By the time Ben was seven, he knew all about the War.  There were good guys and bad guys, and the good guys were heroes and the bad guys were Germans and Japanese.  Mama and Papa told him to be nice to the German and Japanese kids at school, because the war wasn't their fault, but Ben was wary of them.  Mama's father was Grandpa Joe and he was a hero because he had fought as a fighter pilot.  Ben loved sitting on Grandpa Joe's knee and hearing about dogfights over the Pacific Ocean, shooting down Zeroes and becoming an ace.  Papa's mother Grandma Esther had survived "the camps" and was a different type of hero, but no one was allowed to talk about it.  Once Ben asked about the black numbers on Grandma's arm.  Mama started to cry, and Papa scolded him for being rude, but Grandma didn't seem to mind.  She didn't answer the question, just started talking about her friend Jakob.

"He was  German Jew, and very handsome."  Grandma always smiled when she talked about Jakob, but Mama and Papa must have heard the stories too many times, and they shushed her before Ben ever got to hear the end.

"He had flaming orange hair and bright, cat-green eyes.  he worked on the other side of the fence at the munitions factory, and sometimes he talked to me.  He smuggled me his bread every day, and he smiled at me."

"Mother, please," Papa said, sounding aggrieved like he did whenever Ben's older sister Rebecca started to argue back about something teenaged and grown-up that Ben didn't understand.

Ben stood by Grandma's hospital bed and listened eagerly.

Mama put a hand over her mouth and looked ready to cry.  Papa sighed and put an arm around her shoulders.  He led her out of the room.  The door clicked shut behind them, but Grandma didn't seem to notice.

"Tell me more, Grandma," Ben said, thrilled.  He would finally get to hear the end!  He offered his small hand to hold, and Grandma closed her spidery fingers over his without seeing him.

"I watched Jakob starve to death for me," she said.  "Every day he was thinner, his eyes bright with animal hunger.  But his words for me were never anything but gentle."

"What happened to him, Grandma?"

She didn't seem to hear him, and he didn't mind.  This part of the story was new.

"Then one day Erik, a Polish boy, told me that Jakob had not passed work selection."  Grandma's eyes filled with tears, and Ben hung onto her hand, tense, waiting for them to fall.  They never did.  "That night we heard screams from the furnaces."  Her hand clenched tighter around his, and she struggled to push herself up.  Ben helped her sit up, and she leaned in, whispering even though they were alone in the room.  "They were burning Jakob alive."

Nightmare horror shot down Ben's spine.  "People were burned alive in the camps?"

Grandma met his eyes, and for the first time she saw him.

"Benjamin, Tobias didn't want to hear this, and he wouldn't want you to hear it, but I must tell it."

Ben realized that Mama and Papa were wrong.  Grandma wasn't senile.  She had called him "Toby" for years, and at his parents' behest he went along with it, but now her eyes were bright and clear, as fierce and as knowing as Papa's.

"They burned people dead.  All the time.  Day and night, smoke poured from the furnace stacks.  I will never forget the stench of human flesh and flame."  Her grip tightened, and Ben squeaked when her blunt nails broke his skin.

He didn't pull away.  Instead he remained as still as a doll, trapped by her gaze, riveted by her words.

"Jakob was the first man I ever loved.  And I heard him screaming.  Somehow he survived the showers, and they burned him alive.  We all woke in the middle of the night, and I knew his voice.  There was nothing we could do."

"What showers, Grandma?" Ben asked.

The door banged open, and Papa rushed to Ben's side.

"Ben!  What are you doing in here?  Your mother and I almost drove home without you!"  Papa tugged Ben free of Grandma's hand, and then said a bad word when he saw the blood on Ben's arm.

Mama stood in the doorway, hand over her mouth as before, and looked as if she had already cried.

"Grandma didn't hurt me," Ben said.  "I just wanted to hear the end of the story," he protested when Papa glared at him.

Papa dragged Ben out of the room, and he barely managed to wave a good-bye, but Grandma's eyes were distant again, and she didn't even notice him go.

