No shelter. Snarling dogs and trigger-happy guards watching over them.
There were no Geneva Convention rules governing their imprisonment. It was not unusual to hear the occasional sharp report of a rifle, or burst of machine-gun fire from the woods, which all the kriegies understood to mean that some Russian had realized the inevitability of his death, and had done something to hasten it.
Tommy shook his head briefly, and thought: Death must seem like freedom to those men.
Then he looked at the tall fences of barbed wire enclosing Stalag Luft
Thirteen and realized: Imprisonment must seem like death to some men right here.
He felt an odd quickening in his stomach, as if he'd seen something that was surprising. He stared at the wire again.
Not a bad spot, he thought abruptly. The guard tower to the north is a good fifty yards away and the one to the south another seventy-five.
Their searchlights wouldn't quite overlap, either. Nor did the fields of fire belonging to the machine guns mounted on either side of the tower. At least, that was what he guessed because he knew himself not to be expert in these sorts of details, although others inside the camp were.
He suddenly thought to himself: If I were a member of the escape committee, this would be a spot I would give serious consideration to.
He narrowed his eyes, trying to guess the distance to the forest. One hundred yards, minimum, he thought. A football field. Even if you managed to blitz through the wire with a pair of homemade shears, it was still too far for anyone not willing to risk everything on a single dash for freedom.
Or was it?
Tommy scraped up a handful of loose, sandy earth, and let it stream through his fingers. It was the wrong dirt. This he knew from talking with men who'd worked on the unsuccessful tunnels. Too hard and dry, too unstable. Forever caving in. Vulnerable to the probes from the ferrets. He shuddered at the idea of digging beneath the surface. It would be stifling, hot, filthy, and dangerous. The ferrets also occasionally commandeered a heavy truck, loaded it with men and material, and drove it, bouncing along, around the outside perimeter of the camp. They believed the weight would cause any underground tunnel to collapse. Once, more than a year earlier, they'd been right. He remembered the fury on Colonel MacNamara's face when the long days and nights of hard work were so summarily crushed.
It was the same look of frustration and despair that the colonel wore a few weeks back, when the two men digging had been buried alive. Tommy looked over at the barbed wire.
No way out, he told himself. Except the worst way.
And then, in that second, he wondered whether this was true.
To his left, he suddenly spotted an officer with a metal hoe working a small patch of garden, dutifully cultivating the rows of turned earth over and over again. There were similar gardens all along the length of Hut 106. All were well-tended.
Dirt, he thought, fresh dirt. Fresh dirt being blended with old.
He wanted to stand, look closer, but with a great internal tug at his emotions and a lassoing of the ideas that began to spring to his mind, he remained where he sat.
Tommy took a long, slow breath, releasing the air like a man ascending through the water. He lowered his head, trying to make it seem as if he were lost in thought, when in reality his eyes were darting back and forth, searching the area around him. He knew someone was watching him. From a window. From the exercise yard. From the perimeter path.
He did not know precisely who, but he knew he was being watched.
Abruptly, from the front of the hut, he heard a sharp wolf whistle, the double-pitched sound that in happier places meant a pretty woman was sashaying past. Almost immediately afterward, there was the sound of a metal waste container being slammed shut twice, another double report.
Then he heard a single kriegie voice call out: 'Kein drinkwasser!' in a distinctly flat, twangy American accent. Someone from the Midwest, Tommy thought.
He stretched out his arms, like a man who'd been dozing, and lifted himself to his feet, dusting off his pants. He noticed that the officer who'd been tending the garden across from where he was seated had disappeared, and this made him very curious, though he took pains to hide this observation. A few moments later, Fritz Number One came sauntering around the front of the hut. The ferret was making no attempt to move through the camp with any concealment; he knew that his own presence had already been noticed by the fliers assigned to stooge duty that day. He was merely reminding the kriegies that he was there, as always, and alert. When Fritz Number One saw Tommy, he walked over to him.
'Lieutenant Hart,' he said, grinning, 'perhaps you have a smoke for me?'
'Hello, Fritz,' Tommy replied.
'Yes, if you'll escort me to the British compound.'
'Two smokes then,' Fritz answered.
'One for each direction.'
'Agreed.'
The German took a cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag, and slowly blew out smoke.
'Do you think the war will end soon, lieutenant?'
'No. I think it will go on forever.'
The German smiled, gesturing with his hand for the two of them to start moving across the compound toward the gate.
'In Berlin,' the ferret said slowly, 'they talk of nothing except the invasion. How it must be thrown back into the sea.'
'Sounds like they're worried,' Tommy said.
'They have much to worry about,' Fritz answered carefully.
He looked up into the sky.
'A day like this one would be right, don't you think, lieutenant? For launching an attack.
That is what Eisenhower and Montgomery and Churchill must be imagining back in London.'
'I wouldn't know. All I did was navigate a plane. Those gentlemen rarely consulted me with their plans. And anyway, Fritz, planning invasions wasn't my particular cup of tea.'
Fritz Number One looked momentarily confused.
'I do not understand these words,' he said.
'What has drinking tea to do with military maneuvers?'
'It's another saying, Fritz. What it means is that I don't have any sort of education or interest in that thing.'
'Cup of tea?'
'That's right.'
'I will remember.' The two men continued toward the sentries at the gate, who looked up as they approached.
'Again you have helped me, lieutenant. Someday I will speak truly like an American.'
'It's not the same thing, Fritz.'
'Same thing?'
'Not the same as being one.'
The ferret shook his head.
'We are what we are. Lieutenant Hart. Only a fool apologizes. And only a fool refuses to take advantages from what is in front of him.'
'True enough,' Tommy answered.
'I am not a fool, lieutenant.'
Tommy took a sharp breath and measured quickly what the German was saying, listening hard to the soft tones, trying to see into the suggestions beyond the words.
The two men marched in unison toward the British compound.
