3rd Chapter: The Letter

Of course, Max didn’t know of any of Helena’s background. He in fact didn’t know anything about her besides these few lines she sent to him in her letter today. He didn’t know if he should meet her or not. So in good old investigator fashion, he took a closer look at the letter to see if he could glean anything more about the writer. As far as his counter intelligence training from the Shrivenham Academy was telling him, her letter could be a trap by the communists. It wouldn’t have been the first time, he’d fell for such a trap and so Max rather tried to be overly cautious nowadays.

When he took a deeper look at the letter he was intrigued by her print-perfect handwriting, which showed a very educated style. It must have taken her some time to write this letter– from the correct spelling to the spacing of the letters, the centering of the words to her careful punctuation. Max never spent much time in school focusing on these things, making it quite a burden for him – and he therefore assumed that anyone with good grammer must have spent as much time as he would have.

He also noticed that she called him “Herr Max”, a strange combination of using the German equivalent to “Mr” together with his first name Max instead of his last name. A mistake that was so blatant that it must mean something more, he imaged – but what? Also the fact that she used his colloquial name “Max the Spy”, showed a level of familiarity and a bluntness. She indirectly undressed him from his official role as Britain’s trade attaché by naming his real profession. Was that her way of saying, “I don’t play games – so don’t play games with me” ? He must admit to himself that he liked her from the start and decided to meet her at the Berlin train station she specified in her letter. In Max’ mind he was expecting a German educated, British woman that has lived in Berlin for a long time and must have lived through some tough times because of her directness and by choosing Berlin’s dodgiest train station in the middle of the night – a great place to meet strangers in case you had to run away quickly...

Was it mainly curiosity, his professional duty or something else that drew him to this nightly encounter? He couldn’t tell but he was incredibly nervous the night before meeting her and couldn’t sleep at all. Bad preparation for a busy day and night that should follow.