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“Message for the boss: ‘Fire out. No trace.’”

“‘Fire out. No trace.’ Got it. Congratulations. And interesting timing.”

“How’s that?”

“The other guys report the other fire is out. It’s on the news.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You coming home now?”

“See you soon,” Fulmar said and hung up the phone.

All the way back to Manhattan, with the Walther and acid-fuse pen in his pockets, Fulmar tried to find holes in what just happened.

There really isn’t any way to absolutely know if all the fires are out.

Maybe all the agents aren’t dead.

Maybe others are laying low.

Then again, maybe there aren’t any others.

The only way to find out for sure is to wait and see if there are any more bombings, while keeping the intel l

ines open.

Which I can do from Washington while working on something else.

Like going to work with Canidy.

He sighed.

But all that can wait till after I see Ingrid again.

The cabbie tuned the radio in the dash to a new station. The programming was going to a commercial break.

The announcer said, “The news is next after this message from one of our sponsors.”

An obnoxious advertisement, sponsored by the Tri-State Ford Dealers, came and went, and then the announcer’s voice came back on again.

“And now for today’s breaking news,” he said. “In a press conference in Washington, D.C., a half hour ago, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—”

Fulmar said, “Turn that up, will you?”

The driver did, and they both listened as Hoover said, “I repeat, we have found no evidence to suggest that this train wreck in Oklahoma was anything more than a very tragic event involving a gas leak….”

Say it often enough, Fulmar thought, it becomes the truth.

Fulmar said to the driver, “That’s all I needed to hear. You can turn it down or change the station.”

He looked out the window and wondered what Ingrid was doing right now.

[ THREE ]

Palermo, Sicily

2240 19 March 1943