The Tristan Betrayal - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,172

me for disturbing you, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, but I need your assistance."

Frau Eva Hauptman noticed that her best friend, Mitzi-Molli Kruger, was acting a bit superior. The box in which they sat, which belonged to the Hauptmans, seemed positively cavernous without their husbands. Maybe that was why she was paying more attention to Mitzi-Molli than she might normally have. Mitzi-Molli's air of superiority rankled her, and the worst thing about it was, Eva couldn't say anything about it. She knew what Mitzi-Molli was thinking she'd known the woman long enough, since finishing school in Hannover. Mitzi-Molli had taken pleasure in Eva's humiliation. She was always jealous of Eva anyway of Eva's beauty, even her choice of a husband so it must have given her no small pleasure to see her friend embarrassed that way. Imagine, that cad had pretended not to know her! He couldn't have forgotten her in Paris they'd had a brief but ardent affair, and Eva Hauptman was a vixen in bed: men did not forget her.

No, Daniel Eigen hadn't forgotten her, of course but why had he pretended not to know her?

Maybe he was here with another woman that would explain it yet she hadn't seen him talking with a woman. He was talking to some boring-looking Tunte, with not a woman in sight.

Eva began thinking about how to let Mitzi-Molli know about Daniel Eigen's rakish reputation. Eigen, she would explain to Mitzi-Molli, must have been embarrassed to see her, given how passionate their relationship had been; surely he was still in love with her, and no doubt he was at the ballet with another woman. That was why he had acted so strangely!

As she was about to turn to Mitzi-Molli and casually, ever so casually, say a few words about Daniel Eigen, the door to the box opened. The women turned to see a black-uniformed SS man standing there.

The SS men always made her uneasy, even though her husband was highly placed in the Reich. They were arrogant, drunk with power, and they really didn't know their place. She had heard far too many stories of people from good families, well-connected society people, who had been taken in to the SS headquarters in Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, never to return.

The SS man pointed at her and began speaking, rudely and without even introducing himself. "Can you come with me, please," he said.

"Excuse me?" Eva replied in her haughtiest voice.

"We need to clear something up."

"The ballet is about to begin," Eva said. "Whatever you want, it can wait until later."

"It's a matter of utmost urgency," the SS man said. "You greeted a man in the lobby an American."

"He's not American, he's Argentine. What about him?"

Nazi Germany's security service, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, was divided into seven distinct departments. One of them, Department VI in charge of foreign intelligence and counterespionage was so large that it had its own headquarters building, a modern four-story building located at Berkaerstrasse 32, at the corner of the Hohenzollerndamm.

Less than one hour after SS Sturmbannftihrer Rudolf Dietrich placed an urgent call from a special SS call box on Unter den Linden, in front of the opera house, a senior official knocked on the door of the chief of Department VI and entered the corner office. Both men worked long hours, but the department chief, SS Oberfrihrer Walter Rapp at thirty-two, the youngest department chief in all of the SS seemed never to leave his office. Rapp prided himself on his attention to the smallest detail. He read every intelligence report, vetted all major expenses, even ran his own agents. He was said to have an ear up to every wall.

The junior man, SS Standartenfrihrer Hermann Ehlers, spoke quickly, because he knew that his chief had little patience for interruptions. When Ehlers had been speaking for no more than a minute or two, Rapp broke in.

"This American if he was exposed by SD Paris, why was he in Moscow?"

"I've searched the card files myself, and I don't know much more than bits and pieces, sir. I know he killed several of our men in Paris after his reseau was eliminated."

"His real name?"

"Stephen Metcalfe. He works for an American espionage ring founded by a spymaster named Corcoran."

"Corcoran's name I know." Rapp sat up, now intent on the junior man. "I have my own lines into Corcoran's ring. What do you know about what he was doing in Moscow?"

"Very little. But I have the summary here of the agent report dispatched by our asset in the Lubyanka. The NKVD detained