She looked at him in surprise. Maybe he wasn't so queer as all that. No-she would have bet dollars to acorns his "friend" was a pointer, not a setter. And he was at least ten years younger than she was, probably fifteen. He couldn't be after getting her into bed. Even if he was, she was sure she could take care of herself. "Thanks!" she said. "Thanks very much. I would like that."

"Good enough," he said. "I'll come by your hotel about six, then. We can get some supper before the performance. It's Wagner."

"Surprise!" Peggy said. They both chuckled. Wagner was Hitler's favorite, of course. And what point to being Fuhrer if you couldn't get your favorites up on stage? Hitler could, and he did.

Only after Peggy left the embassy did she realize the opera invitation had also let Constantine Jenkins get her out of his hair much faster than he would have otherwise. He might be a fairy, but he knew something about diplomacy.

She put on a blue silk gown that did nice things for her figure and played up her eyes. It was the fanciest one she had with her, which meant it was also the one she'd worn least. Jenkins showed up in the lobby at a quarter to six, looking dashing in black tie. Not even the blandness of a German dinner took the edge off things. Peggy drank schnapps to make sure nothing would. She was pleasantly buzzed when they walked over to the Staatsoper.

Berlin lay almost as far north as Edmonton, Alberta. You didn't think about that most of the time, but you did when you saw how long light lingered as spring neared summer. Even so, it would be dark when they came out. Getting back in the blackout might not be much fun.

The tickets were for the front row of the first balcony. Peggy peered down into the orchestra section as Nazi big wigs and their ladies took their seats. Jenkins handed her chromed opera glasses. "Goebbels and Goring are here," he said. "I don't see the Fuhrer tonight."

Peggy wasn't disappointed. She did wonder about security. If someone up here pulled out a submachine gun instead of opera glasses… But nobody did.

Then the lights dimmed. The opera was Tannhauser. It was early Wagner. It had raised a sensation when it was new, but it hadn't been new for a long time. It didn't beat you over the head with rocks, the way the later stuff did. So Peggy would have said, anyhow. A real Wagner lover might have had a different opinion-as if she cared.

She poured down champagne during intermission. That let her applaud more than she would have otherwise when the performance ended. The singers aimed their bows at the Party Bonzen, not the galleries. They knew who buttered their bread-not that anybody in Germany saw much butter these days.

"So how are we going to find the hotel?" she asked as she and Constantine Jenkins walked out into pitch blackness. Some Germans wore lapel buttons coated with phosphorescent paint so people wouldn't bump into them in the dark. She wished she had one.

"Here." Jenkins also went without. He took her hand, finding it unerringly despite the lack of light. "Stick with me. I'll get you home."

Damned if he didn't. Maybe he was part cat, to see in the dark, or part bloodhound, to sniff his way back. Getting back to the hotel so easily seemed worth celebrating with a drink in the bar. One drink in the bar became two. Two became several. When Peggy went up to the room at last, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should go up with her. He was a good deal steadier on his feet than she was on hers.

And when she woke up the next morning with him beside her smiling, she wondered what the hell she'd gone and done. She didn't wonder long, not when all she had on was her birthday suit. She sure wondered what she'd do next, though.

Chapter 7

Down roared the Stuka. The sirens in the landing-gear legs screamed. French troops scattered. Hans-Ulrich Rudel saw them through a red haze of acceleration, but see them he did. His thumb came down on the firing button. The forward machine gun hammered. A few of the running Frenchmen fell.

Some of the poilus had nerve. They stood there and fired at the Ju-87 as it roared by only a couple of hundred meters over their heads. You couldn't mistake muzzle flashes for anything else. Most of the time, they missed. The Stuka went mighty fast, and they wouldn't lead it enough. But all those bullets in the air were dangerous. Ground fire had brought down airplanes-not often, but it had.

Not today. Not this Stuka. It climbed again as Hans-Ulrich yanked back on the stick. "See any fighters?" he asked Albert Dieselhorst.

"None of ours," answered the noncom in the rear-facing seat. A moment later, he added, "None of theirs, either."

Theirs were the ones Hans-Ulrich worried about. Stukas were marvelous for shooting up and bombing enemy ground targets. When it came to air-to-air combat, they were too slow to run and too clumsy to dodge. A lot of good men had died before the Luftwaffe decided to admit that.

Although Hans-Ulrich had already been shot down once, he didn't intend to die like that. Unlike plenty of other cocky, cock-proud pilots, he didn't intend to be stabbed by a cuckolded husband, either. He aimed to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered around his bed, so he could tell them something interesting and memorable as he went. He was a minister's son, all right.

He saw French panzers moving toward Clermont. He reported them by radio-that was all he could do. A Stuka had to score a direct hit with a bomb to harm a panzer, and a direct hit on a moving target was easier imagined than done.

On the way back to his airstrip, German flak opened up on him. He was tempted to strafe the idiots who'd started shooting. A Ju-87 was about the most recognizable plane in the world, for God's sake! Speaking of good men, how many were dead because their own friends murdered them? Too damned many-he knew that.

Even through the speaking tube, Sergeant Dieselhorst's voice sounded savage: "You ought to go back there and shoot those bastards up!"

"I thought about it," Rudel answered, "but at least they missed."

"That just makes them incompetent bastards," Dieselhorst said.

"Would you rather they'd shot us down?" Hans-Ulrich asked. Dieselhorst didn't answer, which was probably a good thing.

The landing wasn't smooth, but a Stuka was built to take it. Rudel went into Colonel Steinbrenner's tent to report. "We got your news about the panzers," Steinbrenner said. "Good job. The ground forces are doing what they can to stop the froggies."

"Danke, sir," Hans-Ulrich said. "Stuka pilots ought to be able to do more about panzers from the air. We're fine against soft-skinned vehicles, but armor…?" He spread his hands, palms up, as if to say it was hopeless.

"I don't know what to tell you," the wing commander replied. "Machine guns aren't heavy enough, and you have to be lucky with bombs. You'd need to mount a cannon or something to do yourself any good."

By the way he said it, the idea was impossible. The more Rudel thought, the more he figured it wasn't. "You know, sir, we could do that," he said, excitement kindling in his voice. "You could mount a 37mm gun under each wing instead of the bomb that usually goes there. You'd need a magazine for the ammo instead of loading it round by round, and you'd want to use electrical firing, not contact fuses from the ground artillery. Once you had those, a Stuka would turn into a panzerbuster like nothing anybody's ever seen."

"You're serious," Steinbrenner said slowly, staring across the table with folding legs that did duty as his desk.

"Damn right I am, uh, sir." When Hans-Ulrich swore, he was very serious indeed. "I'd like to talk to the engineers and the armorers, see what they think of the idea."