The Wolf's Hour Part 11

"Have you ever read anything on anatomy?" Wiktor took a thick book from a shelf. Mikhail looked blankly at him. "Anatomy: the study of the human body," Wiktor translated. "This one is written in German, and it gives ill.u.s.trations of the brain. I've thought a lot about the virus in our bodies, and why we can go through the change while ordinary men cannot. I think the virus affects something deep in the brain. Something long buried, and meant to be forgotten." His voice was getting excited, as if he were on a university podium again. "This book here"-he returned the anatomy volume and removed another book near it-"is a philosophy of the mind, from a medieval ma.n.u.script. It proposes that man's brain is multilayered. At the center of the brain is the animal instinct; the beast's nature, if you will-"

Mikhail was distracted. The rat: scratch, scratch. A peal of hunger rang in his stomach like a hollow bell.

"-and that portion of the brain is what the virus liberates. How little we know about the magnificent engine in our skulls, Mikhail! Do you see what I mean?"

Mikhail didn't, really. All this talk of beasts and brains made no impression on him. He looked around, his senses questing: scratch, scratch.

"You can have three thousand worlds, if you want them," Wiktor said. "I'll be your key, if you choose to learn."

"Learn?" He tore his attention away from his hunger. "Learn what?"

Wiktor came to the end of his patience. "You're not a half-wit! Stop acting like one! Listen to what I'm saying: I want to teach you what's in these books! And what I know about the world, too! The languages: French, English, German. Plus history, mathematics, and-"

"Why?" Mikhail interrupted. Renati had told him the white palace and this forest would be his home for the rest of his life, just as it was for the others of the pack. "What use would I have for those things, if I'm going to stay here forever?"

"What use!" Wiktor mocked him, and snorted angrily. "What use, he says!" He strode forward, brandis.h.i.+ng the torch, and stopped just short of Mikhail. "Being a wolf is a wonderful thing. A miracle. But we were born humans, and we can't let go of our humanity-even though the word 'human' shames us to our core sometimes. Do you know why I'm not a wolf all the time? Why I don't just run in the forest day and night?" Mikhail shook his head. "Because when we take the form of wolves we age as wolves, too. If we were to spend one year as wolves, we would be seven years older when we returned to human form. And as much as I love the freedom, the aromas, and... the fine wonder of it, I love life more. I want to live as long as I can, and I want to know. My brain hurts for knowledge. I say learn to run as a wolf, yes; but learn to think like a man, too." He tapped his bald skull. "If you don't, you squander the miracle."

Mikhail looked at the books he could see by the torchlight. They appeared very thick and very dusty. How could anyone ever read one book that thick, much less all of them?

"I'm a teacher," Wiktor said. "Let me teach."

Mikhail considered it. Those books frightened him, in a way; they were ma.s.sive and forbidding. His father used to have a library, though the books were thinner and they had gilded t.i.tles on their spines. He remembered his and Alizia's tutor, Magda, a large gray-haired woman who used to come to their house in a buggy. It was important to know the world, Magda had always said, so you could find your place in it if you were ever lost. Mikhail had never felt more lost in his life. He shrugged, still wary; he'd never liked homework. "All right," he agreed, after another moment.

"Good! Oh, if the linen-s.h.i.+rted regents could see their professor now!" He grunted. "I'd tear out their hearts and show them how they beat!" He listened to the scratchings of the clawed intruder. "The first lesson isn't in a book. Your stomach's growling, and I'm hungry, too. Find the rat and we'll have our meal." He clubbed the torch on the floor, and sparks flew until the flames were beaten out.

The chamber was in darkness. Mikhail tried to listen, but his heartbeat was a thunderous distraction. A rat could be a good, juicy meal if it was large enough; this one sounded large enough for two meals. He'd eaten the rats Renati had brought him. They tasted like stringy chicken, and their brains were sweet. He looked slowly right and left in the dark, his head tilted to catch the sound. The rat scratched on, but it was hard to pinpoint its location.

"Down on the rat's level," Wiktor advised. "Think like a rat."

Mikhail got down on his haunches. Then on his belly. Ah, yes; now the scratching led him to his right. The far wall, he thought. Maybe in a corner. He began crawling in that direction. The rat abruptly stopped scratching.

"He hears you," Wiktor said. "He reads your mind."

