blocks in which the man could move. His jungle yard was narrowed down to a
  few places he would have to make after dark. Necessities like a barbershop,
  tailor, cleaner, short-order eats, laundry service, liquor, drugstore. The
  bars were getting hot. He wouldn't show there. Another pincer point closing
  in was the tourist mecca of the Cafe Liechtenstein where Grandfather's old
  flame, Madam Liese, was keeping something nasty cooking on a slow fire.
  Give the screw another twist and the third suspect area was the bulkhead
  where the fishers gathered.
  Of the three, Mrs. Sunbeam's house interested him the most. Rob pushed some
  change across the counter and moved out into the raw wind. It was a heavy
  night, gloomy and obscure with patches of fog rolling in from the river.
  He made a detour around the area, crisscrossed the side streets, coursed
  his way to a bus stop, worked back to a telephone booth on the corner, put
  in a dime, finessed a fake call to a dead receiver, crossed the street to
  slip between palings around a vacant building lot. Working across rubble in
  the lot, he came out at right angles to the house. He figured several
  approaches. There was a back stairway, a narrow alley, a rear entrance to
  a delicatessen.
  In front of 420-A he watched a janitor kicking the ash cans around. It was
  a gray tenement next to a brownstone stoop. The old building was
  embellished by grinning gargoyles with broken noses that leered out at him
  under the second-floor fire escapes. A fat woman scratched her armpits and
  eyed him stolidly. A slat-thin child with fluffy blond hair skipped rope in
  the night shadows, hopping, counting as if there were no tomorrow.
  Mrs. Sunbeam, he figured, would right now be scrubbing the playground grime
  off his two taffy-haired daughters in a playful scrap for the bar of soap.
  Was her bedsitting room up there, where she brewed her bitter, boiling
  black coffee strong enough to raise the dead? What else did she brew,
  sipping, knitting her endless mittens, spinning what webs? For Flix? For
  "Madam"? For Tabby and Tessa? He thought of grisly things like suffocation,
  kid-
148      Noel Pierce

 napping., a flashlight roaming over sleeping faces in the dark, and other
 fright techniques of the paid informer. Then instantly felt a surge of her
 bristling goodness to his family, in spite of her guarded hostility to him.
 Why was she so suspicious, so hostile?
  One minute he was visible to the fat woman. The next, in a swirl of fog, he
  slipped into the brownstone next door and through to the back. It took him
  a moment to finger the rear door, manipulate the lock and merge into the
  yards behind the tenement.
  The snarling spring at his leg was a cat. He let the claws get a grip on
  his thick steer hide boots, then as the screeching yowl started, he shot a
  tranquilizer vapor down its throat and yanked the slackening cat claws off.
  Abruptly, the feline glare paled into unconsciousness.
  Cat. Cat. What stopped him about this animal snarl on the edge of Mrs.
  Sunbeam's back stairway? Rob spun around, took out a switch knife and
  shaved off specimen hairs. "One of them," he had said to Jason, "has a
  cat." Whose enlarged hairs, sifted off Rudi's skin and clothes, were
  microscopically typed and sealed in plastic folders at the Hutch lab. He
  went silently up the stair landings to the top of the adjoining tenement,
  took his knife to snap the hook off the roof door and stepped out into the
  wet fog. Roof-hopping over the black tarred surfaces, he felt his way among
  fluttering, cooing pigeon coops, kids' rusting toys, molding sun pads,
  stumbled over a clattering pail and stepped quickly between the damp folds
  of limp wash.
  He tried to get a mental fix on the grid map. The roof was a burnt-out tar
  forest of television antennas, chimney funnels and ventilators. No Black
  Queen in sight. He jumped the low retaining wall to Mrs. Sunbeam's rooftop.
  Wedging a fuse pellet in the roof door, he blew the lock with a sputter.
  There had to be one room close to the sky, with quick access to rooftop
  exits on either side of this building. Going to the rear edge, Rob peered
  down a dizzying black shaft until he located the window of the room at the
  back. No light showed from it. Listening for a creak of rusting treads, he
  threw a leg over the roof ledge and started down the fire escape ladder.
  A slatted blind was drawn over the uncurtained window. Along the edge of
  the blind he set his eyes. He could see nothing inside. He took out a pair
  of glasses with tele-
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   149

 scopic night lenses and screwed the magnifiers up. No one was in the room.
 He waited for sounds, any telltale movement of a watcher inside, then
 decided to risk the flash beam. It was a slender, greenish white pencil ray
 so powerful that it could blind.
  The ray showed him an interior belonging to an occupant of tidy ways and
  considerable cash. Easy chairs, brandy carafe, polished riding boots
  leaning in a corner.
  The ray probed other expensive tastes, a big bay fishing rod locked in a
  heavy case, camera gear, binoculars. It sped to a clock on the mantel, the
  hand-cranked kind, its face painted with flowers, heraldic scrolls and
  gnomes.
  Rob flexed his cramped legs and bent closer. The ray made the clockface
  jump at him in glaring white. The numerals stood out burning, glowing, as
  if the numerals around the old Austrian clock were imbedded with elec-
  trically sensitive contact nodes. He snapped off the flash. Nothing. A
  fading. Just a heavy shadow of clock on a mantel. He snapped the ray on.
  Its high-powered beam bit into the clockface again and made it pulse and
  generate with a peculiar energy. The numeral on the hour of twelve was an
  Iron Cross. The ray circled the clock around, and counterwise. He blinked
  the pencil ray on-off, on-off. Immediately the numerals paled and glowed,
  faded, came on strong. The ray was trying to tell him something. The clock
  must be a link in a transmission setup. The narrow, intense magnification
  of his night lenses sent two thumbs of pain jabbing at the back of his
  head. The bones of his kneecaps were popping. He slid the lenses up on his
  hairline and wiped the sweat out of his eyes, resting them to get better
  night vision by looking off over dark rooftops into puffs of fog. The
  battery in the pencil ray felt too hot. He let it cool and thought about
  the clock. Someone had to wind it regularly. If, as he guessed, the quaint
  numerals around the painted troll face were built for business, all it took
  was a gloved hand to depress and release rapidly the numbered hours around
  the clockface. Like numeral 7 saying, "Have you got the money, Hans, old
  buddy?" And numeral 9 saying, "Same place, same bar, same broad." Some kind
  of ham operator rig? Where was the output rig into which the clock could be
  connected, generating and transmitting its extremely volatile energy?
  Rob worked himself carefully back, up the flaking iron fire escape treads.
  On the roof he stood up, listening. Faint
150      Noel Pierce

 bleats hummed from a television antenna close by. He catstepped around,
 hunting for an electrical power line which could link the clock circuit
 through a hole in the brick sidewall to a concealed sending device, with a
 cable lead-in and transformer.
  Searching around in the dark, he found the source of the main transmission.
  It was an adequate job, encased in a metal box taped on a ledge below the
  ventilator funnel. Once the old building had had gas or coal fireplaces and
  crumbling brick smoke shafts. The top of this shaft which concealed the
  transmitter was the onion-domed Black Queen on the grid map.
  He found the elephant trunk circuit wire taped to the metal ventilator
  chimney shaft. It was weathered and dirtied over to look like an old repair
  job to brace the shaft, as if some stumble bum of a janitor hoped the
  building inspector's eyes would slide over it on the way to beer and
  schnapps in the basement. Mrs. Sunbeam's house was getting to be very busy
  topside.
  He puttered around the Black Queen, testing, estimating, guessing. There
  was an output transmitter device rigged to an input wire control which the
  man who lived below had threaded through a hole drilled in the brick and
  puttied over. The lead-in, fastened by standoff insulators, was protected
  with a plastic sleeve where it rubbed against the roof edge. Rob detached
  the lightning arrester. It was carefully interlaced with wiring to relay
  the clock sending device to the transmitter. As such, a usable shortwave
  rig that any skilled amateur operator could use for high-speed sending.
  From black tarred rooftops to small town tool shop garages there were
  thousands of the same. Rob thought about it. The clock dials had to be set
  to arrange the sending signal. The numerals represented messages. Then the
  clock is wound. It is a twenty-four-hour clock. When the big pontifical key
  is turned in its innards, did it send the signal? Or was it then charged,
  generated, pulsing with fissionable energy so that, at thirty-five minutes
  past the hour, a frame of numbered signals was transmitted by shortwave?
  Had Rudi set this up? Who was the receiver? Did Mrs. Sunbeam know who lived
  in the skytop room? Had she, he wondered with a stab of anxiety, been the
  one selected to wind the clock?
  He listened to the dripping, fogbound silence on the roof. There was
  nothing but the throb of rock from an
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   151

 apartment across the street and, below, the grinding halt and accelerated
 rush of traffic.
  Then he wire-cut the elephant's trunk, slashing the thick, rubber-embedded
  circuit that linked the transmitter to the fake TV antenna, putting the
  sending operation out of business.
  It was the clock that worried him. Jason would want to paw that clock over.
  1 of 7-Branch will like you, clock. The agency will set you up pretty in
  its trophy room. As a device it seemed childishly simple. A clock that you
  set on the mantel. Wind it, link it to the output cord, and it switches you
  over to sending whatever messages the volatile numerals spelled out.
  But why was it manual? Because this clock had to be mobile. It was designed
  to be carried, hidden under the folds or in the deep pockets of an
  officer's greatcoat, something to be gotten rid of, destroyed by a man on
  the run.
  This one hadn't moved out in time.
  It would have been easier to go in through the window. But the fuse sputter
  on the roof door lock would warn gg when he got back from wherever he was.
  Rob went down one flight of stairs and fingered the locks. There were
  three. One was wired to what would be a screaming burglar alarm. Another
  was a bolt lock. The third, an ordinary double lock. He took them as they
  came, using the knife, master key and lock pick, and at the end a slamming
  shoulder wedge.
  Inside, he plucked up a solid-state walkie-talkie radio, grabbed up a
  shopping bag labeled BRUNO'S PORK STORE, and from a desk, tore out a bunch
  of cipher pads with lists of code numbers; a meaningless jargon of
  transmission kilocycles. In the closet was a tiny, new Swiss bodymodel tape
  recorder wedged in a canvas gun holster. He dropped the lot in Bruno's
  sausage bag. On a shelf was a "bug" detector with a built-in frequency
  sweep that could jam local sending. Rob put it in his shirt pocket.
  Under the bed he kicked out a Vuitton tote bag, scuffed with the edges of
  frontiers and Grand Hotels de Europa labels. On a shelf he found a London
  haberdasher's box. In the tissue was a Colt .45 semiautomatic with oiled
  parts. Under it, double layers of ammunition. He sniffed the muzzleþ It had
  a fresh smell of cordite. There was a sour reek of cat. In a kitchen
  cupboard he found two grenades of a foreign make he couldn't place.
  Grabbing up a fork,
152       Noel Pierce

 he flicked out the primers gingerly. More meat for Bruno's Pork Store bag.
  In a drawer were more radio messages-in serials of scrambled clock
  numerals. Stuffing them in his pocket, he prised along sealed floor- and
  wallboards. Working, he kept wiping off sweat that ran down his wrists and
  onto his slippery hands. Behind one board in the closet he found coded
  numeral instructions and a list of telephone numbers, each with a Munich
  call area. Wadded in a bunch were a series of increasingly anxious cables
  from "father" to "son," whose value to Jason he had no time to guess.
  Along the floorboards at the edges of the room he fished out forged
  passports. There were more cipher pads and a complex mathematical sheet of
  writing which seemed to be short wave frequencies.
  Finishing the groundwork, Rob turned last to the camera on the desk. Under
  the lens was a small bore hole. He took it up, eye level, and stared into
  the bullet hole. If you were too curious about it, what was inside the
  picture box could blow your head off while the nice man behind the camera
  said "Smile." How many such pictures on a Rhineland picnic had the smiling
  man taken? Jason had said, "There was the Dutch girl found floating in a
  canal. She had been garroted, raped . . . ."
  Jason would want to see this deadly little picnic morsel, too. Rob realized
  that for the past five minutes a familiar shaking had begun. It was a
  quivering in his face muscles, a trembling along the tight jaw, a taste of
  sour metal along his tongue. He felt like an engine running too fast while
  standing on a one-way track. The signal to start won't come. The brain is
  tired, it can't trigger the impulse to move. It was the old warning to get
  out fast.
  What had he forgotten that J-Branch would need? Between the camera and the
  clock? One, both? Yes. Bruno's Pork Store bag batted against his legs as he
  ran down the stairs.
  On the stoop at the front of the street the blond girl skipped rope. An old
  man sat on the steps and peered up her dress, nodding and smiling to
  himself. He had a quarter in the palm of his hand. She was eyeing the
  quarter and skipping slower until the rope fell out of her hands and she
  went over and sat down on his knee.

 Go home or to the Hutch? Jason was out of the city
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   153

 tonight.. Cordon off the block? Call in Harris and keep him in the man's
 front yard till morning? Carry this load of groceries back and lock it away
 in the hall closet? Rob stopped on the street corner and thought about it.
  Where would, gg be now? Getting a shave and haircut. Or is he in Washington
  making some kitchen boy drunk on the hotel staff where the state dinner is
  to be held?
  He finished a cigarette, picked up Bruno's butcher bag and headed home to
  the emergency hotline to Jason's Washington office.
  Mrs. Sunbeam came toward him down the long dim block. One minute nothing;
  then a misting little figure, hurrying. He could not remember when he had
  not seen her hurry.
  Fog vapors parted under the streetlamp like the gray wings of her hair. He
  had forgotten how small she was. It seemed. years since he had been home.
  She was part of his home. Moving faster, he stopped and took her hand.
  "Sir? Mister? It is you. How we have missed you."
  Rob said, "Never look for a cop to come home until you need him."
  They laughed awkwardly. She peered up at him in the gloom. He was to
  remember later how warmly he pressed her hand, as if to say, "You can't be
  the Batfowler. You can't be the spy in my household." But the hard core of
  his operative sense stood off and watched her.
  "Madam wants to know all the time of the day where the Mister is."
  "I had to work tonight. The girls-do they give you much trouble?"
  "Nein. Mostly they do their lessons. Tessa has not got toothache. Tabitha
  has a turtle in a bowl. She is feeding it her steak from last night." Mrs.
  Sunbeam laughed. He had not heard her laugh before. She had taken his hand.
  She had never touched him before.
  "And my wife?"
  "Madam is dressing for the opera. She is in white. She wears her emeralds.
  It is Die Fledertnaus she sees with the Grossvater. A very grand occasion."
  "Like the old days, Olga? You remember those grand occasions, too?"
  "I? Mister? When?"
  "When you were in service in Austria."
154      Noel Pierce

 "No. Nein. You are mistaken."
  "My wife's grandfather, the old ambassador, thought he recognized you."
  "Forgive me to say this but der alte Minister, he was full of schnapps that
  night of his birthday. There were many like me in service in titled houses
  . . . he could have seen anywhere: in Europe." She shrugged. "And Madam?
  She has not told you? Has said nothing?"
  "No: About what? Why should she?"
  Mrs. Sunbeam, her eyes lowered to the pavement, very painfully said, "It
  was something I said to Madam."
  "No. She hasn't said anything to me. I don't know what you're talking
  about."
  "She has told you nothing?"
  "No, Olga."
  At that she looked so distressed, shaking as if a puff of wind could knock
  her down, that Rob put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
  "Thank you, Mister."
  "If it was something important that my wife-"
  "Nothing, Mister. Madam forgot. She will tell you in her own time."
  There are times in the intelligence business when the slightest skip of
  breath in an interrogation means something vital has been smothered. He
  felt this about Mrs. Sunbeam. She had expected that he was to know some-
  thing. It would have made the old woman glad to know he did. Flix had not
  told him. But then, he hadn't been home to hear it.
  She peered up at him, the cords straining in her birdlike neck.
   "Sir, you should eat. Get some sleep."
   "Don't concern yourself, Mrs. Sunbeam. I'm fine."
  At that family name for her, she smiled. It was a radiance that lighted the
  bleak street. Then her gaze fell. She saw the shopping bag. He watched fear
  well up in her eyes.
   "What is it?"
   "Sir. You have been shopping?"
   He swung the bag carelessly against his leg. It was heavy
 as a club: BRUNO YOUR BUTCHER. EAT WITH ZEST. BUY BOLOGNA THE BEST.
 He watched her as he explained it.
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  155

  ".Just a bag I picked up to carry an old clock I bought. You know how my
  wife likes baroque antiques. Dusty old stuff'. It's to be a surprise for
  her."
  The old woman fought it off. "But we always trade with Schaller and Weber.
  That Bruno. He is a cheat."
  "Something different for a change." Rob reached in the bag and took the
  clock out, holding it over her head so she could see the dials in the high
  arc light, glowing whitely in the fog.
  "Do you know this Austrian clock or one like it?"
   "No, Mister."
  But she remembered with an almost uncontrollable start when-how long ago it
  seemed-she had found the keyhole to their big apartment stuck. And how,
  taking out of her bun the bone hairpin, she had worked the wad of tissue
  loose from the lock and read: "You have forgotten to wind the clock." She
  remembered the instant precision with which she had unscrewed the funneled
  tube in her hairpin. Remembered that this had been her loyalty to the
  baron, to do his business, if he wished it.
  Now on this fogged, dim street, her fanatical allegiance to the Von
  Gottfrieds ended. She had, she knew, for a long time been peeling off the
  shreds of her old self, asking God to forgive her the things she could not
  forgive herself. Centering her arid self on the refreshment of love for two
  little girls. The willingness to accept their father, the cop who
  confronted her. Her fierce devotion to their mother, whose peril was now.
  And 1 am all that is between her.
  She said with cold, scrupulous politeness, "The clock will please Madam."
  He said with the same coldness, "Is there something about it that disturbs
  you, Olga?"
  But for a nagging nerve of warning that said "Wait". . . she was tempted to
  tell him. To shout the truth to him. But she knew that he knew it already.
  Clearly he had broken into the skytop room. Clearly he suspected, knew
  everything about the baron. Clearly the place was blown.
  But Madam had not told him that she, Olga Czhenzunska, was on their side
  now.
  Why not? '
  Her pale, small face closed in a wedge of caution. Protection of the
  Missus. She needs me more than she knows. I must defend what 1 love. The
  children. The Mother.
156       Noel Pierce

 This is what 1 am now. This is what all my life has brought me to this
 corner for.
 "Good night, Olga."
 "Auf Wiedersehen, Mister."
  She peered after him, so big in the night, yet looking lonely as he walked
  away into the fog.
  Olga Czhenzunska looked after him curiously. She had seen the same Bruno
  Pork Store bag the night before, when she had brought in the groceries for
  Herr Baron and set them on his table while she cooked his dinner.
  She watched the little girls' father disappear. It was like saying
  good-bye. She could turn now. Run after him. It was not too late. Never
  climb these stairs again. Not too late to turn and run. But she was done
  with running.
  Her fingers shook so hard putting her key in her door that she had to catch
  her breath and steady her hands. When had she last remembered to wind the
  verdammte clock?
  Or had she, as twice before, deliberately forgotten?
  He would not miss it at first.
  There would be other furies to fight. She knew that the door would be
  broken, the rooftop transmitter system cut to ribbons, the floorboards
  gutted with the thoroughness with which the Mister operated. She could
  tell, he'd always known that he had no fear about his actions.- Not cool,
  but with a cold hard head. About his heart she did not dare think, nor what
  Madam was doing to him, there. Where the man lived deep and hurt hardest.
  He was a good man. She thought about that. But about this night, or the
  next half hour, she did not dare think.
  Letting herself in, Olga Czhenzunska brewed fresh coffee and took up her
  knitting. Then she sat down to wait.
  The whole of her body, mind and soul was a votive cup. She opened herself
  to a grace she had long since ceased to believe in. Except if there is a
  grace, she had done what she could without asking to receive it.
  She worked over a child's yellow mitten.
            24
              A

  He was increasingly uneasy about Olga. After she had intervened to break up
  his hour with the Herr Cop's wife, gg had watched his old governess. There
  were small, pointed omissions, longer absences from her furnished room. No
  messages for him, no pickup at the Caf6 Liechtenstein from money-grabbing
  Madam Liese. Twice the clock had gone unwound so that he had to resort to
  a makeshift transistor hookup with his rooftop shortwave. He sent a
  carefully worded cable to Munich about her. The curt answer came back:
  "CONTINUE."
  They had quarreled bitterly. He knew it distressed her to involve and
  frighten the children. It did not occur to him that she could defect. That
  the Olga of the secret Munich operation would rather be plain Mrs. Sunbeam.
  Of his real mission gg felt she had only suspicion.
  But after she had snatched the snare and driven him off, fuming, thwarted,
  his night terrors had begun-the feverish nightmares which, as a boy, she
  had been the only one to combat. He thrust up from his bed, stabbing,
  fighting, noosing white-throated images that eluded him until he shouted at
  the walls. He woke drenched in the mornings, fearful Olga would not be
  there. The soothing hand, the quieting effect of her understanding. It was
  stupid to doubt her. She was too involved with him and his family, had gone
  too far, too long. And reassured by old allegiances, he thought: She will
  be in her room tonight waiting for me. As every time, in the years of his
  undercover activity, the canal drowning of the Dutch girl, the careful
  manipulations of the garrote, the decimation of foreign agents, the
  progressively powerful hooks with which he had clawed and thrust his way
  up. Piercing through. the fringes of raw Nationalist groups to reach the
  center of the professional Munich control. Olga had fitted

