Behind Enemy Lines

  Riq soon found the lake, but it was a long way around to the other side, where a tall bronze statue portrayed a man on a horse surrounded by smaller white columns. Steps led from the statue down to the water and, in the center of them all, was Tilda, perfectly straight and still, waiting for Sera.

  Riq looked around him again. The thugs were here somewhere, knowing this was where he'd go. But where were they?

  Then he saw another figure emerge onto the steps. Sera. In her hands was some sort of suitcase. She must've put the Infinity Ring in there for safety. She clutched it to her chest, unwilling to give it up, and then she spoke to Tilda for a moment.

  Riq began running. As fast as he could and with no care for whether the men would jump out at him. Sera could not give up that Ring, and she definitely could not go anywhere with Tilda.

  He called out Sera's name but a breeze was blowing in his face, carrying his words away from the stone steps. He waved his arms, hoping to make Sera see him, desperate to stop her.

  Instead, he caught Tilda's attention. Her oily lips pressed tightly together, and she ripped the suitcase away from Sera's hands. Sera took a step back but Tilda clutched her arm, too, and started dragging her away.

  As Riq continued running, the SQ men came through the columns, aiming directly for him. With them on one side and the lake in the other, Riq had a choice to make: run away and save himself, or run toward Tilda and risk being captured again.

  They were trapped. But he knew what he had to do.

  "Sera, no!"

  Recognizing Riq's voice, Sera looked over her shoulder and saw her friend racing toward her. Tilda actually hissed as she released Sera's arm and turned to run, still clutching the suitcase tightly. Riq obviously wanted to chase after her, but two burly men were running toward them, reeking of the SQ. So while Tilda bolted with the suitcase, Sera pulled Riq with her in the other direction.

  "You escaped?" Sera asked Riq as they ran. She was beyond relieved about that.

  "From those two guys chasing us," Riq said.

  Sera glanced behind them, but the men weren't there. They had disappeared with Tilda. "I think they're gone."

  Riq slowed, then stopped and looked carefully around them. When he was satisfied they were safe, he looked back at her with lips turned down and eyes that were clearly angry. Sera had expected gratitude from him. Not anger.

  "You never should've come," he said.

  "To save your life?" Sera said. "Yeah, so sorry about that."

  "You saved my life, but at what price?" Riq drew in a breath. "You've given Tilda the power to destroy the world."

  "She would've killed you if I didn't meet her."

  "I'm a Hystorian, Sera. Protecting history from the SQ is more important than any of our lives. My life especially."

  Sera blinked hard, but her eyes were clear when she stared back at him. "Dak and I can't do this alone. If we lose you, we won't be able to protect history from a stiff breeze."

  She saw Riq soften at that, and his eyes darted away a moment before he said, "Thanks for the rescue, really. But just think about all the damage Tilda can do now. With the Ring, she could undo everything we've done. Or worse, go to other times and create entirely new Breaks."

  At that, Sera smiled. "I've learned a few tricks since becoming a spy, you know. The Infinity Ring is safely hidden in locker forty-three at the train station."

  Riq broke into a grin as well. "What was in that suitcase, then?"

  "Rocks." Sera giggled. "Tilda's about to discover she made a deal for a couple of dumb, heavy rocks."

  The leaves on the other side of the hedge where they were talking rustled in the wind, a reminder they were still out in the open. Tilda and her thugs were somewhere nearby. It was time to go.

  Besides, they had a war to win.

  DAK HAD spent most of the past few days keeping his head down and, whenever possible, keeping out of sight. He did whatever kitchen work was asked of him and slept in a pantry hidden behind large buckets of sugar and flour. It wasn't pleasant, but neither was getting caught by the SQ. Of the two, he knew which was worse.

  That all changed one afternoon when word came that an officer upstairs wanted a cup of tea. Everyone was busy preparing for supper, and finally the woman who had hired him pointed at Dak and said, "You, boy, take it up to him."

