The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,126

suburb unlit, and Tom kept the Mercedes’ lights off. No sense getting stopped for violating blackout regulations. Overhead, the droning of the bombers still filled the sky; the far-off thunder of explosions and glare of fire to the southwest marked where the RAF was still taking its revenge.

“I don’t need a map to tell me this is a neighborhood where people can afford cars,” Sara returned, gesturing to the monotonous brick villas, the occasional cottages, and countrified houses whose rooflines loomed against the flame-lit sky. “Most people put their cars up on blocks because of the gas rationing... We’ve got ten gallons in back and whatever I can siphon out of the tank, and I hope to hell you got ration cards.”

“Do I look like an idiot?” Tom retorted.

She poked him in the back. “You’re wearing an SS uniform, cowboy—what do you think?”

Then she leaned over to Rhion, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him a little awkwardly on his untidy brown curls. “God, am I glad to see you safe.” She turned back to Tom. “Thank you.” The gruff uncertainty in her voice was odd, considering her earlier sophisticated calm. “I—I don’t know how the hell you managed to escape and get Rhion out of there, but thank you.”

“It was an allied effort,” Tom replied with a grin. “The Prof managed to break up their demo, and after that they were too busy dodging the bombs to follow us too hard. Once we switch cars we can head for Hamburg. There’s enough farm tracks and country roads that run parallel to the autobahn that we shouldn’t get too lost.”

“As long as we don’t get too found, we’ll be fine. Down that alley there...” She nodded toward a deep gap between two gray-stuccoed walls—a line of sheds and garages loomed dimly out of the darkness as they turned, and beyond them were the roofs of a line of semiattached houses, eloquent of the hopes of real-estate developers, the pretentions of well-to-do shopowners, and the managers of banks. “That looks promising.”

Several of the doors stood agape, revealing an assortment of garden tools and broken furniture—one or two were locked.

“My daughter the car thief,” Rebbe Leibnitz sighed, as Sara crowbarred the padlock hasp free of the nearest door’s brittle wood with a screwdriver from the Mercedes’ tool kit and, a moment later, pushed it back to reveal a massive green American Packard saloon.

“Better your daughter the car thief than your daughter the deceased former hostage of the Reich,” she muttered, opening the car door and perching on the seat with one graceful white leg dangling out the door for Saltwood to admire. “This heap still got its batteries or are we gonna have to jump it?” A moment later the engine coughed into life. The leg retreated into the car, and the Packard itself grumbled out into the narrow lane, shuddering with the effort of its long-silenced motor to stay awake. “Got a piece of tubing? Some hose?” She leaned out the door again. “What is this, the minor leagues?” she added, getting out and leaving the car to idle as she darted back into the utter blackness of the garage.

She emerged a moment later with her stolen SS dagger in one hand and a piece of rubber garden hose in the other, with which she siphoned most of the gasoline from the gray car’s tank to the green’s. “Which way are we heading?” she asked as she worked. “I’ll drive ahead and you follow me for a couple miles, so they won’t connect finding this buggy—” she kicked the Mercedes’ tire, “—with the report of a stolen car and know what to start looking for.”

“You used to do this for a living or something?” Tom inquired, closing the door once more and maneuvering the lock back into a semblance of its former appearance, while Rhion and Rebbe Leibnitz transferred their belongings from one vehicle to the other.

“Just brains, cowboy.”

“And dating every gangster on the East Side,” her father added glumly. “ ‘A tree shall be known by the fruit it bears...’ And what’s the date of your birth, by the way, Captain Saltwood?”

“Down this alley,” Saltwood replied to Sara’s earlier question, “two rights should get us back onto See Strasse. We can cut back to the Alt-Moabitstrasse and head for Hamburg that way.”

“No!” Rhion said sharply.

The others looked at him, baffled.

“We can’t go back the way we came! I left the Resonator in the temple at von Rath’s headquarters.