used to be a white shirt. He still wore his bow tie.
“Good God!” Mouse said, stretching to put his arm around the man’s shoulders. “We thought we’d lost you!”
Michael nodded. His lips were gray, and he was shivering. The water had been quite chilly.
Chesna couldn’t move. But then she remembered herself, and rushed forward to throw her arms around the baron. He winced, supporting his weight on one leg, and he clasped his muddy arms to her back. “You’re alive, you’re alive!” Chesna said. “Oh, thank God you’re alive!” She summoned tears, and they trickled down her cheeks.
Michael inhaled Chesna’s fresh aroma. The chill of the river had kept him from passing out during the long swim, but now the weakness was catching up with him. The last hundred yards, then a short underwater swim to get himself tangled in the dredging net, had been brutal agony. Someone stood behind Chesna; Michael looked into the eyes of Colonel Jerek Blok.
“Well, well,” the colonel said with a brittle smile. “Returned from the dead, have you? Boots, I do believe we’ve just witnessed a miracle. How did the angels roll away your stone, Baron?”
Chesna snapped, “Leave him alone! Can’t you see he’s exhausted?”
“Oh yes, I can see he’s exhausted. What I can’t see is why he isn’t dead! Baron, I’d say you were underwater for almost six hours. Have you grown gills?”
“Not quite,” Michael answered. His wounded thigh was numb, but the bleeding had ceased. “I had this.” He lifted his right hand. In it was a hollow reed, about three feet long. “I’m afraid I was careless. I had too much to drink last night, and I went for a walk. I must’ve slipped. Anyway, I fell in and the current took me.” He wiped mud from his cheek with his forearm. “It’s amazing how you can sober up when you realize you’re about to drown. Something trapped my leg. A log, I think. Gave me a nasty slash on the thigh. You see?”
“Go on,” Blok commanded.
“I couldn’t get loose. And the way I was held under, I couldn’t lift my head to the surface. Luckily I was lying near some reeds. I uprooted one, bit off the end, and breathed through it.”
“Very lucky, indeed,” Blok said. “Did you learn that trick in commando school, Baron?”
Michael looked shocked. “No, Colonel. Boy Scouts.”
“And you’ve been underwater for almost six hours? Breathing through a damned reed?”
“This ‘damned reed,’ as you put it, is going home with me. I may gild it and have it mounted. One never knows one’s limits until life is put to the test. Isn’t that right?”
Blok started to reply, then thought better of it. He glanced around at the people who had come forward. “Welcome back to the living, Baron,” he said, his eyes cold. “You’d best take a shower. You smell very fishy.” He turned and stalked away, followed by Boots, but then stopped abruptly and addressed the baron again. “You’d better hold on to your reed, sir. Miracles are few and far between.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Michael said; he couldn’t turn down the opportunity. “I’ll hold on to it with an iron fist.”
Blok stood very still, ramrod stiff. Michael felt Chesna’s arms tighten around him. Her heart was pounding. “Thank you for your concern, Colonel,” Michael said.
Still, Blok didn’t move. Michael knew those two words were wheeling in the man’s brain. Was it a figure of speech, or a taunt? They stared at each other for a few seconds, like two beasts of prey. If Michael was a wolf, Jerek Blok was a silver-toothed panther. And then the silence broke, and Blok smiled faintly and nodded. “Good health to you, Baron,” he said, and walked up the riverbank toward the Reichkronen. Boots glared at Michael for perhaps three seconds longer-enough to convey the message that war had been declared-and then followed the colonel.
Two German officers, one wearing a magnifying monocle, came forward and offered to help Michael to his suite. Supported between them, Michael limped up the riverbank with Chesna and Mouse behind him. In the hotel lobby the flustered and red-faced manager appeared to say how sorry he was for the baron’s misfortune, and that a wall would be put up along the riverbank to prevent such future calamities; he suggested the services of the hotel physician, but Michael declined. Would a bottle of the hotel’s finest brandy help to soothe the baron’s injuries? The baron said he thought that would be a perfect balm.
