August 30, 1943

Baseball is a game of constant disappointment. You swing, and you mostly miss. You think it’s an easy grounder and it bad hops you. You’re called out at third trying to advance on a single. The pop foul to end the game drifts away from your glove as you reach over the rail. One thing after another, one game after another, one season after another; all of this in an endless progression of childish mediocrity.

No wonder he was depressed. Surely there were better things to do with one’s life than catch and throw and swing a stick at baseballs.

Moe Berg, M.S., M.A, Ph.D., LL.D., was a well-educated man, a scholar, a man of great promise. Yet here he sat, a baseball player, in the dugout at Comiskey Park watching the rain fall and gather into puddles atop the tarp that covered the infield. All over the world Americans were at war, trying to turn the tide against the Japanese and the Germans, trying to keep the world free, fighting and dying with their allies. But Moe Berg, with flat feet and a heart murmur, was still playing baseball, a kid’s game. It was shameful.

The puddles rippled in the wind, tiny oceans getting wider by the second. It had been raining steadily for a half-hour and then moments ago there’d been a bright bolt of lightning and an immediate and massive crack of thunder. And now it was really pouring. Surely the game would be called in the next few minutes. Moe stood up from the dugout bench and walked up the well-chewed wooden steps that led to the field. He held out his hand to feel the rain, then poked his head out to look at the stands. Nearly empty except for one woman in the box seats just to the right of the dugout. A real looker. Red hair, dark, under that black umbrella; she was staring at him, not ten feet away. Smiling.

He knew her, he thought, from somewhere.

* * *

The 200-inch Palomar mirror, fifteen tons of it in its wooden casing on a straining flatbed truck, was inching up the side of the mountain at two or three miles per hour. You could walk it faster, Moe knew, since that’s what he’d done the day before, picking his spots, starting up at the observatory site and walking downhill a good five miles. Funny who he’d met on that walk.

In front of him, out over the flat plains of the coast toward Oceanside and the ghost town of Camp Pendleton, he could see through broken clouds as both air forces circled warily. The Republic of Mexico’s brand-new German jets, ME 262s nicknamed Muerte Rapida by the Mexicans, were armed to the teeth and hoping for a mistake by the Republic of California’s old P-38s, which circled and waited patiently for the huge H-6 flying boats to arrive – a flock of spruce geese – for the supposed big flyover during the ceremonies. If things went wrong and one of those wooden flying boats strayed into Mexican airspace, it was game over for the Californians.

Hell, it was a miracle, Moe thought, that the game wasn’t long lost already. All this chaos and yet the Californians had somehow managed to finish the construction of the observatory building and get the mirror for the damn thing this close to being installed. All that despite the ease with which the Japanese took Northern California and Oregon, the collapse of California’s allies with the ruination of New York City by the German superbomb and the surrender by the Federal States after the second bomb took out Boston; the rise of Mexico with the help of the Germans, the mobilization of everyone and everything in the Republic of California to try and hang on to independence.

And right smack in the middle of all this trouble the Caltech team kept working on the observatory, the great dome slowly rising like some Christopher Wren cathedral, a sort of St. Paul’s to science, the dome a statement about who the Californians were and what they could create.

And the heart of their creation was the mirror. Even as Russell Porter and Fritz Zwicky worked atop the mountain to build the observatory, down in Pasadena, in a small warehouse, the key man to this whole thing, a guy named Marcus Brown, had been carefully, inch by inch, layer by layer, shaping and polishing that mirror to the required level of perfection.

The huge Pyrex disk had first emerged from a daring pour at the Corning Glass Works in Upstate New York in the Federal States in March of 1934. From there a special train took it along the south shores of Lakes Erie and Michigan and then across into the Western Republic and through the Mormon Territory and, at last, over the Sierras and into what was then the most prosperous nation in all of North America: The California Republic, which stretched northward from Tijuana all the way to Coos Bay.

The world went to war in 1936, but Marcus Brown didn’t care. He shaped. He polished. Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere succeeded at Pearl Harbor and then the First, Second, and Third Yokosuka SNLFs made their landings at Eureka and Arcata in California and held on and grew inland to Redding and north to the border with the Republic of Oregon before settling down to occupy and tame their winnings and through all that Brown kept polishing. Drained by the battles to the north, the California Republic gave Mexico the port it wanted in San Diego and redrew the southern border. And Brown kept polishing. The German superbomb was anchored to the bottom of Jamaica Bay, in sight of the Empire State Building, by the U-365; and when it went off and that mushroom cloud enveloped Gotham, Brown kept on polishing. Same for Boston Harbor, only this by the U-545. And Brown polished.

By then, in Occupied New England the Corning Glass Works were focused on camera lenses and baby bottles for the fraus of Aryan Europe and only tiny, worthless Ireland remained free of the fascists while, in Pasadena, in the warehouse at the edge of the Caltech campus, Brown, yes, kept polishing and shaping. What started with the huge grinding machine and a slurry of carborundum and water became, over the years, tiny, careful swipes with the small polishing tool, a process so delicate that after a few minutes of work Brown would have to sit back and wait for a couple of hours for the heat from the polishing to fade before taking a measurement and then doing it all over again. And again, getting the great mirror to one-millionth-of-an-inch precision. Infinitesimal corrections and improvements. Polishing. And polishing. Until today, when in the pre-dawn hours, the perfect mirror, the 200-inch disk, was carefully, carefully, carefully loaded onto the wooden bracing on the back of the Aerocar flatbed truck and started on its way to Mount Palomar, to the top of the mountain, where the great telescope’s machinery, all gimbaled and balanced and ready, waited for it.

* * *

The Chicago rain washed out the game with the Yankees in the third inning. From the White Sox point of view this was a good thing. Babe Ruth was on the mound for the Yanks, and you don’t spot the Babe a four-run lead and expect to come back and win the damn thing. It would have been Ruth’s twentieth win for the season. Damn Yankees.

Moe had showered and was putting on his clothes – straight-legged trousers, a nice drape-cut suitcoat, white shirt with cufflinks, a blue tie, all of it very Cary Grant – when Wild Bill Donovan showed up, walking into the clubhouse like he owned the place. Moe remembered Donovan as the U.S. Attorney in Buffalo, a straight-shooter who’d made his name during Prohibition in that shootout with Machine Gun Kelly in Black Rock, the place in Buffalo where the Erie Canal meets the Niagara River. The perfect place for smuggling Canadian whisky across the river from Fort Erie and onto a barge canal and from there all the way to New York City.

Kelly ran that smuggling business. William Donovan was determined to stop him. Kelly had a Thompson submachine gun and, that night, so did Wild Bill. Kelly stepped out of the warehouse for a smoke. He’d been watching his men load the canal barge with the whisky and the work was boring. It would be another hour before the barge was full and could start heading toward Albany and the Hudson and, ultimately, New York City.

As Kelly stood in the shadows of Niagara Street and lit his cigarette, Donovan got out of his car and made a point of slamming the door of the Hudson.

Kelly looked up, saw Donovan, and brought his submachine gun up to point in the G-man’s direction. Donovan stopped, brought his Thompson up the same way, and the two men, without saying a word, paused for a few long seconds and then let it rip. When it was over, Kelly’s body had thirty-six holes in it. William Donovan was untouched and untouchable and had himself a new nickname.

Moe was playing for the Buffalo Bisons back then, so he sure knew the story. He’d been honored when Donovan had taken him out to dinner a few times at Lorenzo’s on Pearl Street, a mile or two from the ballpark. Pretty funny dinner, too, with that steak and potatoes and, surprise surprise, some good, solid Canadian whisky in that private back room. Moe liked the guy.

“How you doing, Moe?” Donovan asked as he walked up to him.

“Fine, Mr. Donovan” – who liked to be addressed that way – “and how is it with you? Sorry about this rainout today, but the way Ruth is pitching we’re probably lucky we didn’t have to play.”

Donovan pulled over a wooden folding chair and sat down, cap in hand. He leaned forward, talked in low tones. “Moe, I’m not here to talk about baseball.”

Funny, but Moe had a good idea what this was about. There was a thought, a wisp of memory, niggling at him. Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen Donovan recently? Something about the war?

“Moe,” Donovan was saying, “I know you were turned down for service.”

“Twice, Mr. Donovan. Flat feet and a little heart thing. And I’m a professional ballplayer, mind you, and my feet haven’t bothered me there. It was damn embarrassing. Hell, I even appealed.”

“I know, Moe. I’ve seen your records. The appeal was turned down.”

“All right, so I can’t enlist. So, what, Mr. Donovan?”

“Here’s what, Moe. I have an offer for you. A way to get involved in this war. A way to fight the Nazis.”

Damned if this all didn’t sound familiar. It was coming back to him. He and Donovan had talked about this before. But years ago, in a restaurant in Buffalo? Not possible.

