"Is it bad?" Eleri had asked him repeatedly as she drove them back to town and hospital, him laid out along the backseat of the Tucker where he had managed, with her help, to drag himself. "Is it very bad?"

"It is bloody damn-well bad enough," he had finally replied through gritted teeth. The pain in his foot where the tire and the weight of the Tucker had driven over it was searing, making it hard to concentrate on much else, and the pain in his chest, which appeared to his untrained eye to be a bruised rib acquired in his subsequent fall, had him needing as much concentration as he could marshal just to breathe.

Broken foot. Cracked rib. Not going anywhere, doctor's orders.

Not that he would be foolish enough to attempt to leave town on his next errands when injured. Who was to say the next phase of his search would be as sedate as had been this one? He might need to run, to climb—or to blend into a crowd (something a man with a limp and cane could not well manage).

Several days abed. Eventually the foot could be walked upon — lightly. Oh, and now Eleri proved as good as gold. She engaged a local nurse for him so that he could return to his hotel (where she had re-let his room), rather than stay shut up in hospital. She had food from local restaurants delivered to his door, bought for him a clutch of canes ranging from dapper to exotic, and managed to visit him every day without exception.

He had no idea how she managed it all in light of her mother's control over her movements and actions. Another gown in the cooker, perhaps? A pet lapdog kidnapped? Threats to cut off little Gita's pigtails in the night if her wishes were not respected? He didn't ask.

In fact, if anything, their visits and chats abruptly became less personal, less meaningful than they had been before. (For all that they were now far more frequent.) At first he chalked this up to the intermittent presence of the hired nurse, but by end of the second week her services were no longer needed, and the polite distance that had seemed to grow up between he and Eleri steadfastly remained.

They no longer spoke of the war in any capacity, neither of them referencing the fact that it was unfinished war-business that had both brought him here and would, as soon as could be, take him away. Gone were the mentions of the islands, observations about present-day connections with their shared Occupation past.

She asked no further questions about his true life or his past (pre- or mid- war), and shared none about her own. Instead their conversation swam about among shallow topics: what America was like, occasional sidetrips discussing local politics, avoiding anything real or divisive or essential as one would avoid TODT landmines upon a Guernsey beach.

He began to let himself believe he had taken her original situation too much to heart. After all, here Eleri was, able to move about seemingly more freely than before. She was in good spirits, speaking of present-day matters, not dwelling upon the past. She bought hats and gloves and other trinkets which she brought by to show-off to him, had a manicure done, her hair set. Went to the pictures and came back to tell him about the plot.

She could stay on here, he thought to himself, leave this idea of running away behind. She would find friends, a life. What could he do about it? If he were to take her with him where would he take her? At what point would they separate? She was not likely able to be granted immigration into the States with her proper name and correct identification, and her bogus ID might not be crafted well enough to stand up to scrutiny — or if it did her alias might already be well-known. Was he to simply take her away and deposit her, a stranger in another country, before he went off?

He could not take her home with him. And not only because he presently had no home — having given up the tight apartment in the crowded city he and Florinda had shared. He was a man without an address. Send all post Allen Dale, General Delivery, NYC, he supposed.

He was a man on a mission. Not a man needing extra baggage. And troublesome baggage at that. Eleri might be puppy dogs and rainbows at present, but there was no way it would last.

Was there?

In all this she never brought up shooting lessons (or his handgun) again.

Finally he did, knowing he had two weeks further convalescence, and nothing to occupy his days. He was weary of magazines and papers in languages he did not read. Weary of taking the month-old French papers (that were available) and learning stale news.

She had come to the hotel for a visit, and he had sent her for the car, to take them for a drive, he said, at the last moment directing her to the fringes of the city where he had her drop him so that he could buy her a gun.

The shop he chose had several pretty pistols clearly designed with a lady and a lady's handbag in mind. He paid them no attention at all. If Eleri were going to learn to shoot, she would have a proper weapon that she could depend upon.

He bought the best handgun among their inventory and made a gift of it to her, telling himself that in doing so, and in giving her two weeks' worth of lessons outside of town he was doing all he could to equip her before his newly re-bought tickets would take him away.

