The sun gleamed dully off the barbed wire; it was about the only thing in the camp that hadn't been spit-polished for the occasion. The Red Cross representatives, two of them, were accompanied by several black-clad SS agents who were doing their level best to mask their normal grim demeanors behind masks of stiff geniality. Colonel Lange met them at the gate, his men ranged behind him at rigid attention. He was also doing his best to mask his usual expression of sly cruelty behind a patently false smile; it mostly made him look constipated, or as if he'd just bitten into an apple and found half a worm, but the effort was there.
The prisoners were also arranged for inspection in front of their barracks. They all looked neat and clean; as Newkirk had predicted, they'd been freshly deloused, laundry soap had been issued for the first time in three months, and the camp barber had made the rounds, doing a slightly less ham-handed job than usual. No two sideburns in the entire camp were the same length, but everyone had two of them, for a change.
The senior Red Cross official, a man called Stephens, strolled past the men of Barracks Three, a guard at his elbow. He was a bit unnerved; he counted twenty-seven men, and twenty-six of them had thousand yard stares that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight. The twenty-seventh, a red-haired sergeant, just looked tired and defeated.
The guard paused in front of the barracks and barked, "Achtung!"
The dead-eyed men snapped to attention, still without altering their numb expressions an iota. "Oh, good heavens; no need for that. Er, at ease," Stephens said, uncomfortably.
They didn't budge. With a smirk, the German left them waiting for a moment, showing his power, before repeating the order and letting them relax. "This is Sergeant O'Meara," said the guard, reading from his clipboard. "The barracks chief."
"I'm Gerald Stephens, from the International Red Cross," he said. "Nice to meet you, Sergeant."
"Yes sir thank you sir," said O'Meara in one breath, looking at something just over Stephens' left shoulder. It took Stephens a startled moment to realize that it was the guard, looming behind him like a bad omen. He took a casual step closer to the Irishman, lowered his voice. "Are you treated well, Sergeant? How are the men?"
The sergeant lowered his voice to match, but didn't take his eyes off the guard. "We're treated according to the Geneva Convention, sir. The Kommandant is very humane."
"Very good! Glad to hear it," Stephens said as heartily as he could. He strolled along the row, picked out a scrawny erk who had almost certainly lied about his age to enlist. "What's your name?"
"Slade, sir. Aircraftman, second class," he said. "The Germans are very good to us, sir. We're treated according to the Geneva Convention, sir."
Stephens blinked. He hadn't asked yet. "Well, glad to hear it, Private. Carry on."
It was the same everywhere. How was the food? The Germans were very good to them. Did they need anything? They were treated according to the Geneva Convention. Did they want him to contact their families? The Kommandant was very humane. Even after shaking loose his German handlers, which he would have thought might loosen a few tongues, he got nothing more out of the prisoners than a few mumbled words indicating nothing short of complete satisfaction with their situation.
By now more than a little unnerved, he conferred with his associate; it turned out that both of them had essentially the same story to tell. In the same words. They had inspected a great many POW camps, and they knew what to expect. And what they were seeing was profoundly disturbing.
The prisoners began filing into the mess hall for lunch; Stephens and the other Red Cross representative, a man about ten years his junior, followed. They watched as each prisoner was handed a brimming dish of chicken soup and a healthy chunk of white bread; more precisely, they watched the expressions on their faces.
"Look," Rowland murmured. "The men have been doing an admirable job of play-acting, but they haven't quite been able to keep it up. Look at them. They look like they've just been handed the Holy Grail and the keys to Buckingham Palace, rolled into one. This isn't the usual sort of fare they've been living on."
"Come now, old chap," Stephens muttered back. "I could have told you that ten minutes after we arrived. If these boys were any thinner they'd be transparent."
A small man in a red scarf, who was not quite dragging a taller man in RAF blues, entered the mess hall and shoved his friend into place at the end of the chow line. Neither spoke as the line inched forward. When they reached the front, the small man accepted his tray, then, as if it were routine, turned to make certain that his friend had also been served, grabbed him by the arm, and steered him bodily to a table. Meek and pitiful as a beaten dog, he went where he was told. The smaller man muttered something in French that neither of the Red Cross representatives could quite make out, but the Englishman seemed to have no problem understanding; he cringed visibly, and lowered his head a fraction more.
