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sensible and long-suffering soldier with a wife and six children, decided he did wish to live. He cut the engine and guided the aerosan to a halt.
    A moment or so later, a naked young man walked up alongside the vehicle and peered through a viewslit. Mikhail Gallatinov wasn’t even breathing hard.
    Vivian couldn’t speak for awhile. But someone had to speak, eventually. “You!” he told the driver. “Get out and take off your clothes!” Then, to Mikhail: “For God’s sake, cover yourself! We don’t do things like this in London!” Vivian dragged Raznakov’s body out to lighten the load. When Mikhail was dressed in the uniform, which was far too big for him but would have to do, he entered the aerosan through the door and took a seat. The naked driver, induced by pistol, started the aircraft engine again. The prop began to spin faster and faster.
    “Are you all right?” Vivian asked the young man, as the aerosan turned toward the west and gained speed.
    Mikhail nodded, but his eyes were hollow and his face grim.
    “Listen to me,” Vivian said. What he wanted to say tangled up in his mind and in his mouth, and he had to wait for his English composure to return to him as best it could. “You are a miracle .” His voice cracked. “Do you understand that? You are…very, very fortunate.”
    “Am I?” Mikhail asked. “I hope you’re correct. But I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?”
    Vivian couldn’t help it. He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and gave him a fatherly pat. Or maybe it was a pat one might give an exceptional animal.
    A stop must be made first, to arrange the delivery of gold coins to a village in Russia where the ruins of a church sat atop a hill. After that, the aerosan would be crossing the border into Poland. Once there, the driver would be thrown out, naked and wiser to the ways of things he could never understand and that no amount of babbling could ever explain.
    Then the two men would be going home, to the land of Shakespeare. To the land of the blessed plot.
    To the land where stands the city of London.

Sea 
Chase

     

One
    At Work By Midnight

     
    He was a gentleman in search of a good piece of meat.
    He was out for enjoyment this evening, strolling casually through the charming streets of Danzig, a busy harbor city on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It had once been known as Gdansk and was originally part of Poland, had a complicated political history between the rulership of Poland and Germany and was now, in this month of April in the year 1938, known as a “free city” with its own national anthem, constitution, government and even its own stamps and currency apart from the Polish standard. The population was ninety-eight percent German, and this was also reflected in its language.
    As he walked along what was locally known as the Royal Road—so named because it was the procession path of visiting kings—he passed sights like Neptune’s Fountain at the center of the Long Market and the Golden Gate with its statues symbolizing Peace, Freedom, Wealth and Fame.
    He enjoyed peace, he relished freedom, he didn’t really need wealth nor did he desire fame. But tonight he had to find the perfect chateaubriand.
    The clerk at the very expensive Hotel Goldene Eiche had given him the name of the Restaurant Maximillian. Too far to walk? Not at all. Three miles was a nice stroll and the evening was cool, the city was lighting itself up for the night and there was a certain excitation de la vie in the air. So he’d set out, dressed in a dark blue Saville Row suit with a crisp white shirt and a plain-spoken black tie, neither walking too slowly nor striding too fast, for he always took pleasure in every moment.
    He was twenty-eight years old and as fit, probably, as he would ever be. He was a large man, standing six-feet-two with a broad chest, narrow hips and long, lean legs. He had the look and smooth motion of a track-and-field athlete. He wore his thick black hair