Another sleepless night for Hogan. There had been too many of those lately. By two a.m., he was well aware this was going to be another one. DuBois had left on schedule, but somehow that didn't make him feel better. Something still wasn't right. Maybe there were a lot of somethings that weren't right.

He turned on the small desk lamp, which he was pretty sure wouldn't be detected from outside the barracks and attract unwanted attention after lights-out, and from the pocket of his robe he extracted the item that was bugging him the most at the moment.

Before this week, he'd never have dreamed that his men kept so many secrets. This one was LeBeau's, and apparently he hadn't realized it was missing yet. Hogan had searched the storage locker containing their contraband food items while the men were at recreation that afternoon, and everything LeBeau kept squirreled away in there had looked perfectly A-OK. Except this.

What kind of French chef kept test tubes in his pantry?

There were two things about this that nagged at him. First of all, he didn't have a clue what was inside. The substance was vivid yellow, a very strange color in the first place, and it resembled fragile threads. What did this stuff have to do with food? Just as disturbing was the small rectangular white label on the side of the glass tube:

NY14

19C

That had absolutely norelation to haute cuisine, he was certain of it. More than anything else, it put him in mind of the periodic table of elements that he'd studied rather disinterestedly in high school. But this particular combination of letters and numbers didn't ring any bells with him. Could this be some new element, maybe something to do with the new bomb that was rumored to be in development, the one that required a supply of so-called 'heavy water'? If it was, what was LeBeau doing with it? And how long before he would realize it was missing?

A cold draft suddenly wafted over his bare feet. It came from the gap underneath his office door, and Hogan immediately reached to turn the desk lamp out. Maybe one of the guards had seen the faint light, and was coming in to read him the riot act for ignoring lights-out. He waited in the dark, listening. No footfalls from the outer barracks. Few of the guards were that light on their feet. Hogan crept silently to the door and cautiously opened it just a hair. There was someone in the barracks proper, just coming in from outside, barely visible in the faint light from the woodstove.

Newkirk.

What the heck was Newkirk doing out in the compound at this hour, where he could be spotted or even shot? Hogan looked on in silence as the British corporal quietly removed his tunic and boots, then hoisted himself onto his upper bunk. Carter, in the lower bunk, was jostled enough to murmur in his sleep and turn over restlessly, but he didn't wake up.

More secrets. More things that didn't add up. Now Hogan had NY14/19C on the one hand, and on the other he had a man sneaking out of the barracks at two o'clock in the morning for no authorized reason.

Was there anybody he could really trust?

oo 0 oo

The uniformed guard gestured for General Biedenbender to proceed through the cell block door ahead of him. As if he didn't know the drill by now. He never gave them any real trouble; there was no point in that. He made it a point to be discourteous, dismissive and downright rude to his captors on a daily basis, but that didn't bother them; as long as he didn't try to wrest any weapons away from them, they didn't seem to care how he treated them.

He would have preferred for Knatchbull-Quimby to escort him, of course, but the boy couldn't be expected to be everywhere. To prevent anyone from guessing there was an alliance between the two of them, the general had to force himself to take the occasional dull constitutional in the company of another orderly once in a while. It was a small enough price to pay to be assured that Colonel Hogan's situation was getting worse by the day. And young Simon appeared to be making very good use of his time outside of Wormwood Scrubs prison, judging from his regular updates.

The worst part of it all, actually, wasn't even the time spent in the company of the deadly dull, anonymous armed guard on the barren, windswept heath… it was the necessity of passing General Schmidt's cell twice, once on the way out and once on the return. When he was lucky, Schmidt ignored him. Today he was not so lucky.

"So, Biedenbender…" Schmidt sneered. "You allow the Englanders to walk you like a dog? Your shame is not yet complete enough?"

That walrus-faced womanizer knew nothing about how to conduct himself as an officer of the Third Reich. "You know something about shame, Schmidt," Biedenbender retorted in an even, almost bored tone of voice. "Colonel Hogan brought you into Stalag 13 tied up in the back of a truck, ja? Then tricked you into giving him the location of your secret base at Heidelheim. That is perhaps some new tactic to win the war that I have not been briefed on?"

"Hogan…" Schmidt hissed. For a moment Biedenbender thought he might actually spit. "I never want to hear that name again!"

