Norway remained a war zone. Because it did, there was no air traffic between Sweden and England-no sea traffic, either. She wished she could go to Moscow and head for Vladivostok by way of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Though it was the long way back to the States, it would have done the job. But, with the railroad cut and Vladivostok under Japanese siege, that didn’t work, either.

And so she stayed where she was. Stockholm made a far more likable prison than Berlin had. The food was better, and she didn’t wonder whether everyone she spoke to would report her to the Gestapo. All the same, she wasn’t where she wanted to be.

She’d never been one to suffer in silence. If she was unhappy, she let people hear about it. The American embassy in Berlin had got to know her much better than the clerks and secretaries and diplomats ever wanted to. (And, one drunken night, she’d got to know one of the diplomats much better than she ever expected to. She did her damnedest not to remember that.)

Now she bent the personnel of the embassy in Stockholm to her will-or did her best. Again, the trouble was that, even when they wanted to do what she wanted (and they did, if for no more noble reason than to get her out of their hair), they couldn’t.

“I can’t call an airplane out of nowhere, Mrs. Druce,” said the undersecretary in charge of dealing with distressed travelers. “I haven’t got a liner, or even a freighter, up my sleeve, either.”

“Yes, I understand that, Mr. Beard,” Peggy answered. To her secret amusement, Jerome Beard sported a hairline mustache. “But if you could arrange something with the German and British authorities…”

He ran a hand over the top of his head, from front to back. Once upon a time, he might have used the gesture to smooth his hair. But where were the snows of yesteryear? He was on the far side of fifty-a few years older than Peggy. He had one of the baldest domes she’d ever seen, though, and it made him look older.