by Bodie Thoene
“You don’t say?” The accent was American. “Is that you, Mac?”
It was John Murphy and Ambassador Biddle. The three men entered the hotel together.
Mac wished the interior of Hotel Continental was not so bright. Biddle and Murphy said his face was as red as the lantern on a caboose. He glowed even in the dark. There was no escaping their ribbing.
The elevators were not working, so he plodded wearily up to his room. Inserting the key, he turned the lock and entered.
He swayed in the darkness for a minute, making certain that the blackout curtains were drawn. They were not. The notion that something was wrong rushed back. Or maybe he really had gone paranoid, as Murphy had suggested.
The window onto the fire escape was open. Cold air billowed in. Mac crossed the room in the dark, while something crunched underfoot.
Drawing the curtains, he turned on the light and stared at what he saw. The mattress and pillows had been slit. Every bit of his clothing was dumped onto the floor. Toothpaste was squeezed out of the tube . . . soap smashed . . . safety razor taken apart, the blades scattered like leaves on the bureau top.
He could live with all of that. Only one thing mattered. The rucksack containing his film was gone. And his DeVry camera was smashed. It lay in pieces on the floor.
Trevor Galway had been imprisoned in the dank cargo hold of the Admiral Graf Spee for days before he was transferred onto the prison ship Altmark, whose only purpose was to collect the human flotsam of British shipwrecks and transfer captives back to the Fatherland.
As senior British officer, Trevor had at first been questioned courteously about the mission and destination of HMS Fortitude. When he refused to answer, he had been lowered into a cargo hold with forty-five other men, and the hatch had been battened down.
It was still an hour before dawn, yet the tropical heat had already begun to turn the prison hold into a steam bath. Trevor figured that the Graf Spee and the Altmark were somewhere near the equator, possibly off the coast of South America. He had not given up hope that the British navy was tracking the German commerce raider with the diligence of a good pack of hounds after a fox.
Beside him on the bare wooden pallet that served as a bunk for eight men, Frankie Thomas, a Liverpool boy of seventeen who had been captured from the British ship Trevanian, moaned and raised his hand toward the hatch. Even before his imprisonment Frankie had been thin and frail from his first voyage on a merchant ship. Captives’ rations on the Altmark consisted of three thin slices of black bread twice a day and a pint of tinned potatoes. Now every bone was visible through Frankie’s pale, stretched skin. He was like a baby bird, Trevor thought—all eyes and wide, hungry mouth. Unlike the other prisoners, Frankie had no beard.
The boy gasped and coughed at the stench of urine and human excrement overflowing from the waste bucket into the bilge. “I gotta breathe fresh air today or I ain’t gonna make it, Commander Galway.”
“Steady, boy.” Trevor tried to soothe Frankie, although he also felt the pressure of filth, heat, and humidity bearing down on his chest. “You can’t talk like that.”
“Sure he can,” barked the bitter voice of John Dykes from the dark pallet opposite. “And he can die if he wants. He probably will. You’d think the young’uns would be the strongest, but they’re not.” The Australian Dykes had been on the Altmark longer than any other prisoner in the hold. His freighter had been blown out of the water off the Cape of Good Hope at the end of September when the war was barely three weeks old.
“Shut up, Dykes,” threatened Nob Jenkins, who was over sixty and had sailed in the merchant marine since he was the age of young Frankie. “Leave him be.”
Dykes snorted in defense. “Just sayin’ what I know. The young’uns always die.”
“Somebody open a window,” moaned Frankie. “I gotta breathe.”
“Window!” Dykes scoffed. “He’s off his head. Thinks he’s at his mum’s house in Liverpool! I’ve seen it. He’s a goner all right!”
“Not yet, he’s not,” Trevor spat. He put his hand on Frankie’s forehead. The boy was burning with fever.
“Why d’ya suppose it’s always the young’uns?” asked the Australian. “Mum used t’ say only the good die young. Y’ suppose it’s because they ain’t had time to live bad enough t’ fear dyin’?”