Mikhail crawled forward. His shoulder b.u.mped something: a pile of books. They slithered to the floor, and he heard the rat's claws click on the stones as it scuttled along the far wall. Going from right to left, Mikhail thought. He hoped. His stomach growled, an alarmingly loud noise, and he heard Wiktor laugh. The rat stopped, and remained silent. Mikhail lay on his belly, his head c.o.c.ked. A sharp, acidic odor came to him. The rat was terrified; it had just urinated. The smell was as clear a pathway as a lantern's beam, but exactly why that was Mikhail didn't yet fully understand. His vision detected more piles of books around him, all outlined in a faintly luminous gray. Still he couldn't see the rat, but he could make out the volumes and shelves on the far wall. If I were a rat, he thought, I would squeeze into a corner. Someplace where my back was protected. Mikhail crawled forward, slowly... slowly...

He could hear a m.u.f.fled, steady thump about thirty feet behind him; Wiktor's heartbeat, he realized. His own pulse was all but deafening, and he stayed where he was until it had calmed. He angled his head from side to side, listening.

There. A quick tick... tick... tick like a small watch. To Mikhail's right, perhaps another twenty feet or so ahead. In the corner, of course. Behind an untidy heap of luminous-edged books. Mikhail crawled toward the corner, his movements silent and sinuous.

He heard the rat's heartbeat increase. A rat had the sixth sense; it could smell him, and in another moment Mikhail smelled the dusty hair of the rat, too. He knew exactly where it was. The rat was motionless, but its heartbeat indicated it was about to burst from its cover and run along the wall. Mikhail kept going, inch after inch. He heard the rat's claws click-and then it darted forward, a blurred luminescence, as it tried to flee across the chamber to the far corner.

All Mikhail knew was that he was hungry and he wanted the rat, but his mind worked instinctively, calculating the rat's angle and speed with an animal's cold logic. Mikhail lunged to the left. The rat squeaked and darted away from his hand. As the rat swerved and shot past him-a streak of gray fire-Mikhail instantly turned to the right, reached out, and gripped the rodent behind the head.

The rat thrashed, trying to get its teeth in Mikhail's flesh. It was a large rat, and it was strong. In another few seconds it was going to fight free. Mikhail decided the issue.

He opened his mouth, put the rat's head between his teeth and bit down on the tough little neck.

His teeth worked; there was no rage or anger in this, just hunger. He heard the bones crunch, and then warm blood filled his mouth. He ripped a last piece of flesh loose. The rat's head rolled over his tongue. The body's legs kicked a few times, but with dwindling strength. And that was the end of a very unequal contest.

"Bravo," Wiktor said. But his voice regained its sternness. "Two more inches and you would've lost it. That rat was as slow as a m.u.f.fin-stuffed grandmother."

Mikhail spat the severed head onto his palm. He watched as Wiktor approached him, outlined in luminescence. It was good manners to offer the best portion of any meal to Wiktor, and Mikhail lifted his palm.

"It's yours," Wiktor told him, and took the warm dead carca.s.s.

Mikhail worked the skull between his teeth, finally breaking it open. The brains reminded him of a sweet-potato pie he'd eaten, in another world.

Wiktor ripped the carca.s.s open from stub of neck to tail. He inhaled the heady fragrance of blood and fresh meat, and then scooped the intestines out with his fingers and pulled pieces of fat and flesh away from the bones. He offered a portion to Mikhail, who took his share gratefully.

The man and boy ate their rat in the dark chamber, with the echoes of civilized minds in the shelves all around them.

4.

The golden weave of days became tinged with silver. Frost gleamed in the forest, and the hardwoods stood naked before the bitter wind. It was going to be a bad winter, Renati had said as she watched the bark thicken on the trees. The first snow fell in early October, and covered the white palace with white.

As the winds of November shrieked and the snow blew like scattershot, the pack huddled together in the depths of the palace, around a fire that was never allowed to burn too high or completely extinguish. Mikhail's body felt sluggish, and he wanted to sleep a lot, though Wiktor kept his head filled with questions from the books; Mikhail had never known there were so many questions, and even in his sleep he dreamed of question marks. Before very long, he began to dream in foreign languages: German and English, in which Wiktor drilled him with merciless repet.i.tion. But Mikhail's mind had sharpened, as well as his instincts, and he was learning.

