And Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock

She said, surprised that I was being so negative, "Why, it was our own OSS. In fact, the reason that I'm here at Oak Ridge has nothing to do with the Manhattan Project. I'm only here to get the detailed specs for the fission triggers."

I said, warily, "You mean you don't work for Einstein?"

She said enthusiastically, "Of course I do, that was the reason why you and I separated."

Then she realized I wasn't THAT husband and added gently, "You couldn't handle the fact that I was going to be at Princeton and you were tied down in Miami with the construction firm that you inherited when your dad died. It wasn't going to be forever. So, I never thought you would take it so badly. "

Cat brightened and added, "It was the opportunity of a lifetime for a theoretical physicist like me."

We were off topic but I had to ask, "I know that we were separated when I was killed in this dimension. What happened?"

She got a sad look and said tenderly, "As I said, I was offered a job at the institute for Advanced Studies. Einstein liked my work on special relativity. Of course, that meant I would have to live in Princeton. I'd hoped you would see that our separation was temporary and we had nothing pressing to tie us down, like the child that we had in your dimension. We argued. But you eventually seemed to accept it.

Nonetheless, you started to drink right after I left and it eventually spiraled into your death." She burst into tears, "I'm SO sorry."

Okay, so that explained it. Due to the dimensional differences, I was tied to the construction trade in Miami, instead of doing engineering work in Michigan. Cat saw separation as an opportunity to advance her career and I took it as a betrayal. I probably thought I'd lost her.

She said earnestly, "I was totally faithful to you for all of the time we were apart. I heard that you weren't. But I forgave you because I loved you." Cat was a beautiful and sensual woman. If what she had just said was true, and I had no reason to doubt her, her loyalty must have been a real sacrifice.

I could have dinged her about last night's episode. But I wasn't THAT juvenile. I mean... until today she was a grieving widow and I would have to be totally fucked up to expect her to remain loyal to a dead man. Hence, that particular conversation was moot.

We were also now thoroughly off track. I thought to myself, "Is she trying to distract me on purpose?" Since the fact remained, that Cat was about to do something that would get her killed.

I said, "I know the OSS. We call it the CIA in my dimension. Who do you report to?"

She said earnestly, "There's no reporting. We're compartmentalized to safeguard the secrecy of our mission." She added by way of additional explanation, "We've been totally on our own since we left Washington."

Cat added slyly, "Everyone thinks I'm assisting Einstein. But I'm really part of a three-person team. The other two have been fighting the Germans since the invasion of Newfoundland. They're the oddest couple. She's a French aristocrat and he looks like a gorilla. It's kind of Beauty and the Beast."

I said, still angry, "Are they the ones who cooked up this insane scheme?"

Cat wrinkled her brow and said, "No, that was done by the planners in Washington..."

Which meant that this alleged plan was a bureaucratic clusterfuck -- full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Cat was still talking, "King and Bernadette are supposed to get me to the facility. And Bernadette is the explosives expert. She'll do the actual demolitions."

I stood there looking absolutely dumbfounded. How could she BE so stupid. There was absolutely nothing about this plan that was realistic. Cat said apologetically, her huge blue eyes puddled with tears, "Honestly... what did I have to live for?? You were dead!!"

Okay, I understood the situation. A bureaucrat, whose ass would never be in danger, had come up with a plot to foil the Nazi nuclear threat. Cat was probably the only person under the age of seventy who had the knowledge to disable those bombs and the youthful stamina to get to them. So, the OSS had pressured her into volunteering by appealing to her over-developed sense of patriotism.

Hence, the pathetic fact was that my beloved wife was about to play Nathan Hale because some basement monkey at Langley had a batshit crazy brain-fart. The inconvenient truth that this dear woman would die in the process was of no concern... because the folks who plan that kind of stuff have no soul - and as we also know... the end justifies the means.

One horrific thought kept flashing in my mind like a bad neon sign, "OH MY GOD!!! I'M ABOUT TO LOSE HER AGAIN!" That was a total non-starter. So, I had to find a better option. Of course, there would be a few minor difficulties. Like the fact that I wasn't supposed to know about the mission -- and then there was also the inconvenience that I was dead.

