Her eyes welled up again.

Halabi took a wadded-up tissue from her pocket and dabbed away the tears. “Well, they couldn’t have taken all your equipment. File tag says you took a bullet on the plating of your body armor. Saved your life.”

Duffy nodded. “Yeah. I was wearing a Bodyglove nanotube weave. With inserts. I guess the krauts don’t recognize quality when they shoot it.”

“Krauts, is it? You sound like a local, Jules.”

“Sorry. Going native is kind of an occupational hazard. I’ve been smoking Camels and thinking about fucking Betty Grable, too.”

She tried to shift herself up in the bed and winced, turning a little gray in the face. Halabi leaned down and helped settle her against a pillow.

“Thanks,” Duffy whispered. She took a few seconds to steady herself before nodding at the engagement and wedding rings Halabi was wearing. “I heard about you and the Texan,” she said, smiling weakly. “So what are you calling yourself nowadays? Captain Mrs. Michael Judge?”

“I’d smack you, but I might kill you,” Halabi said around a smirk. “But no. I kept my name. It’s quite the in-thing now, you know, for a young lady to keep her name. And I’m such a slave to fashion.”

Duffy closed her eyes as another wave of pain washed through her. “S’cool,” she croaked. “Just gimme a second.”

After a few moments she had it back under control again.

“Well, I’m glad for you, Karen. I interviewed your husband once. Out in the Zone. He was a good guy.”

“That Texan charm of his does work wonders on the ladies.”

Duffy seemed to set herself, like somebody about to lift a heavy weight. “It didn’t work out between Dan and me.”

“I heard.”

“Yeah. It was my fault-”

“Now, Jules, don’t-”

“No. It was. He was a great guy and I totally fucked it up with him. Jesus. What a fucking mess I’ve made.” She started to cry again.

Halabi perched on the edge of the bed. Despite the circumstances she appreciated having a contemporary-a true contemporary, not a ’temp-to talk with. She could relax with someone like Duffy in a way that just wasn’t possible even with a member of her crew. The closest thing she had to a female friend was Jane Willet on the Havoc, all the way off on the other side of the world. And they could only manage a personal e-mail every couple of weeks at best. Sometimes months went by without any contact.

She didn’t know Duffy nearly as well. Didn’t know her at all, really. They’d shared a pleasant enough evening at dinner a couple of years ago in Hawaii before the Trident left for home. Apart from that, she’d followed Duffy’s work for the Times, and once she’d done an e-mail interview with her for a brief profile in a series on “women warriors.” Given the isolation all the uptimers felt, however, that was enough to make them more than just acquaintances. It was a little like meeting a countryman in a strange foreign land.

“Look around, Jules. The whole world’s a fucking mess. An even bigger mess in some ways because we turned up. Our personal problems don’t really count, measured up against all that, do they? And at any rate, it’s not like you haven’t achieved anything since you arrived. Your readers love you. And in my opinion, off the record, you did your country a huge favor exposing Hoover the way you did.”

Duffy repaid her with a tentative look. It didn’t seem to sit comfortably on her face, and Halabi guessed that it was an unfamiliar expression for the reporter.

“You think?” she asked. “I took a lot of shit for that series. People saying I killed him. You had to read some of the fucking hate mail to believe it. I thought whack jobs like that were all a product of talk radio and Fox. Apparently not.”

“I hope you don’t blame yourself. You didn’t put the gun in his mouth, Julia. He did that, and pulled the trigger all on his own. My first commander used to call that sort of thing natural selection at work. As I read it, Hoover’s incompetence and sheer lunacy was largely to blame for the trouble the Yanks had catching those bombers who hit New York. If he’d been on the job like he was supposed to…”

Duffy’s eyelids fluttered with exhaustion and the heavy drug load she was carrying. “You seem very informed,” she said with a soft, cracked voice.

“I married an American, remember? A very political American, too, in his off-duty hours. Mike had no time at all for Hoover. Said he was a menace to society. He read every piece you and just about anybody else ever wrote about him. Used to scan them and e-mail them to me. Instead of love letters I’d get these enormous bloody text files with Mike’s annotations on the life and crimes of J.-bloody-Edgar.”

“Let me guess. He was a blogger, back up in twenty-one?”

Willet smiled. “I think it’s what he misses most about the future. Handing around mimeographs just doesn’t do it for him.”

Duffy chuckled. It was a low, warm sound. “So why’d you two get together. It doesn’t sound like he knows how to treat a gal?”

Halabi smiled again. “Mike looks like a hanging judge, if you’ll excuse the awful pun, but he’s a sweetie at heart. And he came after me. Looked me up when he was in London for some conference. Took me out to dinner. Showed me off. You know how with some guys, when you’re out with them, you can just tell they’re walking ten feet tall because they think they’ve grabbed the prettiest girl in the room all for themselves.”

The corner of Duffy’s mouth quirked up in a fair imitation of a grin. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, that was Mike. Didn’t matter where we went. Who we met. He let everyone know that he was proud to have me on…on his arm.”

Halabi realized she was choking up. She felt Julia’s hand on her arm. The clamps and wires of the medical sensors made it feel as though a cyborg was trying to comfort her.

“And I’ll bet nobody gave him any shit about it, either,” Duffy said, her voice becoming a little muddled now.

“No.” The Trident’s captain shook her head and blinked away a tear. “He’s got that whole Clint Eastwood thing going for him. Not once, the whole time I was with him, did I feel like anything other than royalty. Mike has this thing, doesn’t matter how much of a butthead somebody is, they just know he’s not going to stand for any bullshit.”

The soft peep of the computer that controlled anesthetic drip, which had accelerated noticeably when Julia sat upright and winced in pain, dialed back a bit. Halabi composed herself and glanced over at an orderly who was checking the other patients, a couple of RAF pilots fished out of the drink with severe burns. They were deeply sedated and made no sound.

Julia seemed to be drifting off to sleep.

“Jules?”

“Still here. Just.”

“You should get some sleep.”

“Uh-huh. Could I get a drink?”

Halabi checked with the orderly, who indicated that she could have a few sips from the bottle beside her bed. Halabi lifted the tube to her mouth.

“Thanks,” Duffy said when she was finished. “And thanks for having me here. It’s…nice to…you know…somewhere modern…like…”

“Like home.”

“Yeah. Like home.”