Curious Notions

Eleven

Somebody on one of the other shifts had lost a worker's folder. Lucy poked through all the logical places it might be. When it didn't turn up in any of them, she had to start thinking about illogical places. She checked the file for fired employees. It wasn't there. She checked the file for deceased employees—and there it was.

She couldn't imagine why anyone would have put it there. The woman whose file it was remained very much alive. Lucy worked a few stations away from her, and still saw her every day. But how things could get misfiled no longer surprised Lucy. She'd seen worse than this. She pulled out the file—at least it was in the right place alphabetically—and took it to Mrs. Cho.

"Here you are," she said, not without pride.

Her supervisor checked the name, then smiled. "Oh, good. I was afraid it was gone forever. That would have been a nuisance. Where did you find it?"

"Somebody put it in with the dead ones," Lucy answered.

Mrs. Cho laughed. "Haven't run into that for a while." The laugh and the smile that went with it vanished as if they'd never been. "If I knew who, I can think of a folder that would belong in the fired file."

She wasn't kidding. Lucy could tell. Mrs. Cho put up with inexperience and fumbling around. You had to, or every new worker would drive you nuts. But she would not stand for incompetence from people who should have known better. If they didn't shape up to suit her, they were gone. Sometimes she didn't even give them the chance to shape up. One mistake of the wrong kind was plenty.

"What now, Mrs. Cho?" Lucy had learned she should always look for something to do. It didn't have to be important. As long as it made her look busy, that was fine. The one thing the people over her couldn't stand was to see her sitting around and twiddling her thumbs.

Before her supervisor could answer, the front door flew open. It swung through an arc of 180 degrees and slammed into the wall. Half a dozen big men in trench coats and high-crowned caps that made them look even bigger charged into the room. Three of them carried pistols. The other three had submachine guns. "Hands high!" one of them shouted.

People dropped what they were doing—literally. Papers cascaded down onto the floor and splashed across it. Several clerks screamed. Everyone's fingers pointed straight toward the ceiling. All the other people in the big room looked as scared as Lucy felt.

"What is the meaning of this?" Mrs. Cho tried to sound as tough with the Feldgendarmerie men—they couldn't be anything else—as she did with the people who worked for her. She didn't have much luck. Her voice wobbled and squeaked.

"We ask the questions," said the German who'd ordered hands raised. "Where is"—he paused to check a paper he pulled from his pocket—"Lucy Woo?"

Even before he spoke her name, Lucy knew it was coming. She had not a prayer of running or hiding. Every eye turned toward her. In a very small voice, she said, "Here I am."

The secret policeman looked at her. He looked at his five strapping friends. He was as big as any of them. Lucy barely came up to his shoulder. He started to laugh. "They sent lions after a mouse," he said.

I'll bite you if I can, Lucy thought. Shouting defiance at the Germans wasn't smart, though. All she said was, "I haven't done anything."

That set the Feldgendarmerie men laughing again. "The next person I hear who says, 'Oh, yes, I did what you say I did,' will be the first. If you listen to the ones we grab, they are so innocent it's a miracle God doesn't carry them off to heaven." Now his laugh took on a sinister ring. "God takes care of the innocent—and we take care of the rest. Come with us, if you please."

Mrs. Cho began, "Lucy is a very good worker and a very nice girl. She—"

With a wave of his submachine gun, the secret policeman cut her off. "If she is as sweet as you say, we won't keep her long. If" He bore down heavily on the word, then gestured with the weapon again. This time, he used it to point toward the door. Helplessly, Lucy went.

She wondered if they would put handcuffs on her. They didn't bother. That almost made her angry. They didn't think she was dangerous enough to worry about. It felt like an insult. The only trouble was, they were right.

They bundled her into an enormous car. It had to be enormous to hold all of them and her as well. It roared down the street. The driver leaned on the horn. That special scream meant everybody had to clear a path for the German car. People on foot and on bicycles and in other cars got out of the way in a hurry.

"I didn't do anything. I really didn't," Lucy quavered.

