“That you, Shmuel?” somebody hissed-Jerzy.

“Yes, it’s me,” Anielewicz answered in Polish. He had no idea the other partisan was within a kilometer till he spoke. Well, that was why Jerzy walked point while he shlepped along well back in the line.

But the Pole didn’t sound angry at him. “That was a good scheme you had there. The Lizards really like sticking their snouts into that stuff, don’t they?”

“That they do,” Mordechai said. “The ones who get hooked good, they’ll do just about anything for a taste of ginger, and a lot of them are hooked-quite a lot of them, if what happened back there is any clue.”

“Might as well be pussy, eh?” Friedrich stepped out from behind a tree. He was twice Jerzy’s size, but just about as light on his feet-and it didn’t do to think him stupid, either. He’d understood Polish and answered in the same language.

None of which made Mordechai feel easy around him. “I don’t think they keep their brains in their pricks, unlike some people I could name,” he said. He tried to keep his tone light, but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded; having to deal withWehrmacht men made his hackles rise.

“If men keep brains in their pricks, why do you Jews make yourselves stupider by cutting some off?” Friedrich retorted. Was that just raillery, or did the German mean something more by it? Who could tell what a German had been up to in Poland before the Lizards came? Anielewicz gave it up. They were-supposed to be-on the same side now.

Jerzy said, “Come on-we go this way now.” Mordechai was damned if he knew how Jerzy could tell which way to go, or, for that matter, which waythis way was. But the Pole was rarely wrong-and Mordechai had no idea which way he was supposed to be going. He followed. So did Friedrich.

The point man’s skill or instinct or whatever it was led them back to the partisans’ camp deep in the forest. No one risked a fire even with thick tree cover overhead; the Lizards had too many eyes in the air. They just found blankets, rolled themselves in them, and tried to go to sleep.

For Anielewicz, that proved impossible. For one thing, adrenaline still sang through him from the fight. For another, he wasn’t used to sleeping in a blanket on the hard ground. And for a third, men-and a few women-not lucky enough to have been guided by Jerzy kept stumbling into camp all night long. Some of them moaned with wounds.

Some of them couldn’t sleep, either. He joined one of the little knots of fighters sitting in the darkness and trying to figure out how well they’d done. One fellow claimed four Lizards downed, another twice that many. It was hard to figure out the partisans’ losses, but at least two men were known dead, and four or five wounded. What morning would prove remained to be seen.

Mordechai said, “If we hit them this hard every time, we’ll make them know we’re there. We can afford to trade one for one longer than they can.” That produced thoughtful silence, then grunts he took as agreement.

Sirens screaming, airplanes roaring overhead, bombs crashing down, antiaircraft guns pounding maniacally-Moishe Russie had been through that in Warsaw in 1939, when theLuftwaffe methodically pounded the Polish capital to pieces. But this was London almost four years later, with the Lizards trying to finish the job the Germans had started here, too.

“Make it stop!” his son Reuven cried, one more wail lost in the many that filled the Soho shelter.

“We can’t make it stop, darling,” Rivka Russie answered. “It will be all right.” She turned to Moishe. She didn’t speak again, but her face held two words: I hope.

He nodded back, sure he bore an identical expression. Having to admit your powerlessness to your child was awful, and being afraid you were lying when you reassured him even worse. But what else could you do when you had no power and were dreadfully afraid things wouldn’t be all right?

More bombs hit, somewhere close by. The mattresses strewn across the floor of the shelter jumped with the impact. The outcry inside the shelter rose to a new pitch of polylingual panic. Along with English and the Russies’ Yiddish, Moishe heard Catalan, Hindustani, Greek, and several languages he couldn’t identify. Soho held immigrants and refugees from all over the world.

Reuven squealed. At first, Moishe was afraid he’d hurt himself. Then he realized the flickering candlelight had been enough to let his son spot the Stephanopoulos twins, who lived in the flat across the hall from his own. Reuven had no more than a handful of words in common with Demetrios and Constantine, but that didn’t keep them from being friends. They started wrestling with one another. When the next flight of Lizard planes dropped another load of death, they paid hardly any attention.

Moishe glanced over at Rivka. “I wish I could be so easily distracted.”

“So do I,” she said wearily. “You at least don’t look like you’re worried.”

“No?” he said, surprised. “The beard must hide it, because I am.” His hand went to his whiskery chin. A lot of men were sporting whiskers in London these days, what with shaving soap, razor blades, and hot water all in short supply. He’d worn a beard in Warsaw, though, and felt naked when he shaved it off to escape to Lodz one step ahead of the Lizards after he refused to be their radio mouthpiece any more.

They’d captured him anyhow, a few months later. Growing the beard again had been the one good thing about the prison into which they’d clapped him. He shook his head. No, there had been one other good thing about that prison-the commando raid that got him out of it. The trip to England by submarine had followed immediately.

He peered around the shelter. Amazingly, some people managed to sleep despite the chaos. The stink of fear and stale piss was the same as he’d known back in Warsaw.

Rivka said, “Maybe that was the last wave of them.”

“Alevai omayn,”Moishe answered fervently: “May it be so-amen!” The vigor of his reply made Rivka smile. Wishing didn’t make things so, worse luck, but he didn’t hear any more explosions, either nearby or off in the distance. Maybe Rivka was right.

The all-clear sounded half an hour later. Friends and neighbors woke the men and women who’d slept in spite of everything. People slowly went back above ground to head back to their homes-and to discover whether they had homes to head back to. It was about as dark on the street as it had been inside the shelter. The sky was overcast; the only light came from fires flickering here and there. Moishe had seen that in Warsaw, too.

Fire engines screamed through the streets toward the worst of the blazes. “I hope the Lizards didn’t wreck too many mains,” Moishe said. “They’ll need all the water pressure they can get.”

“I just hope our block of flats is still standing,” Rivka said. They turned the corner. “Oh, thank God, it is.” Her voice changed timbre: “Get away from there, Reuven! That’s broken glass-you could cut yourself.”

A woman lay groaning in front of the apartment building. Moishe hurried over to her. He’d been a medical student when the war started, and used what he’d learned in the Warsaw ghetto-not that all the medical training in the world did any good when people were starving to death.

“My leg, my leg,” the woman moaned. Russie was just starting to learn English, so that didn’t mean much to him. But the way she clutched at the injured part, and the way the shin bent where it had no business bending, told him everything he needed to know.

“Doctor,” he said; he’d made sure he learned that word. He pointed to himself. It wasn’t quite true, but he was the closest thing to a doctor the poor woman would see for a while, and thinking he was the genuine article might give her more confidence in him. He wanted that; he knew how to set a broken leg, but he also knew how much the process hurt.