Neither one mentioned that he was doing exactly what she had asked of him (and of which he had declined) before his injury had prevented his making good on the original travel plans he had arranged.

But he was not so foolish as to believe neither one were thinking it. It was his constant companion waking and sleeping, knowing this: Eleri had gotten her way.

Somehow he had managed to convalesce long enough to again be in peril of the invitation to Eleri's mum's dinner party. He managed to acquire an acceptable dinner jacket, his foot well enough for short spells of walking and weight-bearing, his rib tender but no longer crippling.

That night he caught a taxi to the address upon the invitation, and it pulled up to the front of an elaborate and quite new apartment building, in which "Edythe Merker" (or, as British Intelligence knew, Lady Adalgisa von Bachmeier) occupied the penthouse suite.

It was probably not a very wise move on his part, accepting such an invitation. Especially if MI-6 really did watch closely over things here. It would do his own off-book one-man mission no good for his presence here to raise eyebrows back at the Ministry as to what an old timer like himself were doing here, among this company, and not being where they expected him to be (where his file, marked 'inactive', said he would be). For all that he was now an American citizen, for all that he had not worked for SIS since the unit disbanded after the war, it was their pension cheques he still received, though neither he nor any others of the unit had been allowed to officially retire. MI-6, for all that he had never paid them too much thought in past or present, would still believe he was their creature. And they would not care for their 'inactive' creature to be walking around amongst any active investigations or surveilling in which they were presently engaged.

But he had thought to come for Eleri's sake. It would be their last night, as he was leaving tomorrow afternoon. Really leaving this time.

At the cab's arrival that evening, Eleri surprisingly stepped out from within a dark stand of ornate — but shielding — topiaries nearby the doorman's post. Naturally Allen had not expected to see her until he arrived via lift at the penthouse level. Why she was here, meeting his taxicab at street level, he could not immediately understand.

She was dressed in a shade of cool light blue that spoke of ice and crystal and played off the darkness of her hair. The crinolined, full skirt of her evening gown was above the ankle, but not by much, and underneath the shoulder wrap she wore, the sparkles sewn upon it caught and threw light as did the precious stones hanging from her ears. A pair of three-quarter length matching gloves was in her right hand as she stepped toward the cab.

He thought he saw her bright eyes spark as she did not wait for the cabbie to attend upon her, but opened the rear door and seated herself inside.

"Wot's this?" he asked, finding himself half-smiling. "Thot it were butlers and footmen and the like who met the cars."

She smiled, more intensely than he had seen her do in weeks, and instead of answering him she turned to the driver and gave him an address, and an admonition to be quick about getting them there.

"We're not going to that awful party," she told him, in her first burst since his injury of something of the Eleri he had encountered when he had first arrived in Brazil. "It's full of people like Schmidtznagel's dad. 'Important in the war'. Everyone was important in the war, don't you know? The lowest, basest men: important in the war. 'Dance with his son, Eleri, won't you? His father was important in the war. The family lost their ancestral lands, what a pity. Be kind to him. Commiserate with his tragedy. He's banished here! Suffering! Think of what they sacrificed for the Fatherland!'" she scoffed. "Go to that party?" she spat out. "I'd rather die." She used her free hand to settle the skirt of her dress. "And so would you. We're going out."

"Well, I trust I'm not overdressed for what you've planned," he quipped to her, not sure why he fell back on teasing sarcasm instead of presenting her the compliment her toilet deserved, "for I see you most certainly are."

At this she stuck out her tongue at him, ruining the image of the sophisticated woman her clothes and self-possession had for the moment created.

He laughed in answer to the rude gesture, pounding the flat tip of his cane upon the taxi's floorboards in his amusement.

The taxi dropped them less than twenty minutes later at the location she had given him, closer now to his hotel than to her mother's apartment. Here they were not in the club district of the city. Rather, it was a nice, sedate neighborhood near the water, the sounds of Carnaval in its last full day could be heard coming from the beach where the remaining revelers congregated.