"Ha!" said the secret policeman who seemed to do the talking for this bunch. "You know Lawrence Gomes and his son. Don't try to tell me any different, or you'll be sorry. We got what we needed out of the older one. Now we're finding out what the younger one knows."

Lucy tried not to flinch in dismay. Paul, in the hands of the Feld-gendarmerie? She didn't want to believe it. She tried not to believe it. Maybe this fellow was lying to make her sing. That seemed the sort of thing the secret police would do.

But then she remembered that Paul was missing. His father and Stanley Hsu didn't know where he was. One logical reason they wouldn't was if he was in some Feldgendarmerie jail.

Maybe this one, Lucy thought as the car pulled up in front of a building with the red, white, and black German flag floating above it. The door opened. Three of the Feldgendarmerie men got out. "Now you," said the fellow who did the talking. Lucy obeyed. What else could she do? The rest of the secret policemen piled out behind her.

They could have safely brought a criminal mastermind into jail with that kind of firepower. For a terrified sixteen-year-old girl, it was overkill. They used it anyhow. Up the steps she went. One of the spike-helmeted guards at the top opened the thick, heavy door. In Lucy went. It closed behind her with a soft thud. She wondered if she would ever come out again.

Not for the first time, Paul wondered if the Germans were afraid of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. That was the only reason he could see that they weren't tearing chunks off of him. So far, the questioning had been on the mild side, as Feldgendarmerie questioning went. Of course, he had no guarantee it would stay that way.

The cell was about three meters on a side. The cot in one corner had its legs sunk into the concrete of the floor. It wasn't going anywhere. Aside from the cot, the cell held a toilet and a cold-water sink. That was it. The secret policemen hadn't given Paul a chance to shave. His beard, four days old now, was starting to itch.

He was starting to itch all over, in fact. With the best will in the world, you couldn't stay clean with only a cold-water sink and no soap. Maybe the Feldgendarmerie men thought he'd lose heart if he got dirty and scruffy. If he did, he intended to do his best not to let them know it.

Maybe they thought he'd lose heart if he got hungry, too. They fed him twice a day. It was slop. People in the home timeline complained about the lousy food prisoners got. Sometimes they wrote letters to the newspapers. They started e-mail campaigns on the Net. They staged public protests. If they'd had to eat these nasty stews, they would have decided what prisoners in the home timeline got wasn't so bad after all. This was better than starving, but not by much.

Worst of all was the boredom. Nobody else was in a cell Paul could see. Everything was quiet except for the clump of guards' boots against the floor. Paul could pace up and down or he could lie on the cot and grow moss. No TV. No radio. No nothing. Those horrible meals soon became the high points of his day. That was a really scary thought.

And then there were the times that weren't so boring. Those usually came in the middle of the night. He wondered if the Feldgendarmerie had watched too many old movies. They couldn't wake him up by shining a bright light in his face, because they never turned off the lights. But they did make a habit of waking him out of a deep sleep.

The door to the cell would fly open. "Raus!" they would shout. "Prisoner Gomes, come with us at once!" Paul was a sound sleeper. If they hadn't screamed his own name at him, he would have had trouble remembering who he was when he first woke up. They wanted him groggy and stupid when they questioned him. They had ways of getting what they wanted, too.

They'd slam him down into a hard chair in a dark room. Then they'd shine the bright light at him. They'd throw questions at him. Where did Curious Notions get its goods. What happened to all the produce it bought? What did he know about the Tongs? (Except they called them Oriental subversive organizations—regardless of the alternate, cops talked like that.)

Paul told them as little as he could. He pleaded ignorance. He was just a kid—how could he know anything important? They were walking around the edges of the crosstime secret. Unlike the people from the Tongs, who were looking for allies wherever they could find them, the Feldgendarmerie men didn't quite seem to know they were on the edge of it.

Or maybe they were just holding back. Bright lights and shouted questions were as far as they'd gone up till now. They hadn't tried hot things or pointed things or sharp things. They hadn't tried electricity. They hadn't tried drugs.

