Wow, latecomer here! I just heard about this contest on the 16th and had to bang out a story to post today. Talk about speed writing! Thank goodness Hubbles doesn't require us to be "registered" for the contest because I don't quite know how to post to the discussion board (thank you so much, Hubbles!). But, anyway, I'm glad I got to make something. The story went quite on its own, except at the end, where I had to hammer out three versions before coming up with something semi-satisfactory.
Thanks to Canadian Hogan's Fan for telling me about this (and where to find all these challenges I keep hearing about!), and to my sister for the great editing.
This story is dedicated to everyone who stood up for the right thing in WWII.
I do not own anything Hogan's Heroes, except in my imagination.
Right from Wrong
You do what you can for your country, Josephine Chemnitz thought briefly, looking out the window of the unfeeling, sweeping train. She looked down at the photo of her husband David. She shook her head absently. The Führer would never have approved of that name – or that person. And neither would she anymore, she thought. She fumbled in her pocket for the gun inside it, and thought about the explosives in her suitcase. She didn't remember what type they were, but her cousin said they'd work with a timer and showed her how, and that was all she needed to know.
She sighed and crumpled the photo into the ash tray in the center of the car. If it was the only thing a woman like her could do for the Third Reich, well, it would get done. Somehow, it felt like liberation.
The train screamed to a halt. She was somewhere near Hammelburg now. She had only a few hours and at most a day before David would start looking for her.
David. She hardly wanted to think his name anymore. Not after what he did and what he was planning to do. The thought sickened her. Heil Hitler, she whispered.
The person sitting next to her looked in her direction. "Pardon?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing." She smiled sweetly.
The man's eyes quizzed her briefly, then went back to the newspaper he rustled up before his face. She sighed inwardly, not wanting to get any attention for the task she had at hand. Poor David; he didn't even know that she opposed him from the deepest place in her heart. She almost pitied him; he was so ignorant.
She stepped out of the train and flagged a passerby. It was time to get things started. "Do you know the way to, uh–" She checked the notes in her little black book. "–to Luftwaffe Stalag Thirteen?"
:: ::
A full-grown man in the grip of uncontrolled panic is not a pleasant sight.
"Sergeant, control yourself!" Hogan shouted for the umpteenth time.
The Gestapo sergeant finally placed his hand on his forehead, the toll of his panic eroding his strength. "I–I'm sorry, Colonel. It's just . . ."
Hogan sighed. "That's okay. Just tell me how you came here and why you want to leave Germany."
"It's what they're doing!" The emotions started running in his voice again. Hogan almost had enough. He walked over to Kinch on the opposite side of the tunnels and asked him to run this man's name over to London. He still didn't know what to make of this odd deal. After all, no one had ever came down the tunnels themselves – no Gestapo agent, especially. It frightened him to think someone on the other side knew about the location of their tunnel entrance, and he almost panicked himself when he saw him and his black uniform crawl down from the ceiling.
The sergeant was still lost in some sort of terror.
"Lebeau, get some coffee," Hogan said.
The Frenchman nodded and disappeared up the ladder.
Hogan slowly approached the sergeant. "Now, just tell me from the beginning. Who are you and what do you know?"
The sergeant shook his head, still lost in his own terrifying imaginations.
"I have to know!"
The sergeant bounced out of his thoughts. "I'm sorry. I just can't stop thinking about what they're going to do. I never thought it would be this bad."
"I need specifics, sergeant."
"Yes, specifics. The camps they're making. Horrible, just horrible. I want to leave Germany. I cannot live under this, this hateful regime." He gestured emphatically.
"What camps?" Hogan asked quietly. He knew the rumors, but he wasn't sure what was happening with the mass of people trucked there.
"You do not want to know," the sergeant said, shaking his head. He looked solemnly into Hogan's eyes. "Trust me, you do not want to know. Just let me get out of here, me and my wife."
Lebeau came and gave a steaming mug to the sergeant. He took it gratefully and nodded to the Frenchman.