                157
158       Noel Pierce

 into it--his way of life. Despite long absences, she kept in touch. It was
 too late for her to turn aside.
  The fog was thick as he came along the street to their tenement. He put up
  his hands to wipe it away. He remembered his dirty, bloodied small hands
  pawing at her, his nurse. Unfailing in her care. Have you deviated from me?
  Then can 1 endure? It was nonsense. She was Olga. Olga. The Grendel of his
  fantasies. The consoler, The mother confessor. No, he rebuked her as he
  mounted the stairs. You are constant to me. Only to me.
  So far, the night had gone well. In spite of increasingly
 close surveillance he had cabled the Herr Direktor reassur
  ance of his "tourist plans." Made certain of his means of
 access and exit, kept his movement free. His skylight room
 afforded a safe route over the adjoining roofs. He could,
 if he had to, go up and over, or through cellar passages
 for several blocks. With no perceptible watchfulness or
 caution he could not conceivably be cornered. He was sure
 of himself.                    -
  Now as he let himself in, he was caught by a sensation of discomfort. A
  feeling of warning stopped him. No more. Something in this familiar room
  was different. A pricking tightened his scalp. Yet nothing looked out of
  place. He spun around, faced the door. The chairs had not been moved, no
  ripple on the rug. He strained to pull into his senses something alien. No
  track. But it was here. What? Where? The cop feel. Something in the room
  gaped at him. It was the emptiness on the mantel where the clock had stood.
  He ran over to it. Turned-for the camera. Both were gone.
  He jerked out his knife, prised the woodwork loose, ran his fingers under
  empty boards where the passports had been, the forged identity papers, the
  cables from "father," the kilocycle frequencies, money, foreign currency.
  Gone.
  He ran out and up to the roof, to the ventilator, felt along the channel
  where the transmitter conduit had been. Soot, dust, nothing. Cut through.
  And everything tidily put back in place.
  His lips bled, bitten to keep from shouting. He ran down to the stair
  landing. The roof door was blown with a fuse. The locks on his door were
  tampered. Back in the room, he examined the window, saw where a knife blade
  had bitten into the sill. He spun around and went to the Hapsburg chest. In
  the film of dust on the engraved,
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   159

 lettered plate he saw a faint print, the heel of a man's palm.. He spat on
 it viciously, knew before he clawed open the lid that everything inside was
 gone. It gaped emptily at him.
  Rattling the stopper off the brandy, he gulped down burning spirits,
  gasping as he swallowed. Then he went to a closet and saw how everything in
  it had been shoved around, worked over. But one thing the cop had not
  examined. It was a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches. Gg wrenched it
  off the hanger and buttoned it on. This was the hour when he joined Olga
  for coffee and schnapps. She would be expecting him. He prepared for her.
  His fingers plucked at a thread of the stitching of the elbow patch.
  Standing with arms folded, he worked at more threads to draw out of its
  hiding place inside the patch a small nylon cord, threaded with steel wire.
  It lay like a dainty coil in his cupped palm. His thumb nestled it. Before
  he went down to Olga's room, he wrapped it in a lemon-colored paisley
  handkerchief and tucked the folds in the side pocket of his jacket. With a
  flick of the handkerchief it would be coiled in his palm.
  He lighted a cigarette, smoked for a minute, and went down the stairs.
  Listening for him, Mrs. Sunbeam put down the suitcase she had been packing.
  There was the maid's room in the big apartment near the nursery where she
  sometimes stayed when the little girls had colds. She darted back to her
  chair, finished a knitting loop and wound the yarn around her su$denly
  rigid fingers. This was for Tessa, the quiet one. For lively Tabitha, she
  had knitted red ones. As if the heart could ever tell the difference. They
  were in ways so alike; the same obsessive love contained them in a heart so
  empty until now.
  Two landings below, he turned the lock silently and pushed her door open.
  She went into mock joy and dismay.
  "So, Gerhardt, you have decided to come home for once?"
  "You missed me?" He saw the suitcase.
   "It is a long time since you visit me."
  "Were you in, earlier?"
  "Me? How could I be, with my duties at the home of the family?"
   "You plan a trip, Olga?"
160      Noel Pierce

 "Just to meine Freunde in Brooklyn, for the night."
 "You take all your clothes for one night?"
  "One cannot tell the weather. It is-so damp, so cold outside."
  "You heard nothing, up the stair? No one on the roof?"
  "I am not home too long."
  "What have you to report of the cop's activities?"
  "The same," she said guardedly. "The same as before. No news."
  "No drop? No messages? No winding of the clock for me when I am away? No
  one on the stairs? You are home and you hear nothing? You go away without
  telling me?"
  "But, my dear, I am busy with my knitting, my supper, the little things I
  do to .. . ."
  "Ja, Olga, what little things do you do that I do not know about?"
  "Nothing you do not know about."
  "I know how good, how faithful, how loyal you are." He kicked over the
  suitcase, spilled her clothes out.
  She put down her knitting, saw his hand stray to the lemon-colored
  kerchief. He took it out, mopped the beads of sweat on his forehead and
  tucked it in his sleeve.
  "Things go well for you?" she said formally.
  "Why should they not, as usual?"
  "Das ist gut." She sat mutely. Wondering. Waiting. Then she goaded him.
  "Where is Rudi?"
  "Why, do you ask?"
  "You do not speak of him lately."
  "Why should I?"
  "And die Katze, Grimalkin, she yowls half the night waiting for Rudi. The
  neighbors ask me on the floors below. What am I to say?"
  She looped a wool strand around her thumb, and in her anxiety bit it loose
  with ragged lips.
  He was breathing faster, snatching at his cigarette, watching her. He paced
  and sat down, got up, crisscrossed the small room, sat down. She put out
  brandy. He gulped back a short shot, watching her. He was very pale.
  "It is cozy like this, is it not?" he said, then leaning forward, his
  fingers clenched her knee cruelly. "But you have not told me. Did the old
  ambassador know you, at the party where you served as waitress?"
 " Ja. He knew me. I am sure he recognized me."
  "Did he consult with the husband afterward?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   161

 "How should I know?"
 "We pay you to learn of these things."
 "I do what I can." She took up her knitting.
  "My poor nurse." He got up, solicitous. "How tired you look." He took out
  the silk folds of the handkerchief and came strolling around her to stand
  behind, just outside the glow of the lamp. She felt his menacing stillness.
  She didn't turn.
  "Poor Olga." The hand on her shoulder.
  "Do not concern yourself for me." What was in the handkerchief?
  He said reasonably, "Did you go up to my room tonight?"
  "No, I have not been upstairs to turn down the bed. My feet hurt. The
  children run me off them. So I came in. I must rest. I am getting old."
  "But not forgetful? You could still pack your suitcase."
  "What should I forget to do that I have not done?"
  "Do not be alarmed, my dear nurse. But you look tired. See, now, I slip
  your collar down . . . like this. And if I stroke your neck . . . like this
  . . . it will put you to sleep."
  "How much care you take of me, Gerhardt."
  "I have forgiven you much, old one"-stroking her neck. "Let me ease your
  back"-stroking her with warm waves of treacherous comfort. His fingers
  clamped on her throat. She felt the sharp bite and stifled a moan.
  He loomed behind her. Hammering words hit down on her head like flailing
  pebbles.
  "Where were you tonight? Why didn't you come back to watch? Did you give
  the husband the word . . . to sneak in at a certain hour when you knew I
  would be away? He has entered . . . taken everything. Is it because you are
  getting careless in your age that you do not guard my room, show loyalty
  for me or for them-die Kinder, the husband, the wife, the pretty one . . .
  when you know I want her, that I will have her before I move on? You do not
  know where I am going. You do not accept absolutely that what I do I must
  do. It does not matter about Rudi or the peddler or anyone here you know.
  It matters that you are completely with me in what I do. So tonight I come
  back. if find you packing to go from me. I am gutted upstairs. You let him
  in-the cop-because you know how I want the wife . . . because you protect
  the children instead of me-me. I am your whole life. I am the one,
162      Noel Pierce

 the only one you must think of now. But you have opened my door to him.
 Why?"
 He hit her as she struggled up.
 "Tell me what you heard? Why didn't you warn me?"
  She bent under him. He beat her down. The open-palm blows sounded like wet
  wash slapped on a stone.
  "What have you done to me?" he shouted. "Did you let him in? Why should my
  safe house with you be a dirty mess of a ruin upstairs? You must know, you
  must know!"
  "Nein. I do not know. So the husband comes and goes. So he is on police
  work. What is it to me?"
  He flattened her mouth with the side of his hand. Olga kept silent. He hit
  her repeatedly. She would not tell him anything.
  "You are protecting them. What about me?"
  "You. What do you do here that you do not tell me about? The Grossvater is
  not all." She gasped. He had come around and crouched on his knees before
  her. In furious energy she scored his cheek with a knitting needle. "Get
  up," she said, low-voiced. "Get up off your knees. Stand like the man you
  are not. You are a killer. I know now. Assassin. Dirty. Stand back from me.
  If I die, I die cleanly. Away from you."
  He stood up from his crouch before her. The handerchief dangled idly by his
  leg.
   "You have gone over to them?"
   ` Ja."

   "You have betrayed me?"
  "It is for them that I will not do what you order. Not anymore."
   "You knew I would kill you for this."
  She kept her silence. He begged, pleading, demanding. She shook her mute
  head. He hit her across the throat. She would not tell him anything.
  Then he unfurled the silk handkerchief, the garrote coiled in his palm. She
  eyed her death stolidly.
   "Don't you want to live?"
   "I am alive now. In a way you would not understand."
   "You have gotten beyond me. I cannot control you."
   'Va. if am beyond you, Gerhardt."
  He flung the handkerchief out in a soft noose and jerked it back around her
  neck, twining the nylon snare tighter.
  At the end, before he twisted the noose, she said chokingly, "My death has
  waited for you a long time. There is
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   163

 not time left for you. You are kaput. Blown. If you live, you burn."
  "But you will tell me the truth. How could you love anyone more than me?"
  She said very faintly, her dulled, swollen face rolling, her breath rasping
  painfully, "No. Nein. Niemals. Never can I tell you, never on this earth
  again. I am alive. As you have never been. Believe me, you are better off
  dead."
  He looked around, snatched up the brandy and forced it down her throat. It
  spilled out of her clenched mouth. She shut her eyes, turned from him. She
  would say no more. He shook her, slapped her back from where her heart
  drifted on a perilous shelf.
  He lifted her up. She was frail as a leaf. He stood her against the wall
  and hammered questions at her.
  He was a clever interrogator. He used all the methods the Munich cell had
  taught him as a young terrorist. But her pain had begun with him when, as
  a child, the burning began. Pain with and from him was her only constant.
  This was very great, but it was not insupportable. Defection was not a
  shame but a reception of love, a gratefulness.
  In the last minutes she came off the wall like a tigress and fought him.
  His skin, his hair would show them. Clawing, spitting, she took evidence of
  him in her teeth, under her nails, until their blood ran together.
  Toward the end before she died, she felt Flix's warm strong hands
  sheltering her and heard-down a long, unforgettable corridor of time-the
  laughter of little girls calling "Mrs. Sunbeam, Mrs. Sunbeam. . . ."

  He stood up, shuddering. When he had combed every inch of the bare, modest
  room, ripped the bureau open, clawed through her belongings, slashed her
  clothes, stomped her cheap suitcase to pieces, he lighted a candle and set
  it at her feet. As the flame waxed and waned it would droop, slanting
  forward. A rite of immolation. Better, far better that she would be merely
  reported in the news as "a victim of a burning mattress in a furnished
  room."
  SchlaF-sleep long, my nurse. At your breast her children took comfort. And
  1? 1 must think now how to seduce, meet, betray, kill. Contact the wife of
  Herr Cop, fix another meeting with her, strike the hated Grossvater,
  accomplish the revenge, then move on to Washington.
   Neat combed wings of gray hair laid fiat on the small-
164       Noel Pierce

 boned forehead; a plaited rope of soft hair-grotesque halo over the
 unrecognizable face. Have 1 done this? No. He shrank back. Burn, candle. Put
 a quick end to betrayal. Wracked with horror and sorrow, he could not
 forgive Olga.
  So monstrous a treachery, he could not realize it finally. It would
  repercuss across their network. He must compose another message to Munich.
  His freedom to operate was blown. The whole mission was jeopardized.
 If he delayed, his control would send another cable:
 "WHY DO YOU DELAY YOUR PLANS CONFIRM AT ONCE."
  Because she is dead, Olga is dead. 1 have killed her.
  At any time Herr Cop would surround the tenement. He had to get out fast,
  go into hiding.
  For the last time he looked down at her. "Lie, cheat, steal for our needs.
  That is permissible. But never defect. You knew I had to kill you."
  She had known it. She had permitted it. She had given her life for
  something he was no part of.
  "You. The only one in my life who truly loved me. To leave me alone . . .
  . The fatherland has no grave deep enough for what you have done to me."
  Gg sobbed once, convulsively.
  Her only adornment was a worn European peasant-art brooch of ebony and
  chipped garnets. He reached out to take it, still wanting something
  permanent of what he had annihilated. Then he checked his hand. It was bad
  luck to rob a corpse.
  She was staring up at him. Light, schnapps-colored eyes. A figure no one
  could ever quite remember seeing, so frail, so anonymous in a crowd. But
  here, alone, her body was a giant pointing finger.
  He choked down a bile of grief, then hastily pressed her eyes shut. "Your
  eyelids they will not dust for prints. Death dust is on your eyes now."
  And on my hands.

  Tessa banged her spoon in her bowl of vanilla pudding. "Where is Mrs.
  Sunbeam?"
   "I don't know, Tessa."
  Tabitha refused to eat her buttered peas and carrots. "Why is she late,
  Mummy?"
   "I don't know, darling."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   165

  "It's the first time she's been late to take us back to school."
  They frowned at their mother. When they were crogs and upset they peered at
  Flix like shiny-eyed woods creatures, a bird pair, opossums, ready to dart
  out of reach, to spit, to fight.
  "Must we go back to school without her telling us what happened to the
  little spider that got caught in the great big web, but got itself free?"
  "Yes, you must. I'll meet you at the bus stop coming back." Flix scrambled
  the girls up and into their zipper pasts and hoods. They looked like
  disconsolate gnomes. She scooped up books and lessons, herded them to the
  elevator. They blew kisses at her, scowling. She blew back, distractedly.
   "Little spiders that get caught in a great big web . . . ."
  What an odd fairy tale for Mrs. Sunbeam to invent for them.
  Putting the lunch dishes away, she heard the electrode whir in their
  security lock. Only Rob had the other key. She ran to the door and reached
  up to him. She put an uncertain hand over his short, crisp stubble of thick
  hair, drew down the boned face, touching him gratefully.
  "Three days. The nights were awful. I'm so glad to have you home."
  He seemed to walk through the welcome she was trying to offer.
   Flix followed him. "There's still some hot food left."
   "I'm not hungry."
   "Let me fix you a sandwich."
   "I said I'm not hungry."
  "It's fine to have you in the middle of the day." Then she saw his eyes.
  "Drink?"
   "Yes. I need one."
   "I do, too."
   "Make us two stiff ones."
   Going to the living-room bar, she said, "As bad as that?"
   Rob didn't answer.
  She put the drink tray down in front of him. He stared at it, sitting
  hunched and still.
  "The girls were late for school. They were quarreling,
 and I -"
   "Flix. Please just don't talk for a minute."
166      Noel Pierce

  He drank his whole drink off. She put hers down untouched.
  She had once watched a jumping jack at a puppet show. The litle girls had
  screamed with glee to watch him jump, leap, pirouette, his agile joints
  controlled by lively strings. When the show was over, the hand behind the
  scenes let the strings fall. Alone in the audience of mothers with happy
  children, she saw the jumping jack fold himself slowly down into a lump of
  dejection.
  So, now, Rob.
  Something had collapsed him, sitting still on the sofa.
  "Darling, what is it?"
   "Mrs. Sunbeam is dead."
  Terrible things have to diminish before shock can accept them.
   "When?"
   "Late last night. The police have it."
   "What happened?"
   "She was suffocated in a mattress fire. In her room."
  "Oh, that poor old woman. We heard the sirens go by .... Oh, God."
  "Yes. That's how it will be on the news wires, radio, TV, the papers."
   "But-how?"
  To that white, shocked face, he said, "She'd been knitting, and dozed off.
  Smoke inhalation. Died in her sleep."
   "Suffocated?"
   She saw him hesitate. "Yes."
   "A thing for firemen, police. Why were you called in?"
   "Because she worked for us. To protect the children."
  Flix took up her drink with both rattling hands. "Why did you say she died
  protecting the children?"
  "Because of my job-there was danger around you and the girls. Something she
  possibly knew about."
   "What has that to do with her death?"
  How to deal with logic? The shock had hit her badly. How much, how little,
  could he say?
   "How did she die, Rob? Really."
  "A thief-some punk high on pot-got in by the fire escape."
   "But the fire, the smoke?"
  "A candle got knocked over in the attack. Then he ran. Neighbors smelled
  smoke, gave the alarm."
   "I want the truth."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   167

 "I wanted to spare you pain."
  "You can't. We're beyond being nice." Her eyes filled hotly, remembering
  other tears that had fallen on her hands. ("Forgive me, Madam. You and the
  Mister have been kind. Now I want justice done.")
  "Someone killed Mrs. Sunbeam."
   His face was unreadable.
   "Was the fire a smoke screen?"
  "It may have been." He didn't tell her how the fire had been deliberately
  arranged. Nor about the strangled throat, the brutal whipping. The stiff
  flaxen hairs wrenched from the killer's scalp, the shreds of his skin under
  her fingernails. Nor how she had raked him, clawed, spat, fought something
  maniacal in her final fury.
   "How was she killed?"
  "Possibly strangled. Hard to be sure. There was a lot of smoke."
  Now it was out. He couldn't call it back. But he was unprepared for how
  Flix looked at him, older by years, cold and anguished.
  "This is the chain by which the wolf is bound . . . made of the thunder of
  mountains." . . . "You . . . mop up this mess you have made on the world's
  clean floor .... Did you think 1 would let you take the fox cubs from the
  mother?" No, Mrs. Sunbeam. He didn't take me away from my daughters. You
  have seen to that.
  "But if the police say-smoke inhalation? A mattress fire?"
  Rob said, "A candle fell on the rug." Let Flix take what comfort she could
  from the little they'd decided to say. This was how news wires and local
  coverage had it. WIDOW SUFFOCATES IN MATTRESS FIRE. TENEMENT ROOM GUTTED.
  They had a twenty-four-hour exclusion on the death. That was all Jason
  could bargain for, from Homicide.
  "A candle, on the rug," FIN said. "But not by accident?"
  "It wasn't as bad as you imagine."
  She said, falteringly, "Did Mrs. Sunbeam know?"
  He helped as much as he could. "I don't think so. Old people go into shock
  quickly."
  "I must think what to tell Tabby and Tess."
  "Kids forget."
  "They won't forget her." Her eyes stung. "They didn't want to go back to
  school"-all the words ran together-
168       Noel Pierce

 "until she told them what happened to a little spider that got caught in a
 great big web."
 "Well," he said, "she got caught in it."
  The mournful screech of the pulley bird . . . the smell of freshly ground
  coffee . . . the warmth of friendship shared over an ironed shirt. All gone
  up in smoke.
  "We found this," Rob said. "She must have meant it for you." He handed her
  a smoke-scorched wedge of damp, wadded wool.
  Only then Flix broke down. It was evidence. Because he was Olga's employer,
  for his children, he had slipped it in his pocket while Homicide and
  Jason's lab technicians were busy with cameras and prints.
  Crumpling the wool, Flix felt the sodden. mitten. She pushed back her hair,
  dried her eyes.
   "Will I see you again tonight?"
   "No. I have to meet a man from Washington."
  He went to the bar and poured himself another two stiff fingers of scotch.
   "We have a shakedown near here. I'll get some sleep."
  She came and stood in front of him. He ran his hand over her face. "Don't
  worry." He went out.
  Flix looked after him. She took up the mitten. Queer kind of comfort from
  a dead hand . . . It matched one Mrs. Sunbeam had finished for Tessa.
  Before she dozed off and the candle fell. Flix pilled herself together.
  Stop sniveling. She loved us. She's at peace. When Olga Czhenzunska was her
  daughters' few years, did she own a warm glove? Were her skinny hands raw
  with chillblains in the bitter Warsaw winters? Why this remembrance?
  Flix felt a shaking in her throat. She wants me to do something for her.
  Olga is trying to tell me something.
  Across these river rooftops the Baron von Gottfried would know about Olga
  now. He was not too inhuman to feel that commonest of all levelers-grief.
  He would come in. He would know his old governess was dead.
  Mrs. Sunbeam, what am 1 to do?
  ("Madam, do not blame him. Even as a child he cried in horror of his filthy
  beast of a mother . . . flinging herself naked into his room. I can still
  hear her laughter. `Look at your beautiful mother now . . . my lovely
  child, my son., my pretty one!' . . . until he lashed out at her, then took
  his pain out on me.")
   And for this she is dead. Mrs. Sunbeam had been exter-
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   169

 minated. Why? By a marauder, a thief, an addict? No. The bequest was
 ghostly. It made no sense. It was horrible. She wants something more of me.
 Suspicion touched Flix with a lick of fire.
  Rob's words . . . "Strangled?" "Hard to say, there was so much .smoke. . ."
  sent a shock that jolted her. "He got away by the fire escape . . . ." He?
  The suspicion grew. She pushed it aside. No. This was his nurse, his
  governess, the only one he trusted. If he could love anyone, it had toþ be
  Olga.
 That night of the fetter-how close was he to killing?
 Convulsively she remembered her desire for him. The feverish response when
 he kissed her. It was ridiculous. A kind of madness. 1 think he wanted me
 too much to do it. And 1--and 1? Mrs. Sunbeam knew this about us. That was
 why she freed me.
  Is that why she is dead? No. What could an affair have been to her?
  Nothing. It was more than that. What?
  Take it again. Slow, agonizingly. What is it she wanted to warn me about?
  Face one fact. Peel away the pity to the hard core. Olga Czhenzunska,
  small-time operative, tried to tell me something of desperate importance,
  over her dead body.
   In doing this she pointed her finger at the killer.
  Flix realized that in fifteen minutes she had to meet Tabby and Tess on the
  school bus corner, bring them safely home. And tell them. Consternation
  gripped her. She couldn't move. To avenge Mrs. Sunbeam, to expunge guilty
  conscience, to put some honorable planks under the sacrifice. This was why
  Mrs. Sunbeam had selected her.
  And if it was he who had done this atrocious thing? But how could he be
  responsible for Olga's murder? She was his last link with that fatherland
  of death. Awareness rang in her ears. She heard Mrs. Sunbeam speaking
  across a far distance, "No one is safe now, Madam, no one at all." He would
  know she had defected. To him it was betrayal. ("You know I will kill you
  for this.")
   She had to make sure.
             25

 In the confusion of the tenement fire, Harris lost him.
  Staked out as close as he could wedge himself, the ladder trucks were
  blockbusters, the rubberneckers packed thick. Hose lines nuzzled the
  gushing hydrants like pythons at a fountain. He couldn't spot anyone in the
  briefing Rob had given him. People seemed to come through the tenement
  walls like termites out of rotten woodwork. Smoke belched from the second
  floor where the old widow was found. Her scorched mattress was flung out a
  window. Black forms scuttled around it. The bullhorn shouted them off. In
  a rift between smoke billows Harris spotted a highshouldered figure dodging
  down the block, banging suitcases at the legs of the crowd. Elbows flying,
  he shoved his way through the milling rubberneckers. There Harris lost him.
  Five blocks north, in the Kaiserin Garage, gg stowed his suitcases in the
  Mercedes. He had to have all the money he could get his hands on, fast. One
  source was the old proprietress of the Cafe Liechtenstein. Madam Liese was
  ripe now for a little plucking. He bad let her alone, so far. Now he would
  arrange that she should entertain the old ambassador and blackmail him out
  of all the cash she could wheedle. Then he would finish him.
  He took a quick look at himself in the overhead car mirror. Two red
  scratches showed Olga's nails. He fumbled in the dash pocket for a kit that
  would conceal some of the damage. He tanned his face with unguents,
  covering the marks. Easing the big car up the side ramp, he fished under
  the seat. for a switch in registration plates. Finding the fake foreign
  consulate FC plate, he went around to the rear hubs and worked with a
  polishing rag until the night mechanic had gone. Quickly unscrewing and
  switching plates, he drove out with his immunity temporarily intact.

