The strange counter-insurgence strike team of two archaeologists and three former officers strode along the busy sidewalks en route to their target. Gilroy Buchanan had departed after delivering his mission details, but nobody seemed to miss him. Almost by instinct, the two panzer veterans fell into a well-drilled field march cadence that was matched by Ernst Wieland.

Mel and Janice walked behind the tough men who had temporarily put on soft hats and tan trench coats to blend in a little better. Mel's long legs enabled her to keep up with the marching cadence at first, but she slowed down when she noticed Janice lagging behind. The fiery adventurer had zero interest in marching with any kind of former enemy so she dropped back on purpose.

At twenty to nine in the evening, the sidewalks of the main streets the team needed to use were ripe with plenty of well-dressed pedestrians out for a night on the town. The mood was upbeat but still reserved in the typical fashion of the upper-middle class.

Later, after crossing through several smaller streets, the mismatched group entered the boroughs that had housed the working class before the devastating air raids. Although everything had been rebuilt to a far higher standard than the ratty, old tenement blocks, the type of residents hadn't changed. Mel and Janice saw many men in their early thirties who were amputees or carried other types of physical disabilities that were clearly lasting legacies of the war. Some, but not all, of those men stared at the familiar marching cadence and the general looks of the Panzer veterans with wide, angry eyes.

Janice let out a disdainful snort when she noticed Ernst Wieland deliberately looking in the other direction when they marched past a small shop deep in the working class borough. It appeared the shoemaker Samuel Weissbaum posed a threat to the tall man simply by being there after all the work that had been done to get rid of them.

---

The group eventually turned off Hoferstrasse and went down Erwin-Thieleman-Strasse that was in fact a Fussgängerzone, a pedestrian zone. The neighborhood changed; the colors grew brighter and the exteriors of the stores more garish. It was soon clear they had arrived at the proverbial pearly gates of one of Hamburg's fabled entertainment zones. Although not quite as unrestrained as the notorious Reeperbahn near the docks, the establishments on Erwin-Thieleman-Strasse offered a little of everything for those members of the public who didn't necessarily consider themselves mainstream.

Mel responded by moving closer to Janice and grabbing her hand. They shared a brief look and let out identical chuckles. Janice had seen it all before countless times - and in every language imaginable - so she felt right at home, but Mel was less versed in how the world turned in such districts.

Just to underscore the fact they were now in the Land of the Rambunctious, they went past a rather wild and woolly bachelor party where the poor groom had been draped in festoons, diapers and women's underwear while chugging down a bottle of Sekt, a popular German type of sparkling wine.

A group of uniformed British Tommies from the occupational forces chatted up a few Fräuleins in the hope of getting the most out of their evening pass. They behaved themselves while being near a couple of British sergeants from the Military Police, but as soon as the MPs had moved on, the young soldiers let loose all over again - some things never changed.

When Janice and the others finally arrived at Die Traumfabrik, she pushed her fedora back from her forehead while she took in the colorful spectacle. The marquee said it was a restaurant, but the colorful paintings of bosomy cabaret singers and scantily-clad dancing girls that framed the central entrance told another tale. "Die Traumfabrik… the Dream Factory. Huh. Buster, are you sure you got the right address?  'Cos this sure as hell doesn't look like a hot spot of communist activity to me."

Ernst Wieland nodded. "Quite sure, Doctor. They hold heir meetings in a back room," he said before he moved over to his fellow Germans.

Mel dared to leave her protection behind to take a closer look at the colorful billboards. The text was in German so she could only pick up the odd word, but she didn't need to understand it all as the photographs were vivid enough. One term in particular caught her eye, and she furrowed her brow while trying to translate it.

Giving up, she moved back to Janice and grabbed her hand again. "Jan, dear… what do you suppose a travestie-show is?  That's what it says on the billboard. I'm thinking it may be what we call a vaudeville."

"Ah, well… I think it's closer to burlesque, actually," Janice said while displaying a lop-sided grin. Her grin turned wider at seeing the look of perfect indignation that fell over Mel's expressive face. "Don't worry, Toots. I doubt we'll have time to watch the show."

Nodding thoughtfully, Mel adjusted her glasses as she looked a little more at the colorful hoardings next to the entrance.

A tall, wide bouncer stood firm in the door to make sure only upstanding citizens would enter the hallowed halls. When a pair of drunken sailors tried to shove their way past the bouncer, the large fellow returned the favor by presenting one with an all-singing, all-dancing right hook; the other got an uppercut for his bother. The action took less than two seconds and left two piles of drunken humanity on the sidewalk.

Chuckling at the outcome of the brief fight, Janice gave Robert von Schenck a quick once-over. He was supposed to go inside with them, but it only took a single glance to see that his black outfit and square frame would make him stick out worse than any sore thumb in the history of mankind. After a short grunt of disapproval, she let her eyes continue their brief tour until they landed on Ernst Wieland. The tall man would be a much better fit, looks-wise, but she didn't know if she could stomach spending as much as a minute in close company with such an unsavory character.

"Jan Covington, something's on your mind," Mel said into Janice's ear to be heard over the festive spirits of the people nearest them.

"Yeah. I'm getting the notion that Mista Big Daddy Buchanan didn't think this through after all. Can you envision that palooka over there," - Janice pointed her thumb at Robert von Schenck - "visiting that kind of place and not being noticed by all and sundry?"

"No…"

"You and me, no problem. We'll be snug like a bug in a rug. Remember the sneaky coffee shop in Amsterdam back in 'forty-eight?"

"Ah… I do. Vividly," Mel said and adjusted her glasses.

Janice chuckled and reached out to give Mel's hand a little squeeze to help her overcome the embarrassing memory of accidentally devouring an entire tray of cannabis-laced brownies on her own. "I'll bet… it's the same thing here. More or less. This is our kind of establishment. Not Joe Palooka over there. But Wieland might be a different story. Sweetie, would you-"

"Stop, Jan. I'm sorry. I simply refuse to have anything to do with that man… or even to be anywhere near him," Mel said and put a firm grip on Janice's arm.

A few seconds went by before Janice nodded and reached up to caress the hand that held onto her. "I understand, darlin'. But you better be prepared for some fireworks. I definitely see some in our future when it comes to von Schenck's involvement."

Mel nodded. "I am."

"Good," Janice said before she moved over to the wide agent. "Hey, Joe… yeah, I'm talkin' to you, ya big lump. Are you ready or what?  Oh, and don't give me that crap about not speaking English. I know you understand every word."

The square-jawed panzer veteran narrowed his eyes. After a moment, he looked over at Ernst Wieland who nodded in return. As von Schenck looked back at Janice, his lips parted in something that was far more of a smile than expected. "I am ready. And I have been in many such places," he said in a voice that didn't carry as much of an accent as his Teutonic exterior hinted at.

"What, were you eavesdropping on us, buster?"

"No. But there's nothing wrong with my hearing," von Schenck said with a smile.

Janice wasn't impressed by the comment or indeed the smile. She let out a short grunt before she strode across the pedestrian area with Mel in tow to get to the main entrance of Die Traumfabrik. Once they were there, she looked back at where Wieland and Schulze had been, but both men had moved out of sight.

The bouncer initially didn't know what to make of two women wearing men's clothing and a big fellow in a trench coat, but the wad of bills that Robert von Schenck slipped into his palm convinced him it was safe to let the trio in.

---

The interior of Die Traumfabrik was a cozy if slightly kitschy affair. The scarlet carpet that covered every square inch of the floor leading up to the stage set the tone, and it was only strengthened by the flashy painted backdrop, the over-sized gold draperies and the row of silvery limelights that marked the boundaries of where the entertainers would perform. The stage itself had been raised three feet up from ground level so everyone in the room could see the singers and the dancing girls.

The restaurant was equipped with eighteen square tables of varying sizes. Some could only seat two and were used as fillers, most could seat four while a small number just inside the entrance could seat six. A special table for VIPs had been placed directly by the stage, but it was vacant at present. Each table carried a lamp with a tasseled shade, a tablecloth made of gold-colored linen, silvery cutlery and elegant glassware that appeared to be crystal at first glance.

A long bar counter made of polished darkwood took up the entire wall on the right-hand side of the room. Golden beer taps proved that quality draft was served, and the countless bottles on the wall behind the three bartenders showed that wine and all kinds of alcoholic beverages were sold as well.

Several groups of people wearing elegant dresses or tuxedos sat at tables around the room enjoying dinner and drinks. The mood was cheery, and it only grew more so when the guests gawked up at the somewhat underdressed dancing girls performing on the stage. Waiters dressed in black pants and red Toledo-inspired shirts brought further drinks and food to the tables; they were under strict orders not to stare at the dancers, so everyone focused on the job at hand rather than on the skin that was being flaunted up among the bright lights.

Although the nubile dancers were topless, the stage show was remarkably family-friendly. It seemed to involve women dressed in large feathers and little else, a guy with a pan flute and other guys wearing furs and odd horns on their head. They chased each other hither and yon while canned classical music boomed out of hidden speakers. Now and then, a maiden was pinned down by one of the horned men, but she always made her escape to shake her endless legs a little more elsewhere on the stage.

Coming to a halt just inside the entrance, Mel let out a strangled grunt and adjusted her glasses. "Why, if it isn't the Ancient Greek story of the Satyr and The Maiden… goodness me. I can't imagine that Kalathinakos of Corinth ever expected his play to end up in such an establishment!"

"Don't bet on it!" Janice said with a grin as she nudged Mel in the side with an elbow. "The term horny was coined by the old Greeks, dontchaknow!"

"Ah, I very much doubt that… but never mind now," Mel mumbled as she glanced around the colorful Traumfabrik. The air in the restaurant carried a heady mix of expensive perfumes and aftershaves, of quality food and wine, and of an unidentifiable fragrance that reminded her of pine cones or indeed an entire forest of pines.

They were soon met by a waiter who ushered them over to one of the tables that could seat four. Mel had little interest in sitting next to Robert von Schenck, but looking at his visage throughout the affair wasn't too attractive either. Ultimately, she sat down next to him but made a big show of turning her chair away from the Panzer veteran. The waiter was soon back with three dinner menus, but von Schenck told him to only bring something to drink. It didn't take long before two Coca-Colas and a large mug of draft beer had been placed on the table.

Janice let out a surprised grunt at the unexpected gesture. The bubbly soft drink couldn't be held accountable for the shadiness of its buyer, so she decided to enjoy her free Coke now it was there.

Two further groups of people dressed for a fun night on the town arrived at the door. The restaurant part of Die Traumfabrik was soon fairly full, and the buzz among the guests started to build up.

Janice glanced at her watch that read five minutes to ten. It was obvious something big was going to happen at the top of the hour, but although a few words were repeated by the other guests at the tables around them, she couldn't pick up enough to learn what the headlining act might be.

Soon, an emcee was announced with a great trumpet fanfare from the hidden speakers. Stepping onto the stage, the fellow strutted into the center of the spotlight carrying a wooden cane that was given quite a few twirls. He was dressed in black patent leather shoes, gray slacks featuring sharp creases, and a gray tailcoat over a gray vest and a white shirt. He wore a top hat and a monocle in his right eye, but the former was soon taken off and used as an accessory in his spiel revealing that his pale-brown hair was short, neat and water-combed.

Janice instantly felt she had been transported back to pre-war Berlin by the man's looks and mannerisms - she and her father had been there in 1927 when she had been a tender twelve-year-old on a mission to be introduced to the many facets of the real world beyond the dusty books.

The emcee's flamboyant spiel was given in an artistic German that neither Mel nor Janice could make heads or tails of, but it didn't matter as it was delivered with such perfection they were held in rapture. Once the introductions had been made, the well-dressed fellow bowed and left the stage with a few fleet-footed dance moves.

The dinner guests seemed to hold their collective breath as they waited for what would undoubtedly be a grand entrance by the night's headlining act. When Janice happened to look at their German associate, she noticed he was studying his wristwatch. "When 's this thing gonna go down?" she asked quietly now that a tense silence had fallen over the spectators.

"Hä?"

"When do we start…?"

"Soon," von Schenck said in a similarly quiet voice. "Last meeting, the Bolsheviks were here at ten-thirty. Schulze will come in when the back room is nearly full. Then we wait for the leader… and then we strike."

"Mmmm," Janice said and turned back to watch the stage.

The dinner guests breaking into wild applause ended all attempts at holding a conversation; a few seconds later, a platinum-blonde prima donna in a tight, glitter-strewn dress rolled into sight like a proud cruise ship braving rough seas - the incomparable Miss Honey Diamond had arrived.

A spotlight followed her all the way into the center of the stage. The bright light all but ignored her entourage that consisted of four male dancers made up to resemble sailors in Navy-blue uniforms and four females whose mermaid costumes wouldn't have added much to Die Traumfabrik's bill at the dressmaker's.

If Mel's eyes could grow any wider, they'd fall out of their sockets. She shook her head slowly as she took in the remarkable figure up on the stage - Janice just grinned and made herself comfortable on her chair.

