Private Volker Shultz stood cautiously as the door opened again to reveal an American general. Given that his uniform had been confiscated, Volker wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing. Saluting seemed silly when he was wearing a suit, and he wasn't thinking all that straight.

"Volker Shultz," the man stared at him, "huh, you look a lot like your father."

How did this man know his father? How could he?

"Have you hurt him?" He managed to unstick his tongue from the top of his mouth, "he."

"You really should be worrying about yourself." The general noted. "You wrote your letter to your family telling them that you've been captured?"

"Yes...sir. Sir….where is my uniform?" No one had explained anything, and he'd been pacing this little room for hours. It was a nice room, and the house he was in was beautiful too, but it was spoiled by the soldiers and guards all over the place.

"Sit down, son." The general ordered, and Volker cautiously sat on the couch. Taking a moment to take out a cigarette, he lit it and surveyed the young man with an intensity that bordered on frightening. "You're not old enough to be fighting by our standards. You're not old enough to fight even by German standards. 18 and up, and you're far below. As far as we're concerned, you're not a soldier."

"I...don't understand." He was a soldier, he wasn't happy to be a soldier, but he was one. "I am a soldier. I am a soldier."

"Not by our standards, and you're not going to be a soldier ever again." That ominous pronouncement made his stomach twist. "You're going to America."

"America? I...I can't... America ? Why?"

"Let me ask you something," the General leaned forward. "Do you really want to be a soldier?" When Volker nodded, he shook his head. "No, you don't. You never wanted to be a soldier; you wanted to be an engineer. You wanted to build things, not blow people up. You were a sweet kid, too gentle, right? The Hitler Youth boys picked on you for helping."

How did they know ? Swallowing hard, he tried to remember the training he'd had. It hadn't been much, and they'd said Americans would torture him. "Nein, you're."

"You were forced into the army and sent to North Africa after he pissed off someone with a higher rank." The general continued to stare down the young man. "You're sixteen , and you should be looking at pretty girls and watching movies. Holding a gun, shooting at men wasn't what you were born to do."

"I am a soldier," he replied thickly, "I cannot be anything else."

"What if I told you that you could." The words were soft and seductive, and Volker blanched.

"What?"

"You're just over sixteen?"

" Ja ?"

"Sixteen is pretty young; let me explain something to you, Mr. Shultz. You're young, and we're not sending you back to Germany, but you don't have to be in a POW camp."

"You took my uniform," he pointed out. Unless Americans stripped them of their uniforms, it was odd that he would bring this up.

"You've got an opportunity here to be a parolee until you turn eighteen."

"A what?"

"A parolee, your situation is..unique. You give your word that you won't bother anyone, sabotage anything, and generally agree to live peacefully like an ordinary kid. For two years, or until the end of the war, you'll be under supervision."

"In prison?"

"Family placement." He handed over the file he'd brought in his suitcase. "There's a program for kids who've been displaced by the war. You go with this; you don't spend the war looking out between barbed wire."

"I...family placement?" He couldn't believe it. "I am not...I am a soldier. If I defect, my father will be killed. My family will be killed."

"Which is why it's a secret," the man said blankly, "you still write as if you're a prisoner, don't tell your father, and we report you as captured. Unless you want to spend the rest of the war in prison."

"Well, no," he shook his head, "But...I would." He struggled for an answer. His father hadn't wanted him to enlist, but he hadn't had a choice. Ending up in North Africa had been against his will too, and he was only alive by accident at this point. "My father." He tried again.

"Would your father want you to spend your life in prison?" The general asked, already knowing the answer he'd get.

"Nein."

"Then?"

"I would be betraying him!" Volker explained.

"But he's your father, isn't he?"

"Ja," what did that have to do with this? He had a sinking feeling that this general was just as slippery as Hogan.

"So he'd want you to be safe and comfortable and happy, right?" The man waited, and Volker nodded. "Do you think he'd want you to spend the war in prison if you had a different choice?"

"Well," it made sense. It made a horrible amount of sense.

"Didn't he want you to study engineering?" The American knew the answer to the question. His voice was already pushing Volker for the response he wanted. Volker remained quiet until the silence grew entirely unbearable.

"Ja."

"So wouldn't he want you to take the opportunity to live without being in prison?"

"Ja? That isn't the same thing!" He tried to protest, but he knew his father's blase attitude toward the war and soldiers in general. Han Shultz might be a sergeant of the guard, but he wasn't a blood-born soldier, and he had no idea or plans to advance in the Luftwaffe. His father had been a businessman, and if he wasn't going to take the time to return a captured Allied officer to the prison camp, then he probably wasn't going to care if his son betrayed Germany.

