“I would warn Herr Oberst that what you suggest is a direct violation of the Geneva Convention, of which Germany is a signatory. Such treatment of escaping Allied personnel would constitute a war crime, and anyone engaging in such behavior will eventually find himself facing a firing squad. Or a hangman’s noose, Herr Oberst. That, I can promise!”
Von Reiter turned to the British officer. “I have my orders!” he answered briskly. “Legal orders! And do not speak to me, wing commander, of war crimes! For it is not the Luftwaffe that nightly drops incendiaries and delayed-fuse bombs upon cities filled with noncombatants! Cities filled with women, children, and the elderly! Expressly against your beloved Geneva Convention rules!”
As he spoke, Von Reiter glanced over at Hauptmann Visser, who nodded, and instantly barked out a command to the men guarding the British fliers who’d been involved in the escape attempt. The Germans immediately chambered rounds in their rifles, or manipulated the firing bolt on the Schmeisser machine pistols they carried. These made a distinctively evil clicking sound. The squad encircling the British officers raised their weapons into firing positions.
For several long seconds there was utter quiet on the parade ground.
His face suddenly pale, drawn tight, the Senior British Officer stepped forward sharply into the silence.
“Are you threatening a massacre of unarmed men?” he shouted. His voice abruptly turned high-pitched, almost girlish with fear and near-frenzy. There was more than a tinge of panic in each word he spoke.
Von Reiter, still red-faced but with the irritating coolness that superiority of firepower brings, turned to the British officer. “I am well within my rights, wing commander. And I am merely following direct orders. From the highest levels in Berlin. To disobey would result in perhaps my own firing squad.”
The SBO stepped closer to the German. “Sir!” he shouted. “We are all here as witnesses! If you murder these men . . .”
Von Reiter glared at the Englishman. “Murder? Murder! You dare talk to me of murder! With your firebomb attacks upon unarmed civilians! Terrorfliegers!”
“You will hang, Von Reiter, if you give the order to fire! I’ll fashion the bloody noose myself!”
Von Reiter took a deep breath, calming himself. He eyed the SBO with irritation. Then he smiled cruelly. “You, wing commander, are the officer in charge. This foolish escape attempt today is your responsibility. Will you offer yourself to the firing squad, in return for the lives of these men?”
The Senior British Officer’s jaw dropped in astonishment and he did not immediately reply.
“It would seem a most fair trade, wing commander. One man’s life to save the lives of two dozen.”
“What you’re suggesting is a crime,” the officer answered.
Von Reiter shrugged. “War is a crime,” he said briskly. “I am merely asking you for a decision officers make frequently. Will you sacrifice one man for the good of many? Yourself? Quickly, wing commander! Your decision!”
The camp commandant lifted his riding crop in the air, as if about to give the command to open fire.
The rows of British airmen seemed to stiffen, then waver, as if rage like a wind passed down each line. Voices started to rise, angrily. In one of the nearby guard towers a machine gun pivoted on its base, making a creaking sound as it was brought to bear on the assembly.
The two dozen would-be escapees seemed to shrink together. Where they had worn boisterous smiles and wide grins as they emerged from interrogation, now they had paled, staring out at the weapons that covered them.
“Commandant!” the Senior British Officer shouted hoarsely. “Don’t do something you might later regret!”
Von Reiter eyed the officer carefully. “Regret? Regret killing the enemy that is doing such a fine job of killing my own people? Where should I find something in that to regret?”
“I’m warning you!” the officer cried out.
“I’m still awaiting your decision, wing commander! Will you take their places?”
Tommy stole a look at Heinrich Visser. The German could do little to hide his pleasure.
“I think they’re going to do it,” whispered the actor standing next to him. “Damn it, I think they are!”
“No, they’re bluffing,” said the chess master.
“Are you certain?” Tommy asked, under his breath.
“No,” the chess master replied quietly. “Not at all.”