Good luck is where you find it, Paul thought after one of those sessions. Even as it was, he felt his brain had been turned inside out. But it could have been worse, and he knew it.

Once, the German asking the questions told Paul, "This is not what your father says to be the case."

"Why don't you ask him about it, then?" Paul answered. As far as he knew, he had told the truth here. The Feldgendarmerie man wanted to know the prices he'd been paying for Central Valley produce. That seemed harmless enough.

"I am asking you," the German said. Did his voice lack some of its usual snap? Paul thought so.

He said, "That's how I remember it. If Dad knows something I don't, it's news to me. Maybe he's the one who remembers wrong. Like I say, you can ask him about it."

"We have transcripts of what he said," the German replied. "He ... is not available for questioning right now."

"Why not? What did you do to him?" Paul enjoyed being able to ask questions instead of answering them. He knew the Tongs had got his father out of jail. He didn't know how they'd done it, but Sammy Wong had assured him that they had. He wondered if the man on the other side of the bright light would admit it.

He should have known better. The German said, "That is none of your business, and of no concern to you."

"He's my father," Pal protested. "Of course it's of concern to me. You've got a lot of nerve, telling me my own father is none of my business. What did you do to him? Did you make him disappear?"

Did you make him disappear? was a polite way to ask, Did you kill him? Plenty of people "disappeared" from German jails. Paul happened to know Dad hadn't, or not that way. But the man questioning him didn't know he knew. If Paul could yank the fellow's chain, he would. Why not? The Feldgendarmerie man had sure been doing his best to yank his.

The German muttered something in his own language. Paul understood German. He thought the man said, Miserable kid. That made him feel better than he had since the Feldgendarmerie nabbed him. The secret policeman went back to English: "Your father has not disappeared. Not in the way you mean."

"Oh, yeah? Prove it," Paul said. "Let me see him. Then maybe I'll believe you."

More mutters in German. This time, Paul couldn't make out what they were. Then the secret policeman spoke to his pals in the room: "Take him back to his cell. He's being very uncooperative."

One of the other Feldgendarmerie men spoke in German: "You ought to use the wire and the thumbscrews. The punk would sing like a nightingale then."

Paul didn't want them to know he could follow their language. Keeping a blank look on his face was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. They could torture him whenever they wanted to. What would stop them? Not a thing.

But the man doing the questioning said, "Nein. Not yet, anyhow. Things are more . . . delicate than you realize, Horst." That also came in German. Not showing relief was as hard as not showing fear. Paul didn't know why things were delicate, but he was sure glad they were.

The Feldgendarmerie men hauled him back to the cell. The door clanged shut. Compared to the bright light glaring into his face, those empty cells across from his didn't look so bad. He wondered what was going on outside the jail. By now, Sammy Wong would know he was missing. Wong would probably know why, too. Would Dad? Would Lucy? What were they doing to get him out? Were they doing anything? Or were they saying, Serves you right for being dumb and leaving him in here till he rotted?

They wouldn't do that. Would they? With nothing but bars as far as his eye could see, Paul began to wonder. Maybe this view wasn't that much better than the one in the room where they questioned him after all.

Lucy was both sick of answering questions and surprised the Germans hadn't done anything but ask them. Oh, they'd yelled and shone bright lights in her face and told her they would do horrible things if she didn't come clean. They'd told her that, yes, but they hadn't done them.

In her bare cell, Lucy shook her head. They hadn't done them up till now. That didn't mean they wouldn't. They were Germans, after all. Was there anything they wouldn't do?

At least the people at work knew what had happened to her. For one thing, that probably meant her folks would find out about it. For another, it might mean she'd get her job back if the Feldgendarmerie ever let her out of jail. Mrs. Cho would know why she wasn't coming in now. She'd know Lucy wasn't out somewhere goofing off and having a good time.

That made her laugh. No, she wasn't having a good time at all.

When they took her away for another round of questioning, they started yelling at her again. "You must know more than you admit about Curious Notions! You must!" shouted the man behind the lamp. She'd never seen his face. "They named your father a supplier! Why would they do that?"

