“Ignorance. I didn’t know they were. I had walked for miles along those dark tracks, trying to find a way out. I couldn’t. All the tunnels ended in rubble and earth.”

  “Flattened by bombs?” Potter asked.

  Churchill nodded. “To get out, I was going to have to go out through the German headquarters, and I could think of no practical way of doing that. Then the colonel here came, plainly a visitor since he was S.S., not army, and because he had an escort. I hoped to attach myself to him, a knowledgeable, subservient Englishman who might inform on the commandant if he could be convinced it was safe. I would persuade him to take me with him, and when he did, I would be outside. Sergeant Lohr and any Germans in the headquarters would know who I was, of course. But if they were wise—if they spoke with the commandant first, certainly—they would let me go without a word. If they prevented me, the army would be blamed for my escape; but if they held their peace and let me go, they could report quite truthfully that I had been taken away by the S.S. With luck, they might even get the credit for my recapture later.”

  Potter said, “That won’t happen.”

  “I’ve answered your questions, Mr. Potter.” Churchill looked accusingly at his smoldering cigar and set it on the edge of the little table. “Now you must answer one or two for me. The colonel here has told me that I am not being taken to President Kuhn. It relieved my mind at the time and will relieve it further now, if you confirm it. What do you say?”

  “That we want you, not Kuhn.” By a gesture, Potter indicated von Steigerwald and himself. “Donovan sent us. We’re from the O.S.S.—the Office of Strategic Services. Roosevelt set us up before he was voted out, and he put Colonel Donovan in charge. President Kuhn has found us useful.”

  Churchill looked thoughtful. “As you hope to find me.”

  “Exactly. Kuhn and his German-American Bund have been pro-German throughout the war, as you must know. America even sold Germany munitions.”

  Churchill nodded.

  “But now Hitler’s the master of Europe, and he’s starting to look elsewhere. He has to keep his army busy, after all, and he needs new triumphs.” Potter leaned forward, his thin face intense. “Roosevelt, who had been immensely popular just a year before, was removed from office because he opened America to European Jews—”

  “Including you,” von Steigerwald put in.

  “Right, including me and thousands more like me. America was just recovering from the Depression, and people were terrified of us refugees and what we might do to the economy. Fritz Kuhn and his German-American Bund replaced the old, patriotic Republican Party that had freed the slaves. I’m sure that half the people who voted for Kuhn hoped he would send us back to Hitler.”

  Churchill said, “Which he has declined to do.”

  “Of course.” Potter grinned. “Who would he protect America from if we were gone? He’s getting shaky as it is.”

  Von Steigerwald cleared his throat. “It might be possible to persuade Roosevelt to come out of retirement. Potter here thinks that way. He may be right.”

  “Or at least to get Roosevelt to endorse some other Democrat,” Potter said.

  Churchill nodded. “I could suggest half a dozen. No doubt you could add a dozen more. But where do I come into all this? Donovan wants me, you say.”

  Potter nodded. “He does, but to understand where you come in, Mr. Prime Minister, you have to understand Donovan and his position. He was Roosevelt’s man. Roosevelt appointed him, and he’s done a wonderful job. The O.S.S. worked hard and selflessly for America when Roosevelt was president, and it’s working hard and selflessly for America now that Kuhn and his gang are in the White House.”

  “Yet he would prefer Roosevelt.” Churchill fished a fresh cigar from his pocket.

  “We all would,” Potter said. “Donovan doesn’t think he’ll do it—he’s a sick man—but that’s what all of us would like. We’d like America to go back to nineteen forty and correct the mistake she made then. Above all, we’d like the Bund out of power.”

  Rolling the cigar between his hands, Churchill nodded.

  “But if and when it comes to a war between Hitler and Kuhn, we will be with Kuhn and our country.”

  “Right or wrong.” Churchill smiled.

  “Exactly.”

  Von Steigerwald cleared his throat again. “You’re not American, Potter. You’re a refugee—you said so. Where were you born?”

  “In London,” Potter snapped. “But I’m as American as you are. I’m a naturalized United States citizen.”

