The Expendable Spy by Jack D. Hunter

Author:Jack D. Hunter [Hunter, Jack D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2015-10-14T06:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

The Abendsee filled a chink in the Alps, its placid, deep-green waters forming a moodily shifting mirror for the colossal peaks above. The mountains, deployed in a jagged semicircle, were faced on the lake’s northern rim by a fan-shaped sweep of valley land that snoozed in the sun and exuded the mixed scent of wild-flowers, pines, and rich black earth tilled for centuries by occupants of the Disney-cute cottages dotted around. The road cleared a highland rise, then went out across the valley like a lazily tossed rope, and giving the Opel its rein, I relaxed and tried to absorb the majesty of it all.

I decided to make some conversation. “Abendsee. The Evening Lake. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I once loved this place,” Christl Werner said beside me. “Once? Why once?”

“You forget, Herr Jaeger. It’s where I met my husband.” I felt a flash of annoyance with myself. “Of course. I’m sorry. I should have remembered.”

“No reason why you should have.”

“Your father also came here for his illness, didn’t he? Is that why he decided to come back again now?”

“No. His house in Obermenzing has been taken over by the Amis as an officers’ quarters and, since he’s had a place here for years, it was the logical move to bring him here.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t come here in the first place. Who’d want to live in Obennenzing when he has a house by the Abendsee?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t even try to fathom my father any more, what with his condition and all.”

“How did he get down here?”

“It was while you were being held by the Ami troops. The second morning after your — disappearance — an Ami officer drove up to my father’s house and told Leo that the two of them would have to get out — the house was needed as a barracks for the officers of a military police unit, or something. Anyway, Leo bundled Father into the VW and down they came.”

“Oh.”

“I was worried about you, you know.”

I gave her another glance, but she kept her eyes on the road.

“Worried about me? What do you mean?”

“When you didn’t come back for such a long time, I worried about you. I remembered how Herr Klottner went out one morning and never came back.”

“Well,” I said, strangely pleased, “that’s nice. It’s nice to be missed.”

“It’s rather nice to have you around the house.”

“You really don’t know very much about me, Frau Werner,” I said, the warmth in me fading.

There was a period of silence, and I could sense that she, too, was having trouble finding a conversational base. “You’ve often mentioned your father,” she said. “You like him very much, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“What kind of man is he?”

“Oh, he’s many things. A flier in the First War — he was in the Richthofen squadron, and very proud of it. Then a writer. And after my mother died when I was born, he traveled a lot. Physically, he’s not very big, but he gives you the impression he is.

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