Through the Eye of Time by Trevor Hoyle Page A

that dinner in a quiet restaurant I knew in the Unter Den Linden might help to take her mind off this painful separation.
    She was reluctant until I happened to mention that I was on good terms with Reichsführer Himmler and that he might be persuaded to countermand the order. ‘There can be no harm in trying,’ I said, patting her shoulder. ‘After all, he’s only human.’
    Elisabeth thanked me for my kindness and agreed to accept my invitation. We dined by candlelight at the
Biarritz
and she, in her misery I expect, drank more wine than was good for her. In any event I had to support her as we left the restaurant and she fell asleep on my shoulder in the cab. I rummaged in her bag and found the key to the front door and had to carry her upstairs to the first floor apartment.
    Once inside I dumped her on the bed and went into the tiny kitchen to make black coffee. I do not like women passing out on me: it is rather futile, I always think, and such a waste whena woman cannot accommodate her partner’s desires in the conscious state; besides which it is insulting to the partner to be faced with dry orifices in a comatose body.
    Carrying her up the stairs had set the ache off in my shoulder, memento of a skiing accident in my youth when I had fallen heavily and lacerated the flesh. I swung my left arm a couple of times to ease the pain.
    Elisabeth was still insensible. I made her swallow three tablets and wash them down with coffee. They stimulated her nervous system and she came groggily to her senses by which time I had undressed her and was preparing to mount. When she had recovered sufficiently to realize my intention she struck out with her fists and struggled to extricate herself from beneath my squatting embrace (I was astride her abdomen).
    â€˜Elisabeth,’ I said, catching hold of her wrists and pressing her arms to the eiderdown – she hadn’t shaved her armpits, I noticed: ‘there’s no need for all this. It’s only me, Theo. You remember, Theodor Morell. I promised to speak to Himmler on your behalf.’
    She calmed down and lay there staring at me. Her eyes were tense, frightened, though there was also a look – of sacrifice? – of resignation? – I did not recognize.
    â€˜That’s better,’ I said, smiling down on her. ‘You won’t help your young man by struggling, will you, Liebchen?’
    She lay still, her breasts rising and falling, watching me, saying nothing, the rush of air audible in her nostrils.
    â€˜Open your legs for the doctor, there’s a good girl.’
    She did so and it gave me pleasure to see her eyes contract and the spasm of pain cross her face as I entered her. She was tight and smooth, perhaps not quite slippery enough.
    Pumping away, my face next to hers, I could see from the corner of my eye the dark straggle of hair underneath her arm and it suddenly occurred to me (all my best ideas come thus, instantaneously, out of nowhere) that if I could manufacture lice powder in bulk and supply the entire Germany Army my fortune would be made.

4

Proemptosis
    â€˜You blundered in where angels fear to tread,’ Johann Karve said, puffing pipesmoke into the air. It rose above his head like a grey wraith.
    â€˜You should have warned me that the woman was a hardliner.’ Queghan shook his head slowly, baffled, slightly irritable. ‘Why do people like that choose to work at MyTT? If they don’t understand and sympathize with our aims why come here in the first place?’
    â€˜Professor deGrenier is an extremely capable scientist.’
    â€˜I don’t doubt it.’
    â€˜And we do need such people. It’s all very well when you go off on one of your blue sky sessions, or whatever you get up to in that monk’s cell of yours, but without people like deGrenier the hardware to put your schemes into operation would never get developed.’ He regarded Queghan sternly