Page 20

He sighed.

“You know, all the way back on the sub, after Rossi told me about the deadly cloud, I was sickened at the thought…”

He stopped himself, then suddenly looked back out at the sea.

Jesus! What the hell is the matter with me?

I’m babbling.

Yeah, I’m sickened at the thought of all those people in Palermo in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But why does that bother me?

This is war. And I didn’t put the goddamn gas there.

So why then am I suddenly concerned about innocent…

Oh, shit!

Ann!

Canidy heard Stan Fine’s comforting voice behind him.

“Dick, you didn’t know,” Fine said loyally.

Canidy turned, and, as he looked at Fine, he said softly, “Ann?”

The look on Fine’s face was shock, then anger.

“Dammit!” he said, and thrust his right hand into his tunic. “I’m sorry, Dick. I’d forgotten—”

“It’s okay. Obviously, so had I.”

Ann Chambers was more than Canidy’s sweetheart. She was the one woman who had made him look hard in the mirror and consider that by God there might be something to having a relationship that lasted longer than a half rotation of the earth.

But three weeks earlier, Canidy had gone to her London flat and found that, while he had been in the States, it and most of her street had been demolished by a Luftwaffe bombing—and that she had gone missing.

Fine produced a sheet of folded paper and held it out to Canidy.

“From London Station. I put it in my jacket to keep it separate of this stack.” He gestured at the table. “I didn’t want to forget it. Lot of good that did.”

Canidy took the sheet and unfolded it.

“It’s basically good news,” Fine went on, “don’t you think? Not everything we’d like, of course….”

Canidy read it, swallowed with some effort, then said, “So they still haven’t found her, or any trace.”

“Dick, that strikes me as positive. Otherwise, they’d be reporting that her body was found in the rubble of her flat. And they are making every effort to locate her.”

He’s right, Canidy thought. Ann is smart as hell, more than able to take care of herself.

But my memory of her bombed street—and the thought of her being an innocent casualty in this damn war—no wonder I feel bad for those sorry bastards in Sicily.

“You’re right, of course, Stan,” he said, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket. “Thank you.”

“I wish I could do more,” Fine said.

“Me, too.”