Mark wished the crash had killed them all.
Roberts, Blitz, and Snowman were dead either way, and Blitz wouldn’t have suffered for so long if Mark and Silent Joe had just let the B-17 slam into the hillside at full speed. Mark could live to be a hundred and never forget the way his friend had screamed.
Shivering against the cold and the memories, Mark let his head fall back against the box car’s wall. The train had stopped a few minutes ago. There were voices outside. Shouts. Mostly German. Something solid hit something less so, and a sickening grunt preceded a heavy thud. Then more shouts. Again, mostly German, but this time a few in English. After another grunt and another thud, the English stopped.
Don’t fight them, idiots. Mark rubbed his hands over his face. They were already prisoners. Even the Germans supposedly abided by the Geneva Conventions, and sticking out the rest of the war in a POW camp was better than being beaten to death in the snow.
And with those being the choices, he closed his eyes and wished again that he and Silent Joe hadn’t fought so damned hard to put that plane down gently. All those trees, all those rocks; by all rights the two of them never should have been able to land like that. Maybe they should have just let go and gone up in the ball of fire God had apparently intended.
Mark watched Silent Joe. The man’s gaze was fixed on the narrow gaps at the top of the box car, as if he could see all the activity on the other side. Like Mark, though, he’d sat against the wall, too far down to see through the gaps. He hugged his knees to his chest, teeth chattering and eyes blank as he stared up at those makeshift windows. Maybe he was watching the sky. Watching for a bomber to happen by and finish what the Luftwaffe pilot had started when he’d shot them down.
Silent Joe hadn’t spoken since the crash. Mark had been the one to give him that nickname, and he regretted it now. Its irony had been funny before—Silent Joe was a man who never shut up—but now it was just too damned close to the sad truth. He hadn’t even made a sound when one of the Wehrmacht officers who’d captured them shot Blitz in the face. Mark hadn’t said anything either. Haywire and Kitten had both lunged forward, cursing the Nazi assholes, but Mark and Fix-It had restrained them. Threatening their captors wouldn’t bring Blitz back, nor would it help their situation. And as much as they’d all hated the German bastard, he had ended Blitz’s obvious agony.
Those two were apparently resigned to that fact now. Haywire had gone quietly into another box car with Fix-It and the other enlisted men. Kitten sat beside Silent Joe, quiet and subdued.
Like Silent Joe, Rubble hadn’t said much since the crash. He was in a corner now, knees drawn up to his chest and head lolling as he kept nodding off. At least he was still alive. He’d hit his head hard in the crash. He’d bled like hell that first day, and he’d barely been able to walk. Aside from the remaining gash on his temple, though, he seemed to be doing all right. He’d probably survive just like the rest of them, and get to suffer through months or even years in a godforsaken POW camp.
We should have just let the plane crash.
The box car’s side door opened. Mark and the others scrambled to their feet.
No Germans entered, though, and no order came for them to exit the car. Instead, two Americans were shoved in. One caught his balance while the other tumbled unceremoniously to his knees. Then the door slammed shut again.
The two men were both second lieutenants, the lowest ranking officers in the car, so they quickly straightened up and saluted.
“At ease.” The first words Silent Joe had uttered in hours.
The men relaxed, and found places against the wall. The car wasn’t crowded, which may or may not have been a blessing. Room to sit and stretch out meant less body heat to keep everyone warm. They all stayed at one end, huddled together, but the empty half of the car meant plenty of space for that bitter winter chill to move in.
Mark prayed this train ride didn’t last much longer. Whether it was a passing bomber that ended it, or they finally made it to their pneumonia-hole destination, he hoped it was soon. Wherever they were going, there would—hopefully—be blankets and walls that kept out at least some of the wind.
The train lurched into motion again.
Rubble groaned, cradling his head in both hands.
“You all right?” Mark asked through chattering teeth.
