“No guarantee, no.” Beard paused to fill a pipe and light it. The mixture smelled like burning dirty socks. “Swedish blend,” he explained, a note of apology in his voice. “All I can get these days. But to come back to your point… The Swedes will fight. They’ve made that very plain to Germany. Since the Germans have plenty of other pots on the fire, Sweden’s safe enough for now. That’s the ambassador’s judgment, and the military attache’s, too.”

“And maybe they’re right, and maybe they’re wrong,” Peggy said. “All I want to do is go home. It’s 1940, for crying out loud. I was going to be in Europe for a month in fall 1938.”

“You picked the wrong month, and the wrong part of Europe,” Beard said.

“Boy, did I ever!”

“There may still be a way,” he said. “You would have to take some chances.” He shook his head. “No-you would have to take a lot of chances.”

“Tell me,” Peggy answered. “If I don’t have to put on a uniform and carry a gun, I’ll do it. And I’d think about putting on a uniform, as long as it isn’t a Nazi one.”

“You can still travel to Poland. From Poland, you can get to Romania. From Romania, you can probably find a ship that will take you to Egypt. Once you get through the Suez Canal, you’ve left most of the war behind you,” Beard said.

Italy and England were fighting a desultory war over Somaliland and Abyssinia, a campaign neither one of them could get very excited about. But that was the least of Peggy’s worries. “Like the kids’ magazines say, what’s wrong with this picture?” she replied. “If I fly in to Warsaw, say, the Red Army’s liable to be running the airport. And if it isn’t, the Luftwaffe will be. Besides, isn’t there fighting in the stretch of Poland that borders Romania?”

“There is,” Beard acknowledged. “But you could skirt it by going from Poland to Slovakia and to Romania from there.”