  “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 Old Woman in the Young Woman

  He had been walking all day. Twice the wandering trails he followed had led him into ruined towns; in each case he had halted and spent an hour or so poking through such rubbish as nature had not yet buried. In neither case had he found anything worth keeping. Knives that would not rust were found in ruined towns, sometimes. Or so some said. Long Tom, who would have liked one, had never found one or even seen one.

  To the people who had lived in those towns, he had given not a moment’s thought. The roofs of their houses had fallen, and the walls were falling. The broad, black pavements were crumbling. The people who had made them had died long before he was born. He had never met anyone who had spoken to one of them, and he never would.

  His belly was empty when he came to the village. The little buckskin pack in which he sometimes stored food held only an old pair of stockings. The slender rifle he bore was heavy on his shoulder, its weight reminding him over and over again that he had not had a decent shot all day. That rifle would no longer feed a cartridge when he pulled its lever down, but he rarely needed a quick second shot.

  Up the hill along a path that was a little too wide and clearly marked to be a game trail. Through blackberry brambles on which not one berry was ripe.

  Then, the crest of the hill.

  Long Tom put down his rifle, setting its curved brass butt-plate almost carefully beside his right moccasin, and looked down at the tiny village in the valley. Six cabins, he thought, or it could be seven. Smoke rising from three chimneys. The cabins looked too poor to offer much comfort to a traveler. Too poor, although one was a trifle bigger than the rest and had an outbuilding. A little barn, or perhaps a woodshed.

  · · · ·

  Inside that larger cabin, young Emmy sat at old Miz Emily’s bedside, listening. Listening, but the words came slowly, punctuated with much labored breathing. The wide spaces between those words had room for a great deal of dreaming, and Emmy was a practiced dreamer. Someday—some happy day very soon—Miz Emily would be close to young again. Miz Emily would rise from her bed and once more do all the things she now did only in her stories. She would bake bread, can, and heal.

  “A brain,” Miz Emily told Emmy, “spiles faster ’n a fish.” She shut her eyes, and the breath whistled through her toothless old mouth. “Brain’s the worst part of a man… Or a woman, either… You can’t hardly never save it.”

  Emmy nodded, rapt.

  “Ol’ Sheller Shapcott… He wasn’t hardly cold. I shot in my heart-get-up… Best I had. His heart… She galloped again… You see, Emmy?”

  Emmy nodded as before.

  “Never moved… Never spoke. Horse’s alive, only nobody riding.”

  Still nodding, Emmy cocked her head, conscious of a new sound. Someone was tapping on the front door. She rose.

  A faint smile touched Miz Emily’s lips. “Somebody’s sick. You see who.”

  Emmy hurried away.

  Outside, Long Tom, who had been knocking with his knuckles, had changed to the handle of his knife. He was about to resume knocking when the door swung back.

  The girl was young and small, with the sort of plain, smooth face that promises beauty (although not prettiness) to come. Her blue eyes widened at the sight of Long Tom, and her small lips formed an O.

  Tom removed his cap. “I’m a man that needs a place to stay tonight, ma’am. There’s rain comin’, which you can feel if you breathe deep. Just a place out of the rain, and a bite to eat, if you can spare. Cornpone or what you got. Tell your ma?”

  “I don’t have no ma.” The girl’s voice was scarcely audible. “Never did.”

  Long Tom nodded and smiled. “You the lady of the house, ma’am?”

  “Miz Emily.” The girl reached a decision. “She said let you in.” She stood aside.

  Long Tom entered, still smiling. “I don’t believe we’ve met proper, ma’am. Tom Bright’s my name. Long Tom’s what most folks call me. Guess you can see why.” He held out his hand.

  The girl’s touched it; hers was far smaller than his but just as hard, the hand of a girl who scrubbed, cooked, and swept, Tom thought, from kinsee to kaintsee. “I’m Tom Bright,” he repeated, “’cept you can call me anythin’ you’d like. Long Tom or whatever.”

  The girl’s hand had closed on his.

  “Lazy, mebbe. Lazy’s good. There’s lots of folks call me that.”

  At last she smiled, and her smile stirred to life something in him he knew at once would never die.

  “Hungered, Tom? Didn’t you say you was? Stew for supper tonight, an’ I got it on a’ready. Be fit to eat ’fore long. You could sleep by the fire, mebbe? I do, only in Miz Emily’s room, you know. Case I got to git her somethin’. We got our own li’l fire in there, an’ it’s God’s own blessin’.”

