Slothrop will never find out. He loses the fat young lunatic in a village near the sea. Girls in full skirts and flowered kerchiefs are out in the woods gathering mushrooms, and red squirrels flash through the beeches. Streets curve on into town, foreshortening too fast—it’s wideangle, smalltown space here. Lamps are clustered up on the poles. Street cobbles are heavy and sand-colored. Drayhorses stand in the sun flourishing their tails.

Down an alleyway near the Michaeliskirche, a little girl comes tottering under an enormous pile of contraband fur coats, only her brown legs visible. Ludwig lets out a scream, pointing at the coat on top. Something small and gray is worked into its collar. Artificial yellow eyes gleam unwholesomely. Ludwig runs hollering Ursula, Ursula, grabbing for the coat. The little girl lets out a flurry of curses.

“You killed my lemming!”

“Let go, idiot.” A tug-of-war among the blurry patches of sun and shadow in the alley. “It isn’t a lemming, it’s a gray fox.”

Ludwig stops yelling long enough to look. “She’s right,” Slothrop points out.

“I’m sorry,” Ludwig snivels. “I’m a little upset.”

“Well, could you help me carry these as far as the church?”

“Sure.”

They each take an armful of furs and follow her through the bumpy gassen of the town, in a side entrance, down several flights to a subbasement of the Michaeliskirche. There in the lamplight, the first face Slothrop sees, inclined over a Sterno fire tending a simmering pot, is that of Major Duane Marvy.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

YAAAGGGGHHHH— Slothrop hefts his armload of coats, ready to throw them and flee, but the Major’s just all smiles. “Hi there, comrade. You’re just in time for some o’ Duane Marvy’s Atomic Chili! Whyntcha pull up a pew ’n’ sit down? Yaah-ha-ha-ha! Little What’s-her-name here,” chuckling and copping a feel as the girl deposits her delivery with the enormous stash of furs that occupies most of this room, “she’s kind of indiscreet sometimes. I hope you don’t feel like that we’re doing anything illegal, I mean in your zone and everything.”

“Not at all, Major,” trying for a Russian accent, which comes out like Bela Lugosi. Marvy is out with his pass anyhow, most of which is handwritten, with here and there a seal stamped onto it. Slothrop squints at the Cyrillic handwriting at the bottom and makes out Tchitcherine’s signature. “Ah. I have coordinated with Colonel Tchitcherine on one or two occasions.”

“Hey’d ya hear what happened up in Peenymunde? Buncha ’suckers just come in hijacked Der Springer right out f’m under the Colonel’s nose. Yeah. You know Der Springer? Bad ass, comrade. That ’sucker got so many arns in the far don’t leave much for free-enterprisers like me ’n’ old Bloody Chiclitz.”