The prima donna's voluminous hair was only matched by her singing voice. When she began belting out the first of a long line of old and new genre favorites accompanied by canned music that blasted out of the speakers, nobody was left unaffected.

The rousing There's No Business Like Show Business had rarely been more apt, and the larger-than-life cabaret singer was able to shape her voice into sounding almost like Betty Hutton who had performed it originally. The first song segued into a fetching, uptempo version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Hello, Young Lovers which was in turn followed by the chestnut Sentimental Journey. The medley concluded with Anchors Aweigh, a song that took full advantage of the mermaids and the sailor boys in the chorus line.

It didn't take long before a good portion of the guests sang along to the familiar lyrics. The enthusiastic singing increased everyone's thirst, and the waiters had to increase their tempo accordingly to match the demand.

After the first couple of songs had been belted out to rapturous applause, Mel leaned in toward her partner. "Jan… is that really a woman?  I can't tell."

"Nope. It's a guy."

"Are you sure?"

"Fully. But the emcee was a woman."

"Goodness me… really?"

"Ohhhh-yeah," Janice said and sported a cheesy grin that made Mel adjust her glasses.

Once the prima donna and her dancing entourage had the dinner guests singing along to another old chestnut from the mid-1930s, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Janice glanced at their associate to see how he found the show.

The retired soldier seemed to have little time for the events up on the stage as such; he kept looking at his wristwatch like he was counting the seconds until the moment came when they would strike. As he felt Janice's eyes on him, he whispered "Ten minutes" at her, but the wall of music that blasted down from the stage was so massive his voice couldn't penetrate it - it didn't matter as Janice had understood.

"Mel… Mel," Janice said - she needed to lean over and tug at her partner's sleeve to make herself heard over the prima donna's Red Roses For A Blue Lady. Once she had Mel's attention, she continued: "Ten minutes. Get ready."

Mel had to swallow a lump of pure nervousness. She reached for her Coca-Cola at once and drained most of it in a series of deep gulps.

*
*
CHAPTER 4

Zero Hour was reached when Joachim Schulze entered the main room from a corridor off to the left. The retired soldier - who still wore his soft hat and trench coat - took the long way around the back of the restaurant to stay out of the dinner guests' line of sight for as long as possible. Once he arrived at the table shared by his fellow agent and the two Americans, he leaned down and whispered a few words to von Schenck who in turn tapped his knuckles on the table so Janice could be alerted without needing to speak.

Janice looked; then nodded. As the panzer veterans shed their trench coats and left the table dressed in their black, uniform-like fatigues, she waved Mel in toward her. The song being belted out up on the stage was Frankie Laine's Jezebel, and even the prima donna's extraordinary pipes were put to the test by the challenging song. "Sweetie… it's going down. I know you can't stand that nasty fella, but I think you should go outside to Wieland-"

"No. I'm staying glued to your side. And that's final," Mel said and pushed her chair back. Her face had lost a great deal of color, and it was clear by the way she clenched her jaw that she wasn't happy about being there.

"I love you. Let's get this over with so we can lose those palookas and just be ourselves," Janice said and got up from the table. She made sure her fedora was on right by trailing the leading edge with her fingertips. Then she reached behind her to make sure the Colt was ready as well.

The prima donna continued her warbling up on the stage and the dinner guests continued singing along to the old and new favorites, but Mel and Janice no longer had time to enjoy the melodious and occasionally raunchy spectacle. Moving quietly so they wouldn't disturb the other patrons, they walked around the tables to go down the corridor Schulze had come from.

The corridor led to the immediate backstage area that appeared to be nearly as large as the restaurant itself. Several doors that led away from the corridor carried German labels that Janice translated into 'dressing rooms - ladies' 'dressing rooms - gentlemen' 'stage art' and 'instrument depot' as they walked past them.

They went down two flights of stairs and through another, narrower corridor before they found themselves at a red metal door that had to be the rear entrance to Die Traumfabrik. The word Notausgang had been painted onto the door in tall, white letters, and Janice knew that meant 'emergency exit.'

A pair of dim light bulbs illuminated the small space at the rear entrance. A rusty bucket next to the door was supposed to serve as protection against possible fires, but it was less than half full of water - most of the contents had leaked through the rusty cracks and onto the floor ages ago. The bucket was joined by a wooden chair undoubtedly intended for a watchman of some kind, but the chair's frayed wood and rickety state proved it had been a while since it had seen any action.

Though the light produced by the filthy bulbs was nearly orange, it was enough to reveal that thick layers of dust covered most parts of the floor and the items in that section of the establishment. Fresh tracks on the concrete floor leading away from the door proved that many feet had used that path only recently.

Mel and Janice followed the tracks through yet another corridor until they teamed up with von Schenck and Schulze once more. The black-clad veterans had taken up well-covered offensive positions on either side of a gray metal door that led to a storage room - that's what it said on the label.

Janice could hardly believe her eyes when she noticed the weapon Joachim Schulze wielded. Instead of a simple handgun like von Schenck, the former tank commander held a dark-gray MP40 submachine gun. Her jaw worked overtime once more as she remembered the characteristic hard chatter produced by the deadly weapon known as the Schmeisser. That a war-time submachine gun would appear in such a place - and that she and Mel would find themselves on the same side as the man poised to use it - was another of those surreal moments that her life seemed to consist of. Just to make it even worse, Schulze wore a black field cap identical to those the Panzer forces had used during the war whenever they were away from actual combat.

The music playing up on the stage was distorted by the many walls it had to go through to reach that far down in the bowels of the establishment, but it was possible to hear how the prima donna and the canned music came to the end of yet another song - Nat King Cole's Nature Boy. Thunderous applause followed which seemed to indicate a break in the show.

Once the loudest singing had concluded, the four people in the corridor were able to hear German chatter from beyond the metal door. Most voices were male, but one or two of the speakers were female. Although Janice couldn't understand much of what was being said because the speakers used a local dialect, the voices were relaxed and free of stress - perhaps indicating they were merely talking about everyday things before the meeting would start.

A sudden squeak of dry hinges from somewhere behind them made Mel let out a gasp and put her hands to her bosom. The sound made Schulze stare daggers at her from across the corridor, so she slammed a hand across her mouth to keep quiet while she pressed herself even further into the small gap that existed between von Schenck's broad back and Janice's soothing presence.

Soon, the sound of labored footsteps reached them. Mel remembered Buchanan's words that the leader of the cell limped after being injured in the war. Her heart rate went through the proverbial roof at the mere thought of the impending conflict, and she reached out with her free hand to give Janice's arm a strong squeeze.

Janice returned the squeeze and added a comforting smile before she reached in under her leather jacket to draw the Colt. She put her finger next to the trigger but didn't yet cock the hammer. Although the heavy pistol gave her confidence, she would prefer if the situation could be resolved without everything turning into a shooting frenzy - a glance at the MP40 and Schulze's granite-like expression told her it was a pipe dream, and she even began to worry about the possibility that the heavily armed veteran carried grenades as well.

Without warning, a shot rang out somewhere behind the four hidden people. It had been muted like it had been fired out in the alley beyond the back door, but the hard sound was unmistakable. The voices in the storage room fell silent like someone had flicked a switch. Mel gasped again and ducked for cover while Janice and the two veterans spun around to look behind them.

A quick burst of juicy German swearing blasted through the narrow corridor from down at the other end. The labored footsteps grew frantic as they hurried away from where the ambush was to have taken place. The back door was opened and then slammed shut. Another shot was heard from the outside; somebody let out a pitiful groan. Someone else shouted something in a language that could be English, but it was impossible to be certain due to the solid nature of the metal door.

"Verfluchte Scheisse!" Joachim Schulze barked as he cocked the MP40 and jumped into a firing position. The profanity had barely left his lips before a sequence of loud reports could be heard from inside the storage room. Although Mel shrieked and dove down onto the dusty concrete floor, Janice and the veteran soldiers could tell it hadn't been regular gunshots.

A split second later, the door was flung open and a bearded man stormed out pointing a pistol ahead of him. The back room rapidly filled with heavy, gray smoke that grew denser for each passing second. Soon, bright-orange flames licked across two tables that carried maps and other types of documents.

The bearded man's wide, frightened eyes missed the four people hidden in the shadows so he didn't open fire at them. Instead, he stepped aside and shouted something unintelligible into the room. Five other people, three men and two women, came running out to get away from the flames that soon grew into an orange-tinted, roaring inferno behind them.

Von Schenck and Schulze both jumped out of hiding. The latter barked an impossibly loud "Halt!" that nearly made dust trickle down from the ceiling. The escaping people came to screeching halts in the middle of the narrow corridor. Time slowed down to a crawl as evil-gray smoke billowed out of the storage room and began to swirl and creep along the ceiling.

Then everything happened at once. The bearded man opened fire at the dark-clad figures; his shot went wide and ricocheted off the wall in a shower of sparks and fragments of concrete. Schulze returned fire with his Schmeisser and nearly cut his opponent in half. As the dead body crumpled to the floor, several of the other people fleeing the fire they had started drew pistols and opened fire at their ambushers.

Mel shrieked again and clapped her hands over her ears as a non-stop barrage of violent noises and lethal lead filled the corridor. The staccato chatter from the MP40 was unbearable in the cramped conditions as it kept firing for what seemed like minutes.

Robert von Schenck opened fire as well with a Walther P38 pistol, but Janice kept her finger well off the borrowed Colt's trigger. The shooting war she had wished to avoid broke out all around her, but it wasn't her war - at least not until one of the supposed communists took several frantic potshots at her. As sparks and chips flew from the concrete wall not too far from her head, she returned fire with the intent to wound rather than kill. Her first shot ricocheted off the door and smashed some glass somewhere inside the storage room, but the second round slammed into the shooter's arm and sent his pistol flying. A loud cry was heard through the deafening racket, but she couldn't tell from whom it had come.

When the Schmeisser stopped firing from a lack of ammunition, Schulze worked fast and efficiently to replace the empty magazine using well-drilled gestures. Von Schenck provided cover for his brother-in-arms by continuing to fire at the room, but his regular Walther wasn't as effective a deterrent as the submachine gun, and their opponents grew bolder in their defense.

Inside the storage room, the igniting of another canister of the accelerant used by the apparent insurgents created an even fiercer conflagration. Flames soon spread from the tables and onto the floor, the walls and the ceiling. The fire began to let out the tell-tale roar that proved it had grown beyond control. As the heat turned impossible to withstand, the people in the storage room used the lack of firing of the MP40 to storm out while firing wildly in all directions.

At the exact same moment, Joachim Schulze cocked his Schmeisser, jumped up and fired off a long burst that cut down three of the fleeing people. Both women and one of the men crumpled to the floor as boneless rag dolls, but the final two managed to get past the ambush unscathed and sprint through the corridor to get to the back door.

Another juicy curse left Schulze's lips, but the fire spread so rapidly he and the others had no choice but to vacate the premises in an almighty hurry. He kept the submachine gun pointed ahead of him as he and von Schenck hustled down the corridor in a classic spearhead formation.

"Wait!  Wait, you sons of bitches!" Janice roared after the veteran soldiers, but they weren't about to wait for anyone. She rubbed her brow angrily as she looked at the bodies that littered the floor. "Mel… I need your help!  We need to see if those poor bastards are dead or alive!"

"Right behind you!" Mel cried in a voice that nearly broke from the fright. She staggered to her feet and stood up straight, but as soon as her face came into contact with the suffocating smoke, she began to cough uncontrollably. Ducking down at once, she scrambled over to the nearest body and rolled it onto its back.

She only needed a single look at the man's glassy eyes to tell that he was past any form of help. Leaving him behind, she staggered over to the first of the two women whose dark-gray dress had been torn and bloodied from the five rounds that had hit her. Mel shook her head and continued over to Janice. "They're both dead," she said in a trembling voice.

"So is this one," Janice said and wiped her bloody hands off on the other woman's dress.

Behind them, flames began licking across the ceiling; the moment the leading edge would reach the various pieces of stage art that were leaning against the walls of the narrow corridor, the wood, the fabric and the paint would ignite within seconds. Janice whipped her head around to find something they could use to douse or beat down the flames, but every item in their vicinity was either flammable or simply not up to the task. "No, that's it… we gotta get the hell outta here, Mel… c'mon!  Quickly!"

Mel stood firm and pointed in the other direction of where Janice had begun to move. "No, Jan!  We must warn the guests!  We simply must!"

"Mel, for Chrissakes!  They left ages ago when they heard all that shooting!"

"If the music played, they might not have heard it… no. We must warn them, Jan!"

Janice opened her mouth to complain but soon realized it would be a futile endeavor. "All right… but we still gotta hustle… that fire devil there ain't gonna wait for nobody!"

---

After sprinting through a confusing maze of corridors and up the two flights of stairs, Mel and Janice finally returned to the main restaurant. The billowing smoke had already alerted the guests and the staff of the danger, but the guests in all their elegant clothes seemed oddly reluctant to leave. The prima donna had remained on the stage as well, but the music had stopped. It wasn't until Janice roared "Feuer!  Feuer!  There's a big fire downstairs!" at the top of her lungs that people bolted and flocked to the main exit.

