Chapter 11: Prisoners

At the next station, Fear and Fury followed Sabine off the platform and into the small town. They had several hours until their train would arrive, and the Fear had let everyone know he had been starving for the last hour.

"No more apples. Get me some meat!" he groaned as they passed a butcher shop.

Sabine kept walking.

"Sweetheart," Fury said, jogging beside her, "mind if I ask where we're going?"

"Yes," she answered curtly.

"Hate to be rude, lady, but we're on a goddamn mission here. I think I have a right to know where you're taking us."

"My name is Sabine, not 'Lady'. If you want my help, just follow me."

He shrugged and followed her down a side street. Fear could tell that Fury liked this woman. He didn't argue with her. He didn't yell. He was oddly placid. Sabine had the same confidence and composure as the Joy radiated, but in Sabine it was almost conceit. Every movement, every note in her voice seemed calculated to create a persona. She was playing characters in layers – the shy little sister with the outer skin removed revealed cool-headed spy Sabine, but there were more beneath that identity.

They stopped in front an old-fashioned book shop, the sort with paneled windows and a hanging sign which read "Livres". Fury held the door for Sabine but let it close on Fear.

The shop owner was like a character in a dime novel. His white hair had receded so far that he only had tufts on the sides of his head. His nose was broad and round, and it held a pair of tiny round spectacles similar to the ones Sabine wore. The shop was empty except for the three of them and the shopkeeper, who finished putting the back cover on the pocket watch he was fixing before he greeted them.

"Ma fille!" he shouted, stepping around the counter to hug Sabine.

Fear knew that he used "fille" as a term of endearment. Sabine was not really his daughter.

"Pére, I would like to introduce my new brother Kurt," she said, taking Fury's arm forcefully.

"I thought I said not to bring Nazis in here," the shopkeeper said, grinning.

"Kurt and Fritz are going to Stuttgart, and they need our help."

An hour later, the Fear was dressed in threadbare blue pants and a yellow shirt that had once been white. His uniform and papers were stowed in a hidden compartment in Fury's new suitcase.

"Okay, Fritzy, wrists in front," Fury said, holding a pair of shackles attached to a chain.

"Honestly?" the Fear asked disgustedly.

"Do you want to make your train?" the shopkeeper asked.

Fear sighed and held his arms in front of him. The cold metal clamped tightly around his wrist. He wanted to protest, or at least to give all of them a vicious grin, but he felt like an animal. He was arrested in Spain when he was sixteen. A vegetable peddler was passing through the woods, and Fear had jumped out of a tree to steal his food. He had not hurt the man, although he would hurt others later. Stealing was in his blood, the officer had said. It's just what his type did. They ought to put him down right there, hadn't they? He'd only get worse if he lived.

"I should have drowned you when I had the chance," the wife of the ringmaster had told his 15-year-old self.

"Hey, Fritz, you okay?" Fury asked, breaking Fear from his reverie.

"Yeah."

"What's the problem?" Sabine asked. "Are you Jewish?"

"No," Fear answered. He hesitated. Even Fury knew nothing about his life before the Cobra Unit. It was not a life he was proud of. "I'm Romani," he said finally.

After Sorrow was snoring fitfully in their compartment, Joy walked out on a platform near the back of the train to watch the stars cross the sky. What would her father think of Sorrow? He was the only Cobra her father had not met. She had only been home once since America had entered the war. That was in 1942, just after Operation Torch. Her father had looked so old and worn. He had lost his sense of humor. Tears filled his eyes when he hugged her.

"I thought when I had a daughter that I was safe from being a military father," he had said, letting tears fall on her uniformed shoulders.

"I did this to you," he had said. "I gave you this destiny."

"No, you didn't," she had said, smiling through her own tears.

He had held her at arm's length, looked her in her mother's eyes and said, "The Philosophers did this. You are not only my daughter. You are their daughter. You and the other children of the Philosophers will be marked as theirs until they kill you."