By the time Ben was seventeen the damage had been done, and his parents could no longer hide the truth of the Second World War from him.  He knew all about the concentration camps and kamikaze pilots, and he understood exactly what his grandmother had told him ten years ago.  Against his parents' wishes he researched the horror of the camps and the suffering its prisoners underwent, and he stopped being wary of the German and Japanese kids at school, because he knew that wariness could turn into fear and fear could lead to more people suffering the same way Grandma had.

This time Grandma was dying.  She hadn't called Ben by his name in ten years, so he smiled and answered to Toby and learned all sorts of interesting things about his own father's boyhood.  His father was always embarrassed whenever Grandma scolded Ben for something he hadn't done, like smoking out behind the garage or sneaking out for a date with "that girl" (who turned out to be Ben's mother).

The entire family was there, aunts and uncles and more cousins than Ben could properly name.  They were all there to say goodbye to Grandma, but she didn't seem to see them, not really.  Ben's mother was crying, as was his sister, and several of the women had to duck out of the room to cry louder.

"Love you, Ma," Tobias said, and kissed his mother on the cheek.  She barely seemed to notice the gesture, and the family filed out of her hospital room.

Ben lingered in the hallway with some of the cousins who were his own age and pretended not to eavesdrop on the adults' conversation.

The doctor arrived, and even more relatives pretended not to eavesdrop, but the news wasn't unexpected.  Grandma only had a few days left, and the best they could do was make it comfortable for her.

It was Aunt Beth's big idea to celebrate as much as possible for Grandma before she died, so for the next few days the family crammed themselves into the painful white sterility of the hospital room and celebrated Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, Easter, and Christmas all in one go.  Grandma came to for some of the celebrations, and seemed genuinely charmed by all the balloons and food and bright colors.  The younger children reveled in the celebration as well, but everyone who was old enough to know exchanged pained smiles and kept the party going.

Ben hung back near the door, as he had been elected to dash back and forth to the car for more supplies.  He supposed that his years on the track and field might have something to do with his appointment to the post, but his parents had never forgotten the day he "upset" Grandma as a child.  He still had the scars on his arms.

After his last run to the car he left the door open.  With that many people crowded into the room it got hot quickly, and since the Cohen family wasn't very loud, he supposed that the nurses wouldn't mind.

Ben handed over a bag of plastic utensils and settled back against the doorjamb.  Several of his other teenage cousins had affected similar poses of disinterest, and Ben was sure that there was going to be a permanent groove next to his spine from the way he rested all of his weight against the sharp door frame.

Everything was going well, and then one of the smaller children did it, asked about the numbers on Grandma's arm because the hospital gown didn't cover the numbers properly and only bad people had tattoos.

Tobias's head whipped around and he pinned his son with a glare, but Ben threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender, because he honestly hadn't put little Nathan up to the task.

Ben's mother looked sickened, and several of the aunts started to cry.

Tobias leaned down and tried to hush Grandma, because she was starting in about Jakob again, and Nathan's mother was giving him a sound scolding.

"No," Grandma said, and everyone gasped when she heaved herself up into a sitting position.  "Jakob promised to be with me when I died.  Where is Jakob?"

Tobias patted her arm awkwardly.  "Mom, Jakob isn't here.  Jakob's already dead."

"He's not dead!  I heard him screaming!  He was alive when they put him in there!"

Ben's cousins exchanged curious looks, but the younger children were startled at all of the fuss and were beginning to cry, so there was much scrambling to stop the children from crying.

Grandma stretched one arm out, eyes wide and joyous, and Ben's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Jakob, my love, you came back!  I knew you would keep your promise."

Tobias and Aunt Beth tried to get her to lay back down, but Grandma struggled weakly against them, reaching toward Ben, toward the door.

"I knew it was you as soon as I saw you.  You look just as a remember you."  Grandma was practically sobbing with sheer joy.  "You're still so handsome, so young and strong."

"Mother, no one's there," Tobias insisted.

Ben saw his grandmother mouth the words "I love you," and suddenly the fight was gone from her, and she sank down against the bed.

Tobias jumped back, startled at her sudden compliance, and there was stunned silence.

Ben realized his grandmother was dead half a second before everyone else did.  And then the tears came.

