His eyes throbbed and tornadoes blew through his head.

Who could it be? The Gestapo? Had they discovered his treason? But no, if that had happened, I would not be alive.

Then who? Where had he seen that man before?

Willie's wide eyes and Little Manny's white, terrified face loomed out of the gray spots that still lurked in his peripheral vision. When he was almost sure he could walk without getting tangled up in the wet spaghetti strands of his own legs, he grabbed the flexipad, attempted to compose himself, and headed out the door.

"Herr Oberst?" said Frau Schluter. "Is there anything-?"

"No," he croaked, waving the pad at her. "I simply forgot a meeting at OKH. I am late. I shall be back later today."

"But there is no meeting at-"

"I got the message last night," he called back over his shoulder, as he left the office. "It was too late to call you. Please carry on updating the Two Sixty-two files."

He broke into a trot in the corridor, almost knocking a Kriegsmarine officer off his feet as he hurtled around a corner.

"Excuse me," he called out as he dashed past the elevators, which were notoriously slow. He headed straight for the stairwell instead, trying to get out of the building as quickly as possible, without looking like a madman. Others were also hurrying about, no doubt on important state business, so no one paid him any mind.

Brasch hit the street and ran for a tram that was pulling up a hundred yards away. As he struggled to put his flexipad away, he realized he had no change for the fare, but rushed on anyway, leaping onto the bottom step just as the streetcar began to move.

A conductor began to amble toward him as he puffed and prepared to browbeat the man into letting him ride for free. But as he began the pantomime of searching his pockets for coins he knew weren't there, the man nodded at the Iron Cross on his breast and turned away.

Brasch examined the decoration somewhat dubiously. So it had a use after all.

He rode the entire way home, bunching the muscles in his legs, silently urging the driver to hurry up. He checked his watch at least twice every minute, cursing himself for not noting what time the message had come in. Would he make it in fifteen minutes?

Would a delay of a minute or two cause the man to kill his wife and child?

Behind of all this lay the bigger question: Who was their captor? Which master had sent him?

The more he thought about it, Brasch didn't think the man was an SD agent. The state had no need to play games like this. If they had wanted him, they would have marched a squad of goons into the office and simply taken him. So, too, with his family.

He realized with a flutter of his already churning stomach that he still wore his Luger. The instructions had been quite explicit. He was to come alone-and unarmed.

Thus as he jumped from the trolley at the stop nearest his home, and half walked, half jogged the rest of the way, Brasch unbuttoned the clasp on his holster. His soldier's training tried to assert itself, pushing him toward action. But his rational mind checked the warrior spirit.

This bastard wanted him, for whatever reason. If he had been an assassin, he wouldn't have bothered with Willie and Manfred. No, the prize was Brasch, not his corpse.

He fumbled with his keys at the building entrance, and again at the door to their rooms. "It's me," he called out, closing the door behind him. The kitchen was at the end of a long corridor. He unloaded the Luger and slid it along the carpeted floor with an underarm throw.

"There," he called out, "it is as you wished. And I am alone."

A German voice replied. "I know. I can see. Come into the kitchen, slowly."

When he was halfway down the hall, the voice spoke again. "Turn around, place your hands on your head, and walk the rest of the way backwards."

Brasch did as he was told.

Muller watched the engineer as he felt his way into the small kitchen. When Brasch was a few feet from the table, Muller told him to stop and turn around.

"Bind your hands to the table leg with those plasteel cuffs," he ordered, pointing to the objects on the table. "I'm sure you know what I mean, so don't fuck around or I will put a bullet into your son. This pistol is silenced. Nobody will hear."

He spoke in English, to spare the boy any more distress than was necessary. Even so, he fought to keep the disgust off his face and out of his voice. This wasn't how he had imagined himself when he had enlisted, twelve years earlier. No, this was the moral equivalent of the evil he had volunteered to fight, although he had no real intention of murdering the boy or the woman.

Brasch however, could well be spending his last day on earth. When the engineer had cuffed himself to the table, Muller moved around to a spot where he could see the man's hands.

"You have brought your flexipad, I see. Good, Herr Oberst. I will remove it now and place it on the table. My gun will be at your head the entire time. I doubt you will want your son to watch as his papa's brains are blown out."

Brasch was shaking with coiled tension as Muller removed the device, powered it up, and laid it next to his own on the table. He keyed in the command set that would effect a laser link transfer of all the data.

"What are you doing?" asked Brasch. "You're not Gestapo, are you? You're one of them. From the future?"

"Yes," Muller admitted. "And I'm saving Germany from herself."

"You idiot!" Brasch spat. "Why did you have to do this to my family? Look at little Manny-he is shaking with terror. You have tortured him, and all for nothing. I sent you everything I know. Everything! And this is my reward? What sort of a barbarian are you?"

Muller had no idea what the man was talking about. His mission brief had been simple. Brasch was one of the critical players in the Nazi's accelerated weapons program. So Muller had been sent in to determine how much they had accomplished, and to liquidate Brasch once he had the information. The engineer's outburst made no sense.

"Where do you think the data burst came from, on the Demidenko Center, the fast-fission project, the SS special-weapons directorate," Brasch hissed, glancing around as if afraid they might be overheard.

"Just shut up, and slow down," Muller barked when he finally recovered his wits. "What are you talking about? What burst?"

"It was yesterday! I sent a compressed, encrypted burst to the British ship, the Trident. It took me months to work out how to do so, without being caught. I sent everything I had on the special projects, and on Sea Dragon. Have they told you nothing?"

"Did you identify yourself?" asked Muller as he tried to understand what was happening. It was like wrestling with blocks of smoke.

"Of course not. Do you think I'm insane? I took enough of a risk, just sending the information as I did."

Muller glanced at the wife. She must speak English, too, he guessed. He'd spoken to her only in German before. Her eyes registered a renewed shock-something beyond the trauma of being taken hostage.

He tried to think it through as quickly as possible. If Brasch had sent such a burst, but hadn't identified himself, there would be no immediate reason for the special ops executive to contact Muller. Particularly if there was any risk of compromising the source of such valuable new information.

"Shit," he muttered as he scooped up his own flexipad. He dropped the file transfer into the background and brought up the communicator, scribbling out a quick message.

He needed to check out Brasch's story.