He's wrong, she thought now, her fingers wrapped around the cool railing on this hot August night in Germany. I'm fighting for them now because they want what I want. Things will change after the war.

She heard voices inside the car. Two railroad guards met her on the platform between cars.

"Seig heil!" they shouted, saluting when they saw her.

She raised her arm to return the salute. Her mother would have loved to see that. If she had lived longer, she probably would have sympathized with the Nazis. She would have adored their uniforms, their salutes, their statues, and their cars. Joy's mother with her aquiline nose, long and noble, would have sided with the Nazis simply because Joy's father would have hated it.

The guards crossed the platform then leaned against the railing to smoke under the stars. It was a clear, fine night, and Joy wished she had a companion to stand beside her. For a second, she imagined that companion as the Sorrow, blushing shyly and holding her hand, but that was a sentimental image, born from her current familiarity with him. Still, he was an intelligent man. His German was perfect, even if he spoke so formally, and his English was improving. He read every book in English that he could find. Joy read, but she learned better by doing. Reading reminded her of school, which had not been her favorite place. She wondered what sort of teacher Sorrow would be. There were now three Russians in the Cobra Unit, but she knew little of their language. Her father had warned her that the Soviet Philosophers had been hiding some of their actions recently, sending their own agents into Occupied countries without telling the American and Chinese Philosophers. If she planned to be a diplomat after the war, she would need to know the languages of all of the major powers. Perhaps, the Sorrow…

"We couldn't just uncouple the car somehow and leave them there on the tracks to starve?" one of the guards was saying.

"And risk one of our trains hitting it and derailing?" the other asked.

"It was a joke. What I really wonder is why they don't just kill them and bury them in some secluded place like this."

"They need cheap labor in Poland."

"That's not what I heard about Sobibor."

"What did you hear?"

"That they kill them, and some of them they experiment on until they're dead."
Joy gagged silently. This must be what Sorrow heard. She knew there were crimes, atrocities… but hearing these two men discussing it so nonchalantly made her feel like her body was burning from within. She forced a smile.

"Good night, boys," she said and excused herself into the car. She walked calmly and carefully back to her compartment and dug through her suitcase for her camouflaged fatigues. Packing them was a gamble – if the Nazis searched their bags at any point, they might find them and get suspicious.

"What are you doing?" Sorrow asked, rubbing his eyes.

"What you're too weak to do," she answered, tossing her uniform on a fold-down table and putting a leg into her fatigues.

"Why?"

"Guilt, I guess."

She was dressed in a minute. She searched the room for something that would break a lock. The black umbrella Astrus had given them lay across Sorrow's suitcase. That would have to suffice. She took the umbrella and slid the window open. The space was just large enough for her to pull herself comfortably into the frame.

"Be careful!" Sorrow cried.

"It's not like this is my first time crawling across a moving train," she said, pulling herself through the window and out onto the curved top of the car. She scrambled along the length of the train, thankful their compartment was near the end. The smoking guards had left their platform and gone inside.

She wondered if the Philosophers had known about the prisoners on the train, if they had purposely sent her to free them. They had power and money, but they could not have predicted that she would hear the guards talking, could they?

The last car was locked tightly with a padlock on each side. It would have looked like it was carrying cargo except for the air vents, like on a cattle car, near the top. Joy leaned over one side and wedged the metal tip of the umbrella into the space between the lock and the latch. She put all of her weight on the other end until she heard a loud pop.

The umbrella seemed to have done some damage to the lock, but it was not enough. The tip of the umbrella had broken and now lay somewhere along the railroad tracks in western Germany. Her umbrella too short to reach the lock, Joy tore open her camouflage shirt, revealing a dark undershirt and her pale arms. She tied it to a pipe on the top of the car and turned the rest into a makeshift harness by wrapping the sleeves just above her waist. She let herself drop beside the car.

Her eyes were level with the vents, and a putrid odor wafted from inside. She could see eyes in the darkness, and when these eyes saw her, there was a clamor of voices and hands banging on the side of the car.