Grandmother Esther looked peaceful in her sleep, and Ben thought they should all be quiet, that she deserved peace after all she had lived through.

A strange cloying scent stung Ben's nose, and he turned sharply, but the doorway was empty.

The alarms went off, prompting the children to wail along in confusion, and nurses shooed the family out of the room.

Ben was swept along in the mass exodus.

A nurse called out, "Sir, there's no smoking in hospitals."

"Sorry," a man replied, his voice low and husky.

Ben craned his neck to see over the heads of his relatives and saw a man walking away.  He walked with a slow, easy stride and wore a long green coat.

And he had long, bright orange hair.

Ben pushed past his cousins.  "Hey, wait!"

The man paused, ashed his cigarette, and turned.  He winked at Ben with a single green eye, bright and wickedly tilted like a cat's, and then lowered a pair of red shades.  He vanished around the corner too quickly for a man moving at a casual saunter, and Ben broke into a run.

He made it to the end of the corridor and around the corner just in time to see the door of the stairwell swinging shut and a green-clad figure gliding past the small window in the door.

Ben cursed his relatives for wearing him down already and pushed his long legs to the limit, dashing down the stairs.  He peered down the stairwell, taking two steps at a time, but the strange man stayed two floors ahead of him the entire way.

When Ben burst onto the sidewalk, panting and heaving, the pedestrians stared, but the man was nowhere in sight.

He headed back up the stairs slowly, and his father caught up with him.

"What the hell was that, Benjamin? Everyone else was distraught, and you took off like a bat out of --" Tobias cut himself off abruptly.  "I'm sorry.  That was probably your way of dealing, huh?"

Ben shook his head, and Tobias frowned.

"Then what was that?"

"I saw a man.  Smelled his cigarette smoke just outside Grandma's room, and tried to follow him."  As soon as Ben said it he knew it was the wrong thing to say, and he saw his father's eyes narrow in suspicion.   

"No, it's not drugs!" Ben said, too quickly.  He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.  "The man - he had red hair and green eyes."

"Dammit!" Tobias yelled, and Ben leapt back when his father spun and drove his fist into the wall.  "Why did you listen to your grandmother's crazy tales?  She was stuck in the worst time of her life and you kept bringing it up and --"

"I saw a man," Ben said flatly.  "It couldn't have been him, obviously, but I saw a man.  Maybe Grandma saw him too.  Maybe that's what made it...okay."

It was a lie.  Ben knew it was him.  It had to be.  He would never know for sure.

The irony about the peaches in Georgia was that they were all from South Carolina.  Rebecca suggested this was because they were close to South Carolina, but the Georgia-South Carolina border was a good hundred miles behind them, and every roadside fruit stand Tobias had stopped at had been laden with non-native peaches.  Rebecca was exasperated, so it was left to Ben to go on the last run for real peaches.

A cheerful gum-snapping clerk at a gas station told him that there was a farmer's market a few miles off the next exit.  Ben thanked her politely and was rewarded with a wink for his "nice Yankee manners" before he headed back out to the car to tell his father.  Then he climbed into the back seat beside a suddenly cheerful Rebecca.

They found the exit but no sign of the farmer's market, and there was a hurried, loud debate before Rebecca exerted some of her daddy's little girl power and Tobias swerved onto the exit.  Ben's mother shrieked and clutched the handlebar, and Rebecca cheered like an excited five-year-old as Tobias weaved the car through interstate traffic and angry horn-honking.  Once they were off the highway Ben spotted it, a dusty wooden sign that proclaimed the Georgia Annual Farmer's Market.

"If there are Georgia peaches anywhere, they would be here," Rebecca said.

"I wonder if they have any of that flavored honey," Ben's mother said.  Tobias parked the car, and the four of them climbed out, stretching the limbs after a long ride.  They agreed to meet back at the car in half an hour.  Tobias and his wife headed off in search of some flavored honey - that they had found initially at a farmer's market in Utah - and Rebecca bounded up to the nearest fruit stall to ask about peaches.

