The Egyptian raised his chin to indicate the envelope in her hand. “Are you quite sure that belongs to you?”
“It’s a gift from a friend,” she said. “It’s what I came here for.”
“May I look inside?”
“I have . . .”—she turned her head toward the door—“people . . .”
The man smiled. He had a youthful, pleasant face. His smile seemed to come from somewhere deep inside. The light on his eyes gave away no depth. They were bright and hard as medallions.
“The two gentlemen in the American car. Yes. The one in the passenger’s seat seems especially concerned for you. Why is that?”
She looked the man full in the face. “I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else.”
The black man looked genuinely pained. “How can he care for you?” He leaned close enough she could see the disappointment in his empty golden eyes. “He doesn’t even know what hurts you.”
Susan glanced back at the alcove. It glowed a pale green—bright with Angle Webs. One of them had to get her back to her own world. All she had to do was reach it.
“If you are planning to go home the way you arrived,” the black man said, “allow me to advise against it.” It was a suggestion, as one would give to a friend putting money down on a gimpy horse. “Some men have become aware of your presence. They are waiting for you in the alcove. I fear their intentions toward you.”
Susan looked toward the end of the bar. A pair of SS men were eyeing her with a certain ferocious candor. One of them smiled to her.
She tried to tell him there had been some mistake. The black man waved her objections aside with a sigh. “Really,” he sounded peevish. “You are so bad at lying, it grates a bit, you know? Why don’t you just stay here awhile with us?”
Susan noticed something in the alcove—a pair of shadows. In case she got past the two jokers at the end of the bar, they had a backup. She’d run right into their arms.
“Here’s another idea,” she said. “How about I turn this place of yours into a distressed property?”
The black man looked interested. “Can you do that?”
She pulled Bogen’s grenade from her pocket and, with a finger extended from the envelope in her other hand, jerked out the pin. “You ever see what one of these can do to a dump like the Four Winds Bar?”
“Really.” The black man did his best to look interested. “And what do you suppose it would do to Herr Kriene’s telescope?”
“I tell you the truth, I don’t know. Let’s say we find out.” She raised the pineapple a little higher, her hand white-knuckled over the lever.
The black man grinned. “We quail before such heedless fury. Very well.” He nodded toward the front door. A little portal appeared, like the portal on a luxury steamer. Through the portal, she saw the squat, beautiful little hump that was Charley Shrieve’s Plymouth staff car.
“Under normal circumstances, you would have to return to your world by the same means you left it. Rules of the house, you understand. But,” the black man raised his hands in an equitable gesture, “as it is my house, I make the rules. This one time, you may forgo the dangers of the Angle Web. You may return to your realm through the front door.”
Susan hesitated. “How do I know it’s real?”
The black man laughed. He had a generous laugh. Susan could almost trust a laugh like that. “I like you,” he said. “These gentlemen you see represent death, horror, apocalypse. They think they pay me in the coin of my realm. But my interest is not in destruction for its own sake, but in chaos. And you—” He looked into the back of her eyes and smiled. “You represent that in good measure.”
“You don’t know what I represent.”
The black man threw his head back and roared. “Just so,” he managed. “Just as you say.”
Somehow, she realized, she had made his very point. She pulled back from him. If he follows me . . . she said to herself, but the thought remained incomplete. Something in her ears was marching up and down like an Armistice Day parade. Clutching Hartmann’s envelope to her chest, she fumbled the pin back into the grenade, and made herself walk out deliberately.
The Plymouth swung around in the center of the street. It pulled up in front of her, smooth as a Dillinger bank job. Bogen was grinning at her from the driver’s seat. “What’s a dish like you doing in a dump like this?”
“You’ve been watching Cary Grant movies. We approve.” The back door was open, but she opened the front to toss the grenade next to Bogen, who pulled away with a choked cry. “Keep the strings tied on your carryall,” she advised him. She closed the door and got in back with Charley Shrieve. She didn’t feel like conversation.