Chapter 3: In the Colonel's Lair

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."

"You just said you'd torture her."

"I want her captured, yes, but Wolf will be the one tortured," smiled the Colonel malevolently. "After which, we will ship her off to the West." He caught the sad and fearful eyes of his daughter. "He's mated, Maria. He has no interest in you anymore."

Fear and sadness turned to cold hate in Maria's eyes. "Mated? You mean..."

Nodding, the colonel pointed at the photo of Wolf's mate standing with Yablonski having a smoke and a chat. "Gretchen."

"The bitch!"

"Soon," said the Colonel mysteriously.

"What are you talking about?" growled Karl. "What has this to do with Yablonski?"

"Absolutely nothing. I've been advised to place you in his midst, but we both know how that would turn out. Even with the promise of Maria and your own successful troupe you'd succumb to his charm and the chance to star in his silly little plays. No," the Colonel tapped on the photo of the feral wolf, "it's all about him."

"Some man eating wolf? You're crazy."

"Like a fox," smirked Colonel Foxx. "That's not some ordinary wolf. That there's my Moby Dick." He rubbed his scar.

"Pure lunacy," proclaimed Karl with a shake of his head and an absurd smile. It took an hour to peruse the thorough file and for the Colonel to lay out his assignment for the actor.

"Lunacy indeed," the Colonel smiled back. "Moon madness. That's them in a nutshell."

"You're the nut," Karl returned.

"Enough!" the Colonel roared, standing and grabbing a crop. The office door sprung open and a goon entered. The Colonel set the crop down. "Ah, Sergeant. Well attended. The prisoner wishes to provoke my ire. Most stimulating. All goes well though. You may unshackle him."

A touch of surprise marred the goon's stern expression. He bowed slightly and knelt by Karl and unshackled his hands and feet.

"Thank you, Sergeant. You may retire for the night."

A question left unsaid appeared on that face, but the Sergeant nodded and exited, carrying the metal shackles.

The Colonel sighed. "It would be best to fear me rather than tease me, Karl. Ask Maria." He took the crop back in his hand and walked around his desk stiffly. Pressing the tip against Karl's cheek, the strap dangling below the jaw line, the Colonel smirked. "I can make you regret every word you say against me, right Maria? I don't have to mar that pretty face of yours, Karl, but perhaps that would hurt more than the pain I inflict in less apparent areas of the body." The crop pressed against Karl's groin. Karl winced and attempted to brush it away, causing the Colonel to press harder.

"Ow! Fuck! Okay!" Karl grimaced.

Removing the crop from its dangerous place, the Colonel gently tapped it against Karl cheek. "Call your troupe, at least those who haven't escaped."

"Beatrix has all the contact numbers," Karl explained.

"That's not a problem," Maria said, extracting a sheet of paper from her file.

Bringing the phone in front of Karl, the Colonel smiled. "Of course it's not. I leave you in the Major's capable hands." He stiffly exited his office.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Karl. "He walks like a tin man."

"Ssh," hissed Maria, paging through the large old file and pulling out a photo of a young man badly wounded in the face, chest, abdomen and legs. She whispered, "I believe that's the Colonel."

"Shit," Karl whispered back. "No wonder. But it couldn't have been Wolf who did that. That's nearly forty years ago."

"I know," Maria replied, shaking her head, worried even more about the Colonel. Not only was the comrade colonel the most cruelly sadistic man she ever met, but he appeared to be insane on top of it. His dangerousness multiplied. Handing Karl the sheet of names, phone numbers and addresses of the troupe, she ordered him, "Call them."

Seeing the thorough list disturbed Karl. It even had Trixie's carefully hidden second residence. Worse, her name along with Gretchen's and three others had been carefully crossed out with a thin black line enabling the information to still be read. The chair placing him uncomfortably low in relationship to the desk and the phone on top of it, he sat on its edge and lifted the receiver. For some reason, despite the apparent comfort of the fine leather upholstery, neither he nor Maria dared to sit in the Colonel's desk chair. "Esther, my love..." Karl began, winking at Maria who winked back and caressed his inner thigh.