              170
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  171

 He would be sorry to leave the Mercedes. But after tonight it would be found
 leaning on its side, the hood blown off by a delayed detonator on the edge
 of a remote car heap in the East Bronx.
  The fire sirens wailed distantly as he drove to a non
  descript: building with a bar in front. A sign over the dim
 door read M()BLIERTE ZIMMER ZU VERMIETEN. He took
 out his key to one of the furnished rooms. Going up the
 silent stair, he plunked the suitcases down; went out again
 and bought brandy, schnapps, cigars, newspapers, flowers,
 groceries for a short stay; then came back, and after ar
 ranging a pitcher of mimosa, syringa, jasmine and tube
  roses, he began to condition his weapons. The pungency
 of gun oil mingled with the powdery yellow fragrance of
 mimosa. On the floor below was a pay telephone. He r: n
 downstairs and dialed the Caf6 Liechtenstein.
  "You are to do two things for me, Liese," and he explained.
  "But if the old one refuses?"
   "You must not allow it. Pressure him, lay it on thick."
  "So, okay. But when I get him here for the dinner, what do I tell. him?"
  "That you need money-for your rent. Or that you have a warning that his
  great-grandchildren are to be snatched. Invent what you will. Listen
  carefully. You are a retired soprano from a minor company of the Staats
  Opera. Which career you gave up. Naturlich, he will ask questions."
   "I am to answer what?"
   "Act with politesse. Get him drunk."
   "And get what from him?"
   "Money, you stupid bitch."
  "Are you in trouble?"
  "Mind your verdammte business. Pick the old man's brains. Bleed him slowly.
  That's your style."
  "Who will pay me for the contact?"
  "I see to it. You run the restaurant."
  She was silent, hesitating and afraid.
  "Explore his interests. His granddaughter. I want to be informed about her.
  You worry? Why?"
  "He was my friend. Der alte Minister. He was good to me."
  "That is even better. Fix it for tomorrow night."
  She hung up, frowning. Her veined hands plucked to
172       Noel Pierce

 pull the skirt down over fat hips. How the old man had stroked and pawed her
 skin. "Bavarian cream" he called it. She reviewed her orders. To threaten
 him with old scandals in return for all the money she could scare out of
 him, for Herr Baron. If he refused the bait she was to give him warning, a
 threat to the granddaughter, or the children. He would pay well, if it
 concerned his own. So, she shrugged, twisting her ratty furs, no risk.
  But there was something about it she didn't like. For a man of such wealth
  as Herr Baron to need cash?

  "You're going out, sir? Will you want the car?"
   Grandfather's houseman gave him his mufer and cane.
   "I won't be in for dinner. Don't wait up."
  His white hair smoothed by silver-backed brushes, cigar case full, he felt
  a funny little flurry under his heart. Silly old fool. But Liese had been
  . . . that was all it came down to . . . "had been." She'd be . . . old.
  Impossible to quite accept. Let's see, what time had- But why did he
  bother? Only the small warning that said, "Look out." Her urgent notes had
  followed close on his concern about Felicia being followed . . . and
  anxiousness for the children. Get a foothold on time? Have a look at what
  the years have done to an old love affair? All right. But keep his sights
  sharp.
  He had an impression of green plush and potted pahns. Of a spurious
  elegance. Everything is too correct here, the old man thought. The tinkling
  zither, the showy tables, the enormous hand-lettered menu, and a faint
  steaminess of sauerkraut.
   "Reservation, sir?"
   "Guest of Madam Liese."
   "This way, bitte."
  Behind the Rhine wine corks, the crackling goose and smoked pheasant, there
  was something else. As if he could have torn the velvet curtains down,
  found wretchedness, bad debts.
  "Madam Liese's table."
  He saw for an instant what his heart remembered in a snapshot. Liese,
  young. Flamboyant prettiness, a dazzling smile. The trite sparkle of
  glacier-blue eyes. Curling blond hair piled like a beehive; her creamy
  breasts heroically pushed up by firm corseting, and around the full throat
  the pearls he had given her. Now the brittle blue hair was embellished with
  a fake bang; the glittering smile dentured.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   173

 The lashes beaded. Her furs frayed.
 He felt himself flush and set his jaw.
  "Mein bester Freund, so good to greet you. So happy you could join me."
  She was like an old opera super offering fake roses to an empty house.
  The old man pressed her hand with his impeccable courtesy. The band played
  "Adieu, Mein Kleiner Offizier." Liese snapped her fingers for shrimp
  cocktail, a brandy. She was in business again.
  They sat and looked at each other appraisingly.
  "You have not lost your hair, darling."
  "You have not lost your charm, Liese."
  "But, the cane?" '
  He had kept his sword stick from the coatroom attendant. "I have some
  trouble with my leg." He drank to her. "Like old times."
  "Ja. Old times." She drank to him. An iced wine cradle was wheeled up with
  champagne.
  "I say of my restaurant, come early, eat hearty. For you, Herr Minister, we
  have the venison . . . ."
  The champagne an excellent vintage year-was exhilarating. She was not
  unpleasant to him. There was something still pungent of warmth and good
  nature in the onceplump flesh. Behind the smoke screen of his cigar he
  remembered her in the rough-and-tumble of silk sheets, her body opening to
  him with its practiced charms.
  And now the closed, frightened smile.
  Grandfather thought, She's broke. 1'11 give her some money, get out early.
  As sparingly as he drank, she filled his glass.
  "It is good, is it not? So? Like this. Vis-'a-vis, across the coffee cups,
  the chartreuse?"
  He detested the sweetish, biting liqueur, the gamey, high-charged dinner.
  What does she want of me? He asked her bluntly, "Why did you send me those
  notes, Liese?"
  "Must one want something to see an old friend?"
  "I am nothing to you now." Nor you to me.
  He saw her eyes flare past him, and looked over his shoulder. The bar was
  at the left of the entrance, the checkroom on the right. There was a crowd
  waiting for tables. He could see nothing.
  "Is Madame Liese here?"
  "In the dining room, sir," the checkroom girl said.
174      Noel Pierce

 "Where?"
 "Table four. With a guest. The old one."
 "Danke."
 "You wish to-"
  "Nein, nothing. I was not here. You did not see me." Gg went past the men's
  room to a short hall leading to the rear of the cafe. Letting himself into
  Liese's private parlor, he snapped out the lamps by her pink sofa, found a
  metal cashbox in her desk, broke the lock and pocketed a handful of bills.
  He stood back to the wall so that when the door opened he would be
  concealed behind it. There was a single light over the door. Giving her ten
  minutes, he smoked a cigarette.
  The old man watched her. He knew he had been fingered, cut out of the pack
  and summoned here. Felicia and the man who tracked her were involved. To
  these imponderables he wanted answers.
  "How did you know where to find me?"
  "But, my darling. It was easy. Your records, your honors, your clubs. . .
  We are all small neighborhoods in the city. You are a big man."
  She prattled on evasively, her fingers knitting the air, her trilling laugh
  mingled with the tinkling zither. Without guile, which she was used to, the
  old man's stubborn authority threw her off balance.
  The lavish marzipan dessert was removed, more brandy poured. Her painted
  blue eyes dragged desperately to flirt with him. He faced her down with his
  indifferent good manners. No, thank you, he would not waltz.
  "I remember a time when you hurried to meet me, darling. Along the mountain
  roads where we would picnic on quail and Rhine wine, the peasants took off
  their caps and called you Lord. Your hunting coat was lined with fur. I
  would curl up in it."
  He nodded, the rich dinner and too many drinks fuming in his head.
  Sometimes his chauffeur had waited all night outside the rooms he'd
  furnished for her. His power had seemed awesome to her. Now he felt
  menaced, helpless to stop something he had let himself in for.
  Anxiousness, a spine-cold dismay, stiffened his will. To imperil Felicia,
  his family, the little girls . . . to start these Prussian jackals after
  his blood .... He'd eluded the dark young man again tonight, only to wind
  up here in a Yorkville cafe. Obviously Liese was the procuress.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   175

  She was handed a message, crumpled it indifferently. "Darling, you will
  excuse me? There is trouble with the chef. He is one temperamental prima
  donna. I must see to it.
  She went through to her parlor and snapped on the lamps, sensing he was
  behind her.
  "You should not have come. I said I would see to it. He is not too drunk
  yet. Why don't you leave me to ask him what you-"
  She turned and gasped when she saw how he looked.
  "What does the Herr Baron want?"
  "Open your handbag. Spill it out." She was too slow; he jerked it from her,
  -,wadded the bills in h1s pocket. "It is not enough. More. Everything. All
  you have. Now."
  "But how am I to-"
  "And from the call girls. What they paid you tonight from the upstairs
  rooms. All of it." He ripped open her desk, scrambled through the drawers.
  "Get me everything from the till."
  "Nein. I must pay the waiters, chef, the maitre d' . . . ."
  "Write them checks."
  "I cannot write them their wages on bad paper. I must give them cash."
  He gave her a stinging slap. "You have a big mouth. Shut up. I want all you
  have taken in-at the lunch service, the dinner hour. All of it. Now."
  "Listen to me, Herr Baron. I have him out there, the old dog on ice,
  waiting. Give me a little time."
  "There is no time. I want what he gives you . . . for sentiment. You are to
  go back. Get all the money. In cash. Wait." He checked his watch. "Fake a
  phone call to your table. For the old Schwein. Tell him he is wanted for a
  message from his house. A great-grandchild is sick. Make an excuse. Tell
  him to come here to the parlor where there is a telephone call for him."
  "I have at last a business going for me. All my life nothing, living from
  bad bars to bad beds . . . until now. . . . Now that the neighborhood is
  going up, the tourists are coming to Yorkville. Herr Baron, I implore you
  not to ruin me."
  "Ruin you? Look at yourself in the mirror. Don't give me those fake tears.
  Don't tell me you are becoming Saint Liese. Y'ou know how to persuade the
  old man. The way you have crawled through the bowels of aging diplomats
176      Noel Pierce

 in palace beds across half of Europe. Who bought this cafe and set you up as
 an undercover vice madam with the roast goose and the fifty-dollar girls
 waiting upstairs for the dirty little tricks they've been taught to do by
 Madam Lorelei? To please the customers. You go back there now and you please
 your most important customer. Get me money. Then send him back to me."
  She went to the ladies' room to powder. There was a pay telephone outside
  the door. She clawed out a dime and, fumbling for her glasses, thumbed the
  directory. She found the old man's Park Avenue home number. A butler
  answered. She spoke rapidly in a hoarse voice thickened by urgency.
  "Listen to me. Do not interrupt. I call from a restaurant. The Mister has
  been taken ill. No. Shut up. Listen. Bitte, do this quickly: call to his
  granddaughter, Madam Schuyler. Tell her the old one is ill at the Cafe
  Liechtenstein. She is to come to him at once. No, nein! You have a car?
  Good, tell her to come alone. She is to come to the back parlor."
  Liese hung up. Settling her fur stole, she turned the worn patches so they
  wouldn't show. The fur clung to the icy dampness of her neck. She went back
  to the table, smiling down at him. The musicians struck up the overture to
  The White Horse Inn.
 "Excuse me to be so long, darling. I freshen my make-
 up.þ
  "Liese, do you need money? You look ill."
  "What woman does not, in this wretched world? In this world of
  dog-eat-mad-dog . . . ." She used the German idiom and the sad phrase was
  almost untranslatable. He understood it. "How are you faring?" she forced
  herself to say brightly. "What of your good life now? Do you travel? There
  is a granddaughter, her children, no? I see pictures of them in the society
  papers. And her husband, he is in politics, no?"
   "He is a security specialist."
  "That sounds very grand."
   "He is a cop, Liese. A government intelligence agent."
   "The police?"
  Her face seemed to wither. The dentured smile sharpened, her color grayed.
  "You know everyone in the neighborhood. Running a caf6 like this. It must
  attract expatriates from Austria,
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  177

 Hungary, the old families. Do you know a man who drives an old Mercedes-Benz
 around Yorkville?"
 "Nein. I cannot think-Who would that be?"
  "Perhaps the grandson of a baronial family you knew in the old days?"
  She shook her head, her eyes cautious, thinking fast.
  "Bitte," she said, wheedling. "I could remember?" He would have to pay for
  it.
  His old-fashioned manner hid a bull-like resentment at being made a fool
  of. "You want something of me or you wouldn't have looked me up. Now you'll
  give nothing in return."
   He waited, carefully intent. How much was it worth?
  Her blue-veined hand, with its dusty rings rattling, lay palm up on the
  table, the fingers open.
  "Who told you to look me up, Liese? Who knows about us?"
  She held his eyes, saying nothing. Her fingers twitched, beckoned.
  "If you were ill, poor, needed anything . . . I would have given you a
  check for five hundred dollars. To see you through a bad time."
  "A check," she said bitterly, "is of no use to me." She was frantically
  aware of his peril. And of her gamble lost. She did not want his death on
  her hands. Her swollen ankles throbbed. She raged at the old man inwardly.
  With all his wealth, his expensive cigars, his lavender-scented
  underclothes, his stiff French cuffs, his absurd sword stick, and the
  cavalier way he had set about the business of the bed.
  "Our age is finished," he reminded her. "I'm glad to see you so well
  established in a new business." He took out his wallet.
  Nothing but a few fifty-dollar bills. Credit cards, fat as a pork sandwich.
  How had she let Herr Baron persuade her that he was a senile old fool to be
  flattered, warmed, made drunk, used, robbed?
  "You are tired, Liese. Let me see you home."
  Home? Five flights up in a backwater tenement?
   "Danke. I have a friend waiting for me."
  "Did he put you up to this? Who bribed you to get at me? Is it Von
  Gottfried? The grandson?"
  She shook her head wordlessly, forcing a tear, chin quivering.
178         Noel Pierce

  "An old woman like you," he said, "should be ashamed of herself."
  She had a slashing, vitriolic tongue. Grandfather braced himself for the
  invective. None came. She huddled lower in her worn fur stole. He brooded
  over her.
  "Don't you see what they've done to you? You can't talk back. Once, to shut
  you up before the servants, I laced you with a carriage whip." She had run
  screaming from the divan to sofa, her blond hair tumbling, her jeweled
  combs clacking on the marble floor. He chased her to the embassy salon,
  spanked her bare bottom until she lay sobbing and laughing up at him.
  "Now you get yourself in a mess. Someone has frightened you. Probably
  criminals. You can't speak from fear."
  Now at the end of the evening he saw her, not with heart, but with a cold
  eye. A stranger in a dyed wig. Sharp red nails. Scared eyes. Poverty.
  Blackmail. Desperation. Silly old slut.
  She rattled the ice in her glass. "You would not understand."
  "Try me, Liese."
  "You would not confess to fear or show weakness. You are too proper, too
  correct. You have not been bad. Not had the-how you say?-guts to be sly,
  tricky, use anything to save your skin."
  Oh, haven't I? Little you know what 1 would do for Felicia, for my little
  girls, Tessa, Tabitha.
  Hers was not much of a skin worth saving. He understood Liese's ranting. It
  was the grand histrionics she had borrowed from Austrian society. Her
  plump, powderflaked arms flung out in a helpless gesture. She was pathetic.
  A waiter bowed over them. "Excuse, please sir. There is a telephone call
  for you."
  He started up, his mind at cold, anxious work.
  "Who knew I was here?"
  "I have no idea." The old man stared down at her. "My dear, kind friend,
  you do not refuse me anything."
  (He had known better than to try. Known enough to shake hands while he
  still had a few fingers left.)
  "Tells war es meine Schuld."
  "No, Liese. It was no one's fault." He added sharply, "We're wasting too
  much time."
  "I? Waste time?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  179

 "Yes." He snapped his fingers. "How much?"
  She was silent. He emptied his wallet on her plate. Bowing to her, he left
  the table. The waiter was pointing.
  "Where is the phone?"
  "In madam's office. Down the hall. The door on the left."
  He knew now.
  His band clenched the sword cane as he limped along.
  The hurtling years that Liese had recalled to him furled back. Night of the
  intruder in the sleeping embassy dark under the white stars. A sound of
  gunfire woke him. A ripple of curtains along his bedroom windows on a wind-
  less night. Plunging up from bed, reaching for what lay nearest at hand.
  Pig-sticking at a marauder in the grunting dark. Fighting for his life ....
  Finishing the attacker ofj' with something in his hand, a paperweight.
  Hearing the crunch of bones like an eggshell .... What had it been? What
  had they wanted? Government orders? A directive from the State Department?
  What had the embassy guards done with the body? Flung it to the fish in the
  Isar River.
  And that young girl in service in the baronial residence where there was
  such a village furor over the disappearance of the head pf the house of Von
  Gottfried? Did she know?
  He knew as he walked past the crowded cafe tables to take the phone call
  that he was marked as if someone had chalked an X on his back.
  Grandfather pushed open the door to the parlor.
  "Alle Menschen mussen sterben," the voice behind him said.
  Gg watched with some amusement how the trembling old thumb touched the
  button on the cane. A silver shaft whistled out. He reached out and took
  the sword cane, broke it across his knee and threw it on the floor.
  Then he stepped forward.

  They drove through the slanting rain, east on 86th Street. Lights of the
  shops and restaurants were out.
  "Stop. It's there. The Liechtenstein. Across the street." Flix ran for the
  curb. "Wait here. If I'm not back in five minutes, come for us."
  The cafe windows were dark. She rattled the handle of the door. No one
  came. She kicked and banged. A curtain stirred at the cafe door. She
  pressed her face against it,
180 . Noel Pierce

 staring in. A dim drop light hung from the ceiling down a long hall. A
 busboy with mops and pails meandered along, lifted the curtain, and let her
 in.
 "Who are you, lady?"
 "Where is he?"
  "la. You are the one who-Someone, an old man is sick that you have come to
  get? Madam told me to wait. She is gone."
  "Where is he?"
  "In there, Missus"-pointing with a mop handle.
 She ran down the hall and pushed open the door marked

 OFFICE.
  The room was crammed with big artificial plants in tubs around a pink sofa.
  On the table a green plaster castle with troll faces, peering through
  rubbery green Rhineland scenery. A clock trilled "CIckcoo-cuckcoocuckoo."
  The painted leaves and waxy tendrils gave off a medicinal odor. The whole
  effect was poisonous. Nothing could live in this room.
  The body lying jackknifed on the floor had taken on the same eel green as
  the rubbery leaves around it.
  Her eyes fixed on the torn lips. The bruised and smashed face.
  It was Grandfather. She plunged her thumb to his neck and felt a faint,
  pumping life.

             26

  They had taken Mrs. Sunbeam's prints from her kettle, her coffee cup, her
  stove, her combs, her table, her radio. Taken the merry sleigh bells photo
  from the wall.
  After the chemical dusting, photos were shot of her body. Of the carnage to
  her neck. Her tiny, clinging ridges of skin were magnified in a series of
  high-powered, closefocus frames. Accurate scale drawings were made of a
  rigor-mortis hand clutching a strand of yarn. Under her
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   181

 nails were scrapings of skin and flax-colored hairs. The balls of her
 fingers looked like the tracings of tides on a harbor chart. Her right palm
 print showed a long,- clear lifeline.
  "We want her bloodstained prints," Homicide fussed. "Her normal ones are of
  no use." But everything about Mrs. Sunbeam was still of some use. The
  official indictment would read: "Wanted in the killing .... By choking, and
  asphyxiating by hand . . . with his or her hands, or by ligature (binding)
  . . . with an instrument of strangulation." "Let them take what they want,"
  Jason said, "so we can move."
  Rob looked up. He had been working on Mrs. Sunbeam's official pedigree. The
  form read: "Check Relevant Matter."

