Panzerfaust

Chapter 41 - Wünsche

September 11th, 1945, Adlerhorst, Bayern, Greater German Reich

an: that's the real Max Wünsche in the left corner. what an angry boy

'Is he always like this... intense?'

'Yes, Madame. But he won't mind us using his private diner.'

The sun has already set by the time they emerged from the Führer's lair, as the blond officer leads her into a lavishly decorated dinning box with candlelights and artpieces from around the world, most likely scavenged from all the prestigious museum the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler visited during their invasion of Europe.

We can see them, but they cannot see us.

Sitting above the large dinning room full of guests in the glass terrace across Sturmbannführer Max Wünsche, Sophia Skorzeny absentmindedly sloshes the orange sludge of the roasted pumpkin soup with a silver spoon, watching the tiny piece of croutons soak up and dive to the bottom of the bowl, never to be seen again.

'Is the soup not to your taste?' The officer asks as he cuts a generous portion of his steak tartare, offering it towards her. 'Would you like to taste my appetizer?

'Hmm? No, it tastes just fine. I'm just a little... tired' 

He eats just like Otto, she realized. Some men ate with finery rivaling women, some ate like nickpicking birds and some ate with absolute pleasure - just like her husband; they devoured. 

Like wolves. 

Strong jawlines working on the meat between their sharp teeth, gnawing with delight.

'Herr Wünsche, I... must ask you a very indecent favour.'

Blue eyes flash with caution from the food on the porcelain plate to her face. 'Yes?'

'Could you please pull my heels off? They're wrecking havoc on my ankle and since I can't really lean forward...' Stroking up a palm on her belly, she feels her daughter respond to the comforting touch inside her womb.

The man's lips turn upward in amusement. 'This is that really indecent favour?'

'Yes.' Another blond officer's face swim into her mind confusing her friendship with flirt as he pushed against her body, intruding hands crawling across her skin. 'I-i-i just don't want you to think anything more into it...'

'Alright, Ma'am. Let me see those indecent ankles.' Putting down his utensils, he slips from his seat to kneel down by her foot, taking one leg into his grip, looking up at her with a rapacious grin. 'I feel like one of those fancy English lords from a Jane Austen novel.'

'Jane Austen?' She muses as warm hands unclasps the buckle cutting into her tender skin. 'Like you ever read anything by her.'

'I finished all her works. I was wounded and then captured by British troops in the Falais pocket and spent some quality time in Hampshire in a prisoner camp. All they let me read was sappy romance books. Nur auf Englisch, natürlich.'

'Oh. I personally prefer Charlotte Brontë.'

'I bet. Her heroines suit you more.'  Wünsche grabs an empty chair and places her now free legs on it before returning to his seat.  'A little Kätzchen; with no net to ensnare her: a free human being with an independent will. Quite a dangerous profession in a place like this.'

'Is it wrong to carve out our own place in the world - men and women alike?' Sophia wasn't really sure if she was asking him or just asking in general.

'No. But some people do it with such fervour they ignore those they trample underfoot on their way to... self realization.'

'I must admit I had a very bad impression of you, Max.' She says after the waiter set the aromatic turkey roast with pomegranate seeds for her, and schnitzel with baked potatoes for the Sturmbannführer, then disappeared behind the door.

'Me too, about you.' The off handed way he delivered that sentence was unsettling, as if he was talking about the weather outside.

'Oh.' Taking a sip of her cherry wine, she leans back in her seat. 'You go first then.'

'I thought you married the Kommandant for power. I've seen women marry for money, marry for fame... You came through me as someone who married Otto Skorzeny to grasp any potential for herself after her family was ousted from might.'

'Thought? As in past sentence?' Running her fingertip absentmindedly over the edge of the wineglass, like the answer wouldn't matter at all. 'What made you change your mind about me?'

'I observed you. And I observed you observing me.' Wünsche raises his own glass towards her before taking a sip. 'I saw you desperately trying to hold your marriage together - after refusing a higher ranking man's romance. I saw you taking care of the Fölkersam baby and I saw you looking at an old cherry tree and thinking about the new life inside you; I saw you fighting when Otto Skorzeny was just too tired to fight.'

Taking a sip too, Sophia averts his gaze for a second before asking again.

'How do you know Peiper?'

'We were in the same class in Junkerschule Bad Tölz.'

'Ah, so you two are good friends?' 

'Fuck no. I just told you I hate opportunistic cunts and you ask me if I am friends with Jochen fucking Peiper?' Wünsche stabs his fork into his schnitzel as if it wore the other officer's face. 'Hanke told me about... you and him. Your turn.'

'Alright.' Leaning back towards the table across him, she sets her own eyes hard on the German officer across her. 'I think you were sent to my husband's unit to keep tabs on him. I know something terrible happened in Moscow but nobody tells me the truth; the whole truth. All I get is crumbs and crumbs of informations and I see my husband suffer silently in himself of what I can only guess is survivor's guilt.'

'If I tell you what I know of what happened during the Battle of the Kremlin, would you trust me when I say I'm not your husband's Gestapo agent?'

'Maybe.'

'You don't give your trust easily, huh?' The officer winks at her, chewing on a piece of veal with delight.

'Do you?'

'Well I am saying if the Gestapo were hiring, you would be my first candidate, Frau Skorzeny.'

'I'll assume you meant that as a compliment.'

'You're good at this, you know. Finding out things, saying the right things at the right time... and being beautiful is a great help too.' 

'Flattery aside, I still cannot see what a Panzercommander like you wants in an elite Fallschirmjäger Battalion like Friedenthall.'

'You think I'm not good enough for them?' She can hear the tiny edge of indignation in the man's voice, slightly offended. Now I got you, Max Wünsche.

'We have seen that even my husband can make the mistake of putting his trust in the wrong man.'

Looking up at her from behind his glass, the man's voice snarls back at her as dark blue eyes are scanning her reactions like roentgen beams.

'In the wrong man? Or in the wrong woman?' Then with a tilt of his head Sturmbannführer Max Wünsche empties his glass, then sets it on their table with a clink. 

'No, Sophia Carolina Skorzeny, I am not your husband's Gestapo handler; I am yours.'