The Bavarian Gate

From between two dunes came giants, 50-foot redheaded monsters carrying great chains, anchor chains, wielding them like fly swatters, beating the beach with them. With each blow, dozens of men died. There were shrieks. A chain smashed the sand in front of him, jerked upward thick with blood and flesh, started back down… and he awoke, panting.

The beach had no crushed bodies. There was only A

A

Macurdy's attention was not on where they were. It was on the dream beach where monsters tramped among GI's, crushing them beneath great clawed feet, smashing them with bloody chains. He hadn't dreamt it idly, he told himself. It was a reminder of duty, a duty he'd only now recognized.

They hiked through heath for much of a mile, while the dawnlight strengthened. Then the heath ended. Ahead was what had been a farm cottage, now a home guard outpost, with two jeeps parked outside and a uniformed sentry by the door. A

At fifteen yards, the middle-aged sentry pointed his rifle at them. "Stop right there," he said, and they did. "Who are you, and what's your business here?"

"My name is A

For a moment both the sentry and Macurdy gawped, then Macurdy added, "I'm Lieutenant Curtis Macurdy. We're an OSS mission-the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. Army. I need to get in touch with our superiors, at once."

The sentry gathered his wits. "Sergeant!" he shouted, forgetting protocol. "Come out here right away"

A

A jeep from MI5 arrived from London in about an hour, in the charge of a green 2nd lieutenant, to take them into custody. Macurdy fended them off with obstinacy and lies, insisting that he was a 1st lieutenant, and not about to be ordered by a junior officer. Minutes later an OSS jeep arrived with an American captain, and took them away, leaving the unhappy lieutenant behind.

What stuck in Macurdy's mind, though, riding off down the road to London, wasn't his small victory over MI5, or even how quickly things had developed. It was that he'd never suspected A

31

"Should Auld Acquaintance…"

Before the day was over they'd both been debriefed, which took until evening because the OSS wanted everything. Among other things, he emphasized that it was A

Normally his mission officer would have debriefed him, but the man was away, and a young lieutenant did it. Handling it professionally, even the description of the Voitar and their ears, and the drills Macurdy had done-until Macurdy told about his visit to Hithmearc. The lieutenant got nervous then; it showed in his eyes, and conspicuously in his aura. He's afraid of me, Macurdy realized. He thinks I'm crazy.

Awakening spontaneously the next morning, Macurdy went to breakfast and found A

Her aura told him she really did feel threatened, though he couldn't imagine the threat being real.

"I'll see if I can do something about it," he said.

When the MI5 man arrived-a lieutenant less green- Macurdy was with her, and explained that she was a German national, working with him. "We've got a mission," he lied. "We'll be leaving before noon."

"Sorry, chap," the Englishman said, "but I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else. She's our responsibility now." Scowling, Macurdy stepped close, pushing his broken nose in the man's startled face. "Look, shit-for-brains, she and I have been working together for months. She may have been born in England, but you people never even heard of her until yesterday. So hear this, and hear it well. The only way you take her with you is to whip my ass first, and you don't have a chance in hell of doing that."

The man didn't flinch, only grimaced, as if he found such language and behavior offensive. "Your superiors shall hear of this," he said stiffly, and turning, stalked away.

They probably will, Macurdy thought ruefully, then turned and gri

She cocked her head at him. "Lieutenant Macurdy, you are a never-ending source of surprises. And yes I think we should." She paused thoughtfully. "Right now you're the only friend I have here, actually the only friend I have anywhere:"

That sobered Macurdy. With A

He was around, now wearing a major's oak leaves on his collar. Macurdy got through to him by feeding a WAC secretary a cock-and-bull story. Von Lutzow had just returned from France again, and had spent the day before at Bushy Park, Eisenhower's new headquarters, reporting to the commander's G-2 on a mission he'd carried out in France. He seemed to have enjoyed his day with the high brass, as if the experience had been invigorating.

Macurdy sketched out his and A

She smiled ruefully. "My spinster aunt Agnes," she said, "a rather dear soul, in her way, but an intransigent fascist." A

When the war began, of course, all that had ended. Agnes had promptly and publicly renounced her fascist loyalties, and denounced those who didn't, including A

When A

When Von Lutzow returned, General Donovan's office had already called him, but he delayed calling back. When Macurdy told him what he had in mind, the major said he'd set it up. Then he took the two into an office whose occupant was on mission, and left them there. An hour later he was back with hastily drafted mission orders for Macurdy, and a temporary appointment for A