To get you out of their hair, Lucy thought. And look how well that worked! She said, "We don't have anything to do with them as far as business goes." Then she remembered something Paul told her in Golden Gate Park. "If you don't believe me, you can ask Captain Horvath. He knows we are what we say we are."

She wasn't sure how much weight a mere San Francisco cop carried with the Feldgendarmerie. But a police captain wasn't mere, was he, even if he was only an American? Fatty Horvath had a good reputation in Chinatown. And he had done something to get Lucy's father out of a mess a lot like this one.

"Horvath? Who is this Captain Horvath?" the Feldgendar-merie man behind the lamp demanded. Lucy's heart sank.

But one of the other Germans in the room said, "Amerikanischer Polizeikapitän." Lucy could figure out what that meant. The Feldgendarmerie man went on in his own language. Lucy recognized more words here and there, but not enough to let her figure out what he was saying. Was he telling the fellow behind the lamp that Horvath was a big wheel, or that he was full of hot air? Lucy's nails bit into her palms in frustration. She couldn't tell.

Her questioner said, "Tell us more of this Paul Gomes. Tell us everything you know. Tell us in great detail."

Fright flared in Lucy. Did the Kaiser's men have Paul? It seemed much too likely. She said, "Well, I don't have much to tell you. I've only met him a few times." She wished she could say she didn't know him at all, but they wouldn't believe that. "He seemed like a pretty nice person. He wouldn't shine a light in my face and yell at me." That wasn't much in the way of defiance, but it was all she had in her.

It didn't impress the Feldgendarmerie man. "My job is not to be nice. My job is to get answers. And I will get answers. I do not care if Paul Gomes is nice or not. I want to know what you know about him. Believe me, I have ways to get what I want. Talking freely is better and easier."

She did believe him. She was just glad he hadn't done anything worse than shine a light in her face and yell at her. If she didn't give him some of what he wanted, he was liable to. She wondered what she could say that might satisfy him without hurting Paul. "Well, he told me he's from the Sunset District," she said.

"This we already knew. We have checked his school records," said the man behind the lamp.

You don't know as much as you think you do, Lucy thought. Paul probably came from the Sunset District, all right, but not from this Sunset District. If the secret policeman understood San Francisco, he would have seen that right away. Somebody like Paul just couldn't come from a place like that. But if he had records there good enough to fool the Feldgendarmerie .. . That said something about how well his people were organized, and how many of them there were.

"Tell me more," the German said. "Tell me quickly. Do not sit there making up your lies."

"I'm not lying. I just told you the truth. You said so." Lucy tried to sound angry instead of scared. It wasn't easy, not when she was scared. She tried again: "I know Captain Horvath likes him, and some other important Americans." In fact, she didn't know they liked him. But she did know the people at Curious Notions had influence on them. That was as good as the other.

No matter how good it was, it didn't impress the Feldgen-darmerie man. "Important Americans?" he jeered. "There are no important Americans." He had a nasty laugh. "There will never be any important Americans."

One of the other men spoke to him in German again. They went back and forth for a couple of minutes. Lucy wondered what they were talking about. Her, probably. Doing it in a language she couldn't understand was rude. Somehow, she didn't think that would worry them.

Her questioner returned to English: "A while ago, Polizeikapitän Horvath and some others urged us to let your father go. Is this not so? Did they not do it because of Paul Gomes and his father?"

"I don't know anything about that," Lucy said, which was technically true. She hadn't asked Captain Horvath or anyone else why he'd asked the Germans to let her father go. She added, "I thought you let him go because you couldn't show he'd done anything wrong."

The Feldgendarmerie man laughed again, even more nastily than before. "That is not enough reason to let anyone go. Believe me, it is not. The guilty are often good at covering their tracks."

"If you go on like that, you can show anybody's guilty of anything," Lucy said.

"You begin to understand," her questioner said. What she began to understand was how much trouble she was in, or could be in. The Feldgendarmerie man went on, "Did you not tell one Margaret Ma at the zoological garden that you are fond of Paul Gomes? Is this not why you seek to cover up for him?"