  Dak wanted to tell her no, for the very good reason that somewhere outside the kitchens were two people under orders from Tilda to shorten his life span significantly. But he also knew he wasn't there to hide. It was his job to make sure that the German military's leaders accepted Major Martin's papers as real. This was an opportunity to get closer to them.

  So he gathered everything for the tea onto a tray and asked, "Who is this for?"

  Don't say it's for Hitler, he thought. If it was, Dak would be sorely tempted to throw the hot tea on him, Mincemeat Man or not.

  But it wasn't. "Colonel Von Roenne," came the answer. "He's in his office upstairs."

  Dak rolled his eyes and walked into the hallway. Von Roenne hadn't exposed him to Cleo and Anton before, which was a good sign. But Dak was still struggling to remember the significance of Von Roenne's name. He wished he'd thought to pick up a history book or two while in the twenty-first century.

  Once upstairs, he passed several closed doors and wondered who was inside. He passed some open doors, too. In one of them, several Nazi officers were engaged in a loud argument.

  "Martin is nothing but a Trojan horse!" one of the men shouted. "The British are playing tricks just as the Romans once did."

  "Greeks!" Dak said before he thought better of it. The men stopped and stared at him, then Dak clamped his mouth shut and passed the open door.

  Okay, yes, maybe he shouldn't have said anything, but if they were going to discuss the Trojan horse, they ought to get their facts straight. Over three thousand years ago BC, the Greeks wanted to invade the city of Troy, but after ten years of fighting still couldn't get inside their walls. So they built a huge wooden horse and left it outside the city walls, then went away. The Trojans pulled the horse inside their gates as a prize of war. What the city didn't know was that the Greeks had hidden soldiers inside the wooden horse, who waited until everyone was asleep at night, then snuck out and opened the gates. The rest of their army entered, and Troy fell soon after.

  Whether the story actually happened was debatable, but personally, Dak believed it. And he thought the comparison to Mincemeat Man was pretty fair, too. The British had given Germany something they'd think was a prize of war -- a dead body with secret information attached. But that information could be as destructive to the Germans as the Greek soldiers were to Troy. Mincemeat Man really was a modern-day Trojan horse.

  "If the British wanted to trick us, there are easier ways," another man argued.

  "Major Kuhlenthal tells us he will have Martin's papers any day now," a third man said. "Let's see what they say and then we'll decide."

  "Kuhlenthal is too desperate to please the Fuhrer," the first man said. "He will want to believe the papers are true because he needs them to be true. We need a more reasonable evaluation."

  "Colonel Von Roenne will look over the information," the third man said. "There are few people Hitler trusts more."

  Hearing the colonel's name reminded Dak that he had better deliver the tea before the water got cold. He left the men arguing and walked the rest of the way to Von Roenne's office.

  He knocked on the door and heard a quick "Come in." Dak carefully balanced the heavy tray on one hand while he turned the doorknob and entered. But for all that, he nearly dropped it anyway once he looked up. Staring back at him, on either side of Von Roenne's desk, were Anton and Cleo.

  Dak froze, unsure of what to do. It was too late to pretend he didn't know who they were. Should he drop the tray and run? Expose their SQ connections to Von Roenne? Maybe the colonel already knew. Maybe that's why he had called Dak here.

  Anton and Cleo grinned wickedly when they recognized him,
but Von Roenne didn't seem to notice. He motioned for Dak to bring the tray over to him, and then apologized for not having any to offer the others in the room.

  "Shall I send this boy to bring more tea?" he asked politely.

  "No," Anton said, staring down at Dak. "We can get whatever we want from him later on. And we will." His grin widened, but not in a pleasant way.

  Von Roenne shifted the tray on his desk and several papers fell onto the floor near Dak. "Pick them up, will you, boy?" he asked.

  Dak dropped to his knees to straighten the papers that had fallen. One, right on top, was printed with purple ink on a half sheet of thin, cream-colored paper. It was a telegram -- sort of like text messaging for the 1940s. It read:

  Col Von Roenne: Will have papers soon. Will offer evaluation but hope you agree. Maj Kuhlenthal

  Dak figured this was probably the note that had started the argument back in that other room. He'd heard Kuhlenthal's name before, how powerful he eventually became in the war. This telegraph certainly had to be referring to Major Martin's papers.

