"Because the dead man was the double of Jack O'Brien. Because two detectives found that out and turned the investigation into a crusade. They just wouldn't stop digging."
"But…"
"I know. But it was O'Brien. To perfection. Even to the clothing. I know there had to be differences, but after fifty years I couldn't put my finger on a thing. I was too upset the one time I saw the body, though I remember saying it looked smaller.
"I finally figured it out on the way here. Because I saw Neulist at the funeral. He planted the body. How, I don't know."
Fial paced. "What about why?"
"To stir up the police? That would be his style, wouldn't it?"
Fial stopped abruptly, peered at her. He dropped into his chair. For two minutes he steepled his fingers before his face and stared into nothing.
"Yes it would. Exactly." He paused again.
"There's something I haven't told you, Fiala. Fian's dead." He described the circumstances.
"I went over there personally. In forty-six and again in forty-eight. The Russians weren't much help.
"I always thought there was something fishy about it. But Neulist? No. I didn't suspect that. The informer, Josef Gabiek… in the history I learned, he was a patriot. He was killed in a police raid on a Resistance hideout. But this one wasn't. He disappeared instead.
"I've spent a million dollars trying to find out where he went. I think I know now."
"You should've told me, Fial. I don't need protection from the truth." She had suspected Fian's death for a long time. He would have gotten in touch after the war had he been alive.
"I didn't want you to worry. You always overreacted in emotional situations. Anyway, this one didn't seem that suspicious then. There were fifteen hundred other people in the village, and the raid was identical to the one in our own history-except that Fian was there. There wasn't a shred of evidence against the colonel. I wanted to find Gabiek to satisfy my own curiosity as to his motives, as a check against history as we know it. I certainly couldn't go ask Hitler why the bomb didn't kill him in his bunker and stop the war eight months earlier than it ended. I thought I might uncover some pattern to the changes we've seen. That I might find a way to abort them, or neutralize them, or soften their long-range impact.
"Well, if Gabiek was Neulist, he shouldn't be able to trace us. I don't see how he found you. Unless he got it from Fian somehow. And that's impossible. It had to be dumb luck. I mean, the Czechs let me do some digging where he died. I found his journal, that he kept right up to the minute when the security police started shooting. He never mentioned Gabiek, nor did he have a word to say about Neulist, except a warning about what happened in the programming theater…
"Oh! He didn't follow you, did he?"
"No. Nobody could have. Not without being ten people. We're safe. I don't think anyone even knows you exist. And I took time to make sure they didn't find out. I cleaned the house top to bottom."
"But… Neulist. You should have let me know. I could have come in and surprised him. I could have… I've got contacts. Hans knows people who would have loaned us an assassin. As a favor."
"I didn't know till it was too late. I didn't run from him anyway. I could have handled him. He's vulnerable. But the police aren't."
"But we took care of the O'Brien thing back when." A wrinkle of distaste marred Fial's expression.
"Back when isn't the problem."
"Fiala? Don't tell me. Not again? Not another one?"
"A policeman this time. And I had no choice, Fial. It wasn't like before, just madness and meanness.
"I went to the funeral for the O'Brien doppelganger. And Neulist showed up, like I said. That left me in a state, not thinking very good. Otherwise, I might have handled it differently.
"While I was out, one of the detectives got into the house. He must've lost track of time. He was still there when I got home. He left the door open a crack. Because I was upset, I was ready to be suspicious of anything. I snuck in. He was in the little west parlor going through my journals. I did a lot of them in English, to practice. He was so preoccupied that it was child's play to slip up with a hypodermic… It just didn't occur to me that I didn't have to kill him, not if I was going to run anyway. What I should've done was sedate him while I scoured the house and got out. Nobody would have believed him. But at the time I just didn't see that there was any choice."
"Okay. I understand. I don't like it, but I understand. What about the body?"
"I shipped it in a trunk again."
"I'm running out of room in the basement." He smiled weakly. "You're sure you can't be traced? The police are more sophisticated now."
"I made it as complicated as I could. I bought a railway ticket to Indianapolis. The police sergeant looked the type to think me too old-fashioned to travel any other way. Then I went to the airport. I spent the last five days hopping from Memphis to Chicago to Detroit, to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit again, Buffalo, then here. Sometimes I used the bus, the railroad, or went by plane. The luggage I sent by bus and several other shippers, skipping every other city. I used three different names and paid for everything in cash. I changed my clothes every time, and I wore wigs." She was unable to put into words the fright, the feeling of anachronism that had accompanied her every step of the way. She had kept going on sheer willpower.
"Okay. You used your head. If they can untangle that at all, it'll take a month. We'll get the jump on them in the meantime. It's time we went back to Europe anyway. The international situation is going to get nasty soon. The Chinese are going to start in. I've been getting ready for ten years, aiming for seventy-eight, just before it hit. But now is just as good.
"The route will be as complicated as yours was. We'll use four different identities. They've existed for years, and they've been leaving the necessary paper residue in the files of several governments. They'll keep on, because these people really exist. We'll eventually end up tenants on a little farm near Tirschenreuth, at the edge of the Bohemian Forest, just on the Bavarian side of the Czech border, in West Germany. We can cross over whenever we want. Hans handled the arrangments. He knows some ex-Nazis who can manage things like that. I've done them a few favors over here.
"When Hans gets back I'll have him contact his people. I'll contact my brokers in New York and tell them to start moving our money. To Beirut, not Zurich. They always look in Switzerland first these days. After that, we can leave as soon as your body is buried. For my part, I'll apparently die and be buried here. I made the arrangements a long time ago. Seemed the best way to disappear. Hans will get this place. He'll cover our backtrail."
Fial chuckled. "Now we've even got a body to put in my coffin."
"Father couldn't have done better, Fial."
"He couldn't have done as good. That's why he always left me the staff work."
For ten minutes they said little, just sipped tea and contemplated the dramatic tricks fate had played with their lives.
"Eighty-one years to go," Fial muttered. "It'll be one colossal drudge."
"And no way of knowing what we'll face when we get there. Things are so different."
"Not so much. It's our perspective and revisionist educations, more than anything. The real difference peaked around nineteen fifty. Since then history has been undergoing a normalization. It's as if the fabric had been stretched, but now it's going back to its normal shape. But, still, I sometimes wonder why we bother."