"Gretchen chose well," thought Karl as he handed out an abundance of money to the four remaining troupe members and the five replacements. "Pieces of eight, this money for all these Judases. Gretchen's choice of escapees would have seen that and refused. Only actors bitten and thoroughly infected by the performance bug remained. Me too, I guess."

They met at an actual theater, a thrust stage abandoned when the police closed it down for subversion to the state. Three actors and a set builder and a seamstress, colluders in the arrests of their stage comrades once occupying the very stage on which they sat, made up the new members.

A late meeting, after Karl explained Maria's presence and Gretchen's absence as a step up in their careers as performers, with a future edifying a much greater audience, they quickly read the corrupted version of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice as communist propaganda and promised to meet early the next morning to board a bus whisking them into the Black Forest to rehearse their first performance of a tour of small East German towns. The text had been his and Gretchen's first collaboration and had been meant as a satire. The two eighteen year olds had laughed until tears fell from their eyes when they created it. The troupe had worked on it and decided not to perform it since it didn't quite hold together. Taking it seriously though, in a sort of ironic twist, actually seemed to work, especially overlaying it with a Brechtian flatness.

Still later, past midnight, Esther, the newest Portia, fearfully entered the apartment of her presumed nemesis along with her lover and the nemesis herself.

"I believe I'll take a bath and go to bed," said Maria. "See you two later," she winked and disappeared into her bedroom.

"I don't understand," said Esther as Karl removed her coat and added hers and his to the coat tree.

Karl led her to the couch and sat beside her, holding her cold hands. "What don't you understand, my love?"

"She's ... I thought..." Realization struck Esther like a slap on the face, waking her up to the fact she had Karl all to herself. "Never mind," she smiled and brought Karl's brilliantly kissable mouth to hers.

His remarkably soft lips made her tingle in her tummy and lower as they always did. "Oh Karl," she murmured, straddling his lap and kissing him more deeply.

His hands unbuttoned her thick wool shirt, releasing her resilient young breasts, surprisingly ample with their excitable little areolas and tiny sensitive nipples made hard by his thumbs brushing across them. "Oh Karl," she murmured again. Eyes closed and lips kissing, her small hands struggled blindly with his buttons on his white dress shirt until his softly muscled chest emerged and she teased his purple nipples, her groin pressing down on his hardening shaft, feeling its pressure exactly where she wanted it.

Karl's eyes remained open watching the hallway until the lithe, naked blonde beauty emerged from her bedroom and winked at him, her hand sensuously caressing her breasts and abdomen. Watching her finger press into her pussy and rub at the top made Karl moan. The gorgeous, sexy vixen smiled lustily, licked her lips, winked again and disappeared into the bathroom. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the cute, horny woman in his lap. He had one thought though before letting thought go and embracing delightful feeling. "Twenty minutes to pleasure Essie before Maria finishes her bath. My cute little actress should be ready for anything by then."

Shifting positions, he laid Esther on her back on the couch, stripped off her pants and panties while increasing the stimulation of her nipples with his lips, tongue and teeth. By the time his mouth released them, her body revealed her need for more direct pleasure. Legs wide, hips raised, her hands pressed the top of his head to speed his travels south.

He had time to tease, so his mouth skipped her needy clit. His fingers however hovered close to the pin of pleasure beginning to emerge from its hood as if searching for something to give it friction. But even his fingertips danced near without contacting her clit. They caressed the slippery edges coaxing more fragrant fluid and more swelling of the pussy lips and strummed the ridge between them and her anus and played at penetrating that smaller orifice. Meanwhile his mouth caressed her inner legs: thighs, knees and calves before sucking each of ten toes into his mouth. Big toes he sucked like two small cocks, hinting at the possibilities when he at last suckled her clit. Whether it was the possibilities or direct pleasure, she moaned and writhed.

At last he plunged his fingers inside her and pressed his thumb against her swollen clit. The fingers rubbed her g-spot while her thumb strummed her clit like a thick bass string causing her to shiver and groan. His mouth soon followed, lips grasping pussy lips following the path his teasing fingers had gone. At the anus, after circling he pressed his tongue inside briefly. "Oh," she shivered, as if surprised his naughty tongue actually felt good. But he left that narrow portal for later, attacking her clit with his mouth at last where tongue met thumb in a two pronged attack.