Amerikan Eagle

She frowned. “Through bribes, what else? The new government has been issuing travel visas for humanitarian reasons. Just a drop in the bucket, but it makes for nice propaganda. If you pay enough for them, the government grants them. The visas work only in North America. Mothers and wives aren’t allowed to see the POWs in Germany, now, are they?”

“Prisoners are still being kept? I remember reading a story a couple of months ago saying the last of the POWs had been sent home.”

“Ha,” she said, and he noted how rigidly her hands were holding the purse. “A load of cod swollop, that is. Most of our boys are working in arms factories in France and Germany. Half starved and overworked, that’s what they are.”

He wondered what she would say if she knew what he had done yesterday to save Hitler’s life and prolong the POWs’ misery. He said, “So. You can’t find your husband, is that it?”

“Not in this soddin’ mess, can I? But I found out he spends time with this writer—”

“Walter Tucker,” Sam supplied. Alicia Hale nodded and continued.

“I had to pay a taxi man a hefty fare to bring me to the man’s flat, but he wasn’t there, and the desk sergeant, he said maybe you could help me.”

Sam asked, “Mrs. Hale, is it possible your husband’s papers are no longer in order?”

“Who the hell knows? Does that make any difference?”

“Not to me, but it may explain why he’s hiding out—with all the hoopla over this summit.”

She seemed to shiver. “To think you Yanks are treating that bloody bastard like royalty! Should ’ave sunk his boat when it got here, you should ’ave.”

“Maybe so,” he said, not wanting to think any more of the summit, “but if we can find Walter, I’m sure we can find your husband.”

“That would be brilliant.”

He put his pen down, “Are you here to take him back to England?”

A violent shake of her head. “Not bloody likely. No, I’ve got a cousin who has a farm up in Manitoba. Once I get my Reggie, we’re going there and never going back. Not ever.”

“Good for you,” Sam said. “Look. Let’s go see if we can find your husband. I have an idea of where to start.”

CHAPTER SIXTY

He took her to his Packard, dented and scratched from the previous day’s desperate drive. A part of him was still mourning his brother and aching at the thought of Sarah and Toby behind barbed wire, but he forced his focus to the job, and he closed the passenger door after she slid in.

When he started the car, he asked, “What part of England are you from, Mrs. Hale?”

“London.”

“Oh. What’s London like nowadays?”

He headed toward the center of the city. The checkpoints had all come down. With the summit over and a success, it looked as though security had dissolved, although there were still armed National Guardsmen at each corner.

“Horrible, the city is, simply horrible.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She sat properly and primly, purse again in her lap. “Parts haven’t been rebuilt since the bombing and street fighting. Food, petrol, clothing, they’re still rationed, but if you know your way around the black market, almost anything can be had. In reichsmarks—the pound is worthless. People have to make the most awful decisions every day. Taking a government job or cooperating with the officials… are you being a collaborator? Or are you just a realist? Do you show allegiance to King Edward, even though he’s only on the throne thanks to Herr Hitler. Or allegiance to the queen and her daughters marooned in Canada? The resistance—are they truly fighting for freedom? Or are they just terrorists and criminals? The interior zones, the unoccupied zones—some say that’s the worst. At least in the occupied areas, the Jerries keep some sort of order… the miserable bastards.”

He turned in to a bank parking lot and found an empty space. As he switched off the engine, she said, “Is it true, what I heard? That Churchill’s been arrested in New York?”

“Yeah, it’s true. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I hope the Jerries hang the fat bastard and then shoot him, make sure he’s dead. It’s all his fault this happened.”

She opened the passenger door but remained motionless. Sam, too, sat still and listened. “In ’40, after France fell, there were rumors Hitler wanted an armistice, wanted a peace treaty,” she continued. “It wouldn’t have been all milk and honey, but we would have been left alone, for the most part. Drunk Winnie wouldn’t sit still for it. That belligerent old bastard, fight them on the landing fields, on the beaches, blah bloody blah. Spurned old Hitler, he did. And after the invasion, the government collapsed and tried to make peace, but it was too late then. Too late for me and my Reggie.”

As they walked, he grasped her elbow and leaned in to her and said, “Like I said, the trick is to find Walter. After that, we can find your husband.”

* * *

Alicia looked around at the swelling crowds. “Going to take some luck, isn’t it, then?”

“Walter is a regular when it comes to his writing. Once a week he produces a short story for one of the magazines, and every day he goes to the post office, always at about noon. And that’s where we’re going.”

People swept by, some carrying small American flags, and from the bits of overheard conversation, he learned what was happening: President Long was motoring back from the shipyard after yesterday’s triumph, and the local Party, doing a good job of grassroots efforts, had turned out this crowd to cheer him on. The Party… He shuddered at what would be waiting for him when the summit was over. Throwing his lot in with the marshal and the Nats, he thought.

The National Guardsmen had moved into the streets, rifles held up in a long, flowing honor guard. He found his fingers tightening on Alicia Hale’s arm. “That’s the post office,” he explained. “Walter should be either entering or leaving in the next few minutes.”

Sirens wailed and Sam said, “We’ll wait for the motorcade to come by and then cross the street. We do it now, we might get run down.”

She just smiled, and he felt a flash of envy for the wounded British vet, to have such a woman find the means and strength to cross the ocean and come to a strange city, to find her mate.

There. Could it be?

He leaned in to her and said over the approaching sirens, “Jackpot. There he is, going inside.”

Sure enough, there was Walter trundling up the wide granite steps, worn leather valise in one hand. He disappeared into the building. The wail of the sirens grew louder.

Alicia had her hands up over her ears, squeezing them, her purse hanging off her wrist. “I hate sirens. Ever since the air raids.”

Sam tried to give her a reassuring smile. The sirens yowled louder as the motorcade became visible, people waving their flags, cheers and applause. Three cars came up the road, Secret Service agents perched on the running boards, President Long in the rear seat of the last vehicle, waving his straw boater. Some of the crowd started chanting, “Long, Long, Long!,” but Sam heard another chant rise up at the same time: “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” Hearing those voices, looking at his poorly dressed neighbors, bad skin and bad teeth, poor shoes, patched suits and dresses, he felt the power in their cries. They had hope again, hope after so many years. He had a trembling thought that they would be betrayed again, that it was all a lie. Oh, for some there would be jobs, but those jobs would come with a price tag: devotion and blind adherence to the Kingfish. And for those on relief, the relief funded in part by the Jewish slave labor, they would pay the same price. These people would be asked to sign over their vote and freedom in exchange for a steady paycheck, and who could blame them if they did?

After the cars went by in a cloud of exhaust and dust, Walter came out of the post office, joined by a man