Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [66]
The blond man wore stubble across his chin. His face was full of harsh angles. The knife disappeared somewhere.
With a broad accent, the blond man asked, "Do you have anything to eat?"
9
KATRIN SAT on the only piece of furniture left in her bedroom, a Gothic armchair of carved and gilded wood with velvet upholstery. The one-time pad was on one knee and her pages of dots and dashes on the other. The room was meagerly lit by an oil lamp resting on a windowsill at her shoulder. On a bitterly cold night three months ago, with no electricity or coal, Katrin had ripped apart her bed and used the frame for firewood. Then onto the fire grate went the dresser and her antique desk on which she once wrote letters to Adam, and even the chair with the scroll legs and ball feet made by the Huguenot Daniel Marot two centuries before. She had huddled near the fireplace and watched the flames blacken and eat away the old wood, so happy to be warm she hadn't given the heirloom furniture another thought.
She decoded the last line and stared at the page. The message made little sense to her, and it was not meant to. It was addressed to the Horseman. She fumbled with the sulfur match, her hands so cold she had difficulty grasping it. She scratched the match head, then put the flame to the pages she had torn off the one-time pad. After they had curled and turned dark, she blew out the flame and used the bottom of an ink bottle to crush the embers.
Katrin's head snapped up at the scent of meat. She had not had any kind of meat in six weeks, maybe longer, she could not remember. The heady smell was almost foreign to her. Tendrils of the odor seemed to lift her from the chair and pull her from the room. She carried the message with her as she descended the stairs. Her head throbbed with each step, and her ears were still buzzing from the Gestapo agent's blow.
The American was in the kitchen. She held out the message. "It's for you."
He looked up from the frying pan. He must have been more interested in the meal, because he put the message on the counter without looking at it. He salted the meat. She shuddered at the sight of the American, and found herself taking a step back. But the scent of the meat — it looked like flank steak, sizzling and browning, the juice gathering at the bottom of the pan — held her in the kitchen.
"I don't bite," he said, shuffling the meat in the pan.
She glanced at the flyer on the counter. It had been delivered to every door in the neighborhood by a Pimpf—a member of the Jungvolk—that afternoon. This man's face was on the flyer.
"I had no idea.. . ." Her voice faded.
"You had no idea the Horseman would be the man on the posters all over the city, the Vassy Chateau soldier?"
She shook her head.
He smiled. "I had no idea I was the Horseman either, until a few days ago. Somebody gave me the name. I'd like that job. Sitting in a room, dreaming up code names."
He took another pinch of salt from a bowl and sprinkled it over the pan. He concentrated on the steak and seemed to exclude all else in the room. Also on the stove were potatoes and carrots in boiling water. On the counter and table was a vast treasure of food. The kitchen seemed to be bursting with jars ofjam, cheeses, potatoes, three dressed-out chickens, dozens of sausages, tins of butter, loaves of bread, and bottles of wine. And pastries. French eclairs, an apple tart, Bismarcks, and a blackberry Strudel.
She moved toward the pastry. She knew she should show some restraint. Her finger dipped into the icing on an eclair. She brought it to her mouth. She tested it with her tongue, then like a child licked it off her finger. The sweetness of that small taste made her giddy, overwhelmed the pain in her head. Her finger went back for more.
"Don't spoil your dinner," the American said lightly. His German was gnarled by an accent but fast and understandable.
Katrin picked up a cloth bag from the counter and held it to her nose. She closed her eyes. "Coffee. Real coffee." She glanced at him. "Is the gauleiter still alive?"