The fires of Paris [antikvár]

As THE RATHER battered Rover rolled to a stop at the edge of the abandoned sod landing strip in Norfolk, the man in the passenger seat lit a cigarette and looked up. The sky was just beginning to show the cast of dusk; the breeze was crisp with the tang of the North Sea and the premonition of winter, though it was only August. There was, in the delayed dusk, the old and often forgottén reminder that he was a long way from home, that this field was on a latitude with central Canada, that he had not smelled the arid drylands of west Texas in more than four years. He checked the time again, and again was momentarily startled to see a cheap Swiss watch on his wrist instead of his good gold Bulova. His dark and somewhat soiled slacks were of wartime French manufacture, and his worn shoes were Luftwaffe issue. "You have everything?" the man at the wheel asked.