An Interlude to EJ McFall's 'Ring of Steel'

by marylinusca

Based on E.J. McFall's 'Ring of Steel' and is a tribute to that fine story. [Warning: High marysue content]

3. Chapter 3

From Ring of Steel by E. J. McFall: 

"I'll stay. You get some sleep too."

" And let you spend the whole bloody night hacking all over the man? Are you crazy, mate? The governor can hardly breathe now what with his ribs all broken. He doesn't need pneumonia too."

"I…" Kinch's rebuttal was interrupted by a fit of coughing. He knew Newkirk was right, but that didn't make it any easier to surrender his post and find an isolated bunk in the other room. But if he was going to trust anyone with Hogan tonight, the Englander would be his first choice. ...

***

continuing marylinusca's version: 

Newkirk watched Kinch narrowly as, smothering his coughs, the sergeant turned with a considering frown to Hogan and then back to him.

Look at the man. He's barely holding himself together. Why does he think he has to be bloody Atlas carrying the world on his back? What does he think we'll do if he collapses?

Kinch reluctantly nodded and sighed.  "You're right.  With his ribs and my pneumonia, I'd do him more harm than good."  His dark eyes bored into Newkirk's. "Take good care of him. Call me the moment he wakes up..."

Newkirk cut in, disgusted. "Do you think I've no brains of my own? I can tie my shoes and cut up my food, y'know. Can't be that hard to watch over one unconscious man for one night."

Kinch shot him a glare, then he gestured surrender. "Yeah. Sorry. Of course, you're more than able to take care of the colonel."

Newkirk shrugged, outwardly indifferent but inwardly astonished.  He had never won so complete a victory over Kinch so easily.

"That's all right," he mumbled. "You had to deal with what the bastard did to him." He looked a little shamefaced. "Sorry I got huffed. It couldn't have been pleasant for you."

Kinch managed a small, rueful smile. "No, it wasn't. The colonel busted me to private and threatened me with a court-martial for pulling off his pants."

Newkirk could not help his grin. "Well then.  He hasn't lost his sunny disposition.  That shows he'll be better in no time."

"Yeah."  Kinch turned back to the colonel. He moved sluggishly toward the bed, leaned against the post, and gazed down at him. Then he turned back to the Englishman.  Again, Newkirk felt a shock.  Kinch looked hollow-eyed, utterly spent - and afraid. "Newkirk, I …I daren't leave him."

The corporal approached him and touched his arm. "You're not God, Kinch," he said, very gently. "You've done all you could do. Take care of yourself now." He gave the arm a tiny, self-conscious squeeze, and a little push. "He'll be here for you tomorrow.  Get a good, long sleep."

Kinch nodded again, wearily. His eyes silently repeated his plea, "Take good care of him."  He bent down, picked up the colonel's blooded slacks, and draped them over his left arm. Then he shepherded LeBeau and Carter from the room.

Newkirk remained standing, determined not to relax until Kinch had left him alone with their colonel.  He felt a little guilty at forcing his colleague to back down. Perturbed too.  He shook himself irritably; but the feelings remained. It was not like Kinch, nor like LeBeau, to leave the colonel in the care of others.  The guv'nor often complained that they were too protective of him.

As soon as the door clicked shut, the Briton dropped his self-confident pose and sank down on the stool beside the colonel's head.  He leaned forward, nervously rubbed his hands together and stared at them.  He stared at his fingernails, his knuckles, his palms, and then the backs of his hands.  The he stared at his shoes, the pens and pencils neatly arranged on the wooden desk, the leather jacket carefully hung on its hook in the locker, the leather cap with its eagle and shield badge hung on its hook on the half open locker door.

He looked everywhere in the room except at Colonel Hogan's body.  Every time he tried, his eyes veered away. He angrily shook himself again. He was not afraid to look Gestapo goons in the eyes. Why couldn't he look at his leader's face?

Because he was afraid of what he'd see. Because he was no good in here. Sick people had always given him the willies. Even Carter, with his Boy Scout training and his pharmacology, was better capable to care for the colonel than he.

LeBeau had proven he was the best of nurses, as if it needed proving.  No one had devoted as much time as he did to caring for Kinch, Carter, the Russians and the other sick men. For a man squeamish at the sight of blood, he was indomitable. None who survived would have survived without LeBeau, since Doktor Falke had been unable to get through Hochstetter's 'ring of steel' and see to things herself. She would probably say they did better with him than with her.

He should have let Louis sit up with the colonel.

Newkirk nerved himself to move his eyes along the blanket-covered body, starting from the foot of the bunk. It was not so hard, he told himself.  With his wounds hidden by the rough cloth, the guv'nor looked quite normal. As if he was merely asleep. Until one looked at his face, that is.  Newkirk swallowed, and forced his eyes those last few inches. It was too much.  He suddenly turned his head away, but his apprehensive thoughts snagged and tore on the sutures.

Was Colonel Hogan 'quite normal'?

LeBeau, who believed so passionately in his colonél that he preferred to fight for France at his side than at De Gaulle's, did not believe he had survived Hochstetter's brutality unscathed. Every horror story of Gestapo brutality stared out of LeBeau's dark intense eyes as they looked upon Hogan's lacerated face.

Kinch did not believe. Kinch had looked straight into Carter's eyes while he spoke bracingly, with conviction, that, although Colonel Hogan was in great pain and his convalescence would be lengthy, no Kraut could conquer him. Carter's first article of faith was 'Colonel Hogan can do, or survive, anything'. Carter had to believe that to keep functioning. But Kinch's gaze had slid away when their own eyes met; and he flinched when LeBeau accused him of not telling their innocent the full truth.

Newkirk knew then their operation's days were numbered.  Kinch was a trained pugilist, and being a studious sort of bloke, he would have made a thorough study of how much pain a man could bear. If Kinch didn't believe the guv'nor would fully recover, how could they?

What were they going to do if the colonel was broken?  What were they going to do if he survives but he's not himself? Could they maintain the operation without him? What if he insisted on remaining in control?

Some of the colonel's plans – most of his plans – had been the balmiest schemes ever thought up, and yet they were the most brilliant. If we were not such a marvellous crew, they would have never worked, but that was the guv'nor.  Amazing how he could get us – even me – to believe in him and do everything he wanted done.

But what if it was over for him? Newkirk shook off the thought as treasonous; but it returned to his mind.  What were they going to do if he was not himself?  Send him to London in a strait jacket?  Pretend to follow orders, but work around him?

Who would take over? Some officer from London?  Do we follow orders from the underground?  If the colonel's gone completely… if he… Newkirk forced his mind forward.  If he dies, Klink'll transfer in a new officer and we'll have to go by his rules. 

What would the new man be like?  Would he listen to us?  After all, we've got experience here and he hasn't.  Took us a long time to learn, too.

The last man had been just, but very by the book, up to the moment he died.  As the camp troublemaker, Newkirk had never gotten along with him. He had never got along with anyone in authority until Colonel Hogan came. When Hogan had set up his command, he had given him the job of security officer, on the assumption that a con artist would not let anyone con him and a pessimist would be suspicious of everyone and everything. Now that he knew how hard it was to maintain order, Newkirk regretted he had been a plague to his old senior officer.  He didn't like regret. It left an acid taste in his mouth. But he regretted.

Nerving himself, Newkirk looked at Hogan's still face with a worried frown.  "We've got to get you well in a hurry, guv.  We've grown too used to your style of command."

He had offered to help undress the colonel and make him comfortable, but Kinch had ordered him out.  Newkirk scowled. Took too much on himself, did Kinch. As if no one but he was fit to touch the guv'nor. He wanted to argue him down but no one dared argue Kinch down when he took a hard line. Better to obey the man than risk a blow to the jaw. Kinch seldom hit, but he could hit very hard. Newkirk did not want to try the man at the edge of his self-control.

Kinch had told him to organize a noisy gambling game.  Newkirk saw the purpose of it right off.  The noise would cover up Hogan's moans from the other men.  So he obeyed, but his heart wasn't in his patter.  It was in that little room, where the rest of him wanted to be.

Newkirk admitted that he wanted to string up every German he saw, not ease the colonel's pain. Still, he wanted to be by his colonel's bedside, even if it was as a helpless bystander wringing his hands (around Hochstetter's neck, he muttered fiercely) not in the common room making light-hearted banter.

But he was just a lowly corporal carrying out Black Kinchloe's orders.  Stubborn sod, Kinch; but, then, he always was.

The other men in Barracks Two had almost immediately given up the pretence of enjoying their impromptu 'Monte Carlo Night'.   They had gone through the motions of gambling away their money, but Newkirk had seen their covert glances at the colonel's closed door. Games of chance had been far from their minds.  They had laughed and shouted in a semi-subdued way, obeying Kinch's order to make noise, but their faces were straining to hear the colonel's moans.

The glowering Corporal Marcus Simms had not even tried to pretend.  The wiry black airman stood a silent sentry at the colonel's door, keeping everyone – particularly Carter – from venturing near it.  Once he gave Newkirk a grim nod, as if to say he shared his feelings and approved his efforts.  Newkirk grimaced, yet felt oddly comforted that someone, even Black Kinchloe's staunchest supporter, had spared some sympathy for him.

Carter had not pretended all was well.  The young man had huddled on his bunk, eyes averted from Simms and the gamblers, and tried in vain to conjure up one good memory from his knotted string.  Poor Andrew, Newkirk sighed.  Remembering just made him more miserable.

Now here he was, Peter Newkirk, alone with his colonel like he wanted to be.  He forced himself to look down at Hogan's still face.  He had never felt more helpless in his life.  Not even when he had fallen into the trap set for Papa Bear by the Gestapo who posed as the underground unit North Star.  Then it had been only his neck in the noose.  He knew that Colonel Hogan would save him, after he got the message without the four score and seven codes.  Even if the colonel could not rescue him, at least he would have died knowing that he had warned him 'North Star' was a fraud. The creeps would never capture Papa Bear, and that's all that had mattered.

But Papa Bear was wounded now, and Hochstetter's trap had nearly caught him.

Newkirk gritted his teeth.  If Kinch could look upon the colonel's wounds, so could he.  He was as tough a man as 'Black Kinchloe'. He grasped the edge of the blanket, and then abruptly let it go.

Newkirk squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.  He could do this.  He had to.  Admit that he was less a man than Kinch?  Admit he could not hold his nerve?  Not bloody likely.

Clutching it tightly in both hands, Newkirk raised the rough cloth, opened his eyes and forced himself not to look away or to gag when the image focused.

How could Kinch have cleansed those wounds?  How could he have even looked at them without retching?

He noticed a long stitched cut on the colonel's cheekbone.  Our Doktor Falke's work.  A trifle ragged, but I'd know her stitches on anyone.  I've seen them often enough on guys she's sewn up for us. After what he had overheard that Hochstetter had done to her, he could not blame her for their unevenness.

Marlena had said he would get well, if he was well cared for. They would ensure he was well cared for.  But she could not assess the state of the guv'nor's mind.  Just that of his body.  He might have been aware enough when she was with him but what about when she wasn't?

But if Hogan did say something in the staff car, Klink had not let on and Schultz had not let on. Those two were as sneaky as a pair of newborn babies. The guv'nor could not have babbled.