An unremarkable building stood before them. Eleri walked them around to the side where a rough-looking door opened at her request and they stepped indoors.

Stepped back might be a better turn of phrase, for before him was something not at all of 1954. Within the unremarkable building was a nightclub. Obviously an elite nightclub, disinterested in patrons unvetted and uninvited.

There was a hat check/coat check girl at the ready, taking their things. Out of instinct more than conscious thought, he tipped her as she gave him their check ticket. Beyond there was a band playing on stage, a dance floor ringed by tables. The lighting was low, moody as one might expect in any club. It took him a moment to put his finger upon it fully. But there it was. The band was playing an old song. A song popular during the war. But not only were they playing it (which was not really that unusual), they were playing it exactly as it would have been played during the war. As though no time, no change in musical styles had happened since then.

Swastikas hung here and there upon the walls, among the draperies, and were incorporated into the centerpieces upon every table.

The men in attendance wore dinner jackets, like the one Allen had found for the evening. But the other men wore them as though they were part of a uniform: instead of boutonnieres, military ribbons and medals hanging upon their breast pocket sides sometimes obscuring their pocket squares with the amount of such meritorious accolades.

And the majority of the women were dressed as they would have been (for the height of fashion) during the war. Hairstyles, the cut of their frocks — even the perfumes he caught wind of as they passed were fragrances popular during the war.

Eleri must've felt him tense with the realization.

"It's my mother's club," she told him in a whisper as they walked toward a table. "No one will ever think of looking for us here."

Smart thinking. "But it's bloody 19 and 42," he replied.

"I know," she agreed. "It's their plan to hold on to their glory days. But we can enjoy it a little, right?" her eyes showed that she needed him to agree. "We needn't speak to anyone. I thought maybe, since you are—" she did not say 'leaving', "that you might manage a dance before the night is over?"

"Well, let's hope the beef's not old," he told her, agreeing not to leave as they walked past another couple being served their main course.

It was a queer spot to be sure, this klatch of people so desperate to hold on to the past, to ignore that the world had moved on from them. But even so, he did like a big band.

The beef was not old. Neither were the potatoes and several others of fancy-prepared veg he did not outright recognize. In fact, the beef was exceptional in both its quality and its preparation. The selection of European wines was, well, he knew enough to know he ought to be impressed. And the pastry offering was formidable.

He could not have recalled what they two spoke about. Again, Eleri and he had retreated into whatever their present politeness might be called. They were not overly chatty, and what little they did say was forgettable, inconsequential.

Occasionally they laughed, but not too heartily. They were proving themselves able to interact as very refined (by not speaking with any degree of candor or intimacy), and more than one head (male and female alike) had turned when Eleri arrived in her ice blue frock. And Allen knew the telling dynamics of a turning head well-enough to know that for every one that had turned because Heinrik Vaiser's daughter and Baron von Bachmeier's step-daughter had arrived, was a head that turned simply because a striking woman, flawlessly attired had entered the room on the arm of an unknown escort. There was nothing outdated or nostalgic about Eleri's present style.

And he reckoned he cut a dashing-enough figger himself, cane and all. His coat fit well, his lapels and cuffs were up to scrutiny, and the cane — well, he found he liked the look of it, something of a dapper Astaire-like quality to it — though it did wobble sometimes in his necessary employment of it.

Following their dinner they listened a bit to the music. He did not have to point out how he noticed the band was still sticking with the Jerry-approved soundtrack of those bygone years, avoiding songs by Jewish composers or those that Jewish or Black performers had made popular.

Yes, obviously, very much Eleri's mother's club.

He flexed his foot a few times following the dessert course, put a spot of weight upon it as a test before standing and hooking his cane over his arm so that he might grant her wish and ask her if she would like to dance.

He had not been out dancing for awhile — certainly not since he had left America for the Channel Islands on his Annie errand.

He and Eleri had managed about two and a half songs, though no one watching them would have said their dancing was at all energetic. They moved pretty much the same (by virtue of his injury) to all tempos, and commanded very little of the floor, barely more than what might be taken up by a telephone box.

