Channel Island of Sark - farm of Blind La Salle - Robin worked, repairing the stacked stone wall with an extra fierceness, though he, himself, did not notice it. His mind was consumed with the lack of information on how the rescue attempt (and Marion's crucial part in it) was going. It was after lunch now, time to move on from barn chores to the fields. He was standing-in (along with John) as Stephen's hired man for the day, as Dick Giddons and his boat were busy with the Alderney escape, conversely working for Robin and the gang.

Luncheon at Stephen's had not been a particularly large meal, nor made up of rich foods, but nonetheless it seemed to swell uncomfortably in Robin's belly, fermented by his troubled and all-consuming thoughts.

But telephone service and even electricity were far from standard on even the most populous of the islands. Here on the rural and sparsely settled Sark such services seemed all but mythological. There would be no news anytime soon.

Perhaps when Allen Dale was returned from his long day of driving for the Kommandant, and had been brought back on the German army-run ferry to Sark (the location his forged paperwork listed as his residence), perhaps then, there might be news.

Until then there was only his hands to the cold, smooth stone, the existing wall in front of him with its fissure to be mended, and fearsome thoughts of wild risk and the grimness of possible failure. And always, the fear of loss. Marion's loss.

Unlike this pasture wall, he did not believe a fissure, such as her loss would create within himself (coupled with the strain of that first loss some five years ago), could ever be put right. No matter the skilled craftsman set to the task.

Alderney Harbor and docks - Harbormaster's office - The space smacks of German efficiency and of being well-run by the timestables of harbor loading and unloading. However, with Thomas Carter's escape, this office, set high on stilts so that it may also serve as a competent lookout to the harbor beyond, has been turned into a ground zero for all searching. And turned somewhat on its ear.

Kommandant Vaiser, at receiving the news of the prison break via radio while at another camp, has arrived to be debriefed in person on the situation by Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer, displaying an equal mixture of rage at the prisoner's daring breakout, and angst over the identity of the hostage taken.

"We believe it is possible the prisoner might still be on the island, Sir." Gisbonnhoffer stood in front of the Harbormaster's desk, the Kommandant just having stepped inside through the office's door.

Vaiser's anger has been stewing dangerously all the driven journey here. "Gisbonnhoffer," the Kommandant replied, his tone only barely civil, "do you take me for an idiot? A fool? Do you take yourself for one?"

"Sir?"

"You have interrogated the prisoner countless times at this point. When I was not with you I have read the transcripts. Do you HONESTLY believe that this man failed to succeed in fleeing the island? Do you take him for a half-wit, a boob? You should never have let him leave your office alive!"

"But the hostage..."

"Ah, YES, the hostage." The smaller man kept his distance, as though the act of standing near his taller subordinate was somehow distasteful to him. "Forget the woman, Lieutenant!" He continued in anger. "Why did you not take the shot? Someone should have taken the shot!"

Gisbonnhoffer spoke in a tone as though he thought accepting such blame (though entirely his) was also somewhat noble. "They were acting on my orders."

"To protect Lady Marion?" Vaiser's swell of intense ire bordered on apoplectic. His eyes bugged, the veins in his neck stood out, his forehead purpled. He had the very appearance of Rumpelstiltzkin in the children's fairy tale, stamping his feet in outrage until he made a hole in the earth all the way down to Hell. "Screw Lady Marion, Gisbonnhoffer-oh, wait. That is exactly what you are trying so hard to do, isn't it? And in this instance you chose instead to screw over your career, to screw over me, to screw over the Fatherland's impressive and total grip on these islands, as you would rather have her alive for the screwing than be in my good graces for preventing AN ENITERLY PREVENTABLE PRISON ESCAPE!"

Vaiser took a moment to inhale and compose himself. "You should have shot-to-kill Lady Marion, removing any leverage the prisoner thought he had, and then shot to wound him. If you had done so-entirely textbook, by-the-by-we would be sitting here discussing how to further loosen Flight Commander Thomas Carter's lips instead of running around with our thumbs up our arses TRYING TO FIND WHERE THE DIRTY DEVIL HE IS!" He walked toward Geis, crossing the room, and slapped the cablegram of earlier in the day down on the desk just behind Gisbonnhoffer. His voice again modulated to composed. "Happy birthday," he said, his low tone bordering on menacing. "Find the prisoner, or, in addition to other fun times I have reserved for you-such as the Russian Front-I shall inform..." the Kommandant picked up the paper cablegram again to consult on the names with which it was signed, "Greta, little Hans and Lili Gisbonnhoffer that their 'beloved' husband and father has embarked on an engagement and MARRIAGE TO A MEMBER OF THE BRITISH NOBILITY!"

The tall Lieutenant blanched at the Kommandant's discovery.

"And I would hurry, Herr Geis," Vaiser counseled, in a purr. "After all that you've personally enacted on Blondie, there's no telling, really, what he might do to your little Jerry-bag girlfriend now that he has her all to himself. What do you think a man like him," he paused, actually seeming to consider and relish the perverse thought, "might do to her? Hmmm? In the end you might wish, really, that you had taken that shot." His lips had come together in a tight pursing of faux-concern. "You have lost me time and manpower, respect and discipline among the other prisoners, and the life of an officer. Be glad that in this moment I do not choose to take your own in reprisal."

He turned to go. "Radio our men on the French coast. Send someone to search that wretched slab of deserted rock, Burhou, and begin your search with the nearest islands, radioing St. Peter Port and St. Helier. We've got two soldiers here, I'm told, for every wretched islander. If they can't coordinate a search with those numbers..."

The Lieutenant seemed to at last find his voice as the moment turned toward military matters. "And how shall I search the other islands? Sark has no appropriate vehicles to speak of."

"Steal horses, commandeer bicycles, have the local sewing circle run-up a ruddy zeppelin for all I care-take their tractors. Get him BACK. Scorched earth policy, Gisbonnhoffer. The best way, the fastest way to find a needle in a haystack? Always has been: burn the haystack." He slapped his gloves against his hand, adjusted the great coat that hung about his shoulders, the sleeves swinging free. Vaiser hard-forced a put-on sigh. "And to think, earlier today I really thought I could quite like you, your nefarious plan to trick the Brit twit, and all...Pfft." He swept out of the appropriated HQ-for-the-search, the Harbormaster's office, and set off at pace down the steep wooden steps to the beach below, bellowing, "Driver!" at the top of his lungs.

...TBC...