Drechsler shrugged and moved towards the tall blonde sitting on her own at a table.
Von Heißen followed unsteadily, stumbling against a table and knocking it over, sending the wine glasses to shatter on the wooden floor.
‘May I present Miss Katrina Baumgartner,’ the doctor intoned impassively.
Katrina looked up. Her eyes were pale blue and her skin milky white.
‘Von Heißen. Hauptsturmführer Karl von Heißen,’ the SS captain slurred, clicking his heels. ‘What are you drinking, Fräulein?’
‘I don’t drink, Hauptsturmführer,’ Katrina Baumgartner replied coolly, eyeing von Heißen with disdain.
‘Nonsense.’ Von Heißen snapped his fingers at one of the dining-room staff. ‘ Rotwein für das Fräulein . Where are you from?’ he asked, pulling out a chair.
‘Berlin,’ Katrina replied, her eyes glazed with boredom.
‘And what brings you here?’ Von Heißen leered.
‘I’ve been assigned to the Lebensborn program, so I didn’t have much choice. But surely you know that, Hauptsturmführer.’
‘Quite an honour,’ von Heißen observed, ‘for a woman to be able to serve the greater Reich. I myself am about to deploy to the jungles of Guatemala, although that is top secret. Tomorrow I will meet with Reichsführer Himmler, who has personally selected me for the mission. We are going to search for archaeological evidence that the Aryans were at the heart of the great Mayan civilisation.’
Katrina raised a sceptical eyebrow.
‘We will also be looking for a secret codex that’s been missing for centuries. It could be of great value to the Reich!’
‘If it’s top secret, then perhaps you shouldn’t be talking about it?’
‘You, I can trust,’ von Heißen slurred. ‘You’re on the program, and you’re of good German stock. If you were a Jew or a gypsy, it would be quite a different matter.’
‘And if I told you I have a number of Jewish friends who are good, decent citizens?’
‘Then I would advise you to be careful, Fräulein. Very careful. Have you read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ?’
‘Should I have?’
‘Most certainly. I will arrange for a copy to be sent to you. The Führer himself has endorsed it …’ Von Heißen reached for his glass, almost toppling out of his chair. ‘Anyway, for the moment, I’m going to have to put up with a Jewish professor on my expedition, although he will have a use-by date.’ Von Heißen’s laugh was deep and guttural. ‘But it’s very noisy in here,’ he added, standing and reaching unsteadily for Katrina’s hand. ‘Let’s go to your room.’
She looked at him, contemptuous of his highly polished knee-high boots and the immaculately tailored Hugo Boss uniform, all black save for the red-and-black Nazi swastika armband. She reluctantly rose from the table.
Von Heißen sat on the side of the bed and wrestled with his boots. ‘I’d get into something very comfortable if I were you,’ he said lustfully.
Katrina Baumgartner let her red dress fall to the carpet of her large, comfortably furnished room. Her black lace bra and knickers contrasted with her smooth white skin.
Von Heißen ogled her long legs and struggled out of the rest of his uniform. He stood up and lurched towards her. Katrina sidestepped his advance and von Heißen stumbled back against the bed.
‘Not very ready, are we, Hauptsturmführer?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, look at it,’ she said, laughing as she slipped into bed. ‘Any smaller and I wouldn’t be able to find it.’ It was a dangerous, albeit calculated ploy. Katrina knew well that the more pressure a man was under to get it up, the higher the failure rate, especially amongst the arrogant Officer Corps. She couldn’t have known, of course, that von Heißen’s first girlfriend had also had a fit of the giggles, or that von Heißen had been forced to find solace in the brothels of Berlin ever since.
‘Fick dich!’ Von Heißen swung his fist at Katrina, but she deftly
David Levithan, Rachel Cohn