Donovan rose from his chair. “We need you, Moe. It’s important. It’s likely to be dangerous work, but you’re a patriot, I know it, and this is something that has to be done. I’m hoping you’re the man for the job.”

Moe smiled. This was all a little familiar. But damn right he was the man for the job. No more kid games. No more balls and bats and running around. “Sure, I’m in, Mr. Donovan. You know I want to do my bit.”

Donovan reached into his front lapel pocket and pulled out a business card. “All right, then, Moe,” he said, handing him the card. “Tonight, eight o’clock, at the Drake Hotel, you’ll find out everything you need to know. I hope to see you there.”

The card said “William Donovan” on it and nothing else. There was a room number – PH1 – scribbled on it. So, a penthouse at the Drake.

“OK, Mr. Don. . . .” Moe was starting to say as he looked up; but Donovan’s back was turned to Moe and he was walking away, back toward the clubhouse door. All right then. This was it. The chance to get into the fight. Finally.

Moe quietly finished dressing and then put Donovan’s business card in his front pocket. There was another card in there, one the batboy had delivered from that woman in the stands. “Piccadilly Hotel, 5 p.m. in the bar,” was written on it in blue ink, nice hand-writing. Good timing. A couple of hours, a few drinks with that woman and maybe make some arrangements for later, and then take the El north from the Piccadilly to the Drake. No problem. No problem at all.

* * *

Miriam Ruggiero was tapping Moe on the shoulder. “Say,” she said, “you the reporter?”

Moe turned up the collar on his coat and nodded. It was getting colder and darker, a few clouds drifting over this side of the mountain. It might rain in a few minutes. Hell, at this altitude it might even snow. Sure,” he said, “I’m the reporter.”

She was wearing a light blue jersey knit dress with a jacket over the top and carrying a beaded clutch purse. Very sporty. Moe knew about her, and suspected she knew about him, so this was all a sort of inside joke before all hell broke loose. But Moe played along when she smiled at him and said, “I thought so, just from the way you’re looking things over. But I don’t see any notepad, or a pencil, or a pen. Or a camera for that matter.”

He reached into his inside coat pocket and there, right next to the little Beretta he’d aimed at Werner Heisenberg and then, later, more successfully, at Carl Weizsäcker during the last assignment, was his reporter’s pad, narrow, and with the paper hinged at the top so you could scribble and flip and scribble some more. He’d spent a little time every day over the past week, since he got out here, taking notes and working on his scribbling skills, so he’d act like a real reporter when it mattered. It was no sillier a thing to learn, he thought, than swinging a thirty-three-ounce piece of lumber at a moving fastball or figuring out how to get the first-baseman’s mitt into the right place to pick up a short-hop ball thrown by the acrobatic Luke Appling from deep in the hole. Moe wondered if there was a Luke Appling in this place, and if there was, would he recognize Moe if he met him?

Moe decided to scribble and flip some for her, pretending he didn’t already know her name, playing along. He opened the pad and grabbed his pencil stub from his shirt pocket and looked at her. “I’ll get the photographer later, but as long as you’re so interested, let’s start with this. What’s your name?”

“Mary,” she said, “Mary Smith.”

“Sure,” he said, and didn’t even write it down. “Mary Smith. And you’re from Smalltown, USA, I bet, right?”

“You got it,” she said, and she snapped open her clutch, reached in to grab a cigarette and started to light it. She was just starting on that when they both heard a grinding of gears from below and she stopped as they walked over to the edge of the mountain road and looked down. The flatbed was down there, struggling up the incline that led to the switchback turn and then up toward where they stood.

Miriam Ruggiero was a Fascist, a real fan of Benito and his pals, and now she was working for the Germans, making sure the special package that had been added onto that tractor-trailer this morning back in Pasadena got where it was going. Moe was there to make sure something else happened.

Light rain started falling. It was damn cold. The woman had told him that would happen, and she hadn’t often been wrong. What the hell was her name? Jesus, he didn’t forget things like that very often, but in her case his memory got slippery. She’d told him her name, he was sure; but he couldn’t think of it. Too many changes, at least three, since he’d talked to her in Oakland.

There were maybe 100 spectators gathered at the intersection on the road where Moe and Miriam Ruggiero waited. The road up the mountain took a Y at this spot, and if you went left instead of right you started back down the mountain on the narrow, old road. Take the right instead of the left and you went uphill another half-mile on the new road and you were at the construction site for the Mount Palomar Observatory.

In about twenty minutes the big flatbed with the 200-inch mirror on it would slowly amble by and they’d all be standing by the side of the road with a lot of others, getting a good close look at history as it went by at two miles an hour. There might be sleet by then, sometimes that’s how it went, the woman in Oakland had told Moe.

The sleet would make it all trickier and it was complicated enough already. Moe had to take control of that rig and get it back down the mountain, down that narrow old road with its tight turns and steep grade. Halfway down the mountain, there was a quarter-mile of flat plateau and there he’d be met and he’d hand over the rig to some Californians who would unhook the big mirror and leave it behind before taking the rest of that cargo down onto the flatlands below and Lake Hayward. If the Mexican Muertes didn’t get them. If the old P-38s could hold them off. Too damn many “ifs.” But that was the plan. It might work out. It could.

* * *

Moe pushed open the glass door to walk into the Abbotsford Bar in the Piccadilly Hotel and there she was, sitting alone at the small table in the back corner.

Moe liked the bar, a nice Southside place on Blackstone Avenue. Moe knew the hotel and stayed there sometimes. A couple of the Sox players lived there during the summer.

She wore a nice little mauve hat with a feather on it, and a long skirt with a white blouse, long-sleeved even in the August heat. She had on a pair of glasses and the color of the frames matched her hat and the skirt. She looked good.

He walked up to her and she smiled and said, “Hello, Moe. Nice to see you again.”

“You ever going to tell me your name?” he asked. He remembered more of it now. It was coming back even as he looked at her: Heisenberg, Weizsäcker, the Hindenburg. Moe had been involved in that somehow, had done some shooting and, he thought, killed someone for the good of the cause. Something about a Nazi superbomb? Hidden in that huge zeppelin? Yeah, it was coming back. But how the hell was that possible? He played baseball for the Chicago White Sox. He had flat feet. Until he’d talked with Donovan a couple of hours ago the damn war had been going on without him.

Again, that smile of hers. Nice teeth; perfect in fact. And the glasses didn’t look like they were doing anything particularly useful for those brown eyes. Moe suspected her eyesight was just fine. “We knew you’d begin to remember it, Moe,” she was saying, “and we have another situation that you can help us with.”

He didn’t remember it all yet, but it was coming back fast. And he didn’t recall anyone – her or anyone else – ever explaining how things changed all the time, how reality kept shifting around. He thought maybe he didn’t want to get too involved with this woman, no matter how good looking she was.

“I have a meeting at the Drake tonight,” he said, “with a Mr. Donovan. So, I’m really damn busy and I don’t think I’ll be able to help you this time.” But then he was thinking about that bomb, and remembering what good pals he’d been with Paul Scherrer, the Swiss physicist. Hell, he’d stayed at the guy’s house, gotten to know the wife and kids, liked it there, liked it just fine. It was coming back. More of it.

She could see that, could see the light bulb burning a little brighter in Moe’s memory. She reached out to touch his arm and there was that brief moment of nausea and then here they were still in the Piccadilly Hotel, but the woman wasn’t wearing a hat, or any eyeglasses, and the blouse was blue and she was looking at him as he realized the changes. He looked toward the bar. “Harry’s,” it said across the top of the mirror. So that was it, step one. It had gone that way last time, too.

“We’re on the ten p.m. Super Chief out of Union Station, Moe, heading West, out to California. It will take us a couple of days to get there and we’ll need those days to get you ready. You all right with that?”

Was he? He hadn’t been so sure a minute or two ago. But, now, remembering, he said, “Sure, I’ll go pack my bags.” Donovan could wait a week or two. So could baseball.

But she only smiled again at that and nodded to a spot behind him. When Moe turned to look there was a nice valise, brown, a little worn from hard use. He reached down to pick it up by the handle. Full.

He had a lot of questions; about where he was and where he’d been, about time and travel, and how come he seemed to be back where he’d been before, about who she was and who she worked with and why they kept coming to him for help. He remembered now that she’d promised to answer some of those questions the last time they’d worked together.

He turned back to look at her. She smiled, shook her head no. “On the train, Moe, that’s where you’ll get a few answers.”

