Astronomy(21)
She asked Susan if a man waited for her. That seemed to be the inevitable question in a place like the Four Winds Bar.
Susan thought of lying, but she was a terrible liar. All of her OSS friends always groaned at the feeble way she rehearsed her cover stories. She couldn’t even explain what she was doing in the kitchen at two A.M. without looking guilty.
“I am trying to find a Herr Hartmann.” She looked around. “Conrad Hartmann?” She didn’t know if this was a wise or dangerous admission. She just knew lying would have made her look furtive.
The woman smiled, professionally. “Are you a friend of Herr Hartmann?”
“No,” Susan said. “I thought he might have something for me.”
The woman’s smile became more studied. She picked up her armload of beer steins. With her elbow, she pointed thataway, behind the bar. But she didn’t stick around. She was on her way out to the patio, to assuage the war wounds of the Luftwaffe pilots.
“He was here a day or so ago. He left something. He didn’t say who was to pick it up.” The woman was gone through the lace curtains to the back.
Susan licked her lips. She rubbed her palms. She told herself she could simply walk over behind the bar like she owned the place. That’s what her OSS friends would have told her.
But her OSS friends weren’t here. She felt the weight of every eye in the room upon her.
A warning was passed through the bar—they were launching the xenon signal in ten seconds. Everyone should look away. Among the rich patrons at the bar, blackened glasses were snapped from pockets, and unfolded with practiced ease. They held their chronometers at the ready, their thumbs waiting on their femtosecond timers. Others clamped their hands across their eyes, giggling nervously.
This game with the xenon lamp must have been a tradition at the Four Winds. The barmaids even had a drink they served for the occasion. Returning from her Luftwaffe pilots on the patio, the little button-eyed bierfrau asked Susan if she might care for a Dresdenwasser.
“Excuse me? Dresdenwasser?”
The woman laughed at the horror on her face. “The drink is quite beautiful. You should see—peppermint schnapps and a drop of radium.”
“Radium.” Susan essayed a little smile. “Indeed.”
“Oh, just a little bit won’t hurt you.”
“Another time perhaps,” she promised.
The patrons banged rhythmically at the tabletop as the countdown hit five. A hundred shot glasses glowing pale green raised to the sky, while the men sang, “He’s here! Soon He is here! Time for the Renewal of Time!”
Susan ducked behind the bar as the countdown hit zero. An ashy-blue light coated every upturned surface in the room with bright violet icing. She found a manila envelope set between a bottle of Jagermeister and one of malt wine. Scrawled across the front in pencil were the words Das Unternehmen—“The Undertaking.”
People were laughing and catching their breaths as she stepped out. Susan figured her luck was holding: all eyes were locked on the red- and black-suited men out on the patio as they compared the accuracy of their plated instruments against the readings from a photovoltaic cell.
The crimson-suited paladin folded the cover over his watch. She heard the snap of a tiny latch. Without a backward glance, he made his way through the crowd for the night air. This was her chance. She had Hartmann’s package; she was just steps from the alcove she’d arrived through.
Laughter erupted behind her.
“You look like a schoolgirl sneaking out early from class.”
She turned to answer, and stopped.
Take the blackness of the night sky between the stars, pour it into the shape of a man. Give him a sardonic smile. Give him eyes of perfectly beaten gold. She started to say something. The image of the man took her words away.
“Don’t be alarmed, Fräulein. I am the proprietor of this establishment. Everyone knows me.”
She tried to smile, tried to think of some normal sort of reply. “Leave me alone,” she said.
Well, it was normal bar conversation for her.
The black man tittered effeminately into the tips of his fingers. “You have a terrible ear for chit-chat. I would have thought your OSS friends would have coached you on that. It hardly matters. I would give you my name, but it is ancient and Egyptian and difficult to pronounce. You do not need to learn it. In any case, it is you whom I am anxious to meet.”
Susan pushed past him for the door. His hand came up around her elbow. It was not a firm grip. She could have broken it without difficulty. Maybe that was the thing that lent it authority. People stopped for that hand. No further force had been needed in a very long time.