A Quiet Flame

She was tall and thin and elegant, with perfect semicircular eyebrows that looked like they’d been drawn by Giotto, and lots of wavy fair hair either side of her face, which lent her a spaniel look. She belonged in the Cologne Prize winners’ enclosure at Weidenpesch racecourse. But I wouldn’t have raced her; I’d have put her out to stud at a million dollars a time. Frau Kammler’s daughter was no less beautiful and no less charming. She looked about sixteen, but was perhaps younger. Her hair was more Titian than red, because as soon as you saw her, you thought she belonged on a velvet couch in the studio of a great painter with an eye for beauty. When I saw her, I was sorry I didn’t paint myself. Her eyes were a peculiar shade of green, like an emerald with a trace of lapis lazuli, but quietly knowing, too, like she was about to check your king and you were just too dumb to know it yet.

All of us did our best to be civilized and polite. Even Anna, who responded to the thrown-down gauntlet of so much unexpected beauty by finding a little bit of extra beauty inside herself and switching it on like an electric light. But it was difficult to maintain this genteel atmosphere when the last guest was Otto Skorzeny. Especially as he had been drinking.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when he saw me.

“Having dinner, I hope.”

Skorzeny draped a big arm around my shoulder. It felt as heavy as an iron bar. “This fellow is all right, Hans,” he told Kammler. “He’s my confidant. He’s going to help me to make sure those greaseballs never get their hands on the Reichsbank’s money.”

Anna shot me a look.

“How’s the hand, Otto?” I asked him, anxious to change the subject.

Skorzeny inspected his big mitt. It was covered in some livid-looking scars from when he had punched King George’s picture. It was clear he had forgotten how the scars had come to be there at all. “My hand? Yes. I remember now. How’s your ingrown toenail, or whatever it was?”

“He’s fine,” said Anna, putting her arm through mine.

“Who are you?” he asked her.

“His nurse. Only somehow he manages to look after himself very well without me. I wonder why I came at all.”

“Have you known each other for long?” asked Frau Kammler.

“They’re engaged to be married,” said Heinrich Grund.

“Really?” said Frau Kammler.

“It’s for his own good,” said Anna.

“Do you have any friends as good-looking as you?” Skorzeny asked her.

“No. But you seem to have plenty of friends of your own.”

Skorzeny looked at me, then at Kammler and Grund. “You’re right,” he said. “My old comrades.”

Anna shot me another look. I hoped she didn’t have the gun on her. The way things were going, I thought she might shoot everyone, including me.

“But I need a good woman,” he complained.

“What about Evita?” I asked. “How’s it coming along with her?” Skorzeny pulled a face. “Not a chance. Bitch.”

“Otto, please,” said Frau Kammler. “There are children present.”

Skorzeny looked at Mercedes and grinned with open admiration. She was grinning back at him. “Mercedes? She’s hardly that.”

“Thank you, Otto,” said Mercedes. “At least there’s someone here who’s prepared to treat me like a grown-up. Anyway, he’s right, Mommy. Eva Perón is a bitch.”

“That will do, Mercedes.” Her mother lit a cigarette in a holder the length of a blowpipe. Scolding Skorzeny gently, she took him over to the most comfortable-looking sofa and sat down with him. Evidently, she had experience of his behavior, because a minute later the hero of the Gran Sasso was asleep and snoring loudly.

We dined without him.

As promised, the dinner prepared by Goering’s chef was excellent. And very German. I ate things I hadn’t tasted since before the war. Even Anna was impressed.

“Tell your chef that I’m in love with him,” she said, full of charm now.

Kammler took his wife’s hand. “And I am in love with my wife,” he said, bringing the long, slender hand to his lips.

She smiled back at him and took his hand back to her mouth, then nuzzled it tenderly, like a favorite pet.

“Tell me, Anna,” said Kammler. “Have you ever seen two people who were so much in love as us?”

“No. I can’t say I ever did.” Anna smiled politely and looked at me. “I do hope that I’m as lucky as you are.”

“I can’t tell you how happy this woman makes me,” said Kammler. “I think that I would die if she left me. Really I would. I’d just die without her.”

“So, Anna,” said Grund. “When are you and Bernie planning to get married?”

“That all depends,” she said, treating me to one of her most saccharine smiles.

“On what?” asked Grund.

“He has a small quest to perform for me first.”

“So he’s a true knight,” said Mercedes. “How romantic. Just like Parsifal.”

“Actually, he’s more like Don Quixote,” said Anna, taking my hand and squeezing it playfully. “My knight is a little older than most knights errant. Aren’t you, darling?”

Grund laughed. “I like her, Bernie,” he said. “I like her a lot. But she’s much too clever for you.”

“I hope not, Heinrich.”

“And what is this quest?” asked Mercedes.