Sure, he thought, and didn’t believe a word of it. But on the other hand, he was either lying to himself or he was ready to do something serious with his life, get involved in the war finally, put a stop to playing a kid’s game. And working for Donovan might be fine, but if he didn’t show there tonight there’d be other people who would. There were plenty of guys with flat feet who spoke some languages, and Wild Bill would find them. Plus, the woman was a looker. A real looker. So, thought Moe, stick around in Chicago and field some groundballs, turn some double-plays, maybe work for Wild Bill Donovan. Or do something a little more worthwhile? Right here. Right now.

Oh, hell. Easy decision. “Ready when you are,” he said.

“Time to go, then,” she said. And they did.

* * *

The cold drizzle was making the road slick already, though it was too warm to freeze. As Moe and Miriam Ruggiero stepped back from the precipice, she slipped, and he grabbed her by the elbow to keep her upright. Pretty damn ironic, considering what he had planned for her in about twenty minutes, but he figured maybe it was supposed to all happen a certain way. It hadn’t gone the way it was supposed to the last time in Zurich, when he’d thought he was supposed to kill Werner Heisenberg to end the Nazi superbomb program, and instead he shot that bastard Carl Weizsäcker; but maybe that was why he was here. Things hadn’t gone right and so he was now in the repair business, fixing things. Or maybe the train business, getting things back on track. Shit. Whatever. All he could do now was focus on the task at hand and do what Clarissa, or whatever the hell her name was, had told him to do. Two shots into Ruggiero’s chest, that’s what she’d said.

Miriam Ruggiero thanked him, and they got to smooth ground and stood there, quiet for a few moments. Moe reached into his pocket and got his fingers around the comforting shape of the cold Beretta. Ruggiero had to die, and Moe had to do it. Well, people were dying all over the planet because of fascists like Ruggiero, getting rid of one of them – especially this one, especially here – was just fine. That little pistol had done the job for him last time during the fracas with Weizsäcker. Moe had looked at Weizsäcker lying there in the cold grass of December, dying, and hadn’t felt bad about that. Then he’d turned to see Werner Heisenberg climbing the ladder up to the control car of the Hindenburg. The bomb – the only bomb that the Uranverein had been able to make in that reality – was huge and oversized and not all that powerful, but it fit into the great zeppelin’s main hold and if it went off as planned by Heisenberg it sent Hitler and Goering and the others to Hell, and that solved the problem in that place.

But not here, Moe thought as he turned his back to the cold mountain air. Not here.

* * *

“You’ll be a good reporter, the way you love newspapers,” the woman said to him as she sat in the settee in the corner of their first-class Pullman sleeper room and watched Moe spread out the St. Louis Dispatch over the carpeted floor.

“Newspapers are clean and fresh, that’s all,” he said as he carefully lifted the center table and slid the sports page underneath it. The front leg of the table fell smack on Babe Ruth’s face when Moe let the table back down. That felt good.

They’d taken a taxi from the Piccadilly to Union Station, then walked right to platform eighteen where the Super Chief hummed with anticipation. So did Moe. Ballplayers didn’t ride first class on the Super Chief, that was for sure. On the three or four trips he’d made to the West Coast with the Sox for exhibitions, they’d been on the old El Capitan, the one where the porter came by and folded down opposing seats to make a bed for you. An uncomfortable bed, at that. Leave at midnight from Chicago and get to L.A. thirty-six hours later after two nights of bad sleep, then play a day-game against some PCL team. That’s what cheap ownership got you when you made it to the big leagues. Low pay, no comfort, no wins.

But this? This was traveling.

“So, what’s the assignment?” he asked, settling into the second chair and going through the ritual of opening the bottle of red wine – a California merlot – that stood on the table.

She didn’t answer as he got the cork out, poured two glasses and handed her one. Then she took a sip. “We’re a few steps away from the real thing and while I can’t tell you too much too soon, you’re going to be a reporter for the next couple of weeks, working for the Chicago Post.”

“There is no Chicago Post. They’ll know that in California, you know.”

She shrugged, smiled, and leaned over with her glass, clinked it against his. A moment of nausea and he knew things had changed, but he couldn’t see what was different yet. “Sure, there is, Moe, and it’s been the top paper in town for 100 years.”

Moe sipped on his wine, a bad chardonnay, set it down on top of the paper. Damnit. He looked at the woman: “Look, don’t you think it’s time you told me your name? At least your first name?”

She sat back, took a sip of hers. “In time, Moe, you’ll get over that whole idea of names. For now, for here, you can call me Clarissa. I’m Clarissa Berg. I’m your wife.”

There was a polite tap on the door and then it opened. A beefy Negro with a nice smile stood there, dressed in one sharp uniform; blue slacks and a blue coat, shined black shoes, a high collar. He wore a porter’s cap, with that stiff top. He touched the bill of that cap and said “I’m Frederick, your porter. I thought you folks might like the evening paper. You doing all right in here, Mr. and Mrs. Berg?”

He handed Moe the paper. Chicago Post it said on the nameplate at the top. “Ruth Hits Three Homers” was the headline underneath that and the picture showed the Babe, at least some fat version of the Babe, stepping on the plate. Interesting.

“We’re doing fine, Frederick,” Clarissa said, “and we wonder if you could arrange a little dinner for us in here. Steak, maybe? A couple of New York strips, medium rare, with baked potatoes and some red wine, maybe a merlot. Around nine?” And she handed him a tip, some folding money.

“Of course, Mrs. Berg,” Frederick said, sliding the tip into a small front pocket. “I’ll be back with your supper at nine. Y’all will love the steak. Chef Geoffrey is famous for his steaks. Otherwise, y’all need anything you just press that button there,” and he pointed to the porter button near the door, “and I’ll be right here in a jiffy.” And Frederick backed out, the door snapping shut behind him.

There was a moment of nausea, that usual brief flash, as Moe reached over to grab the bottle of wine and pour himself another drink. He wished it was a nice Irish whiskey – Paddy’s perhaps – but it was now some imported Chablis and that would have to do. It might help settle his stomach.

Clarissa was looking out the window into the evening fields of Illinois. Corn, ready to be harvested. Every now and then what might be a field of wheat, or soybeans. “Not much to see out there,” Moe said as he sat down and took a sip of the wine.

She sat back. “Yes. Flat Illinois. All those crops dying in this damn drought.”

Moe noticed the rain had stopped. The White Sox and the Cubs and the Cardinals had all been fighting with the rainy Midwest weather for more than a month. What drought? And then. Oh, yes. “We’ve already switched tracks once, I take it?” he asked her.

She nodded. “And there will be a few more before we get out West, Moe. It’s a tricky path we have to take to get you and me where we need to be by the end of next week.”

“You know I could use some more information on that, right? Some details? I take it this has something to do with Heisenberg and Scherrer and those guys? The German superbomb? The Uranverein? I thought we had that all done, you and me. All that stuff with Zurich and the Hindenburg and the Eagle’s Nest. Last thing I recall was Heisenberg climbing into that zeppelin and heading to Hitler.”

She sat back in the little settee. “I’m betting you know who Erwin Schrӧdinger is, Moe, right? I’d think your Ivy League education included a little something on him.”

Moe nodded. “Sure. I met him, actually, in Dublin, back in that last place, when I was prepping for the big meeting with Heisenberg. Nice enough guy. And I liked his wife and his girlfriend both.”

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“They all lived together in a nice flat on Merrion Square, courtesy of the Irish government. Wife and girlfriend are both lookers, and very nice. He’s a lucky guy.”

“In that world, Moe, but not this one. Here, in this one, he’s trapped in Berlin, under house arrest for not saying nice things about the Nazis. In some others it’s even worse.”

“Shame,” said Moe. “I just spent the one evening with them but I liked the guy. Mostly, we talked about Schopenhauer.”

“You’re familiar with his thought experiment on the cat?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you should know then why I can’t tell you too much. It’s dangerous even to tell you I can’t tell you too much.”

Moe realized what she was getting at. Look too close, or look at all, and it forced changes. Hell, this was all tricky enough already and he didn’t need to make it worse. He nodded, and kept it at that.

“Your memory’s really back now, Moe, isn’t it? That’s excellent,” she said. “I’m not surprised.” She finished off her wine and saw the bottle was done, too. “How about we get some of that Irish whiskey that you like?” And she stood to walk over and hit the call button for Frederick.

She came back and sat down across from Moe. “You’ll like this, Moe, wait and see.”

She leaned back, crossed her legs, and smiled. Seconds later there was a rap at the door and she turned toward it and said, “Come on in, Frederick.”

The door opened and in walked Frederick, a plump middle-aged white guy with some unruly red hair scrambling out from under the porter’s cap, a kind of beret with a thin brim and a small badge in the front that had “California-Illinois Railroad” in red written around the top of the badge.

“Mr. and Mrs. Berg? Something I can do for you?”

Moe caught on quick. “A bottle of your best Irish whiskey, please, Frederick, all right? Does the bar have some?”