"Isn't it?" The American was convincing and made too much sense. Volker clapped his hands over his ears and shook his head.

"You don't understand! They will hurt them! My mother, my father, my siblings! I...I was supposed to die to protect them!"

"And you were captured instead? Do you really think they can fault them or you for being a prisoner? We captured hundreds of soldiers, what's one...little...toymaker's son got to do with it?" The General, still refusing to introduce himself, smiled. Cold, terrible fear reasserted itself, and Volker bit his lip.

"You can't...you can't promise that...they'll be safe."

"Why not? It's what we promised your father." Waving at Volker, the young German had a terrible feeling that he was missing something. He knew it was stupid for an American general to worry about one little underage private when there was a war going on and hundreds of prisoners to process. It didn't make sense to be separated from his fellow soldiers and stripped of his uniform and to be hauled into this place. They wanted something...and he couldn't think of what they might have wanted. Had they promised his father that they would keep him safe so long as he was...what? What did his father do that made an American General drop his work and visit a 16-year-old private? Did his father do anything? Was he a collaborator? Did it have something to do with Hogan?

Hogan.

"You sound like Colonel Hogan," Volker finally said, getting the first real reaction out of the man since he'd arrived. "All sweet words, but poisoned. You want something from me, and I do not like...slime." He should be respectful, and if it had just involved him, he would have been. "You can't promise that my father will be alright."

"No," The general agreed, "we can promise him that we'll do our best to keep him alive."

"In exchange for what? For me...to take this?" He tried to think, his mind raced, but the only thing he could remember was Hogan...Hogan laughing on the couch without a care in the world, even if he was a prisoner. "You can't let Hogan kill him,"

Carefully turning his head, the American pinned Volker with a gaze both penetrative and questioning. "Excuse me?"

"Colonel Hogan," Volker swallowed, not sure if he was condemned man or not yet, but he would say his piece. "You can't...you can't let him hurt my father."

"You think Colonel Hogan will hurt him?"

"He's a prisoner, and my father is a guard." The stupid laugh echoed across his mind, and he could see Hannelore squirming playfully in the man's arms. She was so small; she didn't know he was an enemy. "He...you cannot let him hurt him. Please, Herr General, he is my father, and his job is very dangerous."

"You're," the man blinked, tilting his head. "A good son, Volker Shultz. I assume that we have a deal?" Holding out a weather-worn hand, he waited for the young man to respond.

"Ja," he sucked in a deep breath, fighting back the habitual tears that had gotten him mocked for years. "We do." Taking the American's hand, he wondered why it felt as if he'd signed his soul away.

#$#$#

"There's been a fascinating development," Captain Scamander swanned into the little London house, looking as happy as a seal in the water and smugger than a fat cat. "Lt. Troy?"

"He's in the kitchen, sir." Corporal Pettigrew didn't move to stand; his attention and focus was wholly on the chess match, and given the bitter expression on Lt. Moffitt's face, he was winning.

"Righto!" Beaming, he relocated to the kitchen to find the Americans working wonders with their rations. "Smells charming, old boy."

"Captain," the wary, displeased expression returned in full force, and he returned to his cooking.

"How well do you remember Patricia Bauer?" The American was sturdy, steady, and his hands only faltered a little.

"Pretty well," he said, "why?"

"She's in Londontown," Scamander relayed. "MI6 is more than well aware that she's a spy, and your own people are keen to lock her up, but we have plans for her. Could you recognize her?"

"No," Troy paused, doing something with his dough. "Maybe. I didn't see her clearly."

"You were blind, correct?"

"Mostly blind, but I knew her voice."

"She thinks that you're dead, old boy and that you were too proud to explain to your command that you had been outsmarted by a woman."

"My pride isn't that deadly," Troy shook his head, "and she was just a pawn. Dietrich outsmarted me."

"Yes, clever bit that allied aid station trick. Well, he's under wraps right now, so he shouldn't concern you over much. She's feeding the Jerrie's false information."

"Sir?" The single worked packed an entire question into it. What was Scamander doing here?

"After supper," the man finally said. "We're going to take a trip to headquarters."

"Sir?"

"We might need to extract the dear captain, and we'd like to pick your brain as to how."

"I meant are you staying for dinner?" Troy paused, glancing back over his shoulder with pursed lips and a visible hope that the Englander would take his leave.

"If you'll have me," he gave a bright smile, and the American sighed faintly.