Follow the Dotted Line by Nancy Hersage Page A

the Baron, is not dead but being held in a prison camp in southern Germany.
    “For Emma the news is not only thrilling, it’s unsettling. Her husband is alive. What’s more, he could be a valuable asset to the Allies if he could escape. Ironically, no one in British intelligence is better suited to navigate the labyrinth of war-torn Germany and attempt to free him than Emma herself. But everyone in the agency agrees that sending Emma back into Germany is out of the question.”
    Sam perused the room, as if she were looking for someone to call on. Her eyes finally settled on Harley. But instead of asking a question, she spoke as if she were telling him a secret. “And this is where we reach the really interesting part.”
    End Act I, thought Andy. That’s my girl.
    “War, as you know, fulfills a great many human agendas,” Sam said, returning to her academic voice to establish the setting for the next part of the story. “Political. Economic. Philosophical. Professional. But most often, in my opinion, personal. Leaders go to war to make a name for themselves. Or exact some kind of revenge against an enemy who has slighted their self-image or insulted their family. Or simply because it makes them feel powerful. And war gives lesser players opportunities to fulfill their ambitions, as well. Men who thrive on violence get their hands on guns. Engineers and physicists are invited to explore science by creating new weapons of death. And entrepreneurs can suddenly make money in ways that, in times of peace, are thought to be morally corrupt. War is pretty much a free-for-all.
    “So when Emma Linde pleads with her superiors that she simply must return to Germany, no matter what the cost, British Intelligence sees an opportunity to go where no one has gone before.”
    It was hard to guess exactly which direction the professor was headed, Andy thought with admiration, and along with almost everybody else in the room, she leaned forward, waiting for the action of Act II to begin.
    “With Emma’s consent, the men in Cairo call in a team of surgeons from London,” Sam explained. “These men spend the next five months making what was once such a lovely face—unrecognizable. In fact, Emma’s handlers willingly use her desire to go back undercover as an excuse to test every reconstructive surgical technique they have ever imagined.
    “Here in 21st century California, we consider taking a knife to the face a routine, if expensive, act of vanity,” Sam observed, soberly. “But in Emma’s case, this is no act of vanity, and there is nothing routine about it. It is experimental and dangerous. Yet, in all my research, I did not find one indication that she ever objects to any of this butchery.
    “Why, you may ask. Because, like everyone else in this war, she has her own personal agenda. So when she emerges from the hospital months later, ready to return to the field, Emma Linde is fully aware of what she has let them do to her. She is no longer naïve. Nor is she beautiful. In fact, I have seen correspondence in which those who know her describe her appearance as ‘ghastly.’ But Emma doesn’t seem to care. She is a woman on a mission.”
    Sam glanced at her watch, setting off a ripple of anxiety across the room. That’s it, Andy nodded, make them beg for Act III.
    “Let me just say,” Sam continued, picking up her narrative ever so slightly, “that the overlords in London are delighted by the results of their young agent’s transformation. And they are very eager for her to return to the belly of the beast to see if their experiment works. So Emma returns to Germany with a new face and new papers and a new purpose. This time it’s personal.
    “Emma begins by embedding herself in the small community near the camp where the Baron is being held. She manages to get a job delivering potatoes to the camp, at one point walking by a wall in the prison with a wanted poster displaying her picture. Not a spark of recognition by