Newkirk lowered the blanket, covering Hogan's bandaged torso and casted arm.

He frowned at the memory of Hogan's return from the hospital. The colonel had sagged, first against Schultz when the guard assisted him from the car, and then against Kinch.  Kinch's grim mouth and eyes had shown Newkirk that he too was alarmed. This was not the Colonel Hogan they knew: the man with the confident bearing, the bright, merry eyes, and the cocksure grin.  Newkirk sensed it had taken all the radioman's self control to keep from scooping him up in his arms and carrying him through the mob of POWs.  That would never have done.  Morale would have 'gone for a Burton' beneath the tunnel floor.  Rumours always flashed about the camp, magnifying as rapidly as they spread.  If the colonel had stubbed his toe, the word would have been about in minutes that he was paralysed.

This was worse than a stubbed toe. What would the men make of what they had seen? What would they tell others?

And what if they were right? Newkirk wondered with dread.  What if the colonel was too helpless to lead them?

Newkirk felt the green imp's pitchfork stab him, recalling how Hogan had leaned so heavily upon Kinch; as if the man was the only support he had in the world, the only man worth trusting. Newkirk knew that Kinch was the man to whom Colonel Hogan entrusted the operation if he was captured or killed.

He had felt jealous of Kinch from the start.  Black Kinchloe was a good man, but why did the colonel always turn to him?  Why not to Corporal Peter Newkirk?  He was the most like Hogan: brash, suave, devilish with women, unscrupulous, a gambler, a flim-flam artist extraordinaire. Why didn't the colonel trust him like he trusted Kinch?

Sergeant James Ivan Kinchloe was not even the ranking NCO, yet Carter, LeBeau, and almost all the other men obeyed him without more than the token grumbling always given to an officer's orders.  Carter was his superior by a grade, yet Carter obeyed him wholeheartedly.  If anyone asked why, he'd shrug and say, "Kinch always knows the score."

Newkirk had to admit with a half scornful smile that Kinch was a trustworthy man.  His impulse to work for others and for the greater good (the only impulse Kinch ever allowed himself, he cynically groused) made him a man one could count on, particularly in a crisis, to do the right, best, thing, even if his idea of the 'right, best, thing' wasn't your idea. He was sensible.  Clear-sighted.  A good judge of a man or a plan.  A hard worker – too hard for Newkirk's liking.  He demanded as much of others as he gave himself.  He was surly at times; but who wasn't?  Doktor Falke had good reason to nickname him "Herr Kinchloewen." He seldom roared but he was indeed a lion – a large, powerful, cat, ever alert behind his even-tempered façade.

Newkirk admitted that, for all the bitterness he must feel at the limitations his country put on men of colour, for all he knew about the shadow sides of the streets and the injustice of authority, for all he may have done that was not strictly honest, Kinch was a good and trust-worthy man. Down deep, Newkirk admitted he respected that. That's why the colonel looked first to him, touched his arm or rested his hand on his shoulder, why he shared his smile, believed in him. No man he relied on more than on Kinch, and Kinch had repaid that trust with interest.

Newkirk wondered what Kinch got out of it – what his game really was.  No man could be so unselfish. He must be expecting some reward. Oh well. As long as he, Newkirk, did not lose, he hoped Kinch would win whatever he was playing for.

***

Newkirk looked up as the door clicked open and a small figure slipped through.  "What do you think you're doin' here?"

Corporal LeBeau put a finger to his lips.  "Shh! Do you wish to wake mon colonél?"  His face turned sad as he regarded the unconscious man lying on the bed.  The small Frenchman's lips silently moved.  In prayer, Newkirk thought with an inward sneer, or is he counting the bruises?

He felt suddenly contrite, and he didn't like the feeling. "Kinch will wake him for us if he finds you here," he grumbled.

LeBeau shrugged. "Kinch is out like a lamp."

"You mean, 'out like a light', you bloody frog, and that's just how he'll put me if I let you stay here."  Newkirk flung out his arms, exasperated. "Don't you get it?  If we're all awake now, none of us will be awake to take care of Colonel Hogan when he wakes up. Go back to bed."

LeBeau thrust out his chin. "Non. I cannot sleep because mon colonél is hurting, and I would rather sit awake beside mon colonél than lie awake in my bed. Besides, Kinch moved back to his bunk beneath me, and his raspy breathing keeps me from sleep.

Newkirk spared a chuckle:  Can't protect the colonel, so he protects the tunnel.  He shrugged and tried so sound uninterested.  "Fine.  Suit yourself, but you'll tell him it's not my fault you're here."

He leaned back against the upright of the colonel's bunk.  "Get a stool from the other room.  This one's taken."

LeBeau did not seem to hear him.  He was staring down at Colonel Hogan's bruised, cut face, his mouth working, his tears running down his cheeks. 

"Pierre," he whispered.  "Do you think that pig has finally broken le colonél?"

Heaving a heavy sigh, the English corporal rose, put his arm across his companion's shoulders, and sat him upon the vacated stool.  "Now, Louis.  You know he's made of sterner stuff than we are.  He did not break.  I know.  I was there in the tunnel right beneath, and I could hear everything."

"You were not in the tunnel all the time," LeBeau argued.

"No, but I was there for most of it."  Newkirk tried to sound heartening.  "He traded quips with old Wolfgang like one of those Yanks in the movies."  He curled his lips and gave his Bogart impression. "Dere's nuffin' you kin say dat'll make me talk, Wulfie, but if ya wanna waste yer time tryin', go right ahead."

Then back to his own voice. "You wouldn't know from hearing him that he was gettin' hurt."

"And if you believe that, mate, you're either a bigger mug than Carter or I'm the greatest mesmerist alive." 

Newkirk saw from LeBeau's anxious, grieving face that did not believe it, but the tiny smile and the whispered, "Oui.  Merci." was worth the lie.  He pulled out his pack of cards.  "Might as well have a game of gin while you're here.  You deal.  I'll get another stool."

Glancing down at his colonel's unconscious face, Newkirk's fists involuntarily clenched as all he had heard while hidden in the tunnel beneath the punishment cell came back to him. He hastily left the room.  He did not want the emotional LeBeau to see how wretched he felt and ask awkward questions. He wanted to pommel Hochstetter's mug until it gushed blood like a fountain from nose, mouth, ears, eyes, anyplace that let it out.

He leaned against Simms' bunkpost to calm his rapid breathing, then moved to the mess table.  As he bent to pick up his stool, he saw Kinch, lying asleep on his bunk. He straightened, walked over and gingerly sat on the edge, gazing down at him.  "Was it only yesterday that we crowded around you while you said those Scripture verses and gave those Reds a decent send off?  Was it only yesterday that I worried I'd next hear them said over you?"

He thought over Kinch's eulogy for the dead Russians whose bodies had been cremated the previous day:  "We didn't agree on many things, but that doesn't matter now.  We were allies against tyrants. We were brothers in a common struggle. They opposed men who treated them like animals. They fought valiantly for their country, their homes, for the people they loved, as we have done.  We honour their unconquered spirits."

For a few seconds, a gentler Peter Newkirk looked through the cynic's eyes.   'Brothers in a common struggle.'   He again heard the undercurrent of passion in Kinch's raspy, muted voice, caught himself saying 'Amen'.

He adjusted the blanket over the sleeping man.  "I didn't tell you everything I heard, chum.  How are you going to react when you see what the bastard did to your 'Doktor Fledermaus'?"  His eyes flicked to the colonel's door, and then back to Kinch.  "She'll come here to check up on him, sure as rain, and on you and Carter as well. What are we going to do then?"

He heard a rustle from the bunk next to him.  "Newkirk?  What are you doing out here?"  Carter flung back his blanket and put his legs out of his bunk.  "Something really wrong with the colonel?"

Newkirk hastily put a finger to his lips. "Not so loud, you twit!  D'ya want Kinch on our backs?  Nothing's wrong."

Undeterred, Carter rose and stood over him. "Then why are you here?"

 "I just wanted a breath of air, that's all," he replied with heavy sarcasm. "Go back to sleep."

"I wasn't sleeping.  I was just pretending to." Carter fumbled beneath his bunk for his shoes, slipped them on, then stumbled back to his friend.  He looked down, first at Kinch, and then at Newkirk.  "He's really out, isn't he?"

"You'd be too, you loon, if you had to undress and quiet down the guv'nor, and deal with your coughing and fever at the same time."  And your own fear since they took the colonel about what they were doing to him and what they might force him to say.   And worrying about what to do with a thousand trapped men if he does crack and the goons come. And keeping yourself and your mates from tearing out Hochstetter's guts.  And keeping up a brave, calm front when you're scared, because you know too damn well everyone's looking to you."

Newkirk touched the blanket over the sergeant's chest. "I couldn't do it, nor would I have tried. You've always been the responsible one.  I've never felt responsible to anyone but myself."  His eyes moved from Kinch's closed eyes, up to Carter's anxious face, and across to the closed door of Colonel Hogan's quarters. Not until now.

"He's exhausted."  Newkirk looked back at Carter. "He'll be cross, and so will Papa Bear, if they wake up and find you've not been sleeping."

"I promise I'll not get in the way.  Please.  Let me sit up with you." the young man bleated.

"No.  We'll need you alert tomorrow to help deal with things."

"What things?"

Kinch stirred.  Both men held their breaths, then expelled them when he sighed and relaxed into a deeper sleep.  Newkirk rose, grabbed Carter's sleeve and pulled him to the further side of the stove.

"That was close.  Now go to bed and don't wake up anyone."

Carter looked over at Kinch, fast asleep, and snickered.  "Isn't it just like the old days, when we used to play tricks on him, and try to pull off stunts without him knowing?"

Newkirk felt a twinge of guilt. "Well, it's not 'the old days' now.  Honestly, I don't know how anyone ever could put up with you."

Carter's grin faded.  "What things did you mean?"

Newkirk rolled his eyes in exasperation.  "Well, Doktor Falke, for one," he blurted out.

Carter looked bewildered. Newkirk rolled his eyes again, silently cursing. "Look, Andrew," he said carefully.  "Marlena's bound to come checking on you and Kinch and the Reds tomorrow.  She knows you've been sick.  She's probably found out what happened to the colonel..."

"She has found out. I saw her stitches on the colonel's cheek."

"Alright, then.  She has found out.  We know she'll be all flippin' anxious, and she usually tries to hide it by being prickly.  We know what the guv'nor's like when he's the least bit out of sorts.  She'll ignite him like one of your bombs, or he'll ignite her, if we don't diffuse things and we've got to be awake to do it. At least you do.  She'll heed you before she'll listen to the rest of us."

Carter still looked mulish. Newkirk rolled his eyes a third time. "Look, Andrew. Why'd you think I stopped Kinch from sitting up with the Colonel?"

Carter pondered it.  "Because you were anxious about him?"

"Because I was anxious about all of us!"  He swallowed his ire. He was about to say too much again.  Better prepare him now, instead of leaving it until morning.  "You've got to understand.  The colonel … may not be himself ... and Marlena, when she comes … may not be feeling so good either."  He wet his dry lips. "You like Marlena, don't you?"

Carter blinked, perplexed. "Of course I do.  She's my friend.  Yours too."

"Right, and she's also Kinch's friend. Now, what would you and I do, and what do you think he would do, if someone hurt her?"