The navigator nodded slowly, lifting his head just enough for Mark to see how green he was getting. After a while, Rubble pushed himself to his feet and staggered to the other end of the car. Mark got up and followed him, though he turned his head and winced at the sound of Rubble retching in the corner. He’d already been sick twice today. He couldn’t have had much left. Not with the rations that were barely enough to keep men going who weren’t heaving every few hours.
Mark put a hand on his shoulder. Rubble spat. Coughed. Spat again.
“I’m fine.” Rubble cleared his throat a couple of times. “It’s the … motion. Of the train.” This from the only man on the crew who’d never been sick in the air, not even with some of Silent Joe’s insane maneuvers.
Mark didn’t argue, though. He didn’t let himself look at the gash on Rubble’s head, and instead put an arm around the navigator’s waist and helped him back to where the other men shivered in silence.
* * * *
They were ordered off the train a few hours later, and marched in a tight group—flanked by armed Nazis, of course—down a narrow, snow-covered road. The road took them through a small village, but Mark kept his head down. He refused to look at anyone or anything. Not after their captors had taken them through the remains of a bombed-out town a few days ago. He’d fought this war from the air, flying over tiny toy-like buildings and watching them explode. Occasionally the Luftwaffe would get too close, close enough that Mark could see the pilots, but their helmets and oxygen masks had kept them faceless.
The smoldering houses and bloody, terrified people on the ground … they hadn’t been toy-like or faceless. They’d been real, and too much like the people he’d left behind in Iowa. That sight would haunt him as long as Blitz’s death.
After a few cold, miserable miles, they reached the gates of what resembled an old castle, perched on top of a mountain, steep walls all around. While it had two towers, it wasn’t like the fairy tale castles from children’s books—no battlements, no flags, just narrow windows high up that reflected the light with a glare, obscuring anything that might lie within. It didn’t help the first impression that the windows to the outside had iron bars fitted. The buildings were painted a light gray and blended with the deeper gray of the living rock underneath, with the dark coniferous forest providing more contrast, even with snow on the ground.
While the guards counted the men for the hundredth time, Mark scanned the group of maybe two dozen. They were exhausted, dead on their feet as much from the journey as the Luftwaffe interrogations before that. And every one of them wore officer insignia.
His heart sank. His enlisted men were nowhere in sight. Likely at another camp. Maybe that was why the train had stopped, to let them off and take them to another facility. With a sick feeling, he hoped it wasn’t any of his guys who’d been violently subdued outside the train. Crackshot, his crew’s radio operator, wouldn’t have stepped far enough out of line for that, but Haywire, that was a possibility. Especially since he’d lost two of his closest friends in the crash and, not long after, witnessed what had been both a mercy killing and a murder in cold blood. Hopefully Fix-It would keep him calm. Somebody had to.
Don’t rock the boat, boys. Please don’t get yourselves killed.
They were led in through the gate, and ordered into ranks in the courtyard in front of the main building. On the steps leading up to the doors, three men who Mark assumed to be German officers, talked amongst themselves. Wehrmacht, by the looks of it. Not SS, at least, but they were all Kraut bastards in his mind.
One had his back turned, and Mark noticed the left sleeve of his long gray coat had been rolled
under to neatly accommodate the fact that his arm was missing below the elbow.
After everything that had happened to his men—those on his crew and those in his squadron—Mark found more than a little satisfaction in seeing a fucking German without an arm.
I hope you were conscious for days without pain relief.
Once the men had fallen into ranks and were standing at attention, one of their escorts faced them. “Gentlemen, welcome to Oflag Ahlenstieg. I give you your new Kommandant.” He turned and gestured up the stairs. “Oberst Truchsess von Kardenberg.”
Mark’s heart stopped.
The man with the rolled sleeve turned around and started down the steps.
Mark couldn’t breathe. It was him. No doubt about it.
It had only been eight years, but Armin had aged almost twenty. He still stood straight and proud, but fatigue weighed heavily on his shoulders and his gait. The left shoulder seemed stiffer than the other, as if that was possible beneath that rigid uniform. Maybe it was from the injury that had taken his arm. Maybe it was the weight of the medals adorning his chest.