Nonetheless, this was wartime and we were at the very leafy end of the tree on the chain of command. So, I was pretty sure that I could slip into the game at the execution point. The other two were obviously guerillas, used to improvising... especially if somebody had a better idea. I said, "I want to meet the members of your team, because I have an idea that will work better."

Cat said, warily, "They're sequestered in the house next door while we finalize operational planning."

I raised an eyebrow and said, "Next door??"

She gave me a, "Seriously?!!" look and huffed, "It's the most secure location in the U.S. except for Los Alamos." Cat didn't need to explain that to me... Los Alamos was the place where the enriched uranium that Oak Ridge was producing got assembled into an actual bomb. Of COURSE, it was secure.

Suffice it to say that the notion of my wife being killed AGAIN simply wasn't acceptable. So, I had to get her and her two companions on board with what I wanted to do as quickly as possible. I said eagerly, "Can we meet?"

Cat looked cautious. I suppose I would've been too. Her dead husband had just appeared out of the blue and immediately tried to jump into a top-secret, hush-hush mission. She could no doubt sense why I wanted to do it. I simply couldn't lose her again. Even so, she would have to suspend a lot of disbelief, as well as trust me to her very bones, in order to agree to such a harebrained proposal.

I said, "Look... I get it... I really do. This is a vital mission and I am essentially a stranger to you. Plus, there are a million holes in my story. So, I could be a German spy playing you. But you've gotta be sensing the same thing that I am... right?"

She gave a tentative nod of her pretty head, tears in her beautiful blue eyes - and then the dam broke. She rushed into my arms, our lips met and lightning arced across the time-space continuum. Cat was frantically, desperately kissing me. It told me how distraught she'd been at my death.

I could sense the pent-up frustration she'd experienced over the years of being deprived of her love. I knew it because I'd experienced the exact same thing. There simply wasn't another Cat in my world. So, sex was nothing more than a biological necessity, not a loving nurturing experience.

My wife had a bedroom and we both knew that we were going to end up in it. I lifted her and placed her gently on top of the neatly arranged covers. I was dimly aware that this was the same bed that she had entertained dipshit in last night. But the difference lay in the circumstance. Our need for each other was all consuming. It was like comparing a hurricane to a gentle summer breeze.

Cat never released my neck during the entire time that we had made the trip from the living room to the bedroom. She was still frantically kissing me, lips constantly moving, nipping, and biting in a frenzy of emotion. There was an awkward couple of seconds while we both struggled out of our clothes. Then she was lying there looking up at me - receptive, and ready.

Her body was as perfect as I had remembered... long slim legs, wide hips, narrow waist, and a deep ribcage with two surprisingly large and firm mounds on top, nipples wildly erect. She said, with anguish in her voice, "No foreplay. I have to feel you!!"

I'm much bigger and heavier than my wife. So, I'd always been careful not to crush her. This time however, she was in no mood for considerate. As soon as I assumed the classic position, she pulled her legs back, elevated her hips and practically jammed me inside her. At which point, she hyperventilated and began to shudder.

I'd made love to Cat an infinite number of times. So, I knew that her unexpected orgasm wasn't any of my doing. It was a measure of what this odd new situation meant to her. I looked into that beautiful face and it was utterly open to me. This was clearly a profound moment for my wife.

Then we fell into the well-remembered rhythms of love, ones we had established over all our years together. That aspect hadn't changed in the slightest. Cat was making loud "Uh-uh-uh" noises as she rotated her hips trying to get more of me inside her. All the while, she was telling me how much she'd missed me and how good it felt.

Cat's normal orgasms are events that most women would remember for the rest of their life. But I could sense that she was working herself up to an even more remarkable one, gasping and moaning, giving herself without reservation.

I reversed us so that she was on top. The surprising part was that, instead of sitting up cowgirl style, she was still plastered to me arms around my neck, frantically kissing me, like she couldn't bear to let go of me. At the same time, she was absolutely crushing her big tits on my chest while she cried like her heart was breaking. It was a weird juxtaposition of wantonness and loss.