"Good God," Rowland murmured, aghast. "What in hell did they do to that one?"
Now, as it happened, LeBeau had actually been telling Newkirk that he was the biggest ham this side of John Barrymore, and Newkirk had ducked his head to hide a smirk that would have been distinctly out of character, but as a bit of stage business, the interplay worked quite well, so that was all right.
"You can plainly see, gentlemen," said Lange. "As laid out by the Geneva Convention, the prisoners are more than adequately fed. My own men eat no better."
"Yes, I see," Stephens said inanely. He saw, all right.
One of the German sergeants, a man who, from the looks of him, wasn't missing any meals, and in fact, might be indulging in a few extra, just in case, smiled nervously. "Ja, ja, the prisoners eat very well. Verrrry well. Why, it was only the other day one of them said to me, Sergeant Schultz, he said— because that is my name, I am Sergeant Schultz—he said to me, Sergeant Schultz, never in my life have I had food as good as the food here in Germany!" Warming to his subject, his eyes increasingly desperate as he struggled under the weight of the lies, he continued, "In fact, I would not be in the least surprised if they wanted to stay even after the war is over, because they are all so very, very happy here. No, Herr Stephens, I would not be in the least surprised!"
Stephens and Rowland exchanged glances. "That's very good to hear, Sergeant," Rowland said soothingly, before he could make a third attempt at it. "The prisoners have been telling us how well they are treated, too."
He recoiled, shocked. "They have?" He blinked. "I mean, of course they have. They are all very happy here. Just because they are our enemies does not mean we may not be friends, ja?"
"That is a very enlightened attitude, Sergeant Schultz, and may I say, Kommandant Lange, it does credit to your administration of this camp," Stephens said.
Lange, who had been giving Schultz a very sour look, scrambled to paste the unctuous smile back on his face. "Thank you, gentlemen. But it is the glorious Third Reich I serve that truly deserves the credit."
"I think we can all agree on that," Stephens said, almost under his breath. He took another look around the mess hall. Some of the men were hunched over their trays as if they expected them to be taken away at any moment. They probably did expect just that, and were inhaling the food, taking no chances. Others were eating slowly, with a sort of disbelieving reverence that made something in his chest twist painfully. The Kommandant could make a show of this single meal, but he could not disguise the gauntness that marked every man in his custody. He could force his charges to feign, if not happiness, at least content, but he could not force them to make it believable. This was wrong; everything about this camp was subtly wrong.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO
"I think we're getting through to them," Richmond murmured. "The one in the brown suit with the glasses—he keeps looking around when he thinks Lange isn't watching, and he looks like he's about to jump out of his skin."
"Spoke with him earlier. He asked me about the mail situation," Forrest muttered back. "Whether we were getting our packages regularly, you know."
"Which did you tell him? That the Geneva Convention is kept or how good the Germans are?" asked LeBeau. "This soup is not bad, but I would have added some rosemary."
"Both, actually," Forrest said. "I wanted to tell him to ask Lange. If that old vulture isn't selling them on the black market, I'll eat my hat. And please—don't mention Rosemary. I had a sweetheart by that name, before the war."
"I beg your pardon," LeBeau apologized. "What about garlic? Does anyone have any objections to that?"
"Mate, we all 'ave to share one very cramped little barracks. Everyone would object to you putting more garlic in the food," Newkirk murmured, his shoulders still hunched defensively. "There's a serious shortage of working gas masks in camp, after all."
"I did not ask you. I asked for the opinion of those whose taste I respect. You, uncouth peasant that you are, would not know fine cuisine if it bit you in the nose," LeBeau said with no particular heat. Newkirk was still very much in character, and there was just no fun to be had in taunting a man who looked as though he expected to be hit at any moment.
"Me nose is the whole ruddy issue," Newkirk, who had no such problems, replied. "After that last pot of stew, we 'ad three dozen men all sweating aioli, and we're not due another shower for a fortnight. I thought I was going to suffocate before dawn. And by midnight, when the other issue started up, I flat out 'oped I would."