  Appears: Slim. Shoulders: Stooped. Manual: Lefthanded. Eyes: Gray. Wears
  (wore) rimless granny glasses. Magnification: (Optimal: could see more than
  she pretended to). Hair: Thin. Wig? Sometimes wore one. Nose: Thin (hooked
  like a hawk). Ears: Small, pointed, pierced. Scars: Left wrist. Prison
  incarceration brand, presumably Nazi; number plastically erased but
  discernible under microscope. Speech: Stern. Accent: High and Low German;
  dialectical; trilingual. Script: Refined. Voice type: Harsh, correct;
  sometimes kind (to my children). Distinctive marks: None. Maimed: (Yes, by
  life). Heart:

 He hesitated, then wrote down: Brave. "Have you finished, Mr. Schuyler?"
  Let it go. He pushed "Relevant Matter" across the desk. Jason scanned it
  through his Ben Franklin glasses.
  Rob thought her final number could pot be charged off as counterfeit. On
  the Bureau of Criminal Investigation pad Mrs. Sunbeam's natal autograph
  would be sealed as: 13 M 2 R 09 21 - O.C. 17. Arch, loop,~whorl.
  Oscillating currents of an old woman's digital seal, interlocked with a
  soul drifting out. A very deathless lady.
  Jason was heating an electric grill along the wall counter. He put on some
  lamb kidneys and set out knives and forks from a brass-hasped picnic
  hamper. He ground in black pepper, poured a dollop of brandy into the pan,
182       Noel Pierce

 flamed it with a match, watched the bubbling sauce settle, sniffed and
 tasted.
  "Every day, Mr. Schuyler, we bump into nasty corners of ourselves that hurt
  to look at. Hot food helps: The warden's last meal to a condemned man puts
  the strawberry shortcake far ahead of absolution." He broke out six
  speckled brown eggs from a crate stamped CHIMNEY POT FARM. "I fly these
  with me. My wife raises Leghorns. She's a bit of a brood hen, herself. Well
  up in the pecking order." His smile was fond. "How will you have yours, Mr.
  Schuyler? New Orleans style?"
  "It doesn't matter."
  "But indeed, yes, it does," Jason said. "I knew an old French countess
  famous for her omelets in Mont-SaintMichel. Knelt over an open hearth as if
  praying to the archangel. She broke fresh-laid eggs into a copper pan on a
  long handle and shook it in and out among the flames. All she added was a
  lump of sweet creamy butter, a pinch of chives and a spoon of fresh well
  water. Truffles, if handy."
  He looked at Rob shrewdly. "You're hurting right now from a lot more than
  hunger, Mr. Schuyler. Your man Harris lost track of Von Gottfried in Olga's
  immolation. I see you have sentimentalized her `Relevant Matter' data." He
  read: "`Voice: Sometimes kind (to my children). Heart: Brave.' There seems
  to be no mention of your wife. What was their relationship?"
  "They were friends. Over the ironing board."
  "Did she and Olga share confidences?"
  Rob put down his fork. "I don't know. Flix never said."
  "But surely, late at night, when you came in-"
  "She'd be asleep. When have I had time to come in?" He looked around at the
  thick-walled room, the long steel table, its lethal trophies neatly set out
  like dishes at a hunt breakfast. Jason, spruce in his hacking jacket, moved
  unhurriedly behind it, a country squire surveying the buffet.
  He had kept other special dishes hot. Each was ticketed in neat printing:
  "gg." The Austrian clock with its painted Iron Cross marking the hour of
  twelve. The forged passports. The tattered wads of foreign money. The
  Olympus Auto-Rektor camera lens with its bullet trigger. The Alpine sleigh
  ride with Olga's slender head slightly turned to the face of the murderous
  child. Under each ticket was printed: "Crime Evidence, Extreme Caution."
  Sample a segment of
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  183

 garrote. Add a dash of cordite, of oil from the neck of this viper carbine.
 Taste gingerly. Trigger the shooting device of this unusual camera. Lift,
 handle. But move warily, touch sparingly.
  Rob reached for the garrote that had murdered Mrs. Sunbeam and weighed the
  nylon fetter in his palm. It looked like a skipping rope for Tabitha's
  doll. Except for the crusted bloodstains. He sighted down a bone hairpin
  tube into which something had been tightly rolled.
  "Enjoy your omelet, Mr. Schuyler." Jason bisected a lamb kidney, forked it
  in a broth of butter-brandy sauce. Getting up, he fished out of the picnic
  hamper a box of fresh baked croissants, brioches, and a jar of apricot jam.
  On the metal table he set a third place. "Your wife's grandfather is
  joining us. How's he feeling?"
  "Shaky," Rob said. "He's a tough old bird."
  "Any clues?"
  "A few. He wouldn't have made it if my wife hadn't gotten that tip."
  "Did you question him?"
   "He clammed up."
  ". . . and the Cafd Liechtenstein?"
  "Padlocked. Madam Liese hasn't sung yet, but she will." Rob pushed his
  plate aside. "Are you going to call off the dinner for the judge? With the
  assassin loose?"
  "No, Mr. Schuyler, we are not. If you do it once you have one hell of a
  scared country."
  "Does the judge know?"
  "Yes. He's determined. He doesn't give a damn."
  Rob stood up and began stalking. "This hunt breakfast
 . . it sits a little heavy on my gut. This dainty decision about the
 scrambleds, versus the Mont-Saint-Michel omelet, made with the Leghorn eggs
 flown in from your wife's pecking ground. You've done an agency snow job on
 me that I wouldn't have believed possible. You've taken over my life, my
 profession, and told me how you want it run. You've spitballed me out into
 a city of over eight million people and told me to hand you a killer. So
 I've lost him. Now I'm going to find him and deal with him myself. I don't
 give a damn how I do it. A lot of us in my family have suffered in this
 effort. One of them died for us. Another nearly did. My children are scared.
 Flix and I are torn apart. But the important thing is, it doesn't matter
184      Noel Pierce

 right now what our family's human condition is. I want him and I'm going to
 find him and use any way I have to."
  Jason sat immobilized for a moment. Too many things were running through
  his mind to make a judgment of what this hotheaded man with his stubborn
  face would do. "Very well," he said. "But it depends ...."
  "No. It doesn't. No deal."
  "Determined, like the judge?"
  "Yes."
  "All right," Jason decided. "What do you want?"
  "First you can level with me about that old woman lying on a slab next
  door."
  Jason explored a molar with a gold toothpick. "She was a small-time
  informer of dubious past. Useful to terrorist groups. She was infiltrated
  into your household through Europa Domestics. We're not sure how. Doubling
  between her impoverished front and as Batfowler in the terrorist ring, she
  had control over your children. She could inform on your wife. On Felicia's
  grandfather. She could set her snare. Or she could defect."
  "Olga cared a lot for my wife and kids. Why did she go along with what the
  assassin ordered her to do?"
  "Because she was of enormous importance to him. And you were getting too
  hot, too close to crippling his principal mission."
  This is what she wanted to tell me when we met in the fog, Rob thought.
  "The rest you know, Mr. Schuyler. "
   "Except where the enemy is now."
  They both knew the grind that would follow. All-airlines alert. Train
  dispatchers, bus depots, tunnel entrance-exit checks, roadblocks,
  riverfront squads. Harbor police. Bridge toll crews. Ferries. The inland
  waterways. Customs entry to Canada, Mexico. A multitudinous and futile
  search to cover cars, trains, trucks, planes, air and water routes across
  the United States.
   "He won't run," Rob said. "I'm certain of it."
   "Why not?"
  "Because this Prussian thinks he's immortal. He wants to crack the whip
  over history. Like Siegfried. The Rhine warriors. The giants."
   "Jack the Giant Killer?"
   "Jack the Strangler."
   Jason quoted, his head cocked: "'He harkens after
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  185

 prophecies and dreams .... And from the cross-row plucks the letter G . . .
 .I " Picking up the old Austrian clock from the trophy table, he pinged it
 with his forefinger. "The hour of twelve is on the Iron Cross. In some of
 the old Germanic border duchies the villagers still have a rural saying:
 "The Diall is upon the Chriss-crosse of Noone."' Jason dangled gg's gold
 neck chain from which the cross hung.
  "We've done a little homework on this, Mr. Schuyler. We lifted a good print
  of his thumb."
  He dropped the cross, rattling on the table. In the silent mortuary the cop
  next door gave a whooping laugh over a comic strip. Jason fished around in
  his jacket for a bundle of notes.
  "Two days ago gg sent a strong warning to his Munich control that Olga
  Czhenzunska's loyalty was blown. Our last dispatch advised us that he would
  `continue as planned."' Jason handed the note over. Rod read:

 DEAR SON ON NO ACCOUNT POSTPONE YOUR VACATION

  STOP TAKE CARE OF MAMA STOP FATHER.

  "So he took care of Mama."
  "Schlechte Erbmasse," Jason said. "A bad heritage."

  "Mr. Ambassador, who beat you up?"
  The very pale old man, strips of bandage covering stitches on head and
  neck, a greenish-yellow tinge where bruises showed, sat with his cane
  between his knees. He looked from Jason to Rob. Around him spread an almost
  palpable authority. As if to say: "Don't involve my family. Don't press me
  too far."
  "Take it easy, Grandfather," Rob said, touching his shoulder.
  "Who attacked you?"
  Night on the parapet; through binoculars the man had zoomed into view to
  track his granddaughter. The uneasy prowl of his mind searched for reasons,
  stopped at his entrance into Liese's restaurant, and shrank back.
  "Any notion, Mr. Ambassador? It would help us immensely. You will be doing
  the national security a duty as you always have."
  "He must have been a Von Gottfried. The grandson."
  "Sure?"
186      Noel Pierce

  "Hard to be sure. It was over forty years ago; he was a child. Those were
  the golden years, the false peace between the wars. I saw the father, the
  Markgraf, now and then. We'd play cards, shoot boar. He was a cheat. A
  butcher, hunting."
  "Did you see the family often?"
  "No, although they entertained lavishly. Rumblings of Hitler had begun.
  Jackboots marching. Black shirts. Brown shirts, alarm among the older
  aristocracy. Plenty of wealth around, plenty of crowned heads. Resorts
  teemed with royalty. German spas like Baden-Baden were booming. But we knew
  that in middle Europe there were uprisings, pogroms. Incarcerations had
  started, conspiracy among the military. Nazism was encroaching; the
  generals scared; the villages frightened."
  The old man traced it back. "In the small territory where I was
  representative there were the usual stabbings, abortive border clashes,
  saber rattlings, wild talk among the military, furious ambitions, blood
  feuds. Much of it took place in the Von Gottfrieds' ancestral home."
  ". . . the mother?"
  "The baroness was a beautiful woman, a wolf bitch. They were a bad lot for
  all that dazzle around them. Something brooded over the family-which came
  right down the line from Frederick William the Great. I remember there was
  a nurse."
  "Yes?"
  "Slip of a girl. Nineteen or so. She controlled the child."
  "What was her name?"
  "Olga."
  "Mr. Minister, on the other side of my office is a mortuary. A very brave
  old woman lies in there. She was a nurse. Her name was Olga."
   "It can't be the same?"

   "It is.10
  'The one who looked after my-after Tessa and Ta. bitha?"
   "Yes. She did. History again. Full cycle."
  "On the night of your birthday dinner," Rob said, "you recognized her. Why
  wouldn't you admit it?"
  "You're a cop, Robert. But let me give you a tip. You're scared. So is your
  boss. You think whatever I can help you with will pick this mad grandson
  out of a bundle. It won't. Let me remind you that his Prussian/Hapsburg
  supremacy
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   187

 took four generations of plotting for power. How many generals who served in
 the Wehrmacht still wear their Hitler honors openly? Who are the ministers
 today?" The old man's fist slapped the desk. "Do you think any of this is
 dead? Walk down Bonn and Munich streets. Go to bars, coffeehouses, the
 opera. What do you see? High government figures with Nazi medals. The old
 barons still oiling their pistols, strutting, privileged, respected.
 Gloating over nationalism, the Nazi underground. Shrugging off the Nuremberg
 trials. Biding time, teaching their grandchildren that the Allies were bad,
 ruthless, destructive. Guzzling their beer with regimental pride because a
 former head of the West German ground forces was a Wehrmncht general.
 Children saying, `Where did you get the Iron Cross, Grossvater?' "
  "Sir, why did you go to see Madam Liese at the Cafe Liechtenstein?"
  "She pulled a hard-luck tale."
   "How well did you know her?"
   "As well as the next man. She was my mistress."
  "Her profession?"
  "A music hall soubrette. I took her out of a fashionable caf6, set her up.
  Liese was pretty, a Viennese. We enjoyed ourselves."
   "But your diplomatic reputation?"
  The old man flushed. "Money buys off jealous tongues. I was rich. No one
  batted an eye. One came and went with some pretty woman or other. The great
  parties at baronial estates, the hunt balls, yachting parties, the races.
  Hard to imagine that the lady in your arms was the vicious woman she turned
  out to be. Someone," he said in an angered, haunted way, "who would
  ruthlessly use me now like this."
  "Mr. Ambassador, someone else used you. What was his motive?"
   "I killed his grandfather, the old Count von Gottfried."
   "How?"
   "With a bronze paperweight."

  "There was a barracks revolt-Nazi-fomented, I suppose, along the duchy
  border. The embassy was invaded. I was asleep. Someone broke in-after
  something I had . . . secret dispatches, governmental orders . . . I never
  knew precisely what. My guards took the body away. One of them flung it in
  a tributary of the Isar."
188       Noel Pierce

 "Did you know the Count von Gottfried?"
 "Only to bow to across a ballroom."
  Jason got up and set out drinks, handed his visitor a brandy. Grandfather
  swirled it around.
   "What have you done with Liese?"
   "We have her in protective custody."
  "Must I testify? Will Felicia and the children be involved?"
  "No, Mr. Ambassador. We are after bigger fish. When you got the fake phone
  call and were told to take it in her parlor-what did von Gottfried say to
  you?"
  "He looked insane. I raised my stick. I saw his hand come up." Grandfather
  stole a glance at Rob. Caution shut his mouth. The harsh, choked words
  sickened him again. ("Now you know what I will do so that you will suffer,
  for what you did to the head of my family. Before I am finished with you I
  will take her. Then I will break you up in pieces, you, ja, and your whole
  goddamned world.")
   "Yes?" Jason prodded him.
   "He came toward me and he said, `All men must die."'
  "He strangled the nurse. You are lucky he stopped with you."
  Grandfather set his hat squarely on his head and turned to them.
   "But he doesn't think he did."

             27

  Flix sat in the kitchen, counting. Hours, minutes, shirts, socks, sorting
  laundry, Tabitha's pants. She got up and heated the coffee. It was lonely
  without Mrs. Sunbeam. The phone rang. "Yes? This is Mrs. Schuyler." He said
  his name. She hesitated. "Where are you?" "Calling from near you." "Are you
  going away?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   189

 "For why? But soon I change my plans. That is why I-"
 "What plans?"
 He hesitated. "I cannot go until I see you again."
 She weighed the risks, a plan forming. "All right. Yes."
  He told her where she could find him . . . "if you wish it.
  The lie came smoothly."You know I do."
  "Do not be put off at where I am. My funds are short."
  "Do you need money?"
  He smiled. What did she take him for? "A bank draft comes from Zurich any
  time." He gave her a signal by which she was to knock. They arranged the
  hour.
  Turning away, she leaned against the kitchen counter. Apprehension welled
  inside her. Grandfather's face . . . Olga . . . the torture, the beating,
  the strangling, Rob coming and going, grim and distracted .... What was his
  real business here? Who was he fronting for? If he had done the mugging,
  left Grandfather for dead? If he was Olga's killer? There was not a shred
  of actual proof. All she had were unconnected facts and suspicions. Nothing
  more than Rob intent on a manhunt, and the things she had pieced together.
  She really knew nothing, suspected everything.
  Then . . . why not? Spy. Tell lies. Cheat. Trick the man. Be nice to him.

  Gg returned from the pay phone on the landing. He kicked open the door of
  the frowsy room and weighed his knife in his hand. Rage burned in him
  against the cop. He planned how to avenge it. Use her. Strike. Then move on
  to what was planned. "Maybe I will kill her, too," he muttered under his
  breath. And looked over his shoulder in the empty room as if she might be
  behind him, accusingly.
  But he knew he had her now. Triumph spread, the thickening in his loins
  that wanted to take and hold her. He rubbed his unshaven cheeks, musing.
  Discount her shock about Olga, her grief for the old man. She would inherit
  millions. Break down her social, controlled manner as a wife. Beseech her.
  Play on need. Express fear, plead sympathy . . . "for the furies 1 cannot
  control." Then? Permit her to feel she alone could control him.
  From Munich in the gold gabled house on the Prinzregentenstrasse to the
  Alpenstock Bar had come the word he waited for:
190      Noel Pierce

 DEAR SON YOUR BOAT TRIP ARRANGED TOURIST TICKET

 LIMITED ANXIOUS FATHER.

  He knew that a small, fast shark boat would pick him up at night by the
  fishers' dock and move him on, out of the city.

  Something chilly in the autumn air drove Flix along the gritty pavements.
  To be, or not to be, the decoy? Shame nagged her for having got in too deep
  with something scary, clandestine. For having meddled, in the first place.
  But Mrs. Sunbeam had left her a legacy beyond qualms or conscience. If he
  is the killer, I must know. I can make the contact. Flush him from his
  hideout. Decoy him to Rob and to the police.
  But without help how was it to be done? Find someone 1 can trust, she
  thought, hurrying along-without involving Rob. This must be done without
  his knowing. It has to be "an anonymous tip." Who? Who would understand
  that this reckless, crazy plan she had-that began in defiance of Rob-was
  indirectly to help him and protect the children? Who could she contact,
  depend on? Harris, yes. Exactly. The old, tough, crippled veteran of FBI.
  And God knows, Flix thought, if anyone realizes the fix I'm in, Harris
  does. He's probably two blocks behind me, right now. I'll tip him o$ the
  minute 1 see him. The thought of Harris cheered her.
  But she could no longer dissemble. Flinching, she faced the truth. Cleanse
  the guilt. Lure the man to the end of the funnel. Step back and let them
  take him. And keep myself intact?
  Hardly. That was too much luck to hope for. They were on collision course.
  What she was doing was so obvious that she might as well start stripping as
  she went up the stairs. Do it to find out if he killed Olga? If he tried to
  murder Grandfather. Yes.
  The bait was herself. The man was a savage, handsome, seductive. Verboten.
  And because forbidden, gg excited her the way dangerous people do who are
  evil, beautiful to look at, and outside the law. Honorable men who get the
  dirty jobs well done are disciplined, stern-not impulsively, sexually
  explosive. They have mastery over emotion. He has none. But I have.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   191

  The desire to subdue, to control. Palpable, not terrifying. Giving herself
  to it, she could not turn back. Seeking in her ambivalence both his
  surrender and his physical magnetism, this man who had so powerful a
  compulsion strung her up like a taut wire. Hurrying, she despised herself
  for it.
  "Look for a sign in a window," he said. "MOBLIERTE ZIMMER ZU VERMTETEN."
  Furnished rooms for rent.
  She saw the building midway along the shabby block; Mrs. Sunbeam seemed to
  stand behind her.
  She knew about us. Knowing Gerhardt. Knowing me. Knowing Rob. Knowing the
  children. And had, herself, died so many deaths of survival that the right
  and wrongisms of the dark, secret things in a clash of intimacy did not
  concern Mrs. Sunbeam. She had seen it all, done it all, and laid her head
  on the line. What 1 do now with dishonor is what only she would understand.
  It is something I can never explain to Rob. Man's work? Womah's work?
  Divide down the middle of a marriage for better or worse? In for a hunch,
  in for a killing? 1 must know if he did it.
  Flix went down the street to the sign in the window.
  Watching her, Harris braked the black bureau car across the street. Seeing
  her as he had tailed her at the park playground, the supermarket, her arms
  lifting a bunch of scarlet zinnias, tracking her to the toy store, the
  opera house, the parish house at St. Trinity's. He saw her with ice-cream
  cones for the children, walking the poodle named Suzy. He saw her by the
  river walk talking to a man with the cameras, the fishing rod. He saw the
  daylight shine and the rain fall on chestnut hair. He saw the moon rise on
  her and the sun set along fine bones, along her cheeks and neck. He saw her
  legs, straight as a racing colt. "Leggy" she was, alive, long-limbed. The
  boss's wife.
  Out of a brown paper bag he took a pear. It had a wintry flavor. Something
  that should be sweet-like the boss's wife-tasted bitter to him. He chewed
  it remorselessly. Thinking glum thoughts. This backstairs meeting. . . what
  was she up to? And torn between caution and loyalty, he thought: Shut up,
  if she needs me I'll know. Don't tell the boss.
  A fat tenement dog, the darling of a sweatered, sagbusted janitress, panted
  up from the cellar stairs by the black sedan. Dog and janitress looked in
  at the wiry old
192       Noel Pierce

 man fitting an ammunition clip into the gun between his knees.
  From the basement came the long, baying warning of the old dog, and the old
  woman. Sounding their bitches' cry of beware.
  In his rented room, windows locked, gg didn't hear it. In the tenements
  children were doing their school work. In his stakeout Harris waited,
  adding up careful sums of bad consequence. One and one make two. There had
  to be two now, up there in one room in Zimmer zu Vermieten.
  Flix went down three steps into a dank, chilly room with a small bar. There
  were fly-specked notices of sports club outings, soccer, Rugby, weight
  lifting. Ornately plated, tarnished trophies stood in niches. On the
  counter pickles and cucumbers swam in sour liquid. Mashed-out butts filled
  the tin ashtrays. There was a stale odor of malt and cheap perfume. No one
  was about.
  She went up two flights and gave the signal knock.
   "Willkommen. Come in, bitte."
  She had forgotten how tall he was. The flashing face was radiant at seeing
  her. She had forgotten, in the shock and horror of Olga, of her
  Grandfather's beaten face, the disarming grace with which he could make a
  feast in a dust heap. Heels together, standing stiffly in his excitement at
  having her here, he drew her in, took her furs, seated her.
  "Each time I see you, I feel such joy." She looked around. He had provided
  fresh fruit, flowers, almond cakes, kimmel, brandy, anisette, cheese on a
  plate.
  Gg fussed with a small spirit burner, to make coffee. "This poor room-it
  makes nothing. We were smoked out in a fire where I was before . . . You
  remember, Liebchen?"
  "Yes. I remember."
  "You have forgiven me that bad time? You do not bate me so much?"
  "Hate you? No."
  "That is good." He pressed her shoulder. "Since I think I am summoned back
  to Germany soon, here it is at least quiet where I finish my work."
  Her eyes fled to the luggage, the deep-sea rod in its padlocked case. A
  transistor radio tuned to shortwave was belting out police bulletins. He
  went over quickly and shut it off.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   193

