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Epilogue

It was the week of April 30. Henri Giraud, the French general, had just escaped from Konigstein Fortress; the Hollywood Victory Caravan, including Bing Crosby, Spencer Tracy, and Groucho Marx, had just visited the White House; all the Jews in the Netherlands had been ordered to wear yellow badges. And Benjamin Pennybacker of the United States State Department was standing at the window of his Virginia rambler, watching Sandy Gilfoyle pull his car onto the bright curb.

By the time Pennybacker got his slippers on and met him outside, Hannelore Wolfe was taking a suitcase out of the trunk. He watched the girl carefully set it on the curb, then return to the car to collect a stack of lists from the passenger seat. Sandy gestured at her, and she returned once more to fetch the keys from the ignition, clearly busywork to send her away from the adult conversation. She wasted time in the driver’s seat while Sandy handed Pennybacker a second suitcase. The youngest Gilfoyle and the girl had clearly reached an accord.

“They’ve been looking everywhere for that child,” Pennybacker said, weakly.

“Not everywhere,” Sandy remarked.

Suburban birds shrieked with delight. The sun moved slowly overhead. Pennybacker had thought—hoped—that the case of the disappearing Wolfe girl had involved Allied subterfuge of some sort, but the surprise he felt at actually seeing her told him that he had not really believed it. He’d thought her fate was just one more tragedy in a situation full of them. But it made sense, in retrospect. During the disaster at the hotel, June had disappeared; her staff told everyone she was working behind the scenes to mitigate the damage. The timing of Sandy’s absence had been more difficult to pinpoint—no one paid attention to a man in a wheelchair. Had he disappeared after the flood? Or had he already been gone? He was not one of the internees, so Pennybacker hadn’t been watching him closely. Hannelore’s absence had become painfully obvious in Jersey City, although where she’d gone absent was less clear. Her name was on the list of train passengers; her mother insisted she had boarded with them. No one had disembarked at any point during the journey.

It had been a fraught day. Despite appearances, Pennybacker was very good at his job. He had never lost an entire human before.

They searched the hotel in Jersey City. They searched the train, even though it had already departed. They searched the Avallon, with its blocked-off halls and wilting damp wallpaper. Finally, as international tensions mounted, they sent the rest of the diplomats on their way across the ocean.

Case closed. For now.

“Now, listen. Hannelore has a head full of code,” Sandy told him. “A list of American sympathizers in the German diplomatic corps. Useful? I have no idea. But she will sing it for you if you make her a tuna fish sandwich. She’s awfully fond of them. Make them pretty dry, though. Not too much mayo, or you’ll get an earful.”

Pennybacker wanted to say something like What makes you think I will take her , but he already knew; Sandy had been in the bar when he told Sabine Wolfe. What a week he suddenly had ahead of himself. It was too late to put her on the boat, of course—Sandy had made sure of that—but she was still in danger. He would need to continue to wrap her in bureaucracy until she, like the ambassador’s son, was forgotten by anyone who had power.

“June says this’ll be good for you,” Sandy said. He grinned.

Pennybacker hadn’t thought to suspect June, even though his calls to the Avallon now always led him to either Griff Clemons or Basil Pemberton: We’re so sorry, but Miss Hudson isn’t available right now. He’d just thought that, like her dachshunds, she was now rejecting him. And why not? He’d headed the mission that knocked her lovely hotel to its knees.

He had not even thought to suspect Tucker Minnick, his resignation written even before he got to the Avallon.

“Do I have to worry about that waiter turning up here next?” Pennybacker asked.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” Sandy said.

Pennybacker was still in his bedroom slippers. There was not much food in the house. He was not gifted at living alone. He would need to shop. He would need to make up the guest bed. He would need to reopen files. He would stop sleeping in. He would make breakfasts in the morning and tuna fish sandwiches at lunch, without too much mayo.

Pennybacker could feel the light touch of June Hudson all the way in this Washington, DC, suburb.

“The State Department wants to buy the Avallon, did you hear?” Pennybacker asked. The hotel was badly water damaged after the flood, but the government didn’t care about some mildewing walls or rotten stairs; they’d just snag it at a nicer price. “I saw the preliminary proposal the other day.”

Sandy said, “How would I know anything about the State Department’s machinations?”

Pennybacker gave him a look. He had been in government for a long time; the youngest Gilfoyle had clearly made either friends or a nest in the intelligence community. “What do you think?”

“War hospital,” mused Sandy, giving up the pretense. “It’s a good way for the old ship to go out, I think. I hope Ed agrees. He never wanted to run that hotel. End of an era.”

Hannelore climbed out of the car, waited for her mother’s terrier to jump out, and closed the door. Letting the leash drop to the ground, she shielded her eyes to take in the neat, square neighborhood. It was quintessentially American, this neighborhood, selected by the Pennybackers years before for its mundane charms, and surely had to be different from anyplace she’d ever stayed before.

“Where are they?” Pennybacker asked. “The hotel says she’s gone. And I know he is. I got his file.”

Sandy smiled sunnily. He was still winsomely handsome, even with his shrapnel scars. “Do you think they told me?”

“Yes.”

Sandy said, “Here is what I imagine. I think the Grotto probably packed them a picnic, because she loves a picnic. They probably tried to leave the dachshunds behind, but they couldn’t be persuaded to leave her, so into the back seat they went. I bet Toad cried over that. I bet they took that limo of hers as far as Charlotte, then got as much cash for it as they could. I think they bought a car off someone who didn’t have a gas ration for it anyway. I think they drove awhile. Probably held hands a lot. Florida would be nice right now. Pensacola, Miami, white beaches.”

“You think he’ll get drafted?”

“Maybe,” Sandy said. “He’s already had one bullet pulled out of him. He’s tough.”

“What do you think she’ll do?”

“Something big,” he said. “That’s how she is.”

The Wolfes’ terrier gamboled over to Pennybacker, leash dragging. It asked to be pet; Pennybacker did so. “What’ll you do?”

Sandy just wagged a finger at him. “You take care, Mr. Pennybacker.”

Benjamin Pennybacker stood in his bright driveway as Sandy Gilfoyle pulled away, not moving until the sound of the engine had completely faded away. Then he turned to Hannelore Wolfe, who stood beside him, her arms by her sides. She looked up at him. She was not crying, even though she was sad, but that made sense to him; he hadn’t cried when he was sad, earlier, either. He was not the sort of person who required faces to tell the entire story.

At that moment, he was just thinking of how he would manage the next few weeks with her. Later, he’d laugh at the person he’d been. A few weeks! They’d all been quite na?ve, he thought, at the beginning of the war. It was a different time.

“Well, kid,” he said. “Looks like it’s you and me.”