Praise the gods! Fuller thought. Fuller thought. A real nymph! A real nymph!

"Tubes," Canidy said, "this is Andrea Buda."

Fuller nodded and smiled, then stepped forward. He held out his right hand.

"Hello," he said. "It's my pleasure to meet you."

"She doesn't speak English..." Canidy began.

Andrea returned the smile, put her hand in his, and leaned forward, slightly turning her face to present her left cheek.

"But it would appear," Canidy went on, "that you're expected to perform the traditional greeting."

Fuller looked at Canidy, confused.

About that time, Andrea moved forward.

To Fuller's amazement, she touched her left cheek to his, made the sound of a kiss, then repeated it as her right cheek touched his.

Then she stepped back, smiled, and diverted her eyes.

"That is what I meant," Canidy said. "You can take the boy out of California, but you can't take the beach bum out of the boy." is what I meant," Canidy said. "You can take the boy out of California, but you can't take the beach bum out of the boy."

Fuller smiled at Canidy and quietly said, "Can I change my name to Venus?"

Venus? Canidy thought. Canidy thought.

Then it took every effort for him not to grin.

Venus, goddess of love....

Canidy took a match from the box on the table and struck it.

"Tubes, touch her in any way that could be construed as anything but for the protection of her life," Canidy said lightly, "and..."

He touched the tip of the flame to the flash paper.

Andrea gasped.

[ONE].

Great Glen, England 1620 4 April 1943 For the first eighty miles or so miles of Charity Hoche's drive north, the view from behind the wheel of Ed Stevens's olive drab 1941 Chevrolet staff car had been relatively unchanged.

It had been that of a big red cross painted on an even bigger square of white painted on a big dark green box.

Since leaving Whitbey House, Ann had followed the British Humber light ambulance that carried Major William Martin, Royal Navy Marines.

Then, just shy of Northampton, her view had changed somewhat. As the ambulance approached a fork in the road, she saw a right arm sticking out from what was the driver window and a left arm out from the passenger window. The arms did not belong to the same body, of course.

The passenger's arm-that of Private Peter Ustinov-waved an animated cheery good-bye. The other arm pointed dramatically forward, in the direction of the fork, a narrow macadam lane that split off to the right. The ambulance then followed the main road to the left, continuing north to Glasgow and then on to the docks at Greenock.

Charity came up on the smaller road, checked for oncoming traffic, and then took the turn, tapping the horn twice as she did to signal Good-bye, Good-bye, too. too.

The one who had pointed out the turn was the bigger of the two men who wore the uniform of the British Motor Pool Corps. Confirming Charity's suspicions, they were not actually assigned to the MPC; Ustinov had said it was their cover story for what he called "the unfortunate unauthorized reallocation of the Humber." The burly man had also given Charity written directions to follow from that point forward.

"Sorry we can't show you personally, miss," he had said. "Can't yet afford to lose the ambulance to the real MPC types, you know."

The instruments of the American Chevrolet staff car registered, of course, in miles. The speedometer indicated that Charity, now on the far side of Northampton, was making about twenty-five miles an hour over the rough surface of the uneven macadam. And the odometer showed that she had covered more than one hundred miles.

Generally, Charity had a little difficulty with the mathematical conversion of miles to kilometers-it wasn't that she couldn't do it; she just rather didn't care for the mental exercise-but this time it was easy.

A round 100 makes it a snap.

The formula is to multiply the number of miles by 1.6 kilometers.

And that means I've just gone 160 kilometers.

On the left roadside, she saw by the sculpted hedgerow a signpost that read GREAT GLEN GREAT GLEN 14 14 KM KM.

She glanced at the handwritten directions and confirmed that her destination was just shy of the town.

Charity could not recall the exact formula for converting kilometers to miles. But making a rough calculation was almost easier than multiplying by 100.

A kilometer is roughly six-tenths of a mile.

That's slightly more than half a mile.

So that means I'm a little more than half of fourteen-or seven-miles from Great Glen.

She noted the odometer reading: 42,215.

A little more than ten minutes later, as the odometer rolled to 42,220, she saw that the roadside hedgerow had ended. There now was a well-maintained, low wall constructed of fieldstone. And, as the odometer turned to 42,221, she came to a gap in the wall, an entrance, with a wooden sign that appeared somewhat new.

She braked as she read it: HIGHAM HILLS, A HOME TO ALL HIGHAM HILLS, A HOME TO ALL.

Charity felt her throat tighten as the car came to a stop.

She leaned forward in her seat, chin on the steering wheel, and peered down past the entrance.

There was a charming grassy drive with two tracks of bare soil rutted by automotive traffic. It was lined on either side by mature field maples, the canopies of the trees touching to form a tunnel. And outside of the tall trees, running along the edge of the farm fields, a simple wooden fence consisting of two parallel boards running between posts five feet high.

This trip will turn out to be a complete waste of time and effort.

Not to mention most likely emotionally draining.

But I had to try. I owe Ann that much.

And when I'm done here, and with Major Martin gone, I can double up my effort in finding her.

Charity sat back. She shifted the Chevy into first gear, turned the steering wheel as she let out on the clutch, and soon was slowly rolling past the entrance and into the tunnel of trees.

