Lightning

The prime minister drew on his cigar again, blew out smoke, and studied Stefan intensely. Their chairs were only a few feet apart, and being the object of Churchill's thoughtful scrutiny was more unnerving than Stefan would have expected.

At last the prime minister said, "And you got that information from something I will write in the future?"

Stefan rose from his chair, retrieved the six thick books that the guards had taken from his rucksack — Houghton Mifflin Company's trade-paperback reprints published at $9.95 each — and spread them out on the end of the table in front of Winston Churchill. "This, sir, is your six-volume history of the Second World War, which will stand as the definitive account of that conflict and be hailed as both a great work of history and literature." He was going to add that those books were largely responsible for Churchill's being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953, but decided not to make that revelation. Life would be less interesting if robbed of such grand surprises.

The prime minister examined the covers of all six books, front and back, and permitted himself a smile when he read the three-line excerpt from the review that had appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. He opened one volume and swiftly riffled the pages, not pausing to read anything.

"They aren't elaborate forgeries," Stefan assured him. "If you will read any page at random, you'll recognize your own unique and unmistakable voice. You will—"

"I've no need to read them. I believe you, Stefan Krieger." He pushed the books away and leaned back in his chair. "And I believe I understand why you've come to me. You want me to arrange an aerial bombardment of Berlin, targeted tightly to the district in which this institute of yours is located."

"Yes, Prime Minister, that's exactly right. It must be done before the scientists working at the institute have finished studying the material on nuclear weapons that's been brought back from the future, before they agree upon a means of introducing that information into the German scientific community at large — which they may do any day now. You must act before they come back from the future with something else that might turn the tide against the Allies. I'll give you the precise location of the institute. American and RAF bombers have been making both daylight and night runs on Berlin since the first of the year, after all—"

"There has been considerable uproar in Parliament about bombing cities, even enemy cities," Churchill noted.

"Yes, but it's not as if Berlin can't be hit. Because of the narrowly defined target, of course, this mission will have to take place in daylight. But if you strike that district, if you utterly pulverize that block—"

"Several blocks on all sides of it would have to be reduced to rubble," the prime minister said. "We can't strike with sufficient accuracy to surgically remove the buildings on one block alone."

"Yes, I understand. But you must order it, sir. More tons of explosives must be dropped on that district — and within the next few days — than will be dropped on any other scrap of land in the entire European theater at any time in the entire war. Nothing must be left of the institute but dust."

The prime minister was silent for a minute or so, watching the thin, bluish plume of his cigar smoke, thinking. Finally: "I'll need to consult with my advisers, of course, but I believe the earliest we could prepare and launch the bombardment would be two days hence, on the twenty-second, but perhaps as late as the twenty-third."

"I think that'll be soon enough," Stefan said with great relief. "But no later. For God's sake, sir, no later."

As the woman crouched by the driver's-side fender of the Buick and surveyed the desert to the north of her position, Klietmann was watching her from behind a tangle of mesquite and tumbleweed. She did not see him. When she moved to the other fender and turned her back to Klietmann, he got up at once and ran in a crouch toward the next bit of cover, a wind-scalloped knob of rock narrower than he was.

The lieutenant silently cursed the Bally loafers he was wearing, because the soles were too slippery for this kind of action. It now seemed foolish to have come on a mission of assassination dressed like young executives — or Baptist ministers. At least the Ray-Bans were useful. The bright sun glared off every stone and slope of drifted sand; without the sunglasses, he would not have been able to see the ground ahead of him as clearly as he could now, and he certainly would have put a foot wrong and fallen more than once.

He was about to dive for cover again when he heard the woman open fire in the other direction. With this proof that she was distracted, he kept going. Then he heard screaming so shrill and ululant that it hardly sounded like the screaming of a man; it was more like the cry of a wild animal gutted by another creature's claws but still alive.