of his bureau, beneath his underwear."
"Then I ask this only because I must. Did he tape your activities this evening?"
"Certainly not, it would be too embarrassing. After I met with your associate in the ladies' room, I saw, as they say, my way out.
I always carry an eyedropper filled with a sleep-inducing narcotic in the event the evening becomes too repulsive."
"Yet you're an addict yourself, aren't you?"
"It would be ridiculous to deny it. I have sufficient dosages to last me three days. After that I have been promised to be put on private subsistence in America.. .. I did not choose to become an addict, sit, I was led into it, as it was for so many of my sisters in East Berlin. We all became high-priced official hostesses and consequently addicts so we could survive."
"We're out of here," yelled Witkowski.
"These kids are victims!"
"Then let's go, Colonel-mine," said Latham.
"Captain Dietz will get his chance on the Rhine after all."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
One by one, the disoriented bodyguards converged in the hallway outside Tratipman's door. Each of their accounts of what happened was different, yet each was the same, the variations due to self serving excuses, for none really knew what had happened. That they had been attacked was a given, but none was seriously injured.
"We'd better go inside and see if there's damage," said the man whose breath was born in a distillery.
"Nobody could get inside!" protested the guard who manned the hallway desk.
"There would be a crowd up here if anyone had tried.
The alarm simultaneously alerts the lobby security and the police."
"Still, we were assaulted and drugged," insisted the bodyguard whose hands roamed around his stomach and private parts, scratching furiously.
"I hope to God you're seeing a doctor," said the whisky-prone man.
"I don't want to catch what you've got."
"Then don't have a picnic on the banks of the Regnitz with a slut who makes love in the weeds. The bitch! .. .
We must go inside, if only to learn whether we have to get the hell out of Nuremberg."
"I'll deactivate the alarm and free the door," said the desk guard, bending over unsteadily and touching a series of numbers on his console.
"There, it's unlocked."
"You go first," instructed the riverbank lover.
Four minutes later the threesome returned to the hallway, perplexed, uncertain, each in his own way stunned.
"I don't know what to think," said the large man.
"The doctor is sleeping peacefully, nothing was upset, no papers in his study disturbed-- And no young woman!" interrupted the scratch merchant.
"Youthink .. .
"I know," pronounced the guard whose skin was driving him crazy.
"I tried to tell the doctor subtly, you understand, that she was not good for him. She lives with a hot-tempered policeman who's separated from his wife, and, God knows, he can't afford her habit."
"The police .. . the alarms .. . she could have done it all with her boyfriend's help," said the hallway guard, sitting down at his desk and picking up the phone from his console.
"There's one way to find out," he continued.
"We'll call her apartment." Reading from a list of prominent numbers encased in plastic, he dialed. A full minute passed and he replaced the phone.
"There's no answer.
They've either left the city or are out somewhere establishing an alibi."
"For what?" asked the guard, nervously drinking from his flask, unnerved because it was now empty.
"I don't know."
"Then none of us knows .. . anything." The bodyguard was adamant.
"The doctor is fine, the whore left on her own volitionHeinrich can verify that-and everything is normal, right?"
"Why not?" agreed the guard named Heinrich at the desk.
"Even Herr Doktor Traupman would find it acceptable. He'd rather not see those women in the morning."
"So then, my comrades, nothing happened," said the man, glancing at his empty flask.
"I will continue my watch, stopping in the garage and my automobile for replenishment."
The floodlights shining down on the docks of the marina on the Rhine River in Bonn were in full force. All but one would be extinguished when the small powerboat left its slip In a matter of minutes. A half-mile away, in darkness, was another craft, its hull and deck painted a deep hunter green, its engine off, bobbing up and down in the gentle river currents; its inhabitants were in wet suits, scuba tanks strapped to their backs. There were six of them, the sixth person, a captain, an agent of the [email protected] Of the five prepared to go underwater, only Karin de Vries had to vociferously justify her inclusion.
"I've probably had more experience