After much pushing and shoving, everybody made it safely onto the street including the emcee, the prima donna Miss Honey Diamond and the female dancers whose skimpy mermaid costumes provided plenty of shocked gasps and lewd whistles from the onlookers. A British Military Police patrol who had run to the scene to assist hurriedly ushered the dancers and the other entertainers inside a café opposite the burning Traumfabrik to make sure they were warm, safe and above all out of sight of the general public.

Mel and Janice performed a final sweep of the restaurant to make sure that everyone had left before they ran out behind the others. By then, they could already hear the fire brigade's slow horns and frantically ringing bells approaching fast.

A small-scale commotion had broken out in the entertainment district when the dinner guests had burst out of Die Traumfabrik screaming of a fire downstairs, but it wasn't before other revelers came to gawk at them and the mermaids that it grew into a horrendous mess. Sounds of breaking glass and roaring flames were soon audible over the noises produced elsewhere, and that made even the most inebriated among the onlookers realize that something terrible was going on.

Coughing and spluttering, Janice bent over and put her hands on her knees once she had made it back out onto Erwin-Thieleman-Strasse. She looked for Ernst Wieland but couldn't see the tall, leather-clad man anywhere. Further sirens could be heard in the near distance, and it was now possible to pick up several of the faster police sirens in addition to those installed on the fire brigade's heavy vehicles.

"We need to skedaddle, Mel… before the cops show up… I'm packin'… they'll arrest me on… the spot," she said between coughs. Action spoke louder than words, so she grabbed hold of the sleeve of Mel's combat coat that had gained a strong fragrance of smoke to go with the washed-out colors.

"All… all right… I'm… here," Mel said in a voice that was also plagued by frequent coughing.

They quickly moved away from the pandemonium but needed to run down an alley when the first police cars arrived right in front of them. Pushing herself and Mel into the shadows, Janice glanced at the uniformed men who swarmed out of their Volkswagen to get the crowd under control and away from the blaze. "Son of a bitch… what a mess… what a Goddamned mess," she mumbled.

'Hullo!  Who goes there?  Friend or foe?' a male voice cried in American from somewhere further into the dark alley.

Mel gasped and put her hands to her bosom, but Janice calmly drew her pistol and looked in the direction the words had come from. The alley they were standing at the mouth of was poorly lit and carried all the typical traits of such a location, even down to the rank stench of cat urine that seemed to be a common ingredient the world over. Although the passageway wasn't clogged up by old furniture and broken crates like it would have been in her home neighborhood in New York City, the darkness alone offered scores of perfect hiding spots for a counter-ambush.

Logic told her the alley had to be the back way into the establishment. It meant that the leader of the communist cell had to have used it for his escape - but there were supposed to have been further W-S-A agents there. She drew a deep breath to reply to the question before another shooting war could break out: "That depends on who's asking, pal!"

'I'm… I'm…'

"Oh, great answer, buster!  What the hell kind of dilettantes are you people, anyway?"

'But… no… I'm…'

Janice let out a derisive snort at the insecurity in the man's voice. Even Mel had to roll her eyes at the peculiar answers.

"With that kinda eloquence, ya oughtta run for President, bub!" Janice barked. "Who the hell fired that first shot?!  It screwed up everything!"

'It… it was…'

Shaking her head angrily, Janice leaned in toward Mel. "Toots, stay here until I figure out what's what. If you see Wieland or the limping man… or the two tanks for that matter… holler for me. Okay?"

"Yes, dear," Mel said with a jerking nod.

Striding forward, Janice kept the Colt ready just in case. She had six rounds remaining, and although she had been hesitant to use the weapon down in the basement of Die Traumfabrik, those hesitations had been blown clear out of the water by the willingness of their opponents to risk dozens of fatalities simply to cover their tracks. "I'm comin' through, buster!  Oh, and if ya ain't guessed it yet, I'm a friend!  But that might change if ya don't gimme a couple-a straight answers real soon!"

'I… very well…'

"Yeah, very well," Janice mumbled and shook her head all over again. "Jesus, what a three-ring circus this turned out to be…"

When she finally found the man she had been talking to, he was revealed to be a clean-cut fellow in his mid-twenties who wore one of the ubiquitous ensembles of a tan trench coat and a soft hat. He held a Colt 1911 similar to Janice's which indicated a certain amount of expertise, but his trembling hand didn't provide a good first impression.

"Are- are you the doctor or the translator?" he croaked.

"The doc. Janice Covington. Hi de ho, bub. And you are?"

"Agent Barney Talbott. Please, Doc… you gotta help Agent Gibson… he took one in the arm," Barney said and pointed further into the alley.

Janice shoved her Colt down her waistband and increased her tempo to get there faster. "Dammit!  I'm not a doctor of medicine… I'm a Ph.D. You need a real sawbones. Where's the agent?"

"I'll show you," Barney said and ran ahead. The two people hurried over behind a low, horseshoe-shaped concrete wall that framed a row of metal garbage cans. The wounded W-S-A agent had been dragged in behind the wall, but the stench from the cans wouldn't be beneficiary to anyone, especially not someone who had already caught a bullet.

"Crap," Janice said and knelt down next to the agent. Like Barney Talbott, Andy Gibson was only in his mid-twenties and wearing a tan trench coat. The left sleeve had been soaked through by blood. He groaned out loud and jerked away when Janice tried to touch the limb. "All right. The German cops are out in front… I'll bet there'll be ambulances as well now. We need to get him out there. Is there anything here we can use as a stretcher?"

"No… I've already checked," Barney croaked.

"Dammit. All right," Janice said and leaned down to the wounded agent. "Andy… hey… fella… Andy, this is gonna hurt like a sonovabitch, but we need to get ya out to the cops. Yeah?  Ya need to get on your feet and walk out there. One step at a time. We're gonna help ya all the way there. Okay?  Just cry out whenever the pain gets too much. Barney, take his wounded wing. I got the other one…"

"All right, doc," Barney said and reached in under his fellow agent's arm.

Andy clenched his jaw to keep it all inside as he was helped to his feet, but it only lasted a couple of slow, staggering steps before he cried out. Despite the pain, he was eventually able to get away from the stinking garbage cans and into a clearer part of the alley.

Janice could see Mel's familiar silhouette up at the mouth of the alley, so she drew a deep breath to shout: "Mel!  Mel, have any ambulances arrived yet?"

The frantic plea that cut through the darkness made Mel jerk upright and look back down the alley. She was unable to see anything, and that only worsened her nervousness. Her stomach was already on the brink of all-out rebellion and it certainly didn't need further incentive. "Yes, several!" she cried back.

"Please find a medic or somebody and tell 'em there's a wounded American here!  Okay?"

"Oh, my goodness!  Is he badly hurt?" Mel said while she pressed her hands against her tumultuous tummy.

"Can't say!  Just find a medic… please!"

"On my way, Jan!" Mel cried and hurried away from the mouth of the alley.

Janice let out a dark chuckle as she helped the wounded agent across the uneven surface. "A woman of action… that's my Mel Pappas," she said to herself - it drew confused looks from the two agents, but they soon had more urgent matters to deal with.

---

Moving fast, Mel tore around the corner of the alley and quickly surveyed the scene. A group of police officers on crowd control were using one of the Volkswagen Bugs as their base, but she had no use for them now. Instead, she hurried over to the nearest ambulance where two medics wearing white uniforms had a stretcher ready in case they were called into action.

"Hello!  Ah… hallo!  Hello!  I need help, please!  Bitte, Hilfe!" she cried while she flailed her arms in the air to catch the attention of the two medics. "A man's been shot over here!  Do you understand me?  A man has been shot!"

The German medics clearly didn't understand English as all they did was to stare at the shouting woman who ran toward them. A radio call inside the ambulance seemed more important as they turned away from Mel to listen to what was said.

"Oh!  Oh no, this is intolerable!  A man has been shot and needs urgent help!" Mel cried; moments before her frustration would have made her tear her hair out, help came from an unlikely source: Ernst Wieland who had returned to the scenes of pandemonium with von Schenck and Schulze in tow.

The former Gestapo officer quickly strode over to the two medics and showed them a small card that made them stand up straight in a hurry. "Meine Herren, ein amerikanischer Tourist wurde angeschossen. Drüben in der Gasse. Er braucht dringend medizinische Hilfe. Beeilen sie sich."

The medics practically saluted the tall man in the leather trench coat before one of them began pushing the stretcher away from the ambulance; the other ran into the alley to survey the scene.

Mel scrunched up her face as Ernst Wieland approached her. He was a few inches taller than she which didn't happen often; it gave him a psychological advantage that she disliked even more than his personality or past career.

"That should take care of it. I told them the American was a tourist. There is no need to confuse them," he said in his typically cold tone of voice.

"Thank you, Sir," she said curtly. When Wieland let out a mono-syllabic grunt as his only reply, she strode away from him to return to Janice.

They reconnected at the mouth of the alley just as the medics arrived with the stretcher - it had been delayed because they had needed to battle their way through the unruly crowd of drunken revelers and people who were simply there to gawk at the unfolding tragedy.

Before long, the two men in white took Andy Gibson from Barney and Janice's tender grip and helped him onto the stretcher. The young agent was soon rolled back toward the waiting ambulance - he managed to wave at his helpers before the rear door was closed.

Once everything was secure, the sirens were turned on once more and the ambulance took off at a very slow pace to get through the onlookers without injuring anyone else.

"Jan, goodness me… what a nightmare this has been," Mel croaked as she fell into Janice's embrace to receive a strong hug. When she finally opened her eyes again, she scoffed at the highly embarrassed look on the face of the other young agent. "Hello… I'm Melinda Pappas. Mel for short," she said and nodded a brief greeting. After another strong squeeze, the two women moved apart but literally kept in touch by holding hands.

The young agent snapped out of his stupor and put out his hand. "Agent Talbott… Barney Talbott. How do you do, Miss Pappas?" When he noticed Mel's horrified expression, he looked down at his hand - it was covered in the blood of his fellow agent. "Oh… I'm terribly sorry," he mumbled as he tried to wipe it off on his coat.

"It's… it's all right, Mr. Talbott," Mel said and adjusted her glasses. "Goodness me, this is almost too much to bear… a horrible firefight in a basement… why, my poor ears have never experienced anything so loud in my life!  And all that dreadful smoke… and blood and death everywhere… and my poor, poor stomach has turned itself into a knot…"

Janice let out a dark chuckle at the near-insane situations she and Mel always ended up in. Ever since meeting for the first time near a tomb in Macedonia in 1940, they had been thrown head-first into exhausting cases of high-strung drama far more often than she cared to remember. Quick mental arithmetic suggested it had happened somewhere around fifteen-eighteen-twenty times already - no wonder they were almost suffering from deja vu.

"Mel, I can only agree with ya… this was too wild," Janice said and gave her sweetheart's hands a good squeeze before she turned back to the young American agent. "Hey, Barney, there's one thing I'd like to ask ya. Actually, I kinda already did only you never answered. Who was responsible for that first shot?  And why did it happen?  We had everything under control until that exact point. Then it all went straight to Hades in a handbasket."

Talbott reached up to rub his brow with his clean hand. "Oh, Doc… I… I guess it was me. Or my gun at least," he said in an embarrassed mumble.

"Huh. Okay," Janice said and looked up at Mel for a moment. "Now, where I come from, it takes a finger on the trigger for it to fire, so… what were you shooting at?"

"I didn't. It… it was an accident… the main target had just moved past us. Agent Gibson and I waited for him to enter. When he did, we moved out of the shadows to cut off his escape route. Well… I… I guess I dropped my pistol when I drew it. It snagged on my shoulder holster. It fell onto the ground and went off."

Janice narrowed her eyes down into hazel slits. "Jesus H. Christ," she finally said in the darkest tone she had uttered for months. "That must be one helluva hair-trigger you got on that thing. If I were you, I'd get a new shooting iron or fix the old one in a Goddamned hurry. The next time, it might be your own crown jewels in the firing line!"

"Ah, yeah…"

"Anyway, let me get this straight," Janice continued. "The target came back out. He fired at once when he saw you guys crowding him. And Gibson went down."

Barney Talbott broke out in an embarrassed nod. "Yes… I returned fire but I didn't hit anything. I guess I was too rattled."

"Huh. Barney… how long have you been doing this?"

"Nearly six months come July."

Mel sighed; Janice let out another tired chuckle. "You oughtta count yourself lucky, bub. If Gibson had bought the farm, you woulda spent the next ten years working at a desk somewhere in Dullsville. Or maybe they'd just have put you out to pasture," she said as she wrapped an arm around Mel's waist and pulled her close.

