“Thanks to Donovan, I’m sure.”
Potter turned back to Churchill. “So far Kuhn hasn’t interned us, much less returned us to the Germans. There are quite a few people whose advice and protests have prevented that. Donovan’s one of them. We give America a pool of violently anti-Nazi people, many well-educated, who speak every European language. If you’ve been wondering why so many of us are in the O.S.S. you should understand now.”
“I wasn’t wondering,” Churchill said mildly.
“War with Hitler looks inevitable.” Potter paused, scowling. “Once I told my native-born friend here that England had stood alone against the Axis. He corrected me. America really will stand alone. She won’t have a friend in the world except the conquered peoples.”
“Which is why we freed you,” von Steigerwald added. “If Hitler can be kept busy trying to get a grip on his conquests—on Britain and France, particularly—he won’t go after America. It will give President Kuhn time to persuade the die-hard Democrats that we must arm, and give him time to do it. We’ve taken Iceland, and we’ll use it to beam your broadcasts to Britain. We’re broadcasting to Occupied Norway already.”
Frowning, Churchill returned the cigar to his pocket. “You want me to lead a British underground against the Huns.”
“Exactly,” Potter said. “To lead them from the safety of America, and to form a government in exile.”
“Already I have led the British underground you hope for from London.” Churchill was almost whispering. “From the danger of London.” Abruptly his voice boomed, filling the tiny cabin. “From the ruins of London I have led the ruins of the British people against an enemy ten times stronger than they. They were a brave people once. Now their brave are dead.”
“You,” said Potter, “are as brave as any man known to history.”
“I,” said Churchill, “could not bring myself to take my own life, though I had sworn I would.”
“You tried to kill yourself long ago,” von Steigerwald reminded him, “in Africa.”
“Correct.” Churchill’s eyes were far away. “I had a revolver. I put it to my temple and pulled the trigger. It would not fire. I pulled the trigger again. It would not fire. I pointed it out the window and pulled the trigger a third time, and it fired.”
He chuckled softly. “This time I lacked the courage to pull the trigger at all. They snatched it from me and threw me down, and I knew I should have shot them instead. I would have killed one or two, the rest would have killed me, and it would have been over.”
He turned to Potter. “What you propose—what my friend Donovan proposes—will not work. It cannot be done. Let me tell you instead what I can do and will do. Next year, I will run for president.”
Von Steigerwald said, “Are you serious?”
“Never more so. I will run, and I will win.”
For a moment, hope gleamed in Potter’s eyes; but they were dull when he spoke. “You can’t become president, Mr. Prime Minister. The president must be a native-born citizen. It’s in the Constitution.”
“I am native born,” Churchill smiled, “and I shall become a citizen, just as you have. It is a little-known fact, but my mother returned to her own country—to the American people she knew and loved so much—so that her son might be born there. I was born in …”
Churchill paused, considering. “In Boston, I think. It’s a large place, with many births. My friend Donovan will find documentary proof of my nativity. He is a skilful finder of documents, from what I’ve heard.”
“Oh, my God.” Potter sounded as if he were praying. “Oh, my God!”
“Kuhn is a Hitler in the egg,” Churchill told him. “The nest must be despoiled before the egg can hatch. I collected eggs as a boy. Many of us did. I’ll collect this one. As I warned the British people—”
Von Steigerwald had pushed off the safety as his Luger cleared the holster. Churchill was still speaking when von Steigerwald shot him in the head.
“Heil Kuhn!” von Steigerwald muttered.
Potter leaped to his feet and froze, seeing only the faintly smoking muzzle aimed at his face.
“He dies for peace,” von Steigerwald snapped. “He would have had America at war in a year. Now pick him up. Not like that! Get your hands under his arms. Drag him out on deck and get one of them to help you throw him overboard. They starved him. He can’t be heavy.”
As Potter fumbled with the latch of the cabin door, von Steigerwald wondered whether it would be necessary to shoot Potter as well.
Necessary or not, it would certainly be pleasant.
THE HOLY CITY AND EM’S REPTILE FARM
Em and her brother were wrestling an alligator, and nobody was even watching.
“Hey, Em, did ya see the paper this morning? The Garden’s giving away a piece of the True Cross.”
Judd had a habit of saying outrageous things at the most inconvenient moments. Just now, he was lying atop Ike, a five-footer bred right here on the farm, while Em tried to seal its jaws with tape.
Ike was struggling, Em’s bangs were getting in her eyes, and the tape was sticking to itself. “That’s nuts,” she snarled. “You don’t give away a piece of the Cross.”
Judd bore down on Ike’s head and neck with his elbows. “Well, they’re not giving it away, exactly. It’s a raffle. Spend $50 on the Temple slots, and they’ll deign to let you in the same room with it. Spend $100, and you get entered for a chance to win the splinter.”
The alligator finally secured, Em stood up to catch her breath and tried to gauge if her older brother was ribbing her. He had a stupid grin on his face, which meant he was probably being serious.
“Garden’s been in trouble for years,” he said, trying to sound as if he knew what he was talking about. “Not enough high rollers, I guess, so they’re doing whatever they can to get some attention.”
“Raffling off a piece of the Cross? So some retired pilgrim from Florida can hide it in his attic? It ain’t right.” Em wiped her hands on her apron while Judd used a pole to prod Ike out of the turtle yard he’d escaped to and back to the pond, where he belonged. She looked around the two and a half acres of trees and ponds where she’d spent all fourteen years of her life, thinking that the place had never looked worse. The pumps needed repair, the grass needed resodding, the trees needed a surgeon. Without pilgrims bringing their pilgrim dollars, there was no money for any of it. Except for Judd, and Daddy, still sleeping it off near on noon, it was just her and the critters, as Daddy liked to call the collection of crocs, gators, caymans, turtles and tortoises, rattlesnakes, Bobsey, the two-headed king snake, and Betty, the albino boa.
For years the reptile farm had been a convenient stop in the desert for pilgrims on their way to the Holy City. Here, they could fill their tanks with gas and their stomachs with burgers and slake their thirst with orange soda and milkshakes, and once they were here, they couldn’t resist touring the critters, and a lot of the pilgrims would also buy a T-shirt or a shot glass or a postcard with a picture of Bobsey or Betty on it.
Things were different now, since the Templars had built Via-40, bypassing Trail 66 and leaving so many motels and gas stations and roadside attractions, like the Oasis Town Reptile Farm, dying on an obsolete vine.
Most people thought Em was short for Emma or Emily, but Daddy had named her Em for the Mother Road, Steinbeck’s name for Trail 66, and she took its loss somewhat personally.
Inside the Snake House, a sagging, chipped-paint barn lined with terrariums, Em dropped a white mouse into Bobsey’s tank. The king snake—a pair of Siamese twins, actually, joined two inches below their heads—came out from behind their heated rock and curled toward the terrified mouse.
“Poor Right-e-o,” Em cooed. No matter how eagerly he flicked his forked tongue, Right-e-o always lost out to the more aggressive Lefty. Today, even more than usual, Em empathized with the weaker twin.
Inside the house, Daddy was up and stationed before a sea of paper at the kitchen table. With a pencil nub, he scribbled figures in columns, adding and subtracting. He’d been doing this for months.
“You had breakfast yet, Daddy?”
He looked up and smiled at her, but his smile couldn’t conceal the stoop of his shoulders. She knew as well as he did that his pencil couldn’t hold off the bank from foreclosing.