“I’m sure, Mr. Berg. I’ll get it for you right away, sir.” He paused, held out a pen and a baseball scorecard. “And Mr. Berg, this is against regulations, but I hope you won’t mind. Would you put your John Hancock on this scorecard for my son? We live in St. Louis and since you joined the Cardinals he’s been a really big fan of yours. All those homeruns, the way you move around behind the plate and that great arm of yours, throwing those guys out when they try to steal and all that. Well, it’d be really special if you could sign this for him. Could you make it ‘To Freddy’?”

Moe smiled, said “Sure, Frederick,” and reached out to take the scorecard and the pen. “To Freddy,” he wrote across the front, “my biggest fan. Your pal, Moe Berg.” And he handed it back to Frederick – this Frederick – who beamed and then backed out of the room.

Moe looked at the woman. “So, it looks like I’m still Moe Berg here, but on the wrong damn team. You still Clarissa?”

She shook her head, patted the spot next to her on the small couch, and said, “You are always Moe, it seems, my friend, that’s one reason you’re able to do the job. It’s a gift, this ability to hit start over and over again. It’s a gift, and you have it.”

“Lucky me,” Moe said.

She smiled. “That’s debatable, I suppose. But you are important, Moe, never forget that. The whys and hows of your involvement are difficult to explain; but we know we need you. In a week, in California, you’re going to see a woman who needs to be stopped and you’re going to use your Beretta to do that. If she succeeds, that version of reality will fall back into war – an atomic war – that’s already killed hundreds of thousands. Without her death, many millions will die, most of them Californians. The ripples of that may change other versions, other places; perhaps my version, perhaps some of yours. This is a job that must be done and you’re the only one, we think, who can do it.”

“And why is that? Why am I the only one?”

She looked out the window, starting at telephone poles flicking by over the prairie. “You’re different, Moe, from the rest of us. We have roots, we have a place where we’re from, a definite place, each of us. You? You seem to crop up anywhere and everywhere.”

She reached into her purse. “Here,” she said, handing him a cardboard baseball card. A Bowman card from 1941, in color, with a nice drawing of Moe making a backhanded play at shortstop. “Moe Berg” was the imprinted autograph across the bottom of the front.

Moe flipped it over and there were the details of the career he hadn’t known he’d had in the Pacific Coast League, in black ink on white cardboard. At the top it said, “Baseball Picture Cards” and then below it was: “Moe Berg, shortstop, Oakland Oaks, Pacific Coast League, weight one-hundred-eighty-five, height six-foot-one, bats right, throws right. Switched from the Missions to the Oaks in 1939, hitting .292 and driving in seventy-six runs. His eighty-three hits were good for a total of one-hundred-thirty bases.”

All of which was well and good. It was nice, Moe thought, that some version of him did well in the PCL. “Says I’m a shortstop,” he said to the woman.

“You are, Moe. Or you will be by the time you get to California.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” he said. And then he sighed, shrugged. “So,” he asked her, “where and when do I kill this woman?”

* * *

Tomorrow was the day that the big mirror was going to be trucked from Pasadena to Mount Palomar, so today was the day that Moe Berg went for a nice stroll, walking down a secondary road on the mountain; a steep little road with tight turns. It was going to be a hell of a ride getting that big rig down that road to Lake Hayward.

Nearly an hour into the walk and after several miles of steep downhill, Moe reached the long flat stretch they’d told him about. Here, if he made it this far, he’d meet the Californian troops who’d take the truck and its cargo off his hands. He’d get out of the cab of the truck, hand them the keys, watch them drive off and hope to hell they weren’t getting strafed by those damn Mexican jets: Muerte Rapida, indeed. Then he’d walk back up ten minutes to the logging road that led to the little shack where the woman would meet him and together they’d head somewhere else, some other version of Palomar; somewhere, he hoped, a little safer than this version.

The P-38s had a job to do holding off those ME-262s so the big Hughes H-7 seaplanes could land on Lake Hayward, four of them in four different places on that big lake to make it hard for any Mexican paratroopers to pull off a raid. And then one of those mammoth Hercules seaplanes would carry that cargo away and the others, with dummy loads, would do the same. Moe didn’t know where they’d take that superbomb and didn’t care; he figured to be long gone in some other California by then, maybe one that still was part of some kind of United States.

It all sounded pretty iffy. Too damn iffy. But what the hell, in for a dollar.

He looked around. There was plenty of room here, and just off the pavement was a wide stretch of flat, packed dirt under some trees. That would help.

He was thinking it through, picturing in his mind how it would go, when he heard some rustling in the woods. Moe put his hand in his coat pocket to get a grip on the comfort of the Beretta. Were they onto him? Would this be the Germans? The Italians? The Japanese? Jesus, too many damn bad guys.

But it wasn’t any of those. Wild Bill Donovan – not the William Donovan, Moe guessed, but another one – stepped out of the shadows of the cedar and oak trees and came over to him. “Hello, Mr. Berg,” he said. “You enjoy your walk?”

It was damn hard to keep track of things. The Wild Bill that Moe knew from the first time around was nowhere near here. Hell, even the one from that clubhouse at Comiskey a little over a week ago wasn’t this one, couldn’t be this one; that was three or four changes ago now.

“I was told you’d be here,” Donovan said, and reached out to shake Moe’s hand. “I’m Donovan. William Donovan. I work for the California Republic’s Office of Strategic Services.”

Moe nodded, said “Mr. Donovan. Nice to meet you.”

So, it was clear that this particular William Donovan hadn’t met Moe Berg before. And he was still a spy boss, but now in California, running things for the Republic.

Moe wrestled with the implications, decided to play it dumb. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Donovan?”

Donovan smiled. “We’ve had our eye on you all week, Moe. We’re wondering why a local guy, born and raised in Southern California, would be working for the Federal States.”

“That’s not who I’m working for, Mr. Donovan. I’m a ballplayer, you probably know that.”

“And I’m your biggest fan, Moe. When I lived in Sacramento, back when it was ours, I used to watch you play for the Oaks when they came to play the Solons. Hell of a hitter for a shortstop, Moe.”

“Thanks,” Moe said, but didn’t believe a word of it. Donovan had looked that up. This version of the guy didn’t come across the same friendly way the version of Donovan that Moe knew back in Chicago did, or the one farther back in D.C. This one seemed like he was hiding something. He seemed dangerous.

“I had some streaks, Mr. Donovan. Had some slumps, too. It all evens out, you know.”

“Evened out to a two-eighty-six batting average, Moe. Damn good for a guy with a slick glove at short and that cannon of an arm.”

Moe smiled, nodded.

“But that’s not why I’m here, Moe. We can talk baseball, I hope, some other time. I understand you’re a pretty smart guy, Moe. You’re Doctor Berg, right. Got that doctorate, that law degree from Stanford. You really know your stuff, right?”

Moe nodded, said, “I enjoyed going to school, I guess, Mr. Donovan.”

“That and playing baseball, right, Moe? Funny, a guy like you playing ball in the PCL.”

“I don’t think it’s funny, Mr. Donovan. It’s something I enjoy and I’m good at it.”

Donovan stared at him, shook his head. “You went to Japan twice with the Solons, Moe. In thirty-five and again in thirty-seven.”

Moe nodded. He knew this was where all this had to be going. Back home, in the reality he was from, he’d gone once to Japan on a tour with the White Sox. He’d taken a few pictures. Maybe some of Tokyo Harbor. Maybe some other ones, too. He’d done the same thing here, apparently. Well, all right. He could ride this horse if he had to.

“The Japanese really love their baseball, Mr. Donovan. PCL teams use to go over there every year. Yes, I was lucky enough to get to go twice.”

“Did you play ball the whole time, Moe, or did you do some sightseeing while you were there?”

“We were pretty damn busy, Mr. Donovan. Double-headers most days. Lots of ceremonial things going on. We didn’t get a chance to be out on our own very much.”

“You were out often enough, Moe. That’s what I think. And you speak Japanese, too, right?”

“I get along in it, Mr. Donovan. That and French and Hebrew, Italian, Spanish. I have a facility for languages.”

“And German?”

“Yes, and German, too. You accusing me of being a spy, Mr. Donovan? Are you serious about that?”

“No, no, Moe, quite the opposite. You’re not working for the Germans or the Japanese or the Eyeties or the Mexicans. I wouldn’t believe that of you. You’re too much a patriot.” He smiled. “But, we can sure see why the Federal States would want you in their stable. Guy like you: sports hero, speaking those languages, a bright guy.”

“I’m not working for the Federal States, Mr. Donovan. I’m a ballplayer. That’s all.”

“Sure, you are, Moe, pacing off a mountain road in the middle of nowhere where an important load will be coming tomorrow. You know this is the wrong road for that, right?”

“I’m out for a walk on a sunny day, Mr. Donovan.”