Alekza's stomach swelled. She stayed curled up a lot, and the others always gave her extra portions of the kill. They never changed within sight of Mikhail; they always went up the stairway and into the corridors on two legs before they left the white palace to hunt on four. Sometimes they brought back fresh, dripping meat, sometimes they returned sullen and empty-handed. But there were a lot of rats around, drawn to the heat of the fire, and those were easily caught. Mikhail knew he was one of the pack now, and accepted as such, but he still felt like what he was: a cold, often miserably uncomfortable human boy. His bones and brain still sometimes ached with a ferocity that almost drove him to tears. Almost. He sniffled in pain a few times, and the stares he received from Wiktor and Renati told him crying was not tolerated from someone who didn't suffer gut worms.

But the change remained a mystery to him. It was one thing to live with the pack, and quite something else to fully join them. How did they change? Mikhail wondered, adding to his burden of questions. Did they take a deep breath, as if about to leap into dark and icy water? Did they stretch their bodies until the human skin split open and the wolves burst free? How did they do it? No one offered to tell him, and Mikhail-the runt of the pack-was too skittish to ask. He only knew that when he heard them howl after a kill, their voices echoing over the snowy woods, there was a burning in his blood.

A blizzard swept down from the north. As it raged beyond the walls Pauli sang in a high, frail voice a folk song about a bird who flew amid the stars, while her brother, red-haired Belyi, kept time with the clicking of sticks. The blizzard settled in, and roared its own music day after day. The fire lost its heat, and the food was gnawed away. Stomachs began to sing. Wiktor, Nikita, and Belyi had to go out into the blizzard to hunt. They were gone for three days and nights, and when Wiktor and Nikita returned, they brought back the half-frozen carca.s.s of a stag. Belyi did not return; he'd gone after a caribou, and the last Wiktor and Nikita had seen of him he'd been zigzagging through the storm after his prey.

Pauli cried for a while, and the others left her alone. She didn't cry so much, though, that she didn't eat. She accepted the b.l.o.o.d.y meat with the same hunger as the others, including Mikhail. And Mikhail learned a new lesson: whatever tragedy might happen, whatever torment should befall, life went on.

Mikhail awakened one morning and listened to silence. The storm had ceased. He followed the others up the stairway and through the chambers, where snow lay in drifts on the stones and ice-covered tree limbs stretched overhead. The sun was s.h.i.+ning outside, the sky azure over a world of dazzling white. Wiktor, Nikita, and Franco burrowed a path through the snow into the palace courtyard, and Mikhail walked outside with the others to feast on fresh, frosty air.

He breathed deeply until his lungs burned. The sun was fierce, but it made not a dent in the smooth snow. Mikhail was thoroughly enraptured by the beauty of the winter forest by the time a s...o...b..ll blasted against the side of his head.

"Good shot!" Wiktor shouted. "Give him another one!" Nikita was smiling, already cupping more snow. Nikita reared his arm back to throw it, but at the last second he whirled and flung it into the face of Franco, standing about twenty feet away.

"You a.s.s!" Franco yelled as he dug for a s...o...b..ll. Renati flung one that grazed Nikita's head, and Pauli threw a s...o...b..ll with deadly accuracy into Alekza's face. Alekza, laughing and sputtering snow, went down on her rear end, her hands pressed to her pregnant belly.

"You want a war?" Nikita hollered, grinning at Renati. "I'll give you a war!" He threw a s...o...b..ll that clipped Renati's shoulder, and then Mikhail stood in Renati's shadow and threw one that burst between Franco's eyes and staggered him back. "You... little... beast!" Franco shouted, and Wiktor smiled and calmly dodged a s...o...b..ll that sailed over his head. Renati was. .h.i.t by two at once, from Franco and Pauli. Mikhail plunged his numb hands into the snow for another barrage. Nikita ducked Renati's salvo and scrambled to a place where the snow was fresh and unmarked. He dug both hands deeply into it for double s...o...b..a.l.l.s.

And he came up with something quite different. Something frozen, red, and mangled.

Renati's laughter ended on a strangled note. A last s...o...b..ll thrown by Franco exploded off her shoulder, but she stared at what Nikita held. Mikhail let the snow slither to the ground. Pauli gasped, her face and hair dripping.

Nikita had brought a severed, mutiliated hand up from the snow. It was as blue as polished marble, and two fingers had been torn away. The thumb and forefinger were shrunken and curved inward-the last vestiges of a paw-and fine red hair covered the back of the hand.

Pauli took a step forward. Then another, up to her knees in snow. She blinked, stunned, and then moaned the name: "Belyi..."