"Quiet!" she hissed, but no one listened.

Joy shoved the handle of the umbrella into the lock and pressed her body against the train car. Finally, the lock broke open, and she knocked it off of the latch with her boot. She kicked the door open a few inches and then pulled herself back onto the top of the car.

At first, the people in the car were silent and still. Then a young man shouted, "Jump!" and men, women, and children leapt through the open door and rolled down the embankment. As she crawled back to her own car, Joy heard a few crunches and screams as some of the freed prisoners broke bones or fell under the car. She did not look back to find out.

"They're jumping!" shouted a voice below and behind her.

Rifles fired from the windows, and she was sure some of the shots were hitting their marks. She could not jump the gap between the car she was on and the one with her compartment. Her camouflage was gone, and a man, one of the smokers from earlier, stood on the platform, leaning over the railing to watch the scene at the back of the train. She dropped on top of him, smashing his face against the rail. She dealt him a hard blow to the temple and threw him over the side.

One of the shooters shouted as his car passed the guard's body. By that time, Joy had thrown her camouflaged trousers into the field and swung herself into her compartment. The Sorrow ran to the window to help her. He was surprisingly calm.

"Quick, Sorrow, get naked!" she whispered.

"What?"

She was already unbuttoning his pajamas.

"I can do that," he said, jerking away.

Joy kicked her boots under a table, threw her undershirt into her suitcase, and unbuttoned her bra. Sorrow looked away.

Guards were pounding on doors down the corridor and shouting at the occupants. Joy pulled her underwear down her now hairless legs and tossed them on the floor.

"Yours too," she said to the Sorrow, and he reluctantly removed his last piece of clothing.

They were now completely naked and saw each other in the yellow light that leaked through the curtained window. Joy had powerful arms and pale, muscular legs covered in new bruises and scratches from tonight's escapade. Even with her athletic body, she had womanly curves – hips that widened gently and large, round breasts. She pressed them against his slender chest, only starting to show the strength gained in his training, and laughed loudly and coquettishly so that the guards in the hallway might hear.

"Mmmm, Michael," she giggled, pushing him roughly toward the bed.

He tripped and fell onto the coarse blanket. Joy lay on top of him.

"Quickly, Sorrow. Get on top!" she whispered, rolling herself underneath him.

There was a knock on the door, and Joy screamed theatrically. The compartment door slid open, and the guard's flashlight beam caught the faux lovers in a nude embrace. He quickly turned the flashlight away and scanned the scattered pieces of their Luftwaffe uniforms instead.

"Something the matter, officer?" Sorrow asked, taking to his role.

"Uh," said the young guard, scratching his head. "Someone, uh, stole some cargo from the train, and we're, uh, looking for that… someone. But it seems you were… uh… otherwise disposed."

He looked sheepishly at Joy with the covers clutched to her chest, lifted his hat, and left the compartment. Sorrow snatched his pajamas from the floor and immediately started dressing. Joy, still wrapped in a blanket, took a cigar and a box of matches from her bag.

"Why was that the first thing you thought of?" Sorrow asked, his face red.

"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Joy said, lighting the cigar. "We're married, and it explained why I was out of breath and sweaty."

Sorrow's red cheeks darkened.

"Ah, um," he stammered. "Put that out and get some clothing on!"

Historical Notes:

French notes: "Livres" means "books"; "ma fille" means "my daughter"

An aquiline nose is one of the features considered part of the Nazi "master race".

Fear says that he is "Romani". If you read the short story I wrote about his childhood called "A Dirge for the Fear", you'll learn a bit more about his background, but I'll explain it simply here. The "Romani people" are an ethnic group in Europe that you've probably heard called "Gypsies". Although Romani were already being targeted for extermination in many Axis-controlled countries, they were not officially declared "on the same level as Jews" until December 1943.

Sobibor was one of the Nazi extermination camps in Poland. Two months after this part of the story, there was a massive escape from Sobibor.