Donovan walked over to get close to Moe. Stood toe to toe with him, put his finger on his chest, said, “We’re watching you, Moe. We’ve been watching you and we’ll keep watching you.”

“Sure, you will,” said Moe, and thought about the Beretta in his coat pocket. He wondered if Donovan had anyone else with him, someone still hiding in the woods. Did he have to kill Donovan right now? Here? And then check for anyone in the woods?

Donovan pushed hard with that finger. “Moe, the Republic of California has big plans for tomorrow. We have someone on the inside of the German spy machine, a woman, and tomorrow is her big day, tomorrow she finds revenge for what the Nazis did to her family. You understand? You get in the way of those plans and you’re a dead man. You got me?”

So that Miriam Ruggiero was a double agent. Should he still kill her? He didn’t know.

Moe reached and took Donovan’s finger from his chest, pushed it aside. Maybe this was the moment. He could push Donovan back, trip him maybe, and then pull the Beretta out and shoot the son-of-a-bitch right here and be done with it. One more threat. One more hint.

But the moment passed. Donovan backed away, raised his hands in a mocking surrender. “Sorry, Moe. I didn’t mean to get that touchy, all right?”

“Sure.”

“I’m asking nice now, okay? Leave it alone, tomorrow. Save yourself and your friends some grief and just leave her alone.”

“I hear you, Mr. Donovan.”

“Good,” said Donovan and took one step toward Moe, leaned his way. “Stay out of trouble, Moe. We’re watching you.” And then he turned his back to Moe and walked away, back across the pavement and into the woods. Had a car in there, no doubt. And maybe a partner.

Moe watched the man’s back move away and thought about the Beretta. He’d gone through a lot of training with handguns for the job involving Heisenberg. He remembered practicing with the Beretta, at Scherrer’s house in Zurich. He’d been good, damn good, with the gun. He reached into the pocket, got his right hand around the Beretta, pulled it out of the pocket, gave it some thought and then, as Donovan disappeared into the trees, Moe took a breath, nodded his head, put the Beretta back into his pocket, and turned around to walk back uphill.

* * *

On the train, they talked through much of the night, Moe and Clarissa, eating the cheese sandwiches that Frederick brought back with the Irish whiskey. After a while, Moe had a good feel for what he was supposed to do. It all made sense as long as you kept thinking about falling dominoes. That’s how she explained it; a long, long row of upright dominoes and once one of them started falling, the whole row went. And her world, and Moe’s, were in that row and down they’d go.

Unless something, unless someone, got in the way.

Eventually, about four in the morning, the woman said they had to get some sleep, so they buzzed Frederick – still the same Frederick, too, to Moe’s surprise – and he set things up so that Moe slept on a pull-down bunk and the woman on the nice bed that folded out from the back wall. Moe’s little bed was too small and too hard, but he didn’t mind, it beat the hell out of trying to sleep cheap on the train from Chicago to Boston to play the Braves, which he’d done too many times.

They were up by eight and into the dining car for breakfast. Two eggs over easy with bacon and toast for Moe. A couple of pancakes for the supposed missus. Coffee, black, for both of them, and then back to the room and back to work. Clarissa spent the two bucks plus tip on the nice breakfast spread. Pricey, but the food was good.

She did most of the talking as they arrowed straight west through Missouri and Kansas and onto the flat high plains of Colorado. The scenery was so bad they pulled down the blinds and turned on the lights and talked in general terms about how things were. In the California they were going to, the Germans already had the superbomb. So, it was too late to stop that, and the world wasn’t at war anymore since the Japanese and Germans had about everything they wanted.

Except for America, where the Japanese were clearly angling for all of the West Coast, while the Germans itched to break the pact with Japan and make North America theirs for the next thousand years. Fascist Mexico would be the proxy, using German weapons and with German officers and with a very ambitious Generalissimo O’Rourke, he of the Irish heritage but the Mexican ambitions. An excuse was all that was needed.

All of which might well happen if Moe didn’t get the job done as she outlined it. He thought it was something he could do. Would do. No question. And she smiled when he said that, shook her head slightly, said, “There are too many possibilities, Moe, too many paths. But we have to try, and you’re the man for the job. I’ll help when I can, where I can. But all the twists and turns. . . .”

She let that thought trail off, sat back into her cushioned seat, stared at Moe. “Whatever happens, Moe, just try and get where you have to be and do what you have to do. I hope to be there to help.”

“Hope?” Moe didn’t like that choice of words.

She nodded. “You never know, Moe. Just get there and take care of things. Don’t let that bomb explode. We’re counting on you.”

She reached out to touch his hand. She smiled. “You always seem to get it done, Moe, in a lot of different places. There’ll be a moment there when it could go wrong. I can’t tell you more, but you’ll make the right decision. You and that Beretta. Two shots to her chest. Do that, get it right, and a lot of important dominoes are still standing.”

“But you’re coming along, right?”

She nodded, said, “That’s the plan.” And sat back again, lost in thought.

They rode in silence for long minutes, Moe watching the Colorado scenery go by out the window, some of it damn close to the window, the tracks carved out of the side of the mountains. Other times, they wound their way through river valleys that had done the carving long before train tracks arrived.

The last time Moe had seen mountains was in Switzerland, in Zurich. That seemed a long time ago now. Funny how he’d damn near forgotten about that whole thing, though at the time it had been about the most exciting and worthwhile thing he’d ever done. Beat the hell out of baseball.

The woman was napping, despite the scenery, and Moe finally nodded off himself, too. Fifteen minutes that was all. Then back to work.

But the hard flash of nausea – a feeling he knew too well now – brought him upright after just a few minutes of closed eyes. The woman was gone, her book lying there on the table. The train felt different, the rhythm had changed.

They were rounding a big curve and slowing some. The whistle blew. It sounded breathy. Moe leaned over and looked out the window. They were in the same wide river valley they’d been in before and Moe could see the front five cars and a coal car there, at the front, a huge steam engine ahead of it, pulling them along, smoke pouring out the stack. He hadn’t seen one of those in years. Well, be damned. He sat back. He suspected she was gone; wasn’t in this place anymore, this version of things. She’d warned him that might happen. He wondered if he’d see her again or if he was on his own now. He wondered if it mattered.

* * *

Moe stood on the wet-slick road and listened to the big rig’s engine strain as it worked its way up the slope. He looked around for the woman. She’d said she’d be here. She’d promised that, in fact, and yet the moment was almost here and there were a couple of hundred people standing by the side of the road and over on the parking lot of the gas station and its café and not one of those people was her. The whole week in Los Angeles, knocking around, checking things out, using his press credentials to get into the workshop at Caltech; he’d been looking for her, expecting her to show up again after that conversation in Oakland. But nothing.

Maybe, Moe thought, he was in the wrong reality? Maybe he needed a lot more nausea? The woman had said she’d be here, hadn’t she? He took a deep breath, thought it through. Maybe, in fact, she hadn’t made any promises. Maybe she’d just said she’d hoped to be here. Maybe he was on his own. Maybe that was the point of the whole thing.

Now here he was coming down to the final few minutes of this little drama and Moe didn’t know for sure if what she’d asked him to do was still the right thing at the right time for this place, this here, this now.

Thing was, it felt right. In his gut, that same gut that wrenched at him each time he shifted from one version to another, he felt this was it.

The California Republic was playing nice with the Japanese Occupied Territories here, just like it was supposed to. The emperor’s own son, Akishino, was here, ready to cut the ribbon on the big Subaru telescope, and that too was right. It was Japanese money that finished the observatory, it was Japanese expertise that built the housing for the big mirror that was coming on that truck. That, too, was spot on. And all of this was pissing off the Germans, who wanted California for their own, for the West Coast ports they needed for their navy, Moe was guessing. For that the Germans were willing to set off a superbomb that would take off the top of Mount Palomar and start a war to clear the Rising Sun out of California. Hell, they probably had a superbomb in Tokyo Harbor ready to go off right now, too.

He looked down the road and there, maybe 500 yards away, was that big Aerocar flatbed trailer being pulled along by the overhead cab. And on that trailer was the mirror, the 200-incher, polished to perfection, maybe the only remnant in this time and place of the technology that the old United States once had.

The big rig was down to a mile or two per hour, straining to make the climb. Moe knew why. There was an extra ton of weight on that flat-bed. A deadly ton. Hidden under the tarp. The device, the superbomb, he had to do something about.

And he was ready. Mr. Eveready, Johnny on the spot. SuperMoe. Two shots to the chest would do it. He looked around. No woman. No Donovan either. Well, that was all right. He knew what he was supposed to do, and he was ready to do it. Hell, might be fun.