“They’re going to do it,” repeated the actor. “They’re really going to do it! I heard they shot men that escaped from one of the other camps. Fifty Brits, I heard. Went out through a tunnel, were on the lam for weeks. Executed as spies. I didn’t believe it, but now . . .”
Von Reiter paused, letting the tension build in the air around him. The goons with their fingers on the triggers of their weapons waited for a command, while the assembled British airmen stood rock-still, in terror at what seemed about to unfold.
“All right, commandant!” the Senior British Officer said loudly. “I’ll take their place!”
The camp commandant turned slowly, lowering his riding crop languorously. He placed one hand upon a black-sheathed ceremonial dagger that he wore in the belt of his dress uniform. Tommy caught sight of this gesture, and looked intently at the ceremonial weapon. Then he saw that Von Reiter’s other hand had begun to swish the riding crop around his polished, glistening black leather boots.
“Ah,” he said slowly. “A brave but foolish decision.” Von Reiter paused, as if savoring the moment. “But in this instance, it will not be necessary,” he said to the Senior British Officer, but before the man could raise his voice in protest again, Von Reiter pivoted and shouted out to Heinrich Visser: “Hauptmann! Each man who tried to escape from the shower building, fifteen days in the cooler! Bread and water only!”
Fear like a sudden wind seemed to ooze from the huddled men. One man sobbed out loud. Another gripped the arm of his neighbor, his knees wobbly, supporting himself. A third swore angrily, shaking a fist at the German officer, challenging him to fight.
Then the commandant turned back to the SBO. “Now you have been warned!” he said angrily. “We will not let anyone else who tries to escape off so lightly!” He raised his voice again, addressing the entire gathering of Allied airmen. “The next man who is caught outside the wire will be shot! On that you have my promise! Let there be no confusion on this account. There has never been a successful escape from this camp, and there will not be! This is your home for the duration of the war. The Reich will not expend valuable military resources hunting down escaping Allied airmen! This is the limit of the resources we will spend.”
As he spoke, Von Reiter unbuttoned the breast pocket flap of his steel-gray dress uniform jacket, and reached inside. He removed a single thin rifle cartridge, which he held up for the entire assembly to see. After a moment, he turned and flipped the cartridge to the Senior British Officer.
“As a reminder,” he said sharply. “And, of course, there will be no more shower privileges for the British compound for the next fortnight, either.”
With that, the camp commandant made a gesture of dismissal at the gathered men, turned on his heel, and, accompanied by the other German officers and guards, exited the camp. Tommy Hart caught sight of the grin Heinrich Visser wore. He also saw that the Hauptmann had seen him, standing to the side.
“I thought they were gonna do it, for sure,” whispered the actor from New York. “Jesus, that was damn close.”
“No shit,” said the chess master. “Absolutely no shit.” Then the chess player added another question. “Hey, you guys think MacNamara and Clark over on our side know about that directive? The shoot-to-kill order? You think maybe that was some kinda elaborate Kraut bluff? Maybe trying to scare us?”
“Well, it sure worked,” said the actor, blowing out a long breath of pent-up air. “I don’t think it was any bluff. But I’ll tell you this: MacNamara and Clark, they know about those orders. For sure. The thing is, they d
on’t care—not one little bit.”
“It’s a war, remember?” Tommy said.
The two other men grunted in assent.
Phillip Pryce was tending to a battered steel kettle, boiling water for tea, and Hugh Renaday had gone off to try to discover what had happened in the escape attempt. Pryce fussed about the stove, not unlike some elderly crone. Tommy could just make out the muffled sounds of a quartet of voices, singing popular songs a cappella in another bunk room. The whistle of the kettle seemed to blend with the ghostly voices, and for an instant, Tommy looked around and thought the world had returned to some sort of reasoned normalcy.
“We were making some progress, I think,” he said to Pryce. The older man nodded.
“Tommy, lad, it seems to me that there is much to be suspicious about and little time remaining in which to investigate the truth. At zero eight hundred on Monday you will be expected to begin fighting on Mr. Scott’s behalf. Have you considered what will be your opening gambit?”
