Sleeper Agent Read Free

synapse in his tired brain snapped shut. A warning alarm flashed. Wait!
    “No, sir,” he said. “I worked in Greenwich Village.”
    The officer looked up quickly. “What? You are changing your story?”
    “No, sir. That’s what I said before.”
    “Impossible! Have you been lying to us?”
    “No, sir. No.”
    “Then what is the truth? Did you work there, or live there?”
    “I worked there, sir.”
    “Don’t lie to us again.”
    “I didn’t lie, sir.”
    The officer gripped the table with his two hands. He leaned forward, suddenly dangerous. “You are calling me a liar?”
    “No. No, sir!”
    “Then who lies? Answer me! Who?"
    Rage built up in him. God damn, it’s unfair! What the hell do they want from me? I’ve told them the right things. Don’t they know by now?
    At the same time he wanted to scream his frustration at them . . . and to plead for reason. For compassion. But he knew he had to cope in other ways.
    “I must have been . . . unclear, sir. I worked in the village. I lived on Twenty-fourth Street”
    “You are quite certain now?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Perhaps you should be a little more careful with your answers in the future.” It was the interrogator with the steel-rimmed glasses. The man’s whole mien was provocatively overbearing.
    The young lieutenant felt the fury rise in him, threatening to explode. It took all his willpower to control himself. He trembled. Not from fatigue alone.
    The older Gestapo officer gave a dry cough. ‘Tell me, Lieutenant Crane, what—”
    “ Kane, sir. Robert Kane. First lieutenant, 032—”
    “Yes, yes.” The Gestapo man interrupted him curtly. ‘Tell me, Lieutenant Kane, what is your favorite meal?”
    His stomach suddenly contracted painfully. “Meal, sir?”
    “Yes. Food. Food, Lieutenant. What is your favorite?”
    His mind was all at once tilled with a phantasma of foods. He felt ravenous. “Steak, I guess.”
    “With potatoes?”
    “Yes, sir. With potatoes.”
    “How do you prefer it? Rare?”
    Startled, he realized incredibly that his mouth was watering. He swallowed. “Medium rare, sir.”
    “And what do you like to drink with it? Wine? Beer?” The question from the younger of the two interrogators.
    The lieutenant turned toward him. “I . . . I like beer, sir.”
    “Ah, yes. There is nothing like a glass of nice cool beer, is that not so?” The Gestapo man reached over and poured himself a glass of water from a carafe on the table. He drank deeply with evident pleasure.
    The young man watched, unable to tear his eyes from him. He tried to swallow. His dry tongue stuck painfully to the roof of his mouth.
    The Gestapo officer looked at him speculatively. “Perhaps you would like a glass of water, too?”
    He poured another glass and set it at the edge of the table. “Here. Take it.”
    He hesitated. He stared at the glass. It filled the room. It was another trick. Dammit, he knew it was another trick. But he’d never before in his life craved anything as avidly as he did that glass of water. The inside of his mouth crawled in anticipation. Yet . . . he hesitated. He could not face another disappointment, another rebuff.
    “Go on, take it,” the Gestapo interrogator urged him. He was smiling, watching the young man before him. His steel-rimmed glasses shone with reflected light. The lenses seemed impossibly large.
    ‘Take it! . . . Take it!” His soft voice was persuasive. His spectacles hypnotic. ‘Take it!”
    The young man reached hesitantly toward the tantalizing glass. His hand trembled. Water. He’d never seen anything as clear, as fresh, as desirable. Almost . . . almost, and his hand would touch it
    And he would drink.
    “Lieutenant Kane!” The older Gestapo man spoke quietly. “There is no reason you should be permitted to drink, is there? No. Not now.” His voice grew cold and harsh. “I shall give you a direct order not to drink. Lieutenant! You will not drink!” He leaned back in his chair