Starker, if nothing else, was as good as his word. He appeared just after breakfast the next morning in the doorway with a polite knock, trailing two of his men in his wake. One was his pale-eyed lieutenant, whose name Tully thought was Heinz, the other a tall young Rottenführer with dark blond hair and a striking blue gaze set against his bony, Aryan face. They hung back by the window as Starker waltzed into the middle of the room like he owned the place and put his hands on his hips, looking round at them all expectantly.
"Good morning, Madame," he said gallantly to Isabelle. Clearing the breakfast dishes from the table, she only stared at him in silence. With the threats he had made towards her daughters, she was quite finished with false civility. It was a detail that didn't seem to bother him. Removing his gloves, he gathered them neatly up and stowed them in one of the pockets of his leather greatcoat, his black eyes tracking Isabelle's movements with a warped kind of interest glittering in their depths.
"I did promise, Madame, that I would explain everything again when you were fresh," he pointed out. "The least you could do is provide me the courtesy of listening."
At last she stopped, set the dishes down, and wiped her hands on her skirt. Neatly she arranged herself with fingers laced together, brows arching, chin tipped up so she could meet his eyes. "But of course, Monsieur le Capitaine," she said with excruciating civility. "I am listening. We all are."
He cocked his head at her, his mouth sliding into a crooked smirk. "Are you mocking me, Madame?" he inquired silkily. Isabelle wavered ever so slightly beneath his exacting stare. Sitting at the table, holding his fork like a murder weapon, Tully willed her the good grace to back down. The less they taunted Starker, the more time he would leave them alone to figure out an escape plan. Isabelle seemed to sense this, and acquiesced with a quick bow of her head, averting her eyes.
"Non, Monsieur le Capitaine," she said quietly. "I am not."
The smirk flickered at the edges. "Good," he replied. His tone turned almost playful as he continued. "It is not so bad, you know, if you are. I prefer a little fight before it's all finished. I would not have held it against you, Madame." His gaze scanned over them all, taking in the sullen Americans, Genevieve's wide gray eyes, Marguerite half-hidden beside the sturdy shape of Toulouse perched on the edge of the table. Whatever he saw in them was more than enough to satisfy him.
"Well," he announced with a sharp sigh, rubbing his hands together. "Let us begin again, shall we? I know your husband left the information here, Madame, and I mean to get it. What is it the Americans say, come hell or high water?" He glanced at Tully and Hitch as if for confirmation. They merely stared back in unamused silence. Unaffected, he continued. "As I mentioned to you last night, this is the way we shall go about things: I will give you ten minutes, and you will decide amongst yourselves whether or not a human life is worth a few words strung together into some semblance of coherency. It is up to you, Madame, what happens today."
Isabelle looked at him for such a long moment Tully began to wonder if she was changing her mind. It was a clear-cut choice Starker was giving her—the information or a sure death for her children, patriotism or family. The lives of many or the lives of a few. The Kentuckian hardly knew himself what he would have done in such a situation. If his fellow Rats had been threatened he wouldn't have hesitated in rejecting such a one-sided offer and getting them all shot if it meant Starker didn't find out how much the Allies knew about German troop movements. But they knew the risks, and they had signed up knowing full well what could happen. Genevieve and Marguerite hadn't.
"If I do tell you," Isabelle said at last, rather hesitantly, "what assurance do I have that we will be safe? How can I trust that you will not go back on your promise?"
He looked hurt by the implication that he could even be capable of such shameless treachery. "I assure you, Madame," he told her, touching a hand to his heart, "that I will not harm a single one of you. I give you my word as a German officer and a man of honor."
From the table, Hitch snorted. "Lotta good that does," he said caustically. "You talk about honor—your man shot Private Davis in the back!"
The captain stopped abruptly and stared at him, processing his words and the tone they had been spoken in. His sharp face registered genuine surprise at the sergeant's defiance; then, slowly, he swiveled on his heel to face the two soldiers lingering near the door. "Jäger," he said, quite levelly. "You didn't tell me you shot him in the back."
