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“What brings you here, Baker?” Fulmar asked. His eyes were contemptuous and wary.
“Westerman,” Baker said.
Fulmar thought that over.
“Westerman, then,” he said.
“Well, I had to come over here, and I thought I’d say hello,” Baker said. He saw the chill deepen in Fulmar’s eyes, and quickly added,“I heard about the promotion and the Silver Star. Congratulations.”
“Bullshit,” Fulmar said flatly.
“I need a word with you,” Baker said, giving up. He wondered why he had bothered trying to be friendly. It had been necessary, twice, to cause unpleasant things to happen to Eric Fulmar. And Eric Fulmar was not the sort to let bygones be bygones.
Fulmar took a sip of his Scotch, then turned to look at Baker out of his cold blue eyes.
He would have made an SS officer to warm the cockles of Hitler’s heart, Baker thought. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, muscular, erect, the perfect Aryan.
“Have your word,” Fulmar said.
“Not here,” Baker said. “Can we go to your room?”
Fulmar said something to the bartender, who picked up Fulmar’s glass and pushed it into a bed of ice behind the bar. Then Fulmar picked up his machine-pistol and walked out of the bar. Baker followed him.
They rode wordlessly two floors down in an elevator and then walked down a corridor to Fulmar’s suite, a small sitting room and a much larger bedroom with a balcony. The balcony overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and a rather stunning beach.
“I don’t know if this place is secure or not,” Fulmar said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Baker said. “This isn’t going to take long.”
He took from the breast pocket of his tunic two 3×8-inch sheets of corrugated paperboard, held together by rubber bands, and then a fountain pen, a large, somewhat ungainly instrument.
“Is that German?” Fulmar asked, his curiosity aroused. Baker nodded his head.
“I used to have one something like it,” Fulmar said.
“Sit down, Eric,” Baker said, nodding toward a small writing desk as he removed the rubber bands from the sheets of cardboard.
When Fulmar had seated himself, Baker handed him a postcard and two sheets of paper cut to the same size. Fulmar examined the postcard. It was a photograph of the Kurhotel in Bad Ems.
“What’s all this?”
“I have only the one postcard,” Baker said. “So we can’t take the risk of fucking this up. What I want you to do is copy the message from the one sheet of paper onto the other sheet of paper. Copy what is written exactly.”
Fulmar looked at the piece of paper. The postcard was to be addressed to Herr Joachim Freienstall, 74-76 Beerenstrasse, Berlin/Zehlendorf. The message (in German) was “Sorry I missed you. Please give my regards to my father and Prof. Dyer. Kindest regards, Willi von K.”
“What the hell is this?” Fulmar asked. “Who’s Freienstall? For that matter, who the hell is ‘Willi von K’?”
“That has nothing to do with you,” Baker said.
“Bullshit,” Fulmar said. “Why do you need me to write it?”
“Let me put it this way,” Baker said coldly. “You don’t have the need to know, Eric.”
“Then write your own fucking postcard,” Fulmar said.
“Just do what I ask you, Eric,” Baker ordered. “This is important.”
They locked eyes for a moment.
