She said: “We didn’t approach you before: you were being studied.” She knocked ash from the cigarette. “You did well under the circumstances—quite well.”
She waited—and Otto knew he must speak. He said, awkwardly:
“I did not know what to do. It was difficult. I decided that I should act in all matters like a Jorgensen.” He wished she would move her eyes.
She dropped the cigarette into an ash tray, but did not shift her gaze.
“Having made the first mistake,” she said, “you were right. But it was a bad mistake—a dereliction of duty, Captain.”
The tone was cold yet hotly stinging, like a lash. She said:
“You are honoured by being chosen for special duty—and you deliberately endanger your life by endeavouring to save the lives of enemies. It is only the purest chance that you were saved. Another hour and you’d have drowned; but without the burden you could have lasted far, far longer. . . . A bad beginning, Captain!”
The tone was harsher even than the words. A tinge of red showed in Otto’s face, and he stood yet more rigidly.
She waited, but he still did not speak. She said sharply:
“Have you nothing to say?”
“A very little.” Otto’s speech was slow and heavy. “It was . . . accident. The boy showed a way to get off the ship. It was the only way. So the three of us were together when we jumped.”
A lie came to him and he clutched at it. He said:
“Something struck my head. I do not remember much until I was in the water a long time. You understand?”
“Go on,” she said.
“We were all together in . . . in a knot.” Speech was easier now, and the words came more quickly. “I do not know who was helping the other among us. I made great effort, but my head was strange again from the blow. . . . Somehow the woman’s hair is tied around my neck. I do not know whether the boy did this, or the woman. And the boy’s hands are . . . are locked around my life jacket. I cannot get loose without my head going under the water. . . . That is all there is. After a very long time, the boat found us.”
He felt suddenly flat and wilted. The lie which had seemed so good was ashes in his mouth. He wondered drearily what would happen to him now.
She said: “I see. It is possible—quite possible.” She seemed to be thinking aloud, but her voice was clear and hard again when she went on. She said:
“I will tell you now, Captain, that whether or not you were guilty of dereliction of duty, things have worked themselves out well for you—very well. You are solidly established as a gallant, German-hating Swede; so solidly that it would be almost impossible to make the fools believe that you were in the service of the Reich even if one tried to give them proof. That is excellent—more than we could have hoped for! On top of that, Nils Jorgensen will shortly be a
She took another cigarette from the silver box, and this time Otto had a match burning and ready. She tilted back her chair and looked up at him through a blue veil of smoke. He met the gaze with eyes studiously blank, but behind them his mind raced. He was feeling better now: the lie had worked and the reprimand was past and he had not disgraced himself in the new service and he was rapidly adjusting to the revolutionary changes which had been wrought in the past quarter-hour; in the fifteen minutes which had seen an invisible wand transmute Nils Jorgensen back into Otto Falken, and a beautiful, exciting benefactress into a superior officer, harsh-tongued and autocratic. He stood motionless, wondering at the confusion of feeling which surged through him beneath the racing thoughts.
“So now,” she said at last, and as if there had been no pause, “you can begin duty, Captain.” She sat straight now and ground out the half-smoked cigarette. She took her eyes from Otto’s face for the first time, looking down at her hand as if in thought—and he immediately became acutely conscious of her beauty: it struck him strangely and without volition of thought. He felt almost as if he were seeing it for the first time.
Unconsciously, he relaxed the tautness of his stance a little; then, as she looked up at him, snapped once more into rigid immobility.
“Pay careful attention to what you’re going to hear.” Her words were slower than before. “You are going to be told a great deal. And you are going to receive your orders. You will repeat them to me afterwards.”
“Yes,” said Otto. “I understand.”
She leant her arms upon the edge of the table and began to talk.
She said:
“We are servants—soldiers—of the Fuehrer and the Reich. There are many thousands of us here in North America. Most of us, like myself and you, are German-born, but none of us are the ‘fifth columnists’ they write about in the newspapers. Nor are we the ‘Nazi agents’ pursued by the energetic bloodhounds of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and no one of us is remotely likely to be uncovered by the clumsy rake of Mr. Dies. . . .