The tall, rawboned Rottenführer blinked at him, unsure. "I am sorry, Hauptsturmführer," he apologized at last, bemusedly. "I did not think it was important."
His commander acknowledged this with a tip of his head, as if it didn't merit much thought after it was all said and done. "You're right, of course," he allowed. "Really not worth bothering about now, anyway."
It was very fast, so fast Tully would have missed it if he hadn't been looking. Neumann, the blond lieutenant, had throughout the conversation kept his eyes fixed vaguely on some point of the floor, but at Starker's comment glanced up sharply, startled—and for the briefest of moments fixed the captain with a hard look. It was quick and terribly faint; his face shut down into well-practiced, impassive neutrality almost immediately. But Tully had seen it. For whatever reason, for whatever it was worth, SS-Untersturmführer Heinz Neumann seemed to have a soul. Instinct told Tully he could use that in some way. But how?
Starker hadn't noticed the momentary crack in his aide's features. Turning back to his captive audience, he shrugged and said reasonably, "After all, it's all fair, isn't it? In love and war as they say? Far worse things have been done."
"Like orchestrating the massacre of an entire village?" challenged Hitch. The captain leveled him with an unamused stare.
"I was not responsible for the Oradour-sur-Glane incident, Sergeant. Had I been, it would not have been so messy. They say a few survived." He brushed off some invisible speck on his coat sleeve. "Why this maudlin obsession with what has already happened? It had to be done. Haven't you heard there is a war on?"
"That is not war," Isabelle snapped heatedly. "That is sheer inhumanity!"
"Oh, Madame." He sounded so terribly disappointed. "When has war ever been anything more than a mere justification of murder? Our excuse was poorer than others', and so we receive blame for things we cannot help. It seems rather unfair to us, but I do not spend my time complaining. Why should you?"
Whether it was his flippancy towards mass murder or his ability to reduce the weight of objecting to such brutality as mere complaining that registered as the most disturbing, Tully couldn't begin to guess. He didn't take the time or make the effort to dissect the instinctive revulsion he felt, that before he could stop himself had driven him to speak.
"You ever heard of morals?" he inquired acidly. Starker merely smiled at him in his slow, condescending way.
"Ah, yes, the measuring stick of the human race." He tipped his head, his tone turning philosophical. "What would you do, Sergeant, if you ever stumbled across an entity that had a different way of looking at things? I wonder. Not everyone shares your views, I'm afraid." He stepped past Isabelle to stand before the smoldering ruins of the fire, one hand out experimentally to test its warmth as if the outside heat and his heavy coat were inconsequential. "With that we raise a tricky question. What do we really all have in common when it comes down to it? A value for human life? A duty to one's people and one's heritage? On both sides there are commanders who care for their men, and men who care for their country. With such ingredients you have the makings of a perfectly good cause. To objectively say the other side is the bad side becomes simply impossible, Sergeant. How are you to judge what should and should not be done?" He turned on his heel, brows arching in amused irony. "If we are to operate with such freedom, then how are we to know I am not the hero in this instance? How will we ever know?"
"You make it all sound so very useless, Monsieur le Captaine," said Isabelle quietly from her place near the table. "So very, inconsolably useless. What is the point of fighting, then, if we never know who has God on their side? How will we know if the right ones win?"
He cast her a crooked smile, his eyes narrowing in genuine pleasure at her answer. "You catch on quickly, Madame—therefore you must understand the futility of your actions. If you insist on continuing this game, you will waste your family's lives and my men will waste their bullets. Ammunition does not come cheaply, you know," he added as if the only motivation she needed was the knowledge she would be lessening the strain on the Third Reich's budget if she acquiesced. "If you will only tell me what I wish to know, we can end this bothersome business here and now and avoid any further headaches."