"Then stop talking to me." Biedenbender kept walking. The weak-willed Schmidt sometimes still, even now, occasionally screamed that name in his sleep during the night, perpetually haunted by Hogan's cleverness, and Biedenbender was thoroughly sick of it by this time. Strangely, the one thing he and Schmidt agreed upon was Hogan, but he had such contempt for the man that he preferred not to acknowledge that they had ever had any common ground whatsoever.

oo 0 oo

Movie night at Stalag 13 held none of the hometown charm the prisoners recalled from their own stateside trips to the cinema. There was no concession stand with piping hot popcorn for sale; the snacks were strictly bring-your-own from Red Cross packages. There were no sexy girls on the screen; the feature was a late 1930's Charlie Chan movie. Worst of all, there were no pretty girls in the seats beside them, either… just the same scruffy barrackmates they were with day in and day out, their looks not much improved by the relative darkness inside the rec hall as the film rolled. Tops on most of their to-do lists for after the war: a drive-in and a hot date. It wouldn't matter what was playing; none of them would be watching the movie anyway.

In the back row, Carter leaned forward and tapped LeBeau on the shoulder. "Hey, Louis," he whispered, "could you spare a couple jujubes?"

LeBeau turned around to face him with a look of combined confusion and revulsion. "If I knew what those were, I'm sure I would not want to eat them in the first place."

"What's the matter, Carter; you forget this is a BYOC event?" Kinch kidded.

"I didn't forget… I ran out. I checked my footlocker before we came over here and I knew I didn't have any candy, but now I don't even have the can of sardines I was saving."

LeBeau shuddered. "If I have to sit this close to you, I'm glad someone took them."

Kinch leaned over toward Hogan. "Sounds like our petty thievery is still going on, Colonel."

After the pressure of the past several days Hogan knew that it might not take much to cause him to lose his cool, and it was all he could do to keep his voice down. "Didn't everybody get my order? Knock it off! We've got enough to worry about without that kind of thing going on. Get the word out… again. Whoever's doing the stealing better cut it out or he's gonna be real sorry."

"Yes, sir."

"The really weird thing," Carter continued, "is not just that the sardines are gone, but now I've got six more cigarettes than I had yesterday."

"You must have miscounted," said Kinch.

"Nope; I'm sure… I was out of jujubes and cigarettes yesterday, but now I've got a half-dozen of 'em. I don't get it."

If they could pay as much attention to fighting the war as they did on who had how many cigarettes, Hogan fumed, they'd probably be way out in front already. He didn't want to be here in the first place, but there had been no getting out of it; Klink had insisted that all the men attend the movie whether or not they wanted to, and that included himself… probably so the guards could toss the barracks, see if they could turn up any contraband. Being stuck here was a complete waste of time, but Klink had said everybody.

Everybody?

Hogan scanned the dimly-lit rec hall in the flickering light of the film that was unfolding on the white sheet hanging at the front of the room. He could see well enough to be quite sure that everybody wasn't here.

Where was Newkirk?

The film stopped all of a sudden and the lights came on. Most of the men, already not all that happy about being here in the first place, immediately objected with hoots and a few wadded-up balls of trash tossed at the screen. The boos and refuse-pitching increased when Klink himself entered and walked to the front of the room, planting himself firmly in front of the now-dark screen.

"The next man who makes a sound or a move will find himself in the cooler for thirty days!" the Kommandant announced. It was the threat of punishment, not respect for his authority, that shut his unruly and unwilling audience up almost at once.

"What's the big idea, Kommandant?" Hogan got to his feet. "You wanted us all here; the least you can do is let the men finish the movie."

"I intend to, Colonel… after I advise them, and you, that I am placing additional guards outside the wire on a twenty-four-hour basis. Any escape attempts you might be planning are therefore doomed to failure. For the good of you and your men, I would advise you to suspend any such activity immediately."

Hogan gave him a suspicious look. "Why the extra guards?"

"I am not required to give you a reason, but since you asked… I've just received word that an Underground agent was identified and pursued at the edge of Hammelburg, and with obvious Underground activity this close to the camp the Gestapo have stepped up their own vigilance and requested that I do the same."

DuBois. Things just kept getting worse and worse. Pursued probably meant just exactly that, though; Klink wouldn't hesitate to gloat about it if he'd actually been recaptured. Still… how could that have happened in the first place? Black Sheep had promised to handle it personally; what had gone wrong?

Klink gave the signal and stepped aside, the lights went back down, and the movie started to roll again. The men lined up on the benches settled back down and turned their attention back to the screen.

Newkirk entered from the back and slid into the seat next to Hogan. "Sorry I'm late… I miss anythin'?" he asked with the usual cocky grin.

Hogan didn't answer. Something was missing around here, all right. And he was beginning to be afraid he had a pretty good idea what it might be.