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Cleveland for dinner, had steak tartare and a snifter of 20-year-old cognac. What the hell, I was flush.
    I bought a pack of Camels from the cigarette girl, though I’d lost the habit overseas. I couldn’t carry American cigarettes and Kraut cigs taste like pine tar. I paid my check, washed up in the men’s room and straightened my tie in the mirror. I was ready.
    I took the streetcar across the Detroit-Carnegie Bridge and hopped off at the corner of Lorain and 32 nd . My wristwatch said 8:49. The window sign said that Pappas Deli closed atnine. Mr. Pappas would be recuperating with a hot water bottle and a tumbler of Ouzo. Jeannie would be alone.
    I hid in a doorway across the street just in case.
    The deli went dark promptly at nine. I crossed the street and waited two doors down. I unzipped the pack of Camels and parked one in my mush. My heart was pounding. The spark was still there, I’d felt it the second I saw her. Had Jeannie? That’s what I was huddled in this dark doorway to find out.
    Where was she? Had she gone out the back?
    No, the red OPEN sign was still in the window. Maybe she forgot to turn it over? I went to peer through the window and almost knocked Jeannie down as she stepped through the door.
    â€œHal?”
    â€œDammit Jeannie, you’ve ruined everything.”
    â€œWhat do you…I don’t…”
    â€œDon’t look at me,” I said. “Just go back inside, count to three and come out again.”
    â€œHal, what the…”
    â€œPlease.”
    Jeannie blew out a breath and did as I requested. I lipped a fresh butt, pulled a hank of hair across my forehead and leaned a shoulder against the doorway. Jeannie walked out. “Hey there, beautiful,” I said. “Got a match?”
    Jeannie looked me over coolly. “Your face and a donkey’s bum.”
    We cracked up, just like always.
    â€œIt’s good to see you.”
    â€œYou too. What in the world are you doing here? In Cleveland? With that awful man?”
    â€œIt’s complicated.”
    â€œI’m listening.”
    â€œAww, shit, Jeannie I can’t tell you. Not yet.”
    I expected to get her rubber-lipped eye-rolling look. Jeannie had more facial expressions than a rhesus monkey. But she regarded me with a plain sad face.
    â€œHal, I thought you were dead.”
    â€œWhy would you think that?”
    â€œGee whiz, I wonder?”
    â€œI know your girlfriends got letters once a month…”
    â€œOnce a week sometimes.”
    â€œI was
behind
enemy lines.”
    â€œHal, you were a wireless agent, isn’t that right? Your job was to send messages, isn’t that right?”
    â€œSure, but personal stuff was strictly forbidden.”
    â€œDammit Hal, you could at least have
tried.
”
    â€œI suppose. I didn’t…”
    Jeannie pressed her strong dainty finger to my lips. It smelled of mustard.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter,” she said, her eyes saying just the opposite.
    I bent to kiss her. “Not here,” she said, twisting away.
    â€œWhere then?”
    She looked at me for a long time. “I’m a married woman now.”
    I watched her walk down the sidewalk, hugging herself for warmth, and enter her walk-up above the store. I trudged back toward Mrs. B’s and thought things over. I didn’t feel the cold.
    Jeannie had a lot of questions she wanted answered and so did I. But she was right. It didn’t matter now.
    I approached Kiefer’s German-American Tavern at the corner of Detroit and 25 th . Rosy-cheeked couples spilled out onto the sidewalk, arm in arm. I wove my way through them. They looked sublimely happy and content.
    The sons of bitches.

Chapter Seven
    This is the best part of being a double agent I thought as I climbed the stone stairs to the Standard Building the next day. As a spy I risked my neck every time I wirelessed my case officer. The SD, Himmler’s spy hunters, had