Nothing more needed to be said to the young agent, so Janice turned around which necessitated Mel following her. Together, they strolled out of the smelly alley and toward the unruly crowd. There were still quite a few policemen around, so Janice drew plans that involved acting inconspicuous so they wouldn't catch an unhealthy interest in her. A long groan escaped her when she clapped eyes on something worse - the unmistakable figure of W-S-A Section Commander Gilroy Buchanan.

The pompous man stood on the far side of the street to be away from the worst of the crowd. He spoke intently with Ernst Wieland and the two panzer veterans, and judging by the way his cheeks had turned rosy, it didn't seem he was too impressed with how Operation Bright Light had been carried out. He clammed up when Mel and Janice approached the small group of agents, but he loosened up enough to shoot them a short, predator-like smile. "Ah. Doctor Covington. Miss Pappas. Herr von Schenck has just told me you acted like true soldiers when the communists attacked you in the corridor. Well done," he said after he had taken his pipe out of his mouth - perhaps he was concerned Janice might knock it out again like she had done in the Cadillac.

The muscles on the sides of Janice's jaw were given a short workout while she tried to come up with an answer that didn't involve insulting the four men's families a dozen generations back. Ultimately, she just let out a "Mmmm."

Mel adjusted her glasses and looked at the three Germans and their American commander. "Thank you, Sir. It was quite an ordeal that I wish I shall never have to repeat. You promised that Doctor Covington and I would be free to leave once the operation had ended. Well, it has now."

"It has and it hasn't," the section commander said cryptically. His comment caused Janice to roll her eyes and let out a loud snort. Buchanan locked eyes with Ernst Wieland to invite the former Gestapo officer to continue the debriefing.

"What Commander Buchanan is saying," Wieland said in a voice that held an undertone of frustration, "is that the main target, the leader of the Bolsheviks, was able to escape. We found and eliminated the two men who acted as his guards, but Gerd Neumann himself vanished. The Bolsheviks have many sympathizers in the working class districts. Chances are he has sought refuge in the home of one of his allies. These days, we cannot… ah…"

"Conduct house-to-house ransackings like you could in the good, old days," Janice interjected in a mocking tone. "Yeah, adhering to the democratic constitution of the reborn republic must be a real pain in the ass for you people."

Wieland let out a cold laugh that made Janice growl and Mel adjust her glasses. "At least the plans were destroyed and most of the Bolsheviks were killed. That cell will no longer pose a threat to anyone."

"Another might be started tomorrow," Janice said, more determined than ever to get away from it all regardless of the cost.

"Then we shall eliminate that as well. There will be no stopping us on our way to the final victory," Wieland said without even the tiniest amount of irony tingeing his voice. Robert von Schenck and Joachim Schulze both let out solid cheers to support the message.

Even Gilroy Buchanan had the good graces to look embarrassed at the chilling echo of the recent past; he took a deep puff from his pipe to compensate. Mel and Janice simply shared a long, dark look. "Ah, Doctor Covington," Buchanan said once Wieland had finished, "in view of the situation, we request that you and Miss Pappas remain here in Hamburg over night."

Janice drew a deep breath to complain, but Buchanan wasn't done: "Your tickets are valid for the morning express so a short delay won't be a problem for you. I'm sure Gerd Neumann will have been captured by then. Once he has, I will grant you and Miss Pappas your leave. It's certainly been, ah, interesting. For now, I bid you farewell."

The good news caused Mel to let out a long, trembling sigh of relief, but it seemed the far more cynical Janice waited for the inevitable sting in the tail to the happy end. When none came - or seemed to come - she nodded a curt goodbye at Commander Buchanan and at von Schenck who had at least been tolerable to work with. Wieland and Schulze were left thoroughly ignored; then she and Mel turned around to leave.

Before they could get too far, the heavy object that pressed into her back made her realize she had forgotten something in the mayhem. With Mel a concerned witness, Janice stomped back to Wieland and handed back the Colt with nary a glance at the tall, leather-clad man.

"Now we can leave, Toots," she said and made sure to keep a firm grip around Mel's waist.

"Thank the Gods!  All of 'em!" Mel said and let out another long sigh on their way out of the worst of the crowd.

Behind them, Gilroy Buchanan kept his steely eyes on the two women until they had disappeared amongst the massive numbers of onlookers. No sooner were they out of sight before he waved his three German field agents closer to him to brief them on the first part of their new assignments.

*
*
CHAPTER 5

The next day dawned dull and overcast. A city the size of Hamburg never slept, so the streets echoed with the familiar sounds and smells of motorized traffic even at a quarter past seven in the morning. Somewhere, a frantic police siren cut through the din to act as a reminder of the night's dramatic events.

Hamburg's central station and its many dull-gray concrete platforms and buildings wasn't perhaps the most cheery and upbeat place to spend the morning - especially not with a low cloud cover that threatened to dump rain onto the passengers waiting for their trains - so Mel and Janice had taken up residence inside one of the heated First Class waiting rooms. They had commandeered a luggage cart that had been filled to capacity with all their suitcases and various other items that needed to be dragged aboard the train once it arrived.

Mel had changed back into her medium-brown travel dress, and she even wore her elegant pillbox hat. She had her long hair up in a bun to make it a little more presentable. The night's fiery events had given it an unfortunate fragrance of wood smoke, but the tiny bathroom at Hotel Merkur hadn't offered her enough space to wash it. She had her legs crossed in a most lady-like fashion like always while she sat on a cushioned bench trying to read one of the new day's morning papers.

Janice was less concerned about appearances. The expert archaeologist lay messily on the bench with one trench boot down on the tiled floor and the other up on the seat. At Mel's insistence, she had used an old newspaper as cover so she wouldn't leave any stains on the plush cushions. She kept her battered fedora over her face so she could get a few winks before the express arrived, but she wasn't able to find much rest - the mess they had found themselves in the night before continued to churn on in her mind.

Mel folded the broadsheet newspaper twice once she had found the article she had been searching for. "Dear, there's a brief interview with some of the entertainers from the Dream Factory. As far as I can tell, they're all safe if understandably devastated at the loss of the establishment. The journalist spoke to a… goodness me… Miss Honey Diamond…"

Janice moved the fedora aside to let out a brief laugh. "That's gotta be the cabaret singer, Toots. The name fits!"

"Quite," Mel said and adjusted her glasses before she returned to the article. "Whose real name is apparently Manfred Ettlinger. You were right about that, dear. Oh, and the emcee… the stage name is Dionysus Dupree, but her real name is Hildegard Vollmer."

"What can I say, sweetie… I know my gals," Janice said before she broke out in a wide yawn. Once it had receded, she sat up and scratched her unruly hair. Like Mel's neat locks, Janice's haystack reeked of wood smoke, but she just hadn't been bothered to do anything about it save for forcing a comb through it to get the worst filth and soot out. She glanced around to take in the sights; they were the only people in the elegant First Class waiting room, but there were several passengers who braved the dull weather out on the platform itself.

Another platform saw the arrival of a chugging steam locomotive that pulled seven cars. It had come from the south and soon came to a stop some distance away from the waiting room. A myriad of passengers left the commuter train and filled up the platform before they dispersed to get to their various schools or places of work.

Janice yawned once more before she plonked the fedora back onto her locks. Although she pushed it back from her brow, Mel's crooked eyebrow meant she pulled it forward again in a hurry. "Sorry, Toots," she said with a grin that was almost too cheeky for seven o'clock in the morning. "Y'know, I can't believe that old fart of a night porter actually had the guts to tell us that we could go to hell when we checked out."

"I can't believe we were barred from ever staying there again…" Mel mumbled.

"Aw, that's no real surprise. All right, we didn't wreck anything, but look at all the hubbub we caused. I guess the bellhop quit from the fright I gave him. That's too bad… he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Quite," Mel said and adjusted her glasses before she returned to skimming the newspaper for other tidbits of information regarding the fire; she was soon busy trying to spell her way through some of the eyewitness reports from the entertainment district near Erwin-Thieleman-Strasse.

The door to the First Class waiting room opened to reveal a well-dressed businessman who entered without paying any attention to the people already there. He only noticed Mel and Janice when he unbuttoned his coat and sat down, and by the way he furrowed his brow, it had been a while since he had seen a woman wearing trench boots, khaki pants, a leather jacket and a fedora.

Janice grinning at the businessman made him avert his eyes in a hurry.

Mel glanced at the man who suddenly seemed to find the nondescript wallpaper rather fascinating. Chuckling, she crossed her legs the other way before she turned a page in the newspaper. "At least Mister Buchanan was true to his word. Regarding the First Class tickets for the Munich Express, I mean," she said and gently patted the duffel bag that had become a general repository for all their most important documents and finds.

Janice let out a grunt and assumed a dark expression. Pushing her fedora back from her brow, she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees - as she zoomed in on the duffel bag, her body language changed from relaxed to taut like something had just dawned on her.

"Why, Janice Covington… what's with the glum face all of a sudden?  Did you forget something in the hotel room?  And will you please pull your-"

"Toots… in that article about the fire… does it say anything about the shootout in the basement?  Or wotshisname… ah, Neumann?"

Mel furrowed her brow and sat up straight at the urgent undertone to Janice's voice. She quickly scanned the article for the communist leader's name in the text. "Uh… no… no, it doesn't."

"Nothing at all?"

"No. Now that you mention it, the lack of details does seem a little odd. The people watching the show couldn't have missed hearing those shots… but I don't follow-"

"It's something Buchanan said just as we left 'em last night. He was sure they'd have Neumann in custody by now. And he took care of our tickets…"

"Why, he did indeed. I have a hard time following you, dear. What are you hinting at?"

Janice let out another grunt and got to her feet. She began to pace the waiting room which made the businessman shoot her another odd look. "I don't know… I just got a funny feeling about it 's all. So what's gonna happen if Neumann is still on the lam?  Buchanan knows where we are. And where we'll be."

"Yes, and we'll be on the Munich Express in a very short while, Jan," Mel said and looked at her wristwatch. "They're running a few minutes late, but I'm sure it'll be here soon enough. And then we'll be long gone from Hamburg, Gilroy Buchanan and all his awful business. Surely you're not expecting him to… oh… double-cross us somehow, are you?"

"You bet your cute, little belly button I am!  He's a professional liar, Mel… it's what he does. Dammit, I'm not gonna rest until our butts are safely on those plush cushions… and even then he might trip us up."

Mel adjusted her glasses several times. "But… but why should he?  He gave us his word as a gentleman."

"Toots, please… Mel, come on… you heard his parting salute last night… according to him, Operation Something-or-other isn't over until the commie leader has been dealt with," Janice said and threw her arms out wide.

Mel scrunched up her face in a sudden bout of concern, but their conversation was cut short when a message was relayed over the central station's public announcement loudspeakers. As always, it echoed back and forth between all the concrete surfaces which made it near-impossible to understand.

The businessman did seem to understand, because he got up and buttoned his coat.

"Mista," Janice said and strode over to their fellow passenger. "Excuse me, but what did they say?  Was it about the morning express train to Munich?"

The businessman once again gawked at the strange clothes worn by the lady, but he straightened his back and looked at her face rather than her leather jacket. "Ah… ah… yes. The express train is about to come into the station. Two minutes before it comes to this platform. Yes?"

"All right. Thank you," Janice said and strode back to Mel and the luggage cart. "Let's go, Toots. It's two minutes away… and it can't come soon enough."

Almost on cue, the characteristic sound of a steam whistle pierced the morning air. The Munich Express was still a short distance away as it crossed over the countless switches going into the central station, but it was already possible to feel the floor tremble from the hundreds of tons of steel that approached it.

"Right behind you as always, dear," Mel said and hurriedly put the morning paper into the duffel bag. Getting up from the bench, she sent Janice a pointed look at the sight of the old newspaper that had been used to protect the cushions - it was soon thrown into a trash can in the corner of the waiting room. "And Jan Covington, will you please pull your hat forward!  Having it like that makes you look like a hayseed from the fourth row!"

"Sorry, Toots," Janice said with a grin. Reaching up, she made a big number out of pulling the fedora back to her brow.

---

It seemed more passengers were travelling south than at first glance as the platform had filled up quite nicely by the time Mel and Janice pushed the heavy luggage cart back out into the open. Many of their fellow travelers shot them odd looks at their huge amount of suitcases and Janice's unusual garb, but the two explorers were so used to being gawked at they hardly noticed.

The platform continued to tremble under their feet, and to their left, a vast plume of steam heralded the arrival of the Munich Express that had set off from Flensburg fifty-five minutes earlier. The steam and coal smoke mixed with the low clouds and gave everyone the impression they were looking at a solid, gray wall.

Fittingly for an express train, it was pulled by a streamlined locomotive that was able to acquire a much higher top speed than the regular steam engines. The countless points within the station's perimeter obviously made it impossible for it to achieve its maximum pace, but it seemed to go rather slowly - in fact, it went a little too slowly for Janice's legendary impatience.

"What the hell are they doing?" she mumbled as she witnessed the streamliner letting out its excess steam indicating it was idling rather than being under traction. The Munich Express was still nearly eighty yards from the edge of the platform when it eventually came to a full stop and just waited there.

