“Well, then. My wife will care for you until Señor Mallory returns from Biscay. We will attempt to send him a message, yes? Obtain some news, to make the waiting easier?” The commandant leaned forward, as one who understands the delicacy of such matters. “And your husband? Is it necessary for us to send him a message as well?”

“No, it’s not necessary. But I’m afraid I don’t intend to stay here, as grateful as I am for your hospitality.”

“No? You wish to stay in town instead?”

“I’m not going to stay anywhere,” said Irene. “I’m going to go find Sam.”

It took some arguing, but finally they let her go. They even gave her the fuel for nothing, although she offered repeatedly to pay. It had something to do with hospitality, and with the way the commandant admired her. Irene Foster! Sometimes her fame had its uses.

Before she left, the commandant sat her down with the map and went over the terrain, the geography of Spain. He remonstrated with her. The news from Guernica is terrible, he said. There will be frightful wounds, children maimed, the entire town destroyed.

“That’s why I’m going,” she said. “I want to help. I want to make sure Señor Mallory is safe.”

“Do you love him very much?” the commandant said earnestly, as if the immorality of loving a man other than your husband meant nothing to him, or that a woman so great as Miss Foster could naturally love whom she pleased.

“Yes, I love him very much,” Irene said, in Spanish, and the commandant nodded, as if the matter were closed.

So she took off at dawn, after a hasty breakfast and more strong coffee, and the last thing Irene said to the commandant was that he must not, above all, tell anybody where she was, or that she’d visited the air base at all. Even your husband? asked the commandant, and Irene replied, Especially my husband.

This disturbed him, but he wished her Godspeed anyway. As she made her turn at the end of the runway and began to spin her engines, preparing to depart, she saw the fleck of him through the cockpit window, standing by himself to watch Irene Foster take off in her famous airplane from his own air base, what an honor.