Several times during the journey, Peggy bumped into Private George, though the two of them didn't speak other than to say "Excuse me" when they passed in a snug corridor. Though they had been able to get out of Russia, that was not to say there weren't spies on the train who might not have a good description of them and would be looking at couples or watching men and women traveling separately. For that reason, Peggy spent as much time as possible hovering around a group of Russian soldiers in the lounge car, contributing comments now and then to suggest that she was one of them and even allowing one of them to come on to her to give her a guardian angel if she needed one. Upon reaching Finland shortly before dawn, she gave the soldier a false phone number and address as the two passed through customs. A verbal declaration was sufficient to get Peggy through, though the Russians were treated to a thorough hand-luggage search.

Peggy and Private George fell in side by side as they walked briskly into the street. The Englishwoman squinted into the sun as it poked its orange crown into the new day.

"What the hell happened back at the museum?" George asked.

Peggy smiled. "I forgot, you didn't know."

"No, I didn't. I kept imagining that scene in The Guns of Navarone where the woman spy bought it."

"I pretended to trip down the stairs," Peggy said,

"When the woman showed her hand by running after me, I had to cancel her. I used her gun on a spetsnaz officer who seemed to feel that he could take a few bullets and still wring my little neck. He couldn't. There was a lot of confusion after that, and I just slipped out."

"They'll never make a movie out of your life," George said. "No one'd believe this."

"Life is always more interesting than the movies," Peggy said. "That's why they have to make the damn things forty feet high."

The two chatted about possible departure plans, George deciding that he'd take the next flight he could get on, Peggy saying that she wasn't sure how or when she was going to leave Helsinki-- that all she wanted to do right now was to walk and feel the sun bake her face and avoid any closed space that reminded her of a midget submarine, the backseat of a car, or a cramped train.

The two stopped walking in front of the Finnish National Theater. They looked at one another with warm smiles and soft eyes.

"I confess I was wrong," Peggy said. "I didn't think you'd be up to this."

"Thanks," George replied. "That's encouraging, coming from someone with so much more experience, someone so much older."

Peggy was tempted to throw him on his back the way she had when they first met. Instead, she offered him her hand.