Carter's eyes widened.  "Did someone hurt her?  Boy, I'd get really mad." He gaped, and then vigorously shook his head.  "You don't think Colonel Hogan did, do you?  He wouldn't do a mean thing like that.  I mean, he doesn't like what she says half the time, but he'd never hurt her."

Newkirk shushed him. "Calm down, will ya?  I didn't say he did.  I'm just saying that, …well when I was in the tunnel, listening in, I heard Hochstetter say that he got the medicine from her that he gave to the colonel.  She might have got hurt.  I'm just warning you. Now Kinch has had very little sleep and when a man's tired and ailing, he gets cranky."

"Kinch wouldn't lose his temper.  Not at Marlena."

Newkirk mentally threw up his hands.  The oaf doesn't catch on that she's been … abused.  Maybe it's just as well he's such an innocent.  It might make things easier for Marlena to bear if he doesn't understand what she went through.

"I just don't want problems between them, or between her and Colonel Hogan.  We've got more than enough already.  Marlena thinks a lot of you.  If you're rested, you'll be calm and sensible and you can quiet her down if she gets upset."

Carter looked at Newkirk, his faced creased.  "I can't sleep.  Honest.  I want to.  I've tried.  But I keep seeing the colonel's face when I shut my eyes.  Please, Newkirk.  Let me watch him with you.  Please."

Newkirk studied him. If he tossed and moaned, he would wake up every guy in the barracks. Probably the guv'nor as well. Kinch will get sore, and then blame himself for being sore.  That won't help.  And if he's not going to sleep anyway… "Alright.  Go inside with LeBeau while I get a couple stools.  And if either of you wake the colonel, so help me, I'll strangle you both."

* * * *

It had been a wearying, noisy vigil.  Newkirk did not know how Colonel Hogan could have slept through LeBeau, drunk, singing La Marseilles. Or through Carter's snoring. The young demolitions expert had crawled into the upper bunk and fell asleep after a half hour of staring at the colonel.  When LeBeau finally passed out, Newkirk wearily made his way into the common room. Removing his cap, he slumped down on the stool nearest the sleeping Sergeant Kinchloe and kept watch on the colonel's quarters through the open door.  It wasn't that he no longer wanted to stay beside Colonel Hogan, because he did.  It was that, even asleep, Kinch seemed to be the only sensible person among them, and he felt the need of his quiet strength.  Brothers in a common struggle.

 "What are we going to do?" he thought for the umpteenth time.  Hochstetter was not finished with the colonel.  He would come back, or he would have another go at Marlena and force their secret from her.  She was in no condition to escape him, and, with the colonel injured so badly, neither were they.

What if Hogan dies?  It was a possibility he did not wish to consider; but fractured ribs may mean there were also internal injuries. Newkirk was not too sure about anatomy, but what if a splintered bit of bone had pierced the colonel's heart, or lungs, or a major blood vessel.  "No, he would have either died quickly here, or Marlena and the surgeons would have spotted and fixed it.  Marlena thinks Doktor Kruger's a marvel. Hope she's right."

"But what if he dies?  How do we go on?"  Newkirk looked down at his sleeping colleague.  The little green imp stirred again; but he subdued it.  No doubt, Kinch was the right man. He was the man the guv'nor chose. But Kinch was not the senior man, and Kinch was a black man. Negroes were seen as inferiors, even by the Allied whites. Kinch's obvious abilities put those assumptions to shame; but few who saw Kinch as a man accepted him as their equal. His authority came from Colonel Hogan. Lose the colonel, and Kinch would lose his power and position.

What would happen to him then?  Kinch was not an officer.  Since Colonel Hogan had singled him out to be his adjutant, the other ranks did not count him as one of themselves. He would not be allowed to return to obscurity without a beating to 'put him in his place'. What would happen to the operation if he took charge, and what would happen to anyone who supported him?  It would be dangerous to remain his friend.

* * *

Kinch stood at Fraulein Hilda's desk, the telephone receiver clutched tight in his hand. He tried to appear unruffled, but he felt his heart jerk and race. He could not understand why his Doktor Fledermaus had apparently abandoned them. She knew about Colonel Hogan's injuries, his own pneumonia, the Russians, Carter.  Burkhalter had broken Hochstetter's 'ring of steel'.  She could come to them.  She certainly would have come to treat her 'Brother Andrew'. Why didn't she?

He heard the tremor in her voice when she spoke his name.  "I am sorry, Sergeant Kinchloe; but I am much too busy.  You have the medications.  You have the skill. A-all will be well.  Just…" Then it came out in an almost breathless rush, as if she could not trust herself to hold it in, or to say more than she did. "Please, Sergeant Kinchloe. Take care of yourself and Sergeant Carter.  Take good care of yourself and all of them." He heard her unspoken 'dear mein Herr' in the throb of her voice.  She sounded almost hysterical. Why?

"Doktor, what should I know?  What should I do?"  He spoke calmly, quietly, respectfully, suppressing his urge to cough, while he silently begged her to understand the deeper meaning of his words. He could not say aloud, in front of Hilda and within earshot of Klink and his guards beyond the outer and inner office doors, what he wanted to say.  "Tell me why you won't come.  Tell me what has frightened you.  I need to know.  Don't hold it back."  He knew she could not tell him over the telephone.  Since Hochstetter stepped up his persecution of Hogan, they had to be more circumspect than ever.  But he had to know why she would not come.  She had to come.  He needed her.

His world had become unstable. He was still weak and ill, too ill to nurse Colonel Hogan. He was afraid the colonel's life would slip through his fingers because he could not think clearly. Newkirk, LeBeau and Carter were fine men, but not the most astute.  He trusted them with his own life, but he could not trust them with the colonel's. That life was too precious to lose. So many and so much depended on him.  Marlena was a physician.  Marlena would know what to look for, and what to do.  She could get what was needed.  Perhaps she could even recommend through the Red Cross that Colonel Hogan be repatriated. Even if she could do nothing for the colonel, her presence here would mean something. She would take care of Carter and the other sick men. He could relax in her company, feel that he too would get well.  He needed to get well.  The colonel needed him.  The men needed him.  He had to regain strength. But the burden was so heavy. He was so tired.

He drew in his breath. "Doktor, will the colonel completely recover?"

He sensed Hilda stiffen, fingers poised upon her typewriter keys. He waited with bated breath for the answer.

"With care and time, ja.  He will recover."

"And when will that be, Doktor Fledermaus? Six months?  A year? We have an operation to run.  Hochstetter's on our tails.  We don't have that time."  Kinch demanded silently, fighting for self-control.

He repeated her words to Hilda, and then spoke into the telephone receiver – his quiet, composed self.  "Then tell me how to care for him."

Picking up a pencil and drawing Hilda's steno pad closer, he began to jot down her instructions. Marlena's careful, precise voice showed that she was growing calmer – the clinical, emotion checked Fraulein Doktor Falke was taking over.  He felt his own aching heart ease and his spirit grow calm as he wrote.  Planning and carrying out assignments had always soothed his frustration, and he was more frustrated than he had ever felt.

What was Marlena holding back from him?  Kinch knew Colonel Hogan knew what it was, but he forbade him from finding it out and angrily refused to discuss it.  Of course Doktor Falke was too busy.  Was Kinch so deaf he could not hear the almost constant thrumb of the bombers passing over their heads?  The more experienced surgeons had been called away to deal with the casualties in Dusseldorf and elsewhere. That meant she, old Doktor Kruger and Kruger's young assistant surgeon Doktor Eckhart had to tend to everyone in Hammelburg.  She was overworked, like she said, and now that the epidemic had run its course; they were not to bother her.  In fact, with Hochstetter prowling around like a mad dog, Hogan did not want any POW to even speak her name.

This was not the usual pique after one of their many arguments. Colonel Hogan obviously feared for Marlena Falke's safety. He must have put the fear of Hochstetter into her to make her stay away, and she must be scared witless or she would be here for Carter's sake. Kinch vowed that, the moment Hogan's condition improved enough for him to leave him to the others, direct command to the contrary, he would storm her surgery and shake her fears and an explanation out of her.

He straightened up, and with a "Right, Doktor. Will do" handed the receiver to Corporal Simms. He had not been surprised that Marlena had summoned his taciturn friend.  Her first instruction to him was undoubtedly "keep Sergeant Kinchloe within the barracks".  Translated: "keep Herr Kinchloewen out of the tunnel until his cough and fever have left him".  

Kinch's lips tautened in a grim smile. The colonel could pull rank, and his bro' Marcus would disregard rank where his welfare was concerned; but if they and Marli thought they could keep him from the radio, they'd better think again. Simms and Newkirk had drugged him senseless once on Colonel Hogan's orders, but he wasn't going to fall for their tricks a second time.

The sergeant's grim smile relaxed as he recalled the pains Colonel Hogan had taken to gift him with that Christmas fruitcake. The ingredients must have cost a mint, and to convince London to send it! Kinch felt touched and humbled. Most officers, white or coloured, would not have bothered staging a celebration to ease an enlisted man's pain at missing his beloved sister's wedding. Colonel Hogan had bothered. The colonel could be unexpectedly thoughtful at times.

Blinking away the sudden tears stinging his eyes, he saw Hilda glance quickly away from him.  He managed a more reassuring smile; but she kept her eyes fixed on her typewriter.  "So she really has feelings for the colonel."  Kinch sighed. Another complication.  He had thought Hilda was merely enjoying the forbidden thrill of flirting with an enemy officer.  He knew Colonel Hogan was wooing her, like he had wooed Helga, Klink's previous secretary, merely to obtain information and co-operation.  It appeared his charm had again worked all too well.  Remembering Helga, Kinch hoped the more worldly-wise Hilda had kept the colonel from going the full distance.  Marlena would be angry if she was confronted with another demand to abort an unwanted child, and he had no strength to deal with an angry Doktor Fledermaus. She would indeed be 'a bat out of hell.'

* * *

Kinch sensed it again when he and Simms left the administration building: the broken conversations, the heavy silence as every man's eyes seemed to fix on him.  Since the day Colonel Hogan had singled him out and made him his adjutant, he had felt neither fish nor fowl, but never had the feeling been more oppressive.  He took a centering breath, straightened to his full six foot two inches, fixed his most impassive expression upon his face and crossed to the prisoners' side of the compound.

He had thought that assisting the colonel to dress would be his worst ordeal of the day. Even at his best, Colonel Hogan lived up to his code-name of Papa Bear when roused from sleep. He was at his surliest that morning. Just because Hochstetter's thugs had beaten him, he groused to Kinch, did he have to wake up to a snoring duet between Carter and LeBeau? What right had Newkirk to let those two into his office? What right had Newkirk to be there?  Couldn't someone make a decent pot of coffee?  Would Kinch stop tucking him into bed or dressing him up?  He was their commanding officer, not his radioman's doll.

Hogan had brusquely pulled away from his supporting arm just before he opened his door.  He had held him back with a searing glare, then crossed the room to the outer door.  He was intent on making it outside on his own, as if his ribs were not fractured.  As if nothing was wrong with him but a broken wrist.  He could not hide the cast.  The sleeve of his bomber jacket would not fit around it, but he had insisted on wearing the leather jacket instead of the longer and roomier woollen coat. It was more familiar to the men, he said.  He had to project an aura of control, in order to remain in control.  Kinch, three paces behind him, calmed his anxious conscience by telling himself that wearing the familiar bomber jacket helped the colonel feel in control, and that would help heal his lacerated spirit all the faster.

