Lightning

from concealment and sprinted along the edge of the arroyo, angling toward her and toward the meager cover offered by another low dune.
    She leaped to her feet, confident that the Buick would shelter her from the man at the Toyota, and opened fire. The first dozen rounds kicked up sand and chips of shale at the running man's heels, but then the bullets caught up with him, tearing into his legs. He went down, screaming, and was hit on the ground as well. He rolled twice and fell over the edge of the arroyo to the floor thirty feet below.
    Even as the gunman slipped over that brink, Laura heard automatic fire, not from the Toyota but behind her. Before she could turn to meet the threat, she took several bullets in the back and was thrown forward, face down on the hard shale.
25
    "Jews," Hitler said again, angrily. Then: "What of this nuclear weapon that they say may win the war for us?"
    "Another lie, my
Führer
. Though many attempts to develop such a weapon were made in the future, there were never any successes. This is a fantasy the conspirators have created to further misdirect the resources and energies of the Reich."
    A rumbling came through the walls, as if they were not underground but suspended high in the heavens, in a thunderstorm.
    The heavy frames of the paintings thumped against the concrete.
    The pencils jiggled in the copper pot.
    Hitler met Stefan's eyes and studied him for a long time. Then: "I suppose that if you were not loyal to me, you'd simply have come armed and would have killed me the instant you arrived."
    He had considered doing just that, for only in killing Adolf Hitler might he expunge some of the stain on his own soul. But that would have been a selfish act, for by killing Hitler he would have radically changed the course of history and would have put the future as he knew it at extreme risk. He could not forget that his future was also Laura's past; if he meddled sufficiently to change the series of events that fate ordained, perhaps he would change the world for the worse in general and for Laura in particular. What if he killed Hitler here and, upon returning to 1989, found a world so drastically altered that for some reason Laura had never even been born?
    He wanted to kill this snake in human skin, but he could not take the responsibility for the world that might follow. Common sense said that only a better world could result, but he knew that common sense and fate were mutually exclusive concepts.
    "Yes," he said, "had I been a traitor, my
Führer
, I could've done just that. And I worry that the
real
traitors at the institute may sooner or later think of just such a method of assassination."
    Hitler paled. "Tomorrow, I shut the institute down. The gate will be closed until I know the staff is purged of traitors."
    Churchill's bombers may beat you to the punch, Stefan thought.
    "We will win, Stefan, and we'll do so by retaining faith in our great destiny, not by playing fortune teller. We will win because it is our fate to win."
    "It's our destiny," Stefan agreed. "We're on the side of truth."
    Finally the madman smiled. Overcome by a sentimentality that was strange because of the extremely sudden change of mood, Hitler spoke of Stefan's father, Franz, and the early days in Munich: the secret meetings in Anton Drexler's apartment, the public meetings at the beer halls—the
Hofbrauhaus
and
Eberlbräu
.
    Stefan listened for a while, pretending to be enthralled, but when Hitler expressed his continued and unshakable faith in the son of Franz Krieger, Stefan seized the opportunity to leave. "And I, my
Führer
, have undying faith in you and will be, forever, your loyal disciple." He stood, saluted the dictator, put one hand under his shirt to the button on the belt, and said, "Now I must return to the future, for I've more work to do in your behalf."
    "Go?" Hitler said, rising from the desk chair. "But I thought you'd stay now in your own time? Why go there now that you've cleared your name with me?"
    "I think I may know where the traitor Kokoschka has gone, in what corner of the future he's taken refuge. I've got to find him, bring him back, for perhaps only Kokoschka knows the names of the traitors at the institute and can be made to reveal them."
    He saluted quickly, pushed the button on the belt, and left the bunker before Hitler could respond.
    He returned to the institute on the night of March 16, the night that Kokoschka had set out for the San Bernardinos in pursuit of him,