"How do I know I can trust you?" Hogan resumed. "After all, you're the Gestapo."
Newkirk bounced into the room suddenly, having come down from the ladder that led up into the tree stump entrance. "Nothing out there, sir," he told Hogan. "No traps, patrols, Gestapo men, cars – nothing." He eyed their odd visitor. "It beats me, Colonel, why he's come."
Hogan nodded, slowly growing satisfied that this man was on the level. Yet the why still bugged him, and the how most of all. "How did you find out about us, sergeant – and about the tunnel entrance? And how do I know you're not sending a bunch of your friends over to nab us?"
The sergeant nodded. "Please, don't call them my friends. But I understand. You have a right to be suspicious. And fearful. I am your enemy, and I know that. My patrol captured one of your Underground agents a few weeks ago. I was tasked with the interrogation, and I managed to make him confess about your, uh, operation here at Stalag 13. Klink and the tunnels, your people, the security codes, everything."
Hogan cursed in his thoughts. Whoever sold them out was worse than a traitor. He wanted to ask who it was who did that, but there were too many questions building up already, and he wanted the sergeant to explain himself.
"Well, I was glad, of course, to get the information. That was my job. But by then I had already heard something about the camps. I heard about other things in the government and what they were planning to do. A new man on my patrol was close to some major people in the party, and he told us about some things that were going on. Well, by then, like I said, I was fearing the worst. It was getting very hard for me to capture people who were doing the right thing. And when this Underground man came in and told me about your sabotage and escape, uh, operation, well, I thought I could finally get away. Just today, I got a letter from a brother of mine who's stationed in Poland, near a town he called Oświęcim." He shook his head. "I let the Underground man escape and rushed over here. They're probably looking for me now." He began to look panicky again, and Hogan touched his shoulder to calm him.
"Sergeant, don't worry, okay? We're here to help people like you."
He breathed in hard. "I know. Will you get me out? Me and my wife?"
"Yeah, we'll try. What's her name?"
"Josephine Edith Chemnitz."
:: ::
In the hall she put down her suitcase. Some sergeant named Schultz gleefully picked it up for her, perhaps to place it in some storage shelf, but she stopped him quickly. "Thank you, sergeant, but I think I'll keep my suitcase." She wanted to keep the dangerous package close to her at all times.
Schultz put it down timidly and nodded, smiling. "Whatever you wish, fraulein! Now, would you please wait here while I tell the Kommandant." He gave her a wink and a chuckle and went off.
She nodded, and as the round barrel disappeared into the office door, she rehearsed again her speech about being a propaganda worker wanting to interview the prisoners. The pretty secretary smiled quietly at her, and she acknowledged her coldly. When she was finally escorted into the room and talked with the Kommandant, she realized Klink was easy to fool.
"Would you please gather the prisoners on the front? I'd like to choose specifically who I would want to interview."
"Of course, that would not be a problem at all! Schultz! Get the prisoners assembled."
"All of them?" the sergeant asked.
"Yes, all of them. Go! We mustn't keep her waiting." He turned back to her and smiled. "Anything else I can do for you? Radios, a secretary? I could set up the recording room here in camp."
She shook her head quickly. "No, I do not need a room. I was thinking of interviewing the prisoner in his barracks."
"Oh, marvelous idea," Klink said dramatically.
She checked her watch. It was eleven o'clock. She stepped outside the Kommandant's building and stood out in the cold, eyeing the prisoners streaming out of their barracks. She massaged the handle of her suitcase, and keenly felt it lubricated by her nervous perspiration.
:: ::
A whisper of snow touched the cold window of Hogan's office as he stared outside briefly. He had set up the Underground rendezvous for Chemnitz, and he'd alerted the Underground to search for the whereabouts of his wife – carefully, of course. Chemnitz was not a priority he wanted to risk too many people on. He still had bad feelings about this whole affair.
Then he saw the commotion outside the window. Some woman had come into camp and Schultz was beginning to round up all the prisoners. By the time he'd noticed all this, Carter came in. "There's something going on outside, Colonel."
