The mission had been to plant surveillance devices, but her unit had come under fire and taken shelter in what they thought was an abandoned house. The next thing she knew, she was zip-tying two “enemy combatants” to secure them for interrogation. She could smell the dust and hear the gunfire and see the beams of the flashlight sweeping around the windowless room. She did her best to shake off the vision, swallowing the sour bile that rose in her throat, and letting the sense memory of how to secure a prisoner with zip ties take over.

Before Fritz could rouse himself from his stupor, she had bound his hands and feet and Nemo had searched the car, retrieving two small black bags which he tossed into the trunk of Ruthie’s car before dragging Fritz toward the Mini.

“What do we do with him?” said Patton, afraid of the answer.

“Judging from the way you handled those zip ties, I’d say you know exactly what we do with him.”

“We interrogate him.”

“Precisely.”

“Using enhanced techniques?”

“Is that what they call it now?”

“You’re going to torture this guy?”

“I’m going to persuade him to tell us a few things and then prevent him from causing us any further trouble.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, coming from you,” said Patton.

“Looks like you get a friend in the back,” said Nemo to Ruthie, who was still shaking in the back seat, tears drying on her cheeks.

“There’s hardly room for one back here,” she managed to say. “You can’t put him . . .”

“Not him, silly,” said Patton. “Me. I know it’s cozy, but we’ve been cozy before.” She crawled into the back seat, practically sitting on Ruthie’s lap in order to wedge herself into the tiny space. Seeing the look of terror on Ruthie’s face, and understanding that the last thing they needed at this point was a hysterical traveling companion, she slipped her arms around Ruthie and pulled her close. “It’ll be OK,” she said. “I’m here.” She felt Ruthie melt into her and knew that dormant passion would win out over terror. Ruthie always had been easy to manipulate.

Nemo tossed Fritz, now mumbling incoherently in German, into the passenger seat, not bothering to fasten his seat belt, and threw the car into gear, heading down the road back toward Bletchley—this time proceeding at a more reasonable pace, though still fast enough to bang Fritz around a bit.

“What are the police going to think?” said Patton.

“If we’re lucky, they’re going to think it was a single-car accident, driver dead because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and no passenger. Fritz here was kind enough not to bleed on anything.”

“He was dead?” said Ruthie with a tinge of panic in her voice. “That other man was dead? Who are they?”