For all practical purposes, going into Slovakia was the same as going back to Nazi Germany. There was no guarantee the Russians wouldn’t invade Father Tiso’s almost-country, either. Come to that, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t invade Romania. As the embassy undersecretary’d pointed out, there was a war on. There were no guarantees anywhere.

Peggy’d told him she was willing to take a lot of chances. Had she meant it? “Well,” she said brightly, “can you help me with the arrangements?” taff Sergeant Alistair Walsh wore a shepherd’s sheepskin coat on top of his greatcoat. His thick wool mittens came from the Norwegian countryside, too. He’d cut a slit in the right one so he could fire his rifle. He’d wrapped a knitted scarf around his face. The only flesh he exposed was that from his eyes to the brim of his tin hat. He was cold anyhow.

English, French, and Norwegian soldiers still hung on to Namsos, on the coast of central Norway. Sooner or later, the Fritzes were going to throw them out. That seemed obvious to Walsh. His superiors hadn’t figured it out yet. He’d been in the army since 1918. He walked with a bit of a limp from a German bullet that had got him more than half a lifetime earlier. He wasn’t surprised that he had a clearer view of things than the blokes with the shoulder straps and peaked caps.

Smoke rose from the direction of the docks. The Germans had come bombing again. They did it blindly, from above the clouds: to fly down below them was to risk flying straight into the ground. But they’d got lucky, damn them.

All the same, sailors and locals and, no doubt, some dragooned soldiers labored like draft horses to unload whatever ships hadn’t been hit. Without the stuff the Royal Navy brought in, resistance here wouldn’t last long. Even with it…

Walsh had plenty of clips for his submachine gun. He wasn’t too hungry. The artillery, though, was severely rationed. The expeditionary force’s handful of tanks still running were low, low, low on petrol. He could hardly remember the last time a Hurricane, or even a Gladiator, had got airborne.