by James R Benn
“What?” I shook my head, trying to think straight, uncertain as to where I was.
“You stopped talking a couple of minutes ago. Are you okay? You drifted off on me.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes and looking down at my shoes. This was the hard part.
We were betrayed.
And I was there to see it happen. I’d been powerless to stop it. Unarmed, alone, pumped up on Pervitin, jittery as all hell, and facing a city full of retreating Krauts shooting anything that looked like a threat.
I watched Diana being taken.
By the Gestapo.
It was all my fault.
“It’s my fault, all my fault. I trusted the guy who betrayed us. I should have seen it coming. I should have.” The words echoed inside my head as I tried to open my eyes. I couldn’t. I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. Then I felt a hard surface against my ribs. I was on the floor, and Robinson was helping me up.
“I couldn’t stop them,” I said, as I sat back down on the chair. How the hell had I ended up on the floor? “I followed her to Gestapo headquarters, but they loaded up a truck with prisoners and took off for Germany. She’s either dead or in a concentration camp.”
“It’s not your fault,” Robinson said. “But it’s certainly normal to feel like it is.”
“Well, I don’t feel normal. How the hell did I get on the floor?”
“Boyle, you were telling me about a painful emotional event. You fell to your knees, curled up into a ball, and spoke about the greatest losses you’ve ever felt. The woman you love arrested by the Gestapo, your best friend nearly dying. You’re letting yourself experience the toll it’s taken on you. Of course it doesn’t feel normal. But believe me, talking about it is better than letting it fester inside your mind.”
“Do I have any chance of getting out of here?” I asked. “Of feeling like I’m not going nuts?”
“You know what the frontline prescription is for dealing with combat fatigue?”
“Yeah. A doctor once told me the quick fix for a lot of guys was three hots and a cot,” I said. That meant being pulled off the line for some hot chow and a good night’s sleep. Maybe it was only a few hundred yards to the rear, but the brief respite helped a lot of GIs. If they didn’t buy the farm when they went back into combat the next day.
“Well, you’ve had your hot meals. Time for the cot. With something to help you sleep.”
“Why didn’t you suggest this before, Doc?” I asked. “I really need the shut-eye.”
“Because we needed to get at the root cause of your problem. Some of it is the aftereffects of the drugs. You’ve been in the thick of things, so there’s the stress of combat as well. But I recognized there was something else haunting you. Until that was out in the open, there was no use giving you the rest cure. We’d just be back where we started.”
“Okay, but can I go see Kaz first? I kinda lost my temper with him and said a few things I shouldn’t have. I need to patch things up.”
“No. My primary concern is your well-being. Mend your fences with your friend later. Right now, you’ve got a date with a syringe.”
Chapter Six
I didn’t like it at all. Robinson escorted me to my room and ordered me to change into those scratchy hospital pajamas. An orderly stood by, arms folded across his chest, daring me not to comply.
I wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Besides, my right hand was shaking so much I probably couldn’t land a decent punch. I traded my khakis for the blue pajamas as I stared out the window. A favorite pastime in my not-well-adjusted state. Maybe this forced rest cure would work, but if it didn’t, I needed to keep close tabs on the guards and their patrol patterns. It might come in handy.
“Ready?” Robinson asked, pulling a needle out from a leather case.
I was, except for the fact that I didn’t like needles much. I lay down and rolled up my sleeve. “You sure I can’t take a sleeping pill, Doc?”
“This is much more effective than the pill form,” he said, drawing a solution into the syringe. “It’s a barbiturate and will put you into a deep, restful sleep. Somehow this treatment has earned the nickname Blue Eighty-Eight. Maybe because it packs a punch, like the German eighty-eight. Quite safe, given that we’re only using it once. Now, you’ll feel a little pinch.”
I looked away. I felt a big pinch, then he held the needle in my arm for what felt like a long time. “How long before this stuff kicks in?”
“You’ll be asleep in a couple of minutes,” Robinson said. “I’ll check in on you later, and the orderlies know to watch you as well.”
I bet. I watched him leave as the big orderly closed the door halfway. Clattering noise echoed in the hallway, the usual hospital hustle-bustle. If I couldn’t sleep at night when it was quiet, how the hell was I supposed to saw logs in the middle of the day?
I got up on my elbows and took another look out the window. Bad angle, I couldn’t see a thing. So instead, I thought about what I needed to say to Kaz. About my plan to escape and get to Uncle Ike, to beg him to keep Kaz at SHAEF. Then I’d try to find out where the Gestapo had taken Diana. Someone in Intelligence had to have a line on which prison or camp the Krauts took women to. My best hope was that they didn’t know she was SOE. If she was Malou to them, a French girl caught up in a Resistance group, she had a chance. Not a good chance, but better odds than if she’d been identified as a British agent.
Memories of Paris flooded my mind. Barricades, gunfights, dead Germans. Kaz looking pale and weak. And Diana. Always Diana.
I blinked my eyes open. Still daylight. Robinson sat in a chair, a newspaper folded on his lap. I felt strange. The first thing I noticed was how stiff I was. I stretched my legs, my muscles protesting the movement.