“Not yet.”
“It might be wise to start.”
“There’s still so much we don’t know.”
Pryce paused, hovering over the tea cups. “Do you know what bothers me, Tommy, about this case?”
“I’m listening.”
The older man seemed to take his time with every action. He examined the worn tea leaves in the bottom of each ceramic cup carefully. He lifted the water kettle gingerly from the stove. He breathed in some of the steamy vapors that smoked from the opening.
“It is the sense that there is something here that is different from what it appears.”
“Phillip, please explain.”
He shook his head. “I am getting too old and too frail for all this,” he said, grinning. “I think it is a medically proven fact that the older one gets, the more quick one is to spot conspiracies. Skulduggery. Cloak and dagger stuff. Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a young man, now, was he?”
“Well, he wasn’t an old guy. Dr. Watson was. Holmes was in his thirties, maybe?”
“Quite so, quite so. And he would be suspicious, would he not? I mean, this is all so straightforward, from the prosecution’s point of view. Two men hate each other. Race is the reason. One man dies. The survivor must be guilty of the murder. Quod erat demonstrandum. Or ipso facto. Some fancy latinate construction to define the situation. But none of it seems in the slightest bit clear to me.”
“I would agree, but it seems there isn’t much time left for exploring.”
“I wonder,” Pryce said with a lifted eyebrow, “whether or not that is part of the design.”
Tommy was about to respond when he heard the heavy tread of Hugh’s flight boots coming down the hut’s central corridor. Seconds later the door burst open, and the Canadian rushed into the room. He was grinning widely.
“Do you know what those clever bastards tried to pull off?” he almost shouted. There was a schoolboy’s delight creeping into his every word.
“What was it?” Tommy asked.
“Well, get this: The same group had been heading off to the shower building every day, same hour, same minute, for nearly two weeks, rain or shine, bellowing all those songs out, the ones that get that old sod Von Reiter so upset. . . .”
“Yes. I passed them on the way in,” Tommy said.
“Well, you did indeed, Tommy, my friend, but today they were ten minutes earlier than usual. And the two goons escorting them? They were two of our guys in overcoats cut and dyed to look like the Krauts! They marched into the shower and half the gang undresses and starts singing away, just as usual. The other half leap into their clothes and come waltzing straight out, where the two phony guards put them into formation and start walking them toward the woods. . . .”
“Hoping no one notices a damn thing!” Pryce burst out with a laugh.
“Precisely,” Hugh continued. “And they might have made it, too, if some damn ferret isn’t coming down the road on a bicycle. He notices that the ‘goons’ aren’t carrying weapons, and he stops, the men break for the woods, and the game is up!”
Hugh shook his head. “Damn clever. Almost pulled it off, as well.”
The men all laughed together. It seemed marvelously preposterous for an escape attempt, yet fabulously creative.
“I don’t think they’d have gotten far,” Pryce said, between coughs. “After all, their uniforms would have given them away.”
“Well, not precisely, Phillip,” Hugh said. “Three of the men—the true authors of the scheme, so I gather—had civilian clothing underneath their uniforms, which they planned to shed in the forest. They also had excellent forged papers. Or so I’m told. They were the ones who were supposed to make it out. The others were mainly to cause some trouble and consternation for the Krauts.”
“I wonder,” Tommy asked slowly, “if anyone had known of this new order that allegedly allows for the shooting of prisoners, whether they would have volunteered for a diversion so readily.”
“You’re dead on, there, Tommy,” Hugh answered. “It’s one thing to muck around with the Krauts if all it’s going to cost you is a fortnight in the cooler singing ‘roll out the barrel . . .’ and shivering through the night. A whole different thing if the bastards are going to put you in front of a firing squad. You think it was some sort of bluff? I can’t believe . . .”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Tommy said with a brisk confidence that was perhaps ill-placed. “They can’t go around shooting prisoners of war. Why, there would be hell to pay.”