“Shut up!” Trevor snapped. “That’s an order.”
It was still at least two hours before the hatch would be opened and fresh water and rations lowered. Frankie Thomas needed to be lifted out of the hold and placed in a doctor’s care immediately, or Dykes’ prediction would be a certainty.
Trevor crawled out from the cramped space and groped in the blackness for the oil drum that held the discarded tin cans from the potato rations. Finding the drum he grasped an empty tin. Next he woke George Daly.
George was a merchant marine who spoke fair German, along with a half-dozen languages he had learned in ports around the world.
“We’ve got to get Frankie topside,” Trevor said. “ I need you to translate for me.”
George moaned. “I was dreaming, Commander. A good dream, too.”
“Stow it.”
“You know the Huns can’t hear us down here.” At that George let loose with a string of insults in German at the top of his voice. “See there? If that wouldn’t bring them down on us, nothing will.” This was followed by a chorus of curses from the other men. “You see? Nothing.”
“Pick the worst of the lot and repeat it, George. Slowly and distinctly, please. Think of der Führer and spell out every word in German.”
Trevor did not ask the meaning of George Daly’s communiqué. He stood on the pallet and began to clang the can loudly against the hatch, reciting each letter in Morse code. Once, twice, three times the message was tapped.
Within two minutes the hatch was peeled back, allowing a blast of fresh air to penetrate the suffocating gloom.
Nob Jenkins touched the sick boy on his head. “Look, Frankie. The sky.”
Frankie opened his eyes and blinked up at the square of star-flecked heavens. “Thanks,” he breathed.
A cluster of German faces peered down angrily into the hold. Pistols were drawn.
“What’d you say to ’em, George?” hissed Dykes. “You was only supposed to make ’em a little mad.”
George seemed pleased. “Just repeated a rumor that Hitler’s mother’s name was Schicklgruber. A Jewess. Sure to get us shot.”
Dykes, a wild man with a long beard and matted hair, peered at George with eyes like two burned holes in his filthy face. “The name of Hitler’s mother?”
George had just opened his mouth to explain when the glaring face of Captain Thun appeared in the opening. A blaze of light stabbed the darkness, causing the men below to shield their eyes.
“Who has done this!”
Trevor held up the tin can as admission of guilt. “We have a seriously ill man here.”
“What has that to do with this matter? Such slander against the purity of our Führer’s Aryan blood is punishable by death in the Reich. Strictly verboten. Since you are ignorant of the ways of National Socialism, however, we shall spare your life.”
“We could think of no other way to get your attention. If this boy does not get help soon . . .”
But it was already too late. Frankie reached both spindly arms skyward, as if to grasp the stars and pull himself up by beams of light. “Oh, look!” He smiled. “Look at them!”
Nob clasped the boy’s shoulder as if to hold him down. “Stay with us, Frankie. We’re goin’ home to England soon!”
“Home,” Frankie murmured, and his arms fell in a limp tangle across his chest. The light left his eyes, sailing past the German captain to freedom.
“Dead,” said Dykes. “Always the young’uns.”
“So, Lt. Commander Galway, you have the attention of the Reich.” Then the German captain shouted the order to have Trevor dragged out of the hold for public flogging to precede the burial
at sea of young Frankie Thomas.
PART II
Did we in our strength confide,
Our striving would be losing,
Were not the right man on our side,
The man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He—
Lord Sabaoth His name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
10
The Interruptions of War
On a quiet afternoon in the neutral nation of Belgium, the peaceful life of farmer Leopold Dumas was about to be interrupted by the war.
The Belgian farmer scooped grain out of a gunnysack and into the canvas feedbag. An enormous draft horse put his great shaggy head over the stall and neighed with anticipation. Then the horse’s ears pricked upward, and he turned his head toward the open door of the barn that framed a square of gray light.
