Carter had been standing in front of the cracked mirror over the sink for at least five minutes, combing and re-combing his hair, straightening the necktie he had managed to scrounge up someplace. And Newkirk had had enough of it. "Are you plannin' to talk to Klink, or ask him for a date?"
"Look, I don't like this one bit, okay? But my grandma always says if you're going to do something, you might as well do it right."
"I don't see what that has to do with you," LeBeau couldn't resist.
"Do I look okay?"
"I'm not sure," Kinch shook his head. "You're not really my type."
"You guys are no help at all."
"Good." Newkirk passed his well-worn deck of cards through his hands in a quick shotgun-shuffle. "That's exactly what we're aimin' for."
Carter started counting items off on his fingers. That in itself was probably not a good sign. "First, I'll ask Klink about the missing Red Cross packages."
"Second, he'll lie through his teeth about 'em."
"Then I'll ask him how come the electricity in the barracks is getting turned off an hour earlier at night."
"Daylight Saving Time, Kraut-style," Kinch put in. "He saves some dough to put in his own pocket by turning the juice off early. There's your 'why'."
"I get the feeling you don't think it's any use me going over there at all."
"That's right," LeBeau nodded. "But you're the senior POW, so off you go." He made a big show out of dusting Carter off with a dish towel, turning him all the way around, taking his own turn at straightening the necktie that looked ridiculous as an accessory for Carter's faded and patched fatigues. "Eh bien… you're either ready to go see Klink, or to have your picture taken for your grand-mère's Christmas present."
"Someday I'm gonna figure out what being senior POW is really good for… and then I'm really gonna give it to you guys."
A chorus of "dream on", "we'll wait", and "on verra" followed him out of the barracks, and he closed the door behind him. Gee. Some pals they were, kicking a guy when he was down. It really was lonely at the top.
Schultz stood at the bottom of the steps to the Kommandant's office… whether he was officially posted there on guard duty or just doing a pretty good job of slacking off was hard for Carter to determine. "Hi, Schultz."
"Hi." Schultz paused, then took a second, closer look. "Are you going to church?"
"Very funny." Carter mounted the steps with a determination born of utter inability to think of any way to get out of it, and opened the door to Klink's outer office, courteously pulling off his hat as he entered… and fervently hoping it wouldn't mess up his hair.
Fraulein Hilda also needed to look twice… yes, it was Carter; she reassured herself of that in a few seconds. "Guten Tag."
"Hi, ma'am… I'm here to see the Kommandant."
Dutifully she pressed the button on the intercom. "Herr Kommandant, Sergeant Carter is here to see you."
"Who?"
Another blow to Carter's already fragile ego. "Um… the senior POW… it was his idea."
"Sergeant Carter is the senior POW," Hilda dutifully relayed.
"I'm terribly busy!"
"It'll only take a couple minutes," Carter assured Hilda.
She gestured to the door to Klink's inner office. "Go ahead. You might as well get it over with."
"Boy oh boy, that's what I've been telling myself all morning." Carter wrung the hat in his sweaty hands for a few seconds, then knocked politely before opening the door.
Klink looked up with a steely glare that might have frozen a lesser man in his tracks. Fortunately, Carter was a bit too focused on the task at hand to let it stop him. "Hi, Kommandant." He accompanied the overly-folksy greeting with a crisp salute a couple of seconds later, hoping to meet somewhere in the middle of accepted procedure. "If you could just spare a few minutes…"
"What may I ask is so important?"
"Um… well… um…" A few more twists of his hat helped him focus. "The fellas and I were wondering… what happened to our Red Cross packages this month?"
"How should I know?"
"Well… okay then… that takes care of that… and, um… we were also kinda wondering why the lights in the barracks are going off so early."
"Ah ha… you want the lights to stay on later at night so you will have more time to dig escape tunnels!"
Carter chuckled. "Oh, heck no…" That was truly laughable, although Klink had no idea why. They didn't need his lights to dig tunnels. They didn't even need any more tunnels; at this point they had the approximate equivalent of the New York City subway system down there, minus the trains. "But during non-daylight hours we're supposed to have…"
"Is there anything else?"
"Well, um… no, now that you mention it."
"Then dis-missed!"
"Yeah… okay…" He offered another salute, grateful that the ordeal was over with. "See you tomorrow."
Klink waited until the door had closed behind Carter to resume his paperwork and mutter "Not if I see you first…"
Fraulein Hilda didn't seem terribly surprised to see him back in the outer office so soon. "How did it go?" she asked.
"Well… okay, I guess." He thought about it for a moment. He'd remembered everything he'd intended to bring up. That was good.
But… he hadn't actually gotten any answers to those questions… had he?
"I'm not sure I've got the hang of this yet," he admitted.
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He was in Italy. He was in Hell. No difference between the two places, from Hogan's standpoint.
He stood in the corner of the small room Robinson had indicated would be his, arms tightly folded, contemplating his next move. There was a window... but there was also an eighty-foot drop to the ground. He was still seriously considering it.