 "Let us have some music."
 "No. Nothing. Shut it off. My head aches."
  He went to her anxiously. Under his extravagant welcome, he was nervous.
  The tanned face had a yellow tinge of pallor. She noticed the scratches on
  his hands, red streaks in the gold fuzz that sprung on the backs of his
  fingers.
  She sipped a small glass of kimmel. The odor of the room was faintly
  unaired and beastlike. A room no doubt hired by the hour for women such as
  she. Ugly, drab, paid for at a high price to buy the silence below. Smile.
  Be nice to him.
  She said sympathetically, "You can't stay here. If you're pressed for
  money? I've brought you some. Please take it."
  He looked with amusement at the small roll of bills she held out. He
  realized she had no conception of what his wealth was, of the power behind
  him.
  "So, okay, my darling. I take it, if it pleases you." He stuffed it in his
  pocket.
  "But you must understand," she began, "that what happened last time isn't
  going to happen again."
  "What do you mean?"
  "I mean none of your fancy rope tricks."
  He put his hands reassuringly on her shoulders. "You are strong under
  softness. That is what I like so much about you." He had an impulse to pay
  her a compliment as he would one of the young princesses in the royalist
  society his Grandfather knew.
  "Do you know how beautiful you are?" He bent and kissed her lightly. "Ich
  lieb Dich am meisten."
  "How can you think of me when Olga is dead?"
  She felt him tremble. Small beads of sweat started where his light hair lay
  flat. Gg touched the dampness.
  "Ja, it is a terrible thing. She was my friend for so long. I was small,
  wild. There was much trouble . . . my mother
   . her lovers. Olga . . . she understood."
 F1ix said, "So do I," and took his hand.
  He pretended a grief she knew he didn't feel. It was a sentimental,
  treacherous tenderness for the old woman.
  "To console you . . . that's why I came."
  "Console me? There is in my country a folktale about a grieving old peasant
  who buries the wife, then comes home to screw the milkmaid, saying he did
  not kn6w what he was doing-so great was his grief. Ja, that is what I call
194       Noel Pierce

 consolation, my darling." He laughed abruptly, harshly. Lips stiff, she
 managed to laugh with him.
  "la, I mourn. But with you here it is not so lonely." In one of those
  lightning shifts she felt his mind stare down a black tunnel and back away.
  He reached out and gripped her. "Liebchen, I am afraid. Hold me."
  She tried to free her wrists. Her fingers slipped futilely over the thick
  gold mat of hair on his arms. It was like digging at a block of wood. Flix
  pushed him off and stood up.
  "Are you going to find out who it was killed your old governess?"
  "It is for the police."
   "She was nurse to my children. I care. Don't you?"
   "I care for many things I have no time for."
   "But you have time for me?"
   "You are why I cannot bring myself to go away."
  He stood up, too. "I should have looked after Olga better," he pleaded.
  "But that she is dead, from carelessness, ja . . . . You understand? I
  could not continually watch over her. Poor soul, she fell asleep. It is
  partly my fault."
   "Don't blame yourself-or do you?"
   "I?" He frowned. "For what?"
   "I don't exactly know."
  Flix looked at his rumpled couch. Sheets were gray in the dim twilight.
  Mustiness overlay the pine and vetiver cologne from gold-stoppered bottles
  in his dressing case laid out on the cheap maple bureau. A pair of
  lemon-oiled boots yawned in a corner, mud-encrusted. He must have walked
  the streets all night. A soiled shirt was wadded like a fist. The last
  lair, she thought. That a man like this, halfsavage, might actually beat,
  throttle, betray people trying to lead normal lives like Grandfather, like
  Olga.
  His head bent over the coffee cups. She saw a long, raking scratch from
  forehead to hairline. He had attempted to cover it with makeup.
  "Who scratched you?"
  "Grimalkin. Meine Katze. The smoke and fire, the windows smashing. She
  sprang at me." Did you, Mrs. Sunbeam?
  He pulled his shirt open. "Look. Here is where she did me most punishment."
  Did you, Mrs. Sunbeam? His chest was raked with scratches. "After that I
  cut her claws."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  195

 After that, you killed her?
  His face hardened. He had found the old she-cat out like a light in the
  yard. After Herr Cop had cut the transmitter, taken the clock, ripped up
  the floorboards ....
  "You are troubled," he said, watching her, touching her eyes. "You are
  sad."
  She saw her chance to unnerve him further. Flix blinked back pretended
  tears. "It's my grandfather." She covered her face. "He was the victim of
  a mugger . . . robbed, beaten, left for dead .... I adored him."
  "Liebchen . . . I am so sorry to hear this." He couldn't hide a surge of
  elation. The old swine finally dead. Dead. Go carefully. "When? Where was
  this place?"
   "The night after Olga . . . the Caf6 Liechtenstein."
   "Ach, yes, a trap for tourists. The food is terrible."
   "The woman who ran it . . . ." Flix watched him.
   He tensed suddenly.
   "The police have her. They closed the place up."
  "They are questioning her?" He looked blankly at his radio. "It was not on
  the news."
  "No. But naturally we-my husband-we were called immediately."
  They had Liese. She was singing to the cop. The battered,old bird pointing
  her claws at him. It jolted him like a kick in the groin.
  "The poor old one," he said. "Who would do such a thing?þ
  "Not who"-Flix looked directly at him-"but why did someone want him dead?"
  "For the money," be said evasively, "what else?" He wanted to take
  advantage of her tears. "Come, Liebchen. Sorrow has drawn us closer. Now we
  comfort each other."
  He stood close to her, took her hands and drew them to his chest, looking
  down at her. She felt his skin tighten, roughened by her palms as he
  stroked her, seeing her arrogant, almost aristocratic expression break into
  awareness as her control relaxed.
  Warm tides flowed through her. Flix was appalled to want him. Angered,
  distraught, she pushed him away. He gripped her closer. This shock of
  pleasure at his touch . . . . This madness that feeds on what it can
  destroy .... Don't let him know. She raked her nails on his shoulders, dug
  into the welt of back muscles like the cat. He tore her hands away.
196      Noel Pierce

 "Afraid of one more scratch?"
 "Why do you say that?"
 "I almost think you killed her."
 "Why would I strangle my old nurse?"
 "Strangle? How could you know that?"
 "You must be crazy." But he had made a bad slip.
 "The police say it was a mattress fire."
  "Why would I commit an atrocity on someone of my family?"
  "Because Olga told me they were rotten, inbred. What does one more crime
  matter to the son of such a family?"
  She had a furious frankness that dismayed him.
  "Who are you to tell me I could do this thing?"
  "Tell me about it," she urged.
  He ripped off his shirt and flung it at her feet. Flix saw the barrel chest
  loom up in front of her with the livid tattoo marks.
  "So you deny it? I -couldn't bear to think that you . . . ."
  "Ja. I deny it." But his hands sank. A slow paralysis of caution set in. He
  was frightened of what she suspected.
  Gg squatted down at her feet and sank his raked face in his hands. Behind
  this abjectness his mind Was racing. He must bring her back to him.
  "I think you're in bad trouble. I came to you when you sent for me. Surely
  that should convince you?"
  "Of what? You are like all women . . . a pack of lies. You want to break
  the man down."
  She sat down, trembling, in the frowsy chair. He leaned back against her
  legs. They were silent.
  "Forgive me"-she put her band on his hair-"I didn't mean to upset you.
  Trust me a little."
  She felt the heat of his bare back along her legs. This dirty joy, she
  thought, how can I stand outside it? Something does. Perhaps it is Olga,
  forgiving me? Do souls take sides? She looked down. He needed to be
  barbered, shaved. On his neckline a flaxen fuzz sprung, unkempt as a boy.
  She heard him sigh. She felt his damp cheeks press her legs and realized he
  was crying soundlessly. She felt his heated hands move blindly up along her
  thighs. She sat still. The hands moved up, finding what they sought.
  "No." She struggled up. He stood with her, seeming much taller, broader
  than before. The pendulum swung between her fear and his. His need, hers.
  It took one spark.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   197

  He kissed her repeatedly, threading his fingers through the heavy gloss of
  hair, straining her head back to look at him.
  "You know you want me. Why did you come to my room if not to make love with
  me?"
  She tightened her arms slowly around him. She made herself smooth his face,
  seeing the pale, haunted and demanding eyes, his mouth half open, curving
  in a grimace of pain and desire.
  "Tell me the truth. Let it go. All you know, darling. Everything you've
  done. Why are you hiding in this rathole? Trust me .... Let me help you."
  He shook his head, wavering. "There is only one way we-No. Nein. I cannot.
  That I want you, love you, is all I know. You eat me up the way the fire
  did Olga." He shook her, with a wry laugh. "I'll tell you why you are
  here." He began to talk to her in impassioned German, as he kissed her
  eyes, her throat, fondling her, stroking and drawing her down, opening her
  dress and putting his blazing face between her breasts . . . . "You see,
  this is how it is with us since the beginning."
  She had his fear, his tears, his guilt, his mounting need. She had him
  completely subjugated to whichever way desire and power moved her.
  Goad him. Lure him. Make him declare himsglf. Flush him out, Force him to
  terms, to meet me again, in a specified place, get the time, the day, the
  hour . . .
  "Is this what you planned?" she said. "This cheap seduction in this hideous
  place?"
  The shot went home. He struggled to recover and pull away. It come to her
  with a shock-is he impotent? Is it only in the act of killing that he gets
  his satisfaction?
  She pushed her advantage. "This is what Olga knew about you. Now that I am
  here. The bed is here, you back away. You run from a woman stronger than
  you."
  "So? What would you do for me? Leave your husband? Go away with me? Meet me
  abroad-in Munich? The Alps?"
  "Yes. I almost think I would. It could be arranged." She snatched up and
  lighted a cigarette. He took it from her, put his thumb to the hot ash,
  snuffed it out and sucked the burn, tasting some pain from her that excited
  and brutalized him.
  "You need a tamer, a whip. Your fine principles are
198      Noel Pierce

 dirt. It doesn't matter to you if I kill anybody. What you want is to be
 dominated. Put through your paces. You are a girl who begs for it."
 "Then get on with your dirty job."
  He gave a strangled sigh and passed a hand over his damp face. "I should
  beat you for your suspicion of me. I have tried but I cannot do it. Because
  I love you the most. Ich lieb Dich am meisten." He took her face in his
  hands. "I know you do not believe this but it is true. That is why I am
  still here. In this city that is not like the lights of Munich-where I
  shall be going soon. After some diplomatic business I take care of for my
  embassy."
   "When will you go?"
  He said evasively, "It is arranged. But I must see you again. Please. One
  last time."
  He drew her over and down on the couch and lay against her. "Don't hate me,
  Liebchen. Hold me. Don't fight me, I need you. Olga is gone . . . no one
  but you."
  "You spoke of business for your embassy. What business?"
  "Things I do here . . . for my party, the NDP in Germany. We are well
  organized. I am given my directives by someone higher up. You would not
  understand," he muttered, his eyes hidden in her neck. "In Munich there is
  a certain man . . . Herr Direktor . . . who is tracking down those who
  falsely condemned Nazi leaders as war criminals. That is why my party is
  feared. We are powerful. We know that an undivided Germany will restore
  honor to my country. That is what I want above all else. It is why I was
  selected. My friends . . . I cannot name them. There is a manipulator, a
  master organizer. That is where the money comes from. That is why your poor
  little bunch of bills that you brought me made me smile. I am a man in high
  position in my party."
   "Then how can you be in trouble?"
   "I have made mistakes. Who doesn't?"
  "Like what?" Olga? Grandfather? Herself?
   "To delay here when I should be going away."
   "Where will you go?"
   "Do not pry into it. I have other things to fight now . . . ."
   "Like what?"
  "A rage against . . . people . . . things nameless. Here in this room is
  where I run when things are up."
   "What things are up against you?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   199

  "That I love you, want you. Will you meet me again? If I could manage to
  delay my plans a little longer, can I be sure of you?"
  Hold him with arms that weaken and betray him. "Yes. You can be sure of me.
  I'll meet you again." She thought carefully. "But you must say when.
  Where." Bend over him, look at him, take control. This is what 1 have
  bought for my conscience.
  Couching with him, lying close, it was easier. A woman looking down has the
  world above her back.
  Looking up into her eyes, he was conscious of one thing: to throw himself,
  through her, on Herr Cop. Grind him, stab, kick him to pieces. Subjugate.
  Gg's own ambivalence was a match for hers.
  And still she hovered over him, half scornful, taunting. She snatched his
  groping hand, spread the webbed fingers, traced the gold signet ring,
  traced the Hapsburgian armor, felt the web of his birth defect, dipped deep
  for the crippled soul. Knowing she held his death warrant as clearly as if
  she had written it out, signed and handed it over. He was doomed by what he
  wanted. She let him caress her, trying to take what ultimately he could not
  have.
  He drew her spilling hair down over his face, parting the strands, washing,
  drying his pores on her. (So that always after, whenever she brushed and
  brushed the shimmering hair, it was never to feel clean again.)
  She wanted him now, arched and wanting. . ~ . Now, it is now . . . She
  stretched herself out in a dying sigh and turned away.
  He leaned on his elbow, looking at the Herr Cop's wife. The pretty wife.
  The face on the rumpled gray pillow.
  "What stopped you?" Flix opened her eyes. She said coldly, "What did you
  think of when you wanted me?"
   "That between your legs I betray myself."
   "It's a danmed good joke on me." She laughed.
  He sat there by the bed with his heart slowing, his body leaden. It was a
  punishment to his pride that was unendurable. He leaned down and to stop
  that mocking laugh gave her a stinging slap across the mouth.
  She lay silent, contracted with shock. Without pretense or artifice,
  totally unconcerned, her eyes gazed up at him with curious contempt. He
  felt gelded.
   "Some stud dummkopf I am. It is a bad joke."
   He flung himself on his knees over her, burying his face
200       Noel Pierce

 in her belly. She didn't stir. Tonight, he thought, she will sleep with the
 cop husband. He will take her off the edge I have left her on.
  After a while he got up and went and poured brandy for them.
  Flix kicked the sleazy blanket off, lay thinking, hands behind her head. A
  large fly bumbled across the ceiling. It hit the wall.
  "There's a fly on the ceiling."
  He put the brandy down. "At the hunting lodge where I am as a small boy on
  holidays, in a splendid manor house on the Starnberger See, if there was a
  speck of a fly on the wall, with one clap of the hand ten footmen came
  running."
  "Like the partridge in the pear tree."
  "Bitte? Partridge? la, we shot many birds."
  "'Ten footmen came running. . . "' The familiar refrain sung with her
  children. Fantastic, that they seemed at this moment far away in another
  world. To isolate and freeze her daughters like snow children frozen in an
  attitude of endearment . . . as if they were dead. Flix gulped, realizing
  that to keep them remote and unreal was the only way she could go through
  with what she'd started.
  She got up and sat in the stuffed chair, smoking one of his Gauloise
  cigarettes. It was her complete indifference to nakedness that angered him.
  He watched her put on his dressing gown, drawing the cord tight under her
  ribs. She finished the brandy, smoking, striding up and down the dismal,
  tattered room. Flix punched out the cigarette. "A: I think you strangled
  Olga. B: You wanted to take me because you hate my husband. C: You can't
  have a woman as a normal man does-unless you stab, penetrate in a kind of
  excitement that cruelty satisfies in you."
  "What have you told him, that spying bastard of a cop you're married to?"
  "Nothing."
  "Don't lie to me."
  "He doesn't dream I know you. How could he?"
  "Don't go running to him or I'll kill you."
  "Of course I can't tell him anything. You know that."
  "Ach, we foul ourselves. A bird is cleaner." He flung her clothes at her.
  "Dress yourself. I don't want to harm you. Don't make me."
  Gg went to the window, pulled back the shade, sud-
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   201

 denly drew it with a snap and pressed himself flat to the wall.
  "There is a man down there in the street. He is the stakeout for the
  internal police. The driver for the cop car. The lame one."
  Her heart gave a thumping leap. Harris.
  "Why should he be watching you? What are you afraid
 of down there? If you haven't done something that -m"
  "Shut up. Be still while I work it out."
  "What am I to do?" She dressed rapidly, flicking out her hair, catching up
  her coat.
  "Listen carefully. Go down one flight. Turn right, at the public toilet.
  Take the back stairs to the cellar. Follow past the furnace room to the
  back door. Walk through it to the yard in the next house. Use the rear bar
  entrance there. It is Al and Lottie's Alpenstock Bar. They know me. Ask for
  the Telefon. Fake a call. Go out the front door onto Second Avenue like a
  Hausfrau having a quick beer."
  She nodded. "What will you do?"
  "I will go over the rooftops where my friends are."
  "And if I do this for you, Gerhardt?"
  "What is it you want?"
  She put her arms around him. "Trust me. It will be better the next time."
  He thought, 1 must use her, work through her. "Okay. Okay." He snapped
  decisions out. "I cannot tell you if tomorrow or the next day or a week
  from now. After sundown the fishers meet by the bulkhead at the Marine Sta-
  tion for the eel catch. I will get word to you by them. And when. If you
  can arrange, then look for me. Bring a rod. Pretend to fish."
  "You promise?"
  "I promise. Hurry. Who knows?" he said, as he let her out. "That night I
  might catch something big."
28
  She shuddered as she walked. Take the long way home. The wind buffeted her
  down the dark blocks to the river. Were the children fed? Rob said he'd be
  in . . . she hadn't left a note. Put behind her the rear entrance to the
  Alpenstock Bar, asking for the phone, making a fake call, the fat barmaid
  kibitzing, shrewd eyes taking her in. Forget the proprietor's moist paw,
  the scored wooden tables, covered in glasses of suds, the floor with damp,
  dirty sawdust. The sports fans, arguing, drinking, thumping the tables.
  Forget the catcalls and whistles. Forget the flat European faces of the
  muscled soccer players; of the old ones, dismal and gray, suspicious of
  her. They watched her loiter, kill time, and go. Spitting after her on the
  damp sawdust, despising her look of class.
  Shaken for horror of herself, she knew it was deserved. Breaking out
  violently from a smug, safe chrysalis where some other Flix had lived clean
  and clear before. Her mouth felt punished, bruised. She stopped under an
  arc light to put on lipstick. Burning slits stared back at her from the
  mirrored compact. Flix thought: These are my eyes. She covered them.
  She's crying, Harris said to himself. First that "furnished room," then Al
  and Lottie's trash can. What was Mrs. Rob up to? He drove slowly down the
  block until she got control of herself. Give her time to find her way
  before she got home to the kids. Whatever the boss's wife had done, shacked
  up in that crummy dump, she's in trouble, that's for sure. But maybe she's
  had to make some kind of deal that shook her.
  Thinking about it shook him so much that he decided to take a shortcut,
  bead off Mrs. Rob and just kind of sit there in the lobby, waiting to know
  she was safe home. And let her know he knew it, for whatever that was
  worth.

              202
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   203

  Flix recognized the old man, turned back from the elevator and came
  straight toward him.
  "Harris."
  "Ma'am?" He took off his hat.
  "We can't talk here."
  "No, ma'am."
  "Is my husband-" She gestured upstairs.
  He nodded.
  "Does he know why you-I mean, that I-"
  "No. I didn't say anything, Just reported in to him. He has to know where
  the mule is."
  "Mule?"
  "The bureau car. She's got herself spotlights, fog lights, roof beam,
  double siren, bullet shield, retractable bumper. But I still got to kick
  her when she wants to get away from me."
  "Can we talk in the mule? I need your help."
  "Sure thing, ma'am."
  They went down the street. He unlocked the car and they got in. It was dark
  inside. She bent her head and began to cry, helplessly, desolately.
  "There now"-he put his crooked arm around her"there now." Patting her
  clumsily. "Everything is going to come all right. You'll see."
  "Everything is terribly wrong."
  "Like that fellow Jack Webb says, just give me the facts, ma'am."
  "I can't. But I have to depend on you." She thought how to put it. "Can you
  get word to someone in authority over my husband? Without his having to
  know?"
  "Now look here, Mrs. Schuyler, you got in your husband the best man in the
  bureau. I got no secrets from him."
  She started to get out of the car. He caught her back.
  "Now wait. Look here. What's this all about?" After all, hadn't he been
  assigned to watch over her, right or wrong?
  "Harris, I know my husband. This is something that if he knew, he'd be
  furious about. I can't risk it. I have my daughters to think of. Their
  father will do something dreadful if he ......
  "Level with me, Mrs. Rob."
  "The man who strangled my children's nurse. I've been in contact with him."
204      Noel Pierce

 Harris let his breath out in dismay.
  "Where is he now? That rooming house?" She shook her head.
  "He got away over the roofs."
  "We'll think of something," Harris said.
  "Who is my husband working with?"
  "J-Branch. CIA."
  "I want you to get word to them. Call it an anonymous tip. Invent
  something. Anything. But on no account must Rob know I'm involved."
  Harris thought about it. "How far are you prepared to go with this?"
   "I'm going to set him up."
   "For us to take him? How?"
  "He's to meet me on a certain right by the fireboat dock . . . ." She
  explained how she thought the plan would go. Harris questioned her. They
  went over it again.
  "All right," he agreed. "J-Branch. Don't you worry. I'll take care of it.
  You go up now and spoon some hot supper into the kids. Take a belt of
  kitchen whiskey for your nerves. And, Mrs. Rob-"
   "Yes, Harris?"
   "When you wake him up-be kind. He's had a bad day."
  So have 1, she thought. "Thank you."