The fifteen men in the common room had literally frozen in the acts of getting ready for roll call and breakfast.  They stared appalled at the colonel's face, watched him with indrawn breaths as he twisted his lips into a smile and lurched past them on his way outside.

But when the men had then turned to him, it was all Kinch could do to keep calm. He had seen their anxious expressions on Carter's face when the young man had stared down at Colonel Hogan's body the night before and then stared up at him. This was Carter multiplied fifteen times.  The men were looking to him for reassurance and guidance. How could he convince his friends Colonel Hogan would recover if he could not convince himself?  How could he reassure when he needed reassurance?

Roll call was Carter's face multiplied a thousand times.

Hogan had greeted Kommandant Klink with his usual cheeky remarks. He had sauntered at the Kommandant's side while the German inspected the prisoners and took the report of barracks guard after barracks guard.  Everything appeared 'as usual'; just the way the colonel wanted it.

Trailing in Hogan's wake with his three cohorts and the rest of their barracks, Kinch saw Carter's anxiety staring out of almost every POW's face.  Hogan's display of nonchalance had managed to raise their spirits. No doubt about it, the colonel was a marvellous actor, a master confidence man, but he could sustain the illusion only so long.

Kinch had caught Newkirk's sidelong glance.  Newkirk had not only seen the cuts and bruises, he had heard all that Hochstetter had said and had had done to their commander.  Newkirk averted his eyes.  Kinch knew then that Newkirk had heard more than what he had told him. He managed to push the sour thought aside – he had neither the time nor the strength to indulge it – but it hovered at the edge of his conscious mind.  What had Newkirk heard that he would not tell him?  Why had he looked at him so speculatively?

Now, as he and Simms passed a group of men, he heard one sneer. "We won't have black apes lording it over us when Hogan's dead."  He immediately clamped his hand on his friend's shoulder and muttered, "Don't rise to it."

They walked, seemingly oblivious of the stares, until they were out of sight.

"Well?" Simms demanded when Kinch released his grip.

Kinch audibly sighed.  "Relax, Marcus. It's just a few malcontents."

Simms gaped. "Kinch, bro. Listen up. You can't avoid this.  If Hogan dies, what happens to you?"  He took his companion by the upper arms and gave him a slight shake.  "Have you forgotten what you are?"

"No.  I haven't forgotten." Kinch said evenly.

"I hope not.  Sometimes I've wondered if you see yourself when you look in the mirror.  You're black, bro; but you're a white officer's right hand man. You're a contradiction to everything we've known back home."

"So are you," Kinch rebutted. "You're Air Corps – you were trained to fight.  I was never supposed to be in combat.  They needed a radioman for one mission and I was the only one around."

Simms hugged his arms to his chest. The air between them felt very cold. "You're the man Hogan chose.  He called you out of everyone in camp and gave you his authority. Maybe Carter's the only white who's never resented it."  He paused.  "You have his trust, so some of our folk distrust you. You're set apart from all of us, Bro. If Hogan can't function, where are you? Protect yourself."

"If there's a power struggle, I'll have other things on my mind than my health."

Simms grimaced. "The 'store'."

Kinch gave him a wry smile. "It has to come first."

Simms pondered it, then nodded.  "I'll back you."

"Thanks, old buddy." Kinch bit his lip. "Marcus, I know it's been hard for you to stand by me …"

Simms waved away the thanks.  "You're my bro, Sergeant.  It's been harder for you.  I don't know how you've stood it so long."

Kinch sighed, and looked away.  The words came out with some bitterness. "I'm not a 'House Negro'."

"I know.  You bear it calmly; but you're not resigned." Simms shrugged. "Most of us say 'yasssuh', or keep out of sight. We let the whites have their way so they don't trouble us.  Hogan asked us what we wanted. You chose to tell him. You were deferential, but I know it was sergeant to colonel, not lackey to master."

Simms looked down at his feet. "There's something in you, something about you I can't put words to. A sort of dignity. I've never thought you sold yourself to him."

"The colonel's quite a man," Kinch said simply. "I've not regretted serving him."

"So long as you're happy, Bro.  So long as they don't conquer you."  Simms' lips twisted in affectionate scorn. "Maybe you've conquered them."

Kinch mimicked Newkirk's accent. "Not bloody likely."  Then he sighed.  "I'm so tired of this. Why can't we live together as equals?"

"Too much blood spilt between us.  If they admit we're equal to them, they admit they had no right to make us slaves, or keep us down.  If we open up to them, it's as if we don't care that they humbled us."  Simms leaned against the wall and studied his hands.  "I like them:  Carter, Olsen, Newkirk, LeBeau. Colonel's got my support.  Not their fault things are as they are."

He looked up, across the compound. "Colonel's an amazing magician. Had us living in a dream, that maybe we could live together as equals. I think we're about to wake up."

Turning, the black airman saw his thoughts mirrored on James Ivan Kinchloe's face.  He had guarded the door while the sergeant listened in on Hogan's and Klink's conversation via the coffee-pot, not overly surprised that Kinch had disobeyed Hogan's standing order not to eavesdrop on him. 'Right to know' or not, there were times when the colonel's men should know the colonel's mind.  If Hogan clearly could not cope, but pretended he could, he had to be 'retired'. Would Kinch stop him?  Or would he too pretend Hogan was capable, so he could keep his authority?

 He watched Kinch narrowly.  He knew his friend's loyalty to Colonel Hogan was almost absolute.  The colonel parked his race outside the barracks door and expected his men to do the same; but sometimes Kinch forgot to pick his up again. Kinch had become colorblind since he became Hogan's adjutant.  In a world full of black shirted and white hooded bigots, Simms thought that was a dangerously foolish attitude. He loved his blood brother, and wanted to keep him safe until he finally remembered he was black and Hogan and the other men were white.

Simms sucked in his breath, feeling a chill he could not blame on the cold air around them.

Colonel Hogan has not lost his will to live. He had proved that during roll call, he reminded himself.  We can foster it, with time and lots of care. All would be well then – at least until Hochstetter's next visit.

Kinch was thinking the same things. "Alright, Marcus. I'll admit the colonel got quite a going over, but I'm not letting on to the guys – not even to the Colonel – how bad off I think he is.  He can't lose face or we'll all lose faith. Then we're done for."

"You can't baby sit him forever.  If he can't function, can you count on the others to back you?"

Kinch looked taken aback. "What do you want me to do? Lead a revolt?  Keep the colonel in chains?"

"Of course not, but don't tell me you haven't thought up a contingency plan. We want to hear it."

"We?" Kinch tried to keep his tone light, but he was growing incensed.

"It's not a rebellion, Bro. Yeah.  All the barracks but Carter, and even he's worried that the colonel's lost his super powers.  They asked me to put it to you, if Doktor Falke sounded the least bit doubtful."

Kinch's voice sounded strained.  "She must have told you something she didn't tell me."

"Just that I was to do everything but kill you to keep you upstairs and make you well."

Kinch opened out his hands. "What do you think I can do?  I'm only a staff sergeant.  The guard dogs have more say about the colonel's movements than I do."

Marcus Simms still pressed the issue. "Goldilocks will want to know.  If he can't function, they'll want him out. We could take him home.  He could get a good long rest. So could you."

Kinch folded his arms over his chest, looked his friend over with narrowed eyes. 

"Kinch…"

"He's our C.O., Marcus. We can't gainsay him.  Sure. If he deteriorates, or if he's not safe here, I'll radio Goldilocks.  They can order him home. We can't. I'm not risking court martial and execution for any of us by trying to subdue him."

"No. Just risking our lives," Simms groused.

Kinch laid his hand on Simms' arm.  "Mine as well as yours."

Simms raised his eyes and let out a great sigh. "I don't know who's the greater fool."

***

"Well, I just don't understand it, that's all. It's been three days!  You'd think Marlena would come, at least to check on the Colonel."

Newkirk gave Carter a searing look.  "Did you ever think Marlena might be ill?"

Carter sank back on his bunk, deflated.  "Oh.  I never thought of that.  You know, I've never considered a doctor being sick – a doctor knowing how to treat sick people and all, you'd think they'd never get sick.  But then, doctors are human too," he mused. "At least, Marlena is.  Sometimes, now that I know her so well, I forget she's a real doctor."

"Of course she's a real doctor!  Do you think she pretends to be one, just so she can see your ugly mug every two weeks?"

"No," Carter said slowly, his mind still pondering how a physician could get sick.  "It's just that Schultz said he told her that I've been sick and that Kinch had pneumonia and she knows Col. Hogan's really hurt because she helped operate on him and she's always come before and…"

 "And. And. And." Newkirk wanted to throw something at him. "Andrew, can't you keep your 'ands' to yourself?  You'd irritate an angel, you would."

"But do you think she's mad at us?" Carter persisted, his guileless face creased with worry. "Maybe she and Kinch had a fight.  Kinch is still sick and you know sick people are cross as bears.  Especially the strong ones like Kinch.  And Kinch has been coughing and weak and …"

Newkirk pounded the table.  "There you go with your 'ands' again!"

Carter shrank back.  "Sorry."  He felt miserable.  He thought now that they finally had the colonel back safe, if a little banged up, that everything was all right.  But it wasn't. What was wrong with everyone? Biting and snapping and moping about.  It's worse than ever and no one tells me anything.  They just pretend that everything's all right but I know it's not.  They keep treating me like I was a little kid.

He glanced at Newkirk's scowling face and subsided even further back in his bunk.  He felt smaller than a mouse and about as welcome in the barracks.  He could not seem to say or do anything right.

Of course, Kinch was still quite sick. Pneumonia sure took the stuffing out of a man.  And Colonel Hogan, injured and cranky, was a taxing responsibility too, especially when you have to nurse them and you're not feeling well.  Sick people can get grouchy, but it wasn't like Kinch to lose his temper at him just for asking an innocent question about how soon he thought the colonel would be well.  Neglecting to set a timer or losing a compass – of course Kinch had a right to be sore at those.  That was important.  That was the operation.  Everyone was keyed up during missions, and if Colonel Hogan said it once, he said it a dozen times; a slip up could cost everything, even their lives.  The colonel himself could really get upset when one of his schemes went kablooie because someone slipped up.  Of course, to be fair, he would get mad just as much at himself as at them when things didn't work out the way he planned.