  “Your pa won’t mind?”

  The girl shook her head. “Ain’t never had none, Tom. Ain’t nobody here ’cept us. Miz Emily an’ Emmy. I’ll have to show you to Miz Emily, Tom. It’s only polite. You come along. We got to see if she’s wakeful.”

  Tom sighed. “If she don’t want me, I’ll go, Emmy. There won’t be no trouble.”

  “She’ll cotton to you,” Emmy told him. “It’s certain sure. There aplenty for us to be feared of without our bein’ feared of you.”

  Hand-in-hand they walked through the big front room, a lofty room redolent of venison stew. A clean and orderly room that had, somehow, something of the air of the ruined towns. It might, perhaps, have been the high, stained table.

  It might also have been the bags of rags, or the three lofty cabinets along one wall, locked cabinets of hardwood black with years, somber and silent.

  Emmy motioned him back and opened the door of another room enough to put her head through. “Comp’ny, Miz Emily. Name’s Tom Bright an’ seems a well-favored man. You want to see him?”

  Apparently Miz Emily did; Emmy turned and waved.

  Going in, Tom saw the oldest woman he had ever set eye on sitting propped up in bed. Her white hair was almost gone, her cheeks fallen in, and her nose and chin so long they nearly touched. Only the eyes, blue eyes that seemed as young as Emmy’s, remained alive in her ruined face.

  “Long Tom’s what they call me, ma’am.” Tom touched his forehead. “I’m headed west, Miz Emily. There’s land there that ain’t so pizzoned as ’tis ’round here. So I hear tell. The folks is dead, mostly, like here. Only the land’s better. So I’m goin’ to claim a real good piece for my own.”

  The aged head nodded the merest fraction of an inch. For an instant, Tom thought he saw the dry lips twitch in what might have been a smile—or almost anything else.

  “So I’m jest passin’ through,” he finished lamely. “I’d slept out in the woods like I done last night, only there’s rain in the air, you know. So I seen your place here, all these houses, an’ this’s the biggest so I thought it’d have more room most likely. I’ll work, if you got work to do, or else be gone at sunup. I’ll go now, if you say to. Only Emmy said I got to talk to you.”

  “Goin’ to farm, Tom? Know how to?”

  Tom nodded. “Yes’m. My pa had a farm, an’ me an’ Cy, we worked it. Only us, out toward the end, you know. Then pa passed. Cy, he said we’d split. Only there wasn’t enough for it. I want a couple fields an’ medders. Enough for a horse an’ a milk cow fer sure.”

  His own eyes had sunk in dream, although he did not know it. “Corn an’ a garden, too. Chickens an’ mebbe a pig. Got to have a sight of good land for all that.”

  “Like him, Emmy?” Miz Emily’s voice shook. “Can see you do. Wouldn’t have brought him to me if you didn’t.”

  Emmy nodded.

  “Got a wife, Tom? Girl back home?”

  Looking stricken, Tom shook his head.

  “Don’t let that pretty face fool you, Tom. Emmy’s a hard worker.”

  Tom managed to say, “I know it, ma’am.”

  “Smart, too. Smart as a whip.”

  “I… I ain’t much, ma’am. I ain’t much, an’ I couldn’t—”

  Emmy made a tiny noise.

  “Well, I ain’t.” Tom swallowed. “An’ you got to take care of your grandma, Emmy. Only I guess I could, mebbe, stay on a bit… If you’d have me.”

  Miz Emily cackled. “She ain’t my granddaughter, Tom. She’s me.”

  Tom stared at her, then at Emmy. And found he could not tear his eyes from the latter.

  “’Splain, Emmy. I’m that tired.”

  “There’s a man here…” Emmy groped for words. “A neighbor, you know. Pen Perry’s his name. He found a real pretty bush one time. Had pretty flowers all over it, an’ he wanted two. Wanted one for each side of his door.”

  Rain rattled the cedar shakes of the roof.

  “So he dug it up an’ split it. I seen that. Seen him hackin’ it into two with his hatchet. He planted the halves an’ had him two bushes. You know ’bout that, Tom?”