*Please see the illuminating note posted prior to "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", and for your good mental health, and to prevent permanent mind-frell, read that establishing Alternate Timeline/Uberfiction story to accustom yourself to exactly how Robin Hood and Lady Marian (and friends) have found their way into WWII Europe first.

"Don't sit under the apple tree, with anyone else but me...
Don't go walkin' down lover's lane, with anyone else but me,
Not until you see me, not until you see me marching home."

Channel Island of Alderney - It was Tuesday, 3:47 a.m., and so, it must be torture.

"Thomas Carter," he again spat out (though he had not the saliva left to waste on it-there had been no water given him in over 24 hours). "Flight Commander, 2-2-6-5-4-8-3-2-3-6-Zed."

"Zed?" came the chief interrogator's question, "Zed, Blondie? Really? It don't take us a rocket scientist to hear you speak and know you for an American. 'Zed'? Not in their vocabulary. And what you give as your serial number? All. Wrong." The man tch-tch'ed, his face coming close, so close Carter could smell the sauerbraten from his late dinner still on his breath, its pungent mixture of vinegar and garlic.

From the shadowy corner of the small cell room Carter heard the taller Nazi, for the moment playing the 'good cop', the rational one, speak. "Why is the RAF dropping men onto the islands?"

Carter coughed and re-asserted the only statement he was permitted to make.

The far shorter, somewhat rounder man, the chief interrogator, cut him off, bored with his reiteration. "Oh," the German sang, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dum-my-a Yankee Doodle do AND die...Yes, that's right, Flyboy. You patriotic sap, so desperate to join up you couldn't wait for your own country to get up off their constipated arses and go to war. Went and let the British-" he jerked his head back toward the other officer, "wait-Lieutenant-wasn't there a whole war or something or other where the Americans fought," he again brought his face close to Carter's, "and died to throw off the shackles of British tyranny? Something like that?"

"I think, perhaps, sir," the taller man smirked lopsidedly, "'twas but a mere skirmish. Certainly nothing of historical import."

"Well, not to Blondie, here, anyway. He's more than willing-desperate, even-to let his previous oppressors use him as yet another body to throw at the Reich. Of course they accepted your enlistment, Thomas Carter," he lingered almost lover-like over his Christian name. "So that you might die in a Briton's place."

"Have no fear, Anglophile," the shadowed man assured him, "when you die-and if you do not talk, eventually, after much pain, and much more suffering," here came the lopsided smirk again, "you will die-you may buried here, with the others, in this-previously-British soil."

"Flight Commander," Carter again repeated. "2-2-6-5-4-8-3-2-3-6-Zed."

"Well," said the shorter man, making ready to leave the room, "we shall see, we shall see. Lieutenant, he is all yours. Do be as illuminating as possible in your report. I have always wished to know if blondes, indeed, have more fun." He made a kissy face to Carter, and chuckled maniacally, humming discordantly as he all but pranced his way out the only door.

It was just Carter and the taller man from the shadows, now, unlikely to still be playing at 'good cop'. The German's lopsided smirk, and where he chose to use it, certainly seemed to indicate a longer night yet ahead of them.

"Have the basin and the electrodes brought in," the Lieutenant shouted, to whomever was posted guard or runner outside the door.

Carter looked up as the German officer walked toward him, saw the tension spring into the lieutenant's right arm, presaging the arrival of his fist to voice box, felt himself flinch before the powerful and piercing blow actually landed.

"Now that," he thought to himself, even as he fought for breath, "was downright stupid. Punch a guy in the very place he needs if he is, as you want him to, going to talk." Maybe he had overestimated this enemy after all.

Thomas Carter, RAF Flight Commander, Eagle Squadron 121, looked about the mostly-darkened interrogation chamber and had no fear. No fear of what had already been, night after night enacted on him, nor of what was, shortly, to come. He was not going to die. Or talk. It was only that he did, very much, wish a glass of water.

...TBC...