Free Christopher's Ghosts by Charles McCarry Page B

if stepping out of somebody else’s underwear and cursed loudly.
    “Under arrest?” Rima said. “For what?” It was a pointless question. Everyone knew that no one in the Reich had a right to know why he or she was being arrested. But for a moment, snatched so rudely from her reverie, Rima thought that the policeman might be taking her into custody because he had been attacked by Blümchen.
    “Control your dog!” the policeman said.
    She gave the cop an astonished grin. Ear-tips to toes, Blümchen wasno more than seven inches tall. The policeman took Rima by the arm and set off down the sidewalk. Blümchen continued to dance around the two of them, barking incessantly and lunging at the policeman. The policeman kicked at the dog. Blümchen counterattacked, sinking its needle teeth into the burnished leather of his boot. Despite the desperation she felt, or maybe because of it, Rima was overcome by giggling. She was only sixteen, after all, and whatever she had said to Paul in the American church, she did not really think, especially on this particular morning, that she was going to die. Not at her age, not when she had just learned that human happiness was so deep, so sweet, such a surprise.
    At the police station Rima was booked and made to hand over the contents of her bag and pockets, and also Blümchen. “That dog belongs to Miss Wetzel of number eleven Gutenbergstrasse,” she said. “I am only the dog walker. If the dog is not back on time, the owner will be frantic.” No one in the police station seemed to hear anything she said.
    In another room, Rima was stripped and searched by a gaunt unsmiling female with a man’s gruff voice who smelled of decaying teeth and strong antiseptic. This woman put a finger between Rima’s legs, shook it disgustedly and washed her hands. Then she pointed to the sink and shouted, “Wash yourself!”
    After Rima was dressed, the woman marched her back to the booking room. To the elderly policeman in charge she said in a loud voice, “No contraband discovered! Evidence of very recent fornication noted!”
    Every sentence this woman uttered ended in an exclamation point. The elderly policeman, silent and expressionless, dipped his steel pen in an ink well and entered her words in his log.
    Rima expected to be locked in a cell, but she was told instead to sit at a table in classroom posture—feet flat on the floor, knees together, hands folded, spine vertical but not touching the back of the chair, head erect, eyes straight ahead. Holding this position required strength, alertness, stamina. It made the mind as well as the body ache. It made the urethra burn. It had kept generations of children in order. It had been invented by an evil genius.
    After a long time, much more than an hour, the gaunt female, now wearing a wide leather belt from which a truncheon dangled, told Rima in ringing tones to stand up. She then placed her in handcuffs, took her by the arm and marched her to a back door. Outside, an Opel sedan waited. It was black like the Daimler and gleaming with wax, but smaller. A man in civilian clothes sat at the wheel. Rima got into the backseat as ordered. The woman got in beside her. The windows were curtained. There were no inside door handles. Rima’s hands were cuffed together behind her back. The thick cloth upholstery was dappled where it had had been spot-cleaned over and over again. Like the woman beside Rima, it smelled of strong disinfectant.
    They drove through city streets to another back door. Her handcuffs were removed. Another woman, this one broad and muscular, took custody of Rima. She walked her down a corridor, unlocked a door, and pointed a finger. Rima walked into a small windowless room. It was no larger than a closet and devoid of furniture apart from a bulb inside a wire cage screwed to the ceiling. The woman said, “After the door is closed, remain standing.” Rima said, as if to a teacher, “May I please go to the lavatory?” The woman