Private ran the tip of his flipper down the wide-ish crack in the left corner wall, confused.
Where had it come from? It didn't seem to be a normal crack, a break in the wall due to a change in temperature or pressure; it was nearly straight, apart from the occasional wobble, and went vertically up from the floor to a few centimetres above his head, at which point it ended sharply. The gap between the line and the wall perpendicular to it on the right was just wider than him, and, if he looked really closely, at the top of the crack there was another one – very, very slight, and very straight – running horizontally from the top to the wall on the right.
It looked like the outline of a door... a secret door which he had never known was there. Private whimpered excitedly and hopped up and down. Then he stopped.
This crack, if it was the outline of a door in disguise, would have been noticeable to him before. But this was the first time he had seen it. Surely he would have found it before if it was, actually, a door? It would have been there ages. His excitement dissipated. It was likely just a crack in the wall, a coincidental mark left by Kowalski's new laser gun he was testing yesterday. Yes. That would be what had happened.
Besides, if it was a door, he was only a first-class Private. He would have no clearance to even know the door was there, let alone explore whatever was on the inside. That was the point of a secret. He'd never know either way. Private sighed, disappointed, and was about to turn away from the crack when he noticed something.
At the bottom of the line, at the floor, there was a tiny silver screw with its little tip stuck in the crack. He vaguely remembered Kowalski fussing yesterday about how he didn't have enough screws, despite having counted them all out earlier. Private guessed it had been accidentally flicked away in the flurry of construction and had become lodged in the crack.
He bent down to pick it up. He wrapped the tip of his flipper around it and pulled, but to his surprise, it was firmly stuck; he had to pull hard to free it, and when he did, the crack promptly shut itself with a barely audible snap. He blinked. The line was now so thin he could barely see it – just like the one joining it to the corner.
Private functioned like a zombie the rest of the day. He stared off into space, eyes vacant, barely concentrating on his training. He seemed indifferent to comment and replied in noncommittal grunts.
During the usual midday six laps around the penguin pool, he did seven and a half before Rico pulled him out of the pool for lunch. Lunch consisted of sushi and little tins of sardines, which would usually have been devoured in seconds, but Private just nibbled, his mind on other things. He wasn't even paying attention when the others started a contest to see how much food they could fit in their mouths (Kowalski won, 3 points above Skipper; Rico was disqualified for swallowing them). Afterwards, Private lost spectacularly to them in a card game of go fish and didn't even sigh. He just didn't seem to be focused.
Kowalski suggested they ask Private what was wrong. Skipper quickly intervened and vetoed the idea, mistakenly guessing that Private was growing up, and he said that so long as he didn't become insubordinate, it didn't matter. He also stated that he was glad the 'lunacorn phase' was coming to a close, since Private had shown no interest in the new episode on television that day. His doll lay discarded, as Rico's had months before. "These things end," he'd said. "He's becoming a man."
In actual fact, Private's thoughts were still childish and naïve; he was now sure that the crack was a secret door, and despite the probable confidentiality of the interior, his mind was alive and bursting with curiosity.
He could only imagine what was inside.
What if it contained super secret gadgets and gizmos even Kowalski couldn't imagine, or weaponry so powerful it was hidden away so nobody, not even them, could get their hands on it? What if, hidden inside, there was information so fascinating and confidential even Skipper wasn't allowed to read it? What if it was a prison, where Skipper stored his enemies that he didn't want the rest of them to find out about, or a second torture dungeon, a more vicious and horror-movie one, where he extracted information – and possibly teeth – to learn what he needed to know?
What if the other two were in on it, and he was the only one in the unit with no idea?
All of these questions swirled in his brain all day, even continuing their assault after lights-out, while he could hear Rico's snores and Skipper's sleep-mutterings. Try as he might, Private couldn't get them out of his mind, like that old lunacorn song that went la-la-la, na-na-na, la-la-la-la-la-la- dammit, now that was stuck in his head for another week. He scowled.
Suddenly he heard movement above him. Kowalski was shifting around in his bunk.
Private saw a flash of black and white drop down past his bunk, then heard the padding of his colleague walking towards the corner, notebook under his arm. Private turned his head slightly and watched him out of the corner of his eye.
Kowalski placed his left flipper on the wall and spoke, quietly but clearly: "open." Private gasped as the door slid open. He watched the scientist enter the dark new room in HQ, too excited to bother to pretend to be asleep any more. He sat up in his bunk and hit his head on its ceiling with a whimper of pain that nobody heard.
From inside the alcove he heard the rustling of paper and the snap of drawers for several minutes, and Kowalski emerged without his notebook, but reading a scrap of old and yellowing paper instead. Shaking himself free of lingering dust, he muttered to himself about equations and principles of science, then tutted and wandered into his lab without looking up to see if anybody else was awake. The door in the corner closed with a quiet thunk.
The next day, when Skipper declared they were to be treated to snow cones for a new record time taken to clean HQ (or most of it, Private thought), Private declined under the pretence that he just wanted some time to himself. He really wanted to stay to figure out how the secret door worked – curiosity piqued, he was too tempted by its forbidden fruit to forget about it. He waved them goodbye as they went, and waited until they were out of sight to dash down to the corner and place his left flipper on the hidden door.
"Open," he said tentatively, expecting a barrage of moths and the stench of age-old filth.
