The women shook hands.

"Our friend Inge is already here," Erika said. "As is Pastor Dannberg. Why don't we go in the house?"

"Thank you," Netty said.

Inge Liptz, a trim blonde in her early thirties, was in the library with a small, wizened, nearly bald old man in a clerical collar, Pastor Heinrich Dannberg, who was first among equals in the Evangalische hierarchy of the area.

Inge, who was drinking champagne, walked up to Netty and Elaine and kissed both of them on the cheek.

"I see we're all in uniform," she said.

At a social gathering a year or so before, she had smilingly observed that she and Netty and Elaine were very similarly dressed, in black dresses, with a single strand of pearls.

Netty had replied, "I don't know about you, Inge, but for Elaine and me this is the prescribed uniform of the day for an event like this."

Inge, whose husband was the Oberburgermeister of Fulda, had never heard that before and thought it was hilarious.

"You know Pastor Dannberg, of course?" Erika asked.

"Yes, of course," Netty said. "How nice to see you, Pastor Dannberg."

He took her hand in his, made a gesture of kissing it, then clicked his heels and said, "Frau Lustrous," and then repeated the process with Elaine.

A maid extended a silver tray with champagne flutes.

"Again, welcome to the House in the Woods," Erika said, raising her glass. "I don't think you have been here before, have you?"

"No, I haven't."

"Your husband has, many times, over the years," Erika said. "He and my father have taken many boar together."

"Yes, he's told me," Netty said.

"I first met your husband, Frauoberst Lustrous," Pastor Dannberg said, "when he was a lieutenant, and he and his colonel came to Saint Johan's School with a truck loaded with boar they had taken-very near here, as a matter of fact-and which they gave to us to feed our students."

"I didn't know that," Netty said.

"Oh, yes. And they did that often. It was a great service to us. The woods were overrun with boar-they had not been harvested in the last years of the war. We needed the meat, of course, and, additionally, the boar, we knew, were going to cause the badly needed corn crops severe damage. I have ever since regarded him as both a friend and a Christian gentleman."

"That's very kind of you to say so, Pastor," Netty said.

And it is. So why do I feel I'm being set up for something?

"And my father, too, thought of Colonel Lustrous as an old and good friend," Erika said.

And there it goes again.

"My husband, Frau Gossinger, was very saddened by:"

"My father killing himself and my brother by driving drunk at an insane speed on the autobahn?" Erika said very bitterly.

"Erika!" Pastor Dannberg said, both warningly and compassionately.

"It's the truth," Erika said. "And the truth, I believe the Bible says, 'shall make you free.' "

"It also says, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged,' " Pastor Dannberg said.

"I meant no offense," Erika said.

"And certainly none was taken," Netty said.

Erika signaled to the maid for another flute of champagne.

"I really had meant to say two things," Erika said, when she'd taken a healthy sip of the champagne. "The first was to tell you that we're having roast boar today, sort of in memory of all the boar your husband and my father and brother took together over the years."

"What a nice thought!" Netty said. And thought: There it is again. What's her agenda?

"And the second was to suggest that although you and Frau Naylor and I are meeting for the first time, this is really a gathering of friends. You two and Inge, I know, are very close. The pastor has been my good friend, in good times and bad, since I was a little girl. And he's told you how he feels about Oberst Lustrous, who was a good friend of my father and my brother. What I'm driving at is that I would be honored to be permitted to address you by your Christian names."

"Oh, I would really like that," Netty said.

And is this where we get the pitch?

"Welcome to my home, friend Natalie," Erika said.

"Please, my friends call me 'Netty' "

Erika smiled. "Welcome to my home, friends Netty and Elaine," she said and kissed both of them on the cheek. And then Inge Liptz kissed all three of them on the cheek.

Why do I think Inge is on the edge of tears? What the hell is going on here?

A maid announced the luncheon was served.

The dining room was on the third floor of das Haus im Wald. A dumbwaiter brought the food from the kitchen on the first floor. One wall of the dining room was covered with a huge, heavy curtain.

When Erika von und zu Gossinger threw a switch and the curtains slowly opened, Netty and Elaine saw that a huge plate-glass window offered a view of farmlands.

And of the border between the People's Democratic Republic of Germany and West Germany.

Netty knew a good deal about the border. She'd spent much of her life married to a man who patrolled it. First, he'd served as a second lieutenant in a jeep or armored car, and now as the colonel of the regiment responsible for miles of it.

The border was marked with a thirteen-foot-tall steel-mesh fence topped with barbed wire. Watchtowers had been built wherever necessary so the fence and the land leading up to it could not only be kept under observation but swept with machine-gun fire, some of it automatically triggered when a detection device of one kind or another sensed someone in the forbidden zone.

The forbidden zone, several hundred yards wide, had been cleared of trees and was heavily planted with mines. There were two roads, one on either side of the fence, one for East German border guards, and the other for West German border guards and the vehicles of the Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment.

"That's Gossinger land over there," Erika said. "Just about as far as you can see. You'll notice I did not say, ' Used to be Gossinger land.' One day the family will get it back."

Netty said what came to her mind.

"That fence is an obscenity."

"Yes, it is," Erika agreed simply.

What does she do? Sit here and look at what the family's lost?

Or is this another part of the setup I now know is coming?

"Well, why don't we sit down and have our luncheon?" Erika said.

Pastor Dannberg said a brief grace, and then two maids served a course of roast boar, roast potatoes, spinach, and sauerkraut. Glasses were filled with liebfraumilch. Netty sipped hers very slowly, and held her hand, politely, over her half-full glass when one of the maids tried to fill it.

Dessert was bread pudding. Cognac was offered but declined all around, except by Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger, who held her snifter in her palm not nearly long enough to warm it before taking a hefty swallow.

"Elaine," Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger said, "I hope you won't take this to mean that Inge is a gossip but she tells me that not only are you and Netty friends but your husbands as well."

I guess that was the opening statement.

"Allan," Netty said, "Elaine's husband, saved my husband's life in Vietnam. They're very close."

"The reason I brought that up," Erika said, "is that I am about to get into a subject I would really rather share only with friends."

"I'd be happy to take a walk:" Elaine said.

"I'd rather you stayed," Netty said.

Frau Erika nodded.

"Netty," she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to try to impose on your friendship, and your husbands friendship, in dealing with a matter of some delicacy."

"I can't imagine you imposing," Netty said.

Oh yes I can.