As the door shut, the Colonel relaxed. “A good boy, that,” he said. “You Westerners sometimes pride yourselves that we cannot be efficient, but you will see-like that!” He snapped his fingers, smiled seductively at Miss Kolin and then glanced at George to see if he minded having his girl smiled at in that way.
Miss Kolin merely raised her eyebrows. The Colonel passed round cigarettes.
George found the situation entertaining. The Colonel’s curiosity about the nature of the relationship between his visitors had been evident from the first. The woman was attractive; the man looked passably virile; it was absurd to suppose that they could travel about together on business without also taking advantage of the association for their pleasure. Yet, of course, the man was an Anglo-Saxon and so one could not be sure. In the absence of any positive evidence as to whether the pair were lovers or not the Colonel was beginning to probe for some. He would try again in a moment or two. Meanwhile, back to business.
The Colonel smoothed his tunic down. “This German of yours, Mr. Carey-was he an Alsatian?”
“No, he came from Cologne.”
“Many of the deserters were Alsatian. You know, some of them hated the Germans as much as we did.”
“Ah, yes? Were you in Greece during the war, Colonel?”
“Sometimes. At the beginning, yes. Later I was with the British. In their raiding forces. It was a type of Commando, you understand. That was a happy time.”
“Happy?”
“Were you not a soldier, Mr. Carey?”