What little of his hair wasn’t hidden by his cover was much lighter than before—nearly snow white at his temples. Lines had carved themselves into his face, and his intense blue eyes had dimmed. His expression was blank as it often was, but it wasn’t elegantly schooled to be neutral and unreadable. It just seemed … empty.
Mark swallowed hard. His heart was beating again, wildly now, and pounded harder and harder as Armin came closer.
Armin stopped. He cast a slow, sweeping look across the gathered men, and when his gaze landed on Mark, his eyes widened just slightly beneath the brim of his cover.
Then he continued scanning the rest of the officers, and Mark released his breath. The last thing he needed was for Armin to address him by name in front of all the others. This camp promised to be hell without him having to explain why the Kommandant already knew him.
His small tour done, Armin returned to a place where he could probably see all of them, unfazed by one of the prisoners spitting out noisily. He briefly moved to the balls of his feet, then back, flexing his legs as if he needed to be light-footed and was assuring himself of the functionality of every muscle and tendon in his legs.
“Gentlemen. Any kind of welcome will appear to you as mockery, but I bid you welcome regardless. The highest-ranking officer of your respective forces will give you all necessary introductions in short order.” He briefly indicated two officers, one British, one American, who stood impassively at the side. “I represent the Wehrmacht and the highest German authority, and I assure you that you will be treated with dignity and fairness.”
At the word ‘fairness’, Mark could have sworn Armin focused right on him. The whole scene made his heart hurt. Eight years ago, Armin had welcomed them in his charming, odd way to the Olympic village. It had been a rainy, wet August all round, but they’d been free, and Armin represented the “honor guard” and “good will” of the Germans extended to the American team. Now he was their captor.
“We all understand our duties,” Armin continued. “Yours is to escape. Mine is to keep you from escaping.”
Facing Armin like this, Mark was torn between wanting to get as far from this camp as he could, and needing to take him someplace they could be alone. The feelings he’d had back then should have died the moment he realized Armin was now the enemy.
Strange. He’d thought of Armin countless times over the years, even since he’d come back to Germany as a soldier rather than an athlete, but he’d never thought of Armin like this. He’d seen him in the uniform back in Berlin. Intuitively knew the man was in the German military. But somehow he’d never thought of Armin like this. As one of them.
In the back of his mind, he simultaneously regretted the venomous wish that the man missing an arm had suffered as much as possible, and also angrily reinforced that wish, hating Armin for being a Nazi. An enemy.
Funny how you didn’t try to stop me from escaping back then.
Armin and a small entourage of fellow Germans left the courtyard, and Mark released his breath. More than he hated Armin right then, he hated himself for that pang of loss and regret that had hit him the instant the Kommandant was out of sight.
Come back. Come back!
Now he really did wish the crash had killed them all. Then he could have died without ever knowing what Armin had become.
Chapter 5
Armin sat down on the chair in front of the fireplace without even bothering to take off his coat. It was cold in the office just about everywhere but right in front of the fire.
His chief of security, the aptly named Willi Schäfer, closed the door behind them. “Kommandant.”
Armin looked at the man, not sure—never sure, really—whether he should feel that touch of disgust at the man’s eagerness. Schäferhund, he sometimes called him in his mind. Shepherd dog. Schäfer had a perfectly correct attitude to work. He wasn’t brutal. He wasn’t a Nazi trying to sniff out whether any of the prisoners were Jewish (and God save them if they were). Considering the man had been wounded in the East about half a dozen times, finally costing him the use of a lung, Schäfer was likely just happy to be far away from the Ivan. An attitude that Armin could understand.
“Anything to report?”
“Nothing, Kommandant.”
Some diversion would have been good. A punishment to assign, an escape plan to foil, or a strictly administrative issue to take care of.
“Be on the lookout. I’m not concerned about the bomber crew—one of theirs is injured, so I assume they might hang around long enough to see if he’ll be all right.”