"Take her inside," Wiktor said to Renati. Instantly she took Pauli's arm and tried to guide her back to the palace, but Pauli jerked free. "Go inside," Wiktor told her, stepping in front of her so she couldn't see what Nikita and Franco were uncovering from the drift. "Now."

Pauli wavered on her feet. Alekza caught her other arm, and between them she and Renati led Pauli into the palace like a hollow-eyed sleepwalker.

Mikhail started to follow them, but Wiktor's voice lashed him: "Where do you think you're going? Come here and help us with this!" Wiktor knelt down to push aside the snow with Nikita and Franco, and Mikhail came over to add his s.h.i.+vering strength.

It was a ma.s.s of crimson, blood-crusted bones. Most of the meat had been ripped off, but a few shreds of muscle remained. Some of the bones were human and some were wolf, Wiktor quickly saw; Belyi's body, in death, had warred between its poles. "Look at this," Franco said, and held up part of a shoulder blade. Across it were deep sc.r.a.pes.

Wiktor nodded. "Fangs." There was more evidence of powerful jaws at work: furrows on an arm bone, the jagged edges of the broken spine.

And then, at last, Nikita brushed away some hard-crusted snow and found the head.

The scalp was gone, the skull crushed and the brains scooped out, but Belyi's face remained. Minus the lower jaw, which had been torn away. The tongue, too, had been wrenched from its roots. Belyi's eyes were open, and the red hairs covered his cheeks and forehead. The eyes were directed for a few seconds right at Mikhail, until Nikita moved the head again, and in them Mikhail saw a gla.s.sy s.h.i.+ne of pure terror. He looked away, s.h.i.+vering but not with the cold this time, and retreated a few paces. Franco picked up a leg bone that still held a few fragments of frozen red muscle, and examined the bone's splintered edges. "Great strength in the bite," Franco said quietly. "The leg was broken with a single crunch."

"So were both the arms," Nikita said. He sat on his haunches, looking at the bones arranged around him in the snow. A patchwork of shadows and sunlight lay on Belyi's face, and the ice in the single remaining eyelid was beginning to melt. Mikhail watched with dreadful fascination as a drop of water trickled down Belyi's blue cheek like a tear.

Wiktor stood up, his eyes blazing, and slowly turned his gaze through all points of the compa.s.s. His fists clenched at his sides. Mikhail knew what he must be thinking: they were no longer the only killers in the forest. Something had been watching them, and knew where their den was. It had crushed Belyi's bones, torn out his tongue, and scooped the brains from his skull. Then it had brought the broken skeleton back here like a taunt. Or a challenge.

"Wrap him in this." Wiktor removed his deerskin cloak and gave it to Franco. "Don't let Pauli see him." He began to walk, naked and with a purposeful stride, away from the white palace.

"Where're you going?" Nikita asked him.

"Tracking," Wiktor answered, his feet crunching in the snow. Then he began to run, casting a long shadow. Mikhail watched him weave through the tangle of surrounding trees and spiky undergrowth; he saw gray hair ripple across Wiktor's broad white back, saw his spine start to contort, and then Wiktor vanished into the forest.

Nikita and Franco put Belyi's bones in the robe. The head, with its silent jawless shriek, was the last to go in. Franco stood up, the folded robe clutched in his arms and his face gaunt and gray. He looked at Mikhail, and his lip curled. "You carry them, rabbit," he said in a tone of derision, and he put the sack of remains in Mikhail's arms. Their weight instantly dropped the boy to his knees.

Nikita started to help him, but Franco caught the Mongol's arm. "Let the rabbit do it alone, if he wants to be one of us so much!"

Mikhail stared into Franco's eyes; they laughed at him, and wanted him to fail. He felt a spark leap inside him. It exploded into incandescent fire, and the heat of anger made Mikhail strain to stand with the sack of bones in his arms. He got halfway up before his feet slipped out from under him. Franco walked on a few paces. "Come on!" he said impatiently, and Nikita reluctantly followed. Mikhail struggled, his teeth gritted and his arms aching. But he had known pain before, and this was nothing. He would not let Franco see him beaten; he would let no one see him beaten, not ever. He got all the way up, and then walked with unsteady steps, his arms full of what used to be Belyi.