We were both sweating profusely from our all-out exertion and the smell of sex was mind-altering. I was shoved as far up inside her as I had ever been when she began to thrash and buck wildly. It was the beginning of a climax like I had never witnessed before.

The frenzied gyrations of Cat's upper body as she writhed on top of me was sending incredible new sensations through my chest. She was moaning, at the top of her lungs and emitting loud, "Ahhhhs". I remember thinking that if there was anybody nearby, they would be getting an earful, not that I cared.

In some ways it was most sensual thing I'd ever experienced. My wife must have had her sixth or seventh distinct orgasm as I came inside her. When that happened, Cat just slumped on my chest like she was dead. Her arms fell away from around my neck and I was able to see her tear-streaked face for the first time.

I understood the crying. I'd sensed the same miracle. Our eternal dark despair had been turned into something unique and special by an unbelievable trick of fate. I kissed each tear away as she came back to awareness and said one word from the bottom of my heart, "Forever". She looked at me with impassioned love and total comradeship and said, "Forever".

*****

We were flying at treetop level on a vector bearing 030 out of Mistissini in northern Quebec. There were four of us onboard... me, Cat an elegant French lady and a fellow who resembled Sasquatch. Our destination was the island of Renee Levasseur and perhaps destiny.

It had been a two-day journey from Knoxville to Montreal and then from Montreal up to Mistissini. The hop to Montreal was roughly 600 miles. Running lean at 10,000 feet, I could get 650 miles out of my kite. So, we arrived in the afternoon.

We were a lot closer to the front lines up there and I wanted to have a fresh mind when we made the hop to Mistissini. So, we overnighted at the Laurentian, downtown.

Refueled, the 500 miles to Mistissini took another three and a half hours. Mistissini is part of the Cree nation lands. In the summer it hosts some of the best fishing in the world. But we were after something a lot more ambitious than trout. So, we laid over in that little town for a couple of days while everybody checked and double-checked their gear and I made an alteration to the Cherokee.

Mistissini is on one of the bigger lakes in the Canadian north. So, we modified my aircraft to take a pair of bush plane floats. The floats slowed our airspeed and burned more gas. But they were necessary to land on Lac Koch, the target destination on Renee Levasseur island.

It would be an hour and a half to Renee Levasseur and the Nazi lab. But that whole trip would be at less than 300 feet - in order to merge into the ground clutter. It was also in the hour just before total dark. So, it was going to be challenging getting there without hitting something.

Calling Renee Levasseur an island is a bit of a misnomer. It was actually produced by a meteorite that hit earth 214 million years ago. The impact formed a crater roughly 60 miles in diameter. So, the lake that surrounds the island is almost perfectly round.

Renee Levasseur itself is the second largest lake island in the world. It lies in the center of the impact crater separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water. So, It's vast. Lac Koch is in the northwest corner, at roughly ten o'clock. It's one of several normal-sized lakes that dot the surface of the bigger island. The Nazi bomb making facility was on an even smaller island in the middle of Lac Koch.

As planned, it was nightfall as we skimmed in from the southwest. This scheme was only going to work if the Nazis didn't know we were there. There was a heavy SS presence on the shore of the lake. But nobody was guarding the island housing the facility. I mean -- why should they? It was in the middle of a small island in the middle of a larger island in the middle of nowhere.

It had been a harrowing flight. Radar is line of sight and we had to keep under the vision of the big Nazi installation at Port Cartier. Nonetheless, we had a clear shot at the bomb facility if I managed to get us down without anybody noticing our arrival. The idea was to land on the side of the lake opposite the Wehrmacht camp and paddle the rest of the way using the little island to screen us.

After I'd explained what I had in mind, Cat had reluctantly agreed to introduce me to her friends. Even so, she'd warned me to be vague about who I was. She told me to simply play along with her. Since. "visitor from another dimension" wasn't a very plausible backstory.

Her two comrades were in the yard of the next-door house tending a little garden. The woman, whose name was Bernadette, was in a frilly dress with a quaint little apron that looked expensive. The man was stripped to the waist and sweating, while he dug in the places that the woman pointed to.

His name was King - as in Kong - which was apt. He was short, squat and faintly simian - with huge slabs of muscle in his shoulders and arms. Because he was so wide, he might have appeared overweight. But I saw with his shirt off that that was an illusion. King was built like a tank, without an ounce of fat on him.