As soon as the door of Chesna’s suite closed and the German officers were gone, Michael eased his muddy body down onto a white chaise longue. “Where were you?” Chesna demanded.
“And don’t give us that six-hours-in-the-river crap, either!” Mouse said. He poured himself a shot of hundred- year-old brandy, then took a glass to Michael. “What the hell happened to you?”
Michael drank down the brandy. It was like inhaling fire. “I took a train ride,” he said. “As Harry Sandler’s guest. Sandler’s dead. I’m alive. That’s it.” He undid his bow tie and began to strip off his tattered shirt. Red razor slashes streaked his shoulders and back. “Colonel Blok assumed Sandler would kill me. Imagine his surprise.”
“Why would Sandler want to kill you? He doesn’t know who you really are!”
“Sandler wants-wanted-to marry you. So he tried his best to get me out of the way. Blok went along with it. Nice friends you have, Chesna.”
“Blok may not be my friend very much longer. The Gestapo has Theo von Frankewitz.”
Michael listened intently as Chesna told him about the phone call Blok had made. In light of that fact, his remark about “iron fist” seemed rather reckless. Frankewitz would sing like a bird once the Gestapo went to work on him. And though Frankewitz did not know Michael’s name, his artist’s eye-however bruised and bloodshot-would remember Michael’s face. That description would be enough to bring Jerek Blok and the Gestapo down on all of them.
Michael stood up. “We’ve got to leave here as soon as we can.”
“And go where? Out of Germany?” Mouse asked hopefully.
“For you, yes. For me, I’m afraid not.” He looked at Chesna. “I have to get to Norway. To Skarpa Island. I believe Dr. Hildebrand’s invented a new type of weapon, and he’s testing it there on prisoners of war. What that weapon has to do with Iron Fist I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Can you get me there?”
“I don’t know. I’ll need time to arrange the connections.”
“How much time?”
She shook her head. “It’s difficult to say. A week, at the least. The fastest route to Norway would be by plane. There’ll be fuel stops to arrange. Plus food and supplies for us. Then, from the coast of Norway, we’d have to use a boat to get to Skarpa. A place like that is going to be under tight security: offshore mines, a coastal radar station, and God only knows what else.”
“You misunderstand me,” Michael said. “You won’t be going to Norway. You’ll be getting yourself and Mouse out of the country. Once Blok realizes I’m a British agent, he’ll figure out that your best performances have not been in films.”
“You need a pilot,” Chesna replied. “I’ve been flying my own plane since I was nineteen. I have ten years of experience. Trying to find another pilot to take you to Norway would be impossible.”
Michael recalled Sandler mentioning that Chesna had flown her own stunts during one of her films. A daredevil, he’d called her; Michael was inclined to think that Chesna van Dorne was one of the most fascinating women he’d ever met-and certainly one of the most beautiful. She was the kind of woman who didn’t need a man to direct her, or to praise the insecurity out of her. She had no insecurities, as far as Michael could see. No wonder Sandler had wanted her so badly; the hunter had felt the urge to tame Chesna. To survive this long as a secret agent in the midst of the enemy camp, Chesna had to be someone special indeed.
“You need a pilot,” Chesna repeated, and Michael had to agree. “I’ll fly you to Norway. I can arrange to find someone with a boat. From there, you’re on your own.”
“What about me?” Mouse asked. “Hell, I don’t want to go to Norway!”
“I’ll put you in the pipeline,” Chesna told him. “The route to Spain,” she clarified, when he continued to look puzzled. “When you get there, my friends will help you find a way to England.”
“All right. Fine with me. The sooner I get out of this viper’s nest, the better I’ll feel.”
“Then we’d best get packed and out of here right now.” Chesna went to her room to start packing, and Michael went to the bathroom and got the mud off his face and out of his hair. He took off his trousers and looked at the wound across his thigh; the bullet had grazed cleanly, cutting no muscles, but it had left a scarlet-edged groove in the flesh. He knew what had to be done. “Mouse?” he called. “Bring me the brandy.” He looked at his hands, the fingers and palms crisscrossed with razor cuts. Some of them were deep, and would require burning
