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 don'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.
Skullduggery. 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.'
