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Troop?”
    David Strauss began to pick up the pace. He tried to ignore the agent. “Little stitch in my side. Diaphragm spasm. Getting my second wind, though.”
    “You can’t fight them.” Callaghan was struggling to keep up with the younger man. His chest was twisting tighter and tighter. His legs felt leaden. His neck and shoulders ached.
    “The fuck I can’t. If I ever get the chance … I goddamn will. Fight the bastards. Murdering coward bastards.”
    “They’re not going … challenge you to a footrace, Doctor.”
    David said nothing.
    That
made Harry Callaghan angry.
    Damnit, he
knew
about the Reich. Callaghan knew more about the Nazis than just about any field man in the Bureau.
He could help
. That was his job. David Strauss was choosing to ignore him, though. Acting as if the agent were some kind of useless second asshole.
    Furious, Harry Callaghan stuck his foot out.
    He knew he shouldn’t have the second he did it.
Not professional, Harry
. Not rational.
    David fell hard and fast. As if he’d been hit by a bullet from a sniper’s rifle. Something Harry Callaghan had seen happen to a man.
    The green shirt and shorts, the wheeling arms and legs, flipped, somersaulted, and rolled to an exaggerated stop against a wall of scrub pines.
    “You might as well learn a lesson right now,” the FBI agent called down from the main trail.
    “The Nazis run dirty, Dr. Strauss. Remember that.”
    Harry Callaghan headed back to the Cherrywoods Hotel.
    Walking slowly.

CHAPTER 17
    The realization that she was maybe royally screwing up her life, her acting career at least, came to Alix Rothschild slowly, over a couple of weeks in mid-spring.
    First there had been the million-dollar perfume stink in front of Henri Bendel’s.
    Then another tempest in a teapot, in The Café of the Sherry Netherland, with a slick “packager” representing CBS, MFA, and apparently two million dollars.
    Now there was the most uncomfortable tableau of all. At her movie company’s New York offices, high over Central Park South.
    Alix’s agent, Mark Halperin, was there, the California golden boy. He was biting his manicured nails, sliding his sunglasses in and out of a breast pocket of his Western shirt, rubbing the soles of his fashionably soiled tennis sneakers together.
    Also present in the posh business office was Arnold Manning, former president of one of the few remaining large studios in Hollywood. The gonzo independent producer was unattractive. He was bald and stout.
    Manning sat in the midst of a coterie of studio lawyers, accountants, and other vice presidents. These overindulged men seemed to confuse themselves with their company’s movie stars and directors.
    Arnold Manning spoke to Alix in the softest voice—as if she were a wayward but much-loved daughter—which in a way, Alix was.
    “Must I remind you, Alix, dear, sweet, confusing, confused lady, that we have a three-picture arrangement, you and I. That’s for
movies. Three
movies.”
    “That’s fine, Arnold,” Alix nodded. “I just haven’t liked the scripts you’ve been sending me.”
    One of the studio heads reared ugly. “Point of information, Alix. As I understand it, Jackie Bisset didn’t like the script for
The Deep
. Dick Dreyfuss didn’t want to do
Jaws
. Facts.”
    Alix looked away and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows that were rattling softly in their giant aluminum frames.
    Outside was Columbus Circle. Lovely Central Park in late spring. No visions of concentration camps today. No Dachau. No Buchenwald. Not yet, anyway.
    “Please, listen.” Alix turned back to Arnold Manning. On her face was a small child’s hurt look. Crestfallen green eyes. The slightest thin-lipped moue.
    “I promise to do the three pictures for you. I promise. I owe you, Arnold. I also kind of love you, dear, sweet, dark, confusing, I forget the rest, man.”
    Arnold Manning looked hurt now. The slightest fat-lipped moue. “You forget
sexy as hell
.”
    For the first