should there be any delay at all, no matter the reason, they’d land on him like

woodpeckers on a tree full of insects. He’d never hear the end of their pestering until they got what they wanted, and then silence again. It seemed sadly ironic to him that even in

an insider’s paradise like CI he was on the outside.

It was humiliating to be one of those stereotypical Americans who time and again got

sand kicked in his face. How he hated himself for being a living, breathing clichй. It was

these evenings spent with General Kendall that gave his life color and meaning, the

clandestine meetings in the health club sauna, the dinners at local barbecue joints in SE,

and then the delicious chocolate nightcaps at The Glass Slipper, where he was for once

the insider instead of having his nose pressed to someone else’s window. Knowing that

he couldn’t be transformed he had to settle for losing himself in Afrique’s bed at The

Glass Slipper.

General Kendall, smoking a cigar in the corral, the colloquial name for the parlor room

where the girls were paraded for the benefit of the patrons, was enjoying himself

immensely. If he was thinking of his boss at all, it was of the heart attack this scene he

was enacting would cause LaValle. As for his family, they were the farthest thing from

his mind. Unlike Feir, who always went for the same girl, Kendall was a man of diverse

tastes when it came to the women of The Glass Slipper, and why not? He had virtually no

choice in any other areas of his life. If not here, where?

He sat on the purple velvet sofa, one arm thrown along the back, watching through

slitted eyes the slow parade of flesh. He had already made his choice; the girl was in her

room, undressing, but when Bev had come to him, suggesting that he might want

something a bit more special-another girl to create a threesome-he hadn’t hesitated. He’d

been just about to make his choice when he saw someone. She was impossibly tall, with

skin like the darkest cocoa, and was so regal in her beauty that he broke out into a sweat.

He caught Bev’s eye and she came over. Bev was attuned to his desires. “I want her,”

he said to Bev, pointing at the regal beauty.

“I’m afraid Kiki’s not available,” she said.

This answer made Kendall want her all the more. Venal witch; she knew him too well.

He produced five hundred-dollar bills. “How about now?” he said.

Bev, true to form, pocketed the money. “Leave it to me,” she said.

The general watched her pick her way through the girls to where Kiki was standing,

somewhat apart from the others. While he observed the conversation his heart began to

beat in his chest like a war drum. He was sweating so much he was obliged to wipe his

palms on the purple velvet of the sofa arm. If she said no, what would he do? But she

wasn’t saying no, she was looking across the corral at him, with a smile that raised his

temperature a couple of degrees. Jesus, he wanted her!

As if in a trance, he saw her coming across the room toward him, her hips swaying,

that maddening half smile on her face. He stood up, with some difficulty, he noted. He

felt like a seventeen-year-old virgin. Kiki held out her hand and he took it, terrified that she’d be repulsed if it was damp, but nothing interfered with that half smile.

There was something intensely pleasurable about allowing her to lead him past all the

other girls, enjoying the looks of envy on their faces.

“Which room are you in?” Kiki murmured in a voice like honey.

Kendall, inhaling her spicy, musky scent, could not find his voice. He pointed, and

again she led him as if he were on a leash until they were standing in front of the door.

“Are you sure you want two girls tonight?” She brushed her hip against his. “I’m more

than enough for any man I’ve been with.”

The general felt a delicious shiver travel down the length of his spine, lodge itself like

a heated arrow between his thighs. Reaching out, he opened the door. Lena writhed on

the bed, naked. He heard the door close behind him. Without thinking, he undressed

himself, then he stepped out of the puddle of his clothes, took Kiki’s hand, padded over

to the bed. He knelt on it, she let go of his hand, and he fell on Lena.

He felt Kiki’s hands on his shoulders, and, groaning, he lost himself within Lena’s lush

body. The pleasure built along with the anticipation of Kiki’s long, lithe body pressed

against his glistening back.

It took him some time to become aware that the quick flashes of light weren’t a result

of the quickened firing of nerve endings behind his eyes. Drugged with sex and desire, he

was slow to turn his head directly into another battery of flashes. Even then, negative

images dancing behind his retinas, his fogged brain couldn’t quite piece together what

was happening, and his body continued to move rhythmically against Lena’s pliant flesh.

Then the camera flashed again, he belatedly raised his hand to shield his eyes, and

there was stark reality staring him in the face. Kiki, still dressed, continued to take shots of him and Lena.

“Smile, General,” she said in that sensual, honeyed voice. “There’s nothing else you

can do.”

I’ve got too much anger inside me,” Petra said. “It’s like one of those flesh-eating

diseases you read about.”

“Dachau is toxic for you, so is Munich now,” Bourne said. “You’ve got to go away.”

She moved to the left-hand lane of the autobahn, put on some real speed. They were on

their way back to Munich in the car Pelz’s nephew had bought for him under the

nephew’s name. The police might still be looking for both of them, but their only lead

was Petra’s Munich apartment, and neither of them had any intention of going anywhere

near it. As long as she didn’t get out of the car, Bourne felt it was relatively safe for her to drive him back into the city.

“Where would I go?” she said.

“Leave Germany altogether.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Turn tail and run, you mean.”

“Why would you see it that way?”

“Because I’m German; because I belong here.”

“The Munich police are looking for you,” he said.

“And if they find me, then I’ll do my time for killing your friend.” She flashed her

headlights so a slower car could get out of her way. “Meanwhile I have money. I can

live.”

“But what will you do?”

She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m going to take care of Virgil. He needs drying out;

he needs a friend.” Nearing the city, she changed lanes so she could exit when she needed

to. “The cops won’t find me,” she said with an odd kind of certainty, “because I’m taking

him far away from here. Virgil and me, we’ll be two outlaws learning a whole new way

of life.”

Egon Kirsch lived in the northern district of Schwabing, known as the young

intellectual quarter because of the mass of university students that flooded its streets,

cafйs, and bars.

As they came abreast of Schwabing’s main plaza, Petra pulled over. “When I was

younger I used to hang out here with my friends. We were all militants, then, agitating for change, and we felt connected to this place because it was from here that the

Freiheitsaktion Bayer, one of the most famed resistance groups, commandeered Radio

Munich near the end of the war. They broadcast messages to the populace to seize and

arrest all local Nazi leaders, and to signal their rejection of the regime by waving white

sheets out of their windows-an action that was punishable by death, by the way. And they

managed to save a large number of civilian lives as the American army swept in.”