I just assumed he was a brainless gorilla until he looked at me and I saw the shrewd intelligence that lurked behind his eyes. This was a very formidable human being. Bernadette was an exquisite French woman with laughing eyes and a will of steel. Cat had already told me that the lady was the Marchioness, Bernadette l'Arqes d'Langdouc. How they got together must've been some story.

On the surface they were the most mismatched pair imaginable. But they were the exact same person underneath, strong, brave, dedicated and they clearly adored each other. You could never find a better pair of companions to accompany you into harm's way.

Bernadette was trained by the British SAS to blow things up. She wasn't merely an artiste with plastic explosives, she was Van Gogh himself. Of course, any prospective explosions would be after we left. Because, the Nazis had stationed a full brigade of SS only a couple of hundred yards away on the far shore and we'd be like hens in a fox house if they discovered that we were there.

King would dispose of any stray guards first. He was two hundred and fifty pounds of silent killer, as agile as a cat and uncannily strong. Right now, however, the two of them looked like Fred and Wilma as they dug their little garden.

They both were slightly wary as we approached. Bernadette smiled graciously at Cat and said, "Bonjour Catherine, who is your friend?"

Cat said, "This is Erik, he was sent here with a change of plan." She didn't mention that it was from another dimension.

Both King and Bernadette looked even more wary. Nobody likes last-minute changes, especially if they are made by total strangers. I knew that I had to move fast and be convincing. So, I said as disarmingly as I could, "I know that last minute changes are bad tradecraft. But it will increase our odds of survival and it will move the mission timeline up by weeks." Now, they both looked interested.

I said, "The flaw in the old plan has always been the trek to the site, and back again. It will take you a long time and it's arduous. So, I have been recruited to fly you directly to the target in a special plane, which can get you in there undetected."

I wasn't exaggerating. By World War Two standards the Cherokee was a technological marvel. I added "You can carry out your mission and get out of there before anybody can react."

King said, "And just how do you propose to do that. The Nazis have air superiority everywhere." That was what I was hoping he'd ask.

I said, "We are going to fly around the effective range of their fighters and come in through the back door. The Me 262 is supreme. But it has a max operational range of 300 miles - closer to 200 when you factor in patrolling." I didn't mention that I got all of that from Wikipedia. It might confuse things a tad.

They looked very interested now. I made my closing argument, "So, we will fly into Montreal and then circle completely around their bases on the St. Lawrence by flying way up north and then over to Renee Levasseur. We'll stay at treetop height going in, in order to evade their radar. When we blow the facility, we'll fly back the same way. It's guarded by SS Panzergrenadiers. They won't be able to chase us."

King looked at Bernadette and she nodded. It was clear that this delicate little woman was a modern-day Joan of Arc and that theirs was a true partnership. King stood up, offered me his hand, which was about as big as his shovel, and said, "It's a deal pardner."

That marked the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The weather had turned ideal, which matched my mood perfectly. Okay -- maybe I was going to die next week. But it would be with the woman I loved. THAT was heady stuff. Cat and I worked on the route and timing details all day and then made love all night.

We even ran into Todd in Jackson Square. The joy of watching Cat and her former lover struggle to act nonchalant almost made up for the grief that their little tet-a-tet had caused me. I especially liked the glowing smirk that Todd gave Cat as he said hello. My wife was muttering, "Stupid-stupid-stupid!!" as she walked away.

Cat didn't know that I knew about their little escapade and of course Todd couldn't believe that I was with her. So, I told him on the side how frequently and passionately we fucked. I could see that the envy was killing him. Okay, I'll admit it -- I enjoyed twisting the knife.

Since we were going off script, we arrived separately at the Knoxville airport - to avoid any inconvenient questions about deep-sixing the original plan. Cat, King, Bernadette, and all of their gear got a ride down in an Army deuce-and-a- half. I rode the Scout and then gave it to the PFC who'd initially alerted me to it.

Then... we loaded all of the things we needed, packs and Bernadette's little pets, into the Cherokee and took off to meet our fate.