Ben honestly had no interest in peaches, so he lingered near the doorway, just inside so he was cool but far away enough from the stalls that the vendors wouldn't pester him.  Most of the market's customers were families and housewives with slow southern drawls and hyper kids bounding all over the place.  Ben saw one pair of girls race by, mouths and fingers sticky, clutching little plastic packets of lemon-flavored honey.  He laughed to himself and continued watching the crowd.  

His grandmother had left a substantial amount of money, though none of the children knew where it was from.  Ben had gone the same way as Rebecca and decided to put his share of the money toward college.  Rebecca was attending grad school in Atlanta, and by some miracle of SAT's and hard work Ben had won a scholarship to Georgia Tech, so their parents decided to take them on a summer road trip through the south before dropping them off back at school.  Ben had just graduated from high school and Rebecca was pursuing her fashion design degree, and they hadn't seen much of each other for the past few years except at Grandma's funeral, and having the family together again was a strange comfort before he departed on his own.

Ben crossed his arms over his chest and settled back against the wall, still watching the buzz of customers.  There were several wooden benches along the walls, most of which were occupied by exasperated fathers trying to wrangle their children, and Ben was amused by one man trying to settle his five children, all of whom were high on sugar from the flavored honey.  There was a bench beside Ben with some space on it, and as long as he stuck to the unspoken rule about personal space between strangers Ben could have sat, but he had been cramped into the car for hours and was glad to be on his feet.

He eyed the bench again, wondering if anyone would think it strange when he sat down to stretch, and noticed the bench's occupant for the first time.

The boy wasn't much older than Ben, maybe seventeen, but he looked severely out of place.  He was Japanese or Chinese, and Ben was embarrassed to admit that he couldn't tell which.  The boy had fluffy dark hair and sharp features, and he was hunched over a laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard.  Earphones blasted the back beat of some horrible kind of techno music, and the boy was lost in his own world.   He wore weird clothes and looked like an escapee from the movie Hackers.  In comparison to the flannel shirts and dusty jeans the boy was practically an alien.  

As if he sensed someone staring, he lifted his head and fixed Ben with a cool blue gaze, and Ben blinked.  An Asian boy with blue eyes.  Was that genetically possible?  Ben met the boy's oddly-colored gaze for a moment, but he quickly lost the battle of wills and turned away.  As an afterthought, he began to stretch his legs as best as he could without winding himself into awkward knots.  This vacation was fun, but he had really been slacking off with his morning runs.

Then a strange voice broke Ben's concentration.  It was deep and rough, as if the man smoked heavily.  He was speaking German, probably on a cell phone since no one answered back.

Ben darted a glance over his shoulder and glimpsed a long white coat and bright orange hair.  The rapid stream of German cut off abruptly with a "Ja.  Gut," and then Ben heard a cell phone snap shut.

"Old Tiresias says we move out in thirty."  It was the same voice but in gentle English with only the faintest accent.

There was no answer from the boy with the laptop.  Ben kept his gaze averted, though he was listening to every word.

"Chibi, did you hear me?"

"My name is Shinji," the boy said flatly.

"But did you hear me?"

"Clearly, I did."  The boy resumed his swift keystroking.

The man chuckled.  Ben heard a soft hiss of a match striking, and a glance out of the corner of his eye showed pale, long-fingered hands cupped around a hand-rolled cigarette.

"Saa, gaijin, don't smoke around me," the boy said.

"You can call me gaijin but I can't call you Chibi?"  The man chuckled.  He exhaled loudly, and Ben stiffened, struck with a sharp, familiar scent.  "My name is Lukas."

"That's not your real name," the boy retorted.

"My name is what I choose it to be."  The man took another deep drag.  "It's not my fault that you Japanese put your last names first."

"Would the German government tell me your name is Lukas?"  The boy's typing paused for a moment to let the question sink in, then resumed, as quickly as ever.

The man chuckled again, the sound low and rough like sandpaper and velvet.

A German man and a Japanese boy in a farmer's market in Georgia.  Ben was amused.  With the addition of himself, an American Jew, it could be World War Two all over again.

He wasn't the only one to notice.

Several young men in dusty jeans and dirty flannel shirts over white tank tops swaggered toward Ben, and he ducked his head instinctively so as not to be noticed.  He watched their mud-stained boots stomp right past him and halt beside the wooden bench.