A moment later the farmer noticed it also: an intermittent buzzing as if a mosquito were turning its shrill hum on and off. Leopold straightened up and listened, twirling one end of his bushy silver mustache in thought. “What can that be, eh?” he asked the horse. “What is an aeroplane doing around here, and in this weather also?”
The horse’s curiosity about the unfamiliar noise ended, and he nickered again for his supper. Leopold shrugged and finished filling the feedbag as the humming receded.
The farmer was slipping the leather strap over the animal’s ears when the buzzing returned with a rush. It seemed to come from a great height, faint at first, and then increasing until the sputtering hum was directly above the barn roof.
There was a swoosh of air through the open doorway that scattered the chickens and swirled the dust. An instant later came a sharp crack, as if a frozen tree limb had broken off, followed by more snapping noises and the rattle of breaking glass.
Leopold hurriedly retrieved his heavy coat from a wooden peg near the door and slipped the cap with the long earflaps over his head. At first he could see nothing amiss as he scanned the fields covered by early snow. Then a man staggered into view at the far end of the pasture, climbing out of the culvert.
Leopold started toward him. A little closer and Leopold could make out the crumpled outline of a small plane. It lay half across the drainage ditch with its nose on one side and its tail on the other, but it had buckled in the middle as if the bug Leopold had thought of earlier had been squashed. A Nazi bug, judging by its markings.
A second man in uniform staggered out of the ditch and joined his fellow. They appeared to be having a hurried conference involving a leather portfolio that the first officer waved excitedly. Both men patted their uniform pockets, looking for something.
They turned at Leopold’s approach, and the man with the pouch spoke. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
“I speak German,” Leopold acknowledged. “So, your flying machine is broken, yes? Are you hurt?”
“No, no, we are very fortunately uninjured. I am Major Kurt Hulse, and this is Major Reinberger. And your name is?”
Introductions over, Hulse made an odd request. “Have you any matches, Herr Leopold?”
So the search of the pockets was explained. “Yes,” Leopold agreed. “Why?”
“We need . . . that is . . . it is so cold. We need to build a fire, Herr Leopold.”
“Come into my house,” urged the farmer. “It is just beyond the barn there.”
“Ah, no, we . . . we cannot leave the plane, you see . . . we must guard it.”
“From what?” Leopold asked, eyeing the empty fields. A car turned the far corner of the hedge-bordered pasture.
“Please,” Hulse begged. “Our orders, you see. Could we build a fire here to keep warm?”
Leopold hesitantly produced two matches from his jacket and handed them to Hulse. Reinberger upended the portfolio, spilling a pile of papers onto the frozen earth.
A light snow was beginning to fall, and the first match sputtered and died without catching in the heap of typewritten pages. The auto pulled up across the hedge nearest the plane and slid to a halt on the icy road. A gendarme jumped out.
“Schneller,” muttered Hulse.
The second match flared, and Reinberger cupped it against the wind and touched it to the corner of a page. The damp paper seemed to refuse the fire for a second; then a bright yellow flame jumped up as the gendarme vaulted the ditch, pistol in hand.
Hulse turned to face the policeman, blocking his view of the scene as Reinberger, in a sudden change of mind, stomped on the tiny blaze and hurriedly stuffed the papers back into the case.
“Leopold,” called the local gendarme, a man named Albert. “This plane . . . it is German.”
“I know that,” remarked Leopold with irritation. “It has chosen my field in which to crash.”
Albert waved his pistol at the two Nazi officers. “You will move away from the plane,” he directed. “Leopold, we will please go to your home to await my superiors. We saw this plane circle the village, obviously in difficulty. Others will be following me shortly.”
Reinberger and Hulse exchanged a look, then complied with the policeman and started across the snow toward the farmhouse. Reinberger cradled the pouch under his arm as they went.
