little more, enough to stumble forward a few more feet.
He had no idea how far they traveled. Fritz Number One turned and urged him, 'Quickly, Mr. Hart! Quickly. Not much farther!' and with those words. Tommy battled ahead.
Visser on his shoulder no longer seemed like something of this world; instead, he was like some great black crushing evil, trying to defeat him.
Just when he reached the point where he did not think he could travel another foot, he saw Fritz Number One abruptly stop, and kneel down.
The German gestured for Tommy to come forward next to him. Tommy staggered these few yards, and then dropped to the earth.
'Where…' he managed, but Fritz hushed him.
'Quiet. There are guards nearby. Can you not smell where you are?'
Tommy wiped his face with his good hand and breathed in through his nose. Only then did he become aware of the mingled smells of human waste and death that clogged the forest air around them. He looked at Fritz Number One quizzically.
'The Russian work camp!' Fritz whispered.
Then the German pointed.
'Take the body as close as you dare and leave it. Be quiet, Mr. Hart.
The guards here will not hesitate to shoot at any noise. And put this in the Hauptmann's hand.'
Fritz Number One reached into his own tunic pocket and removed the Russian belt buckle that he had tried to trade to Tommy days earlier.
Tommy nodded. He took the buckle, turned, and dragged Visser's body onto his shoulder. He fought forward, only to have Fritz Number One hold out his hand. The ferret stared at Visser's dead eyes.
'Gestapo!' he muttered. Then he spat once into the murdered man's face.
'Now, go, and be quick!'
Tommy battled through the trees. The smell was nearly overwhelming. He could just make out a small opening, almost a glade, perhaps two dozen yards from the makeshift barbed wire and sharpened stakes of the Russian work encampment.
There was nothing of permanence in the Russian area; after all, the men it was designed to hold were not expected to survive the war, and there was no Red Cross organization in Geneva ostensibly monitoring their conditions.
To his right, he heard a dog bark. A pair of voices tripped the air around him.
He thought: This is as far as I dare.
With a great shrug, he tossed Visser's body to the earth. It thudded, then lay still. He bent over, thrust the Russian belt buckle into the German's dead fingers, then stepped back and wondered for a moment if he had truly hated Visser enough to kill him, and then understood that that wasn't really what counted. What counted was that Visser was dead and he was still clinging precariously to life. Then, without another look at the dead man's face, he turned, and moving as quietly, yet as swiftly, as he could, returned to the spot where Fritz Number One remained.
The German nodded when he arrived.
'You may have a chance, now, Mr. Hart,' he said.
'But still, we must hurry.'
The return through the forest was faster, but Tommy thought he was closing in on delirium. A breeze sliding through the treetops whispered at him, almost mocking his exhaustion. Shadows were lengthening around him, like dozens of searchlights trying to seize hold of his face, expose him. Kill him. His hand screamed obscenities of hurt, trying to blind him with pain.
It was the moment of the morning when dawn seems to decide to insist on taking hold of the day. Black fades to gray, and the first streaks of blue were soaring through the sky, chasing away all the stars that had been so comforting to him earlier. From a few feet distant. Tommy could easily make out the black hole of the tunnel exit.
Fritz Number One stopped, hiding behind a tree. He pointed at the tunnel. He took Tommy by the arm.
'Mr. Hart,' he whispered sharply, 'Hauptmann Visser would have had me shot when he learned that it was I who traded the weapon that killed
Trader Vic. The weapon that you returned to me. I was in your debt, but now, tonight, that debt is paid. Understand?'
Tommy nodded.
'Now we are, how you say, equal?' the ferret added.
'Even Steven,' Tommy replied.
The German looked slightly surprised.
'Who is Steven?'
'It's another figure of speech, Fritz. When things are all equal, we say they're 'Even Steven'…' Tommy smiled, thinking that he had finally gone completely crazy with exhaustion, for now he was giving an English lesson.
The ferret grinned.
'Even Steven. I will remember this, too. There is much this night to remember.'
He pointed at the hole.
'Now, Mr. Hart, I will count to sixty, and then I will blow the alarm.'
Tommy nodded. He pushed himself up and raced to the hole. He did not look back, but instead, almost threw himself back into the darkness, his feet finding the rungs of the homemade ladder, and climbing down into the pit. He fell to the dirt at the bottom, the pain in his hand screaming insults at him. Without thinking of all the terrors he remembered from childhood, or any of the terrors that night had held.
Tommy thrust himself down the tunnel. There were no lights, not even a stray candle left behind to guide him. It was all a great and infinite blackness, mocking the dawn that was lighting the world beyond his reach.
Tommy crawled back to prison, alone, exhausted, blind, and deeply hurt, chased by the faraway sound of Fritz Number One's whistle shattering the orderly world above him.
Chapter Twenty
It was near chaos in Hut 107.
The would-be escapees gathered in the central corridor were frantically changing out of their re tailored suits, back into their frayed and worn uniforms. Many men had collected extra rations for the escape, food to eat while on the lam, and they were now stuffing their mouths with chocolate or processed meat, fearful that any second the Germans were going to arrive and confiscate everything they'd hoarded so diligently over the past weeks. The support personnel were seizing the clothing, forged documents, tickets, passports, work orders, anything the kriegies had constructed to give false legitimacy to their anticipated existence beyond the wire, and stuffing these into hollowed-out books, or behind walls in concealed hiding spots. The men who'd been part of the bucket brigade of dirt dropped down from the hole in the ceiling, furiously wiping sweat and grime from their faces while one flier carefully fixed the access panel back in place on the off chance that the Germans would not discover it. An officer stood by the front door of the hut, peering through a crack in the wood, shuffling men out of the hut singly and in pairs, as long as the coast stayed clear.
There had been twenty-nine men stretched out in the tunnel when Tommy had given the word of warning to Number Nineteen. The alarm moved more rapidly than the men, passed back in a series of shouts, just as the message about Scott's innocence had been. But as the warning streamed back, the men in the