Lucy needed a second to remember that Margaret was the name Peggy came from. She'd never called her friend anything but Peggy as long as they'd known each other. Had she said that to Peggy? She couldn't remember. But if Peggy had told the secret police what she thought they wanted to hear, who could blame her? Anything to make them go away.

"Well? Speak!" the Feldgendarmerie man snapped.

That made Lucy want to go Woof! She didn't think it would be a good idea. "I do like him, but not like that" she said, which was more or less true. Paul fascinated her, but more as a puzzle than as anything past a friend. So she told herself, anyhow. She went on, "And I'm not trying to cover up for him. But if you ask me about things where I don't know anything, how can I tell you anything?"

"Ha! A likely story," the German jeered. Then he spoke in his own language to the other Feldgendarmerie officers in the room. They hauled Lucy out of her chair with arrogant, effortless strength and took her down the hall. Back into her cell she went. The door slammed shut. They must have closed it extra hard. The clang of metal on metal sounded dreadfully final.

Paul blinked and narrowed his eyes against the glare of the lamp. The Kaiser's men let him get away with that much. If he tried to turn away from the bright light, they jerked him back towards it. They got less gentle each time, too. He'd given up. They were liable to tear his head off if they got the chance.

"Sssso," said the man behind the lamp, the one whose face he'd never seen. He stretched the word out into a long, snakelike hiss. "You are acquainted with a certain Lucy Woo, is that not true?"

Alarm trickled through Paul. "I've met her," he answered cautiously. "I can't say that I know her real well." Like so much of what he said in this alternate, that was truth and lie mixed together. He hadn't met her all that often, and he didn't know her all that well, not the way he knew his friends in the home timeline. But what he did know, he liked. She had brains and she had spirit. And she was cute: not spectacular, but cute.

"This is also what she says of you," the Feldgendarmerie man told him.

Did that mean they had her? Did it mean the German wanted him to think they had her? Or did it just mean they'd asked her some questions? One thing it had to mean was that the German wanted to see how excited he'd get. He shouldn't get excited, then, or shouldn't show it if he did. All he said was, "Well, there you are."

"Ja. Here I am. And here you are. You are plainly guilty of enough things—starting with illegal import and export and going on from there—to send you to prison or a penal colony for many years." The German paused. "Not that many people last many years in a penal colony, of course." He paused again. "If you begin telling us the truth, perhaps—perhaps, I say—we can go a bit easier on you."

"I have been telling you the truth," Paul said. Some of it, anyway. Inside, he was calling himself forty-seven different kinds of idiot. That was probably only half as many as Sammy Wong would call him. And Paul would have been happy—would have been delighted—to smile and nod and agree to every single one.

He knew what kind of mistake he'd made. He also knew it was one of the commonest for people from Crosstime Traffic. Because they had higher technology than the locals, and because they could usually leave an alternate if they got in trouble there, they often thought nothing could happen to them.

Not many people last many years in a penal colony, of course. If the Germans sent him to Patagonia or New Guinea or Siberia or even the Mojave, how would Crosstime Traffic ever find him again? If they did find him, how would they pull him out? If they couldn't pull him out, how long would he last?

This was real. The German on the other side of the lamp wasn't playing games. He'd do what he said he'd do—and he'd be sure he was doing the right thing while he did it, too. The Kaiser might pin a medal on him for it. Why not? He'd deserve one. He was serving his country the best way he knew how.

Paul braced for the next question. Instead, the Feldgendarmerie man spoke to his pals: "Take him away. We will try something else tomorrow."

They had him on the ropes. He knew it. He knew it much too well. And now they were letting him off? He didn't care what they'd try tomorrow. That was what he told himself just then, anyhow. They were giving him a day to recover. He felt like singing as the secret policemen hauled him back to his cell.

He wasn't so cheerful once he'd sat on the edge of the cot for a little while. His imagination started to work. Something else tomorrow? Hot things? Sharp things? Pointed things? Electricity? Wondering was almost a worse torture than what might happen to him. Almost.

He didn't have a good night at all.