  The remote station alarm on his wristwatch stopped buzzing. Rob shoved it
  under the pillow, hauled the blanket up and lay smoking. He listened to the
  stillness. She hadn't come in yet. Gone again. Afternoons. No note. Where?
  As before? To whom? As before? He fought down a queer sense of panic and
  unbelief. A piece of yarn wove convulsively through his memory. Something
  tugged, snagged. Why was Olga Czhenzunska knitting while waiting for
  assassination? Premonition? Why had she offered her neck to the strangler?
  She was close to Flix. Did she know something he didn't know about Flix?
  He could feel the sweat running from armpits to chest to face, to hair, to
  neck, until he was drenched with it, and it was very cold.
  This bed was home base for them. Had he driven her from it:' He lit another
  cigarette and lay missing her. Forcing himself to think: I have to face
  this if it is true. While the watch under his pillow ticked out: Get on
  with the job, get on with it, pull on your pants, get it over with.
'                             MESSENGER FROM MUNICH 205

  But the jealous pain crept back, a grimacing gargoyle of pain that humped
  and thumped on his pillow while the busy watch ticked and the
  time-pressure-calendar pounded away. Torn between the urgency of time and
  missing her, he thought: Here in this good bed which is ours, hers and mine
  together, her sensitive skin smell and mine with hers familiar, the sheets
  we have made love in-whenever it has been good together is unforgettable-is
  all we have.
  Now comes the extra, added, unbeckoned fact, the warning. That she could
  want another man.
  Like a tapestry your eyes know so well. But do not see complete until now.
  You follow the hunt, the chase, the lady, the villain, the king, the
  dragon, the unicorn, the old nurse, the beast. Until you see the black
  thread at the end. After the gold ones. The bad worm that eats the tapestry
  turns in the rotten thread of wool. Then what you have held in sight all
  this long time of loving her disappears.
  You literally do not know, he thought, punching out the hot coal of another
  cigarette against his scorched mouth. You do not even miss it-until now you
  know. That what you had with her is gone. He got up and began to dress.

  Flix let herself in and went to the nursery. Tabitha and Tessa slept flat
  on their backs with arms spread-eagle. A tattered teddy bear ear was
  clutched in one grubby hand; in the other a sticky glob of gumdrop. She
  gazed at them. ("Partridge in a pear tree" . . . "Ten footmen came running
  . . . ." "Partridge? Ja, we shot many birds . . . .")
  She sensed Rob come in and stand behind her. They looked down at the
  sleeping children.
   "Drink?"
   "Not for me." She turned. "I'll fix one for you."
  They went into the living room. He heard the ice clink, the soda splash. He
  heard her fingers rattle among the bar things.
   She brought his drink back. He finished it.
   "Going out again?"
   "For a while. Don't wait up."
   "I won't. I don't."
  "Flix." He put out his hand. "There'll be other times for us, better
  times."
  Still she stood apart. There was something parched about her . . . but no
  time for comfort.
   They stood as strangers, not on edge after a rousing
206       Noel Pierce

 quarrel with insults hurled and the slow, heated caresses to make it up
 again, but in that deadliest calm of allutter separation.
  The shock of her coldness and silence was beyond his comprehension. As if
  the core of something dynamically his, in Flix, had been blasted apart. He
  was torn by an inarticulate pity for her, for himself, for the children. He
  hung in the doorway, fuming to get on with the search, longing to stay.
  "How did Olga really die? Don't keep it from me any longer, Rob."
  "I've told you."
   "No, you haven't."
  He looked at Flix sharply. "Why can't you let it alone?"
  "She died violently, didn't she?"
  He said finally, "Yes."
  "Who did it?"
  "We don't know. She was strangled by a professional criminal."
  "Did she expect it? Did she fight to live?"
  "We have his skin, his hair under her nails."
  Her eyes glittered. She turned slowly away as if she had been drugged.
  ("Grimalkin. Meine Katze.")
  "I have to know. I simply have to know."
  "He used a fetter. A garrote. Quick. Olga Czhenzunska was breathing. Then
  it was done."
  "But the fire?"
  "The man set it."
  "You're sure of this?"
  "Positive. We've done the autopsy."
  She had gone very white. He watched her straighten a sofa pillow, then give
  it a ferocious punch with her clenched fist.
  "I don't care what she was involved in . . . 1 want her avenged."
  "We're working on it." He bent to kiss Flix and caught a reek of brandy on
  her mouth. The strong odor of Gauloise cigarette smoke hung heavy in her
  hair. From her clothes, her skin and pores came an indescribable sexual
  sweat. .
  "Where have you been?"
  "Out," she said.
  Flix stepped back from him with an imperceptible shudder to let him pass,
  and turned her face.
29
  He was in another rented room, closer to the docks. To pass the time until
  the signal came and he met her again, he tinkered with weapons, as absorbed
  as on a playroom floor. One new one they had given him to test pleased him.
  It was so artless, so simple-a small flashlight that could lie in his
  pocket. Into one end gg fitted the breech of a mini automatic, then snapped
  in a clip of steel needles. With a thumb pressure on the flash button he
  could discharge them like delicate spears. Whoever received the charge
  would be stuck all over like a wire hairbrush. Aimed at the back, the
  bristles would puncture the man's lungs, deaden the spine. He patted it
  fondly. But like a spoiled boy with a collection of toys to choose, it was
  not his favorite.
  He liked either the very small, skillful ones, like this snare, or that
  one-gracefully flicking the garrote in the air, catching and palming it-or
  the big one, the prime toy. As a child in the old castle with Olga, he had
  scowled over a birthday penknife, disdained his new ice skates, and reached
  instead for the shining rifle.
  So he turned to his big one, the favorite.
  It was the weapon for Herr Cop.
  The fishing rod spine lay on the floor like a shark's skeleton. Gg
  dismantled the steel fins, oiled and resectioned the slender shafts. He
  took up the chemical chamber for the flamethrower, inserted and locked it
  in the handle. Carefully he took the primer off to neutralize the fuse.
  Then worked and reset the thumb guard to trigger the flame.
  As he prepared it, he sang under his breath an old Alpine verse, fumed with
  satisfaction. "Neuschwanstein, lichtum ffossen . . du einsam hehr' Bau. .
  ."
  The lethal mechanism was simple as releasing the thumb

                207
208      Noel Pierce

 catch to slip the drag off the reel. When a big one hit and took the hook,
 let the line run out, the flame annihilate.
  It was not like a snub-nose bullet that splits the brain and spatters it.
  Not like the knife that had silenced Rudi. It was not like the Ravenstock
  gas used to blacken and burst the flesh. This kills the cop.
  Fire cleanses, leaves its mound of ashes. If his meeting with the wife was
  to confront Herr Cop-as he thought it would be-gg prepared his reception.
  "Traumverloren, wach auf aus tiefem Schmerz," he sang, the words filling
  his throat as he shoved the primer in, working the flange of his wrist,
  casting, pointing, aiming. For when it was done . . . "Dien Herr ward neu
  geboren (to the crown of the mountains you are born again)."
  The primer worried him. It had to mesh exactly with the sensitively
  computed gear that would launch the fire. Again he disembodied the skeleton
  and with infinite pleasure tested the primer. "Empor zum Himmelblau (king
  of the blue sky), here is your Lebensgefahr, Cop," he sang sweetly,
  murderously. "Here is your death danger." He gave a final pat to the heavy
  rod as to a top animal that had done its mechanical tricks.
  "You are big, you are clever. You are obedient to my hand. You will kill
  when I wind you up."
  Just so. He gave a final flick. Now we have it. Apply violence to a
  selected end. Herr Cop was his end. She knew it. That between the three of
  them they had reached explosion.
  "There can be no failure. Only a higher order. You must be triumphant."
  Thus, the Herr Direktor he followed. In carrying out his duty, he felt
  secure. It is all 1 have, he thought. This is what 1 have to work with,
  fondling the heavy potent bay rod. But the doors in his mind were closing
  one by one. To be hemmed in, hedged off, hunted as hard as he knew they
  were now was a thought that stood off and bayed at him. He looked over his
  shoulder as if a jackal whined in the doorway. There was a freezing in his
  chest. Hastily he poured some schnapps, drank it neat. Warmth returned. The
  lilting song from the high Alps fumed with icy, cool sweetness, the way
  vapors rise from pink snow-always the peasants' warning-before sun strikes
  an avalanche.
  He stood the bay rod on end. Imbedded in it was the gyro jet gun with a
  slender inner barrel. Inside he had
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   209

 primed the capsule fire cylinder that would break on impact. When fired, he
 estimated the impact on muzzle, or firing propulsion in the throat of the
 rod, would meet its highest velocity at twenty-five to thirty-five feet
 after he launched it. He could direct it more accurately than a gun if they
 tried to stop him at the river bulkhead. There would be no recoil from the
 flame cartridge. He could even put his hand against it, fire it and not feel
 it. If any recoil, then so minimal it would fire slowly at first. Then be
 directed in a shooting flame at the enemy.
  Burning time, very short. Death of the man, very painful.
  He zippered the rod in its leather sheath. Then he got out his formal
  dinner clothes and began to assemble studs, cuff links, white tie. He
  fingered the medals. The Order of the Golden Fleece, the highest honor, he
  set proudly to one side. The missing Iron Cross-his grandfather's, filched
  by the intruder cop-infuriated him. Order of Merit, la-one or two. The
  Siegfried Star? Ja. The striped chevron bar in the colors of the House of
  Von Gottfried? No. Too conspicuous.
  Fail her not. One date to keep with her, the pretty wife, another to keep
  with the Nuremberg executioner at the dinner. But his dress clothes must be
  sponged and pressed, the white tie was crumpled. He must buy a new one.
  Then realized how little money he had left. No bank draft had come from
  Zurich. It worried him. And with the cafe closed, and Liese singing to the
  police for her supperGott im Himmel only knew what they had staked out to
  stop him. Olga had always had money for him. Olga had sponged and cleaned,
  pressed and sewn. Olga had-convulsively, he blanked her out. Then he
  remembered the money she-the pretty one-had brought him. He rummaged
  through a suitcase, found the shirt he had ripped off. In the pocket was
  the little wad of bills. To the bills clung some perfume from her gloves,
  her purse, her skin. He wondered if they were marked, and scrutinized them
  through a magnifier. No. Clean. She would not be so careless as to betray
  herself.
  So? Gear? Okay. His playthings? Okay. His white tie and tails? Okay. He
  laughed suddenly at the thought that she was now about to pay the cleaning
  bill for getting him into his evening clothes. At a judicial dinner where
  her
210      Noel Pierce

 husband could not stop him. Like Olga, the cop would not be there.
  But the answer to his carefully worded message to Munich was here. And
  taking it out of his wallet for the tenth time, gg frowned over it, shaken
  and uncertain of its meaning.

  DEAR SON PROCEED IN ALL HASTE STOP WE AWAIT YOU

  STOP FATHER.

  We await you. He had not had such an oblique, constrained directive before.
  So what? Carry out the imperative? Naturlich. Or were they going to fly him
  home? It unnerved him. He needed the bank draft, a new passport,
  credentials, everything in order for the prime maneuver. Gg went back over
  the plan. It was a power launch rendezvous at the fishing pier bulkhead on
  a date to be cabled. Time, after sunfall. Drop off the bulkhead to the
  launch.
  Had Olga informed on him? Before he- It was obvious that the Munich
  operation knew he was threatened. As happened many times in espionage work.
  Of course they worked now to protect him. Then fly him back to the
  fatherland? From the launch, to a freighter? To a shark boat? From
  Washington, jet to Munich? Some obscure landing field? What difference?
  Herr Direktor would have arranged every detail.
  Hadn't he been selected above all the others to do it? Even officers of far
  higher rank in the NDP did not have this honor. He fingered the Siegfried
  Star. The Order of the Golden Fleece. These were the reasons they had
  trained him for so long. He thought of the nightmarish punishment of the
  drill. Obedience, instant command, Spartan rations, the measured drug
  intake. Now you sleep, you wake, you shoot, you hit the punching bag, hit
  the icy water, you are huge and powerful. Your breath has no end, your arms
  know no length, you are massive, you disappear like air. Then they had
  bought sleight-of-hand performers from the old European circuses to train
  him. "Make the loop disappear-like this-like this. Noose, snare, draw,
  pull, step back, palm the cord, light a cigarette, spin on your heel, fade,
  disappear, ja, that is good, nein, that is bad, do it again." Step by step,
  again, again. "He is here. He walks, he talks, he laughs, he drinks, you
  are behind him in the crowd. Lightning strikes. 'the body
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   211

 will fall there. Step back, step back. Mach schnell. Now. You are gone."
  So, he had done it. So often that many times he fell down, fainting. Then
  they had drawn for him the plan of the hotel kitchens . . . a grand hotel
  in America like the best of the Europa de luxe splendides, vast kitchens
  and pantries, state rooms and rest rooms, networks of interlocking
  corridors, the banquet hall, reception rooms, checking the entrances,
  exits, the path he was to take marked in green chalk, the canopy under
  which he would stand, and in red chalk his moves to right and left. The
  password he was to give to security officers. The word was the town where
  the high court pig executioner was born: "Saybrook." He had laughed when
  the Herr Direktor told him. A little hamlet of a village in a place called
  in the States Connecticut. It came hard on gg's tongue.
  No problem now. Except-and these were the doubts he managed to beat off-did
  they know about Rudi? For a boy so full of vices, did they care? How could
  they have been informed that Olga was dead? Hadn't they sent word: "Take
  care of Mama"? Between garrote and knife, what conclusions would they draw?
  That one and the same hand had- Gg gritted his teeth uneasily. So much for
  the Batfowler. The Party paid many like her for small-time in-
  forming-charwomen, porters. But had she contrived to get word to Munich
  that a woman he wanted was the real reason for his delay here? He had made
  the stiffest deal he could when his training was complete: to settle a per-
  sonal score and avenge the bludgeoning of the old general, revered in the
  House of Von Gottfried.
  Because they demanded one thing of him, supremely, he had-in effect-held a
  pistol at the Party's head. "A few weeks, then. A few weeks only."
  Throughout the terrible snare training he held back his price until the
  last. Then, with the decimation planned, the timetable set, he told them.
  By then it was too late to train another.
  "We await you"-was he to be punished for the delay? He had shaved it to the
  last thin hair. To see her again. To have her with him. What difference
  could it make? Munich was far away.
  His long, spatulate hands hung heavy with death in the fingers. He flexed
  them. Strength in these hands is for Herr Cop. Gg stamped with impatience.
  To wait, to burn for her, to risk so much for her, to want .... But so far
  he
212       Noel Pierce

 was in control. Command had worked out a safe countermove before the massive
 one. The shark boat. The time. The credentials. Papers, money, passport. All
 would be in his hands on the night of departure from the fireboat dock.
  His spirits rose. He pulled on a sweater and jacket and made a circuitous
  way through the cellars, turning in at A1 and Lottie's. A dry bunch of
  Alpine flowers hung over the door lintel. GOOD LUCK TO ALL WHO ENTER HERE.
  It made him homesick for the mountain passes. Strange, that "home" and
  "sickness" were one and the same ....
  Al saw him and came to the front. "Herr Sir. . . ."
  He started to say something. Gg crushed Al's fist tighter and tighter until
  his nerveless fingers fell. They might have been shaking hands.
  Gg turned his back and sat at the bar drinking Pilsner. Lottie's beady
  little eyes shifted over him nervously. The bar mirror gave him back his
  hot face. The stiff light hair fell damp over his brown forehead.
  Night had come. The waiting was painful. Something had gone wrong. He could
  not track it down. Somethingwas it Olga's betrayal? He looked around. Where
  were the sports teams? The place was half-empty. He felt a chill of power
  deserting him.
  He rubbed his sweating face, thinking: How I need her. How 1 want her. To
  show her the old European cities, the Rhineland castles. His barony. The
  linden trees, the deer paths, in the dim, fresh, dark-green forests. The
  trophies he shot, as a boy. la, always smart and proud with guns too heavy
  for his shoulders, but the aim quick, the convulsive squeeze of the hand
  true.
  It had led him to this desirable, unfathomable woman across half a world.
  Her forthrightness, her violence, her fearless meeting with him. The
  infatuated abandon, the intolerable last-minute parting. Absolute in her
  honesty, surely this was what she wanted? Surely she shared his demand? He
  ached for a last meeting, to enjoy her once more.

  Lottie's poodle squatted by the cash register. Lottie smiled at him,
  picking her teeth.
  "Herr Sir, you want a nice girl tonight? A virgin. I swear by her mother."
  "And she has sold the girl to you for how much?"
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   213

  Lottie was baiting him, taking her time. He tightened, knowing she had
  something else for him.
 "You do not buy girls. And boys you do not like, Hein?" He held her eyes.
 Between them passed the knowledge of Rudi. Neither blinked.
 "I do not care for faggots."
 "A more elegant type?"
 "You know my type."
 "How well do I?" She held out her wheedling hand.
 "This much how well."
 Lottie wadded the bill in her dress.
 "Your lady was here."
 "When?"
 "Often."
 "Nein."
 ..
  Ja..
 "What doing?"
 "Waiting."
 "Nein. What doing?"
 "Making up her face. Having a nip. Using the toilet."
 "Nein. She would not. You are lying. What doing?"
 "Using the telephone."
 He considered it, watching her.
  She goaded him, smirking. "My Al, he took a fancy to her."
  He winced. "Keep his filthy hands off her."
  "Twenty years I tell Al this, he still pinches the arm, jiggles the
  breast."
  His hands on his knees worked, crawled. Halt. Do not. Do not. Lottie backed
  away from the glaring stare.
  "Now wait a minute, Herr Sir, you keep that lousy temper or I'll-"
  "You'll tell me now." He gouged his nails into her fat wrists, pinning her
  to the counter.
  She blurted out: "The lady called you on the bar phone last night. She said
  if you come in you was to call her on the safe number soon as you could.
  Soon, she said. And she paid me."
  Lottie flexed her wrists. The bartender came lumbering up, wiping his palms
  on a bar apron.
   "Trouble, babe?"
  "Not a scrap, lover. He left smiling all over, the son of a bitch."
214      Noel Pierce

  Down an alley, across a garden, down to a cellar and through the boiler
  room, up a building stairs to a roof, gg crossed to the next tenement, ran
  down four flights to the street, and walked up the stoop to a carpenter's
  shop. He opened the padlock with a skeleton key, sidestepped around the
  walls, left no dust prints, opened the shop door into the hallway, and went
  upstairs. He brewed coffee, drinking brandy, chewing cold sausage and
  cheese. If anyone rattled the door handle he would have shot through the
  panel. No one came near him.
  Twelve blocks farther south, across the street from MOBLIERTE ZIMMER ZU
  VERMIETEN, two men in dark suits, one skinny, one pink, waited in an empty
  doorway. They were a little too sure of him and for a while did not realize
  he had gone. Like Harris, who had tipped them about the rented room, they
  had a clear view of the building. They knew how to stand and wait for a
  long time without tiring; placing their feet evenly, leaning forward
  slightly. But after a longer while-like Harris at the fire
 they knew they had lost him.

  In the morning, as soon as the foreign bank branch opened gg accepted and
  signed for a money draft from Switzerland and received (in the name he was
  registered under) the final cable from "FATHER" to "DEAR SON." Seventy-two
  hours from now. After sundown. The bulkhead.
  He stopped at the corner phone and called her.

  "You are certain?" she said, with some dread.
  "But of course Liebchen. You promised. . "
  Silence on the humming wire while she worked it out. "In seventy-two
  hours?"
  He cut in quickly. "It is arranged with us, isn't it? It is important that
  I know."
   " . . Because you are going away?"
  "No. Nein. Have you changed your mind?"
  "You must know how I long to see you again."
  "Long? What is this word `long'?"
  She made herself laugh softly, her mouth close to the phone. "When one
  longs to be together."
   Va. Now, I understand."
   "After sunset, is it?" she said carefully.
  He was sweating in the closed booth, and fumbled for another dime. "But I
  have said so."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   215

  The operator cut in. He cursed her in German. "Listen, do you understand?
  Have you got it clear?"
  "Darling, don't be so impatient. Of course I understand . . . . But I have
  to make excuses-to him."
  He put the receiver down.

              30

  In a Washington hotel suite the Honorable Justice was rehearsing his speech
  to an empty room. His moment of tribute for a long and distinguished career
  was seventy-two hours away. He was worried about minor things-nervous
  indigestion, a choice of shirt studs, the knotting of a white dress tie. He
  had big, blunt thumbs, and trying to loop the tie around his neck, his
  hands shook. He remembered a telephone call from J-Branch. He clenched his
  blunt thumbs and made himself tie the white bow tie.

  Three hundred miles or so away, in another room, another man was rehearsing
  in front of another mirror. In the palm of his hand he balled a nylon
  thread and tied it.