Ben began to inch toward the door.  The last thing he needed was to get into a brawl.

"What have we here?" one of the men asked.  He spoke with a heavy drawl.  "A Jap an' a Jerry in our midst.  You two sure have a lot o' nerve, hanging around here like ya'll ain't done nothin' wrong."

The boy's typing had stopped, but he said nothing.

"We haven't done anything wrong," the Lukas said.  "At least, not yet."

"Don't start," the boy said, and he sounded tense.  Ben inched closed to the door.

There was a sound of flesh on flesh, as if someone had been slapped.

"Not gonna say anythin', ya dirty German?" one of the other boys snarled.  "You just gonna take it?  You sure as hell deserve it!"

"Lukas--" the boy began, but there was another impact of flesh on flesh, and Ben heard bone breaking.

He spun around and saw one of the men on the ground.  The other two had leapt back in shock.  The Japanese boy was on his feet, laptop hugged to his chest, but he seemed calm.

The man in the white coat stood arced over the man on the ground, one arm out, as if he had just thrown the man down.  He straightened up and tossed his head, shaking out bright orange hair.  It was secured by a yellow headband, and was shaggy.  He picked up a pair of yellow sunglasses and perched them calmly back on his head, and Ben could see a bruise forming on one sharp cheekbone.  The man - Lukas - eyed the remaining two men with brilliant green eyes.

They were tilted wickedly, like a cat's.

He said, "You think me a dirty German, responsible for all the atrocities of the last great war?"  His voice was low and dangerous.

One of the men took a step forward and raised his fists.  "Let's settle this like real men."

"What is there to settle?" Lukas asked.

The man swung.

Lukas dodged easily, and the man fell back, fists still up to guard.

Lukas eyed the man for a long moment and then said, "Fine.  We'll do this your way."

"Lukas," the Japanese boy said again, but the man was shrugging off his white coat to reveal a neat white button-down shirt.  He unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled back his sleeves and settled into a fighting stance.

One of the men helped the other to his feet, and they cheered on their friend.

Lukas lunged, quick as a snake striking, and planted his fist solidly in the third man's face.  The man's head snapped back, and blood poured from his broken nose.

"Lukas," the Japanese boy hissed.  He caught the man's wrist and stepped in front of him.  Their gazes locked, and there was a silent battle of wills while several of the stall vendors began to gather around.  The three men huddled together in the background.

Lukas broke the staring contest first, but smirked as if he had won.  "Time to go, Chibi.  It has not yet been thirty minutes, but it is time."  He went to pull on his jacket, but one of the vendors stepped forward.  He was a heavyset man, with a square jaw and massive shoulders.

"Now see here, fella," he said, "we don't want any trouble around here."

"We're leaving," Lukas said flatly.  He nodded for the boy to go, and Shinji darted for the door, but the third man reached out and caught his shoulder.  Shinji went still, clutching his laptop close to his body, and gazed up at the taller man with implacable blue eyes.

"Let him go," Lukas said.

The man sneered.  Lukas started toward him, but the vendor caught his sleeve and jerked him back.  Lukas shook himself free of the coat and headed toward Shinji once more.  Ben saw the vendor move, faster than would seem possible for a man that large, and then Lukas was jerked around abruptly, one massive hand clamped on his wrist like a steel vice.

Lukas met the vendor eye to eye, his face as hard as stone.  "Let me go," he said quietly.

"We don't want none o' your hatred here," the vendor said, just as quietly.

"What do you know of hatred, other than that of which you assume us to be guilty due to the languages we speak and the blood in our veins?" Lukas hissed.  "We are guilty of no hatred.  Those boys are."

"Are they, German?" the vendor growled, and spat the last word as an epithet.

"I'm no German."  Lukas pulled his wrist free slowly.  "Not to the Germans who care."  He reached out and began rolling down his left sleeve, his gaze never leaving the vendor's.

The vendor reached out and caught Lukas' wrist again.  "I saw the tattoo.  The one you're trying to hide."

Lukas' eyes darkened.  "You don't want to see that tattoo."

"Yes, I do," the vendor snarled, and there was a silent struggle.

"Shinji, do something," Lukas hissed.

