"Oh," the escort said, his eyes wide. "Do you want us to come with you, then, make sure nothing happens to him?"
An impatient shake of the head answered him. The middle-aged man said, "He's not going anywhere I don't want him to." He slapped his vest pocket. He didn't come right out and say he had a gun in there, but Paul believed it. So did the young men from the Tongs. They didn't argue any more. The man pointed at Paul again, then jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. "Get moving, kid. We don't have all day."
Paul got moving. As he went, he said, "Will somebody for once tell me what the devil's going on?"
"Haven't you figured it out?" The Chinese man steered him around a corner. The fellow paused for a moment before following— he wanted to make sure the escorts weren't coming along in spite of what he'd said. They must not have been, for he caught up to Paul with a smile on his face. It made him look younger and not nearly so unpleasant. "It took me long enough to get here from Berlin—and from Crosstime Traffic."
Now Paul was the one who stopped dead. "From . . . Crosstime Traffic?" he whispered.
"Yup," the Chinese man said cheerfully. "I'm Sam Wong, by the way. Call me Sammy—everybody else does. A dollar for your thoughts." He paused to take a longer look at Paul. "You okay, kid? You're a little green around the gills."
"I don't know." Paul felt dizzy. He wasn't surprised Sammy Wong could see it in his face. Too much was happening too fast "Wait a minute." He tried to gather himself. "You're from—"
"The home timeline? You better believe it," Wong answered.
He knew the right things to say. Nobody in the home timeline said a penny for your thoughts the way they did here. Nobody in the home timeline had even seen a penny since Paul's great-grandfather was a boy. Sammy Wong knew there was a home timeline, which gave him a head start right there. And he knew there was such a thing as Crosstime Traffic.
All of which proved . . . what? If the Feldgendarmerie had squeezed Dad, or if somebody else form the home timeline had goofed and got caught, who could guess what the locals knew?
"I'd better believe it?" Paul said. "How can I? How can I be sure, I mean?"
"Oh." Sammy Wong winked at him. "I get it. You don't think I'm the genuine article. Well, you can find out. Ask me anything."
"Like what?"
Wong shook his head. "No. If I tell you what to ask me, you'll figure I told you to ask that because somebody briefed me on it. You pick the questions."
That made sense. Paul thought. What were some things nobody from this alternate was likely to know? "Who won the Super Bowl last year?"
"The Bengals. Second year in a row," Sammy Wong answered at once.
He was right. But that was the sort of thing clever people might brief an agent about. Paul needed something else. He snapped his fingers. "How much does a Whopper combo cost, and who sells it?"
"You get 'em at Burger King, and they run about five benjamins."
Paul grinned with relief. "Okay. I'm convinced. And I'm mighty glad to see you, too."
"Yeah, well, somebody had to come pick up the pieces. Happens they stuck me with it," Wong said. "What did go wrong here? You guys vanished off the face of the earth."
"They decided our electronics were too good to be true," Paul said bitterly. "I was afraid that would happen, and I was right. They got Dad. Only reason they didn't get me, too, is that I wasn't home when they came."
"That would have made things harder," Wong said. "More complicated, anyhow. For now, it looks like the Chinese are going to be able to get your father out of jail."
"Great!" Paul said—the escort hadn't been lying, then. The older man didn't seem so delighted. After a moment, Paul saw why: "Oh. Then they'll have him instead."
"Right the first time," Sammy Wong said. "And maybe they'll play nice if you sing for them.... I suppose that was the deal?" He waited. Paul nodded. So did Wong. "Okay. Figured as much—it was the only card you had. Can't blame you for playing it. But they might decide to hang on to you and your old man once you do sing. This is their big chance, or they hope it is."
"Uh-huh," Paul said. "Wouldn't do them as much good as they think."
Wong shrugged. "I don't mind giving them some help, as long as I can do it without giving away the crosstime secret."
Paul almost said the secret was already lost. Lucy had it, sure enough. But if he told that to this fellow who'd never met her, what was Wong liable to do? Get rid of her. Crosstime Traffic people could be ruthless when they had to. That was part of their job. Paul didn't care about their job. He didn't want anything happening to Lucy.
He did say, "The Tongs are close. I'm not sure how close the Germans are." Sammy Wong needed to know that. Paul went on, "Don't bet that the Germans aren't, especially now that they've got their hands on Dad. But it was what we were selling that made people sit up and take notice. Like I said, it was too good. People knew it couldn't be from here."
Frowning, Wong said, "I don't know what to do about that. If we just sell ordinary junk, who'll buy from us? Where will we get the money we need to buy produce? The home timeline has to eat, you know." He was smooth. He didn't say anything like Crosstime Traffic has to turn a profit. That was there, but he didn't come out and hit Paul over the head with it.
As a matter fact, Dad had used exactly the same argument. Paul hadn't been able to tell him he was wrong, either. Nor could he tell Wong he was wrong. All he could do was ask, "So what happens next?"
"I think we put you on ice for a while," the Crosstime Traffic man answered. "We've still got to work out how we're going to set all this to rights." He muttered something to himself, then spoke out loud: "It's not going to be as easy as anybody back at the home timeline thought."
His idea of how to put Paul on ice was .. . different. After the Feldgendarmerie raid, Paul had tried to find the most obscure hidey-hole he could. Sammy Wong, by contrast, walked over to the Palace Hotel on Market Street and booked him in there. It was the fanciest, most expensive hotel this San Francisco boasted.
Sammy Wong turned out to have the room next door. Grinning, he said, "When somebody goes missing, the cops'll turn the Tenderloin upside down. Nobody'd think to look here."
"Easy for you to say," Paul answered. "I couldn't have afforded this for a week, not with the money I had."
"That does make a difference," Wong admitted. "You're here now, though. Enjoy it. Call room service. Order yourself prime rib or a lobster. Why not? It's on the company."
The bed was big enough to get lost in. The bathtub was big enough to swim in (though nobody here had ever heard of a Jacuzzi). Room service seemed wonderful. Paul decided that, if he had to hide out somewhere, this knocked the socks off the miserable joint where he had been staying.
Whenever Lucy was out on the street, she looked for Paul. She knew the Triads had lots of people doing the same thing. So did the San Francisco police. And so did the Feldgendarmerie. Her odds of finding him first—of finding him at all—weren't good. She looked anyhow.
It's for his own good, she told himself. Anyone else who caught him would want to pull information out of him. Whoever did wouldn't be gentle about it, either. Lucy wondered what she'd do if she spotted him first. Tell him to run away and hide, she supposed. But how could he have disappeared so completely?
Had he somehow gone back to his own world? How? He'd said the only way there was through Curious Notions. He couldn't have got back in the shop . . . could he? She didn't see how. The Feld-gendarmerie hadn't forgotten about it. They weren't that dumb. Germany wouldn't have stayed top dog for as long as she had if the people in her secret police were fools.
Lucy wondered if Stanley Hsu and his friends had figured out that Paul might have vanished from this world altogether—and that his father might do the same. She didn't say anything to the jeweler about that. She wondered if Lawrence Gomes would mention it. She didn't think so. If that possibility wasn't his ace in the hole, she would have been amazed.