All that week they ran to Valencia without incident, not a single German airplane in sight, though the sky was wide and blue and cloudless. Sam flew the only spare airplane he could find in Bilbao, a French-built Potez bomber that could barely manage a hundred miles an hour. In the air, flying the Sirius next to this ramshackle ship, Irene felt like a Thoroughbred trying to keep pace with a Shetland pony. In the back of the Sirius was a woman who was supposed to be chaperoning the twenty-two children crammed in the fuselage, which was not equipped for the transportation of any animal at all, let alone a human child, let alone twenty-two of them. By the final trip, the woman seemed to be drunk. Irene was so relieved when they arrived safely in the municipal airport in Valencia and handed the children over to some supervisor, she nearly threw up. It was the middle of May and the weather had turned hot. Sam followed her into the ladies’ waiting room, which was empty, and waited until she came out of the washroom.

“I have to go back to Bilbao,” he said.

“No, you don’t. You’re done, remember? You promised.”

“Well, there was a radio message from the commandant, and another bus full of children just turned up at the airfield. If I leave now, I’ll get there just before sunset. Then I fly back first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Not without me, you’re not.”

“For God’s sake, you’re pregnant! Don’t do this to me, Irene. If I lose you, I’m done for.”

“No. We fly together, Sam. That’s the deal. And if we take my ship, we’ll be there and back in half the time.”

“Irene,” Sam said wearily, “you are the goddamn most stubborn woman in the world.”