The lane wound along for almost a mile. Then the tree line and canopy ended, and the drive made a large circle in front of what appeared to be the main house of the farm.

Charity saw that the two-story residence was built of sturdy materials, with a facade of fieldstone and a roof of slate. And though nothing on the order of an estate such as Whitbey House, it was a rather large residence. It had a substantial covered porch on the front and two sides-where, perhaps, twenty or thirty people were sitting or milling about-and it looked to Charity as if each floor could have maybe ten to twelve large rooms.

She saw that there were three English automobiles and one somewhat-battered pickup truck parked together on the grass off of the circular drive, and Charity steered the Chevrolet beside the truck and shut it off.

She looked toward the porch and the people there and saw that her newly arrived vehicle was now the subject of some attention.

Here goes nothing, she thought and opened her car door. she thought and opened her car door.

As she made her way toward the shallow steps leading to the front porch, a man on crutches worked his way down the steps, then toward her.

He looked to be about sixty. His long face was clean-shaven and his thinning silver hair loosely combed over a shiny scalp. He was neatly dressed in a well-worn wrinkled brown suit with a white shirt, no tie. The right leg below the knee was missing, and the man had neatly pinned up the pant cuff so it would not drag on the ground. And though the man appeared gaunt, he moved on his crutches with a determined effort and an air of authority.

As the man approached Charity, he said with a cockney accent, "How can I help you, miss?"

Charity smiled, then noticed that the man had a clipboard tucked under his left arm, between the armpit and the cushion top of the crutch. She held out her right hand.

"I'm sorry to trouble you," Charity said with a dazzling smile. "My name is Lieutenant Hoche."

"It's my pleasure, Lieutenant," he said, shaking her hand. "Christopher Johnson. I'm the adjunct here."

"I was hoping to see Grace Higham," Charity said pleasantly.

"She's rather busy right now. If I could ask what this pertains to? Or perhaps I could assist?"

Charity considered that and nodded.

"Of course," she said and composed her thought. "There was a recent Luftwaffe bombing in London. A very dear friend has not been heard from since. I am trying to find her and coming here was one of my first leads."

"She's in recovery here?" Johnson said and pulled the clipboard from under his arm. "What's her name?"

"Ann Chambers," Charity said. "But I don't think that she's a patient."

Christopher Johnson flipped through a few sheets on the clipboard and scanned the names, running an index finger down the listing.

"If she were," Charity went on, "I believe we would have heard from her."

"No," Johnson said, still looking at the clipboard, "not a single Chambers listed here. Ann or otherwise." He looked up, and Charity saw genuine empathy in his blue-gray eyes. "I'm very sorry, Lieutenant."

Charity nodded. "Thank you. But, as I said, I did not exactly expect to find her here."

"I'm sorry," he said, "then I'm confused. What is it that you're looking for?"

"My friend, Ann Chambers, she has met with Mrs. Higham. Written about her, actually."

Charity reached into her pocket and brought out the clip of Ann's article.

"Oh, yes," Johnson said as he reviewed it. "I have seen this. We received quite a bit of favorable attention after it was published. Many boxes came, mostly from the States. Quite a few toys and stuffed animals for the children."

Charity smiled.

Attagirl, Ann. You touched some hearts with that one.

"That's delightful to hear," Charity said. "To answer your question, what I'm looking for is the woman who was driving an ambulance to bring patients out here. Sara Spenser, she's in the article. No one can seem to find her, either, and I was thinking that perhaps she had come out here. Maybe bringing in patients, maybe working for a period of time?"

Johnson was nodding his understanding.

"And if Sara was here," Charity went on, "perhaps I could speak to her and she might have some idea where Ann might be. She and Ann, as I understand it, became quite friendly after the profile Ann had written about Sara and then the one on Mrs. Higham."

Charity glanced at the steps to the covered porch of the house and saw an attractive, petite Englishwoman coming out of the main door of the house, then down the steps of the porch.

That has to be the Higham woman.

"Yes," Christopher Johnson said. "I mean, no."

Charity looked back to him.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I don't-"

"Sara is-" he began.

"Mr. Johnson," the petite Englishwoman interrupted as she approached, "is there something?"

Christopher Johnson turned at her voice.

"Mrs. Higham," he said courteously, then motioned with his left hand to Charity as he kept his balance while leaning on the crutch. "May I present Lieutenant..."

"Hoche," Charity furnished, holding out her hand.

"Lieutenant," Grace Higham said somewhat sharply, shaking her hand.

Grace Higham coldly eyed the well-endowed blonde who she thought was single-handedly giving credence to the British barb that the problem with Yanks was "they were overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and and over here." over here."

"What brings you to Great Glen?" Grace Higham went on.

"Sara Spenser," Christopher Johnson said. "She was hoping to speak to Sara."

Charity noticed that Grace Higham's face registered some shock or surprise...or maybe even some disappointment.

"Is there a problem?" Charity said.

"It was our understanding," Grace Higham said, "from Sara herself, that she did not have any family left. That they, too"-she glanced at the patients on the porch-"had been lost to bombs."