An annoyed murmur rose from the waiting passengers who began to look at their watches at once. A businessman ran out of patience sooner than the others and went to find a platform marshal to give the person a piece of his mind.

When the locomotive showed no signs of wanting to resume its short journey to the platform, Janice thrust her hands into her jacket pockets, let out a deep sigh and turned to shoot her partner a dark, somber look. She didn't have to say anything as the look of doom and gloom was reflected on Mel's graceful features.

The next moments proved how much - or how little - weight there had been to Gilroy Buchanan's word as a retired officer and a gentleman. Detachments of uniformed officers from the regular German police suddenly appeared at either end of the platform. Working with their typical Teutonic efficiency, they had the platform sealed off in no time. It didn't take long before Ernst Wieland showed up as well. The tall man wore a tan trench coat and a hat in a matching color rather than his favored black leather coat, but there was no mistaking his identity. He remained at the back for the time being; his cold smile plainly visible even at eighty paces' distance.

As the first police officers began to move forward in a pincer movement, they ushered all the regular passengers off the platform in case trouble would ensue.

"Oh, those dirty palookas. Buncha rotten sons of bitches," Janice mumbled as she took in the depressing scene. Their only means of escape would be to jump down onto the rails and make a run for it across the station's many tracks. Not only would such an action make them appear guilty as hell in the eyes of the police officers - regardless of the fact they had been blackmailed into participating in the botched operation at Die Traumfabrik - but there was no way Mel would ever leave their luggage and all her priceless books and artifacts behind. A deep sigh escaped her as she glanced at her sweetheart. "Mel?"

"Y- yes?" Mel replied in a squeak.

"I know you don't have any control over when Xena decides to drop in, but this definitely wouldn't be a good time… okay?"

"I'll… I'll try…"

"Thank you… I love you."

"Love you too," Mel squeaked and hurriedly adjusted her glasses. Clutching the hand rail on the luggage cart, she tried to calm down so her quick-draw ancestor wouldn't misinterpret the nature of their supposed opponents and show up to take care of business Ancient-Greek-style.

Watching the police officers be ordered to close in on them, she couldn't help but think back to the instances in her life where Xena had indeed arrived in the nick of time to take over her body and soul. The first time had been in the tomb in Macedonia when she, Janice and the bumbling fool Jack Kleinman had faced the resurrected Ares, God of War.

Many years passed without further incidents, but Xena had never been far away from assuming control during the entire business with Cecrops' fist-sized emerald. She had appeared twice during that adventure when villains had showed up to conduct their evil business: first in the British consulate in Thessaloniki, then during the long journey on the legendary Orient Express.

Janice had told her that Xena had also appeared in Yannberah's tomb in Jelling, but that incident was too new to be anything other than a hazy memory that could just as easily have been a feverish hallucination. That was all in the past; Mel allowed a faint smile to grace her lips as she felt calmer than she had imagined she would be given the stressful situation she found herself in.

When the police officers had formed a solid circle twenty feet from the two American women, Ernst Wieland strolled toward the group with his hands behind his back like the caricature of a police detective closing a case.

"Well, if it ain't Doctor Death," Janice said in a growl. "I guess ol' Gilroy is too much of a coward to show up in person. That slippery sonovabitch."

"Good morning, Doctor. Miss Pappas. Your mission is not yet over, but you seem ready to travel on," Wieland said and shot Janice the cold smile that appeared to be all he was capable of.

Mel just adjusted her glasses, but Janice slammed her hands onto her hips. "The hell it ain't over, buster!  It ain't our fault you couldn't catch the commie bastard… and read my lips, we're done doin' your dirty work."

"Is that your last word, Doctor Covington?"

"No. My last word would only make you mad, so I'll keep my trap shut!"

Ernst Wieland let out a cold chuckle and waved the uniformed officers over to them - they already had their handcuffs ready. "Such an American reply. Ah, well. Mr. Buchanan and I will see you later. After you've been arrested and interrogated by an old friend of mine, Kommissar Rasche."

A high-pitched gasp escaped Mel's mouth as they were surrounded by police officers. Although no one had their service revolvers drawn, the tension mounted so rapidly the tiniest of sparks could set off a devastating explosion. She reached out in a hurry to grab hold of her partner's hand while she still could - if any such spark would be created, it would come from the fiery archaeologist. Locking eyes with Janice, she sent her a non-verbal, but no less heartfelt, plea for restraint. When she received a nod in return, she let out a trembling sigh and allowed a police officer to move her arms behind her; a pair of ice-cold, metal handcuffs were soon locked tight.

"Ausgezeichnet. Bringt sie weg. Sie müssen in die Polizeiwache in der Bernaustrasse,"  Wieland said and stepped aside to make room.

"Our luggage!" Mel cried as several police officers led her away. "Please!  You must bring our luggage!"

Suddenly interested in what treasures might be hidden inside the many suitcases and the ex-US Army-duffel bag that he had seen Mel protect so fiercely several times, Wieland waved at two of the police officers to get them to take the heavy cart with them to the police station.

-*-*-*-

Traffic nearly came to a standstill on Bahnhofstrasse when a large group of uniformed police officers led two female prisoners - and pushed a luggage cart filled past capacity - over to the waiting vehicles. The passers-by simply had to stop and gawk as Mel was guided into the back of a Volkswagen Bus. Two officers loaded all the heavy suitcases into the back of the bus while letting out a constant stream of inventive grumbles.

On the whole, Janice was treated less well than Mel or even the luggage: she and her hat were thrown into the back of a regular Volkswagen where she had to shuffle around on her own so her hands and wrists wouldn't be pinned down too badly. She kept her jaw firmly shut so she wouldn't accidentally make any comments on the lineage of the arresting officers, but she was unable to stop a persistent growl from escaping her throat. Her eyes were narrowed down into dangerous slits when Ernst Wieland stuck his head into the VW and offered her a cold smile. "You rotten bastard… you better treat Mel with the utmost respect or I'll kick your ass from here to Berlin the first chance I get!"

"Temper, temper, Doctor," Wieland merely said before the former Gestapo officer stepped aside to let two police officers get into the small car. After the VW had been started, he strolled over to the car he had used to get to the Central Station - a black Mercedes-Benz sedan - and sat down on the front seat next to Hans-Martin von Gerlitz. Soon, the small convoy set off for the police precinct house on Bernaustrasse.

---

The trip through the city took nearly half an hour due to the morning rush hour. When the three vehicles arrived at the precinct house, the black Mercedes pulled over at the curb in front of the imposing five-story building. Ernst Wieland got out and waited for the regular patrol vehicles to catch up. After they had both driven past a sliding gate and into an inner courtyard, he strode up a short flight of stairs to get to the main entrance.

---

Another half hour later, Mel found herself sitting in an interrogation room that was so starkly impersonal or even downright dehumanized that it made her shiver. The only items in the room were a wooden table and four chairs: the one she used, two that had been stacked in the corner and the final one that was occupied by a grave female police secretary there to keep an eye on the prisoner. The room had no windows so a fixture in the ceiling took care of the light - it was so harsh and unpleasant the people in there couldn't help but squint.

Mel had been allowed to keep her spectacles although it was apparently against procedure. After she had been forced to leave them at a desk in the registration office, she had managed to bump into three tables and nearly fall over a chair - all within fifteen feet of handing over the black frame. The arresting officers had quickly decided that regular procedure shouldn't be put above common sense, so they had bypassed the regulations for once.

A cluster of seven interrogation rooms had been placed on the fourth floor of the precinct house. They had been set in the center of the floor and were thus surrounded by regular offices. The room Mel found herself in - number five - was apparently soundproof because very few noises came through the walls or the door. All she could hear were distant, ringing telephones and faint sounds of chattering typewriters. The room reeked of old sweat produced by the special type of fear that blasted through those individuals unfortunate enough to spend any amount of time there.

Gulping down a bitter lump, she tried to think positive thoughts to keep her mind off the insanity of the situation. The temperature in the interrogation office was pleasant enough as such, but the shortage of sleep and the entire nightmarish sequence of events of the past few days soon left her chilled to the bone. She had yet to be informed of why she had been arrested and that concerned her. She had committed no crime, nor had she been near someone who had - and yet she remained under lock and key.

That someone from Germany's darkest past still had such clout in the reborn Republic sent another chill down her spine. It was blatantly obvious to anyone that Ernst Wieland had orchestrated everything from the get-go. She suspected he had a higher rank or standing in the World Security Agency than even Section Commander Buchanan who believed he called all the shots, but why Wieland had gone through so much trouble to get them to carry out his dirty work when his own men were perfectly capable of doing so on their own was beyond her.

She shook her head slowly and let out a deep sigh. Despite everything, it could have been worse - her father could have been alive. Had he been, the scandal that would have erupted when it hit the news that the daughter of the Dean of the University of South Carolina had been arrested in a foreign country would have been so all-encompassing that it might have forced him to resign from his post.

Mel sighed again and looked at the closed door that separated Interrogation Room Five from the rest of the police station. Just like before, nothing happened.

---

Further down the row in Interrogation Room Two, Janice slouched on the wooden chair. Like Mel, she had a matronly female chaperone in there with her - but unlike Mel, Janice wasn't about to take any of it on the chin. The disgusted sneer etched onto her mug and the steely glare flashing in her eyes proved it.

All four legs of the table were bolted to the floor but the chair could be moved. She took full advantage of that fact by pushing it back and putting her legs - and her trench boots - up on the table top.

"Nehmen Sie die Stiefel runter vom Tisch!" the secretary said in a tone that was as unfriendly as it was annoyed.

"Blah-blah-di-da-blah-blah?" Janice said and shot the chaperone a cheeky glare. "Thank you for the recipe, but I don't eat Eisbein mit Sauerkraut. You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would ya?"

"Nein!  Hier drin dürfen Sie nicht rauchen."

"Oh, you only smoke the pipe… okay. A cig would be nicer, though. I'd kill for a cheroot. Don't take that too literally. I guess the walls have ears, eh?"

"Ruhe, bitte."

Slouching even more, Janice took off her hat and used it to fan her nose. "Yikes, this place stinks. Or is it you?  It's certainly not me. I'm as fresh as a spring daisy."

"Ruhe!  Bitte schweigen Sie bis der Kommissar eintrifft!"

"Blah-di-blah-di-blah-blah?  Oh, well, all right. I'll put a sock in it for now. That reminds me of a funny story from Budapest… Dad and me were there in… naw, I better not. I wouldn't want to cause you any sleepless nights. Say, when's that fancy Kommissar of yours gonna be here, anyway?"

By now, the matronly secretary's face had been scrunched up into half its original size. She bit her lips and looked as if she was just waiting for an opportunity to smack some sense into the American detainee.

Chuckling, Janice moved down her fedora to make it cover her face. After shuffling around to find a more comfortable position on the hard chair, she crossed her arms over her chest and tried to relax while she waited for the big revelation.

-*-*-*-

It took another forty minutes of no activity before something finally happened. The door to Interrogation Room Two opened to allow four people to enter. Two of them remained in the background while the other two grabbed a pair of vacant chairs and sat down at the table.

Janice had moved her trench boots off the table some time ago, but her beloved, battered fedora continued to protect her face from the harsh light in the ceiling. As she took if off, she broke out in a demonstratively wide yawn to show the others sitting opposite her how much she was bored by the whole razzmatazz. Her eyes narrowed down into slits when she realized the two people who remained in the corners were Gilroy Buchanan and Ernst Wieland whose cold smile had gained several degrees of smugness since she had last seen him.

The other side of the table from where Janice had been placed was occupied by a man in his late fifties and a woman at least twenty years younger. The former wore plain clothes, but the man's gray pants, stark-white shirt and pale-gray necktie might as well have been a regular police uniform since the clothing items did a poor job of softening the appearance of one of the department's senior criminal investigators.

To balance out the martial garb, his round nose, meaty lips, slight double-chins and severe comb-over - to hide a very large bald spot - offered a friendly, even somewhat grandfatherly, impression at first glance, but his eyes revealed there was plenty of steel behind his trust-inducing exterior. The investigator found a pencil and opened a notepad to an empty page. After licking the tip of the writing utensil, he jotted down the date, time and the identity of the people present.

The mid-thirty-something woman next to him wore a neutral dress of a pale-tan tone. Attractive but perhaps not a knockout, she had her auburn hair up in a bun held in place by a white elastic band. Before the session could get under way, she reached into a purse for a pair of round reading glasses that she proceeded to push up the bridge of her nose.

Janice assumed a cool, bored expression as she looked at the people sitting opposite her. It was clear by the investigator's stony silence he was trying to rattle her cage, but she wasn't about to let him do that. Instead, she looked over at Buchanan and Wieland - the latter seemed to find it all rather amusing.

Another two minutes went by in silence apart from the scratching of the pencil's tip as it moved across the paper. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Fräulein?" the investigator suddenly said before he put down the pencil.

"Ein wenig aber nix genug. Some but not enough. I want to speak English."