She only watched him with her dark eyes, her brief moment of hesitation gone. His cloying talk had only served to reinforce her determination rather than change her mind—but Tully had to wonder, looking at the captain's wolfish features, if he hadn't been hoping for such an outcome. An easy victory would have been too much of a disappointment.
"You seem so certain, Monsieur le Captaine," Isabelle said at last, quite coolly. "How odd you are completely convinced that this wretched plan of yours will work, after all your talk of hopelessness."
Starker regarded her with amused interest. "I don't like being completely convinced of anything, Madame," he responded in his low purring voice. "Such an absolute means no margin for error, something we as humans are so fond of committing. As such, it means that absolute is impossible, because human nature requires there to be an unknown variable. Of course this wretched plan could fail—or perhaps you will fail one another, and give up your sad loyalty to save your own skins. Anything could happen, but I expect such. I cannot trust something I do not know to be indisputably reliable."
"That include your own men?" inquired Hitch in a surly tone. Starker only smiled in his slow, condescending way and cast a glance at Jäger and his aide.
"I trust my own men, Sergeant," he said smoothly. "As far as that trust goes, however, only I know. That way they can never be sure how far they can test the limits."
There. There it was again. Heinz's eyes gave the briefest flicker at his captain's words, almost imperceptibly—but Tully saw it. In those gray depths was something odd and out-of-place, something that it took Tully a moment to recognize.
What kind of commander is it whose own men are afraid of him?
Tutting, Starker checked his watch. "And again, we come down to the wire. I seem to have taken up your precious ten minutes with my prattling. Ah, well, I have time to spare, Madame," he added graciously, touching a hand to the visor of his cap. "I shall give you two more, and then I will be back. I trust you will have reached a decision in that time. Do try and do this democratically." He turned neatly on a dime and headed for the door, signaling with a flick of his hand for his men to follow. Jäger peeled out after him immediately, but Heinz was slower. Slow enough that his fellow Germans left him effectively alone.
"Lieutenant?" came Genevieve's voice, surprisingly, from the quiet of her corner. Neumann paused instinctively, and turned towards her, brows drawn together as he looked for whoever had addressed him. "Is it true?" she asked him hesitantly. "Oradour-sur-Glane? Were you there?"
Heinz blinked at her, processing her questions with a deepening frown. "I was," he answered. "Hauptsturmführer Starker is not lying to you. He was not responsible. Sturmbannführer Diekmann ordered it done."
"But why is he not here?" she questioned further, sounding very small. Perhaps she thought that, after Starker, anything or anyone else could only be an improvement. Heinz did not seem to share her sentiment.
"Diekmann was killed at Normandy," he informed her shortly. "Hauptsturmführer Starker is holding command until they decide to replace him."
"Here's hoping he won't try and live up to his predecessor's reputation," Hitch muttered, fingers picking at a knot in the wooden table. Overhearing, Heinz leveled a cool gray gaze at him. After Starker's heavy black stare, the lieutenant's eyes seemed almost too pale to be real.
"Der Hauptsturmführer is not one who lives up to the reputations of others," he said coldly. "He makes his own." He clicked his heels, waist bending towards Isabelle and her daughter in a sharp little bow. "Good day to you, Gnädige Frauen." He left, and closed the door behind him.
"We can use that," Tully said immediately. "Somehow, we can use that."
"Use what?" demanded Hitch, standing so abruptly his chair squawked in protest as it slid backward. "They're making fun of us, that's all. Two minutes, Tully, how are we s'posed to get out of here now?"
"Didn't you see?" asked the Kentuckian, so caught up in talking for once that he removed his matchstick to make it easier. "Weren't you watchin'? Whenever Starker said somethin' and crossed some kind of line, that aide of his looked itchy. Even his own men don't know what to make of him."
"Great," said Hitch, crossing over to the window to glare out into the SS-infested yard. "So none of us trusts him, then. Maybe he can have them shoot themselves after they kill us to round things out."
