You were so charming, Mike.

Ah, ha! you're thinking. She's making fun of me again! Well, maybe so... But I hope you missed my letter, missed the letters, missed me. Not that you'd admit it if you did, you lamentably decent married man, who found me too bold by far. I think that's what I loved in you.

I also love the odd formality of your letters written secretly, doubtless G.o.d, yes, I enjoy that thought! Bradley scribbling in secret, his cheeks flushed, above the towers of Manhattan.

Your letters, which are filled with a lawyer's reticence, somehow manage to make me feel like a scarlet woman. That's quite an achievement, bud. You make me feel that I'm wallowing in iniquity without its actual pleasures and that's another achievement.

Enough! Let's be serious...

I haven't written for the past eighteen months because I've been travelling. Spain, of course, with the International Brigade, meeting Orwell and Hemingway and all the other, less celebrated intellectuals who idealistically swopped their pens for rifles and often died for the privilege. I didn't carry a rifle my pen and notebook were too heavy

but I was in the market of Guernica, buying some groceries, when the German air force bombed it with high explosives, set it alight with incendiary bombs, then strafed the men, women, and children with machine-gun fire. What I saw there is best not described, but it left its mark on me. It was all I could take.

I returned to London in time to describe, for the loyal readers of the Roswell Daily Record, how King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned, with magnificent pomp and splendour, in Westminster Abbey. I loved it all, I do confess it was like a Hollywood musical: the golden coach drawn by eight grays, with four postilions and six footmen, plus eight grooms and four yeomen of the Guard walking beside it. What with that and the royal outfits of deep red and snowwhite ermine, not to mention the thousands thronging the Mall and Trafalgar Square, I doubt that Cecil B. De Mille could have done it better and certainly, after Spain and some weeks in n.a.z.i Germany, it all seemed so civilized.

I was reminded of you when, a week before the Coronation, the great German airship, the Hindenburg, exploded in New Jersey, after crossing the Atlantic from Frankfurt. Then jean Harlow died and was followed by George Gershwin and I started to think of pa.s.sing time and my age and of the fact that the last time I saw you, which was only the second time, was almost five years ago. I was going to write to you, but I was packed off to Germany by my good friends in Roswell.

The first thing I reported from Germany was the reorganization of the concentration camps, most notably the new establishment opened at Buchenwald, in Thuringia, to house more enemies of the state, and the changes of administration in the camps at Dachau, Sachenshausen, and Lichtenburg, all of which are democratic enough to take women prisoners as well as other automatic enemies of the glorious Third Reich, including Jews and Communists, though gypsies, the mentally ill, and other so-called undesirables are certainly in line for consideration.

G.o.d help Europe, indeed!

Here in London, they're already building air-raid shelters and providing local authorities with millions of sandbags. What can this mean, we ask? 'Peace for our time,' says Neville Chamberlain. Pull the other one, Neville...

And so I think of you. I think of you when I think of America, which I did when Harlow and Gershwin died and my age started telling. And I thought of you and my age when the Hindenburg exploded and I was reminded of airships and aeronautics in general and my former lover, John Wilson, in particular, because through him I met you.

Can you believe that we first met nearly eight years ago? Can you believe, also, that we've actually only met twice and that the last time was nearly five years ago? We met through John Wilson, are haunted by him, and are helplessly tied to one another by his ghost.

Three up for John Wilson.

You keep writing and asking me questions about Wilson and it makes me feel worthless. I've been married and divorced and I've known lots of men, but you, Mike Bradley, solid citizen and moral man, are only interested in what I knew about Wilson. I feel as if I'm invisible.

Okay, down to business...

I asked a pragmatic friend in the British Defence Department to check their report on the Tunguska explosion in Siberia and tell me what their a.s.sessment of it was. Frankly, given normal British scepticism, their a.s.sessment was almost weird in its conviction that something odd had occurred and that it had not been caused by a meteor or other extraterrestrial source. In fact, according to British intelligence: (I) Nothing crashed into the Tunguska forest; (2) The angle of the trees bent by the blast proved that the explosion had occurred above them, not within them; (3) Pieces of an unknown metallic compound were found at the scene of the devastation; and (4) Just before the explosion, a lot of those living in the area reported seeing what appeared to be a small, fiery ball sweeping across the sky above the forest. Then it went down and whammo!

A small fiery ball with a dark core, possibly metallic...

The public stance in Britain was that the explosion had been caused by a meteorite but the private stance, at least that of the Department of Defence and British intelligence, was that it had been caused by some kind of man-made object that did not repeat: did not

come from Russia, but from outside its borders. Also, the reported sightings seemed to suggest that the object, whatever it was, had not come down from the stratosphere, but had been completing a descending trajectory at the end of a flight from west to east. In other words, it could have come from Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, North America, Canada, Alaska, or even farther... Unless it originally left Russia, circled the globe and returned to its source, which seems too ridiculous. The Brits, then, decided that 'if' a terrestrial object had been involved and they certainly weren't too sure of that then it probably emanated from Europe, possibly Germany.

So what do you think, bub?

I know what you think. You think it came from Wilson, from Iowa or Illinois, and that it flew from North America, across the Atlantic Ocean, across Europe, then on to Russia ... And having known Wilson, I believe you might be right.

Is Wilson still in Germany? Yes, I think so but I still can't confirm it. Asking questions there, I quickly found out, can be pretty dangerous. Nevertheless, I'm going back there, for the humble Roswell Daily Record, and if I find out anything at all, I'll certainly let you know.

I really enjoy writing these letters. It's like having a drink with you. I never loved John Wilson he was too cold and remote for that and when I met you, though you've never laid a hand on me, I understood why. I can write about Wilson now because he's everything you're not: a man whose lack of feeling reminds me of all the feelings you hide.

You wanted me so much, Bradley you couldn't hide it and I couldn't resist it. But what I loved you for (yes, I did and still do) was the knowledge that no matter how much you wanted me, you also loved your wife and kids too much to let me be a threat to them.

Which just made me love you more.

I can say that now, can't I, Mr Bradley? Because being at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I'm no longer a threat to you.

That's why I'm bold with you.

I'll write again when I get back from Germany. Adios, mi amigo.

Yours from too great a distance,

Gladys

Hiding his emotions, as Gladys had known that he would, Bradley folded the letter neatly, placed it back in his billfold, and gratefully climbed off the train when it arrived in Bridgeport. Given the guilt he was feeling over what he had not done, though had certainly contemplated, he was glad that Joan hadn't known when he was coming back and so wasn't at the station to meet him. Instead, he caught a bus, which he had not done for years, and simply by doing that for a change, felt that he had stepped back in time and was returning from high school.

That journey home, through the greenery of Connecticut, certainly made him feel young again, if only for a short time. And feeling young, he thought of Gladys, who also made him feel young, and recalled all the letters she had sent him over the years, ever since leaving the United States to work in England and Europe. The letters were like the woman, at once laconic and suggestive, and as they had only met twice and hadn't seen one another for almost five years, Bradley couldn't quite work out just how sincere they were, let alone what his reaction to them was or should be.

He had certainly found her very attractive and, in truth, still did, but he found the addiction more disturbing because he couldn't fully believe in it. He thought of her too much, even had erotic dreams about her, and could only explain this lasting attraction as part and parcel of his growing obsession with the mysterious John Wilson.

If not for Wilson, whom ironically he had never laid eyes upon, he would not have met Gladys Kinder in the first place.