"Ich verstehe. In diesem Fall, lassen mich Ihnen Frau Porter vorstellen. Sie wird ihre Dolmetscherin sein. Ich bin Kommissar Rasche."

The lady in question leaned forward and offered Janice a faint smile. "How do you do, Miss Covington. My name is Hedwig Porter and I will be your official interpreter. This is Detective Superintendent Otto Rasche," she said in a voice that held a charming combination of hard German consonants and soft British vowels.

"Please to meet ya. And it's Doctor Covington, actually," Janice said with a grin. "Married a Tommy, didya?  Huh, you're the second gal I've met in the past ten days who did that."

"Ah… yes. I did indeed," Hedwig did and broke out in a slight blush.

Janice smiled at the sight that reminded her of how Mel had typically reacted when they had first met. "Aw, don't blush yet, Hedwig… may I call ya Hedwig?  There'll be plenty of time for blushing later… first of all, I'd like you to tell your Kommissar here that the ugly fella over in the corner is a former Gestapo officer. The tall fella with the ugly mug."

"I'm… I'm sorry?"

"Please," Janice said with a smile that had suddenly turned harder.

Hedwig's eyes grew wide behind the reading glasses before she turned to Otto Rasche to translate Janice's lengthy message. She and the Kommissar held a brief conversation before she turned back to Janice. "The Detective Superintendent already knows about Herr Wieland's past. Herr Wieland has been properly denazified and can thus hold any position in the Federal Republic of Germany or indeed his new-"

"Ah!  But of course!" Janice said in a voice so thick with sarcasm it nearly dripped off the syllables. "Denazified… oh, why didn't I think of that?  Then everything is hunky-dory. Peachy-boo-lovey-dew, darlin'."

The senior investigator had little time for idle chit-chat, so he slammed his fist onto the tabletop to get back on track. "Fräulein, für das Protokoll, wie lautet ihr Name?"

Janice narrowed her eyes at the harshness in the Superintendent's voice - she decided to give as good as she got. "Name, Janice Covington. Rank, Doctor of Philosophy. Archaeologist attached to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of San Francisco. Number, thirty-six and a half… that's my age. Anything else ya wanna know while we're at it?  I can't give you my star sign 'cos I don't believe in that crap… and you sure ain't gettin' my phone number, Mac."

While Hedwig tried to get the basics across without angering the Kommissar any further, Janice leaned back on the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She never took her eyes off Wieland and Section Commander Buchanan who had remained passive throughout the opening volley.

After Otto Rasche had jotted down the new information, he put the pencil away. "Fräulein, Sie wurden verhaftet, da wir Sie verdächtigen ein Mitglied einer Gruppe zu sein, die gestern abend einen Brandanschlag auf Die Traumfabrik verübt hat. Die Feuerwehr fand mehrere Leichen in einem Innenflur. Die Körper wurden durch die Hitze und die Flammen so schwer verbrannt, dass wir auf den Obduktionsbericht warten müssen, um die Todesursache festzustellen. Brandstiftung mit Todesfolge ist ein sehr schweres Verbrechen. Was haben Sie zu Ihrer Verteidigung zu sagen?"

"Miss Covington-" Hedwig said, but Janice cut her off at once:

"That's Doctor. Like I told you once already."

Hedwig blinked several times before she licked her lips and started over: "I beg your pardon. Doctor Covington, you were arrested because the police suspect you of arson at Die Traumfabrik last night. Several dead bodies were found in a corridor. They were so badly burned that only an autopsy can establish the cause of death. Arson resulting in the loss of life is a very serious crime. What do you have to say in your defense?"

"Not guilty. And you have it all back-asswards, Mista Kommissar," Janice said before she leaned forward. "Yes, I was present when the fire broke out, but it was started by the people inside the storage room, not those of us who waited outside. Some kind of small-fry explosive devices were used for the initial detonations. The fire spread like crazy after that. I'm sure your fire brigade's technical experts will soon discover that as well."

Hedwig Porter took a deep breath and licked her lips several times before she turned to the Detective Superintendent to translate. Rasche didn't seem too surprised by Janice's statement as he merely let out affirmative grunts rather than more sinister noises.

Janice leaned back again and locked eyes with Ernst Wieland. "How long are you gonna let this dog and pony act go on, buster?  It's mighty tiring, lemme tell ya."

Yet another cold, highly smug smile spread over the face of the former - but apparently denazified - Gestapo officer. "Oh, it still has some legs, Doctor. That is the proper term, yes?  Literally, because Mr. Buchanan and I shall pay your charming companion a visit next. I am sure she will be more attentive to our-"

Janice bolted upright so fast the chair flipped over and landed with a bang on the floor. Hedwig Porter jerked back and let out a shriek; the Detective Superintendent and the matronly chaperone both jumped into action at once to restrain the suspect.

"If you threaten Mel, I'm gonna give you a Goddamned knuckle sandwich you can taste for a week, you rotten sonovabitch!" Janice roared before she was tackled down onto the tabletop by the two police officers. Within seconds, she was handcuffed behind her back once more and put firmly on the righted chair.

Gilroy Buchanan shot his German colleagues a concerned look but otherwise remained passive. Wieland just smiled while he leaned forward to say: "Herr Rasche, lassen Sie sie zehn minuten abkühlen. Dann können Sie die Handschellen abnehmen. Herr Buchanan, Frau Porter und ich werden in der Zwischenzeit drüben in Nummer fünf sein."

While Hedwig Porter put her reading glasses into her purse and got up, Wieland and Buchanan both moved over to the door. The section commander and the interpreter soon left, but Wieland waited in the doorway. Once the others were out of earshot, he smiled at Janice. "In case you were preoccupied, I told my good friend and former colleague here-"

Janice's eyes grew wide, then narrowed down into angry slits at the news that perhaps shouldn't have been surprising given Wieland's unbearable smugness.

"-to take your handcuffs off in ten minutes' time. If you will excuse me, Doctor. A far more pleasant conversation awaits."

The battle-axe chaperone still had a hand pressed down onto Janice's shoulder so her range of movements was severely restricted. Knowing when not to act difficult, she let out a deep sigh and remained passive save for a curt nod.

---

The general mood in Interrogation Room Five couldn't have been further from the quick-draw aggression displayed by Janice Covington. Mel Pappas was white as a sheet as Hedwig Porter brought her up to speed by relaying that the Doctor had been initially fingered in connection with the arson that had cost the lives of at least three people.

Mel tried to breathe evenly to keep her pounding heart under control so Xena wouldn't respond to the distress call. She sat on her hands to warm them at first, but eventually moved them up onto the coarse tabletop that saw scarring from years of abuse from various suspects and prisoners. The interpreter's message didn't seem to register with her, but every word was picked up, analyzed and ultimately understood - not that it was hard to understand. They were in trouble, bad trouble, and she had no idea how they could get out of it.

Still smiling coldly, Ernst Wieland put a Dictaphone on the wooden table. He didn't activate it, but turned to Hedwig Porter and put a hand on her arm. "Vielen Dank, Frau Porter. Wir werden uns mit Ihnen in Verbindung setzen, falls wir Ihre Hilfe wieder benötigen."

"You are welcome, Herr Wieland," Hedwig said before she left the interrogation room with the female police secretary in tow.

As the door closed behind the interpreter, Gilroy Buchanan pulled out the vacant chair and sat down facing Mel. He took off his Borsalino and put it in his lap - the table was far too crude for the expensive hat.

Ernst Wieland reached onto the table to turn on the Dictaphone. "And now, Fräulein Pappas," he said in a deceptively friendly tone, "it is time for a little chat. When I searched your luggage for contraband items, I was surprised to find nothing but books and a few ancient artifacts. By the near-zealous way you have insisted on keeping the collection near, I take it that it holds great value?"

"My books are unique and priceless," Mel croaked. "I've compiled several of them myself. I use them to translate Ancient Greek scrolls."

"Like the ones in the… ah, large army bag?"

"Like those in the duffel bag, yes." Mel's chin began to quiver at the mere thought of harm coming to Gabrielle's scrolls before she could parse them in a more analytical fashion than her initial translation in the historical inn in Jelling. She clenched her jaw to overcome it, but the negative emotion was too strong to control. "Please, Mr. Wieland… please don't-"

Wieland waved his hand dismissively. "I am no fool, Fräulein Pappas. The papers are safe. Now… I know my new countrymen are always eager to talk business, so let us get down to it. Gerd Neumann, the man you were supposed to help capture last night, continues to elude us. Through covert informants, we have learned he has contacted a new communist cell. Here is my… our… proposition," he continued while gesturing at Gilroy Buchanan who nodded affirmatively although it wasn't necessary in the context.

"In fact," Wieland continued displaying a cold smile, "our proposition is the same as before. You and the Doctor help us capture Neumann, then we will let you go. If you do not wish to help us, you will remain in custody in a correctional facility for women here in Hamburg until enough evidence has been gathered for the trial. Doctor Covington will be convicted of lethal arson, and you may yet join her as an accomplice. Time will tell."

The shocking threat and Wieland's callous way of delivering it gave Mel a jolt that reached far into her soul; her breath hitched and her stomach clenched painfully. The last remaining part of her mind that had the ability to think clearly attempted to tell the rest of her that Wieland's words were meant to intimidate and scare her, and that perhaps as much as ninety percent of what he said was a lie, but his scare tactics touched her too deeply to be offset by mere logic - an icy chill raced through her body until it reached from the top of her scalp to the tips of her fingers.

Then she felt an unnatural calm fall upon her like a warm blanket. A strange blackness grew around the edges of her vision; the blackness was soon replaced by vivid blues and greens like those found in a lush pastoral setting. Her heart rate slowed down and a sense of peace rolled over her. A dulcet voice right next to her - or perhaps inside her - said 'Let go. I am here.'

Ernst Wieland hadn't noticed the change in the person sitting opposite him, and he continued: "Such a conviction will typically give you a jail term of ten to twelve years. After completion of the term, you will be deported to the United States. Fräulein Pappas, I must inform you that Doctor Covington is not interested in helping us. She foolishly believes she will be exonerated by the technical evidence, but I can assure you she will not. Now, Mr. Buchanan and I are very interested in hearing where you stand on this matter. Please, go on."

'Let go… just let go… I am here. I am ready,' was repeated over and over in Mel's mind, but letting go was the only thing she couldn't afford to do - if Xena showed up and unleashed her special brand of havoc in a police station, Mel would be thrown into the deepest, darkest dungeon for an eternity. "No," she said in a croaking mumble. She lowered her head and began to shake it to get the dulcet voice out, but it insisted on staying. "No, I- I can't… not this time… not this time… please… it'll only make it worse…"

The two men shot each other a long, highly puzzled glance - it was obvious they had no idea what was going on with the lady sitting opposite them.

"Fräulein Pappas, do you need a glass of water?  You are very pale all of a sudden," Ernst Wieland said while furrowing his brow.

"N- no… no water. Th- thank you… I… no… please… please, if- if I- if I agree to h- help you find- find the man, w- will you l- let us go?  Really let us go?"

"We will let you go. You have my word," Wieland continued; his cold smile was even broader than usual - the good, old methods had once again paid off handsomely. "Of course, the Doctor might see it differently."

"N- no… Jan w- will listen to me… she'll listen…"

Though Gilroy Buchanan's face was left frozen in apprehension over his colleague's questionable tactics, the smile never left Wieland as he reached across the table to turn off the Dictaphone. "Thank you, Fräulein Pappas. It was most kind of you to speak with us. I shall play the recording for the Doctor and gauge her reaction. If she agrees on the terms, you shall both be released into the custody of the World Security Agency. If she does not… well. Oh, I am sure you know her better than I do. If you believe she will listen to you, that will undoubtedly be the case. Good day, Fräulein."

After Wieland had left, Buchanan got up as well and gathered his hat and coat. The female secretary moved back inside to watch over the prisoner.

The discoloration of the outer edges of Mel's vision disappeared like flicking a switch. Suddenly woozy, she tilted forward and nearly slammed her head into the wooden table. It was caught by Gilroy Buchanan at the last moment, and he helped her upright until she had returned to the same metaphysical plane as everyone else in the room. "Oh… oh, my goodness… I wish she would leave as gently as she arrives," Mel croaked and reached up to clap a hand across her eyes to stop her head from spinning too badly.

Commander Buchanan furrowed his brow at the odd comment but soon put it down to a touch of female hysteria. Once he had made sure she wasn't about to keel over again, he took a step back. "Miss Pappas, I do believe you need to lie down," he said in a voice that wasn't entirely unfriendly.

"N- no… no, thank you. But I would very much like to- to see Jan… Doctor Covington… please?"

"I'm afraid that might take a while, Miss," the senior agent said on his way over to the door. Standing in the doorway, he cast a final glance at the lady before he left.

Mel rubbed her brow - she could well imagine how Janice would react when the ice cold Wieland would play the recording.

---

In Interrogation Room Two, Janice leaned back on her chair and glared so darkly at the former Gestapo officer that he should have died on the spot. He didn't, and she chalked that up to the fact he had obviously sold his soul decades earlier.

