Eye of the Needle(76)
Not that she would have much time to become addicted, he would, after all, be gone in little more than a day.
She stirred, and he immediately rolled off her and onto his back. She lifted herself on one elbow and looked at his naked body. Yes, he did have scars: a long one on his chest, and a small mark like a star—it might have been a burn—on his hip. She rubbed his chest with the palm of her hand.
“It’s not very ladylike,” she said, “but I want to say thank you.”
He reached out to touch her cheek, and smiled. “You’re very ladylike.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve—”
He put a finger over her lips. “I know what I’ve done.”
She bit his finger, then put his hand on her breast. He felt for her nipple. She said, “Please do it again.”
“I don’t think I can,” he said.
But he did.
SHE LEFT HIM a couple of hours after dawn. There was a small noise from the other bedroom, and she seemed suddenly to remember that she had a husband and a son in the house. Faber wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that neither he nor she had the least reason to care what the husband knew or thought; but he held his tongue and let her go. She kissed him once more, very wetly; then she stood up, smoothed her rumpled nightgown over her body and went out.
He watched her fondly. She’s quite something, he thought. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. She was quite na?ve, and very inexperienced, but all the same she had been very good. I could perhaps fall in love with her, he thought.
He got up and retrieved the film can and the knife in its sheath from under the bed. He wondered whether to keep them on his person. He might want to make love to her in the day…he decided to wear the knife—he would feel undressed without it—and leave the can elsewhere. He put it on top of the chest of drawers and covered it with his papers and his wallet. He knew very well that he was breaking the rule, but this was certain to be his last assignment, and he felt entitled to enjoy a woman. Besides, it would hardly matter if she or her husband saw the pictures—assuming they understood their meaning, which was unlikely, what could they do?
He lay down on the bed, then got up again. Years of training simply would not allow him to take such risks. He put the can with his papers into the pocket of his jacket. Now he could relax better.
He heard the child’s voice, then Lucy’s tread as she went down the stairs, and then David dragging himself to the bathroom. He would have to get up and have breakfast with the household. It was all right. He did not want to sleep now anyway.
He stood at the rain-streaked window watching the weather rage until he heard the bathroom door open. Then he put on his pajama top and went in to shave. He used David’s razor, without permission.
It did not seem to matter now.
24
ERWIN ROMMEL KNEW FROM THE START THAT HE WAS going to quarrel with Heinz Guderian.
General Guderian was exactly the kind of aristocratic Prussian officer Rommel hated. He had known him for some time. They had both, in their early days, commanded the Goslar Jaeger Battalion, and they had met again during the Polish campaign. When Rommel left Africa he had recommended Guderian to succeed him, knowing the battle was lost; the maneuver was a failure because at that time Guderian had been out of favor with Hitler and the recommendation was rejected out of hand.
The general was, Rommel felt, the kind of man who put a silk handkerchief on his knee to protect the crease in his trousers while he sat drinking in the Herrenklub. He was an officer because his father had been an officer and his grandfather had been rich. Rommel, the schoolteacher’s son who had risen from lieutenant colonel to field marshal in only four years, despised the military caste of which he had never been a member.
Now he stared across the table at the general, who was sipping brandy appropriated from the French Rothschilds. Guderian and his sidekick, General von Geyr, had come to Rommel’s headquarters at La Roche Guyon in northern France to tell him how to deploy his troops. Rommel’s reactions to such visits ranged from impatience to fury. In his view the General Staff were there to provide reliable intelligence and regular supplies, and he knew from his experience in Africa that they were incompetent at both tasks.
Guderian had a cropped, light-colored moustache, and the corners of his eyes were heavily wrinkled so that he always appeared to be grinning at you. He was tall and handsome, which did nothing to endear him to a short, ugly, balding man—as Rommel thought of himself. He seemed relaxed, and any German general who would relax at this stage of the war was surely a fool. The meal they had just finished—local veal and wine from farther south—was no excuse.
Rommel looked out of the window and watched the rain dripping from the lime trees into the courtyard while he waited for Guderian to begin the discussion. When he finally spoke it was clear the general had been thinking about the best way to make his point, and had decided to approach it sideways.
“In Turkey,” he began, “the British Ninth and Tenth armies, with the Turkish army, are grouping at the border with Greece. In Yugoslavia the partisans are also concentrating. The French in Algeria are preparing to invade the Riviera. The Russians appear to be mounting an amphibious invasion of Sweden. In Italy the Allies are ready to march on Rome. There are smaller signals—a general kidnapped in Crete, an intelligence officer murdered at Lyon, a radar post attacked at Rhodes, an aircraft sabotaged with abrasive grease and destroyed at Athens, a commando raid on Sagvaag, an explosion in the oxygen factory at Boulogne-sur-Seine, a train derailed in the Ardennes, a petrol dump fired at Boussens…I could go on. The picture is clear. In occupied territories there is ever-increasing sabotage and treachery; on our borders, we see preparations for invasion everywhere. None of us doubts that there will be a major allied offensive this summer, and we can be equally sure that all this skirmishing is intended to confuse us about where the attack will come.”