And then it started to fall apart. A kid who’d been looking at him earlier, wearing a Hollywood Stars baseball cap, grabbed his pal by the sleeve and came over to Moe and said “Say mister, ain’t you Moe Berg, the ballplayer? Hughie and I think you are.”

“I didn’t say it, you did,” said Hughie, who looked bookish and quiet but stood up for himself.

Moe didn’t have time for this, but couldn’t draw any attention to himself, either; there was no pushing these kids out of the way. Play nice for another few minutes. “No, kid,” Moe told him, “you got me confused with someone else. Sorry.”

But the kid, twelve or thirteen, at that age where he was starting to think he knew things, was dead certain of them, said “You are Moe Berg. I saw you play for the Oaks. I told Hughie, you were playing shortstop and then you went and hit a homer against us and then later you scored on a play at the plate to win the game. That was two years ago, in August. That knocked us out of first place. You really gave those homers a ride; I’ll say that.”

“Sorry about that, kid,” Moe said. He had no recollection of that at all, of course. He hadn’t even been there. In fact, he was starting to figure out, it hadn’t actually happened at all until he, Moe Berg, had shown up in this version of reality. He’d arrived and then, instantly, there was a whole history of Moe Berg, Pacific Coast League ballplayer, Oakland Oaks shortstop. Moe Berg who had always been there, who’d played for years in the PCL, who had a personal history that included being born in Sacramento and raised in San Jose and who’d gone to college at Stanford and gotten that law degree and a Ph.D. to boot and then thrown all that education away to play baseball, a kid’s game, an inconsequential career in an inconsequential league in an inconsequential sport.

And now he was here, all the tiny drops of rain becoming rivulets of action coming together into larger streams and rivers and lakes and oceans of reality until Moe Berg, ballplayer, was talking to this kid who’d seen him play, seen him hit home runs, knew for a fact that there was a Moe Berg here and always had been.

It was dizzying. Here. Now. Back a few doors, back in Chicago, back with the White Sox: was that Moe still there? Was that possible? He didn’t know.

Not that it mattered, whether he knew it or not, whether he understood how it all worked. Here was the deal. He was here and had something to do and these kids were here and getting in the way of things.

How to clear this up? “All right, kid, you got me. But I’m trying to stay out of the spotlight, you know? I’m just here to see the big mirror get up to the observatory. I’m an astronomy fan, kid, that’s all. So, let’s keep it quiet that I’m here. All right?”

Moe looked at Hughie, who nodded yes. He looked at the other kid, whose eyes had opened wide. Now the kid thought he was being included in a Big Secret. He nodded his head. “For sure, Mr. Berg. Honest. I’ll keep it quiet.” And he looked around slowly. “I don’t think anyone heard me, okay?”

“That’s great, kids,” Moe said, putting his finger to his lips and saying “Shhh, right?”

Both kids nodded, committed now to secrecy.

Nice kids, Moe thought, looking down the road to where the big flatbed was slowly inching its way upward, still a good ten minutes or more away. Time enough, surely, to help them out. So, Moe said, “Say, how about I sign your cap there?” to the outspoken one. The kid smiled a big old grin. Moe had pushed the right button.

“What’s your name, kid?” he asked him as the kid handed over the cap and Moe pulled out the ink pen.

“Ollie,” the kid said, then shrugged. “Oliver, really. But don’t write that on there. I ain’t no ‘Ollie,’ and I can’t stand the name.”

Moe laughed, he knew all about not liking your first name. Ever since those damn Stooges came along in the early 1930s he’d had to put up with “Hey, Moe” and “Nyuk, nyuk” jokes. Damned annoying. “For my new pal, Ollie,” he wrote, and then signed it “Moe Berg” and handed Ollie back the cap.

“Hey, thanks, Mr. Berg,” Ollie said, looking at the signature in awe for a long moment.

“And how about you, Hughie? Got a piece of paper on you? I’ll sign it for you.”

“I do,” said Hughie, quietly, and reached into his front pants pocket to pull out a little notepad.

He handed it to Moe, who saw it said “Hugh Everett” across the front. “You want Hugh or Hughie there, young man?”

“Hugh, I think,” the kid said, and so Moe signed it “To my pal, Hugh, from your pal Moe Berg,” and handed it back.

“That okay, now, guys?” Moe started to ask, but before he could even get it out of his mouth the two of them had turned to run back across the road to where a couple of parents stood patiently, smiling. Well, hell, Moe thought, I made the kids happy, so the day won’t be a complete waste no matter what.

Sure.

Miriam Ruggiero, the fascist, the double agent that Donovan had his plans for, had watched all this, a little smile on her face. As Ollie walked away she came back over to Moe, said, “So, you’re a ballplayer, really? I knew you weren’t a reporter.”

He wasn’t going to say no to that. What the hell should he say? Listen, doll, I’m a spy, just like you? Only while you play both ends against the middle I travel through different versions of things trying to work my way to the One Big Fix that will bring all of you down, all you ambitious, petty, nasty, cold-blooded, vicious fascists. All of you. Down.

No, he chuckled to himself as he half-listened to her. Behind her babble he could hear the gear box straining on the flatbed, just 400 yards away now.

Or maybe, he thought, he could tell Ruggiero that there’s this woman I like. I want to make love to her. She’s gorgeous, and smart enough I can talk with her, and I bet she makes love like a train wreck, so the sheets are all scattered and in knots afterward and the pillows are over there and the blankets I don’t know and who’s on first and what’s on second. Would that work, telling her that? Sure, it would. Right.

Instead, he said, “Yeah, I’m no reporter, I’m a ballplayer. A shortstop for the Oaks. You a fan?”

“Not really,” she said, and then asked, “A team is named after a tree?”

Moe smiled. Small talk for a few more minutes and then all hell would break loose. Good, he was ready for that now. But where the hell was the woman? Clarissa or whatever the hell her name was. Not that names mattered, she said.

He could hear the groan of the tractor-trailer as it struggled upward and toward them. Another one of those clouds from out over the plains below had drifted their way and it was raining a little harder; a cold, steady drizzle now that gathered into droplets on his coat. He turned up the collar.

The kid, Ollie, was standing with his parents. His pal, Hughie, was off to the side a bit. Ollie’s mom was a nice-looking woman in a dress, so her legs were showing on this cool day near the top of the mountain. She wore dark nylons and Moe wondered where she’d gotten them. Did the stores in the California Republic have nylons to sell? Moe hoped they were keeping her warm.

She was wearing a warm coat and had a hat on, a little feather rising from the hatband. Very snappy. Dad was dressed in a business suit that he didn’t look comfortable in. Also, with a hat, a nice fedora, getting coated now in the thickening mist. Moe recognized that face from somewhere.

Ollie saw Moe looking his way and waved. Moe nodded back, wishing he hadn’t looked. He didn’t want to encourage the kid.

But, damnit, he had. Little Ollie started walking Moe’s way, tugging his parents along, pal Hughie trailing along behind. Damn. He didn’t want them around. In about ten minutes that tractor-trailer with that superbomb hiding under the tarp was going to go right by him and Moe had a job to do.

Little Ollie and his entourage made it across the road. “Hey, Mr. Berg,” he said, “this here’s my parents, and they’d like to meet you.” He took off his baseball cap and pointed at the inside of the front bill. “I showed them this great autograph.”

Ollie’s mom reached out her gloved hand to shake Moe’s. “That was very gracious of you to do that for the boys, Mr. Berg. Thank you so much.”

Dad did the same, giving Moe a good, strong handshake. “Yes, Moe – can I call you Moe? – that was very nice, thanks. I watched you play against the Stars a number of times. You always seem to hit our pitching really well,” he said, and smiled.

“Sure,” Moe said to him, “call me Moe. And thanks, on the hitting.” He shrugged. “You know how it goes with hitting, some of them drop in and some of them don’t. Just lucky, I guess, against the Stars.” Truth was, Moe had no idea how he’d done against the Stars. Damndest thing, to have a history and not know it.

And then it dawned on Moe who this was he was talking to. “You’re Marcus Brown, aren’t you?” he asked him.

Sure enough, just like she’d said in Oaks Field the last time he’d seen the woman, here was Marcus Brown, right in front of him. The guy he had to keep alive while he was making sure others were dead.

Moe knew the story, had read about it on the train down from Oakland to Los Angeles. Brown had been just another blue-collar guy in Pasadena, looking for work, when the disk first arrived from Corning, and he was hired as an apprentice to help with the long, hard work of polishing that rough mirror down to the perfection it needed in order to be the greatest telescope the world had ever seen. Over time, he fell in love with the work. His attention to detail and his ability to get totally absorbed in the careful work of polishing pushed him up the ladder of responsibility and he became, in a few years, the man in charge. The polishing took six years, but finally it was done, and now he was here to see his labor rewarded with the installation of that mirror into the great telescope, the Subaru telescope finished with funds from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Republic of California’s new pal in a forced marriage. Japan. The Rising Sun.