"Do you wish to hear it again?" Wieland said, leaning against the inside of the closed door. He held up the Dictaphone so Mel's voice could be heard loud and clear.

"No."

"So?"

Janice drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. The handcuffs had been removed after ten minutes as promised, and she had sat with her hands crossed over her chest ever since so she wouldn't be tempted to do anything stupid - like punching someone's lights out. "Let me get this straight… if I say 'up yours, Kraut,' you'll leave Mel and me to rot here. If we help you get your claws into this commie-boy, we're free to leave… unless you change the game's rules again and stab us in the back. Again."

"Such charming language, Doctor. But yes."

"All right. And when you've shot him stone dead for sneezin' without using a hankie, Mel and me will be accessories to his murder."

Yet another cold smile graced Ernst Wieland's features as he walked over to the table. "Oh, come now, Doctor… murder is such a melodramatic term. Gerd Neumann is to stand trial for the crimes he intends to commit against the German people."

"That's not how the judicial system works in a democracy, pal. You can't put anyone on trial for something they haven't even done yet!"

"But of course you can. It happens all the time in America."

"The hell it does!"

"Oh, let us not get too political," Wieland said and waved his hand. "Doctor, do you accept these terms as they have been presented to you?  Yes or no."

Janice fell silent. She chewed hard on her hips for several long moments before she nodded - she knew better than to trust a snake like Ernst Wieland, but they could achieve nothing locked up in a women's correctional facility somewhere. "Yeah. Okay. But I agree under protest. The second you apprehend that Neumann fella, Mel and me are outta here. And this time, we're not gonna accept any freebie tickets so you'll know where we go!"

A chuckle escaped the former Gestapo officer's lips; it didn't change his expression, but at least a slight ripple of emotion flashed across his eyes - that it was sheer evil anticipation wasn't entirely unexpected. "Excellent. Doctor Covington, welcome back to the strike team. Operation Dustpan is about to commence."

"Oh, zipp-ah-dee-doo-dah… I can hardly wait," Janice said and pushed her chair back to get up.

*
*
CHAPTER 6

Just to make Mel and Janice's forced separation last even longer, they were transported to their new, temporary home at a secret World Security Agency spy base in two different vehicles: Mel was given a free and somewhat comfortable ride in one of the police Volkswagen Buses to have room for all her luggage, but Janice needed to suffer through the distinct displeasure of sharing the black Mercedes-Benz with Gilroy Buchanan and Ernst Wieland on their seeming endless trip through the German metropolis.

The black car - chauffeured as usual by the former Wehrmacht lieutenant Hans-Martin von Gerlitz - drove through the city in a confusing series of turns, detours and false stops. At times, the car drove blindingly fast like they were trying to throw off a tail; at other times, their progress was so slow the pedestrians on the sidewalks could keep up on foot.

Janice had no intention of asking about the annoying procedure. She had been forced onto the luxurious sedan's rear seat and sat between the two men who had become personal nemeses of hers. At least the seat was wide enough for her to avoid being squeezed by them.

Not long after von Gerlitz had taken a corner on two wheels and screeching tires, the black sedan was caught by a red traffic light. Janice didn't care about such an everyday occurrence, but she felt the change in Gilroy Buchanan almost immediately.

The section commander, who sat on Janice's left, grew tense like he suddenly found himself in front of a firing squad. His fingers clenched the rim of the Borsalino while his foot began a frantic tap dance down in the footwell. The dance lasted the entire duration of the completely regular halt at the red light. It wasn't until the traffic signal turned green once more and the Mercedes subsequently drove away from the line that he relaxed and settled down.

Hardly anything could make Janice Covington apprehensive or even worried, but Buchanan's odd reaction to the uneventful pause in the proceedings certainly made her thoughtful. She had been around the world enough to know that when an important gentleman acted in such a fashion - despite the presence of an armed escort in the shape of Wieland and von Gerlitz - there had to be a credible threat somewhere out there.

The last time she had witnessed a similar reaction from a similar type of man had been in Chicago in the early 1930s during the Great Gangster Wars. As a rebellious teen, she had shacked up there for two years trying to break free from her father's reputation, but that part hadn't worked too well as her last name had made her an attractive prospect for the people on the fringes of semi-organized crime. Back then, every hoodlum in a fancy car had been a legitimate target in the turf wars between Capone's people and their many rivals. Rivers of blood had filled the streets before everything had calmed down.

It was hard to imagine that similar tragedies could strike the relatively peaceful city of Hamburg so soon after the war, but Janice knew very well there were plenty of evil-minded people out there who wouldn't hesitate for a moment bringing about such destruction. A generation earlier, such a person would have been a lone-wolf anarchist with a home-made revolver, a chip on his shoulder and a mind eaten by absinthe, but the Cold War had seen the emergence of a new threat, namely well-organized spy cells that could draw on large groups of fanatical insurgents at a moment's notice.

Janice cast a quick glance at Ernst Wieland who occupied the seat to her right. The tall man's face was as passive and cold as always and didn't reveal anything - undoubtedly a result of his decades of experience. She let out a dark grunt as the black Mercedes-Benz continued on its long journey through the city. For each passing moment, she grew more annoyed with the smoke-and-mirror nature of the World Security Agency until she was seething on the inside.

---

After a further twenty-five minutes, they arrived at a two-storey mansion in one of the western boroughs of the large city. The neighborhood was visibly far more upscale than most they had driven through as the buildings there were generally mansions with one or two exceptions. A great deal of them were white or pale-gray; all had large, well-kept gardens.

The two-storey mansion had been drawn back from the sidewalk of the plane-tree-lined Helmut-Pönitz-Allee by a good thirty yards. Clusters of young - but rapidly growing - Norway spruces in the front garden acted as an effective shield from prying eyes as they all stood between the house and the street.

A ten-feet tall gate featuring coiled-up barbed wire and a row of fearsome spikes on top separated the avenue from a flagged driveway that led down to an underground garage. Von Gerlitz drove up to the gate and honked twice. Soon, the center section slid open with plenty of metallic howls, whines and grinding noises as the heavy gate rolled along a metal rail in the ground.

The black Mercedes didn't continue all the way to the garage at the end of the sloping driveway, but stopped halfway there at a nine-step granite staircase that led up to an ornate, cast-iron garden gate on their right.

The gate had survived the war intact, but the brick mansion it protected hadn't been as fortunate as blast waves from nearby bomb impacts had demolished the roof and several sections of the upper story. It had been fully rebuilt following the capitulation and was presently in a better condition than it had ever been in before the five-hundred-pound bombs had rained down upon it.

Although the outer walls of the mansion were painted in a neutral pale-gray, the eight window frames visible on the front created a pleasant visual contrast by being dark-brown. The steeply sloped roof had two dormers on either side, a brick chimney in the center and a tall radio antenna next to it that seemed out of place in the upscale neighborhood.

After the Mercedes had come to a halt at the staircase, von Gerlitz stepped out first; the driver kept his hand inside his trench coat while he surveyed the situation. When their immediate surroundings appeared free of dangers of any kind, he opened the door so Section Commander Buchanan could get out.

On the other side of the car, Wieland stepped out on his own. He stretched out his hand in case Janice needed help scooting across the rear seat, but the angry glare he got in return made him let out an amused chuckle.

"Where the hell are we?" Janice said as she took in the sights. "Ah, forget I asked. You palookas are just gonna deny this place even exists. But where is Mel Pappas, Goddammit?  I'm tellin' you right now, buster, if I don't see her soon, I'm gonna blow a fuse… and if you think I'm a boil on your asses now, just wait until I get mad. You don't wanna be around me when I'm mad, pal."

"I am sure she will be here shortly. The police drivers are not as good as the Leutnant here," Wieland said and waved at his brother-in-arms.

Von Gerlitz soon got back behind the wheel and drove further down the sloping driveway to park the sedan in the garage. Buchanan had no time to stop and admire the scenery; after brushing past Janice and Ernst Wieland, the section commander quickly ascended the flight of stairs, swept the gate aside and walked so fast up the garden path beyond it that it appeared he was scared of being out in the open.

Janice shook her head and let out a grunt. "And what's with him all of a sudden?  Jeez, you'd think he'd pooped his shorts or something…"

"Merely a safety precaution," Wieland said and gestured an 'after you' at Janice. When they moved along the garden path, he added: "After all, he might be at the top of someone's hit list."

"Huh. Yeah. He might be at the top of your hit list, eh, buster?  To be the man, you gotta beat the man. Right?  Or blow him all to hell. Isn't that how you used to climb the career ladder among your old Gestapo pals?"

"Not quite," Ernst Wieland said with a cold smile. "But it is the way you Americans do it. Oh, I can learn so much from my new Fatherland."

Janice let out another dark grunt as they reached the front door. Gilroy Buchanan had long since gone through it so it was closed and locked once more. When Janice instinctively reached for the handle, she found herself rapidly pulled back by her tall companion. "Hey!  What the hell?  Getcha Goddamned hands off'a me, ya sonova-"

"Do you know the password?  No?  Then step back."

"You fools need to have a password to enter your own damn house?!  Aw, this just keeps gettin' better and better…"

Wieland sent her a dark glare before he moved over to the door and pressed a button installed on the frame. A voice soon said 'Ja?' through a small speaker mounted just above the button. "Prinz Albrecht," Wieland said and stepped back.

Janice had just enough time to roll her eyes before the front door opened to reveal Joachim Schulze who aimed an SG/MP44 Sturmgewehr assault rifle in her direction - the weapon had had its wooden stock removed so it was easier to wield in the confined space at the door.

The former Panzer commander was once more dressed in the black outfit so reminiscent of his old uniform, and he even wore the appropriate field cap. He didn't seem too pleased about meeting his new American associate again because he kept the gun trained on her for a few seconds longer than necessary.

As Janice was ushered inside by Ernst Wieland, her face turned into a sour mask and she needed to clench her jaw to stop the scathing barb she had already lined up. "I guess you palookas don't need cyanide pills this time… you just reach for the door handle instead," she said in a growl.

---

Ten minutes went by. During that time, Janice had refused to do anything but stand at one of the windows overlooking the large garden. Heavy, steel-gray curtains had been drawn in all of the ground-level rooms of the mansion so nobody could sneak a peek at what went on inside. She had been given direct orders not to look out, but she was past caring so she held out a corner of the curtain to keep the Helmut-Pönitz-Allee under observation.

The moment an unmarked Volkswagen Bus pulled over to the curb beyond the garden, she tore out of the living room, squeezed past Joachim Schulze - who let out several juicy curses when she did so - and ran out of the front door. As the door slammed shut behind her, she stormed along the garden gate to get to her sweetheart.

At the same time, Mel exited the VW Bus and began to supervise the extraction of all their luggage - including the duffel bag - from the rear of the vehicle. A pair of uniformed police officers worked hard to get the heavy suitcases onto the sidewalk so they could finally return to their regular jobs.

"Mel!  Mel!" Janice shouted as she came to a hard stop at the ten-feet tall gate that blocked her access to the avenue. Although Mel began to look around as the familiar voice reached her, she couldn't see around the corner and soon returned to supervising the extraction of the luggage.

Growling, Janice grabbed hold of the gate's iron bars to force it to the side but realized at once that a strong-armed approach wouldn't work unless she could morph into a Superwoman. Stepping back, she slammed her hands onto her hips and looked up at the barbed wire and the spikes on top of the upper rail - climbing over wouldn't work either. She suddenly remembered that von Gerlitz had honked when they had arrived in the Mercedes, and that meant the gate could only be opened from inside the house.

Once an adventurer, always an adventurer, so Janice stomped back up the driveway and moved into the garden itself. The lawn was lush and the flower beds pretty and colorful, but she had no time to admire life's little treasures; she was soon among the cluster of young Norway Spruces meant to protect the house from spies, foreign agents or home-grown nosy neighbors. The soft ground and prickly undergrowth between the trunks were no match for her trench boots, and she reached the fence at the far end of the garden in a matter of seconds.

Unlike the safety features installed in and on the main gate, the perimeter fence was a simple wire-mesh thing no more than five feet tall. It took the veteran archaeologist no time flat to scale it and jump down onto the avenue beyond it. Once her boots were planted on the sidewalk, a dark chuckle escaped her - if she could get out that easily, anybody could get in. "Mel!  Hey, Mel… Mel, I'm over here!" she shouted and ran the short distance down to the Volkswagen Bus.

Mel spun around and stared wide-eyed at the familiar figure running toward her. Letting out a huge sigh of relief, she spread her arms out wide and allowed herself to nearly be bowled over by the blonde tornado. The crushing hug of a lifetime followed, but they were unable to go any further with all and sundry observing them. "Oh, God, Jan… I love you so… will this nightmare never end?" she croaked into Janice's hair.

"Soon, baby. Soon. I promise. Love ya too… now and forever. The bastard Wieland played the recording he made of you… listening to you crying tore my soul to shreds."