"A good rabbit always does as he's told," Franco said. Nikita reached out to carry the bones the rest of the way, but Mikhail said, "No," and carried his burden toward the white palace. He smelled the coppery aroma of icy blood from Belyi's remains. The deerskin had its own smell-higher, sweeter-and Wiktor's sweat smelled of salt and musk. But there was another odor in the chill air, and it drifted past Mikhail's nostrils as he reached the doorway. This odor was wild and rank, a smell of brutality and cunning. The smell of an animal, and as different from the odors of Mikhail's pack as black differs from red. It was wafting, he realized, from Belyi's bones: the spoor of the beast that had slaughtered him. The same odor that Wiktor was now tracking across the smooth, blizzard-sculpted snow.

The promise of violence hung in the air. Mikhail felt it like the slide of claws down his spine. Franco and Nikita felt it, too, as they gazed around through the forest, their senses questing, collecting, evaluating with a speed that was now their second nature. Belyi had not been the strongest of the pack, but he'd been very quick and smart. Whatever had torn him to pieces had been quicker and smarter. It was out there now, somewhere in the forest, waiting and watching to see what would be the response to its gift of death.

Mikhail staggered across the threshold into the palace and saw Pauli standing there with Renati and Alekza, her mouth gasping wordlessly as she stared at the folded robe in his arms. Renati quickly stepped forward and took the robe from him, carrying it away.

The sun went down. The stars emerged, s.h.i.+mmering against the blackness. A small fire crackled in the depths of the white palace as Mikhail and the rest of his pack huddled in the circle of its heat. They waited as the wind began to rise outside and shrill through the corridors. And waited. But Wiktor did not come home.

FIVE The Mouse Trap

1.

At six o'clock on the morning of March 29, Michael Gallatin dressed in a field-gray German uniform, with jackboots, a cap bearing a communications-company insignia, and the proper service medals-Norway, the Leningrad Front, and Stalingrad-on his chest. He shrugged into a field-gray overcoat. On his person were papers-an expert job had been done in acid aging the new photograph and yellowing the doc.u.mentation, Michael noted-identifying him as an oberst-a colonel-in charge of coordinating the signal lines and relays between Paris and the units scattered along the coast of Normandy. He had been born in a village in southern Austria called Braugdonau. He had a wife named Lana and two sons. His politics were adamantly pro-Hitler, and he was loyal to the Reich's service, if not necessarily in awe of n.a.z.ism. He had been wounded once, by a fragment of shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a Russian partisan in 1942, and he had the scar under his eye to prove it. Under his coat he wore a leather holster with a well-used but perfectly clean Luger in it, and two extra clips of bullets in his pocket, near his heart. He carried a silver Swiss pocket watch, engraved with figures of hunters shooting stags, and nothing-not even his socks-had a trace of British wool. The rest of what he needed to know was in his head: the roads in and out of Paris, the maze of streets around Adam's apartment and the building where Adam worked, and Adam's nondescript, accountant's face. He had a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs with Pearly McCarren, washed down with strong black French coffee, and it was time to go.

McCarren, a craggy mountain in a Black Watch kilt, and a young dark-haired Frenchman Pearly referred to as Andre led Michael through a long, damp corridor. His jackboots, the footwear of a dead German officer, clattered on the stones. McCarren talked quietly as they went along the corridor, filling in last-minute details; the Scotsman's voice was nervous, and Michael listened intently but said nothing. The details were already in his head, and he was satisfied that everything was planned. From here on, it was a walk on the razor's edge.

The silver pocket watch was an interesting invention. Two clicks on the winding stem popped open the false back, and inside was a little compartment that held a single gray capsule. The capsule was small to be so deadly, but cyanide was a potent and fast-acting poison. Michael had agreed to carry the poison capsule simply because it was one of the unwritten regulations of the secret service, but he never intended the Gestapo to take him alive. Still, his carrying it seemed to make McCarren feel better. Actually, Michael and McCarren had become good companions in the last two days; McCarren was a tough poker player, and when he wasn't drilling Michael on the details of his new ident.i.ty, he was winning hand after hand of five-card draw. Michael was disappointed in one thing, though; he hadn't seen Gaby today, and because McCarren hadn't mentioned her he a.s.sumed she had gone back to an a.s.signment in the field. Au revoir, he thought. And good luck to you.