Nothing happened.
He frowned, then hit upon an idea. He placed his flipper higher on the door to imitate Kowalski's height and repeated the word in a more commanding voice. It worked.
The door ground open, revealing a dark, circular alcove filled with wooden boxes and crates, desks and shelves, stacks of papers and folders. Paper was strewn about everywhere in no order and odd pencils littered the desks and the floor. Dog-tags of the dead and retired hung from hooks on the left. It was dusty, but there were no signs of insect or rodent life. Private breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. Despite the initial unimpressed disappointment he felt, the childish excitement one feels when one is confronted by 100 peanut butter winkies rose within him as he dashed about, trying to see everything at once.
His eyes rested on one particular box, very small, with crude handwriting on its lid. He dashed back to the main room and grabbed Kowalski's speak-and-spell. He translated the writing to be 'Skipper, Denmark'. Private giggled to himself as he reached out for it. He chopped the padlock and lifted the lid. He snapped it shut almost immediately after he took the contents in, heat rising in his cheeks. He should not be seeing this. It was a high-clearance-only collection of dusty photographs, the subscripts in Danish, but the context in the photos quite clear. He dreaded to think what Skipper would do to him if he ever found out that he now had a very clear idea about what had happened in Denmark. Punishments for getting up late were harsh enough – accessing top secret files about a penguin commando? Who knew. He shivered. He would never look at a sandwich the same way again.
He then noticed the box looked a lot deeper on the outside, meaning one of two things: it had a thick base, or it had a secret compartment. Private looked behind him. They wouldn't be back for another 10 minutes or so, he knew, but he was still anxious. He swallowed. He took out the photos and lifted up the fake bottom of the box. What was underneath was even worse than the photos. Private quickly returned the incriminating box to its original state and put it back on the desk. His mind now swam with even more questions, confused and surprised ones, and he felt bad. Really bad. Like an insubordinate. "I shouldn't be in here," he whispered to his now terrified self. He guiltily moved away from the box, eyeing the word 'Skipper' as if he expected to hear his voice reproaching him any second.
Private glanced around himself at the walls, looking for any sign of surveillance equipment, and he saw a diagram pinned to the wall. It looked like Kowalski's old blueprints redrawn, the older version of which hung in an art museum with a unicorn scribbled on it by Rico. This plan had the plus symbol still in place, and looked like it could work if built. Beside it was an overly colourful adaptation far more complicated than the first. Fascinated, Private forgot his fear of discovery and looked at the other pieces of paper.
Some looked like complex mathematical formulae, others like descriptions of bizarre top-secret military weaponry, and others still like annotated sketches of weird fireworks or something like that, with trails of what looked like fiery goo left behind them. Napalm maybe, he thought. Science and violence seemed to be the general theme of the room. As well as incriminatory photography, though he shook that thought away.
He tried to look in a large cabinet leaning against the wall. The hinges were rusted shut and the lid wouldn't budge, so he turned his attention to the drawers in the desks. They were all locked. Oh well, he thought. Some things had to be hidden.
He looked around again. Amazingly abstract and detailed pencil drawings of places of rehabilitation, including their hostile inhabitants, stood in a pile on the floor, complete with the signature of an obviously deranged artist on each of them. Private wanted to keep one or two, but didn't want theft added to his internal ever-growing list of wrongdoings, so he regretfully left them there.
Excited and fearless as he now was, he didn't dare touch any more small boxes until he found one already opened in at the back of the room. It held letters from and to Kowalski, and each one was sealed with the stamp of a higher command than Skipper's. Private wondered what they were. Rifling through the box, he finally unearthed one that was unsealed. To his disappointment, it was coded, and there was no translation sheet in the box. This is why you're supposed to show your working out, Private thought, irritated.
Just then, he spotted a letter addressed to Skipper beside the box. It was uncoded and even without picking it up he could translate its shocking message. It described exactly why the penguins were here, why they were stationed in Central Park Zoo...
Private swallowed. He dropped the speak-and-spell. All of this little adventure ceased to be fun and games any more. He had been told to obey orders and even if he questioned them sometimes, or even disobeyed one or two, he had been loyal to Skipper, believing that it was for the good of the animals of Central Park Zoo. But now he knew differently... astonished and appalled, he backed out of the room, gaze still locked onto the letter, hardly daring to believe what he had seen. The door closed.
He continued to back away until he bumped into something behind him. Something solid, but a little soft. He swallowed again. His insides seemed to have deserted him, as had his pluck. He turned.
"Private," Skipper said quietly, his voice deceptively calm, his ice-blue eyes locked on his. "What were you doing in there?"
"N-nothing, Skippah." Private could swear his leader could hear his heart thumping manically in his chest.
His superior nodded and broke eye-contact. His voice became more steely and commanding. "You've always been a bad liar, soldier. Stay where you are." He left HQ. Private groaned. Shame and guilt bubbled within him and he hid his face in his flippers. He heard voices outside...
"What are we going to do, Skipper?" Kowalski, concerned and in shock.
"What's going on?" Marlene, inquisitive.
Garbling. Rico, explaining.
Silence.
"Men, it's not the first time I've had to schedule an execution..." Skipper. Merciless.
Private summoned the last ounce of courage he had and fled through the door which led to the sewer.