That night she had a room to herself, a double bed and clean sheets. Finding that she could not sleep on a mattress, she pulled the clean sheets and bug-free blankets onto the floor and slept there.
A three-egg omelette was not served again, and after a breakfast of combat rations and ersatz coffee, Tosca was ready to talk shop.
Méret was savouring her barley roast ersatz. Despite what she had told Gregor, just to hold a china cup was a pleasure. Gregor was twitching to get on and Tosca was gently keeping him in line.
“We were looking for you.”
“I gathered. But I don’t know how you knew who or where I was.”
“No matter—we found you.”
“And I am grateful, so much so that I will risk asking what it is you want of me.”
“Good. That saves a lot of time. We want you to work for us.”
“Where? In Russia?”
“No—you get the cherry on the top of the cake. You work for us in the West.”
“Where exactly? And where is the West?”
“The West is whatever’s west of the line made when our guys meet up with their guys. The way things are going that’ll be somewhere west of Berlin, sometime in June.”
“And in the middle are the Germans?”
“Do you really give a gnat’s ass about the Germans?”
“No.”
“When it’s all over, dust settled, borders redrawn, you join the refugee drift westward.”
“Where? France? England? America?”
“Not gonna tell you. Wherever you go we’ll keep in touch. In fact, that’s what we want of you—that you keep in touch.”
“Keep in touch without the police of France, England, or America knowing?”
“Glad you got the picture.”
“So I would be what? A sort of conduit?”
“That about sums it up.”
“I said I was grateful, but tell me . . . why would I do this for you? Why would I not simply go back to Vienna and pick up where my life left off ?”
Tosca slapped a brown cardboard file on the table and slid out three photographs. Méret reached over and spread them with her fingertips, her incredulity growing with each passing second.
“You know these people?”
“Yes.”
“They all work for us. We have them. And if we have them I think we have you.”
Méret stared at the photographs. For a whole minute she could not take her eyes off them, then the right words came to her, not her words, but the right words.
“The rule of possession.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You have me. That is all that matters. You have them . . . you have me. And if there’s one thing the Germans have taught me it is that possession is everything.”