Moe guessed Brown planned to bring the wife and son and pal along and walk next to the big rig up the last 1,000 yards to the top of the mountain and the cranes that would take the mirror from the trailer and drop it gently and neatly into the cradle built for it inside the huge dome of the observatory.

But Moe was there to make sure things went a certain way, and that way wasn’t Brownie’s. There was a superbomb involved, and an ambitious Mexico that didn’t know it was being set up, and a Japanese territory to the north that was in for one or two big surprises, and, of course, the Germans. And Ruggiero, working one side or the other.

And Moe Berg was going to have to ruin Brownie’s day.

* * *

It hadn’t taken Moe long to realize things weren’t going exactly as the woman had said they would. Hell, he’d felt that pulse of nausea another couple of times on the train ride and watched the train’s steam loco change back to diesel and then back again to steam before he crossed the border at Reno and bought his ticket for the narrow gauge up and over the Donner Pass and down the western slope of the Sierras to Lodi, a boomtown now that Sacramento was in Japanese hands. There he got back on the bigger train and headed over to Oakland, in the Republic of California.

San Francisco was in Japanese hands, but the Californians had hung onto Oakland and now that there was peace – of a kind – which was obvious as the train wound its way through the golden hills and down on into Oakland. Moe was on the right side of the train and as they neared the Sixteenth Street Station he could see out his window that great broken bridge heading west over the bay where it ended, eerily, just after Yerba Buena Island. The Japanese had, in two years’ time, dismantled their side of the bridge, making a statement about the permanence of the separation between Occupied California and the Republic. Two huge zeppelins, they looked like sister ships to the Hindenburg but wore the rising sun on their tails, were moving out over the bay. One looked like it was heading out over the Golden Gate, which stood serene and whole in the distance, the other was coming in to dock somewhere along the San Francisco piers. Were there daily flights to Japanese-held Hawaii? Probably so, Moe thought. It was a very different war here. Or had been a different war. Too bad.

At the train station twenty minutes later, Moe got out. It was noon and while he needed to get down to Los Angeles, he needed a break, too. He’d been cooped up on that train for nearly forty hours, and that was enough. And since he had a week to prepare for what he had to do down near the border with Mexico, he might as well spend a half day here.

He looked up at the timetable. There were trains heading down to L.A. every two hours or so right up to the sleeper train at midnight. His ticket was good for all of those, including the first-class sleeper. No beautiful mystery woman to share it with, but what the hell. So, it was lunch, dinner, and some sightseeing in Oakland, getting a feel for how it was living up here right on the border with the Japanese. Then he’d head south.

It wasn’t a big train station, despite having transcontinental trains come in five times a day, so Moe’s walk across the tiled floor of the station was a short one, past the coin-operated storage lockers and then the twin newsstands. The Chronicle’s stand was empty now since the city across the bay was Occupied Territory and Moe supposed that the station master was keeping it there, empty, as a reminder of the current realities.

Moe pushed his way through the glass doors and onto the broad, front steps, and stood there for a moment to take in the view, that beautiful bay and there, in the distance, fog-bound Japanese San Francisco. In Oakland the sun was shining.

Moe figured the ballpark was only a couple of miles away and it was a beautiful day for a walk, so he headed in that direction. When he got to San Pablo Avenue an electric trolley pulled in right in front of him and it was headed the right way so he stepped aboard, handed the conductor a nickel and got his ticket in return, and found himself a seat. In three stops, maybe ten minutes, he was there, the trolley stop across the street from Oaks Field.

He was unlucky and the Oaks were out of town, but the ballpark was open and he walked in through the turnstile and up the broad central ramp that led to the stands and when he got at the top of the ramp he stopped and looked around in the bright sunshine. In front of him were fifteen or twenty rows of box seats, painted bright red. Beyond those folded seats was the field, and there were sprinklers going in the outfield, chugging around to spray the grass in big overlapping circles of water. The infield looked pretty good, major-league quality; hell, that even looked like Georgia clay out there, though that seemed unlikely. He walked down to the front row, went to his left to get past the screen, and stepped over the low wall to walk onto the field and out toward the batter’s box, where he stopped for a second and then took one more step, right onto home plate. Both feet firmly planted.

It was all unreal in its normalcy. This was it, home plate, the center of it all, the focal point of baseball. You swing a stick and hit a ball and you run and run until you come home while the other guys try to stop you.

Moe stood on the plate to look around. The field. The green grass, the bases, the perfection and imperfection of every bit of it, from pebbles in the infield that cost you a game to the perfection of leaning into a good pitch and watching it soar out over the players, the outfield, the wall, the fans: right out of the ballpark and bouncing down the street from there, not stopping until some lucky kid saw it rolling along and grabbed it and had himself a baseball.

He looked down the lines at first and third. The baselines, faded now on an off day, ran out to infinity. Funny that, the idea that beyond the outfield wall the lines kept going, widening all the time, taking in, ultimately, the whole damn planet.

And to each side of the plate the batter’s boxes, messy and faded now before the next home game when they’d be re-sprayed, prettied up, confining the hitter, making him stay in that little box and deal with what the pitcher could deliver.

It had only been a few days and already Moe missed the game. He’d thought he’d had enough of it, wouldn’t miss it a bit; but the feel of the glove on his hand, the handle of the bat in his grip, the sound of spikes on wooden walkways from the clubhouse to the dugout. The guys, the childish and silly and wonderful guys who were his teammates.

He heard a seat slap open behind and turned to see the woman there – back at last from wherever the hell she’d gone – sitting down in the first row of the box seats behind the screen, directly behind home.

She waved at him. He shook his head, but left home plate and walked over toward her.

“The fascists, Moe, and the Japanese.”

“What?”

“You’re such a kid, Moe. Forget about baseball, all right? Think about the fascists; you know, Hitler and Mussolini? Think about them and about Tojo and his emperor. Think about the absurdity of Japan occupying most of Northern California.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about those things and think about home, Moe. Your reality. The war going better now that Patton’s in charge on the invasion, the new Gloster Meteor jets that England’s factories are cranking out, the way the Germans pulled back across the Channel after they couldn’t hang onto their toehold in Sussex. Things are turning around in Europe, don’t you think?”

Moe had read the Lodi News on the way to Oakland. He knew how the war here was going, and it was terrible. But she had better news, news from a few places back, a place where he was from. Things couldn’t have changed too much since he’d left that behind.

“Rommel will never give up Cairo,” Moe said, “and the way the Russians collapsed like an empty sack? Hell, the war could go on for years.”

“But the Germans there don’t have a superbomb, Moe, and that’s because of you. Dominoes, Moe. All those dominoes.”

She stood up, walked over to him. “The war is going even better elsewhere, Moe. There are places where Hitler is dead and the Germans are asking for peace. And places where the Russians stopped the Germans cold, and where Rommel failed at Tobruk and never made it to Cairo.”

He’d seen enough changes now to realize that was probably true. But then everything seemed to be true somewhere.

He shook his head. “So where have you been? And how’d you know I’d be here, in this damn banjo-hitters’ ballpark?”

She just smiled at him and he realized that was a stupid question. He might be a long, long way from home – wherever that was – but he was still himself. Of course, he would get to the ballpark.

“Look,” he said to her as he unlatched the gate that blocked access to the field from the front row of the box seats, “it’s time you told me exactly what you need me to do, all right? I know you say you’ll be there, but things don’t always seem to work out how you expect them to, you know?”

“True enough,” she said.

“For all I know I’m going to blink and you’ll be gone again. Forever maybe, or for five seconds and then you show up in different clothes and your hair a different color.”

“All right, Moe,” she said. “You’re right. And you know there are things I can’t tell you, things we don’t want to have change on us, right? But I’ll do what I can to get you ready, Moe.” She turned around to walk back to the seat she’d been in. She sat down, opened the folding seat next to hers, patted the seat, said “Come on, Moe. Sit down here. It’s time to talk about the next week of your most interesting life.”

All right, Moe thought, about damn time. He stepped up into the stands, leaving the field behind, and sat down next to her.

“Moe,” she said. “For starters, and this is important, it has to be two bullets to the chest.”

Moe nodded. “Got it,” he said. But his stomach felt a little queasy.

* * *

Marcus Brown was talking to Moe. “In ‘thirty-nine,” he was saying, “I was there with Ollie and Hughie the day you ran right over the catcher on that play at the plate to beat the Stars. Do you remember that play? It was quite a collision. Ollie still calls that the most exciting baseball play he’s ever seen.”

Moe smiled. He’d learned some things in Oakland earlier in the week and now felt more comfortable in the skin he was pretending to be in. “Sure, I remember, and it hurt like hell. Mickey Kreitner was catching. He’s a tough guy.”

