Free Return From the Inferno by Mack Maloney Page A

chair, closed his eyes, and wet his lips.
    "The other night, I saw a ghost. . . ." he began.
    Twenty minutes later, the young girl was putting the finishing touches on her drawing.
    "Let me see it," the First Governor ordered her, his impatience getting the best of him.
    She slowly turned the piece of paper over and held it out before her.
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    The First Governor was at once delighted. It was all there. The apparition of Finn MacCool, almost hovering above his bed. The midnight dark clothes. The strange black helmet beneath the hood.
    "Perfect!" the First Governor declared, taking the drawing from the girl with the care and sensitivity of someone handling a Van Gogh. "You have captured it completely."
    The young girl smiled.
    "You are now my official illustrator," the First Governor told her, never taking his eyes off the eerily accurate drawing. "You will live here with me, and you will draw what I see in my dreams."
    The young girl didn't know what to say.
    "What is your name?" he asked her.
    "Seventy-three," she replied.
    "I mean your real name," he said, for the first time taking his eyes off the drawing. "Your given name . . ."
    The girl shrugged sadly. "I don't remember."
    The First Governor squinted slightly. An unlikely bolt of compassion ran through him. He actually felt sorry that the young girl could not even remember her name.
    "From now on you are Bridgett," he declared, looking down at her as a grandfather might his first granddaughter. "And from now on, you have nothing to worry about."
    Outside the Reich Palast, at the small concrete building that served as the main guard post for the palatial seat of the occupying government, a man boldly approached two sentries. He was shirtless, thin, and wearing only tattered socks on his feet. He had red hair and a bare hint of a beard. His face was dirty, with long tracks in the grime made by a recent onslaught of tears.
    "I must talk with the First Governor," the man told the grimfaced soldiers.
    Already in bad temper due to the searing heat and their heavy wool uniforms, the NS guards simply ignored him.
    "I must see him," the strange man insisted. "Now."
    "Leave, sputnik, or we will shoot you," one of the guards barked at him in thick, German tortured English.
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    "If you do not let me see him, it will be you who are shot," the man insisted.
    The soldiers lowered their G3 barrels and pointed them directly at the man's heart. They'd summarily executed others for less.
    "Even if you shoot me," the man began, somewhat cryptically, "I will still live."
    "We shall see," one of the guards interrupted, his finger wrapping tightly around the rifle's trigger.
    "I have met the man of water," the strange man went on.
    The words froze both soldiers. They knew the First Governor was on an almost religious quest to find a "man of water." Everyone inside Bummer Four did.
    Indeed, the day before, their entire guard company had spent 18 hours walking from house to house inside the city, asking citizens if they'd seen or heard about a man in their midst who might be able to perform some rather incredible feats. With each question, they were either answered with blank, confused stares and just a slow shaking of the head. (The real story, the citizens whispered when the guards were gone, was that the First Governor was quickly going mad.)
    Now this strange man was claiming he might hold a key to the First Governor's frantic, bizarre search.
    "What proof do you have?" one of the NS demanded.
    The man stared at both of them for a moment. Off in the distance, two Mirage fighters were coming in for a noisy landing. One at a time, the man turned the palms of his hands up and displayed them for the soldiers. Each one had a huge scar in its center, scabbed over but obviously healing quickly. The man then kicked off his battered socks and revealed similar wounds on his feet.
    "Who are you?" the other soldier asked him.
    The man smiled broadly.
    "Who do I look like?" he replied.
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