“You’re sure of that?” she asked, and swallowed. She’d been thinking the same things I had; how could she not have been?
“I’m sure,” I said, and consciously took a good, deep breath. “He was thrown free.” He had been; that much I knew.
The cockpit was enclosed. Normally, it took tools, time, and more than one mechanic to get a driver out. It had taken a fraction of a second for Bernie to be thrown free as the car burst apart. They found him in the grass, lying very peacefully there, his cloth helmet still fastened, not a mark on him (or so they said. You can’t trust public reports of anything, especially anything the chancellor takes a special interest in).
My assurance seemed to relieve her, and she let go of my arm and went forward, squatting down to look at the detached fairing, lying nearly paired beside the rest of the wreckage. A side panel lay just beyond, the metal hideously crumpled at one end, and nearby a big, solid metal chest.
“The ice tank?” she said, pointing her chin at the chest. “Bernie told me about it.”
“Yes.” I squatted myself, with much less grace, and ran a hand over the tank. It hadn’t broken open but was very battered. The car had flipped, then, at least once...the ice tank had replaced the water-filled radiator in function, but not in position, I saw—they’d left the radiator in the front. I could see the fastenings where it had been, and shattered pieces of grille still set in the braces.
The fairings were detached—I saw that the bolts had been too short; half of them had pulled out completely. But what did that matter, as this had clearly happened as a result of the impact with the bridge.
“Do you think they did it?” Elly turned to me, sudden as a stooping hawk.
“Who?” I asked weakly. And, belatedly: “Did what?”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile.
“You saw the photos, didn’t you? The ones at the beginning.”
I had, and the memory of the images was still enough to make the hairs rise on my shoulders. The lovely shape of my car, the original, had been altered, the sides straightened and raised into massive fairings. The news photos had shown it—the skin of the car, the side panel, was warped, distorted over the left side. It hurt me to see it. The air wasn’t flowing smoothly at all. Two seconds in and something was happening.
“Them,” she said, lowering her voice, thank God, as she jerked her head toward the door, where two brown-shirted men were smoking. Her driver, I supposed, and one of the omnipresent minders; I’d seen such pairs before. I knew she didn’t mean these men specifically but what they represented: the Nazi Party and its control.
“Them? But why?” I was honestly bewildered. Bernie had no use for politics—anybody’s politics—and neither did Elly. (Elly had little use for anybody’s opinions, period. I suppose that a certain disregard for what people think is useful to an adventuress—though it likely works better if the adventuress is beautiful. But then, what doesn’t?)
That disregard didn’t keep her from being aware of what people thought, though. She gave me a quick, assessing look from the corner of her eye before focusing on the wreckage.
“They’ve taken over the funeral,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “I said I wanted it to be only us, just our families. But Herr Trotter—from the Reich; he does their promotional information—assured me he has it ‘under control.’” There was a brief burst of laughter from the men at the door, some response to a joke quickly stifled as they recalled where they were. She didn’t look around, but her shoulders stiffened.
“So it’s to be a state occasion,” she said in the same neutral tone. “Limousines—Mercedes, I expect—and a band. With—”
“A band? At a funeral?” I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, but the men were paying no attention to us.
“With banners flying,” she went on, “and speeches at the graveside.” Her face was stiff with distaste. “A full SS state funeral, with Hitler’s own honor guard. Now, whether the SS chooses to pay for it...that’s maybe something else.”
“Ah,” I said. My Nazi Party number was 567,902; Auto Union arranged for it, the membership a guise of respectability. Partial compensation for my unfortunate heredity. Bernie’s number was 403,201. He’d laughed when I told him about mine and pulled his card out of his wallet to show me. It was folded in quarters and he’d apparently been picking his teeth with it.
The corners of Elly’s nostrils had gone white.
“Hitler’s hero,” she said as if to herself. “They call him—called him—that. You’ve seen the newspapers?”
I’d seen them; the photographs, I thought she meant. The run. The wreckage. There were a few photos, but not enough.
“When did you first meet Bernie?” I asked, just for something to say, to distract her. They hadn’t been married long, barely eighteen months.
She made a little hiccup of a laugh.