Brown shook his head. “Mickey died in the Battle of Redding, you know. Tragic.”

“I know,” Moe lied, ‘and I was sorry as hell to hear that. I liked him. He was a hell of a ballplayer.”

Brownie smiled, shrugged, said, “It’s been terrible, hasn’t it? And yet here we are on this mountain, and this observatory will be famous all over the planet and somehow, we Californians got it done. It feels good.”

Moe didn’t mention the Japanese help. And then it occurred to Moe that it was pretty damn funny how he was starting to feel that it really had been him in thirty-nine, scooping up groundballs and running the bases like a wild man all season long.

“You know,” Moe said, “the truth is I wasn’t having all that great a season. But Riley kept throwing me fastballs inside and I kept hitting them out. We won, I think.”

“Yes, you did,” said Brownie. “I actually took the day off from work to see Riley pitch that day. I do believe he won twenty games that year.”

“A day off from working on the mirror? To watch a ballgame?” Moe smiled. “I’m honored that baseball matters that much to you.”

“It doesn’t, really,” said Brown. “But Ollie wanted to go, and his pal Hughie lives down the street with his grandparents and we like to do nice things for Hughie, so a ballgame now and then is the least we can do.”

The background noise of the big diesel engine on that Aerocar tractor-trailer changed pitch as Moe listened to him and turned to look. Jesus. He’d been talking baseball with Marcus Brown when this world, this reality and a lot of others, hung in the balance. The big rig was just thirty yards away, straining to make the final grade, straining to pass right by them in the next few minutes.

There was a polite tap on Moe’s shoulder. It was Miriam, asking to be introduced to Brownie, asking if she could stand with them as the great mirror went by. She was holding that clutch of hers, the little beaded aqua-colored handbag. Moe guessed there was a gun in there, something small so she’d need to be close to the target.

The big rig was fifteen yards away now, but barely inching along. Moe, the Brown family and Hughie, Miriam Ruggiero. How long should he wait? Until the cab and the driver were right next to him? Yes, the fork in the road was just beyond that point, so he’d struggle to keep the rig in gear long enough to make the left turn and start going downhill. There’d be trouble, for sure. Even with Miriam dead or dying there’d be others, probably Donovan and his pals who were lurking back in the crowd. They’d have their own guns. Damn.

Moe could see the driver through the windshield. Ten more yards now. Damned if it wasn’t a woman behind the wheel. Damned if it wasn’t the woman, Clarissa or whatever her name was. How’d she do that? Well, hell, that ought to make it easier to deal with Ruggiero and hijack the damn mirror and its bomb.

Five yards. The kid, Ollie, was so excited he was jumping up and down. Hughie was standing still, looking around, keeping an eye on Moe. Brownie himself was grinning and applauding, his wife holding onto his right arm, proud of her man, happy for her son. Everyone was applauding. Miriam was opening up that clutch. Behind the windshield the woman driver wasn’t smiling, she was looking at Moe.

Moe felt a warning twinge in his gut. No, damnit, not now, but then came a major cramping, wrenching bout of nausea and Moe closed his eyes for a moment, a second or two, and when he opened them the road was there, but the crowd was gone, and the sun was shining. Oh, hell. Moe spun once and there was little Hugh Everett standing there, wide-eyed, looking at Moe looking at him.

No! Moe tried to find the moment again, tried to bring it back, tried to change it, and sure enough there was another wrench, and they’d changed. Still no crowd, no Aerocar tractor-trailer, no big mirror, no bomb. But, sure enough, there was the Everett kid, stock still, staring at him.

Another wrench, a hard one, and then it felt right. The crowd was back, the big rig just a few feet away. Too much going on, too many questions, but Moe had to act and so he did, reaching into his coat jacket to get a good grip on the Beretta, pulling it out and turning to face Miriam Ruggiero and glad that he was already aiming at her chest since she was pulling her own gun from that clutch, had it halfway out.

Moe pulled the trigger and there was a click, no more. Misfire. Miriam had her’s out now and was bringing it up to shoot when a form came hurtling in from beside her and hit her in the hips, a nice collision, a play at home plate that jolted her, sent her arms flailing as she pulled the trigger once, twice, before she lost balance completely and went onto her back, firing a third time straight up at the gray sky.

It was Ollie, the kid who’d just made the most important play of his young life. Behind him came both parents, Mom reaching for her child, Brownie reaching for Miriam and her gun and grabbing it before she could fire again, then starting to kneel on her as Moe turned around to get to the cab of the big rig.

There were two holes in the windshield, a foot apart, and inside the woman, Clarissa, was falling forward onto the steering wheel as Moe watched it all happen in slow motion. He ran for the door of the cab, pushed the button to open it, swung it wide and climbed up the two steps that got him next to the woman.

“Go,” she said. “Moe. Go,” and he did that, pushing her across the seat to the passenger side, seeing as he did it how the blood was already starting to flow from one hole and there, a foot away, from another hole, the fabric of the jacket smoking from the heat of the slug that had torn its way through and into the woman.

Moe climbed in, the engine stalling, and stepped on the pedal and felt the rig shudder and then catch as he got seated and grabbed the wheel and tried to see through the shattered windshield as he reached up to pull the horn cord and started steering left and hoped to hell that people were getting out of the way. Out the left window he could see Brownie and a couple of other guys holding the Ruggiero woman down. She was still alive, and that was too bad. Next to Brownie was little Hughie Everett, his eyes on Moe, taking it all in.

A few seconds later Moe had the rig turning left and cresting the little hump where the old road met the new one. Over it and then downhill and, still working the horn, he had it going downhill, shifted up a gear and then another to get some speed and, suddenly, he was in the clear, heading down the road he’d walked yesterday, heading down to the meeting place, heading down to the Californians and bringing them the superbomb. He had a few minutes, he hoped, time enough to get where he needed to be before the Mexicans brought their fast death his way and blew him, the great mirror and the superbomb all to hell.

He looked over at the woman, who was slumped on the seat. She didn’t look good. She managed to raise her head and look at him. She managed to smile. Ten minutes, that’s all they should need. Ten minutes and then they’d leave all this behind, and with any luck when they made the shift to the new place she wouldn’t have a hole in her chest.

“I’ll make it, Moe,” she said to him over the grinding of the gears as he dropped it back one gear to keep control.

Sure, she would. There was a sharp curve to the right, then a steep downhill straightaway, then another sharp right and then he’d be there, they’d be there, on that quarter-mile of wide, flat road. Five minutes? That would do it.

He made the curve, relying too much on the brakes and not enough on the gearbox. He could smell the brakes overheating. Not good, not good.

Straight ahead, out over the plains that led to the ocean, Moe caught a glimpse of the P-38s wheeling, trying to take on the Mexicans, dying in the trying of that but buying him time. He didn’t see any of the big Hughes flying boats.

Time. And changes. That was all they needed, the two of them. A few minutes and a useful change. That nausea and something different, a better place. A place with no fast-death jets.

Riding the brakes down the steep slope, trying to downshift but he couldn’t find the gear so back up to where he’d been. She moaned over in the passenger seat. He stole a quick glance. Blood, way too much blood. Damn it.

Into the final curve, the brakes smelling like he was burning up a house but slowing the rig down enough. Just enough to hold onto the shoulder as they went – too damn fast – around that final curve and there was the stretch he needed. And men in uniform there, even Wild Bill Donovan, the son-of-a-bitch, standing there grinning with a pistol in his hand. Two men manned a big fifty-caliber machine gun and the rest of them stood with their rifles aimed up, shooting at something. Oh, hell, a 262. Had to be. Muerte Rapida.

He wriggled the rig back and forth, trying to be a moving target until he got to the wide spot, where he pulled right, stood on the brakes, shifted down and down and down once more and the rig slowed and slowed again and then, the brakes crying and burning, he was there.

“That Everett kid okay, Moe?” she asked through her pain. “Tell me the kid is okay.”

“The kid is okay,” Moe said. Donovan was running toward their way, one hand raised to shoot his pistol into the air – wasted effort – and the other hand holding onto his hat.

“That’s good,” she said, “real good. The kid matters, Moe. I couldn’t tell you before.”

She winced, but then looked at him and smiled. “It’s going to be all right, Moe, I swear. Here we go. Right now.” She reached over to take his hand and Moe grabbed it for dear life, hanging onto her as they heard the scream of the Mexican jet behind them coming in for a strafing run and saw Donovan coming their way and the Californians firing that big fifty caliber and, maybe, an oomph from behind him and maybe the men at that machine-gun were starting to raise their hands in joy when there came a moment of nausea, a wave of violent convulsion in the pit of his stomach; worse than anything he’d felt before any other shift, and it all went dark and he wondered, as he faded away, if he’d ever wake up from this one.