A Game of Spies Read Online Free PDF Page A

were now. Why would he tell a young lady he was trying to impress that he was poor?
    You must tread softly.
    She listened, nodding at the right times, still enjoying his hand on her belly. He mentioned jokingly, in passing, that his only goal in life was to earn a tremendous amount of money, enough to buy himself a title. Von Klinger. She giggled and let it pass. It was still too soon. Next time …
    â€œBut you never talk about your life, Eva, your work. Where did you say it was?”
    She blinked, then told him about the propaganda ministry, and about how tiresome and dull her time there was. It seemed that her years spent in England had qualified her only to pore over endless newspaper advertisements, searching for faint clues to the state of British morale. It was nothing to compare to the excitement of his position with OKW.…
    He hardly seemed to have been listening. His hand was moving lower now, below her belly. He set his drink aside and dropped his cigarette into it, creating a sibilant hiss.
    â€œWhy must we talk of these things?” he murmured. “Why must we waste our time together talking of work?”
    He was kissing her breasts, then moving down and kissing her belly. She set her own drink aside. Lay her head back on the pillow, closing her eyes.
    She had introduced the concept, at least, of being dissatisfied with her work at the Rundfunk. Now she would let his own mind worry at the subject for a while. Deep down, he must want more than just a title; he must. Deep down, he must want justice.
    She made herself lie still and accept the man’s favors.
    You must tread softly.
    LEIPZIGER STRASSE
    William Hobbs stood by the window, watching.
    In the course of ten minutes, he saw a few pedestrians, scurrying like mice; a few black-suited SS men strolling as if they owned the sidewalk—which in a way they did—and two prostitutes. The prossies were out early tonight, Hobbs thought. But then, the prossies had been coming out early more and more often lately. Enforced blackouts were like gold to whores and thieves.
    He kept watching as twilight settled across the city. The twilight was preternaturally clear, partially as a result of the blackout, with a plump alabaster moon materializing overhead. Under Hobbs’ gaze, the evening crowd melted into the streets, jacketed and coifed, as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The sounds of conversation and occasionally even laughter drifted on the night air. They were determined to have fun, he thought, for as long as it was humanly possible. And for that he couldn’t blame them—he felt in dire need of a drink or two himself.
    He had not left this flat for twenty-three days now.
    For the past twenty-four hours, he had been sharing it with a corpse.
    After looking out the window for another moment, he turned and crossed the apartment, moving with a slight limp. He opened the icebox and crouched in front of it. His stomach executed a slow, queasy roll. He closed the icebox again and crossed back to the window. He couldn’t eat—not with Borg in the room.
    Borg lay near the bookcase, on his back, with one hand flung over his head like a man sunbathing on a beach. The pool of blood beneath him had coagulated during the course of the day, turning a rich, organic brown.
    Hobbs returned to looking out the window. His hazel eyes, a shade lighter than his hair, moved back and forth in steady arcs. There was nobody watching the apartment from the street. He knew this for a fact because he had spent the past week making sure of it. For the first two weeks of his imprisonment—for imprisonment was what it was, regardless of what the Nazis chose to call it—a Gestapo agent had kept an eye on the apartment from the far street corner. As of nine days ago, however, the man had vanished. Hagen had evidently decided that Hobbs was secure enough under Borg’s vigilant eye.
    Hobbs kept looking for watchers anyway. As soon as