“Awake, Boyle?” Robinson asked, setting his newspaper aside.
“Yeah,” I croaked, pushing myself up on the pillows. My mouth was dry as a summer’s day in hell. Robinson handed me a glass of water and I gulped it down. I looked at him, trying to put my finger on what else was niggling at me. “It’s not even dark yet,” I said.
“It’s been dark,” he said. “Twice. You’ve been out for nearly forty hours.”
“Jesus,” I said, my head falling back to the pillows. I stared at the ceiling, the sudden awareness of what I was feeling striking me like a mortar shell.
I didn’t feel crazy.
I looked at Robinson again, and the orderly standing behind him. I wasn’t seeing them through a distorted haze of suspicion. It was only a doctor and a guy bringing me a cup of coffee.
I sat up, cradling the ceramic mug in my hands. I thanked the orderly, who smiled. He looked like a normal joe.
I was confused.
And I was hungry. That hadn’t happened in a while.
“You must have given me a helluva dose of that stuff,” I said. “Forty hours?”
“It was a fairly low dose, actually,” Robinson said. “I wanted to knock you out, so you could sleep. But the sleep cure isn’t all about drugged sleep. You need the real thing, and your body let you have it once your brain calmed down.”
“I am a little groggy,” I said, as I sipped the steaming black java. “But I feel different. Better.”
“Tell me what better means,” Robinson said.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said. “Before, it was like having jolts of electricity snapping through my mind. Everything was vivid and blurry at the same time.”
“And now?”
“I’m still worried about Kaz. I still wish I could have done something, anything, to help Diana. I still feel that pain in my heart. But my brain isn’t buzzing with it like a thousand hornets. Hell, I’m even talking to you about it. That’s a switch.”
“Good,” Robinson said. “This is a good first step.”
“First step?” I asked. “How about you call it th
e last step and cut me loose?”
“Sorry, Boyle, it isn’t that easy. I need to observe you for a while to confirm you’re fit for duty. This is the army, remember? They have rules and regulations for everything.”
“Sure,” I said, returning to the coffee. I drank some more, studying Robinson as I did. He seemed like a decent guy. But as I worked to clear my head, I kept returning to one insistent, crystal-clear thought.
I had seen a man with Holland up in the clock tower. I couldn’t write it off as a hallucination or the influence of the drugs that had raged through my body.
Holland had been murdered, and Robinson was one of the first on the scene.
Robinson was a suspect, along with everyone else who’d been near the clock tower. I had to be careful. Part of my brain was telling me not to be paranoid, while the other half knew that the worst thing I could do would be to start openly investigating this killing. If it turned out Robinson was involved, he could send me off to a real loony bin with the stroke of a pen. And if he wasn’t, I ran the risk of him thinking I was delusional and keeping me here longer.
I had to play it safe and watch myself at the same time. How would I know if I was delusional? The deluded delude themselves first, right?
“Hey, Doc, are there any side effects from the barbiturates you gave me? Or from this sleep cure in general? I’m not going to get the DTs or anything, am I?” I grinned to show I was half-joking, trying to sound rational and only a bit concerned.
“No, not at all. The drugs were a one-time dose, and sleep is nothing but restorative. Don’t worry, Boyle, you’re doing fine.”
“Holland hadn’t just come off the sleep cure, had he?” I asked. Robinson gave me a sharp look, and I wondered if maybe I’d spooked him with the question. Or perhaps I’d dreamed the whole thing, who knew?
“Why do you ask about Holland?”
“Well, the guy took a nosedive from the highest point around. I thought maybe he’d woken up after a two-day nightmare and couldn’t take it. So put my mind at ease, Doc, and tell me he wasn’t part of the shut-eye brigade.”
“I told you, Boyle, I won’t talk about other patients. It’s unethical. Now if you’re ready to get up, let’s go get you some food,” Robinson said.
“I should see Kaz first,” I said.
“I’ve told the baron you’d be by to see him as soon as you woke up. I figured he’d be concerned about you after all you two have been through together. You can drop by and visit him as soon as you get some nourishment in you. You’ve been without food too long.”
I had to agree, especially after I tried to stand up. Second time, it was easier.
An orderly led me to the showers and left me with a clean set of khakis. I stood under the water, hoping the craziness I’d been experiencing would swirl away down the drain.
Then it hit me. Robinson had been adamant that he wouldn’t reveal anything about another patient, including whether he’d had the sleep cure. But he’d told Kaz that I’d been dead to the world.
So, which was it? Did my friendship with Kaz outweigh his ethical concerns? Strange.
As I shaved, I took a long look at myself. My face was thinner, and I had bags under my eyes despite my forty-hour slumber. I had a long way to go before Mrs. Boyle’s bright-eyed boy made an appearance in the bathroom mirror.
Robinson escorted me to the dining hall like an overprotective mother hen. He nursed a coffee as I wolfed down scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast slathered with butter and jam. The cop side of my brain considered how much this kind of food would net on the black market, and how the kitchen staff might sneak butter and bacon home with them. The other side of my brain focused on feeding my body. When I finally pushed my plate away, Robinson cracked a smile.