"You think we have a chance, Sergent?" asked Isabelle rather breathlessly, pressing her hands tightly together. Her dark eyes darted to the door that Heinz had closed only moments before. "You think perhaps that we have an ally?"
"Not an ally exactly," he amended, suddenly awkward. His flush of inspiration had vanished abruptly, bringing him back down to the unwieldy territory of conversation. With Hitch too cynical to share his theory, he was stuck explaining this one on his own. "A foot in the door, maybe. If we know at least one of Starker's men will hesitate to follow his orders, maybe others will. Maybe we can run for it."
"We had better be quick about it," said Genevieve miserably. Her head snapped up as from outside came a nerve-rending explosion of squawking chickens and flapping wings. She stood and hurried to the window, the others following out of nervous curiosity.
One of the Germans was chasing the panicked hens around the yard, too slow to catch them but too fast to give up. It was the gray-eyed sergeant, the one named Dietrich, his helmet gone and his MP40 slung over his shoulder. An outstretched hand just brushed the edge of his target's flailing wing, setting off a new round of furious cackling. It was quite clear he wouldn't be able to catch the thing; he was only having fun. A quick glance at Isabelle showed her mouth set into a thin, displeased line that rivaled the fear in her eyes. She didn't dare interrupt, not now. But someone else did it for her.
"Wolfgang!" yelled a voice, and Heinz Neumann appeared at a lanky lope, parting the scattering birds like Moses through the Red Sea. He stopped in front of Dietrich, forcing the sergeant to pull up short. "Stop that!" he ordered. "You will frighten them out of a week's worth of eggs."
The noncom only gave a breathless laugh, pulling open his collar in the morning heat. "What does it matter, Untersturmführer?" he asked easily. "In a week there will be no one here to care."
"Dietrich!" snapped Heinz sharply. "Nicht so laut! Sie könnten dich hören."
He had switched to German immediately, but the damage was done. Genevieve went white as a sheet and managed to find the bench by the window before she abruptly sat down. Isabelle put a hand on her shoulder, eyes fixed on the two men in the yard.
"We must get out of here, Sergent," she whispered. "And very soon."
"Shouldn't we try to take out that SS guy?" asked Hitch suddenly. Tully snorted.
"With what? Who we got as backup, Toulouse?"
"We can't just leave him running loose out there," the blond protested. "If Troy was here—"
"He ain't here," Tully said bluntly. "It's just us."
"Yeah, I know—I know." Irritably Hitch ruffled his blond hair, swiveling around and scanning the room as if searching for some miraculous answer to all his problems. "I know," he said again, half-distracted. "But we better think of something."
Given enough time, Tully was confident that the two of them could slap together a plan that got everyone out of the Germans' clutches and back home in time for supper. But moments after they pulled back from the window, Genevieve holding tightly onto Hitch's arm, there was a knock at the door. Had two minutes passed so quickly?
This time it was only Starker with his pale-eyed lieutenant following. As if he had a schedule to keep, he swept inside without preamble and announced to Isabelle,
"It has been two minutes, Madame."
"Your watch is fast," said Hitch. Starker smiled at him indulgently.
"Perhaps, but it is the one I am judging by. I have not received a satisfactory answer, Madame," he continued, acting as though the sergeants didn't even exist. "Have you changed your mind?"
Isabelle regarded him in silent trepidation, her chin raised in an effort to compensate for his massive height. "I am afraid, Monsieur le Capitaine," she said, the faintest of tremors undercutting her quiet voice, "that I still say no."
The captain tipped his head, absorbing the reply in silence. "I'm afraid you're well aware of what that means," he said at last. His tone was soft, almost kind, as if he was conscious of the unpleasant subject he broached. Isabelle's face turned pale at the oddly-gentle treatment, but she held her ground.
"Please, Capitaine," she whispered. "You cannot murder my children."