Four big guards stomped up to Lucy's cell. "You will come with us," one of them said. "Immediately."

What choice did she have? If she said no, they'd drag her or carry her. Any one of them could have, let alone all four. She kept what pieces of dignity she had left. When they unlocked the door, she strode out with her head high. She might have been a cat going to the vet's. She felt like yowling like a scared cat, too, but she didn't. The guards might think she was afraid, but she didn't want to prove it.

They didn't take her to the room where they'd been questioning her. She wondered whether that was good or bad. I'll find out, she thought, and shivered.

"In here," the guard said. He opened an ordinary door. The room beyond it seemed ordinary, too, if bare. It held a cheap table and two even cheaper chairs. The walls and ceiling were painted a plain white. A grayish carpet that had seen better days covered the floor. Only the wire mesh over the small window reminded her she was still in a jail.

All the guards trooped out. The room had only the one door. She wasn't going anywhere till they let her. She sat down on one of the chairs, wondering what they had in mind. Whatever it was, it wasn't as bad as she'd expected—not yet, anyway.

Ten minutes later, the door opened again. In came Paul Gomes. Lucy stared at him. He was grimy and worn looking, and he needed a shave. He was well on his way to growing a beard, in fact. She brushed a hand back over her hair, realizing she wasn't at her best herself just then.

She also frantically tried to think. Had the Feldgendarmerie had him all the time he was missing? She thought the Triads would have known about it if the Germans had. She thought so, but she wasn't sure. The Germans hadn't run things for so long by not being able to keep secrets.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into this," Paul said as his burly escorts left the room. The door closed behind them. "You had nothing to do with it, not really."

As he spoke, he pointed to the ceiling and cupped a hand behind his ear. Lucy nodded to show she got it. The Feldgendarmerie was listening to whatever they said. The secret police had to be hoping they'd talk too much. That meant they had to be careful not to.

"It's good to see you," Lucy said. Then she'd remember she'd told her questioner she didn't know Paul very well. She quickly added, "It's good to see anyone who's not yelling at me and thinking I did things."

"Boy, do I know what you mean." Paul might have overacted a little, but not much. As he talked, he winked at her. "It's especially bad since we haven't done anything." He paused. "You're right. It is nice to see anybody who doesn't think you're a criminal."

Lucy smiled at him. He was getting things in between the lines, too. He didn't want the Germans to think the two of them were friends. That would give the Feldgendarmerie one more weapon. Didn't it have enough already?

"I never thought that." Lucy smiled at him. In fact, they grinned at each other, right there under the Germans' noses. She went on, "I do think it's terrible that you've had so much trouble."

"Well, it doesn't seem like I'm the only one," Paul answered. "It's just too bad, that's all. You know what I'd like to do when this is all over, to try to make up for some of the trouble we've caused you?"

"What?" Lucy thought he was an optimist for believing this would be over any time soon, if ever. But if you weren't an optimist when you were in trouble, wouldn't the weight of it squash you flat?

"I'd like to take you to dinner and a movie, if that's okay." He sounded nervous in a way that had nothing to do with being stuck in the Germans' jail. Lucy remembered thinking he was shy.

She nodded. "I'd like that." Would anything more come of it? Could anything more come of it? She had her doubts, even if she wished she didn't. The distance between that other San Francisco, the one with the nice Sunset District, and this one felt enormously wide. But dinner and a movie could be fun by themselves.

"The Feldgendarmerie hasn't been too rough with me. I hope they haven't with you." Paul yawned.

"No, not too bad." Lucy yawned, too. She wondered why. It was early in the day. She saw Paul sag down in his chair the instant before blackness also washed over her.

"You idiot." Sammy Wong looked as disgusted as he sounded.

Paul stared up at him. He remembered yawning, and then nothing else—till the man from Crosstime Traffic appeared in the room. It might have been magic. It might have been, but it wasn't. Across the table from him, Lucy Woo slumped in sleep. Paul's left arm burned. "You drugged us," he said. "You drugged us, and then you gave me the antidote."