The Scotsman and the young French partisan led Michael up a set of stone steps, and into a small cave lit by green-shaded lamps. The illumination gleamed on a long, black, hard-topped Mercedes-Benz touring car. It was a beautiful machine, and Michael couldn't even tell where the bullet holes had been patched and repainted. "Fine machine, eh?" McCarren asked, reading Michael's mind as Michael ran a gloved hand across a fender. "The Germans know how to build 'em, that's for sure. Well, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have got cogs and gears in their heads instead of brains anyway, so what can you expect." He motioned toward the driver's seat, where a uniformed figure sat behind the wheel. "Andre there's a good driver. He knows Paris about as well as anybody, seein' as he was born there." He tapped on the gla.s.s, and the driver nodded and started the engine; it responded with a low, throaty growl. McCarren opened the rear door for Michael as the young Frenchman unlatched two doors that covered the cave entrance. The doors were thrown open, letting in a glare of morning sunlight, and then the young Frenchman began to quickly clear brush away from in front of the Mercedes.

McCarren held out his hand, and Michael gripped it. "You take care of yourself, laddie," the Scotsman said. "Give 'em h.e.l.l out there for the Black Watch, eh?"

"Jawohl." Michael eased into the backseat, a luxury of black leather, and the driver released the hand brake and drove through the cave entrance. As soon as the car was clear, the brush was put back into place, the green-and-brown-camouflage-painted doors were sealed, and it looked like a rugged hillside again. The Mercedes wound through a patch of dense woods, met a rutted country road, and turned left on it.

Michael sniffed the air: leather and new paint, the faint whiff of gunpowder, engine oil, and an apple-wine fragrance. Ah, yes, he thought, and smiled faintly. He looked out through a window, studying the blue sky full of lacy, billowing clouds. "Does McCarren know?" he asked Gaby.

She glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Her black hair was pinned up under her German staff driver's cap, and she wore a shapeless coat over her uniform. His gaze, that piercing glare of green, met hers. "No," she said. "He thinks I went back to the field last night."

"Why didn't you?"

She thought about it for a moment as she jockeyed the car over a rough section of road. "My a.s.signment was to get you where you want to go," she answered.

"Your a.s.signment ended when you got me to McCarren."

"Your interpretation. Not mine."

"McCarren had a driver for me. What happened to him?"

Gaby shrugged. "He decided... the job was too dangerous."

"Do you know Paris?"

"Well enough. What I didn't know I learned from the map." Another glance in the rearview mirror; his eyes were still on her. "I haven't spent all my life in the country."

"What'll the Germans think if we run into a roadblock?" he asked her. "1 imagine a beautiful girl driving a staff car isn't a common sight."

"Many of the officers have female drivers." She concentrated her attention back on the road. "Either secretaries or mistresses. French girls, too. You'll get more respect with a female driver."

He wondered when she'd decided to do this. She certainly didn't need to; her part of the mission was over. Had it been the night of their chilly bath? Or later, as Michael and Gaby had shared a stale loaf of bread and some musky red wine? Well, she was a professional; she knew what kind of dangers lay ahead, and what would happen to her if she were captured. He looked out the window, at the greening countryside, and wondered where her cyanide capsule was hidden.

Gaby reached an intersection, where the rutted dirt road connected with a road of tarred gravel: the route to the City of Light. She turned right and pa.s.sed a field where farmers stood baling hay. The Frenchmen stopped their work, leaning on their pitchforks as they watched the black German car glide past. Gaby was a good driver. She kept a constant speed, her gaze darting to the rear view mirror and then back to the road again. She was driving as if the German colonel in the backseat had somewhere to go, but was in no hurry to get there.

"I'm not beautiful," she said quietly, about six or seven minutes later.

Michael smiled behind his gloved hand, and he settled back into his seat to enjoy the journey.

They went on in silence, the Mercedes's engine a polite, well-oiled purr. Gaby glanced back at him occasionally, trying to figure out what it was about him that had made her want to-no, no, need to be with him. Yes, that ought to be admitted. Not to him, of course, but in the chapel of secrets. It was most probably, she reasoned, that the action against the n.a.z.i tank had fired her blood and pa.s.sions in a way she hadn't been flamed in a long while. Oh, there had been other cinders, but this was a bonfire. It was just the nearness of a man who craved action, she thought. A man who was good at his job. A man... who was good. She hadn't lived so long to be a poor judge of character; the man in the backseat was special. Something about him was cruel and... beastly, perhaps. That was part of the nature of his occupation. But she'd seen kindness in his eyes, there in the chilly water. A sense of grace, a purpose. He was a gentleman, she thought, if there were indeed any of those left on this earth. Anyway, he needed her help. She could get him in and out of Paris, and that was the important thing. Wasn't it?

She glanced in the sideview mirror, and her heart stuttered.

Coming up behind them, very quickly, was a German BMW motorcycle and sidecar.