“This is him! This is the one I didn’t shoot down!”

Franz had always wondered if the great risk he’d taken had been worth it, if the American had made it home. Brown had always wondered what the German had been planning to do to him, and why he had let him go.

He immediately wrote a letter to Brown.

Brown was too impatient to actually read it. He called the operator and had her look up Franz Stigler’s number, then place the call immediately.

“When I let you go over the sea,” Stigler said, “I thought you’d never make it.”

“My God,” Brown said. “It’s you.”

Tears were streaming down his face. Stigler had answered Brown’s secret question without Brown having to ask it.