The Japanese boy started forward and was yanked back abruptly by his captor.

"Shinji!" Lukas cried.  He wrenched himself backward, and there was a horrific screech as his sleeve tore.

Ben's gaze locked on the black numbers tattooed on the inside of the man's left forearm.

Shinji took advantage of his captor's distraction and broke free.  He scooped up Lukas' coat and held it out.  Lukas shrugged into it, and the numbers vanished from view.

The vendor swallowed hard.  "That tattoo - was it --"

"We're going, Shinji."  Lukas strode toward the door.  "We're going to be late."

Ben spun to follow them.  Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed his parents and sister.

Lukas and Shinji headed for a beat-up red Neon parked just beyond the market doors.  Lukas reached up and slid the hideous yellow shades over his eyes.  Ben's heart skipped a beat.  The gesture was familiar.  Was it really possible?

"Jakob!"

Lukas paused and turned.  He raised the shades with one hand and peered against the harsh summer sun.

He spotted Ben, and a slow, satisfied smile crossed his face, like a cat who had just had the cream.

"You again.  Didn't think you would recognize me."  He took a deep drag off his cigarette and said, "You have Esther's eyes."  Then he lowered the shades again and unlocked the car.  Shinji made a move for the driver's seat, but Lukas batted him away with an impatient hand and took the wheel.

The three boys, the vendor, and various other market-goers stood in the doorway and watched the car fade into the distant dust of the road.

Tobias said, voice choked, "That was a number tattoo from a concentration camp."

"Impossible," Rebecca said.  "He was barely older than me."

Ben's mother said, "He answered to Jakob."

The crowd broke up and drifted back to their respective duties.  The three men huddled together, cataloguing wounds and shooting confused glances at the open door.

Rebecca tossed her prized peach up in the air and caught it several times, a proud juggler.  "You find that honey, mom?"

"Some.  Lemon-flavored."  She pushed past the rest of them and headed to the car.

Rebecca sighed.  "Mom has always been so uptight about what happened to Grandma."  She drifted out of the market as well.

Ben started to follow, but Tobias held him back.

"That was the man you saw, at the hospital when Grandma -- at the hospital?"

Ben nodded.  "Yeah.  That was him."

"What did he say to you again?" Tobias asked.

"At the hospital?  Nothing."

"No.  This time.  What did he say?"

"He told me I have Esther's eyes.  Grandma's eyes," Ben said softly.

Tobias was silent for a long moment.  "You do.  They're your mother's eyes, too."

Ben nodded, and together they stepped into the summer sun.

Ben was alone on graduation night.  The rest of his friends were out drinking the night away.  Rev had had a crush on a pretty chem student and was probably attempting to lose his virginity to her before he lost his nerve.  Darren was probably celebrating the success of his crazy diet.  He had taken to dancing in clubs with lots of pretty girls.  A computer programmer surrounded by pretty girls - it boggled the mind.  Ben wasn't  a bad-looking computer programmer.  On the contrary; he had kept up his strict running regime through all four years of college, and he was in excellent shape.

Four years of college, and while both of his friends were having the time of their lives, he was huddled at the end of a dingy bar on the lousy side of town trying to get enough alcohol in his system to numb the insanity without getting drunk.

"Why do you look so sad?"

"Yesterday I watched a couple of strangers in overalls put my family in the ground."

"Better than watching a couple of friends in camp uniforms putting you on a pile of corpses."

Ben's head turned sharply.

The man who lounged on the bar stool beside him wore a pair of straight-legged jeans and an oversized tie-dye t-shirt that threatened to slip off one pale, bony shoulder.  It was dyed in various shades of purple and red and pink, and it clashed horribly with his bright orange hair.  His hair was as long as Ben remembered, and tied back by an orange and yellow bandana.  The man wore red shades even inside the dimness of the bar, and rolled a cigarette with long, deft fingers.

"Is it Lukas or Jakob?" Ben asked.

"Josef, these days."  The man flashed him a grin, the barest flicker of white teeth amidst the cigarette smoke and weak light.

"Why are you still alive?"

"Damned if I know, although I think I'm damned already, or I would be dead by now."  He chuckled to himself and added, "Funny.  Death is a blessing."