He knew he somehow kept making the colonel angry. Whenever he asked what he was doing wrong, so that he could stop doing it, the guys either kept telling him to shut up, or kept telling him he wasn't to blame.  He couldn't understand why the colonel didn't want him around, but if the colonel didn't, then he didn't.  But the colonel didn't want Kinch and LeBeau and Newkirk around either. That really puzzled him. Kinch was always at his elbow, the colonel complained. Of course, Colonel Hogan had to have Kinch nearby, to give orders to.  Kinch was his adjutant, after all.  He was in charge of running things until the colonel was fully fit again. Besides, Kinch said it was an adjutant's job to look after his officer's health and safety and Kinch always took his job seriously. LeBeau wasn't happy unless he was doing things for Colonel Hogan, and he could be more stubborn than a mule where the colonel's health was concerned.  But Colonel Hogan got even more irritable when LeBeau fussed because he didn't have the heart to push the little guy away.  So he would get even more irritable at Kinch because Kinch was bigger and because Kinch was available to get irritated at, and he would get irritated at Newkirk too because he'd be angry at himself for getting mad at Kinch when Kinch was sick and it wasn't Kinch's fault and because Newkirk was also there and…

And…And…And… there we go again! Carter sighed.  It's strange that Marlena's not come to check on us.  You'd think she'd be anxious.  She hasn't seen us and we haven't seen her since Kinch got sick and Hochstetter sealed off the camp.  Carter stole a glance at Kinch. The man was seated at the table, hunched forward, staring at his cold coffee with the most worried, helpless, exhausted expression Carter had ever seen on anyone's face.

Maybe he's' worried about more than just the colonel. Kinch never loses his cool when it comes to being brave but sometimes he does when I've done something really dumb, and maybe Marli shot off her mouth once too often about the colonel or about Americans or the military.  She's not exactly tactful.  She might have said something and he might have said something and well, Marli can take things hard at times, especially when she's stressed. All the casualties from the air raids must be frazzling her. But they don't quarrel much and Marlena respects Kinch more than she respects anyone else.  Besides, Marlena has never let arguments keep her from being our doctor.  She always comes.  Still, with the colonel being wounded, she might be too upset or Kinch might be too upset.  Maybe she wants to make things right but she feels too ashamed to face him.

But Schultz has been acting strange about Marlena too.  He keeps heaving big sighs and changes the subject whenever I ask if she's shown up in camp.

Klink's been acting strange too, come to think of it.  He knows the colonel's bad off and he's got a camp full of sick prisoners and no doctor – not even a medic among us since he transferred Wilson to Stalag XVI.

Carter snickered as he thought of their grumpy medical corpsman in Colonel Crittendon's POW camp.  He must be driving Wilson nuts.

Newkirk shot him a searing look over his cards.  Carter cast down his eyes, but he could not help smiling at what Wilson must be going through. It sure felt good to laugh again.  Newkirk should try it.  He looks like he ate a pickle.  But he mustn't laugh.  Not with the colonel acting so strange and Kinch at his wits end what to do and sick to boot.  They sure must've worked Colonel Hogan over some for Kinch to look that worried.  It's not like he hasn't seen bruises before, or felt them, or given them.  So, the Colonel must really be in a bad way.  But it doesn't seem right that Marlena's not here.  Maybe I ought to ask Colonel Hogan's permission to go see her myself and get her side of things.

But, to Carter's surprise, Hogan adamantly vetoed the request.  "If Doktor Falke doesn't come, leave her alone." Carter began to protest, but Hogan cut him off and made it an order.  No one was to visit the Fraulein Doktor until she visited camp first.

Carter felt even more hurt and bewildered.  He was just trying to make things right.  But Colonel Hogan was acting awfully strange.  Officers as officers were strange.  He could never figure out what they were talking about or what they wanted. He never could figure out Colonel Hogan because he was so smart, but that was ok since none of the other guys could figure him out either.  Kinch knew a bit, Newkirk knew a bit, and LeBeau knew a bit.  Put together, they could sum up Colonel Hogan pretty well and explain to him, Carter, what he, Colonel Hogan, wanted.  Usually.  But now it seemed everyone was at fault.  LeBeau was really upset. Even Newkirk was feeling the pressure.  Kinch looked drained out and his cough was getting no better.  Of course, it didn't help that he was barred from the tunnel and that there was not enough fresh fruits and vegetables, or even canned, for him to eat.

Carter tried not to fret about Colonel Hogan. He looked so white where the bruises didn't show.  That Kinch still had to help him dress disturbed Carter more than anything else.  Usually all Kinch had to do as his adjutant was mind the operation and serve as the Colonel's liaison with the men. The "health" part of the C.O.'s health and safety had never entered into things before. Carter did not like admitting it to himself but he was getting worried that Colonel Hogan was no longer himself. He was irritable and jumpy one moment, and so quiet the next. He doesn't plan our next mission or talk about sabotage, and Baker says London's getting edgy. Although how anyone can get edgier than the colonel seems incredible.  Carter frowned. If he was not the man he had been, what were they going to do?

***

Hogan heard the snicker. He scowled across the small room at his radioman, who was biting down hard on his lower lip while pretending to read a repair manual.  Where's Kinch's mind these days? He should be reading that in the tunnel, not up here, where the Krauts could confiscate it.

He looked harder at the man, ignoring Sascha Pasternak's howl at his latest blunder into the Russian language.  Even after four days and repeated doses of penicillin and sulphonamides, his adjutant still looked gaunt and half asleep, weary with the effort to keep watch over him.  The antibiotic had worked wonders. Kinch would have probably been dead by now without it.  Pasternak too, and the remaining Russians in his barracks, would have died of the pneumonia they had brought into Stalag Luft XIII.  The Russian sergeant was improving rapidly, but his American counterpart was not getting any better.

Hogan felt guilty, knowing he was the cause of it.  Rather, he wasn't.  Hochstetter was.  Damn the black toad.

He had lain awake for the last four nights; eyes closed so as not to disturb Kinch or whoever Kinch had permitted to keep vigil over him.  He could not sleep, much as he longed for sleep.  The memories returned every time he closed his eyes, and with every stab of pain. The jackboots kicking him in kidneys, groin, chest, head.  The gloved fingers crushing his throat, bashing his head against the roughly plastered wall of the punishment cell.  The little cuts with the dagger, pinpricks to what would follow.

And, when he slept, he underwent the recurring nightmare of seeing Hochstetter's apes throw Kinch's body into the fire, of seeing the flames consume him like they consumed the bodies of the dead Russians.  Sometimes in the dream, Kinch was alive, either bound or too weak to move.  Sometimes, in the dream, he would cry out to him. Then he'd wake and see him dozing against the support of the bunk. It was all he could do to keep from calling his name, or from touching him to assure himself he was awake and Kinch was alive. Sometimes the Kinch in his dream would not cry out, and that was worse because then he would go on dreaming.  He would see Hochstetter leering, sneering.  He would see him come toward him, flanked by his goons and holding out his hands, dripping with Kinch's blood.  Or Carter's.  Or Newkirk's.  Or LeBeau's.

"See what I've done to your damned ape, Hogan.  To your fool. Your thief.  Your frog.  They died because of you, Hogan.  They died because of you.  I broke them, Hogan.  I broke them into pieces, and every piece screamed your name."

But even that was nothing to what Hochstetter had actually told him.  Hochstetter was capable of all evil, but Hogan had not even dreamt the repulsive toad would rape Doktor Falke to force her to give up her cache of penicillin. Not only rape her, but gloat about it to him. When he agreed to trade secrets for the antibiotics, he had thought Hochstetter would get them from his black market connections or from a co-operative physician. It was an open secret that the local doctors were stockpiling drugs to use when the Allies dropped bombs on Hammelburg.  He thought Hochstetter was lying about what he had done to Marlena, but the details had unnerved him.  What had Marlena said to make him stop? What if he knew all about her and her connection to us?

When he awoke in the recovery room and saw what she could not hide of her face, he knew it was true.  Those frightened, distressed, slightly clouded blue eyes.  The slur in her speech that confirmed to him she was sedated. Not overly so, since she had watched over him, and had apparently assisted the surgeons in putting him together.

Poor Marlena. He had never given her due credit for either her fortitude or her medical skills.

About time the 'great Papa Bear' realized he can't perform every trick in the book.  Marlena couldn't fire a shot, but she could make sick men well. About time he realized how much he owed his pacifist pain in the butt who cared for them at the risk of her life.

Glancing at Kinch's worried face, he longed to tell him why Marlena refused to attend them. If he knew, he would comfort her. She needed his comfort as much as he needed her care, and, if Kinch comforted her, he would not be constantly hovering at his elbow. He would also keep Carter from pestering him for permission to visit her and find out what the problem was.

Marlena did not want them to see her, at least not until the bruises faded.  She had not wanted him to see her.  She did not know he knew the reason why. She wanted to get over it herself, if she could.  Hogan did not think she could. Not alone.  She shouldn't be alone.  He wanted to tell Kinch to fetch her into the tunnel and radio London for a plane or sub to take her home.  The Americans had crossed Germany's western border. The Russians were advancing through Poland.  The war was almost over. A few months in an English prison was better for their Doktor Pacifist than Hochstetter's 'attentions' and a shallow unmarked grave.

She should go home, and his men should go with her. Now. While he still could hold out.

He shut his eyes and bit the inside of his cheek. He did not think he could get over what Hochstetter had done to him. Every snore Olsen snored every night. Every scrape of the coffeepot against the metal of their wood burning stove.  Every fork Carter fumbled and dropped.  Even the fluttering noise the cards made as Newkirk shuffled them shot panic through him.

Hochstetter was not through torturing him.  He would never be through torturing him.

Hogan shifted, seeking a less uncomfortable position. Pain lanced from his broken ribs.  He stifled the groan that would have alerted Kinch.  He did not want, or need, the man's fussing.  What he desperately wanted was for Kinch to get well quickly, close down the operation and get everyone out.  The men.  Marlena.  Everyone.

He felt those inquiring, anxious dark eyes upon him and tried to concentrate on Sascha's lecture upon the merits of Stalin and Roosevelt.  He conjured up what he thought was a look of absorbed interest, but Kinch had frowned. 

Kinch always knew when he was bluffing.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to distract him from ushering Pasternak out and asking what could he do for him.  The door banged open and Carter, wild eyed, burst into the room.

"Colonel!  Trouble!  Big trouble!"

Kinch, on his feet, barked out a reprimand. Stammering an apology, the dishevelled young man poked his finger into the air behind him.

Hogan, struggling out of his bunk, heard the Russian's muttered curse and Kinch's gasped 'No!" before he saw the three SS guards, like gleaming black beetles, push into his quarters past Newkirk, Olsen and Simms.  One goon shoved Carter against the table. The second shoved Pasternak away while the third trained his gun on Kinch.  Hochstetter entered the room, Kommandant Klink following like a dog at the heel of its master.

***

Oh, that Major Hochstetter is slimy, Carter thought, the way he talked to the Colonel with that sneering voice, inviting him to be his guest for dinner.  Carter watched his two friends, Newkirk and LeBeau, wriggle their way into the room and try to wriggle in on serving the dinner, so they could be available to protect the colonel. 

He opened his mouth to join in, but immediately found Sascha's hand clamped over it. "Nyet, tovaritch!" The Russian hissed in his ear.  He jerked his head slightly to the left.  Two of the three SS now had their guns pointed at Kinch, blocking his path to Hogan's side. Only one covered them.  Apparently, Hochstetter thought the black sergeant was the greater threat, or the surer hostage for Hogan's co-operation.  Kinch stood stock still, his fists loosely clenched, the realization of his impotence on his face.

Carter carefully moved his eyes to the right. He could see the guns, boots and elbows of two other SS on either side of the door.  Though it, he glimpsed Schultz holding back Simms and Olsen with his pudgy hands.  He squeezed his eyes shut, praying that Schultz would not see the knife clutched in the black corporal's hand.  He prayed even harder that Simms would not use it.

