But for now he had his hopes pinned on a new rumor that not only would the war not last forever, but that Germany would lose it. The German Army was losing ground on both the eastern and western fronts. German citizens were losing faith in their raving moron of a Führer. The French Resistance was growing, and rumors were flying that an Allied invasion of the continent was being planned for the near future. If he could hang on, Dirk Drechsler just might be able to make it home again.

Hurriedly, he dressed in his army shirt and pants, forgoing the jacket, since German soldiers were not required to dress in full uniform in their quarters on Sundays. It was so damn cold and only October 11. His floor heater did little to warm the room beyond a three-inch radius, but he was lucky that he could leave the pilot light continuously burning. The French boarders were rationed to the use of four hours of gas a night in their rooms, none during the day.

He heard his neighbor next door—Stephane Beaulieu—lock his room door. The French engineer puzzled him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he didn’t seem…well, as much French as the other frogs. French people, unless with friends and family, had struck Dirk as very posture and gesture conscious. They were formal in their conventions: how they dressed, how they spoke to one another, how they presented themselves at the dinner table, and how they greeted one another. They did not hug. They did not shout unless in anger. Neighbors calling to each other across the street in Texas would be taboo in France, and they never ate while walking down the street. The French were unbending around strangers, but Stephane Beaulieu seemed looser somehow, his mannerisms less stiff. He was polite and reserved without being aloof, proper without being prudish, but Dirk had noticed that he seemed inordinately careful and watchful, and once he had seen the engineer bite into an apple (one of a bag given to the boarders courtesy of Captain Achterberg on one of his more generous days) while setting off to catch the metro, but who wouldn’t break convention if there was no breakfast and you were hungry enough? Dirk noticed such anomalies, an asset in his job that had won from Captain Achterberg his only praise. He called him “sharp-eyed,” using American slang.

Stephane Beaulieu was the only one of the French boarders with whom Dirk had felt he could develop a cordial relationship. He took French lessons daily so that he could converse and had become fairly comprehensible, but the engineer had side-stepped his attempts to be friendly—not exactly shunned him as the other Frenchmen had, but avoided him. Dirk had noticed that difference, too.