Ben drained his shot glass.  "You only say that because you can't die."

"I have wished, many times, that I could."

"How emo of you."

"So are you the last of them, then?  The last one with pretty Esther's eyes?"  Josef took a deep drag off his cigarette.

"What's your obsession with my grandmother's eyes?"  Ben couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice.

"They were the last thing I saw before they turned on the oven."

Ben felt his face drain of color.

Josef smiled, not nicely, and said, "People did things they didn't want to have to do during those years."

The alcohol in Ben's stomach began to turn, and he felt the distinct urge to puke.

"You never wondered why your parents didn't want you to hear such a pathetically romantic story?"  Josef took another deep drag off his cigarette.

It took several moments before Ben was able to speak again.  "Where's your little Japanese sidekick?"

"Shinji?  He's robbing a bank.  It'll keep us on the road for a while."

Ben almost choked.  "Robbing a bank?"

"Online," Josef said calmly.

"Haven't scientists tried to experiment on you?" Ben asked.

"No one does experiments like the Germans do.  Or the Japanese," Josef said.  "Both of races pride themselves on their thoroughness."

A strangely comfortable silence fell between them.  Josef smoked, and Ben stared at his empty shot glass.

"Where will you go next?" he asked finally.

Josef shrugged one shoulder, his t-shirt slipped down further.  Ben shuddered when he noticed some of the businessmen at the other end of the bar eyeing Josef with wary interest.  He tugged his sleeve back up absently and took another drag off his cigarette.  "Wherever we go where the scientists won't find us for a while.  Then something stupid will happen, like Shinji will get hit by a car or Seamus will tear out an eye again, or Lane will get himself shot, and somehow we'll all walk away without a scratch.  Then we'll have to move again.  Seamus has been doing it the longest.  He watched Cromwell's men murder his father and rape his mother and sister.  That's why he's crazy."

Ben stared at the murky bottom of his shot glass and said, "I'm not sure whether or not I want to believe you, but if I don't believe you then I can't believe myself."  He lifted his head and studied Josef's face, memorizing it, because he knew it would be the last time he saw it.

"Your grandmother really loved me, you know," the man said, and Ben realized that Josef really was a boy, nineteen at the most, with an old man's eyes.  "It was her crying as she loaded me up with the other corpses that woke me from the first time I died.  All I saw was her eyes as she shut the furnace door.  Bright with tears.  Beautiful eyes."

"I'm not going to cry for you," Ben said.

Josef smiled and shook his head.  The expression was wistful this time, a little condescending, but for once it was without the feline predatoriness that Ben had always associated with the elusive Jakob in his mind.  "You won't have to cry for me.  You'll do it for someone else.  Everyone does, at least once in their life time, even if the other person isn't there to see."  He slid off the barstool and shook out his wild hair.  He settled his shades properly on his nose.  "Good luck, Benjamin Cohen."

"You too.  Josef."

Josef took a last deep drag off his cigarette before he stubbed it out in a nearby ashtray.  "Benjamin Cohen.  That's a good Jewish name."

"The same could be said of Jakob, or Lukas, or Josef."

Josef laughed, the sound brittle like broken glass crunching under the heel of a boot.  "Yes, yes, indeed."  He placed a small business card down on the table.  "Shinji's done financing us for the month.  Good luck with your future, Benjamin."

"You don't make it sound as if I have much to look forward to.  Then again, compared to the unknown years you have, it probably isn't much."

"On the contrary, my good fellow," Jakob said as he headed for the door.  "I have the unknown.  You have death.  It's much simpler.  Most wise men suggest we live life simply."  He tipped his shades down for a parting wink, and then he was a black silhouette in the doorway, and then he was gone.

Ben picked up the business card.  It belonged to a Shinji Nakamura of Bennett Computer Systems.  They would probably need a new programmer.

Ben paid for the last of his alcohol and stepped into the twilight.  As an afterthought, he called the number on the bottom of the card, the one for the main office, and left a message, said that Shinji had had to leave suddenly but recommended Ben take his place.

It wasn't a lie, not really, but Ben decided it would be better to keep things simple.