“Why don’t you ask me something easy?” he said testily. “Walking across the Baltic, for instance?”

“It’s frozen over for miles out to sea.” Peggy, by contrast, sounded as bright and helpful as she could.

Beard’s harried expression said he understood she was being difficult but sugarcoating it. “Pardon my French, Mrs. Druce, but hell will freeze over before they cooperate. Last time around, both sides were perfectly correct. They did everything they could to help displaced persons like you. Now?” He shook his head. His bare scalp gleamed under the overhead lamp. “No. I’m very sorry, but it’s not just a war.”

“You said that before,” Peggy pointed out. She was bound and determined to be difficult, regardless of whether she sugarcoated it.

“Well, what if I did?” Beard ran his hand over his crown again. “It’s true. You have no idea how much those two regimes despise each other.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I was in Berlin, remember,” Peggy said.

“All right, then.” The undersecretary yielded the small point. He wasn’t about to yield on the larger one. In fact, he poured more cold water over it: “And the same holds true for France and Germany. The French don’t merely hate the Germans, either-they’re scared to death of them. That makes joint efforts even more unlikely.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” Peggy demanded.

“How about thanking God you’re in one of the few countries on this poor, sorry continent where there’s plenty of food and no one is trying to kill anyone else?” Beard said. “You couldn’t pick a better spot to wait out the war.”

“I thought the same thing about Copenhagen. Then I watched German soldiers get out of their freighters and march on the palace,” Peggy said bitterly. “No guarantee the same thing won’t happen here.”