His Majesty's Hope(33)

Gottlieb’s flat was on the seventh floor of an older building on a tree-lined street. On the door’s handle perched a tiny wrought-iron mouse. Above the mouse, watching its prey intently, was an iron cat. “Charming,” she remarked.

Gottlieb held open the door for Maggie and she stepped in.

Inside, the building smelled of floor polish and age. A worn tiled staircase wound around an elevator cage. “After you,” he said, holding her suitcase in one hand while opening the elevator’s outer door and then pulling aside the brass grate with the other.

“You’re sure this is safe?” Maggie asked warily. She hadn’t come all the way to Berlin to die in an elevator.

“Absolut sicher sein,” he said, which Maggie roughly translated to the British expression “safe as houses.” She smiled.

The elevator ground to a squeaky halt on the seventh floor. “This is ours.” Gottlieb opened both doors, then led Maggie down the dim hallway. It smelled as though someone was cooking liver and onions and, from behind closed doors, she could hear a dog bark.

She followed him to black-painted double doors marked 7B. “And, here we are!”

Across the hallway, a door creaked open. A tiny, elderly German woman with piercing eyes appeared in the shadows.

“Good morning, Frau Keller,” Gottlieb said. “May I introduce Margareta Hoffman? A good friend from Rome.”

“How do you do?” Maggie said.

Behind the woman, a miniature schnauzer appeared, still yapping. “Quiet, Kaiser!” the old woman said, ignoring Maggie.

She spoke directly to Gottlieb. “I want you to know, Herr Lehrer, that I don’t approve of unchaperoned female guests. I don’t believe in these new morals, or these so-called Brides of Hitler.”

Gottlieb gave her his most charming smile and took out his key. “Yes, Frau Keller.”

“And I don’t want any noise. Do you understand? No late-night drunken comings and goings. Ordnung muß sein!”

There must be order! Maggie translated.

“Yes, Frau Keller,” he said, turning the key in the lock.

She gave a sigh. “When you took the apartment, they told me you were a quiet young man, studious. Wanted to be a priest someday. Now you’re bringing home”—she looked Maggie up and down—“women.”

“Just one woman, Frau Keller,” he corrected serenely, opening the door. She was about to reply when he hurried Maggie inside.

“Intrusive old bat,” he muttered.

“I’ll report you!” they heard, as he closed the thick door.

Maggie’s first impression was that the room was clean and almost empty. Spartan, in fact. “You live here?”

“My humble abode,” Gottlieb replied.

The walls were bare. The only furniture was an old, moth-eaten sofa and a brass floor lamp. Next to the sofa was a stack of newspapers. There was a card table with a VE 301 People’s Receiver radio. Plate-glass windows with ancient-looking blinds looked over Hannover Square.

She walked to the window and looked out. Sure enough, on a bench in the square sat a gray-haired woman, hunched over her knitting, silver needles flashing in the sun. Ah, my Madame Defarge.

“Get away from the window!” Gottlieb snapped.

“What? Why?” Maggie said, even as she stepped away from the glass and dropped the blind.

“We must be careful of everything these days. Always assume you’re being watched. Don’t trust anyone. Didn’t you learn anything in your British spy school?”

“Yes, of course I did.” Maggie felt her temper flare.

“This isn’t your first mission, is it?” Gottlieb looked at her closely.

“No,” Maggie answered. Then, hearing the defensive tone she used, she added, “I mean, I’ve done work in London, and also at Windsor …”

“But this is your first mission abroad?” Gottlieb was incredulous. “The first time you’ve ever dealt with Nazis?”

It’s a yes-or-no question, Hope. “Yes.”

“Mein Gott, what have you sent me?” Gottlieb exclaimed.

Maggie was tired. Her muscles ached from the parachute drop. She was alone and, she was starting to admit, scared. And now her contact, the only person she knew in Berlin, in all of Germany, was doubting her? “Don’t judge me until you’ve seen me work,” she snapped.

Gottlieb glared, then held up his hands in mock surrender. “Fine, fine.”

An unused-looking galley kitchen was behind one door and a bathroom behind the other, with dark-green tiles, black and white trim, and a large salmon-pink tub. “No baths, except on Saturday and Sunday,” Gottlieb instructed. “And please be frugal with the toilet paper. It’s issued ‘according to needs.’ ”