  Dak finished straightening the rest of the pile, then got to his feet and put it on the desk. Von Roenne noticed the telegram on top and looked up as if to ask whether Dak had read the telegram. But he didn't actually ask, and Dak wasn't about to volunteer the information. He only backed up and said, "May I go now?"

  "You may," Von Roenne said.

  "We'd better be leaving, too," Cleo said, keeping one eye on Dak.

  "Not yet," Von Roenne said. "I have a few more questions first."

  "Very well." She seemed irritated, but clearly had to do as Von Roenne ordered. Before Dak left, she turned to him and said, "I will want some tea when I'm finished here. I'll know where to find you when I'm ready."

  Dak left the office, but he wasn't going back to the kitchens now. Maybe not ever. Every part of him wanted to leave the bunker at once and run for his life. But he was a spy now, and he had to finish his mission.

  If this Major Kuhlenthal would have the papers soon, and if it was Von Roenne's job to decide whether they were real, then Dak had to get closer to Von Roenne. He found a small closet not far from Von Roenne's office and ducked inside, then closed the door after him. When Kuhlenthal sent the papers, the men in the office would begin arguing about them again. And that would be his sign that it was time to come out and convince one of Hitler's most trusted men to let his country lose a world war.

  SEAR AND Riq spent the rest of the afternoon near the German Embassy, where they discovered one interesting fact: Madrid loved gossip. The people here devoured it the way rabbits eat carrots. Everyone had his or her own tidbit of news to share in exchange for a friend's even juicier morsel. The two watched different pairs of people come and go from the embassy, heads inclined toward each other to share the latest scoop. And nobody seemed to care if they were talking near a young girl and boy engaged in a game of jacks. Sera and Riq might have looked like they were playing, but both had their ears tuned in to every word that was spoken near them.

  "Nobody works harder than Kuhlenthal at spying on us," one Spanish officer said laughingly to another. "Does he think we don't know who he is? He's lucky so many of us support the Nazis, or he wouldn't get very far."

  "I've heard he has Jewish blood, from a grandmother," the officer's companion said. "Can you believe it, a Jewish-born Nazi? Imagine if Hitler knew about that."

  Minutes later, two men in Nazi uniforms passed them. "Personally, I doubt the papers are real," one of them said. "But that's for Kuhlenthal to decide, not us."

  "He had better hope he gets this right," responded the other. "He's fallen for Allied tricks before. And yet, if the papers are real and Kuhlenthal backs them, he will become the Fuhrer's favorite spy."

  Sera looked over at Riq and frowned. This spy business was starting to mess with her head.

  Britain needed everyone to think they were desperate to get Martin's papers back.

  But they couldn't actually succeed in getting them back. At least, not until Germany saw them.

  The papers had to look as if they were written in a code, to protect them in case they were found.

  Yet the code had to be easy for Germany to figure out, although not so easy that it would look as if Britain was trying to trick them.

  And if she and Riq were going to be helpful, they had to persuade Kuhlenthal to trust them. If they pushed too hard, though, he might suspect something. So how were they supposed to convince him?

  After several hours, Riq and Sera had nearly given up hope of even seeing Kuhlenthal that day. Maybe he'd come tomorrow. Or maybe never. Sera was standing up to leave when she heard footsteps behind her and turned.

  Kuhlenthal was right behind her, but his blue eyes were focused on Riq. "Who is this?"

  "We both speak English," Sera said. "But my friend here can speak a dozen other languages perfectly."

  "Two dozen," Riq corrected, then shrugged when Sera glanced back at him. "I've been practicing in my spare time."

  Kuhlenthal frowned. "We have other Nazis who can read English, of course, but if I let them see the letters, they'll tell Hitler that they solved this mystery, not me. You understand that I can't allow anyone else to read them until I've made my report."

  Sera nodded. Her heart was racing, though she wasn't sure if it was from excitement or fear. Maybe it was both.

  "You can trust us," Riq said. "Besides, even if we tried to report back to Hitler, he'd never believe a couple of kids."

