The only man who ever frightened Maria sat behind his large desk in the Katzekeller office, a large space reconfiguring several rooms once notorious for whores sucking and fucking johns before the big war, the johns having been customers at the bar downstairs and the whores employees of the bar. A couple of other rooms remained used for such business, but were much larger and much more luxurious. His hazel eyes, similar to hers, gazed at her in their usual placid depth which hid the true cruelness of his soul. They also hid the pleasure only revealed with a tightened mouth and a quick bit of panting as the voluptuous blonde waitress kneeling between his legs swallowed desperately his spurting seed, her eyes tearing from the pressure he exerted at the back of her mouth forcing his cock into her throat and preventing her breath. At last released from his hand, she gasped, lapped up the last of his spend oozing from his softening spear and returned it to its place inside his fine wool slacks, very carefully zipping them. Crawling out from under the desk, the blowsy blonde beauty exited the office without meeting Maria's eyes.
Again his hand waved her silent when Maria began to speak. He smiled at her frustration, crinkling the large scar on his right cheek. The man just entering his sixtieth year of life with a whitening blond full head of hair would have been considered quite handsome in classic Aryan fashion had it not been for the scar. His less resilient, aging flesh had not sagged as men his age tended to do losing the battle of the bulge and their youthful visage. Instead it tightened like a stretched canvas making his face skull like, a sort of death mask in life. The fact that it was triangular with similar features to Maria shouldn't be surprising since he had impregnated a woman housed with other women chosen by the Third Reich for their Aryan beauty for that specific purpose and had conceived Maria. The Nazi defeat had caused those master race children to be orphans. The Colonel had deliberately plucked her from the foster home in her mid teens to groom her to be what she had become, a perfect second generation SS officer.
"Bring him in!" he roared after a knock resounded on the door.
Two Aryan goons carried a writhing Karl, his wrists and ankles shackled and his mouth gagged with duct tape and tossed him into the chair beside Maria where the Colonel gestured. While one pressed him down at his chest, the other goon removed a cuff from his wrist and reattached it after circling the chain through a metal bar in the back rest of the chair.
"Remove the gag," ordered the Colonel.
With a sadistic smile, a goon tore off the tape.
"Ow. Motherfucker," Karl responded angrily. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Thank you Sergeant," said the Colonel quietly but with considerable command. "You may leave."
The men bowed and two strides later exited the office, closing the door crisply but quietly behind them.
"And I thought you were a charmer," spoke the Colonel wryly, menace oozing from the words.
Glancing at Maria, Karl saw something he wished he didn't: fear. "Oh shit," he thought. Karl answered the scary man with his bravest smile, "You're not a woman."
The Colonel chuckled, amused, but the chuckle dripped with menace. "Obviously."
"What do you want?" asked Karl.
"Very good," smiled the Colonel. "Already receptive."
"I'm only an actor," said Karl, fighting the whine.
"Only?" chuckled the Colonel. "Such humbleness. So out of character. How close are you to Yablonski?"
"Who?"
"Maria?" the Colonel smiled at her. She quieted her shiver and pulled out the photograph of Yablonski and Gretchen and put it on the desk in front of Karl.
"They're cousins," Karl shrugged. "I...respect him of course. He's a fine playwright. We've chatted. I guess we're friends."
"Chatted?" the scary man leaned forward.
"About acting."
"And politics?"
Karl swallowed. "Of course. Nothing specific though."
"You knew he used Gretchen to communicate his plans."
"Not so much knew as suspected. But like I said, I know nothing specific. Gretchen..."
The Colonel smiled. "Yes? Go on."
Karl sighed. "From the beginning of our troupe, Yablonski added to our plays, giving Gretchen a monologue, very eloquent and stirring, though oddly phrased. The grammar or semantics or whatever was kind of twisted, weird, but actually kind of poetic. It was like a signature thing for us, Gretchen's odd speech midway through a play. I found it rather Brechtian in its distancing effect, flattening the performance and making it more...didactic perhaps? But in a good way."
"But the twisty words..."
"Yes. Code maybe?"
The Colonel nodded and smiled at Maria. Returning his gaze to Karl, he asked him, "What do you think of Major Braun?"
"She's exquisite but chilly most of the time, like a cold flame."
"Most of the time?"
"Uhm..."
The Colonel leaned forward again. "Not so chilly in bed?"
For some reason Karl choked on the words. "She's white hot."
The Colonel nodded and pursed his lips. "Have you had better?"
Karl shook his head, stilling it and gazing at the fantastically sexy Maria, seeing her eyes change, dissolving the coolness and the hint of fear, becoming warmer until they burned with lust. Despite the moment in the presence of the Stasi commander, he felt his cock swell and his eyes respond in kind.
The Colonel watched the interaction with pleasure. Having seen her fucking many times on surreptitious tapes, her skills obvious, a brilliant succubus stealing men's secrets rather than their souls, he felt lust like any man would, at least any real man. To him she was two entities, the sensuous, incredibly seductive body used to pleasure men while pleasuring herself inexhaustibly, and his formidable daughter, his pride and joy, whom he loved like a daughter without a hint of incest. More than any other example, he took pride in the discipline of his mind enabling the strength to create such a separation.
"Is he as good as Wolfgang?" he asked his daughter.
"No one is," Maria replied. Startled by the question a moment after her response, she studied the Colonel. "Why?"
The Colonel pressed his fingertips together. "I'm afraid your lover has gone rogue. Or should I say he has stopped being a rogue wolf." He pulled a thick old file, yellowed, with ragged edges, from a desk drawer and placed it facing Maria and Karl. "Would Maria be enough of a reward for changing sides, Karl? Or how about your own touring company of Brechtian players well compensated by the state?"
Opening the file, Maria gasped at a photograph of a wolf, his eyes two bright lights, his paws pressing down on a man, SS by the look of the tattered uniform, whose neck had been torn apart to the point of near decapitation.
"What has this to do with Yablonski?' Karl asked, baffled.
"I believe you when you say you have no intelligence regarding that silly man," said the Colonel. "And yes, your friendship could be useful, especially with Gretchen's disappearance."
"Gretchen's gone?" asked Karl.
The Colonel nodded and pointed at the photograph. "With Wolf. Her and four others of your subversive little troupe. I'm afraid she's in more danger than the Stasi could provide."
Karl couldn't help snorting. "I'm afraid that's impossible."
A proudly evil grin squeezed from the edges of the Colonel's mouth. "At least for Gretchen you may be right. We are interested in her as we are with Yablonski. We need the source of the code. I'd hoped Wolf would accomplish that without use of torture. Not that I'm inured to such processes. In fact I quite looked forward to playing with the feisty little firecracker. Unfortunately in both cases, Yablonski and your Gretchen, they have parental protection shall I say. In fact that's the point. I'm certain their diplomatic parents are essential to Yablonski's plans, or are the creators of them. Not certain enough unfortunately."
"You're crazy if you think I'll help get Gretchen tortured!" Karl roared.
"I promise nothing will happen to her if you help me. And your help could save your other friends."