"You can open your eyes now, Andrew.  They've taken him."  Kinch's voice, bitter, resigned, cut through the sudden silence.

Pasternak dropped his hand, muttering something in Russian that sounded regretful.  LeBeau began to whimper.  Newkirk put an arm around him and guided him through the doorway.

Carter gaped at Kinch.  "What should we do?"

His friend turned his eyes away. "What can we do?" he muttered.

"Something!  Hochstetter's going to kill him!"

Kinch pulled the door closed, but not before Carter saw him exchange a look with Newkirk. He sank upon Colonel Hogan's bunk and bowed his head in his hands.

Sascha Pasternak laid a warm hand on Carter's shoulder.

"You are a devoted young man; but Comrade Kinchloe is wiser. There is nothing you can do but bow to fate." He looked around nervously. "There are many like Hochstetter in Russia. They are like your writer Conan Doyle described his Dog of the Baskerville. 'A Hell-dog'."

Carter hung his head, too disheartened to correct his quotation.  Kinch looked at him, guilt stricken, then at the floor.

Olsen knocked, and then put his head through the doorway.  "They've lifted the guard around the barracks, Kinch.  All the Gestapo goons are around the guest house now."

Kinch muttered, "Thanks" but he did not look up.  Sascha looked at him and sighed.  "Comrade Carter, I think Comrade Kinchloe wishes you to escort me back to Moscow-on-the-Rhine."

Carter looked nervously for Kinch's nod.  It was slow in coming.

Pasternak stood before Kinch. He studied him; then he gently touched his shoulder. His lips curved in a slight smile.  "My regards to Comrade Newkirk."  He brought his hand up solemnly in a salute.  "Comrade Sergeant Kinchloe."

Kinch blinked up at him, then slowly returned the salute.  "Comrade Sergeant Pasternak."

Pasternak ushered Carter out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.  He took Carter by the shoulder and steered him toward the barracks he referred to with heavy humour as 'Moscow on the Rhine'.  He did not speak until they were there, but Carter tensed, sensing his companion intended to say something he did not want to hear.

"Andrei – that is your first name in Russian, is it not?"

Carter wet his lips, apprehensive. "Is it?"

"Da."  He motioned to the bench outside the door.  "Sit down, Andrei."  It was said genially, but it was an order.  Carter sat.

Pasternak lowered himself beside him.  "You have great devotion for the Comrade Colonel. Da?"

Carter blushed at the word 'devotion', but agreed enthusiastically, "I respect him a lot.  He's a great man."

Pasternak slowly smiled. He nodded once. "Comrade Kinchloe and Comrade Newkirk have great affection for you. So does the French comrade, LeBeau.  Are you as devoted to them as you are to the Comrade Colonel?"

Carter looked a little uneasy.  That sounded a little like a threat.  He remembered Colonel Hogan saying that they were not supposed to be too friendly to Russians, even though they were allies, because Russians were usually spies.  They were not to know about the operation. "Yes sir, er, Sergeant.  I mean Comrade."

Pasternak slapped his knee.  "Andrei.  Be easy.  Comrade Kinchloe would not let me bring you here if he thought I would hurt you.  I do not even ask how Comrade Newkirk could disappear from a closely guarded barracks."  He flicked his finger at Carter's rank badge.  "You have one stripe more than Sergeant Kinchloe upon your sleeve. That means you are his superior, da?"

Carter shrugged, self conscious. "That's just the Army.  They don't know how good Kinch is. I'm not really his superior.  I just outrank him."  He looked at Pasternak's arm.  "Do you outrank me?"

The Russian's smile grew gentle.  "Andrei, most sergeants I have met – most who are not Russian – would say, "I outrank you" whether they outrank me or not. If you are Comrade Kinchloe's equal, then I am yours."

"I don't think I'm that. Not here," Carter replied, tapping his head.  He was still nervous about where this conversation was leading him.

"Da.  I understand.  I ask because I want to know who the man of power will be, now that Comrade Colonel is …" He waved his hand as Carter spluttered a protest.  "I am clumsy.  Please, forgive me, Comrade Carter, but I must speak frankly.  In Soviet Union, when a man like the Gestapo major – a man in the Chekka – provides an armed escort for his dinner guest, the friends of the guest do not expect his return." He paused significantly. "Nor do they ask to see him.  Not if they wish to avoid such an invitation sent to themselves."

"It's not like that with us and Colonel Hogan!" Carter's eyes narrowed. "If you think that's what Kinch meant, then you're wrong!  There's no one Colonel Hogan trusts more than he trusts Kinch, and no one Kinch would rather work for.  I bet he's thinking up a plan right now to save him."

The barracks door opened and several heads poked out. One man, a burly corporal, stepped outside.  Pasternak motioned him back inside with a few stern words.  Then he turned back to the indignant American.  "Comrade Carter.  Compose your emotion.  I saw ample proof that Comrade Kinchloe is devoted to the Comrade Colonel; but I think the comrade sergeant is too wise to think of rescuing him. Because he is devoted, he wanted solitude to compose his heart.  That is why he let you escort me back to Moscow on the Rhine.  It is why I closed the door upon him and why Comrade Corporal Simms will see he is not disturbed.  Perhaps the comrade sergeant is thinking about rescue," Pasternak's voice went gentler, "but Comrade Carter, I think his act of devotion will be to keep you safe from harm."

"You mean," Carter swallowed.  His eyes went large. "You mean Kinch won't save him?"

"I cannot see into Comrade Kinchloe's mind, Andrei," Pasternak said gently.  "What you Americans call fatalism is what a Russian calls sense.  I am sensible. If I were devoted to Comrade Colonel, and could not save him, I would not try.  Instead, I would try to save Comrade Colonel's friends if I could."

Carter sprang to his feet.  "Kinch will save him!  I know he will!"

Pasternak searched his face, then sighed.  "If he does not abandon him, then he is a sentimental fool."

"He won't."  Carter's assertion sounded weak, even to him.  "I know he would never do such a thing."

Sascha Pasternak looked out, across the compound, to a charred spot in the snow.  "I have heard that Comrade Kinchloe spoke words from the Bible for my dead comrades, when he himself was ill.  Was that so, Andrei?"

Carter nodded.  "Yeah.  He did. He gave a eulogy too."

The Russian looked perplexed.  "What is 'eu-lo-gy'?"

"Words you say about someone when he's dead."  Carter struggled to explain.  "Words like, 'He was a good man" and why he was a good man."

Pasternak looked incredulous. "But he did not know my comrades."

"He did not need to. He said that we were brothers, because we fought against people who wanted to treat other people like slaves."

"And the comrade sergeant knows his own people's struggle well," Pasternak mused. He rose.  "Andrei, go back now," he said gruffly.

"Sure."  Carter started walking quickly away.  Then he remembered his mother had always told him to be polite. He did not understand half of what Sascha Pasternak had said, and he did not like any of it, yet the Russian seemed to have his welfare at heart. It would be bad manners not to thank him.

He walked back, and shyly held out his hand.  "Thanks for letting me visit."

The Russian sergeant looked searchingly at Carter's face, then at the proffered hand. He slowly clasped it in his.  "Farewell, Tovaritch."

Carter shook and released it.  Just as he took a few steps, Pasternak called out.  "Comrade!"  Carter reluctantly turned. "Tell Comrade Sergeant Kinchloe … tell him I say 'thank you' for eu-lo-gy."

***

Doktor Falke paid the messenger, slit open the flap of the manila envelope and drew out the papers.  Ausweiss.  Orders and permits. All correct.  All papers stamped in the appropriate places.  She slowly returned to her consulting room, gnawing her lower lip as she read the covering letter.  She read it through twice, to be completely sure of every detail, and to ponder what lay ahead and what she must do.

The Red Cross had telephoned early three days ago, just after her second call to Stalag Luft XIII.  The Allies had bombed four cities simultaneously the night before.  All Red Cross personnel were ordered to the bombed cities to succour the injured and to assist in the clean up.  She was to put her affairs in order and depart for Köln from the Hammelburg Bahnhof this evening at 2100 hours.

She could not sleep without morphine. She wandered around in a daze, crying, trembling violently at every noise.  She was incapable of performing the simplest task.  Of what use would she be? What use was she now, to anyone?

The words of refusal were poised on her tongue; but they had died stillborn.  She was doing no good hiding from her fear and her memories in a haze of morphine.  She was letting herself slide into a living death.

What had Herr Kinchloewen said about people who walked around semi-embalmed? It was not his way, and she would disgust him if she made it hers.

She said "Jawhol. Zu bifels." and put the telephone receiver into its cradle, resolved not to let her fears conquer her.

But she was very frightened.  By now, a suspicious member of the staff would have informed the Gestapo of the time she had spent with Colonel Hogan in the recovery room.  She had lived in terror of interrogation since she arrived in Germany.  Hochstetter's vicious attack on Colonel Hogan proved that the operation's days were numbered. 

She knew she could not hold out against Hochstetter's brutality.  He would rape her again, and this time he would demand the secret. She had to warn her friends of the danger she posed to them now, while they could get away.  She wanted them to take her with them, but that was likely impossible.  She felt eyes all around her.

Then, let us take those eyes away from them – to Köln.

She needed time away from here.  She needed to go where people did not know her and would not guess at what had happened.  She needed to escape from Hochstetter too, if only for a little while.  The all-powerful Gestapo were everywhere, but even Hochstetter would pause a few seconds before snatching her away from a mercy mission to his fellow Germans. His superiors might not think raping a German physician for her drugs was an acceptable form of intimidation. At least, they would demand their share of the black market money they thought he got for them.

He would insult the Red Cross if he detained her, and the Red Cross was a respected, and powerful, international organization. She would not go quietly.  She might not live, but she could make a stink that could prove embarrassing should the Germans wish to sue for peace.  The Protecting Power in Geneva would hear of it somehow and demand an explanation. High-ranking Nazi officials banked with the Swiss, and the Swiss government must be using that as leverage to guard their neutrality.  A lot of ill-gotten money could 'disappear' if the Red Cross complained to the right people.

Major Hochstetter had no proof she was in league with spies, or that the senior prisoner of war of 'her' Stalag was a spy, and he had enough decency, it seemed, to honour his bargain with Colonel Hogan by exchanging the penicillin for his information.

Doktor Falke pondered what Colonel Hogan's lie had been, but decided she was better off not knowing.   It must have been prodigious.  Antibiotics were rarer than peace, and costlier than gold.

She dialled the hospital to inform the Herr Direktor and Herr Doktor Kruger of the Red Cross's orders.  To her surprise, Herr Doktor Kruger himself answered the telephone. He told her that the Red Cross had already called the Krankenhaus and that he had persuaded Herr Direktor to allow her to go.  "It is the best thing for you, Fraulein Doktor, to be actively at work.  I know that you will come back to us stronger."

He was right, she thought, fingering her Red Cross armband.  She would come back stronger.  She was needed and she must not think of herself.  Others had lost everything. She still had shelter and food.  Besides, she was determined not to show her face before her friends in the POW camp until the bruises had faded.  She could more easily lie to Colonel Hogan and to his men then.

