Wayne was handcuffed and led out of the room.
Captain Von Helldorf put his face up to Dr. Hoffmann’s face and told her, “You will be taken care of. I can assure you of that.” He then strutted out of the house.
CHAPTER FOUR
Wayne was again brought to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation and escorted back into the infamous Hall of Justice. More torture was to follow. Wayne was terrified that after this session of torture, he would be shot dead — if he even survived the torture.
Wayne, again stripped down, was tied securely to a dunking chair suspended on a hoist above a large filled pallet of sludge. The foul stench of the sludge was enough to make a man crazy. Once again, SS Captain Von Helldorf and his obedient men tried to drag information out of their prisoner, but it was all in vain. Wayne was slowly lowered into the sludge, and then completely submerged for a full minute, which the Gestapo men found hilarious.
Wayne told Von Helldorf whatever he thought the Captain would want to hear. He made up stories that he was with an underground. He was asked about his involvement with Dr. Hoffmann, but kept silent about that. Wayne did not want to get Dr. Hoffmann in any more trouble than she might already be in. Besides, whatever he said would not be believed. And nothing Wayne said satisfied those bastards anyway.
Wayne, looking as if he had just crawled out of a sewer, was untied from the dunking chair. With his hands secured together with rope, he was then suspended from a rack with his body hanging upside down.
“Clean him up,” Von Helldorf ordered.
The two Gestapo men picked up a hose that had been hanging on the wall, and proceeded to hose their prisoner down with ice-cold water. The water pressure was so strong that Wayne thought it might as well have been bullets instead of water hitting his body. He was glad, though, to have the sludge off of him.
With a rag, the Captain personally smeared a sweet, sticky substance all over Wayne’s upper body. Wayne was perplexed. What were these sadists up to?
“I could kill you now,” Von Helldorf stated. “But no — that would be too easy. Though it would give me great pleasure. I have other plans for you. I hope you have enjoyed our time together as much as I have, my friend. Here is a little something to remember me by.” The Captain gave Wayne a final dropkick in the stomach before he and his men left the room.
Wayne, strung upside down like a prize fish that had just been reeled in, wondered what was going to happen next to him. He did not need to wonder long.
Behind Wayne, a screen window built into the wall slid open. Wayne heard this and tried to look behind him, but was not able to twist his body around enough to be able to do so. He did, however, hear the small swarm of bees that flew out from behind the screen. The bees, attracted to the sweet, sticky substance that had been smeared on his body, were instantly attracted to Wayne and began to cover his body.
Sometimes things will pop into someone’s head at the strangest times. Things that a person would never in a million years think about unless that person happened to be in a bizarre situation where that though could come in handy. Such was the case with Wayne at that moment in time. A television show he had seen at least twelve years earlier all of a sudden popped into his mind. It was a weekly show about all kinds of wacky, unusual people and the things they would do, such as eat glass or bicycle across the country. Wayne recalled seeing one particular episode in which a man let himself be covered from head to toe with bees and how he subsequently never got stung. Wayne remembered the bee guy explaining why the bees never stung him. The guy said, “The most critical thing was to stand motionless.” Wayne took the advice of that guy on the long ago seen television show. As he felt the insects crawl all over him, Wayne hung motionless. He was not stung once.
Shortly thereafter, two Gestapo Nazis, whom Wayne had not seen prior to his interrogation, entered the room wearing protective bee clothing and took Wayne down from the uncomfortable position he had been subjected to by hanging from the rack.
Wayne was shackled together at the hands and feet and put into a prisoner transport van. He was not the only prisoner there — he counted four other prisoners in the transport van. They were all men: two young, one middle-aged, and one who appeared to be in his sixties. They all wore the same emotionless look on their faces and remained silent.
The cargo van started to move. Wayne had no idea where they were being taken. It was pitch black inside, the windows having been blacked out. Wayne breathed a little easier. He knew that if he were going to be executed, it would have been done back at Gestapo headquarters. He also knew that he was being transported somewhere for a reason.
The van drove for twenty minutes before it came to a stop in a dreary, industrial section of New Berlin City. An electrified barbed wire fence and armed Nazi guards surrounded the prisoner holding area. Nearby, the smokestacks from various factories spit out a steady stream of pollution and toxic substances into the atmosphere.
The back of the transport van was unlocked and the five prisoners were removed from it under the watchful eyes of armed guards. They were led through a small guarded entrance and into the prisoner holding area.
The Gestapo private who had driven the transport van approached SS Lieutenant Kramer with papers that needed to be signed. It was a routine that both men had been through many times.
“How many this time?” Kramer asked and then took a deep drag on his cigarette.
“Six,” the Gestapo private answered. He held out a clipboard with official Reich sealed papers attached to it.
“What the hell is happening?” Kramer wanted to know. “I’m receiving twice as many as I usually do.” He snatched the clipboard from the Gestapo Private and signed the papers.
The Private said, “The Reich Defense Council ordered that the camps be filled to capacity so there will be enough labor to work in the armaments plants to prepare for Japanese aggression.”
“Those damn Japs. They think they own the world. They already have some of the most productive land around.” Kramer took another drag on his cigarette. “I say we blow up the slant-eyed fuckers.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the Gestapo Private agreed. “It should be done for the good of the Reich.” He then asked, “Where are these prisoners being sent to?”
“Hollenburg.”
The Gestapo private boisterously laughed,
“I would not want to be in their shoes.”
The compact prisoner holding area was crowded with an uncomfortably large number of prisoners, most of whom appeared to be thin and weary looking men and women. A small number of children were also present.
Once inside with the other prisoners, Wayne’s feet and hands were unshackled. If a prisoner did attempt to escape, he or she would make good target practice for any one of the numerous armed guards keeping watch on the compound.
A female prisoner, Linda, watched Wayne curiously. Linda was in her late twenties and had black hair that ran down to her shoulders and dark brown eyes. She wore ragged clothes and no makeup, but was an attractive woman anyway.
Wayne noticed Linda and glanced back at her. He had sensed that she was glaring at him, but he also felt that everybody else in the compound was optically checking out the newest prisoners who had arrived on that night.
The expression on Linda’s face, though, was what made her stand out to Wayne more than anybody else on that miserable day. She had a look of possessing a great emotional strength and an “I’ll beat any situation attitude”. Wayne observed that the other inmates all had a blank and sad defeated look on their faces.
Wayne found a vacant spot on the hard concrete ground and sat down. He could do nothing but wait. He closed his eyes and, surprisingly, considering where he was, fell asleep.
Except for a rotating searchlight, the night was dark and quiet, until the sound of a child’s wails broke the silence.
Wayne awoke to the sound of the crying three-year-old girl. It was an awful, hysterical cry that pierced the
