“You’re partly right,” he told Einstein. “Things have changed a lot in the last twenty years—my last twenty years, I mean. But the things you noticed, they were well on the way before the jihad.”

“Your holy war?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Do you mind?” asked Einstein as he fetched his pipe and pouch from a trouser pocket. “None of you seems to smoke much, either.”

“Not really.” Kolhammer smiled. “But go ahead. It reminds me of my old uncle Hans.”

“From the death camps?”

“From the death camps,” said Kolhammer.

They sat in silence for another minute. It wasn’t a companionable stillness. The sun beat down out of an azure sky just as before. The hint of a sea breeze ruffled Einstein’s wild hair and took the edge off the day’s heat. But a shadow that brought no comfort had fallen over them.

“You find yourself at a loss, Admiral. Faced with evil on so vast a scale, do you think it beyond your capacity to effect change for the good?”

Kolhammer frowned and wiped at his damp brow.

“I made a promise once, that I would never let that sort of thing happen again if I could do anything to avoid it. I just wonder what I’m supposed to do now, what would be best.”

Tendrils of blue smoke began to curl away from the bowl of Einstein’s pipe. The smell did remind Kolhammer of his great-uncle Hans. The old guy would be in the camp pretty soon. Although he wouldn’t be old, of course.

“Have you spoken with Roosevelt?” asked Einstein.

“Yes. They’re all aware of the Nazis’ programs. They were horrified at the extent of the Holocaust. But I got the impression they’d rather I hadn’t brought it up. They said the best way to help the victims was to beat the Germans.”

Einstein took that in like a professor considering a gifted student’s thesis.

“And you do not agree.”

“No, I do not.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Before they could say anything more Agent Flint appeared at a run.

“Excuse me Admiral. Professor. But you have to come right away, sir. Your people are calling from Pearl. On your communications device. They’ve been trying to get you for some time.”

“Dead? But how?”

The connection was flimsy. The boosted comm circuits and a large portable dish antenna, presently pointing skyward from the roof of the hotel, provided a real-time vid link, but Captain Karen Halabi appeared on the screen of Kolhammer’s flexipad through a shower of static. They’d been trying for a secure link for nearly eighteen hours. He cursed their lack of satellite cover for about the hundredth time. Admiral King and General Eisenhower, however, standing behind him the hotel room, exchanged whispers about the marvel of secure, global communications by “movie phone.”