I could say I fell down a flight of stairs in Köln.  The marks will have faded by the time I return. As long as he does not see the rings around my wrists… Oh, he would not believe it.  He is too astute.  I do not have Corporal Newkirk's poker face.  But he must believe it.  I cannot have him know the truth.

Colonel Hogan would have her out of Germany on the next submarine or the next plane, to keep her, and thus his operation, out of Hochstetter's grip.  She frankly did not care to spend the rest of the war in an English prison, fretting and awaiting trial for a crime she did not commit.  Bad enough she was no longer a Canadian citizen and had been stricken off the roll of the College of Physicians.  Bad enough she would be held captive because she had defied the quota ban to smuggle Jews.  She was guilty and would pay the penalty.  But she had not knowingly smuggled Nazi spies into Canada and she refused to be imprisoned for that. She preferred to spend the time with the colonel and his men, even if it meant she would die with them. At least until the Gestapo took her, she could be of some use here.

But she had to leave them. Colonel Hogan knew she would crack when Hochstetter applied pressure, and she knew he would kill Hochstetter for her sake as much as for his own if he found out what the Gestapo major had done to her.  Her conscience would not forgive her being the cause of murder, and, in his weakened state, the colonel would not survive the attempt. 

She had to talk to Colonel Klink again.  She had to examine Colonel Hogan and see her friends one last time without them seeing her.

Her stomach rumbled. She made her way to her kitchen. Rummaging in a cupboard, she found a bag of dried apple rings. She pulled out a ring and nibbled on it pensively. The smell and taste reminded her of the apple rings she had brought to the Christmas party in the tunnel.  That reminded her of the fruitcake Colonel Hogan had ordered from London as a surprise – a gift to help Sergeant Kinchloe celebrate his sister's wedding. She smiled.  A lovely gesture that eased a friend's sore heart.  She recalled how the colonel had kept his order to London secret from his radioman.  It was highhanded behaviour, having him drugged.  So like Colonel Hogan.

She looked at the apple ring speculatively.  Her smile broadened and a little life came into her drug dulled eyes.  She knew how she could examine the colonel without his knowledge. "Turn and turn about, eh, Colonel?"

***

Klink put down the telephone and checked his watch.  1800 hours.  Roll call was at 1830 hours.  Although his window was closed and the drapes were drawn, he could hear faint strains of Der Ring des Niebelungen from the 'guest' quarters.

He shuddered at the word 'guest'. How horribly the word grated on his nerves.  What was Hochstetter doing to his 'guest' now?

He removed his monocle and laid it carefully in the centre of his blotter.  Then he bent his head in his hands.  He doubted he would ever find pleasure in Wagner's operas again.

Hogan was going to crack before they killed him.  No one could withstand two beatings by the Gestapo. He will confess to any ridiculous lie that sadist Hochstetter wanted to hear: that he was the leader of spies and saboteurs and commandos and partisans, that he was responsible for all the racketeering and counterfeiting in the Reich, that he had seduced Eva Braun. Anything, no matter how outrageous.  And he would not just babble about himself.  Every one he had ever spoken to would be implicated. His men. Schultz. Fraulein Hilda.  Fraulein Doktor Falke. Even him, Wilhelm Klink, the Kommandant of Stalag Luft XIII.  The man with the blameless record.

Of course, there had been those petty irregularities that happen to any man or officer, especially to an aristocrat and a bachelor. Klink admitted them with a man of the world shrug.  Amounts 'borrowed indefinitely from the officers' funds, or from the camp funds.  Kisses and caresses from wives and daughters.  But there had been no successful escapes from his Stalag.

Klink inflated his chest with pride. It abruptly deflated.

There was his rivalry with the major over the singer Lily Frankel.  Hochstetter would love to get his revenge for that.

Hogan could deny everything until he died and Hochstetter would still have a confession from him.  But Hochstetter wanted the cocksure American broken and begging for mercy before he killed him. 

It would be a slow, humiliating death.  Hochstetter would see that it was so. That incident after the Russians were cremated, when Hogan attacked Hochstetter because Hochstetter gloated over the deaths, saying he looked forward to burning more of Hogan's men.  What were those men to Hogan that he would risk his life and everyone else's to get the drugs that saved them?  A Negro, a dozen or so Red Russians and a few others.  Dregs.

What would happen to him, Wilhelm Klink, when Hogan cracked?  What could he do to prevent it?

Klink paced his office, rubbing his hands or fumbling with his monocle. He could not keep still. He sat down at his big desk, but he could not settle down to his paperwork. He threw down his pen and smoothed back his thin hair with shaking hands.

The music – that raucous music – kept drawing him to the window.  He kept straining to hear what that music drowned out.

Klink opened the window and gazed across the compound to Barracks Two.  He had confined the prisoners to their barracks.  He did not want them to hear their colonel's moans and cries above the crescendos of the music.   He did not want Hogan's shadow or his black tempered Englander to incite a riot or stage a rescue.  Ill though he was, Kinchloe could do it, and Newkirk would do it. Neither man would be sitting still.  Hogan's men adored him.  They would do anything to save him, perhaps even give up their own lives.  A thousand unarmed POWs against 80 armed guards, plus Hochstetter's men.  Suicidal but desperate men did not care.

Klink did not want to drown in a sea of blood, particularly not in his own.

He could not count on the loyalty of his guards.  He had seen the delicacies and the blood tonics left outside Barracks Two for the 'Herr Oberst.'  He knew Hogan split them with Kinchloe and the other sick POWs, joking that what did not kill them might cure him.  I think they would swallow poison willingly for him.

The telephone rang. Nerves frayed, Klink barked an irritated "Heil Hitler" into the receiver.

"Doktor Falke?"  He smoothed back his hair, in an effort at calm. He was a gentleman.  "Forgive me, Fraulein Doktor. I did not intend to snap at you. The pressures of work … You must go to Köln?  I am sorry to hear that, Fraulein Doktor, but if the Red Cross ordered it, of course you must go …"

He blanched and nearly dropped the telephone receiver. "You want to see Colonel Hogan's injuries but you don't want him to see yours?  I do not see how that is possible, Fraulein Doktor. … You have an idea?"

Klink sat up straight as he heard it.  An idea of his own formed in his mind.  A fantastic idea. He thought it over while Doktor Falke outlined her own scheme.  It fit within hers like a hand within a glove.  An innocent deception, she called it. The good Fraulein Doktor did not know who would be the dupe and who the deceiver.  Klink felt like chortling.  It was like scoring off Hogan. In fact, if it were not on him, Hogan would probably appreciate the joke. If Hogan by some miracle survived his latest ordeal without cracking, he must be sent out of Hochstetter's reach.  There was no telling what he would reveal if he was tortured a third time.

Hogan had certainly acted heroic, risking his life for his men, but heroes were merely brave fools. Fools must be kept under lock and key, to protect the sane.

I must take them unaware.  Schultz reports that Kinchloe is constantly with him.  He is the obstacle I must get rid of.  If he is caught between his friends and his leader… He is a prudent man, and he would not want to sacrifice his comrades' lives. But would he give up their colonel to ransom them?

Hogan's men mean a lot to him, and he's always put their needs before his. Kinchloe is his loyal adjutant.  Hogan trusts him to carry out his wishes.  That may act on him the way I wish. 

A sick, dispirited man can be easily controlled.  A little pressure, carefully applied where he is most vulnerable ….  Ja. He will not resist. It will work. 

Smirking, he picked up the telephone receiver.  "Heil Hitler, Feldwebel.  This is Oberst Klink.  Put me through to the duty signals operator.  I want to radio the Herr Oberst Baume, Kommandant Oflag Luft Drei, Sagan, at once."  He waited.  His telephone rang again.  "Heil Hitler.  …  Danke, Hauptmann.  …  Kommadant Baume? …  Heil Hitler! … Ja, it's Klink. …  I wish to transfer to you the troublemaker I spoke of.  The American colonel. … Ja.  Hogan. That's the one. … Ja.  I know I said I'd rather have him than worse, if there could be any worse, but he must be transferred to you immediately. My sergeant of the guard will explain everything to you. … Danke! He won't cause you any trouble until he's awake."

A hibernating bear's what you'll get, old friend, but I know you can tame bears.

* * * *

Newkirk turned back to his cards.  From out of the corner if his eye, he saw Carter pull his knotted string from his pocket and dejectedly pass it through his hands.  "At least 'counting his blessings' keeps him quiet," he grumbled to himself.  

Newkirk scolded himself for his cynical thoughts.  He reluctantly admitted that Kinch had a good idea, giving him a 'memory string'. He just wished he had been the man who thought it up.  As Carter explained it to him, most people tie knots in their handkerchiefs or strings around their fingers to remind them to do something.  Kinch's idea was to tie the knot whenever they survived one of the colonel's plans or, in Carter's case, whenever he did something right.  Newkirk had scoffed that there must be damned few knots in his string, but Carter said mildly his string had a lot of knots.  He began rambling them off, would be rambling still if he had not stuffed a sock in his mouth. Still, the string kept Carter from bothering him and so Newkirk admitted he felt grateful to Kinch.  Of course, gratitude went only so far, but he did feel grateful.

He felt pity as well.  Also resentment.  Kinch still was not sharing the load.  And now Hochstetter had done it again. And something happened to the colonel. After he had given such a stellar display of fortitude, walking along the entire formation and whistling every Allied nation's anthem, he had practically swooned in Kinch's arms.  Even Carter could not believe the colonel was invincible after that.

Newkirk shuffled and reshuffled his cards, pondering the present situation.  It was becoming too much to bear. Colonel Hogan would not survive a third beating. They had to get him home, but how, if he was so badly injured?  And it was killing him that he could not talk about Marlena Falke. He could not tell the colonel he knew what had happened to her without disclosing how he knew. The colonel hated being spied on.  He could not tell Kinch.  It would haunt Kinch to know his life had been saved at the expense of his Marli's peace of mind.

Our Doktor Falke, who always held herself so erect, who always held her fear at bay, cringing to scum. The pack of cards snapped out of Newkirk's clenched hands and scattered over the table and floor. Carter stared at him in concern.  Newkirk forced a bland expression. He couldn't tell Carter. It would destroy the poor oaf. Andrew looked on Marlena as a sister. But Newkirk's fingernails dug into his palms as he vowed again to kill Hochstetter, slowly, for the pain he had caused the people he loved.

***

Carter couldn't help staring at the closed door.  He turned to Newkirk, who was laying out his cards with the air of a man who has to do something with his hands to keep them from strangling someone.

"What do you think is going on there?  Why does Kinch get to keep us out?"

"Just be glad Kinch is in there.  I don't know what the guv'nor would be like if he had died."  Newkirk sighed.  "I hate to admit it, but he needs Kinch right now.  None of us would be any good to him."

"What do you mean? We'd be heaps of good!"

"Oui. André speaks the truth. We should at least be there too."  LeBeau started his determined way to the colonel's room.

Newkirk quickly intercepted him.  "No, mon ami.  The guv won't open up to us.  It has to be Kinch.  Somehow, they understand each other, " he added reluctantly. "I think Kinch is the only one who could keep his wits about what he's seeing and hearing right now."

"What do you mean?" LeBeau asked.  "Why couldn't we?"