  Rob stood on the river bulkhead with Jason and looked out over the dirty
  swirl of water. The assassin would have to make his break no later than the
  night after tomorrow -seventy-two hours from now. The anonymous tip said:
  here.
  It had come almost too abruptly. Who was the informer?
  He checked the placement of two dummy capstanseach a concealed floodlight.
  One on the Marine Station dock, the other on the foredeck of the fireboat
  pumper. He had arranged a hasty scrub-down for her. Men scoured her
  scuppers, hosed her decks, scraped her paint. They worked from bosun
  chairs, up and down her rounded, housewifely sides. Eyes probed the
  waterfront.
  "What makes you sure he'll try to escape by the river?"
216      Noel Pierce

  "We've sealed him off everywhere else," Jason said. "All transit exits.
  Foreign banks. Rooming houses. Airports. The cafe madam. The waiter. The
  Alpenstock Bar. Al, Lottie. The janitress. Soccer addicts. The old people.
  Olga's neighbors. Everything secure."
  ". . . But that anonymous tip?"
  "Be grateful, Mr. Schuyler, for his enemies."
  Jason pitched his cigar into the river. First Harris had met him at Kennedy
  Airport and given him the message from Mrs. Schuyler. He replayed the
  telephone call he had made to her later.
  "Yes, I know the risk," she had said. "I want to take it. But Rob mustn't
  know."
  Brave girl. He'd warned her to stay clear until the minute she pointed them
  to Von Gottfried on the bulkhead. She was to speak to him, hold him,
  embrace him. Then run like hell to a vantage point he had described. "Yes,"
  she said, "I know where it is. I know the river park well."
  "Good."
  It was a heavy concrete abutment. Harris would be with her; two of his men
  a few yards off. "How will I know them?" she said.
  "One is fat and pink. One is thin and dark. The important thing for you to
  remember, Mrs. Schuyler, is that they know you. They are your security.
  Your cover will be checked, prepared, and safe." But he worried about her.
  Along the bulkhead ranged a gaggle of unshaven fishers, old men in faded
  jackets hugging gear boxes with rusting hooks, slack lines, smelly bait.
  Two were assigned by Rob.
  In lazing shifts they lined the waterfront staring down the bridge span.
  Under it the last sight-seeing boats of autumn churned past, decks buzzing
  with figures snapping cameras at the shore front.
  "If your information checks out and we've pushed him to the river," Rob
  decided, "I'm going out on the water and lie offshore. Intercept the shark
  launch before it can reach him."
  Jason nodded. A gull swerved and dove at them, scolding shrilly. "I've
  dispatched a couple of patrol boats from Harbor Police and the Coast
  Guard-just in case."
  Rob didn't like it. "I don't want a covering action."
  "It's your show, Mr. Schuyler. Whatever you do remember that I want him
  warm and breathing."
  "You think he'll quit just like that? Slip into the out-
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   217

 going tide? Hold his weight down until he's up to his gut with sewage,
 gurgling 'Sieg Heil'?"
  "I don't know what he'll do, Mr. Schuyler. We are after a maniac."
  "Okay. You've had this tip. That an enemy boat will try to get him out of
  New York harbor. But Von Gottfried isn't really sure we're prepared. That's
  why I want him back to back. If he shows here, I can gun my boat and go
  straight in."
  "What if he throws a grenade?" Jason was hearing her voice on the
  telephone. "I want to do this. Don't tell Rob."
   "He won't have a chance to throw anything."
  Yes. Of course, Jason thought. This was the way it had been set up since
  the beginning. Get this cool young man detached from FBI. Absorb his
  blunders. Realize his intense love of his wife and children. Get him
  half-loaded, feed him, cushion him in his bleakness, depend on his hunting
  skills, his remarkable knowledge of the Yorkville purlieus. Use everything
  he's got-except the man's wife.
  Npw, tomorrow night, he was conniving-at her insistence-to do something he
  dreaded.
  It was a profound and ugly truth to discover about himself. That he would
  take a risk as dangerous as this.

  Out in the river channel off the northern tip of Welfare Island, a jut of
  land thrusts into the tidal chop. Behind it spans the vaulting arch of
  Triborough Bridge.
  On mariners' charts Mill Rock is a land spit with an old moss-weathered
  dock landing. It is marked by red-andwhite standout buoys. Once, fronting
  it and facing down channel, stood a vacant, four-square building used for
  Marine Engineering in other eras of hydrographic river traffic. Now it is
  razed. With the winter and summer winds that swept through its broken
  windows, an ancient family of rats has scuttled ahead of the bulldozers.
  The sagging pilings still support a landing. But no boats tie up. Municipal
  funds keep its lawns clipped. The few trees trimmed and pruned. It is a
  lonely place.
  Two reconnaissance flights had looked down on it. Two pairs of eyes, two
  binoculars, two middle-aged men in business clothes, "sight-seeing," had
  circled the land spit, flying a rented Piper Cub.
  Twice on a trial run a small power launch, gray and fast as a shark, had
  made a landfall after dark at the
218       Noel Pierce

 deserted dock. Engine muffled, throttle down, it snuffled and gurgled out
 into midchannel, disappearing between pier heads on the opposite shoreline.
  Mill Rock has two navigational lights, one buoy offshore from the dock, one
  on the far side of the land spit. It is out of sight of the fireboat
  mooring. There a small boat could slip downriver to rendezvous with a
  passenger. Rob took a caliper and marked the abandoned land spit as a
  logical mooring. He dispatched a police boat to stand off Hallet's Point
  from the Astoria waterfront with orders to intercept any maverick launch
  running without lights.
  The chilly autumn dark fell early. Toward dusk he did a trial run in a
  patrol cockpit. Checking the chart, he spoke to the helm.
  "Take her about and stand off the Astoria shore."
  They came around, yawing in the chop. He picked out Hog Back, Hallet's
  Cove, Holmes Rock. Hallet's Point was directly opposite the fishers'
  bulkhead where a factory met the docks with freight piled under open sheds
  for barge loading. From here he worked out a directional bearing. Horn's
  Hook is a turn-of-the-century rock jetty where families once strolled on
  Gracie Mansion lawns terraced down to the riverbanks. Now it's a tumble of
  rocks below a concrete bend in the East River walk. Here the esplanade
  swings downhill to the Fire Station.
  He checked the Mill Rock light buoys. OG, OR. One occulting green every two
  seconds; one occulting red. Rob timed them, thinking: What could turn them
  off? Hell Gate was on his starboard. Rhinelander Reef lay to port.
  Nothing could turn o$ those buoy lights. But something had to. There must
  be a way to do it. He scrambled along the deck way to the wheel.
  "Let's hit the chop and head in."
  "Okay, sir."
  Out in Hell Gate channel he sighted the Heel Tap Rock marking. Near Rikers
  Island, Negro Point. From this he took a final bearing, 'trying to figure
  an angle of gunfire.
  The safest angle would be a triangular water course. From Hallet's Point,
  at the Astoria factory siding, he pegged down one leg. Then across Hell
  Gate rip to Mill Rock, where Von Gottfried's escape launch would attempt to
  contact him. That was the apex. The other leg of the triangle led to Horn's
  Hook, where placid Dutch families
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  219

 had picnicked on little cakes and gossip in a teatime gazebo above the grand
 plaisance.
 This would be another kind of picnic.

  The night before the last one, be sat with Jason and the CO of Manhattan
  Marine Patrol, Waterways Sector, in the back room of an all-night bar,
  eating hot pastrami on pumpernickel.
  The CO was barrel-chested with perpetually flaking, cracked lips. His face
  looked like a Weather Bureau record of frostbite, snow and sun scald inked
  with red and purple veins that scored his leathered square cheeks. He moved
  direct center on any line of action. His not to wonder why. There wasn't a
  nerve in his body that didn't jump to "duty order."
  "We're all set, then," the CO said. Ile scraped his pipe with a callused
  thumb and tapped his teeth with the stem. "This kraut you're after-is he an
  alien?"
  Jason nodded. "They try to jump ship around here."
  "There's going to be a lot of overtime pay ticking out on the river
  tomorrow night."
   "It'll be taken care of, Commander."
  "There's something else I want taken care of," Rob said. They looked at
  him.
  "Those midchannel buoys. I want them scrambled."
  "You what?"
  "-Reflector, spar, can, nun buoy, day beacon-they're flashing all over the
  river. Directional lights can wash us out, scare the shark boat off. Fixed,
  flashing red, fixed white, in groups, vertical greens, quick, and
  short-long . . . . Why should we show a safe beam to the enemy?"
  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what more do you want?" The CO crunched into a
  wedge of pastrami.
  "For one hour," Rob said, "I want to alter mariner lights, buoys and
  beacons between Queensborough Bridge, to Little Hell Gate, Bronx Kill
  bascule, to Rikers Island."
  "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth." The CO gave a great
  barking laugh. He coughed into silence. "I can't get priority on that. Just
  to jump some alien kraut. Are you crazy?"
  "You can get any damn thing you want," Rob insisted. "Do it." He turned to
  Jason. "I need it just like this."
  "To foul up every piece of shipping on the river?"
220      Noel Pierce

  "How much river traffic do you get by night in one hour?"
  "How can we rlo it?"
  "Alter currents and directional signals, every regulated second-for FG, FW
  and VB. Groups lights, white lights, vertical beam." He turned to the
  Waterways CO. "You can do it, can't you?"
  "Jesus, mister, you know what you're asking?"
  Jason looked at his watch. He would have to get Chief of Defense
  Intelligence out of bed. He said to Rob, "How do you read the alteration?"
  "On lights, buoys and beacons, marine signals to read: D. 'Destroyed to be
  reestablished.' TRB. `Temporarily replaced by red buoy.' ?FRB. 'Temporarily
  replaced by fixed red light buoy.' TTLB. 'Temporarily replaced by a
  flashing red fight buoy.' TFLRBW. 'Temporarily replaced by lashing red and
  white lights."'
   "You," he said to the CO, "jam those signals."
   The CO gulped his scotch and picked up the bottle.
   "Me? Scramble the whole goddamn waterfront?"
   "Yes, Commander." Jason stood up. "You."

  It was an hour before sundown. With a spring in his step, gg made his
  preparations to rendezvous on the fishing dock. ("Who knows? . . . That
  night I may catch something big ....)"
  He strapped the heavy Luger across his chest. In a flight case were his
  formal dress clothes, in the lining of the tailcoat the garrote. He packed
  the Vuitton tote bag with field glasses, a cashmere sweater, waterproof
  jacket, a tweed cap, his cigar case, gold lighter, emerald cuff links,
  eight hundred dollars in small bills from Zurich, a flacon of Austrian
  cologne, and shaving kit. Lastly he tucked in a pair of thick sailing
  sneakers. The soles were imbedded with flexible files and capsuled fuses,
  each as slender as a pin.
  Handling it respectfully, he took up the bay rod, heavier now, in its
  unlocked case.
  Taking his gear, he went up and over the roofs. A mist underlay the high
  stars pricking overhead.
  She would be hurrying to meet him, making her clever evasions, drawn by the
  same desire. He would make love to her again. Promising her that it would
  be right for them, the next time he wouldn't fail her. In the dark,
  overhanging
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  221

 the river below the tide wall? Under the drooping trees, the thick shrubs?
 Need takes what cover it can find. He would splay her down softly. Earth
 would lift her up to him. Twigs, bark, leaf bed, rubble and pebble would
 excite them, the earth for bed. One hour of time.
  To hear her low voice, to taste the wrenching mouth .... He longed for her
  fresh skin. He hurried to refresh his harsh tiredness on her body.
  Wanting to feel her under and in and around him, as he had not known a
  woman like her, only the whores . . . .

  "Do you have to go out, Mummy?"
  "Yes."
  "Are you meeting Daddy?"
  "I-we're going to meet some friends of Daddy's. Just for an hour. It's a
  surprise party. They don't expect us. Then I'll come back safe."
  Two faces raised to Flix on the word "safe." They had the clean, shining,
  scrubbed look of children to whom everything home was safe, and the world
  out of bounds until morning and a school bell.
  "Will Daddy come back with you?"
  "Of course. Now be good Jemima puddle ducks and mind Jill."
  Jill was their new sitter. A brainy girl, working for her doctorate. She
  walked the children, cooked spontaneously, wore a pants suit, and scooped
  up Tessa and Tabitha at the end of a trying day as if she were a
  professional weight lifter. She scolded them, fed them, joshed them and
  coddled them. Port of call in a sticky time. Her discretion was impeccable.
  Flix was grateful.
  "We say, `Now I lay me,' with Jill," Tabby said. "Last night she sang `The
  Lord's Prayer' to her castanets. Jill clicks them. Tessa danced, to show
  God how good she has got in her ballet slippers."
  "We're practicing a tarantella for Grandfather," Tessa said.
  "You be groovy kids and show God how fast you can get to bed."
  "Okay, Mummy."
  "I wish Mrs. Sunbeam would come back."
  "Darlings, she's gone on a long trip home."
  "Will she send us a postcard?"
  "No, Tabby."
222      Noel Pierce

  There was a way their mother had of saying "No" that silenced them. They
  watched her button on a white woolly sports coat and tie on a scarf. They
  watched their mother's fingers shiver and jerk, in the warm playroom.
  Rattling on the buttons of the coat like dill's castanets.
   "Good night, my darlings. See you later."
  "Fun tomorrow!" It was their secret password with Mummy. "Fun tomorrow,"
  they hollered. But she was gone.
  "Good night, Mummy ...." Tessa hiccuped with a funny choke. And something
  ached in the children. It was like getting a fib caught in your throat when
  you were too scared to swallow.

              31

  She wasn't there. Gg settled himself, his luggage and rod, to wait on the
  bulkhead. There was a six-foot drop to the water. He unsheathed the bay
  rod, scanned the dark river, listening for the launch, took out some bait.
  Fog banks broke and swirled, creeping in from the Narrows. It worried him.
  He checked the time. Some neighborhood bums were working the opposite end
  of the wharf, tackle boxes and beer cans at their elbows.
  In the shrubbery behind them, above the river walk, Harris sat under a
  sour-smelling boxwood clump, behind a low concrete wall. He watched for
  Mrs. Rob. She was late. His burrow of damp leaves was cold. He took out a
  Smith & Wesson and thumbed the safety catch.
  Below, to his right, a big, fleshy pink man with ears like jug handles sat
  on an iron bench. Harris watched the coal of his cigar glow in the
  darkness. A kid went by on roller skates. An arm caught him and spun the
  kid around. "This park is closed. Beat it!" The thin young man in a dark
  suit and black tie watched the kid skate out of sight. Then he stopped and
  asked the pink man for a match.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   223

  Below them on the bulkhead, gg checked the time. A night bird rustled in
  the bushes, making soft, choked, grunting cries. Harris listened. Do night
  birds mate at night? Where do they hide in the morning? Do they lay black
  eggs? Do they fly blind in the sun? Why has the nightingale so sweet a song
  like a soaring angel? Harris stroked his gun, wishing it were a dog's ear.
  On his deserted bench the pink man took out a transistor and set the timer
  for ship-to-shore radio contact with a USCG boat out in midstream. He kept
  muttering into it on shortwave call signal, "Nothing here. Nothing to
  report. Repeat, she has not shown. Repeat, she has not shown. Off."
  Chomping his third stick of chewing gum, Harris saw something odd on the
  river. All the lights along midchannel and the far shore were going crazy.
  Green where red was, white where green was. Occulting lights reversed them-
  selves. It was like watching a bunch of lightning bugs sprayed by gasoline,
  scattering, flaring, blacking out, darting, twitching, lighting every which
  way. A crazy quilt of some foul-up by Marine hydrographic electronics.
  Then Harris got it. Somebody'd pulled a giant switch on the river.
  The neap tide lay at ebb. Currents rippled skittishly, not certain which
  way to turn. Flotsam spars spun raggedly between shores. The tide hung. It
  waited listlessly. The fog crept in.
  Men on the benches waited. The random moon waited behind the fog. No wind
  stirred. Dry leaves on the park trees hung limply. Tails of idling dogs
  drooped between lagging hindquarters. Nothing stirred. The air felt cold,
  mutinous. Every sound was too loud, out of key with this hammering pulse of
  unnatural quiet. Harris started up at a backfiring truck. Everything was
  too loud in the clamorous, waiting silence.
  Midstream, its searchlight pricking the shore front with a continual flick,
  a police launch patrolled. Wallowing low, the keel cut a sluggish course.
  A Marine sergeant at the helm steadied the wheel. Rob stood with Jason by
  the windshield. They watched the light flick past the fireboat pumper. She
  batted lazily at her pier mooring, a huge red ladybug.
  No light showed on shore. Floodlights under the hooded capstans waited.
224      Noel Pierce

  Rob spoke to the helm. "Throttle down` and come about." He watched a sudden
  expanse of dark water on which dock lights wavered. The river rippled like
  an elephant's hide. He ducked down into the cockpit, opened the small-arms
  locker and took out his Remington, a highpower, pump-action repeater. Built
  to his specifications, it performed like a long-shafted magazine pistol.
  The powerful sniperscope was for night shooting. It was chancy. But this
  action wasn't for close shooting. He didn't think they would get in that
  close.
  Jason had cautioned him. "In the dark don't take any risks with a running
  shot on water."
  "It won't come to that. I'll shake him up."

  The seconds crawled. Gg checked his sweep hand. She was cutting it short.
  Nothing showed in the fireboat station except the mast light. He was
  relieved. A couple of firemen inside, busy with their pinochle. Like the
  beer bums, unaware of anything but to bit the stray eel.
  The launch Munich had promised him would now be clawing her way upstream.
  Small and fast, she could easily conceal, then slip along the bulkhead. He
  would pick up his gear and drop off.
  Something butted his heel. Gg looked down. It was a wharf kitten. It mewed
  and lapped at his jackboot, scratching to be taken up. He kicked it off.
  The huddled wedge of fur crept back, licked its pain, then sprang halfway
  up his thigh, yowling, forgiving. He flung it off. Away. "Raus mit dir-"
  The soft butting nudged his heel.
  "What do you smell, meine Katze? A big fish?"
  The kitten licked his hand. Verdammte Katze. It smells the killing, tastes
  the salt sweat. A bad omen. The old German adage seared: A11 cats love fish
  but fear to wet their paws . . . . "Get lost, you!" He grabbed the kitten's
  throat to choke it-when he saw her.
  Her quick step on the bulkhead, heels drumming. Coming out to meet him with
  a blaze of smile. Her white wool coat swayed with a swagger. The mouth,
  frosted lip paint. The eyes a pale shine like phosphorous underwater. She
  seemed moonlit, radiant. But there was no moon.
  He ran up the slope to meet her. .

  "I'm late. . . ..'Va. I have been worried . . . ."
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   225

 "It was hard . . . to get away."
  "It is nothing. You are here.... How beautiful you are . . . ."
  The kitten mewed. He kicked it behind him with a thud.
  "What was that?"
  "Nothing, Liebchen." His head bent down. Hers jerked away. He slipped his
  hands under the scarf to her soft neck. She stiffened, feeling his fingers.
  "What is it?"
  "I'm afraid."
  "Don't be. You are safe with me anywhere we go."
  "He suspects us. I told him I'd be at a movie . . . ."
  "Soon, I promise, I will take you away."
  She looked right, left, around, behind her. "You want me to go with you?"
  "I will arrange. Anything. Anything. Trust me." The hands he gripped were
  icy. He kissed her, warm, persuasive.
  "What do you want, Gerhardt? What do you plan for us? I can't think . . .
  ."
  "To fly you to Zurich-where I have friends." He drew her back toward the
  shadows, to the bushes and trees. "Listen to me. I will explain." She went
  with him.
  Harris, across the path, was standing behind a plane tree, his gun heavy.
  "I will get word to you. Cable you the money. The air ticket, the address."
  "The contact? Who will arrange-"
  "I will make it, Liebchen. I promise. You will hear from me. Listen to me,
  my darling. I have truly so much money, so much power in my country. I will
  show you my homeland, the Rhineland castles. We will live very grandly. You
  will be welcomed by my people. We will be so happy .... I know you will
  never regret it. Trust me now."
  Harris watched her sinuously twine her arms around the man as if she drew
  a coiled whip around her, and stilled it. He saw the man droop and shudder,
  subdued. So they remained locked. Mouth to mouth. She had him completely in
  control.
  Harris watched her work him out of the covering trees into the open. Down
  to the bulkhead she drew him, wooing and seducing, laughing up at him,
  leading him as a woman snaps her fingers at a pet dog.
  The unmistakable decoy, white belted coat, white head
226      Noel Pierce

 scarf. Harris in his loping half crouch followed, covering her with his gun.
 The fleshy pink man got up from his bench. The dark-suited thin man came
 back along the river walk. They converged to meet Harris. Gg spread her
 hands on his hot chest. All around her Flix saw the ambush. He, gazing down
 at her, sure of her now, did not.

  "Yorkville Five--come in, please. Come in. This is shipto-shore .pickup and
  relay." "Are you receiving us?" "Yes. Is the launch sighted?" "We have no
  relay, no report ....
                    "

  "There is jet interference. Clear it," Jason snapped "Clear it."
  "Report position." Rob grabbed the two-way mike. "Is the launch sighted?
  Report location."
  Relay switched to the RTT. "Yorkville Five, do you read us?" Radio
  transmission tower repeated. "Do you read us?"
  "Is small boat sighted off Mill Rock?"
  "OD .... OD.... Object Doubtful."
  "He's got to be there," Rob said.
  A voice cut in: ". . . expect us to sight him with the whole goddamn harbor
  fouled up?"
  "ED .... ED.... Existence Doubted."
  "Correction to Signal Five" came from RTT. "LYC-5, do you read us?
  J-Branch, do you read us?"
  Rob spoke into the transmitter. "Listen, you guys. A small boat running
  without lights is somewhere-in this water lane. Report. Report. Is small
  boat sighted off Mill Rock?"
  "ED .... ED...
          : '
  "He's got to be there. Have another look. Out."
  "Check. Okay. Over."

  Standing in the tree cover above the bulkhead, Harris saw the nice, neat,
  nasty target. He saw her white coat, her white scarf, her white face. She
  was the protecting shield around the man. None of them could risk a motion
  or raise a gun. They looked at each other mutely. The huge pink man checked
  Harris and the thin dark one.
   Under the boxwood shrub the night bird still mated in
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   227

 its choked, grunting cries. But there were other lovers nearby.
  What was it like to be loved by such a woman?
  Now Harris saw.
  As gg tried to draw her down, her fists came balling up. She rammed him
  with all her strength in a furious shove that knocked him sidewise and
  down. She kicked him in the groin and tripped him as he bent double. He
  scrambled up, crouching. His face was insane. She was getting away. "Halt.
  HOW'
  Harris gathered himself, ran forward, and pulled her down with him in a
  tackling huddle, yanking her back behind the stone abutment. He held her
  down to the ground, brushed her off, saying, "There, there, now. There."
  She was crying. "Harris . . . Harris.... Oh, thank God . . . I was so
  frightened . . . ."
  "Halt . . . halt, bitch. . . ." In long, springing leaps from dock pile to
  bulwark the footsteps searched for her, pounding up and down the path. "Du
  Hurel . . . Du verdammte Sau!"
  "Get down," Harris said. He threw himself on top of her. At that moment,
  ship to shore, floodlights and capstan lights came on.
  Gg ran. The white rays pricked him, toyed with him, tracked him. He ran,
  redoubled like a snow hare.