"Hand the clever fellow a prize!" Sammy Wong kept right on glaring at Paul. "I drugged this whole building. Neofentanyl's good stuff. No odor, no taste, goes through the ventilating system like that"—he snapped his fingers—"and knocks you out for eight hours unless you get a shot. To the Devil with me if I know why I bothered giving you one. After that stunt you pulled, I should have just left you here."

He wasn't wrong. Paul stared down at the cheap gray carpet, feeling ashamed. "I did something stupid. I know that. I've had enough time to think about it in here. I'm sorry."

"Not sorry enough." His rescuer didn't seem to want to let him off the hook. He had trouble blaming the man from Crosstime Traffic, but even so ....

He looked up. "Haven't you ever done anything stupid in your whole life?"

"Not that stupid." Sammy Wong sounded very sure of himself. He turned toward the door. "Come on, kid. Let's get out of here. That eight hours is all very well, but the Kaiser's boys are going to start wondering what's up when the phone rings here and nobody answers."

"Okay," Paul said. "Wake Lucy up, too." He nodded toward the sleeping Chinese girl.

"What?" Wong stared at him. "Are you nuts? No, I won't wake her up. That's dumber than sticking your nose out of the hotel. Now get moving. We're wasting time."

"No," Paul said. "It's not fair to leave her here. Crosstime Traffic got her into this mess. The least we can do is get her out."

"She's a local," Sammy Wong said. "The crosstime secret comes first."

What would he do if I told him she knows it? Paul wondered. But he clamped down hard on that. The older man might want to shut Lucy's mouth for good. Paul did say, "This room is bound to be bugged."

"Won't pick up a thing." Again, Sammy Wong sounded sure as could be.

"Okay." Paul believed him. "But she's helped me a lot. I owe her one. You can't just leave her here with the Feldgendarmerie.."

Wong blew out a long, exasperated breath. "Why not? If you're gone and she's still here, they'll figure she didn't have anything to do with you."

"If I'm gone and she's still here, she'll figure I walked out on her," Paul said. "If I go and she stays, the Tongs will figure we're not to be trusted—and won't they be right? They've still got Dad somewhere, remember? Finding me was easy. What about him?" He waited. Sammy Wong looked even more sour than usual. He made a good match for Bob Lee. Paul added what he hoped was the clincher: "Besides, nobody deserves to be in a Feldgendarmerie jail, and she's only sixteen."

"If I let her out, she can't just go back to her family," Wong said. "The Germans would jug the lot of them."

"She can't stay here, either. She can't," Paul said. They glared at each other. Impasse. Paul sighed. "If you can't see your way clear to letting her out, I'd better stay here, too. Fair's fair."

Sammy Wong's eyes got wider than Paul thought they could. "What?" he yelled. "I can't do that! I couldn't do it before, and I especially can't do it now!" He was almost hopping up and down, he was so excited. "What will the Germans think? They all decided to take a nap at the same time?"

"I don't care." Paul had made up his mind. He didn't know whether he was right or wrong. A lot of the time, that didn't become clear till later on anyhow. "If she doesn't go, I don't go."

"I ought to bop you over the head and drag you," Wong said savagely.

Paul tensed. "You can try." Could the man from Crosstime Traffic do it? Maybe. Paul had had self-defense courses, but he'd never be a black belt or anything like that. He told himself he'd put up the best fight he could. And even if he lost. . . "Good luck explaining why you're lugging me down the street on your back."

Wong said several things in Chinese that didn't sound like compliments. Then he said several things in English that weren't compliments. Paul just smiled. Wong yelled, "You won't work for Crosstime Traffic again!" Paul's smile got bigger. That threat hurt. He refused to let Sammy Wong see how much. Besides, some things were more important.

"How soon do you think it'll be before somebody phones?" Paul asked.

Some of the things the older man called him made what he'd said before sound like a love letter. Paul looked down at his wrist. He wasn't wearing a watch, but the message came through loud and clear. "Here," Wong snarled, and the one word sounded worst of all. He took out a hypo and jabbed it into Lucy's arm.