Newkirk tugged him into a corner, as far away from Carter as he could. "Because Kinch has no illusions about our Colonel Hogan, and we do.  Face it, Louis. You see the guv'nor as a hero fighting to free France like he was the Scarlet Pimpernel.  Carter thinks of Colonel Hogan as someone like Superman.  The colonel can do anything, he says. Nothing can hurt him.  He always saves the day. Except he can't save the day now because Hochstetter has hurt him. Kinch has always seen Colonel Hogan as a man, not as a storybook hero."

LeBeau stared at him, eyes flashing. "Oho! So you and Kinch think I am an imbecile because I think of mon colonél a saviour.  Mais non.  I will believe that thought of you, never of Kinch."

Newkirk threw up his hands, exasperated. "Don't be so touchy!  I'm not saying that you're a fool or that Kinch thinks you're a fool.  I'm saying that Kinch doesn't think our colonel is invincible.  Colonel Hogan does not have to keep up a front before him.  He can lay bare to Kinch what he feels and thinks."

"And he cannot to us?"  LeBeau demanded, outraged.

"That's right, mate," Newkirk quietly replied.  Not even to me.

"And what do you think of le colonél Hogan then, if you do not think him a hero?

What did he think of Colonel Hogan?  A brilliant planner, a conniver, a kindred spirit. He more than respected him. He liked him. But what if he was no longer those things?  What if he was now deadweight? Did he owe loyalty to a broken man?  He was 'Every Man for Himself' Newkirk.  Did he want to be loyal?

Was that the reason the guv'nor turned to Kinch, instead of to him?  Neither of them held illusions about him, yet Kinch had always been quietly steadfast. No heroics, but always at his right hand.

As he pondered the question, Newkirk recalled a story Kinch told him one evening while waiting for Hogan, Carter, and LeBeau to return from 'outside'.  Carter had left his comic books strewn around the radio room.  Kinch had picked them up, and flipped through one with amused contempt before handing them to Newkirk.

"Tell Carter I'm not his maid, will you?  And that the next time he leaves his comics in my section of tunnel, what I'll do to him won't be funny."

 "Then why are you smiling?" Newkirk flipped through them. He studied a panel. "I don't know why you Americans call them 'comics', unless you find the sight of a man in tights ploughing his fist into another man's puss amusing."

Kinch had to chuckle. "It depends on the shape of the man in the tights. I prefer to wear shorts and socks when I plough my fist into a face, but each to his taste."

He arched his brows at Newkirk. "Did Marlena ever tell you about Superman? Or, rather, how she thinks Superman was conceived?"

When the Englishman shook his head, the sergeant gestured him to a stool.  "Well, sit and I'll tell you what she told me."

Leaning back, Kinch pulled the story from his memory. "One hot August, in '33, a mob of Nazi worshippers started a minor riot in Marlena's hometown when they tried to chase the local Jews off the local beach.  Not as bad a riot as the one Jessie went through in Detroit, but bad enough to make headlines in the Toronto papers.

"The way Marlena tells it, she, her two teenaged friends, Frank and Lou, and Frank's cousin from Cleveland, were plenty upset. The Beach is quite a spot for kids in Toronto, and Marli's friends are Jews. They talked about the riot and one thing led to another. Hitler's rise to power that Spring.  Nietzsche and his super race. They discussed if a superman would use his powers for justice and for the weak or to make himself a dictator.

Frank's father had a print of Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' that he was willing to run in his theatre for the boys and their pals after the main feature. The guys were sci-fi nuts and they were teasing Marlena to go see it with them.

"You know science-fiction scares our Doktor Falke. She refused to go, even though the theatre was air-conditioned. Instead, she sat on the steps and fanned herself by fluttering the pages of The Scarlet Pimpernel in front of her face.

"Lou snatched the book from her hand.  He strutted in front of her, holding it out of reach and striking noble attitudes, he simpered, "They seek him here.  They seek him there.  Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.  Is he in Heaven?  Is he in Hell?  That demned elusive Pimpernel."  Marlena said he had looked so funny, with a lock of wavy black hair dangling over his forehead and his thumb and forefinger of his left hand held over his eye like he was wearing an eye-glass.  Frank's cousin Joe sketched Lou in a particularly heroic pose: feet apart, chin thrust up, arms akimbo."

Kinch gestured to the comic books with a shrug and a smile. "Maybe Marlena's wrong.  Still, life is made up of little things like that.  Perhaps Joe Shuster did show his sketch of Lou Weingarten to his friend Jerry Siegel. He might have told him their conversation, and Carter's comic book hero – Superman – may have been conceived then. Who knows?"

Newkirk had answered his shrug with a shrug of his own.  He looked speculatively at his companion.  "Do you believe in heroes, Kinch?"

"Depends on how you define a 'hero'.

"Colonel Hogan?  Us?"

Kinch mulled it over. "I don't see ourselves as heroes, at least I don't call myself one. The colonel's a genius, but a hero?  Not if a hero's superhuman. It takes a lot of courage, being a soldier; but Marlena would never call him a hero.  Takes as much courage being a fireman, she'd say.  Perhaps it takes less courage to repair phone lines in a thunderstorm, but I felt heroic after I did it. Still, it was my job. A threat to food and shelter's a great stimulant.  For the pay?  The adrenaline rush?  Some higher reason?  What makes a guy take the risk?  What makes him a hero and not just a brave joe on the job or fool or a daredevil?

He looked introspective.  "I suppose a hero is someone who actually does risk his life unselfishly. Very few of them around, but they're around, so I believe in them.   It took a lot of courage for Jessie to go out and doctor the people who got hurt in the riot in Detroit – especially those who were our friends. I'd say she was a heroine.  She'd say she did her job.  Who's right?"

He sighed and waved his hand at the comics. "Superman?  He's fiction. I can't believe in him.  I don't believe a man with such powers would fight for the weak. He was just the wishful thought of two Jewish boys who read their people were getting hurt and wished they could send someone to rescue them."

 "And you?  What do you think of mon Colonél?"  LeBeau demanded once more. "Is he, to you, a hero?"

Newkirk looked at the closed door.  "I don't know.  I'd never really given it much thought until now."

"Well, perhaps you should," LeBeau huffed, turning his attention to the stove.

Newkirk stared down at the cards in his hands. What did he think of Colonel Hogan?  Colonel Hogan was the guv'nor.  The man who got things done with style.  The man who could con Klink and Burkhalter and Schultz – even Hochstetter – into doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it done.  The man who gambled on longshots with a smile, with his life and theirs as the stakes.  The officer who not only permitted him to lie and cheat – to be himself – but encouraged it.  A man who liked to live and to hell with the rules. This man could work miracles, could make you believe that with self-confidence and a little effort all things were indeed possible.  The most amazing man he ever met.

A hero?  Maybe not by Kinch's definition. He couldn't see the colonel doing something without getting a payoff, any more than he could see himself doing it.  So, he wasn't the Scarlet Pimpernel, unless the old boy in Marlena's storybook got paid for saving those aristocratic Frogs. By Carter's definition? No, Hogan was not indestructible, and certainly not faultless.  But that was fine by Peter Newkirk.  He never could abide saints.

The guv'nor was brilliant and resourceful. That went without saying. But one could never tell with the brainy ones if they were a little cracked or if they just saw things from a different angle.  He'd follow Colonel Hogan to the ends of the earth and back, and he'd believe they'd get back too.  So maybe he was just as cracked. But he was just as cynical as Kinch, even more cynical. Maybe not as quick to understand the colonel, but just as savvy.

Well, the colonel and Kinch are both Americans.  It's to be expected they'd be more in sync, since they spoke the same language so to speak.  Maybe Kinch could see the man behind the confident smile and the merry eyes and the dashing bravado. Maybe he was seeing that man now, with his defences down.  Maybe that's why the colonel chose him as his number two.  He knew that he could be himself with Kinch since the man held no illusions about him, and because he knew Kinch would back up the act of invincibility so that Carter and LeBeau could keep faith in their hero.

What was going on behind that door?  Newkirk stared at it, worried.  He strained to hear movement, voices talking. Even if it was only Kinch's voice, that would be something.  It would mean the guv' was aware of things, wouldn't it?  Or would it?  It was too damned quiet in there.  Why didn't Kinch open the door, reassure them the guv'nor was safely asleep in his bunk?

The door flew open then.  Not the door of Colonel Hogan's office.  The outer door of the barracks.  There was no time to glare at Olsen for not paying attention to watching it.  Three guards, machine guns at the ready strode in, pushing them away from the colonel's door.  Another caught LeBeau as he was about to open it, and shoved him aside, nearly into Schultz's arms. The big guard clamped a hand over the French corporal's mouth, and looked, terrified, into Newkirk's eyes, shaking his head. Newkirk caught the message. "Don't warn them. Keep quiet, or everyone will die."

Klink entered then, frowning, hostile.  He looked from LeBeau, struggling in Schultz's arms, to the other men.  He looked at Schultz, who nodded once, then he jerked his head to the outer door.  Schultz thrust LeBeau through it.

Newkirk sprang to his feet. "You filthy …" The words never left his lips. The machine guns swivelled toward him. There was a cold silence. All the times he had stood before judges and guards who could make his life hell if he showed his defiance or contempt, suddenly kicked in.  Newkirk felt a chilling trickle of sweat run down his back.

No sound from outside.  No shots.  What were they doing to Louis?  Would they do the same things to me?

Then one jerk of the head and one word from Klink: "Aus."  Newkirk looked into Klink's pale, blue eyes.  Cold.  Hard.  For an agonizing moment, Newkirk could believe the cringing, cowardly 'Bald Eagle' was indeed the toughest Kommandant in all Germany. But he knew Klink was afraid, very afraid, of the Gestapo, and of Major Hochstetter in particular.  Men in fear of their own skins were dangerous to cross.  For them it was kill or be killed. His desperation would goad him to order them shot if they resisted. 

The first shot would warn Hogan and Kinch of their danger; but what could they do?  If Kinch opened the door, the guards would open fire on him. What good would his death, or their own deaths, do Colonel Hogan?

Newkirk sullenly moved toward the door, then saw Carter. The fair young American was standing stock still, mouth working, eyes goggling.  He grasped Carter's arm, tugged at it.

Carter stared at him. "Aren't we going to do something?" he whispered urgently.

"Nothing we can do, pal." Olsen was at Carter's other side, his usually cheerful face sombre.  He took Carter by the shoulders and steered him outside.

Marcus Simms took a step toward the colonel's door. Then he stopped, uncertain.  If he uttered a sound, Klink would open fire on them all.

Simms did not believe in wasted words. Kinch would lay down his life for the colonel on the shout, but the thought of his bro dying, and then the colonel dying the moment after, unnerved him. There was a frightened, desperate look in Klink's eyes.  Desperate men were impulsive men – all the more likely to kill.  Maybe Colonel Hogan could talk him out of whatever he was determined to do. He had done it almost constantly for almost three years. Maybe Kinch's self-controlled demeanour would calm the Kommandant.

It was better to leave. Simms hoped that the colonel and Kinch could save themselves.  But if they couldn't  …  Simms looked at Newkirk beneath hooded lids, then at the outer door.  Newkirk nodded once, slowly, his mouth hard. Marcus Simms taut lips twitched. If Kinch and Hogan died, he knew where Newkirk's knife and his own would be when Klink passed through that doorway.