"Xena was there… inside my mind. She was all ready to jump into action," Mel whispered - the two police officers stood too close to them to risk speaking at a regular volume, especially considering the touchy subject.

"Oh!  How- how did you-"

"I had to fight her off with all I had. Why, she would have killed everyone at the police station, I just know she would. Goodness, I hope she isn't too annoyed with me…"

Janice let out a strangled snicker. "Even if she got in a snit over it, I'm sure a little hot-tub time with Gabrielle will cure it…"

"I hope so. I may need her before this hellish business is over," Mel said before she moved back at arm's length; a few tears escaped her eyes and trickled down her flushed cheeks.

It presented the perfect opportunity for physical contact, so Janice reached up to wipe away the tears before they could stain the exquisite - but slightly crumpled - travel dress.

"I'm sorry, Jan," Mel croaked in a thick voice, "I wish we hadn't been put into this situation… but… but I just couldn't face spending time in a-"

Janice shook her head. "Don't apologize, baby. We're here now. Together. That's all that matters. We've been given a chance to battle on. We need to take it. Whatever else happens from now on, we'll face it as an unbreakable team. After all, we're Xena and Gabrielle's representatives in this era. Right?  They never quit and neither will we."

"I wish I had your confidence, Jan…"

A short chuckle escaped Janice when she thought of the glum faces they would undoubtedly meet inside the house. "And I wish I had your Fates-like patience… there'll be some rocky roads ahead and you how easily I get frustrated. You probably need to keep me on a short leash from here on in."

"Oh, Jan Covington… that won't be a problem. I'll stick so close to you that you'll think I've used an entire tube of Elmer glue. Trust me," Mel said and adjusted her glasses.

Janice broke out in a cheesy grin. She wrapped her arm around Mel's waist and pulled her in for a sideways hug.

The massive amounts of luggage had finally been transferred from the Volkswagen to the sidewalk. It meant the two police officers could go about their business, and they did so without even acknowledging the two women. Their action left Mel and Janice alone with a pile of heavy suitcases and an ex-US Army duffel bag.

"Hey, those fools put my bag upside down!" Janice said once she clapped her eyes on the olive-green canvas. Moving over to it, she crouched down, turned the bag right-side-up and loosened the leather string to look for any possible damage to the priceless items inside. "Well, the scrolls and those things are still in one piece. So is the urn… hell, that damned thing will probably outlast us all."

"Thank the Gods for little favors…" Mel mumbled.

"Yeah. Hey… wait a minute!  What the hell, I can't find my Sally Swackhamer books!  If those palookas stole 'em, I'm gonna be so spit-flyin' furious-"

Mel suddenly turned around to look further up the sidewalk. "Ernst Wieland is coming, Jan. He looks annoyed…"

"He ain't the only one, Toots!" Janice said with her head buried halfway down the duffel bag to look for her beloved paperbacks. "My Sally Swackhamer books… they're not here… Goddammit!"

"Jan… please…"

"I know, I know. I'll simmer down," Janice said and stood up straight. She screwed a fake smile on her lips as the tall man quickly closed the distance between them. "Hi de ho, bub!  Nice day, ain't it?  Now you're here, you might as well make yourself useful. Grab an armful of luggage so the lady won't have to overstress her delicate hands."

"Doctor Covington… the next time you decide to leave unassisted might be the last," Wieland said in a voice that held a far more dangerous tone than usual. Behind him, Robert von Schenck and the young Barney Talbott hurried along the sidewalk to keep up with the far longer strides of their boss.

Mel gasped at the barely hidden threat of a swift and messy death, but Janice grabbed her hand and gave it a good squeeze to offset the evil words. "Yeah, huh?  Speakin' of which, you people really oughtta get a taller garden fence installed here. If a shortie like me can scale it as easy as scratching my ass, how much of a challenge do you think it'll pose for someone wanting to get in?"

Ernst Wieland looked at the fence and the garden beyond it. When he turned back to Mel and Janice, his smile had become colder than ever. "We do not need a taller fence, Doctor. The anti-personnel mines we dug into the ground among the trees should be deterrent enough."

Several rapid heartbeats went by before Mel could do as much as squeak. She needed to adjust her glasses to have room for her wide eyes that stared at her partner - Janice just snorted and pushed her fedora back from her forehead.

Wieland smiled once more as he turned to his associates. "Herr von Schenck, Mr. Talbott… take care of the ladies' luggage. Doctor, Miss Pappas, if you will join me. Mr. Buchanan is about to brief us on Operation Dustpan. You also need to get fully acquainted with the other members of our strike team."

When neither Mel nor Janice seemed all that willing to follow the tall man back to the house, he held out a hand and said: "Now" in a voice that offered a hint that if they would not go voluntarily, he would see to it they were led inside forcibly.

Another moment passed before Janice nodded; she took Mel by the hand to maintain the contact.

-*-*-*-

After Ernst Wieland had delivered the password to Joachim Schulze - whose assault rifle seemed to enjoy being pointed at Janice's gut - she and Mel entered the proverbial lion's den.

The entrance hall of the elegant mansion was long, arrow-straight and surprisingly bare considering the splendor on the exterior. Every item of furniture had been removed to create a funnel for defensive purposes. Even if an advancing enemy made it through the front door and past the guard posted there, they would be sitting ducks in the straight hallway. Similarly, a pair of doors that had originally led off from the hall - to a small bathroom and a storage room, respectively - had been sealed off by hammering long nails into the woodwork.

The far end of the entrance hall opened up into a living room on the left and a secondary access to the main kitchen on the right. A carpeted staircase at the end of another corridor went to the upper floor - much of the landing halfway up had been converted into a machine gun nest by stacking up a vast pile of sandbags.

Wieland ushered Mel and Janice into the living room before he walked over to a pair of sliding doors that led to an extra room. "Wait here," he said before he pulled one of the doors open; his slim frame only needed a small gap, and the door was soon slid shut behind him.

Like the empty entrance hall, only the most basic of furniture like tables and chairs had been put into the living room. There were four of each, and all were of a mass-produced, square-edged nature rather than the handcrafted designs the upper-class neighborhood seemed to demand. The heavy curtains remained drawn - even the one Janice had moved an inch aside earlier so she could look out - which meant the light was provided by a nondescript, military-style light fixture installed in the ceiling where an elegant chandelier had undoubtedly been in the old days.

The wallpaper's flowery pattern was obviously a leftover from the days where the house had been owned by regular citizens as it offered a modicum of peace and tranquility amid the utilitarian surroundings. Here and there, grayish outlines on the walls showed the spots that had seen paintings in earlier times.

The room's wooden floorboards had been planed and lacquered when the house had been rebuilt following the war, but most of the floorspace was covered by a worn Persian rug in deep reds and blues.

Mel let out a trembling breath and reached up to remove her pillbox hat. Wearing such an elegant accessory felt completely out of place in the oppressive environment inside the supposedly super-secret spy base, but holding it in her hand didn't improve anything.

"Are you tired, honey?" Janice said quietly.

"Very much so. The struggle trying to keep Xena at bay drained me of my last drops of energy," Mel said and took off her spectacles so she could rub her eyes. "Oh, I could sleep for a week… but I don't even want to think about that. I do need to sit down, however."

Janice gestured at the collection of vacant chairs in the room. "Take your pick. They look hard as hell, but I'll bet the floor is even harder."

"Why, thank you, dear!" Mel said and let out a tired chuckle.

While Mel moved over to a wooden chair and bumped down onto its seat, Robert von Schenck and Barney Talbott finished putting all the luggage onto the Persian rug. The panzer veteran and the junior agent were both sweaty from the trips they had needed to make, and it was obvious from their expressions they hoped it would be a while before they had to do it again.

"Hi de ho, Barney," Janice said with a wave. "Well, I guess I better call ya Agent Talbott in this company, eh?  D'ya have any word on the condition of your pal from last night?  What was his name again?"

"Andy Gibson," the young agent said. He wore the ubiquitous soft hat and tan trench coat which didn't help the state of his flushed skin - he soon reached into a pocket to find a handkerchief that he used to dab his glistening forehead. "And no, I haven't heard any news. I did hear you were arrested…"

The urge to be near Mel grew too large to contain, so Janice strolled over to the table closest to where her sweetheart sat. She planted her rear end on the tabletop before she took off her fedora and began to toy with it. "Yeah, we were. It wasn't my first arrest, but definitely among my worst… it even beat that one in Matamoros, Mexico when I was accused of smuggling heroin back in 'thirty-five. Basically, it sucked."

"Language, dear," came the predictable reply from Mel.

Grinning, Janice toyed a little more with her hat before she plonked it down on her mane and pushed it back from her forehead. "I know. But it did suck."

A mumbled "Jan Covington, you are incorrigible" was soon heard from the chair occupied by Mel Pappas - the incorrigible dame in question took it all in her stride.

Barney Talbott licked his lips a couple of times while he waited for von Schenck to leave the living room. Once the German had gone into the kitchen, Barney moved closer to Mel and Janice and spoke for their ears only: "Just for the record, Doc, Miss Pappas… I wasn't involved in any of that. It was all Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Wieland."

Janice nodded. "We figured as much, Barney. You're all right. I don't know about the company you keep, though…"

"Thank you. Yeah, I'm telling you, Wieland and his panzer companions give me the creeps. I was too young to fight in the war, but my older brother took part in the invasion of Italy in 'forty-three… the stories he told me about the cruelty of the Gestapo and the Waffen-SS made my skin crawl. And here I am, working with them!"

Mel adjusted her glasses to shoot the junior agent a look of sympathy. "Quite frankly, Mr. Talbott, how in the world did a level-headed young man like you ever get mixed up with these criminals?"

"Mr. Buchanan recruited me. I was supposed to have gone to West Point, but I… well…" - Barney lowered his voice even further - "the notion of being sent to Korea wasn't appealing. Let me put it like that."

"I hear ya," Janice said with a grin.

"The world is different now. Threats are everywhere, so-"

The sliding door opened to reveal Ernst Wieland. Although the former Gestapo officer didn't appear to have heard any of the muted conversation, Agent Talbott clammed up in an instant. Standing in the living room doing nothing would look suspicious, so he nodded a goodbye at Mel and Janice before he spun around and walked up the carpeted staircase.

Wieland furrowed his brow as he took in the sight of Janice sitting on the tabletop swinging her legs like she was on a fun ride somewhere on Coney Island. Snorting at the peculiar nature of the American, he left for the kitchen.

Once they were alone, Mel and Janice exchanged a long look and a pair of identical sighs.

---

Five minutes went by with little activity save for Wieland returning carrying a pot of coffee - it was the real deal rather than the dreaded Coffee Substitute. Soon, muffled voices continued speaking from the extra room beyond the sliding doors.

To take her mind off the dramas, Mel removed the bobby pin and released the horrendous mess her hair had turned into. The female chaperone at the police station had forced her to have her hair loose so she couldn't use the two-bit bobby pin as a weapon - apparently a frequent offense - and she hadn't had time to fix it into a proper bun once she and Janice had been told they were free to leave.

The metal pin was soon nesting between her lips while she fumbled with her hair. It was nearly impossible for her to get it right without a mirror, but such an item was in short supply in the living room. "Jan… I need a hand, please," she said around the pin.

"Shoot, you know how crappy I am when it comes to fixin' your hair, Toots," Janice said with a grin. "All I'm really good at is to pull the pins out when it's bedtime. Or something."

It was the undeniable truth, and Mel sent her partner a slightly goofy smirk to confirm it. "Well," she said as she shifted the bobby pin to the other side of her mouth so she wouldn't swallow it, "there must be a mirror somewhere around here…"

"I don't think these palookas have much need for a mirror. They probably just use their trench knives when they shave… hang on, sweet'ums," Janice said and jumped off the table. "I'll ask that nice Mista Panzer Commander out in the hallway where the john is. Maybe I should call it the latrine?  It's worth a shot. Hell, I need to take a whiz, anyway, so… don't go anywhere, yeah?"

Mel took out the bobby pin and assumed a concerned expression. "Oh, Jan… please don't provoke that Schulze fellow… he isn't the friendliest of sorts. There must be someone else you can ask?"

"You're right, Mel. As always," Janice said and pushed her fedora back. She snapped her fingers like the proverbial light bulb had just been turned on. "I know!  I'll just explore the mansion on my own. See ya in a few."

"That wasn't what I meant!  Jan!" Mel cried, but Janice had already taken off.

A second later, the sliding doors were pulled apart and Ernst Wieland stuck his head out to see what the hubbub was about. When he noticed Mel sitting by herself, he let out a grunt and moved fully into the living room. The sliding doors were once more closed behind him like they protected a treasure chamber. "Where is the Doctor?" he said in his customary cold voice.

"She needed to use the bathroom," Mel said somberly. She gave up trying to get her messy hair back into shape and just let it hang loose around her shoulders and down her back.

"I have never encountered a more infuriating woman in my life!" Wieland growled as he stomped out of the living room to search for the missing member of the strike team.

Part 3

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