Seated on the lower bunk, Crittendon worked at knotting sheets together, with occasional furtive glances towards the open door to ensure he wasn't being observed. Nobody seemed to care what he was up to. Nobody had been anywhere near that doorway, nobody from either side, in at least a quarter of an hour. It looked like the only way to get some privacy around here was to hang around with Crittendon, since nobody else wanted to be anywhere near him. It really wasn't worth it, in Hogan's considered opinion.
"At any rate," the pompous Brit hammered on, in the middle of one of his endless stories that Hogan hadn't been paying the least bit of attention to, "there I was, free and away from Stalag 6… for the third time, as a matter of fact… but just then…"
Just then. That was how it always went. Crittendon thought they were all different stories, but they always turned out exactly the same way. Any number of things could have happened just then, from the guards following the sound of his elephant-like footfalls across the forest floor, to his own men deciding to turn on him and leave him as far behind as possible. Hogan had heard them all. It didn't really matter in the least which minor variation this one was. "Crittendon…"
"Yes, old boy?"
"Let's cut to the chase. How did you wind up here?"
"That's what I've just been telling you. When that rotter of a kommandant at Stalag 6 recaptured me, he actually refused to take me back to the camp. Never heard of such a thing. Have you?"
"Only once," Hogan replied bitterly. What had happened in Major Hochstetter's office just a few short days ago was still a raw wound.
"At any rate, next thing I knew, I was packed off and on my way to a dreadful Gothic pile of stones they call Schloss Colditz. Spent nearly a month holed up in there. Probably still be there, if it hadn't been for the fire."
"What fire?"
"Not my fault, of course, but there's no telling the Gerries that. Apparently they thought I'd set the kitchen ablaze as a diversion for an escape… totally accidental, naturally."
"Naturally." Most Crittendon-caused disasters were just exactly that: totally accidental. The truck complete with time bomb that he'd stolen from the armament factory and parked just outside Barracks Two… the snafu during the attempted kidnapping of Field Marshal Rommel… all totally accidental, and typically Crittendon.
"Extraordinary thing: there was actually an escape attempt going on at the time. Don't know how I never heard about it."
Oh, but Hogan did. The Colditz escape crew had intended to leave him in the dust. Easy. He was worse than a black cat crossing your path while you were walking under a ladder on Friday the thirteenth carrying a freshly-broken mirror and stepping on every single crack in the sidewalk. He was poison. No escape he was a part of had any chance of success, and it never took anybody very long to figure that out. "Imagine that."
"At any rate, the Gerries blamed me for the entire affair, and then they sent me here." He gave the latest knot he had tied in the sheet a firm tug to test its strength. "Hogan… you and I must talk."
"I thought we were."
"No, I mean…" He glanced toward the empty doorway. "I mean, talk. Absolutely marvelous what they've got at Colditz. Could hardly believe my own eyes. It's…" One more look at the empty doorway, and for a change he even lowered his voice. "It's a glider."
"Yeah. Uh huh."
"I assure you, I am in earnest. The prisoners are constructing a two-man glider in the attic of the castle, and they intend to fly it off the roof to freedom. I swear it on the King's own life."
"Well, I don't think it's gonna do us any good here, because I doubt they'll be stopping to pick us up."
"You really must take this seriously, old man. Your chaps have a remarkable operation at Stalag 13, I grant you, but even they've never come up with anything as audacious as this."
Hogan wasn't so sure about that. He and the boys had dismantled, rebuilt and then flown an experimental plane out of the camp… shot off a manned rocket from the rec hall… and even gotten a courier safely out of Stalag 13 in a makeshift hot-air balloon. That sounded like a better track record than one lousy glider that was only a figment of some idiot's overactive imagination. He'd never pegged Crittendon as a drinking man, but apparently the boredom and frustration of captivity could drive almost any man to the homemade hootch eventually, judging from the wild claims he was making.
"You're making a mistake, Hogan." Another firm tug on the newest knot he'd made in the sheets. "I'll be out of here myself before much longer… always got the old thinking cap on, you know… I normally stick with the tried and true; getting ready to lower myself safely down to the ground on the next moonless night, but… by jove, a glider…. just imagine…"
He'd already been working overtime in the imagination department. Hogan was about to tell him that, when his next hefty pull on the knots resulted in the improvised rope coming apart in his hands like strands of overcooked spaghetti. "Blast."
Hogan nonchalantly glanced to his right, taking another good long look at the waist-high window, and then down towards the ground eighty feet below. Hmmm. Yeah… just imagine… Crittendon versus gravity; and who would win that contest?
He shook his head. He shouldn't even be trying to picture it, much less half wishing for it. Crittendon was an ally, after all. Still…
Wheeeeeeeeeee… thud.
He couldn't help it… for the first time since he'd left Stalag 13, he laughed.
"I don't see what's funny," Crittendon huffed.
"I know you don't," Hogan smiled.
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Author's note: If you don't already know about the Colditz Glider, you owe it to yourself to look it up. ;-)