Both were studiously ignoring the fact that they had fallen silent, no room, now, even for neutral pleasantries. As their bodies drew closer in the embrace of the dance, their minds closed off, already disconnected from what was going on presently (them dancing), skipping ahead to what was later to come: their parting.

The band had taken up a Bing Crosby favorite, and had their own version of Bing present to sing the bittersweet lyrics, German accent and all. "Now is the hour, When we must say goodbye/Soon you'll be sailing, far across the sea."

Allen felt Eleri stiffen in his arms as the singer began the sentimental tune. Her unexpected stiffness, and the paths of his own mind at present, caused him to react likewise.

"This is -" she seemed to stumble in her speech, "they play this every night at this time. That is all. It is their tradition."

"Right," he agreed easily, finding his own hand to be disconcertingly damp against the upper waist of the back of her gown. "Course. Who doesn't like a little tradition?" he tried to marry the light comment to a shrug.

He could feel the swinging weight of the cane upon his arm where it hung, lest he need make quick use of it. Everything that touched him quite abruptly seemed to do so with far more force and weight than he had noticed before. He felt his heart queerly beginning to pound as if in rhythm to the song's slow, strong beat, and he could not manage to get a breath of air that did not seem overpowered by Eleri's chic perfume.

He had been holding her in his arms as the dance required, but not entirely close. The cane and his own instinct to protect his foot had prevented him from too-tight, too-intimate a hold.

He was not certain if it were his own, sudden unsteadiness that prompted his arms into more deeply enfolding her, or his unexpected need to feel as though he were taking this moment to bid her his farewell, as the song implied. Either way, he let his arm slip along the sleekness of her frock's fabric at her waist, brought his other hand up and around, so that their two hands which had been properly held mid-air now came to rest upon his upper chest nearby his shoulder, and he felt her resting against him, felt his hold upon her — and hers upon him so real, so intense in that moment as he continued to move to the sound of the music that only his sudden heightened awareness of her could tell him where he ended and she began. "While you're away, Oh, then remember me/When you return you'll find me waiting here."

He did not know if she could feel the tremble in him.

Certainly he felt it. His mind began racing. This is what I want for you, Eleri, he thought, though he had no way of knowing how one spoke such things aloud. Happiness, and security. And a bloke who will take you out dancing when you wish to go. Who will feel proud of how you look upon his arm. Who will not notice any encumbrance, any drag when you are upon it. Who will hold you because he likes how you feel against him, and who will not settle for empty pleasantries coming out of your mouth, but who will want to know your mind. The good and the ill, and the sad. Who will row with you, but always come home to supper after the row. Who will tell you you are gentleness and kindness — and remember you can be those things even in moments when you're not. A chap who will take you far away from here and let you live in the present, however you see fit to do so.

What ridiculous things to want for someone. He was no matchmaker, no great theorist when it came to women outside the bedroom and away from the dance floor. And Elerinne Vaiser was no fantasy pin-up girl; often enough she was as much a trick as a treat. But, bless her, he wanted to wake up one morning knowing she had found that sort of happiness. That kind of a person to love her.

He needed to know that.

All of it bollocks, he knew. He knew little enough how to find such things for himself, much less how to find them for her.

And all before tomorrow afternoon when he was set to leave?

The song kept on, almost lazily repeating its refrain. He began to notice that it was not only his own heart behaving not quite of itself. Consequent of his close embrace with her, he was also feeling Eleri's heart, or more her breath, accelerated beyond what would be normal for their present level of exertion.

He tried to look down at her without noticeably separating from their embrace.

Could it be possible? Could Eleri?

Could he?

There was a tap upon his shoulder, insistent enough that he could not mistake it for anything else. Another man cutting in.

At this moment? Really?

Right now?

He meant to turn to them and beg off in some way, but before he knew it he was turned about, standing awkwardly across from a new partner he had never met. Eleri, gone from his embrace, out of his arms, and of all people, SS Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer dancing away to another part of the floor with her.

And the band played on.

...TBC...