Pryce shook his head and held up his hand, cutting off the conversation. “A prisoner of war is supposed to be in uniform, and he’s supposed to provide his name, rank, and serial number, when demanded. A man in a suit of clothes carrying phony identity cards and forged work permits? That man could easily be taken for a spy. When do you stop being the one and start being the other?”
Pryce took a deep breath.
“We shoot spies. Without any due process. And so do the Germans.”
He looked closely at the two airmen and nodded his head slowly. “I have no doubt that Von Reiter will do precisely that, in the future,” he said. “I believe our lads, clever as they might have been, were in serious jeopardy there for several minutes. Jeopardy they might not have foreseen. Von Reiter may not be some brown-shirted fanatic Nazi, but he surely is a German officer, through and through. There’s probably generations of stiffly Teutonic service to the fatherland running in his quite cold veins. Give Von Reiter a direct and unambiguous order, and he’ll follow it to the letter. Without question.”
“That is,” Tommy interrupted, “if he actually did receive such an order. He could have just been blowing smoke.”
Hugh nodded. “Tommy’s got a point, Phillip.”
Pryce smiled. “Tommy, it seems to me that you’re learning subtlety rapidly. Of course, it makes little difference to us whether he received that order or not—as long as we stay put, right here in our delightful accommodations. But the threat of shooting . . . well, that’s real enough, isn’t it? And so Von Reiter achieves much of what he desires merely by raising the ugly possibility of firing squads. The only way to test the truth is to escape . . .”
“And be caught,” Tommy finished the sentence.
Pryce sighed. “Von Reiter is a clever man. Do not underestimate him just because he looks like some Saturday morning puppet show character in those clothes of his.” The onetime barrister coughed again, and added, “A cruel man, I think. Cruel and ambitious. Traits he shares, I suppose, with that slimy weasel Visser. A dangerous concoction, that . . .”
As he spoke, all three men became aware of the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor. Boots hitting the wooden planks with precision.
“Goons!” Hugh muttered.
Before the two others had time to respond, the door to the small bunk room flew open, revealing Heinrich Visser. Behind him stood a dwarfish man, paunchy and barely over five feet in height, wearing a poorly cut black business suit, holding in his hands a
black homburg hat that he nervously fondled. The man peered out into the room from behind thick glasses. Standing just to the rear were four heavyset German soldiers, each with a weapon held at the ready. Within seconds of their arrival, the corridor behind them filled with curious British airmen torn from the casino of mouse roulette by the appearance of the armed men.
Visser stepped into the narrow bunk room, eyeing the three men.
“Ah, perhaps we are engaged in a strategy session? A critical discussion of the facts and the law, wing commander?”
Visser addressed his question to Pryce.
“Tommy has much work to do, and little time remaining. We were lending him what expertise our experience allows. This should not come as much of a surprise to you, Hauptmann,” Pryce replied.
Visser shook his head slowly. He fingered his chin with his sole hand, as if thinking.
“And do you make progress, wing commander? Does the defense of Lieutenant Scott begin to take shape?”
“We have little time, and so we raise questions. We are still seeking answers,” Pryce responded.
“Ah, such is the lot of any true philosopher,” Visser said, musing. “And you, Mr. Renaday, with your policeman’s heart, have you found any hard facts that assist you in this search?”
Hugh scowled at the German. He gestured around the room. “These walls are facts,” he said contemptuously. “The wire is a fact. The machine-gun towers are facts. Beyond that, I haven’t much to say to you, Hauptmann.”
Visser smiled, ignoring the insult contained in the words and tones of the Canadian’s response. Tommy did not like the fact that Visser seemed oblivious to insult. There was a dangerousness in the officer’s mocking smile.
“And you, Mr. Hart, have you come to rely greatly on Mr. Pryce?”
Tommy hesitated, unable to see where the German was heading with his questions. “I welcome his analysis,” he responded carefully.
“It is comforting to have such an expert at your side, no? A famous barrister, when your own expertise in these type of matters is so unfortunately limited?” Visser persisted.
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