Creep Around the Corner. Douglas Atwill
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lunch. The Stuttgart train did not depart until 1700. I could feel my knuckles more relaxed on the lighter replacement suitcase full of somebody’s shirts and socks. We were seated at a table with a view of the lake, where small steamboats arrived and departed, tight squadrons of black swans moving in and out of their way.
“Bradford, it went well.”
“I was sure that old woman had a gun in her purse.”
“What old woman?”
“The one who kept looking into our compartment. All in black.”
“Don’t let your artist’s imagination get the better of you.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t just another old lady.”
“Europe is full of old ladies in black.”
“But this one had the eyes of a killer. Flecks of crimson, I’m sure.”
“What nonsense. Let’s order our lunch.”
Perhaps she was right. I was too suggestive, too easy to unnerve. She ordered for us both while I tried to translate the menu. Lendenschnitte mit Anana. Mixed vegetables and Bratkartofflen. Coffee and thin slices of Munster Cheese for dessert. The knot that had been tying and retying itself behind my ear loosened a bit and gave me the first sense of well-being since we left Schloss Issel. Then I looked over McQuire’s shoulder to see the same woman in black at a far table, looking our way.
“Captain . . .” I started.
“Call me Aunty, Bradford.”
“Aunty, there’s the woman I told you about right at a table behind you. The woman in black.”
“Can I turn around? Is she looking?”
“She’s always looking.”
“Well, then it won’t matter.” She put on her glasses and turned around as only another woman can, moving her focus from table to table, slightly forward to an earlier table, then backwards, slowly backwards, not missing a single face, appearing to be propelled merely by a simple, sociable curiosity, until it landed on the old woman, almost directly behind McQuire. Some of the other women at tables in the restaurant secretly observed McQuire’s sweep with admiration. No man could have executed that circular camera movement with such bravura. McQuire nodded to the old woman. The old woman nodded back.
“Bradford, she’s one of ours. Works downtown as an analyst in the Villa Ingrid, but a killer in her own right.”
“You didn’t tell me. What’s her name?”
“There’s no need for you to know.”
“So, she followed us?”
“Our back-up. Those papers in the suitcases must have been really important.”
“Is that a machine gun in her purse?”
“Something very like it. Let’s see if we can get some more coffee.”
I lost sight of the Villa Ingrid woman on the return. No doubt it was not so urgent to protect our suitcases on this trip, so she would be sleeping with her feet up in another compartment, snoring with the machine-gunned purse under her elbows on her lap. Europe was a much more dangerous place than most people imagined. The gray car met us at the Stuttgart station and drove us without conversation to Schloss Issel.
As it departed, McQuire said, “You’re tightly wired, Bradford. Not a bad quality overall for courier duty.”
“Thanks, ma’am. I won’t be so nervous on the next assignment.”
“Good, because there will be more, I can assure you.” So Tiberius had picked a new favorite. Me. I made a note to be careful where I walked.
I said, “It would be nice if it weren’t on a weekend every time, though.”
She looked at me without expression, but did not answer me. Had I already displeased her?
“Just a thought, ma’am.”
Did my days as the favorite, luncheons by the lake with stemmed glasses of white wine and Lendenschnitte, promise to be short or had I built a rapport with the captain, partners in the shepherding of secrets across a malevolent Europe?
SUFFUSION
Such romantic illusions, and they’re all about you.
–Marlene Dietrich
“WE’LL ONLY STAY FOUR OR FIVE days. Sarah called and said she needed to see me. Asked for you to come, too. We can swim, drink some beers, go frog-gigging.”
A road trip always excited Henry Zilbert, away from Middleton for a week or so. He asked me to take off work, join him on the trek over to Parthenon. In the years before he had invited me several times but I turned him down because of my summer work.
I said, “Yesterday I was fired from the highway department. Dad got the job for me. Your father is a good man, they said, but there’s no place here for you, Bradford. I’ll cash this last check on the way out of town.”
“Don’t bring much. Shirts, pants, swimming suit.”
A stop by the house to pack, on to the bank and we were on the road by late morning. The drive from Middleton in West Texas to Parthenon in far East Texas took seven hours on the farm-to-market roads, no stopping. We talked little as we drove through San Angelo, Robert Lee, Goldthwaite, Brownwood, across the middle of Texas to Nacogdoches, Chireno and finally the last half hour into Parthenon, where Sarah, Henry’s grandmother, lived.
This was a year before I was drafted, Henry Zilbert and I home for the summer. Before Schloss Issel. We shared a room at college for the last three years. Summers brought us back to Middleton, he to help his grandfather on the ranch and I for temporary work in the oil fields or the pipeline. It would be best to let Dad cool down about my being sacked at the highway department. When we got back I would need to avoid family dinners for a while.
Just outside of Parthenon we turned off into the Blanchett Farm, a gravel road crowded by magnolia trees in a long crescent, dark leaves brushing against the car. I rolled down the window on the passenger side and the moist smell of evening pastures flowed in like water. Honeysuckle, magnolia, new-mown hay and turned earth. It was barely light, the sky a dark violet blue. Around the curve, we saw Sarah’s house, a clapboard two-story with yellowish light filling the double-hung windows.
Sarah had not set foot in Middleton since her son, Henry’s father, was killed in the war, counseling the family with detailed letters and, more recently, telephone calls. Henry’s grandfather refused to go to Parthenon, she would not come back to Middleton, and so the Zilberts had lived apart for twenty years. Sarah was there to meet us at the door.
“I love you, Henry John. Do you know that?” She was tall enough to kiss him on the forehead, like a favored son. With a sense of personal style that we saw little of in Middleton, she wore pleated ivory slacks, a black-and-white striped blouse, and a black silk scarf tucked around her neckline. Her hair was pure white, abundant, cut sharply short and straight. She and Henry had the same burnt-umber eyes. Sarah bought her clothes in New York, Henry had told me, not trusting Dallas to have what she wanted.
“Yes, ma’am. You remember Harold.”
“I do. Come in, both of you. Francie’s gone for the night, but she left some cold chicken and potato salad in the kitchen.” It was cooler in the house, a lingering mix of aromas: cooking, cut-flowers and damp fabric.
Henry said, “We ate in Nacogdoches. No need.”
“You talk like Henry Sr. Not a spare word. Harold, are you hungry?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Henry John can ‘ma’am’ me, but you call me Sarah, please. If Francie’s chicken doesn’t suit, at least get yourselves a cold beer.” She pronounced her name Say-rah.
After