  Kuhlenthal seemed to like that. He stepped closer to them and said, "The wet ink ran in a few places and I can't make out the words. I must get a report back to Germany immediately. Can you help me read it?"

  Sera and Riq followed Kuhlenthal into the German Embassy. He led them downstairs into a narrow, poorly lit hallway, and on their way, explained that the Spanish officials had cleverly managed to remove the letters from the envelopes without breaking the seals. The letters had been dried and then given to him -- but only for a single hour. There had been just enough time to photograph the letters before returning them, and now the photos had been developed.

  "What will happen to the letters now?" Sera asked.

  "Spain will soak them in seawater again, then refold them and replace them in the envelopes. They will lock the briefcase and return it to Britain as if none of this had ever happened." He chuckled. "Sometimes I have thought the Allies are very clever. But they underestimated the reach of the Nazis. They will continue forward with their battle plans without any idea that we know their secrets."

  Sera cast an eye at Riq, who only lifted his eyebrows in response. It was a most dangerous game of cat and mouse. Both Germany and Britain believed they were tricking the other side. And in the next great battle between the two, one would be proven right, and the other would suffer a major defeat that could cost thousands of lives.

  Kuhlenthal put his hand on a doorknob, but before opening it turned to Sera and Riq. "The only person who will ever know you saw these is me," he said. "So if you try any tricks, nothing can save you."

  Sera swallowed hard and nodded, then Kuhlenthal led them into a small room with portable lights set up to brighten it. The papers that must have been there only a short time ago were now replaced with enlarged black-and-white photographs. The photographer had been thorough. Every word of the letters was in at least one of his pictures.

  Kuhlenthal motioned them in closer, then spread out the photos so they could be better examined.

  The first photo was Martin's military identification card. The person pictured on the identification looked very similar to the body that Sera had seen during the postmortem, but it couldn't be the same person. She knew the British had gotten Martin's body after he was already dead, while this man was very much alive. Sera had once heard that everyone in the world had someone out there who looked exactly like them -- a doppelganger -- and if that was true, the British had somehow managed to find that person for their Mincemeat Man.

  Kuhlenthal
lifted the identity card to Sera. "You've seen his body for yourself," he said. "Is this the same man?"

  Sera pretended to study the picture, but of course she already knew how she'd answer. "The body had decomposed from its time in the water," she said. "But this picture looks just like him." She figured that was truthful enough.

  Another set of photos documented a letter to Major Martin from his father, scolding him for not being as responsible as he should. Then there was a loving letter from a woman who was engaged to marry Martin. That one looked as if it had been folded and unfolded many times -- Sera liked that detail. Of course a man at war would reread that letter as often as possible.

  Of more interest to the Germans, there was a note from Martin's commander warning the recipient that the papers he was carrying were very important and secretive. It also made a request for Martin to return with some sardines, since they were hard to find in Britain. That was a bogus request, since whoever actually wrote the letter would have known Major Martin would not come back alive. He didn't even leave while still alive.

  Along with that note was the heart of the entire Mincemeat Man plan: a letter from one British general to another. Sera read it as quickly as she could. It said that they hoped the Germans would believe Sicily was about to be attacked, but that the real invasion was for Greece. The letter had everything the Germans would need: the dates for the attack, the size of the invasion force, and the code names that would be used.

  The risk was plain enough. If Germany didn't believe the Allies were going to invade Greece, then they would know quite a bit about the real invasion of Sicily.

  Kuhlenthal pointed out a few words where the ink had run, and Riq and Sera were both quick to give their most honest opinions as to what was written there. When they were finished, Kuhlenthal pulled up a chair and leaned back, deep in thought, with his eyes closed and the fingertips of each hand pressed against one another. Riq and Sera waited in the awkward silence, unsure of what to do.

  Finally, Kuhlenthal opened his eyes. "Why would the Allies want Greece?" he asked. "Sicily is far more important."

  "But Sicily is too well defended," Riq said. "If the Allies take Greece, then they will be in a better position to attack Sicily later on."