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Page 81.

Ivor Crane returned the salute and stared for a moment, then brightened. “Tim Nordhall! Well, I’ll be. Looking good—I didn’t expect to see you again.”

They shook hands, and Tim said: “What a surprise.”

Crane grinned. “You’re telling me. I was just over here to drop off some paperwork. They have me working over at a British location.” He rolled his eyes up in the general direction of the upriver skyline some blocks away inland. He put a fingertip on his lips. “You know how it is.”

Tim nodded. Half the people in London were on secret business, so why not Crane? “Quickly therefore changing the subject, are you in town for long?”

“I’ll be moving to the Pentagon soon if this war ever ends.” He held up his arm, with the raincoat half draped over his prosthesis. “Time to chew grass in the back forty.” Both laughed. “Look, Nordhall, can I buy you a drink?”

“I’d be delighted, Sir.” Tim felt genuinely flattered, though a bit puzzled.

“Great! In the City then, some bangers and mash with a stout to wash it down.” An olive drab Ford with Colonel pennants rolled around. They got in and Crane said: “You’re looking mighty fit.” A young black sergeant drove, expertly and fluidly navigating the heavy traffic.

“Thanks. I’ve been walking a lot. Seeing the sights.”

“Women?”

“Oh, a few. London is filled with pretty girls.” He didn’t mention his loss of Anna, and the dearth of really interesting women since. If you could call losing someone you never had a loss. He had written to her twice, and received a brief, vague post card from her from a vacation trip on Capri. It was signed simply A.S., without any emotional close.

Leave typewriter empty. Rise and walk away. Audience too stunned to applaud. In the silence, close door as you leave. Finished.

“It sure is,” Crane said sitting back comfortably in the plush interior. Crane had the driver leave them near Piccadilly Circus and told him to return in an hour. Tim took his former boss to a pub he liked on Friday Street, off Cannon, near the badly bombed out Wren church of St. Christopher Cole. As they climbed over rubble and wound through home defense barricades, Crane commented: “Seems like a million years ago that we were in Africa. Did you ever actually meet Malone, that poor fellow who wound up in Mauritania with a knife in his back?”

Tim shook his head. “Not in this life. It was pure coincidence that the German fellow and I stumbled on him and his girlfriend.”

“Oh yes, the Belgian woman. Régine Clery. Poor thing. Your luck was with you throughout that African ordeal, from H.M.S. Sturmer forward.”

“Yessir.”

“I never did bother reading the whole crime report. Must have been a ghastly scene.” They sat in a smoky Victorian pub with its clutter and mirrors and hard wooden benches. The first ale tasted good, and a rather heavy but hearty smell of fried fish and potatoes filled the air. Tim agreed things had turned out reasonably well. They lifted their mugs and clicked them together in a toast so flecks of foam spattered on the tabletop. “Here’s to your continued success, my friend,” Crane said warmly.

“Good luck to you too, Sir.”

Tim dashed off a reply to her, just as he received a visit from his boss, U.S. Navy Captain Jack Stone. “Tim, my lad! The war’s winding down, and we are going back to the States! Are you ready? Pack your belongings and be ready in two days. I have billets for us on board a B-29 on military orders. We’ll fly by way of Paris. Two weeks TDY with SHAEF, just strolling around, and then you’re being reassigned to San Francisco. You get to take a month off in New Haven along the way.”

A last postcard finally arrived from Anna Stokowska, who had been promoted to Major in the Nurse Corps of the Polish Army, and was now stationed at a British Army rear casualty hospital in Athens. She wrote to wish him well—she had fallen in love, and was about to marry a Greek industrialist. Tim sat and stared at the postcard for a long while—wondering about Erek, about himself—and then filed it away with his private papers. They were finished for good, then. He would move on, feeling rather empty and crushed. We get over things like this, he thought, she’s only one woman. He called some male friends to see who was up for getting drunk with Guinness Stout on a walking ramble through the City.