"I know." Hogan stepped outside his office. "You got any ideas?"
"Not yet, sir. There's a girl, and Schultz is getting everyone to line up."
"Yeah, I figured that much. They sure didn't have a very long talk. We couldn't even get the coffee pot on."
Suddenly, someone started pushing through the gathered prisoners in the main barracks. The Gestapo sergeant suddenly appeared in front of Hogan, panic riddling his face. On the sergeant, it hardly seemed new.
Newkirk was trailing him closely, and as they puffed to a halt, he exclaimed, "I couldn't stop 'im, sir."
"I'm sorry, Colonel." The sergeant gestured franticly with his hands. "But couldn't you get us out sooner than next week? The Gestapo is surely looking for me, and I'm afraid–"
"Listen, sergeant," Hogan snapped, "you told us you destroyed the records from your interrogation. You told no one about your visit here. And you said your wife agreed with you." Of course, it was that last one that bugged him the most. She was the one thing out of their control. Women, he sighed.
The sergeant settled down somewhat. He turned around and was greeted by a barracks-full of startled faces staring at his uniform and holding their breaths.
Hogan waved his hand at them. "Believe it or not, he's on our side."
The man guarding the door spoke up suddenly. "Schultz is on his way."
"Come on." Hogan pushed the Gestapo sergeant towards the bunk. The sergeant slapped the mechanism himself and hopped down the ladder. Hogan prayed this man was on their side. He certainly knew everything about how their operation worked.
:: ::
She was waiting for him to come out. There was a couple wearing crush caps, and she eyed each of them with keen eyes. "Which one is the senior officer?" she asked Klink before he began his speech to the assembled masses.
"The senior prisoner of war? That would be Colonel Hogan." He shot his fist in a certain man's direction, the riding crop parallel his extended arm. "Colonel Hogan!" he shouted.
She looked him over briefly as he walked towards them. Tall, strong, confident. The way he quipped with Klink, and how he didn't pay attention when the Kommandant made his speech about her propaganda. She slipped open her little black book and read a few words from it, which contained much of David's interrogation notes that she managed to copy before he burned the originals. Yes, this man looked like the illustrious Underground leader Papa Bear. She sighed and massaged the suitcase handle vigorously. Things were falling into place. For a bloodthirsty moment, she couldn't wait to see him squirm at the end of her gun.
At the right moment in Klink's speech, she announced her choice of prisoner for her project. Of course, the great Papa Bear demanded exclusion for him and his band of prisoners, citing some noble law about land and country and selling out and such. She thought about David and shook her head of the nauseous memory.
She was getting impatient with Hogan's stubbornness. She didn't have a lot of time. "Colonel Hogan," she called from behind Klink and the senior POW. They both turned to her, Klink's face one of pity, and Hogan's of hot determination and perhaps even hate.
"Colonel Hogan!" she demanded in her toughest voice. "I might have a few words that would help change your mind," she added sweetly.
He walked up in front of her. "Yeah, what?"
She rehearsed quickly in her mind, then put her hand into her pocket and jabbed the gun's barrel towards Hogan. She whispered quickly, "I could kill you now, or I could fire this into your precious prisoners. They have no weapons and all the guards are on my side. Or, you could come with me. It's your choice, Colonel." She kept her eyes hot and steady on him.
Hogan paused. "This is not going to look good to your superiors."
"I am my own superior." She unlocked the safety and began to remove the gun from her pocket.
"Fine. I'll do it. Just me and no one else."
She tried not to let her relief show. "Deal." She turned to Klink. "Kommandant, I've found my prisoner, and he's very willing to talk. Now, keep these men assembled here; I may need them. I will take Colonel Hogan into his barracks."
"Would you need any equipment?" Klink asked.
She tapped her suitcase. "No, Kommandant. Everything I need is right here."
Schultz guided them most of the way, but she dismissed him when they got to the door. Hogan, meanwhile, was trying to figure out what she was up to and what he would say on such short notice.
