The woman in blue pastels said, “Why’ve you come to us, are you angels?”
Klietmann wondered if she was senile. Angels in pinstripe suits? Then he realized that they were in the vicinity of a church and had appeared miraculously, so it might be logical for a religious woman to assume they were angels, regardless of their clothing. Maybe it would not be necessary to waste time killing them, after all. He said, “Yes, ma’am, we are angels, and God needs your car.”
The woman in yellow said, “My Toyota here?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The driver’s door was standing open, and Klietmann put his attache on the front seat. “We’re on an urgent mission for God, you saw us step through the pearly gate from Heaven right before your eyes, and we must have transportation.”
Von Manstein and Bracher had gone around to the other side of the Toyota, opened those doors, and gotten inside.
The woman in blue said, “Shirley, you’ve been chosen to give your car.”
“God will return it to you,” Klietmann said, “when our work here is done.” Remembering the gasoline shortages of his own war-torn era and not sure how plentiful fuel was in 1989, he added: “Of course, no matter how much gas is in the tank now, it’ll be full when we return it and perpetually full thereafter. The loaves and fishes thing.”
“But there’s potato salad in there for the church brunch,” the woman in yellow said.
Felix Hubatsch had already opened the rear door on the driver’s side and had found the potato salad. Now he took it’ out of the car and put it on the macadam at the woman’s feet.
Klietmann got in, closed the door, heard Hubatsch slam the door behind him, found the keys in the ignition, started the car, and drove out of the church lot. When he looked in the rearview mirror just before turning into the street, the old women were still back there, holding their casseroles, staring after him.
Day by day they refined their calculations, and Stefan exercised his left arm and shoulder as much as he dared, trying to prevent it from growing stiff as it healed, hoping to maintain as much muscle tone as possible. On Saturday afternoon, January 21, as their first week in Palm Springs drew to a close, they completed the calculations and arrived at the precise time and space coordinates that Stefan would require for the jaunts he would make once he returned to 1944.
“Now I just need a bit more time to heal,” he said, as he stood up from the computer and testingly moved his left arm in circles.
She said, “It’s been eleven days since you were shot. Do you still have pain?”
“Some. A deeper, duller pain. And not all the time. But the strength isn’t back. I think I’d better wait a few days yet. If it feels alright by next Wednesday, the twenty-fifth, I’ll return to the institute then. Sooner, if I improve faster, but certainly no later than next Wednesday.”
That night, Laura woke from a nightmare in which she was confined yet again to a wheelchair and in which destiny, in the form of a faceless man in a black robe, was busily erasing Chris from reality, as if the boy was only a crayon drawing on a pane of glass. She was soaked in sweat, and for a while she sat up in bed, listening for noises in the house but hearing nothing other than her son’s steady, low breathing on the bed beside her.
Later, unable to get back to sleep, she lay thinking about Stefan Krieger. He was an interesting man, extremely self-contained and at times hard to figure.
Since Wednesday of the previous week, when he explained that he had become her guardian because he had fallen in love with her and wanted to improve the life she had been meant to live, he’d said nothing more of love. He had not restated his feelings for her, had not subjected her to meaningful looks, had not played the part of a pining suitor. He made his case and was willing to give her time to think about him and get to know him before she decided what she thought of him. She suspected he would wait years, if necessary, and without complaint. He had the patience born of extreme adversity, which was something she understood.