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"Well, of course," Thelma said, "to you Hollywood types, anyone who reads any book, even once, is viewed either as an intellectual giant or a psychopath Now, Laura, how did you co, phony papers?"
"They’re not phony," Chris said "They’re real"
"That’s right," Laura said "The driver’s license and everything else is supported by govern Endless River, I had to find out how you go about obtaining a new identity of high quality, and I found this interesting man in San Francisco who runs a veritable docuhtclub-"
"It doesn’t have a roof?" Chris asked
Laura ruffled the boy’s hair and said, "Anyway, Stefan, if you look deeper into that box, you’ll find a couple of bank books as well I’ve opened accounts for you under your new identity at Security Pacific Bank and Great Western Savings"
He was startled "I can’t take money from you I can’t-"
"You save me froive youwith hiuess that explains it"
"Hairy, Neanderthalic," Thelma said, "perpetually half-crazed froued by racialexpeditions-they’re all alike"
"Men," Laura said
"Men," Thelainst his will, Stefan Krieger felt soan to find a pane through which to shine into his heart
In late February of the next year, thirteen s, Laura suggested that he co Bear He went the next day, driving there in the sleek new Russian sports car that he had bought with soiven hiuest roo with the included, was all the love he could handle for a while
In mid-September, twenty months after he had appeared on her doorstep with a bullet hole in his chest, she asked hio
The year that Chris elve, Jason and Thel the most beautiful coastline in the world, and they insisted that Laura, Stefan, and Chris visit theust, when they were both between fils on the Monterey peninsula were cool and foggy, the days warht chilly in spite of the season, and that daily pattern of weather was invigorating
On the second Friday of the month, Stefan and Chris went for a beach ith Jason On the rocks not far fro noisily Tourists were parked bu the road that served the beach; they ventured onto the sand to take photographs of the sun-worshiping "seals," as they called then tourists It’s a regular invasion And you notice-they’re mostly either Japanese, Gerht the greatest war in history against all three of them, and now they’re all more prosperous than we are Japanese electronics and cars, Russian cars and computers, German cars and quality machinery of all kindsHonest to God, Stefan, I think Americans frequently treat old enemies better than they do old friends"
Stefan paused to watch the sea lions that had drawn the interest of the tourists, and he thought of thewith Winston Churchill
But tellme Let’s seewell, for instance, what of the Soviets after the war?
The old fox had spoken so casually, as if the question was one that had occurred to hiht as likely have asked whether the cut of e in the future, when in fact his query had been calculated and the answer of intense interest to hi on what Stefan had told hihting in Europe after the Gerrab of Eastern Europe as an excuse to turn against the the thehout the ith Germany, the Soviets had been propped up eapons and supplies from the United States, and when that support ithdrawn they collapsed in a matter of months After all, they had been exhausted after the ith their old ally, Hitler Now the modern world was far different from what destiny had intended, and all because Stefan had answered Churchill’s one question
Unlike Jason or Thelma or Laura or Chris, Stefan was a man out of time, a man for whom this era was not his destined home; the years since the Great Wars were his future, while those same years were in these people’s past; therefore he recalled both the future that had once been and the future that had now come to pass in place of the old They, however, could rereat world poere hostile toward one another, in which no huge nuclear arsenals awaited launch, in which democracy flourished even in Russia, in which there were plenty and peace
Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be But someti chairs on the porch, watching theirthe beach, out of sight
"Are you happy with him, Shane?"
"He’s a melancholy man"
"But lovely"
"He’ll never be Danny"