“How do you—” Schäfer swallowed and straightened. They were friendly, but not quite friendly enough for Schäfer to challenge him.
“It’s what I would do.” Armin’s voice lacked strength. “So if any of the guards require leave, this would be a good time.”
“Wiese’s home city was bombed last night.”
I’m surrounded by peaceful agricultural names. Armin tried to think who else fit in that category, then abandoned the thought. “Did he receive any news?”
“Nothing yet. I believe they are missing.”
Missing could mean anything. It usually meant dead. “Keep him at his post and busy. When the news comes …” Do something. Don’t leave him alone with a pistol. Don’t put him anywhere near the bomber crew that just arrived.
But Schäfer clearly understood. “Yes, Herr Kommandant. Anything else?”
Armin waved him away. After Schäfer had left, Armin stood beside the fire, neither watching the flames nor turning his back to them. He didn’t like fire. It was a necessary thing, of course, but one that could bring death as easily as it brought warmth.
Much like some of the Allies, I suppose.
He’d wondered about Mark, but had never expected to see him again. From the insignia on Mark’s tattered uniform, Armin had gathered he was a captain. Perhaps a pilot, though he hadn’t let himself look that closely. No need to rouse any suspicions that he was looking at anything other than the insignia.
The war meant everyone was aging faster than they were meant to. He’d been surprised to learn a few of the more weathered, ragged British in this camp were only in their twenties. Mark was probably in his early thirties now. Perhaps just thirty.
He’d been young at the Games where they’d met a lifetime ago, and he’d gained far more than the eight years that had passed since then. Not just the gray that dusted his hair like a layer of cobwebs—the youthful arrogance that Armin had found so endearing was gone now, replaced by a mix of fear and unspoken cynicism.
Armin hoped Mark hadn’t seen and felt the things he himself had; it was inhumane, the things this war did to people. He would have liked to believe that Mark was still back in—where did he say he’d come from? Iowa?—and unscathed by the war, but that was, it seemed, too much to ask. Mark had come to Germany. He’d been a part of the war.
A
nd now he was here.
Shivering, Armin inched toward the fire, giving it a wary glance to make sure he didn’t get too close. The wise thing to do would be to keep his distance. Acknowledge Mark no differently than he did any other prisoner. But hadn’t insatiable curiosity been part of what had driven him to take Mark back to his quarters in Berlin all those years ago?
Armin knew he needed to keep his distance from Mark.
Deep down, he also knew he wouldn’t.
Timing, though. He could not rush out and confront him—were he a mere guard he might get away with it. Were he even the head of security, he could find a pretense. As the Kommandant, though, quite literally master of life and death here, absolute ruler of men who would not accept rule, or those too used to it, he couldn’t simply stroll along and ask for a cigarette. He had to go through the highest-ranking American officer, and Major Chandler wouldn’t have any of that. The British Lieutenant Colonel Millington-Smythe was easier to work with, carrying the blasé, very British yes, yes, very interesting, very interesting indeed snobbishness with him whenever they had dealings with each other, but he was a reasonable man overall. Sportsmanlike, he liked to call it. Here was one enemy who didn’t so much cooperate as not fight him all the time. He’d say things like “ah yes, pretty poor showing, old chap” at a lost battle and shrug. Those were airs that Armin knew how to counter—he accepted them and played the same game.
Chandler was different. He was deeply resentful and clearly intended to make life as hard as possible. Armin itched to throw him into isolation and see if the prisoners wouldn’t find somebody more accommodating to replace him while he, hopefully, rotted in the hole. For months—ever since Armin had arrived to relieve the previous Kommandant—he’d been engaged in a battle of wills with Chandler. He remembered his first day and the introductions, and the expression in Chandler’s eyes that was equal parts loathing, hatred and challenge.
Attempts to signal he wasn’t going to be cruel or harsh had come to nothing, until the temptation arose to be cruel so the man knew what he’d summoned.
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