  "All boats scatter. Diverge. Diverge." Rob signaled the Marine helmsman for
  a change of course. The patrol boat heeled over, beating close to shore in
  a churning sweep. He was afraid that the pilot of the shark launch would
  sight converging boats and run for open water.
  Ship to shore cut in with a crackle of static. "He's sighted and headed
  downriver. He's mounting Sten guns. Fore and aft."
  "Move in. Intercept."
  "Permission to fire?"
  Jason hesitated. Rob grabbed the transmitter. "Across his bow. Cut the
  water across his bow."
  "Got you."
  "Repeat. Engage across bow and stern. Shoot. Give him covering fire to a
  standstill. Bring the son of a bitch to a standstill."
  "Check. Out."
228       Noel Pierce

  There was a burst of gunfire. An answering rattle of bullets whined across
  Mill Rock mud flats.

  Gg lunged on all fours across the footpath into gravel, sniffing, smelling
  the trail. Where . . . where? To get his hands on her neck and throttle
  her. Light found him. He jerked under a bush. Light pierced it. He doubled
  back, raging, his hands grinding twigs, gravel, dirt. He stood erect. Light
  pricked him from the fireboat. He flattened into mud, rubble. His radio
  watch was a huge glaring eye under his cheek. He lay still for a second,
  breath rasping with thudding gasps. Time, time running out, sweep of the
  second hand, around, around. Instinct screamed Halt. A sharp cramp of
  indecision wracked him. Escape. Escape now. Run. Run for it while there is
  time. He lay convoluted with indecision, retching into weeds. Make contact
  with the launch. Run. No. Don't stand up. The fireboat deck was a white
  glare. Dive low under it. Slither. Crawl. Decide. Find her. Kill her. Kill
  the betraying bitch.
  The rod. The fiamethrower. Get back to it. He crouched, huddled against a
  stone wall. Kill. Move. No. The rod.
  The pink man laid his gun along the top of the wall. Behind it Harris bent
  low, his arm around 1Flix, waiting.
  A capstan light from the pier swept the path, veered away. Gg tasted dank
  dirt as he burrowed, working back to the bulkhead, hauling out his Luger as
  he crawled.
  Lying flat, heaving, his chin on the bulkhead, floodlights crisscrossed
  inches over his body. He burrowed into splinters. A bullhorn bellowed
  behind him. A squad car roared in with sirens screaming, to seal off the
  roadway. Moving lights pricked the waterfront. Floods bobbed from mid-
  stream. White electric beams struck the bulkhead where he crouched in a
  frozen mound.
  Now, now he must hit the water, swim for it. Swim for the launch. But he
  lay immobilized, consumed by a rage so freezing that he could not run.
  Sharp blasts of guns laid down a crossfire, spearheaded by two converging
  boats. He blinked through his fingers, fiat on the pier. There were many.
  How many? It looked like a huge converging force, riding out of the fog.
  Sharks with headlights. Bows sliced into the midchannel rip. Herr Cop, come
  in. Herr Cop, 1 am waiting for you. 1 am ready for you.
  Tensed for flight, in which direction was the launch? He splayed down flat
  to the bulkhead boards. Dull roaring
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   229

 echoes filled his ears. Crossfire, guns mingled with bullhorn commands,
 roaring, firing, receding, bellowing, shots from the river, to left and
 right. Bursts of fire went up, milking the fog in pink vapor.
  Just two small boats stood offshore. Just two floodlights were on him. Just
  three men and a frightened woman were behind him. One police car, one
  bullhorn. But it seemed to his enraged imagination that the whole
  waterfront had exploded.
  Through his smarting eye slits, gg saw two things move. In a break in the
  fog a small boat slashed through the mist to reach him. Streaks of fire
  shot from its small deck guns. He half-rose on a crouch, inching forward.
  Now. Now he must do it, plunge forward and hit the water, reaching for the
  launch gunwale.
  From on and offshore two rays swung toward him. The escape launch zigzagged
  in a churning course.
  In the momentary blackness gg scrambled along the dock for his bay rod.
  Murk obscured the launch. He snatched up the gyro jet gun and shoved in the
  primer, waiting.
  He was like a snowman in the white lights that pinioned him. Emtpy space
  all around him on the ambush rock. Gg stood up. A fisher, idly hefting the
  rod in his hand.
  He released the thumb catch on the reel. At his fingertip, a shooting
  flame. Object: the cop. Trigger on the reel. Burning time: short. Death of
  the man: violent.
  Find him. Pump the flamethrower on Cop and cinder him.
  Do not crouch to them. Do not crawl. Do not bargain. Do not traffic with
  lesser men. Fools. Do not duck from their mechanical white bug lights.
  Stand as a man. Let them come shooting in, the toy intelligence cops.
  "Deutschland, Deutschland ...."
  Gg spread his webbed hand over his face. "Look at me. Look at me," he
  shouted. "What are you, out there? Filth on the earth's face. My breed is
  old. I am here before your breed was born. Come in, Herr Cop. I am waiting
  for you."
  Saliva ran down the corners of his lips. His face was gray in the white
  lights.

  Rob said into ship-shore relay: "All fire stop."
  "Harris," Flix whispered, "what is he doing out there?"
  "I don't rightly know, Mrs. Rob. Keep your chin up and your skirts down and
  shut up." She laughed. Then she was
230       Noel Pierce

 crying again, and he held her down. He smelled very clean as old men do who
 change their shirts every day and go to mass. He was comforting. Her tears
 wet his shirt. He looked over her head. The pink man chopped his hand down
 into the air. His mouth said, "Shut up."
  On the river Rob signaled the helm off, ran ,forward, took the wheel and
  swung it over hard. They were close in. He could make out the rocks along
  the shore. He turned the wheel and the patrol boat swung about in a
  wallowing sweep. Jason,, flung against the guardrail, rebounded and yanked
  his arm.
  "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
  "You heard him, didn't you? Shut up and get down low." The boat began to
  answer to a change of course. Rob revved the engine up. Roaring in, he put
  the boat on automatic pilot, then scrambled aft and reached for the bull-
  horn. Racing to the foredeck, he signaled to the helmsman. "Take the wheel.
  Steady. Keep her on course." He ran to the cockpit and took up the
  Remington.
  "Half speed . . . quarter speed . . . out. Cut the engine." The patrol boat
  slowed in a churning sweep. Rob jumped away from the cockpit windshield to
  the pitching thwarts. "Slow . . . slow . . . Steady as she rides ....
  Broadside . . . broadside. . . ." Gripping the guardrail, he spoke through
  the bullhorn.
  "Von Gottfried . . . give it up. Turn yourself in ....
                                "

The dull, booming echo of his voice vapored into silence. "You are afraid, Herr
 Cop?" The raging voice shouted back. "I am waiting for you . . . ."
  "Quit. Throw your gun in the water. Come out to us with your hands up . .
  . ."
  A hollow echo answered: Quit, quit, quit. Hands up, hands up, hands up . .
  .
  Rob dropped the bullhorn down and signaled the helm, rifle in hand. He
  braced his legs, feeling the engine thunder, the boat lift, and roar
  forward. He saw the world white, glaring, with gg's face on the bulkhead.
  The speed was so violent that he dragged backward, then jumped up on the
  thwarts, standing high, the rifle coming up. The stern wash boiled white as
  the launch swung around. He fumbled the rifle sights. It was like riding a
  treadmill.
  Hairline sights now on the enemy, outlined in black and white. The dodging
  face.
  And the rod came up.
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  231

  The boat made a skidding turn, shuddered, and careened in, broadside to the
  pier. It was met with a sheet of flame.
  There was a dull, splintering impact of hull on piling. The bow gave way,
  engines reversed. Rob took a sighting aim at the dodging face.
  He shot straight into the yawning mouth of a dragon that vomited red fire
  at him. Pumping, ejecting, shooting shell after shell down the red throat
  of the flame until it was a blackness, and nothing left. But shoot while
  you can see it. Pump, squeeze, eject. Fire again. Chip the enemy's body in
  repeated shots. Cut the cheekbones down. Splinter the bone. Stand on the
  wallowing thwarts. Obliterate the forehead. If her hands touched you . . .
  this one is for you.
 . . Trigger, fire, pump, eject .... If you knew her mouth, this one is for
 you .... Now taste this on your tongue .... Shoot for the ears. Animal ears.
 Where she has whispered
 . . mutilate. Split the web off your hand. Rake for the chest. Sliver the
 bone. Explode the heart. If she has lain her body along yours, here 1 finish
 you.
  Someone had knocked him flat in the pitching patrol boat. Someone had
  knocked the smoking rifle out of his hand. How did he fire? Twice?
  In fog. By night. On a racing target.
  He dug his face in the ribs of the hull, around him the spent cartridge
  shells. Reaching out to the gunwale, he saw something huge. It was his
  hand. He thought slowly, that goddamn son of a bitch kraut has burned my
  hand. It wavered in front of his eyes like a white balloon. My little girls
  chase balloons in the park. Pink, black, white. . .

  Gg pressed his face into the rough, splintered bulkhead. Blood welled up in
  his tight throat. He spat out the taste of tears. They washed down over his
  swelling face. Something shook in his chest. A small boy crying.
  Blood trickled down his collar, warm and sweetish. The stigmata of failure
  stained in a dark rush over his shirt. There was a forest of tall legs
  threshing around him . . .. Thin trees in the frost, in the fall, with
  leaves off . . . ice in the mountain streams . . . beech trees, towering
  pine . . . Grunewald. . . .
  He looked down disdainfully, wiping his sticky hands unbelievingly, as if
  a clumsy waiter had spilled Burgundy on his clean shirt.
232       Noel Pierce

  Something mewed in his neck. Little soft cat tongue laps comforted him.
   "Meine Katze."
  He reached up numbing hands and opened his shirt.
   The kitten lay across his terrible wound protectingly.

             32

  Harris led her a long way around through the park. Dimly behind them on the
  dock stood a huddled group of figures. A flashbulb exploded. They scrambled
  over a guardrail and up a wooded incline to a driveway where the black
  sedan was parked.
  "Get in Mrs. Rob. Me and the mule will get you back ahead of him."
   "Rob didn't see me on the dock."
  "No, ma'am. You're home free, as they say out at the ball park."
  "Oh. Yes."
  She shivered, turned up her coat collar, head bent, hands clenched in her
  lap. He patted a ball of ice. He turned on the fog lights and stepped on
  the gas.
  Rob held his white glob hand out to the police surgeon. He felt a smear of
  unguents, cool bandages. Horror chilled him. His lips were trembling. He
  couldn't speak.
  Someone put a lighted cigarette between his fingers. They stuck out from
  the tape like fat pink sausages. Jason came back from the huddle around the
  body.
  "Well, Mr. Schuyler, he's not warm. Not breathing. One minute more and
  you'd be a mound of ashes. All you've got to show for the flamethrower is
  a burnt hand. You're lucky."
  "He left me my eyes. Who was the informer?"
  Jason shrugged off the question. "Justifiable homicide is how we read it."
  "I didn't mean to kill him. But to shake him up ...."
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  233

  "Oh, yes, you did, Mr. Schuyler. You meant to kill him from the beginning."
  Rob turned away and moved out on the dock. A cop from Mounted Patrol
  clattered up on a high bay gelding. The thick, glossy horse shook and
  snorted, pawing the dock piling.
  "There now, Big John," the cop said. "Ho, Big John." Hooves rattled like
  dry coconut shells. The mounted cop put a quieting hand on the neck of the
  horse.
  "Easy, boy. There, now. Stand. Stand. . . ."
   Rob pushed forward to the body.
  Cover the man. A spatter of rain hit his face. He signaled for a blanket.
  "What did he say? When he died?" The police sergeant had his notebook out.
   "Some kind of kraut stuff?"
  Rob looked down. The long figure with boned skull, Hapsburgian nose, the
  still legs, wide shoulders and stify pointed boots looked like a stone
  rubbing taken from a Saracen tomb. But there were no honors here, no
  knighthood, no decorations, no sword. There was nothing under this blanket
  borrowed from a policeman's horse. Nothing but the smell of blood, of lime
  droppings from scavenger gulls circling overhead. There was nothing . . .
  except . . .
  "Ich hatte eins schones Vaterland . . . . Es war ein Traum."
  The police sergeant waited with his note-taking. "I've got to put it on the
  blotter. What was that kraut thing he said when he died?"
  "I had a fair fatherland. It was a dream."

  The rain freshened. A squad car waited on the ramp, motor idling, to drive
  him home. He hunched his good arm int9,y.raincoat, belted it clumsily,
  holding his white balloon of a hand up. Can forgiving soak into pain and
  soothe it? He watched a small whirlpool spin in the river roil under the
  dock lights. Was it the phalarope that made its own whirlpool to lure fish
  around it and find food? Those two small straws out there .... Spun out of
  control they must cling, or separate. Go under, or break apart.
  Whom did she mourn? What unsaid things regret? Who want, who need?
  To ask her would be to risk the answer that would smash
234      Noel Pierce

 their world for Tabitha and Tessa. And with a sudden thickening in his
 throat he thought that in a few minutes he could open a familiar nursery
 door and see his children.

  Smell of hot coffee . . . of spicy pink carnations . . . of wood violets in
  a white spode bowl . . . crackle of a fire burning against the autumn chill
  . . . an apple log snapped in its glow of sparks as he came in.
 "Daddy's homel Daddy's homel"
  They came at him in a rush, the little girls and Flix, her hair flying. Hot
  food, drinks, Daddy's home, feed the hungry man. Prancing colts in pink
  pajamas engulfed him with an affection that stung his eyes. When they let
  him go, be sat on the sofa in his wet raincoat, not minding the stabs of
  pain through his puffy hand. Tiredness soaked out of his bones. It was
  over. Rob relaxed in a warm, unstirring peace. At the back of his head a
  small thought began to nag. Flix had said nothing about his hand.
  "How was the surprise party?" Tessa said.
  "What party?"
  "That you and Mummy..." Tabitha said.
  "The place you've just come from, Daddy."
  "What are you talking about, Tessa?"
  "But Mummy said..." they began at once.
  "Yes?" He ruffled their hair, looking at Flix. "What did Mummy say?"
  Clearly they thought it was a grown-ups' game of "still pretending" and
  that Mummy and Daddy were funning with each other to keep them guessing.
  "Mummy said you were going to a surprise party," Tessa explained, "and that
  she'was to meet you . . . ."
  ". . . And join the people who didn't expect you."
  "Yes?" he said. "And then what was to happen?"
  "Why"-they kept interrupting each other-"so Mummy said good night to us
  .... She was dressed up fancy in her white coat and head scarf . . . ."
 ". . . and Jill sat with us while you were out ....
                            "

  "Then Mummy came running in just ahead of you, Daddy .... Didn't you,
  Mummy?"
  "What did she say?"
  ". . . That she'd run all the way back to see if we were all right."
  "But, Daddy . . ." Tessa sat back on her heels and looked
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   235

 up at his white, contorted face. "If you surprised your friends together .
 . . how did you hurt your hand?"
  "There was this crazy fellow," he said to the children but still watching
  Flix, "who had this funny kind of popgun at the surprise party. And you now
  what the popgun did?"
  "No, tell usl" They giggled up at him expectantly.
  "He popped it at me. It made a funny little flame. And that's how I burned
  my hand."
   "What did you do to him, Daddy?"
   "That naughty man," sympathetic Tessa choked.
   "Bang-bang. I shot him dead," their father said.
  "Good for you, Daddyl" They jumped delightedly and went clapping around
  him. "Goody for youl"
   "Yes"-he got up-"I think so too."
  In the silence the apple log exploded and fell apart. He stood looking at
  Flix across the puzzled heads of the children and knew her total
  involvement.
  "But Mummy didn't think so."
   "Why, Daddy?"
  "This fellow with the popgun was her friend."
   "Rob. Don't. They're so-little."
  Her strained eyes fastened on him, begged, turned away.
  Like the body on the dock she was like a woman on a tomb. Marble whiteness,
  stillness of the long arms hanging at her sides.
  "You kids beat it to bed. Mummy and I have to wrap up our fun at the
  surprise party."
  He put his arms clumsily around the two small figures. All three stood
  staring at her across the room. Flix looked defenseless, alone, as if she
  watched Rob and her daughters from another shore.
  The little girls took each other's clammy hands and disappeared, frightened
  by the stillness in the room behind them.
  He felt nothing for the children, or her, or himself. Like the apple log
  his world had just fallen to pieces.
  Rob went to the desk and emptied his pockets of his gun, IUD cards,
  notebook, badge, cartridges, keys. He hung his coat on the chair, jerked
  off his tie and put a cigarette iii the pink sausage fingers that stuck up
  through the bandage.
  Fix struck a match. "Let me ......
  He snapped on a lighter. "No. Stay where you are."
  "What do you think you're doing?"
236       Noel Pierce

 "Asking some questions." "If I won't answer?" "Plead your own immunity. I
 don't give a damn." He got the cigarette going. "What were you doing on the
 bulkhead?" "I was out for a walk. Then the noise, all those searchlights and
 sirens, rifle fire began, and I . . . ." "Quit lying to me. Were you the
 decoy?" "Yes," she said raggedly. "You led him to the ambush?" "Yes." "They
 used you? Set you up?" She nodded. "I asked for it." "With whose consent?
 Jason's?" "Yes. Rob . . . let's don't tear at each other. What we know can
 shatter us." "We are now." She saw his fist in slow motion jolt the desk.
 "Disgust. . . horror . . . betrayal . . . two clean little kids in there
 with the spit scared out of them . . . their father and mother dirty with a
 kind of civilized filth that wouldn't stand up as evidence in court but that
 you and I have to sleep with all the rest of our lives." "Rob, can't we make
 it up? Try? Meet halfway?" He was shaken by a longing for something which
 had been her giving. It was gone. "Were they all in on it? My men? Harris?
 The river cops? Jason's squad? They all knew you were there?" "Yes." "And
 why?" "Yes." "Knew you were in it with him, up to your neck?" "With
 Gerhardt? I suppose they did." "Did you call him by his name?" "Sometimes."
 "When he asked you to?" "Yes. When he wanted me to." "You did what he
 wanted?" "Rob-please." "Other things he wanted?" She shook her head mutely,
 fingers working at her sides. "Answer me." "Why should I?" "Did he make love
 to you?"
      MESSENGER FROM MUNICH  237

 "He tried to."
  Rob got up and walked over to her. "Did he see you like this?" He ripped
  her lemon-colored shift open, baring her breasts.
  "Yes. He saw me naked. Lying on his bed. And other times."
  "When?"
  "I visited his room. Mrs. Sunbeam-Olga-knew."
   "Did he touch you?"
  "Please remember that whatever he did . . . I did what I could tonight to'
  make up for it."
  "I know that. Answer me."
  "What is this? This interrogation?"
  "Speak to the cop. Answer the cop."
  "All right." She made no attempt to cover or contain herself. He looked at
  her breasts, her body, clinically, seeing her as Von Gottfried had. The
  rippling belly muscles, the long, slender flanks. "Yes," she said, "He did.
  He knew me all over."
  "You're my wife and you know what you're saying?"
  Flix looked at him wryly. "You asked for it. You killed him. I wanted him
  dead. Isn't that enough? For God's sake, isn't it finished?"
  "You married a cop. You knew what you were getting into. Answer me."
  "Why should I?"
  His hand snapped up and slapped her across the face. "Did you want him?
  Answer me."
  She pressed the red welts on her cheeks. "Yes."
  "He tried, and he couldn't enter you? Take you?"
  "No."

  "If he could, would you have had him?"
  She said very desolately, "I suppose so. Who's to flip a coin at a moment
  like that?"
  "But it wasn't any good, was it?"
  "Not the way it is with you and me."
  "Flix. What drove you to it?"
  "I don't know."
 "Will you want me? Knowing I shot his body to pieces?" She looked up. "Why
 did you?"
 "I was insanely jealous of him."
 "He felt the same about you."
 In a lonely place he saw von Gottfried, not as a strangler
238      Noel Pierce

 -not as an assassin-but as a man bereft of a woman he frantically desired
 and, having her open herself to him, could not take. Stomp, shoot, cut,
 pulverize a body to pieces, the fact was, it made no difference. She would
 have taken him. And in that sense von Gottfried had defeated him.
  Flix reached around herself and undid the rest of the, lemon-colored shift,
  flipping it aside. Simply, without seduction or boldness, she went to Rob
  and opened his shirt, putting her arms under it and drawing him in against
  her. Her breath quickened, her body softened. He shut his eyes, felt her
  mouth come up to his.
  He began to undress so painfully and clumsily that she held his bandaged
  hand up, waiting. "You see," she said, helping and holding him, her arms a
  brush of silk up and down his back, "I thought I was doing this for the
  children. Just to . . . scrub myself free of the guilt about Olga . . . to
  turn him in because he killed her. But it was more than that. When the
  chips are down, it's which side you're on. You always kept me out of the
  dirty part of cop work. But I got in it. Maybe that's why I understand you
  better, Rob. What you do. I've done it, too."
  The Bokhara rug, that battlefield of red, was earth under her back. She
  drew him down and lay there looking up at him.
  She began to stroke him. "Darling, what is it?"
  He thought he knew every expression of Flix's face. Every need, every
  change of muscle, skin and bone that is the guise of the special face. He
  had seen it on their wedding night and in her difficult childbirth, the
  ordinary, everyday looks, the night looks when he caressed the places that
  were his. Now he saw a look that was unfamiliar.
  Not his. Not the warm kind, with the misted eyes, the needful spreading of
  the joining loins under him. It was the other kind. A rapacious sharpening
  of feature, sweat dampening her hair.
  The fine eyes blurred to slits. Her breasts filled, lifting to him, the
  erect nipples thrusting, belly muscles rippling as her hips stirred
  rhythmically, reaching to receive him, the back arched, teeth bared in a
  waiting he let go on and on while he lay on his elbows and looked down at
  an expression on her face he had never seen before.
  Von Gottfried had done this to her.
     MESSENGER FROM MUNICH   239

  "But the man is dead, Rob." She shook him with clenched teeth. "The man is
  dead." "Is he, Flix? Is he really?" "What, my darling?" "Really dead
  between us?"