Forrest stifled a chuckle that would have given the whole game away. "That's quite enough of that," he said, before LeBeau could return fire. "Look, we've got the Red Cross chaps thinking. That's as good a start as we could have hoped for, I daresay. You're all doing a perfectly splendid job of it, but we can't let ourselves get sloppy. We've a ways to go yet."
"I think we're supposed to have a lovely game of football during our exercise period," Richmond said, wiping his dish clean with the last bite of bread. "They might even give us a real football this time."
"Be still, my heart. Think we can get Lange to referee?"
"Better yet; think we can get 'im to play? I promise—I'll only foul 'im four, maybe five times at the most. 'Is eyes will uncross by Thursday, I'm sure, and there's probably a dentist in Hammelberg who could fix 'im up afterwards."
LeBeau, for want of a napkin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand until he thought he could be trusted not to smile. "Peterson is not yet recovered enough to do it. Perhaps you should."
"Good God, LeBeau; don't encourage him," Forrest sighed. "Newkirk, Lange would have you drawn and quartered; please don't make me have to watch that."
"Well, then. I'd certainly 'ate to inconvenience you gents," Newkirk said. "So I guess— Oi! 'Ere comes trouble."
As Stephens approached, he saw rather than heard the men go silent; they'd been speaking far too softly for any stray words to escape the narrow confines of their bench, but even that low murmur died away. Three of the men looked up at him immediately; the small man in red with a burning anger in his eyes that his blank expression could not entirely negate, the two sergeants, one looking exhausted, the other sullen. With a sharp nudge in the ribs that looked as though it was trying to be unobtrusive, the Frenchman got his friend to look up as well, and Stephens found himself staring into a pair of green eyes that seemed to reflect all the horrors that man had ever devised to inflict on his fellow man.
He took an involuntary step back.
One of the others, the weary one, tried to smile. "Sir. Sergeant Forrest, RAF," he said.
"Stephens," he said briefly. "I… ah, well. Pleasure to make your acquaintances. How long have you chaps been... here?"
The sullen one pursed his lips. "Not sure, sir. What month is it?" Recalling his manners, he ripped off a salute. "Sergeant Richmond, RAF, sir."
"November," Stephens said quietly. "Seventeenth of November. 1941." He wasn't sure why he had tacked on that last bit. Surely they knew what year it was. They had to. Hadn't they?
"Eighteen months, then, sir," said Forrest. "Both Richmond and I. Since Dunkirk, sir. But we've been treated according to the Geneva Convention," he tacked on, as something of an afterthought.
"Corporal Louis LeBeau, Free French Air Force, sir. Thirteen months, sir," said the angry one, in a measured tone that did nothing to hide the bitterness. "Les Allemands, they have been very good to us."
The silence dragged on for a moment, just this side of unbearable. Eventually Forrest, biting his lip, said, "And this is Corporal Peter Newkirk. RAF. He's… I think it's been two years. Or thereabouts. Sir."
LeBeau nudged him again. Thus prompted, he whispered, "I… I 'ave no complaints. Sir."
Richmond's lip twitched. "Please, sir; no offense intended. He's… a quiet sort, sir. Never has very much to say."
LeBeau, emotional Frenchman that he was, had to look away for a moment, overcome.
"I see," Stephens said. "Well. Keep your chins up, gentlemen; the war can't last forever," he said inanely. Wanting, very, very badly, to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
He was saved by the rotund German sergeant, who, at some unspoken signal from the Kommandant, had apparently decided that luncheon was over. "Achtung!" he bellowed. "Raus, raus! Everybody, back to the barracks! Back, back, back! Eins, zwei! Eins, zwei!" He glanced at the Kommandant, and added, "If you please, mein Herren?"
In the first coordinated move Stephens had yet seen from him, the corporal was on his feet, at such rigid attention that he all but vibrated. He was followed, a heartbeat or so later, by the rest of the men, and in a matter of moments, the entire mess hall was empty as they were marched away, leaving behind them only the Red Cross representatives, the Kommandant, and a silence filled with appalling questions and even more appalling suspicions.
