Mary's uncle, Wiiri Saari, owned several rental houses. Lying there on the rumpled bedsheets, the young couple decided to let Wiiri know that when Curtis got out of the army, they'd like to rent one of them.

Curtis suggested they spend the rest of his leave on the coast south of Tillamook Bay, where they'd spent part of his leave in 1942. Mary agreed eagerly. She'd already gotten a week's leave from her job at Wiiri's machine shop. She could probably get it extended.

With a slim finger, Mary followed a long scar on Curtis's right thigh. "I wish-" she said hesitantly, "I wish you didn't have to go back. Mostly I felt sure you'd come home, but sometimes I wasn't very brave. I was so afraid for you. And the Japanese? People say they won't give up, that they'll fight to the bitter end. And you're dearer to me than my own life."

Curtis kissed her gently. "Don't worry," he said, "I won't have to fight the Japanese." He paused, sorting his thoughts. When he spoke again, it was in a monotone, all emotion suppressed. "I was never in ETOUSA; that was a lie, a cover story. In the hospital in England, while I was recuperating, I was recruited by the OSS, because I spoke German well. Railroaded is the word. After they trained me, they smuggled me into Germany on a spy mission. In Bavaria lived with people I had to kill. Kill for good reasons."

He stopped talking for a long moment. Mary looked worriedly at him, waiting, knowing he wasn't done.

"People I saw every day," he went on. "One of them especially I knew and liked; I had to shoot him in the back. Another I killed treacherously, while he was shaking my hand. I needed to kidnap him, but first I had to make him unconscious, and… sometimes you misjudge how much force to use. You can't afford to use too little."

He paused, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'll tell you more about those things sometime." Again he paused. "Those ribbons on my Ike jacket-they include the Distinguished Service Cross, the next highest decoration after the Medal of Honor. That one's from Sicily. I almost bled to death there. One of the two silver stars is from Bavaria; they're one step below the DSC. You can read the commendations that go with them."

He reached, touched her solemn face. Her aura matched her expression. This wasn't easy for her, he knew, but she needed to hear it. "Anyway I'm done with war now," he went on. "For good. It may not be patriotic to feel that way, but I'm done with it. I'll tell you more about that too, someday. It's not only this war. It's stuff from before. From Yuulith, stuff I saw and did there that I never told you about."

With his fingertips he felt the rugged scars of his buttocks, and his voice took on a tone of wry amusement. "This," he said, then ran a finger along the longest of the surgical scars on his right leg, "and these will help me stay out of it. Among the things I did to get ready for Germany was, I practiced walking with a limp. Till it was automatic. Along with my scars, and pretending to be weak-minded, the limp explained why I wasn't in the German army. And kept me out of it while I was there."

Again his voice changed, became dry, matter-of-fact. "I'm due to report at the Pentagon on June 19. When I get there I'll be limping, just a little. And no one will question it; my medical records will take care of that. At worst they'll have me training guys somewhere."

That evening they ate supper with Fritzi and Margaret. Margaret questioned him about the war, his family, his plans. His answers were less than candid; her aura, her tone, her eyes, told him she was looking for things to disapprove of. He felt a powerful urge to shock her, tell her about his weird AWOL at Oujda, in French Morocco. About the voitar and the Bavarian Gate; the promiscuous Berta Stark, now a good wife and foster mother; the sexually ravenous, half-voitik Rillissa; the sorceries in Schloss Tannenberg. Instead he recited generalities.

Afterward he told Mary that Margaret might be good to Fritzi, but he himself wouldn't care to be around her. Though he didn't say so, he was aware that Fritzi was having regrets. Curtis saw auras in much greater detail than Mary did.

The next day they got in their '39 Chevy and drove to the coast. There they rented a tourist cabin, and spent ten lazy days strolling the beach, listening to the gulls, watching the surf break on great boulders and basaltic shelves, and hiking the heavy green forest. He left for D.C. on the 13th, planning to spend a couple of days in Indiana en route, visiting family.

Curtis's parents, Charley and Edna, had had no further contact with the Sisterhood. Not that he'd asked-all that was behind him, for good-but they'd have mentioned it. Charley's back had gone bad, and he'd sold the farm to his elder son, Frank. Frank was running beef cattle on it because he couldn't get enough help to raise crops, and couldn't afford to quit his job as shop foreman at Dellmon's Chevrolet. Frank Jr., a platoon sergeant, had come back wounded from France, and was training infantry at Fort McClellan. He wanted to farm the place when the war was over.

Curtis left Indiana feeling both good and bad. The farm he'd grown up on had changed, and his parents had become old in just the three years since he'd last seen them. On the other hand, Frank was looking out for them, and when Frank Jr. got out of the army, the farm would be in good hands.

2 Job Interview

At the Pentagon, Macurdy reported to a major in G-2-Intelligence-who looked him over thoroughly and with disapproval. "The OSS," the major said, "has little or no role in the pending invasion of Japan, and some of its personnel, including yourself, are being transferred to other services. You might have been transferred back to the airborne, but you have twice been transferred out of it as medically unfit. And the Military Police"-he paused, then added wryly: "to which you once were assigned but in which you never served, have rejected you on the basis of your subsequent service behavior.

"There is also the problem of your rank. Your captaincy may have been appropriate to OSS activities, but you lack both the training and the experience to serve as a captain in the airborne or other infantry organization. They might have been interested in you as a sergeant, but not as a captain."

He gazed disapprovingly at the large young man across the desk. Having read his service record, Macurdy's surly expression didn't surprise him. "At any rate," he continued, "for some undecipherable reason you have been assigned to us. Perhaps because of certain very limited similarities of function between G-2 and the OSS. We have found your personnel records both interesting and puzzling. Frankly, your history in the OSS is sufficiently odd and undocumented to bring into question your veracity and your mental health. While the irregularities in your airborne history were impractical to analyze, since so many of the people with whom you served were subsequently killed or invalided out.

"Your combat record, on the other hand, is well documented, and impressive if brief. Overall, however, it seems clear that you showed remarkably little respect for standard procedures, and for army ways of doing things in general. Which you might have gotten away with in the airborne, or"-he grimaced slightly-"the OSS. But not in military intelligence. Even your injuries and medical-surgical history, after the traffic accident in Oujda, are utterly incompatible with your subsequent assignments and combat record." The major peered intently at Curtis, as if hoping to perceive the truth. "Afterward, when reassigned to the Military Police, you avoided the transfer by going AWOL from the hospital, and by some still undetermined subterfuge, inserted yourself into the 505th Parachute Infantry."