Information about the German plane crash in Belgium and the attempted destruction of top-secret Nazi papers reached French Military Intelligence two days after the event. By then the Belgians and the Dutch and the officials of tiny Luxembourg had already taken their turns interrogating the two German airmen. The suspect papers had been examined a dozen times and were the subject of grave concern in the governments of the neutrals. The trembling caused by the revelation of what was in the papers about the Germans’ plan had somehow filtered down into the villages on the border, causing unconcealed suspicion of every stranger who passed through.
Andre Chardon, as French Military Intelligence liaison officer, was the obvious choice to travel to Belgium to check out the papers and talk to the German airmen. In spite of the frigid weather, he elected to motor the route from Paris to Brussels and pass through the Ardennes along the way. The roundabout route was intentional. He wanted to review a growing suspicion about German objectives. Richard Lewinski, working in Andre’s basement to unravel Enigma, grudgingly accepted Gustave Bertrand as a temporary guardian.
After a long, uneventful drive and a night in Luxembourg City, Andre left for Brussels early the next morning. A fine rain mixed with wisps of fog. The trip up through the rough terrain of the Ardennes was long and wet with plenty of time to consider the improbable possibility of German invasion by this route.
He passed through the frontier checks into Belgium without a problem, but upon entering the town of Arlon, he found that the hint of a Wehrmacht assault had sent a wave of panic through the Belgian populace.
The streets of Arlon were without markers. Barricades of logs lay across each of the main thoroughfares. These obstructions, Andre noted, were pathetic attempts by the citizens to block an expected German invasion of their town. The heaviest obstacle could have been simply pushed aside or crushed beneath the treads of a German tank. The only result of the ramparts that Andre could see was crazy bottlenecks in intersections that were nearly impassable at the best of times. Driving from one side of Arlon to the other was something like trying to find his way out of a maze in the gardens of Versailles. If and when the Germans did decide to overrun Arlon, the town’s pitiful fortifications would only impede the advance of friendly troops and artillery sent out to face the Nazi menace.
Finally reaching the center of town, Andre found further evidence of panic. All the men who might have manned the outer blockades were in the square listening to an inspiring speech by the major. Even here the word was “The Boche shall not pass!”
It seemed that the townsfolk did not want anyone to pass, not even a French military officer with official business in Brussels. Andre was pulled to the side of the street. Military police came at the bidding o
f the metropolitan police, who responded to the summons of the traffic police. Each group examined Andre’s documents down to his French driver’s license. Was he a spy dressed in French military uniform? Was he a fifth columnist out to take pictures of the little town of Arlon and pass information to saboteurs? Andre was held and questioned for two hours.
Finally cleared, Andre proceeded by a back road north toward Dinant and the bridge that crossed the Meuse River. There he was stopped by a cheerful captain of the Belgian military police, who instantly read the irritation on Andre’s face.
“What is it, Colonel?”
“I might have been burned for a witch in Arlon. They have gone mad.”
“It is the rumor, Colonel. No one knows where it began, but there is hearsay that the Germans will soon attack through Belgium and Holland.”
Andre knew the source of the rumor would be the documents on the German plane. He did not know, however, how the information had escaped the confines of Belgian Military Intelligence to affect the intelligence of the ordinary citizens in Arlon.
“If there is a spy in Arlon, no doubt he has his papers in order and is carrying the briefcase of the town magistrate.”
The captain laughed and passed Andre’s documents back through the window. “Yes, and if there was a German spy in Arlon, no doubt he would have been the first to run and examine your papers, Colonel.”
“Their hysteria is a bad sign. Frenzy and self-assurance do not go together.”
“That is true. Poor little Arlon. Always the first to be invaded. Yet there is not much hysteria in Belgium. I, for one, do not believe the Nazis will attack us today. But who is to say?” He gestured toward the opposite bank of the river. “If they do, we will cut them to shreds without the help of either the French or English army. You see this bridge? There will never be a German tank passing over it unless all of us are dead. We Belgians shall do it ourselves.”