He drew back as if she had struck him even harder than the previous night. "What do you take me for, Madame?" he demanded, appalled at the very idea. "Do you think I enjoy this manner of work? I cannot help it—you have forced my hand. You are the one who decided this should happen. What can I do but respect your wishes?" He looked past her, at Marguerite clutching his watch chain and Genevieve nestled behind Hitch's arm as though keeping hidden would somehow protect her. At the sight of her, Starker smiled. It was a broken, malicious kind of smile, one that didn't reach his pitch-black eyes. "You have two daughters, after all," he pointed out to Isabelle, lifting a hand to inspect some invisible speck on the palm in a flippant gesture. "This one and a spare. And I cannot bring myself to order shot such a sweet little creature as the spare." He turned his head, keeping his eyes on Isabelle as if awaiting her reaction. "Neumann," he instructed in a drawling tone, "take Fräulein Deslauriers outside."
Heinz cast his commander a blank look, too practiced to let his face show his thoughts, and for the briefest moment hesitated. It was, as it turned out, the perfect amount of time: long enough for Hitch to make an idiot of himself, and too short for Tully to stop him.
"You can't," the bespectacled sergeant declared, stepping in front of the terrified Genevieve. He stared Starker down, utterly unimpressed by the man's threatening air. "She's a civilian. I'm not."
Oh, you complete idiot! Tully wanted to shout, all while grabbing him by the collar and yanking him back with a thorough shake. What good will that do? He's going to kill us all anyway! But he couldn't make himself say a blamed thing.
Starker studied Hitch with arching brows as if he considered his chivalrous display of self-sacrifice rather adorable. "All right," he laughed. "All right, we'll try it your way. Neumann?"
Heinz grabbed Hitch's arm and hauled him out. As the sergeant passed by Tully their eyes met, and the blond didn't even have the decency to look properly scared. Make it count, he was saying, silently, in the desperation of his features. Do something with it. Make it count!
Starker followed them out, pausing in front of Tully and looking down his long nose. He leaned forward a little as if imparting a great secret. "I would let you watch," he murmured, "but I suspect you are already well aware of what's coming. Anyway—" The left corner of his lips quirked up. "Why spoil what's left of a surprise?" Then he swept away, and the door slammed shut. A dull scraping signaled its being barred from the outside, followed by the rattle of closing shutters. Starker's men were sealing them in.
The instant his mind registered the noise, Tully sprang for the window, although he didn't know what good it would do. Blind, he was forced merely to listen, straining to hear the outside world through the solid walls. Behind him Genevieve sniffled quietly and Isabelle comforted her in gentle French; Marguerite chattered away at Toulouse, the watch chain clicking metallically in her hands; the fire snapped in its stone enclosure. It all translated as a vague kind of buzzing to his ears as he heard another, newer sound.
"Achtung! Fertig! Feuer!"
Five gunshots, not quite synchronized and ragged at the edges. Not terribly loud, not terribly close, but Tully still flinched in pain. Noises didn't bother him, but this was more than that. This he could feel as it struck him deep in the gut. As the crack of rifles faded away, there was a muffled pause. Then silence. Dead, heavy silence.
"Hitch," he whispered uselessly to the window. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass pane. "Oh, God, Hitch."
A hand touched his arm, ever so delicately, and Genevieve's soft voice murmured, uncertainly, "I am sorry, Sergent Tully. Was he a. . .a great friend of yours?"
Squeezing his eyes shut, Tully found that the darkness gave his mind free rein to rush through the endless aisle of memories that flooded past on parade at her question: the desert, Italy, being separated and finding each other again in France, both so amused that they would leave the war together like they had entered it; the times he had saved Hitch, and Hitch had saved him; the inherent ability they shared to know each other's exact thoughts without speaking a single word. The blond sergeant's bad jokes, endless pursuit of the opposite sex, and his stupid bubblegum. He thought about it all, and he couldn't find the words. In the end all he could say was, quietly,
"Yes ma'am. He was."