“Okay, I don’t think you’ll faint from hunger anytime soon. Come on, let’s take a stroll and then you can visit your pal.”
“Whatever you say, Doc. You haven’t steered me wrong yet,” I said. But maybe he’d helped Holland take a wrong turn off the tower. I kept my suspicions to myself and followed him to the path where I’d made so many circuits around the great house.
“Let’s walk, and you tell me if anything looks different to you, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Is this some sort of test?”
“Why do you always think there’s a dark motive for everything, Boyle?”
“Probably for the same reason you never give a straight answer. It’s in your nature as a head doctor. Me, I see everything from a cop’s viewpoint. Suspicion comes with the territory.”
“Point taken,” Robinson said with a quick laugh as he picked up his pace to stick with me. “I find straight answers usually don’t lead to the truth. It’s best to let people arrive at it by their own route, no matter how circuitous.”
“We’re on a circuitous route right now, Doc, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to look for. How about dropping a hint?”
“You’ve been concerned about the guards, haven’t you? You’ve alluded to escaping, but said the fence was too high and the patrols too frequent,” Robinson said.
“Hey, I was just blowing off steam, Doc. I didn’t much like finding myself in a prison.”
“Who would?” Robinson asked, stopping at the side of the path and staring into the woods. I did the same.
There was something different. I squinted, trying to focus on what was beyond the veil of green leafy branches.
The fence. It wasn’t ten feet high. And it wasn’t topped by coils of barbed wire.
I stepped over the low iron fence at the edge of the path and walked closer, searching for the guards I was sure would chase me away. There weren’t any.
The fence? It was the same kind of iron fencing as along the walkway, but about six feet high. Where the low fence by the walkway was painted a glossy black, this one was rusted and flaking, left untended for too long. I reached through the dense undergrowth and grasped one of the railings, my hand coming away stained with rusty grit. Where I’d seen coils of barbed wire, there was a single strand of the stuff. I could have climbed up and over this thing with no more to show for it than a tear in my trousers.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes. It was much higher, with bright coils of barbed wire.”
“Like you saw the Commandos patrolling the perimeter,” Robinson said.
“That much is true,” I said, pointing to the far side of the fence. “I can see the path, it’s well worn.” A few yards away, the bare earth showed where a footpath ran the length of the fence.
“Of course we have guards,” Robinson said, taking my arm and leading me back to the walkway. “But why do you think they’re Commandos?”
“Those dark green berets they wear,” I said. “I’ve seen them before.”
“I’m sure you have,” Robinson said. We walked for a while and I couldn’t help but stare at the fence. It was nothing like I remembered. I stumbled along in confusion until we met up with two guards crossing the path by the gate.
“Captain,” one of them said in greeting as he saluted Robinson.
“You fellows off duty?” Robinson asked, putting a hand on my arm as he stopped to chat.
“We are, sir,” one of the men answered. “And after twelve hours, I’m ready to put my feet up.” He looked too old for the Commandos. The guards I’d seen were tough, young, and fit. This fellow was on the pudgy side and wore spectacles. There were flecks of gray at his temples, and his uniform was baggy and ill-fitting.
No green beret.
“You’re Home Guard?” I asked. The Home Guard was made up of volunteers, those too young, old, or unfit to serve in the regular army. It was England’s second line of defense, originally created to slow down a German invasion and buy time for the regular forces. Today, they were often given jobs that could free up other troops for front line service.
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br /> Like guarding this joint.
“That we are,” he said, clapping his companion on the back. It was the same young kid who’d been with Sergeant Jenkins.
“Private Fulton, right?” I said to him.
“Aye, sir. You’re looking better, if you don’t mind my saying it.”
“Not at all, Private. Your Sergeant Jenkins, he’s Home Guard too?”
“Of course, sir. We all are,” Fulton said, and went on his way. Home to his mother, most likely.
“They’re here to keep people away, for the most part,” Robinson said. “They are guarding you, but from prying eyes. There are a lot of secrets in this place, and we can’t have any unauthorized folks getting too close.”
“Now I know why you took me on this walk,” I said. “If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“I needed to know if you were seeing and thinking clearly,” Robinson said as we continued.
“I made all that up? The fence, the Commando guards? How could it seem so real?”
“Well, you didn’t make it up. I’m sure you’ve seen fences topped with barbed wire in a prison or POW camp. And you said yourself you’ve seen the Commando berets before.”
“But why? I don’t get it.” I almost said I wondered if this was a dream and I was still deep in the sleep cure, but I kept that one to myself.
“The human mind is a wondrous thing,” Robinson said. “It does what it must to keep us safe. In your case, you simply weren’t ready to face what happened to Diana Seaton, and you needed a distraction. So your vivid imagination went to work. It used the reality of this place and combined it with other images in your subconscious. Combine that with the aftereffects of the drugs you took, and you’ve got a story that made sense to you.”
“That I was being kept prisoner, that escape was impossible,” I said.
“Exactly. Which is precisely the predicament Miss Seaton finds herself in. As long as you thought it was you yourself in such danger, you didn’t have to think about her. But it was always there, beneath the surface. You can’t escape the subconscious.”