She walked through the barracks, strode towards the secret-bottom bunk, and without hesitation, slapped open the door. Hogan panicked on the inside. She pulled the gun from her pocket. "You first," she said.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Do what I say."
He slipped down the ladder, and looked around for the Gestapo sergeant, but couldn't find him. Maybe he was a part of it, too, he wondered, cursing himself for not having seen through whatever scheme was going on.
"Just what is it that you want?" he demanded as she climbed down after him, gun still aimed.
"I'm doing this for the Führer. My husband is a traitor." She threw her suitcase to him. "Open it."
He caught it, but instead of opening it, he threw it at her legs and jumped away from her gun's line of fire. She crumpled to the floor, gasping. The gun went off and shot the ceiling.
He dived towards her and grabbed her flailing arms. She got a sudden hateful look in her eye and shoved the gun away from him, whirled around towards him, and fired. It hit him in the arm, and he instinctively paused as the pain of the stab shot through him. She scrambled up and kicked him, leaned over quickly to her suitcase, grabbed it, and swung it against his head.
His vision blurred and his sense of consciousness wavered. Panic and adrenaline awoke him quickly, but not before she opened the suitcase and found a pair of handcuffs to snag his healthy arm to a metal pole near the wall.
He glared up at her, the pain of his injury nothing compared to the anger that the operation was compromised and that he couldn't alert anyone. "Just what are you?"
She looked up at him briefly from her rummaging in the suitcase. "Josephine Chemnitz."
Hogan eyed her tensely. Of all the people.
She threw him her little black book, and it opened to the first page:
Notes from Sergeant David Chemnitz, interrogation of Fabrice Luce
Underground leader Papa Bear and Stalag 13
"He wanted to escape Germany through you," she spat. "He wanted to let all that good information for the Third Reich go to waste on petty idealisms."
Hogan glared at her hotly. So this was the sergeant's wife, the one he wanted to carry off to England with him. She disgusted him.
"He complained about those prison camps his brother told him about," she continued.
A different fear grabbed him. "What about them?"
"Such a coward. He couldn't take the destruction of pests."
Hogan gasped. Disgust and horror bore into his bones. All the rumors, all those rumors – and this woman. The cold-blooded Nazi. He fought madly against the cuffs.
She removed something from her suitcase. It was dynamite. She turned its timer, and set it to five minutes.
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
"Removing another pest from our country." She started the timer.
Suddenly a figure emerged from one of the tunnels. Hogan knew it was Sergeant Chemnitz, but he moved so vaguely towards the main room. She didn't even notice him. The gunshot wound was getting at him finally, the loss of blood, and his consciousness wavered. His vision blurred, and he could just hear what was happening.
"Josephine." Chemnitz's voice was soft.
"David!" she gasped.
"What happened to you? What got into your mind?"
"Didn't you ever know?"
"I thought you loved the good and right."
"I do."
"But the camps . . . what they're doing. . . ."
"I told you I loved justice."
A pause. "You don't know the meaning of the word."
Something snapped in Hogan's mind, forcing him awake again. He forced himself forward. "The dynamite," he gasped, but he looked up and saw her holding Chemnitz at gunpoint.
"You're not going to stop me, David," she said hotly. "This sabotage is going to stop. I'm going to do your job for the Fatherland for you."
"Jospehine." Chemnitz shook his head, confused, but it was plain that she meant to pull the trigger. With one sweeping motion, he drew his own gun, fired it, and she dropped to the ground. He stared at her vaguely for a long moment.
There was a stunned silence for a moment, then Hogan remembered the bomb. "The timer, you've got to stop it," he whispered, still feeling weak.
Chemnitz glanced at him slowly, took up the explosives and ripped out the wirings. He slid down to press Hogan's wounded arm.
"Thank you," Hogan gasped quietly.
"You're welcome, Colonel." His eyes were vacant, and weighing on his countenance was a crushed sadness.
"Some people, Colonel," he said, and Hogan noticed a glaze of moisture in his eyes, "just can't understand right from wrong."