Karl awoke to a cold that bit his skin like cat teeth. It was punctuated around his throat, wrists, and ankles, where there were almost-warm spots.
Slightly warmer gloves against his bare skin.
He jerked violently, and half a dozen more guards mobbed him.
His face was pressed into the mud-brick floor, making him painfully aware of the throbbing at the back of his head.
"Hold him dammit!" A voice snarled in German.
For a terrifying few moments Karl could not remember where he was, why he was there, or who was currently tying him to an examining table, naked and the back of his head sticky with clotting blood.
At the foot of the table was an unamused-looking doctor in spectacles, beside a black-suited SS officer whose eyes betrayed a cold anger.
He remembered then; hours ago - he thought, he wasn't sure - he was convincing Sean and Drew to let him go alone to Tobruk for their mission…
Gottverdammt. Fine mess you've gotten into this time, Karl. He thought feverishly. Excellent. Never once suspected a trap did you? Thought they'd just hand you the Fuhrer. Now they're going to throw you into some dark pit where even the maggots won't find you…
The doctor walked over. With no preamble or warning he twisted Karl's lip, making him wince and open his mouth. As soon as he did, the guards were back, wrenching his jaws open.
Karl coughed and sputtered and tried to curse. The doctor put on gloves before reaching into his mouth, yanking at teeth, nudging them, tapping them and listening to see if they were hollow. His fingers strayed close to the back of Karl's throat, making him dry heave and retch. The gloves were tasteless but foreign, and the guards' fingers were dusty and foul, with a grip that was much too tight. The skin at the edges of his mouth felt like it was splitting from how widely it was held open.
After a few minutes that felt like hours as Karl tried to make himself breathe with a hand moving in his mouth, the doctor withdrew with a murmur of, "no false teeth, and no poison packets." The guards were slower to let go and his cheeks stung after they did, drool he couldn't wipe off spilling down his chin.
"Were there any hidden weapons in his uniform?" The SS officer asked.
"A few knives sir. Nothing else." A grunt replied.
The SS rounded on him. "Are you sure?"
"Yes sir!" The grunt shied away like a dog used to its master's hand, curling against a desk and rolling his eye-whites imploringly. The SS still looked suspicious but didn't press further. The guard picked up Karl's uniform and his wrists and ankles were untied. He didn't have any time to savor the feeling of good circulation around his wrists, as the guards all cocked their guns and a few kept them trained on him as he got dressed. Sitting up made his head swim and made him much slower to button his clothes than usual. He barely had time to throw his scarf around his neck before two guards came to hold his arms behind him.
Against all sense, he just felt relieved that they hadn't burned his clothes, his brother's scarf with them.
He was marched forward, out of the room and into a courtyard. The guards on duty beside the doors tried to look disinterested, but their eyes kept wavering to Karl. He glared at them.
He pieced it together in his mind as they walked. It's still night, so I couldn't have been out for long; the sun was going down when I saw off Drew and Markson. Karl's memories after that were vague and shadowy, short images and sounds that he had to strain so hard to obtain that he wasn't sure that his imagination hadn't invented them just to give him an answer. His thoughts weren't much easier to grasp. It all must have been a trap to lure out any possible assassins…possibly to lure any away from the location of the real Fuhrer. That they haven't killed me yet…must mean that they want to interrogate me.
In some ways, it was enough to make Karl wish that he'd bothered to wear the capsule with the cyanide pill in it he had, not that it would've done much good here.
There was no worse fate for a sniper than being captured. He'd be in for everything that happened to Brauer, probably more, because unlike him he wasn't valuable enough to the war effort to risk more OSS or SOE agents to rescue.
At that thought - that he'd be there in Tobruk, tortured until he cracked and spilled, then shot and left in a ditch with a dozen other bodies with no name, or kept until the war was over - panic thrashed in his chest like a dying animal.
He hadn't realized that he'd stopped until one of his guards jabbed him in the back with the muzzle of his sub-machine gun. "Get moving!"
He walked again, faster, tightening his control over his breath. Inhale. Count to five. Exhale. Just like he did before a shot. It steadied his nerves, focusing him in the right ways while dissociating him from the act of pulling the trigger. He was alive. He was still alive and that meant something. He'd been trained for capture, for escape, he could handle it. He just needed to have a plan, to stay calm. Easy to think it if he didn't dwell on what was behind the door they led him too.
They opened the door and the first thing that struck him was the blood. It was dried on the floor, seeped into the wood of the blocky chair with built in restraints in the center of the room. The room was tiny, stuffy with no windows to allow escape of prisoners or the stench of old blood, and there was nothing in it other than the bloodstains, the chair and a table in one corner.
Karl was pushed into the chair, and the metal restraints were locked against his wrists and ankles. He pulled on the restraints to test their strength. They were rusty, but the joints didn't give, and the chair itself was securely bolted down. No getting out without a key.
He glared at the two remaining guards, who edged away. He was pinned, weaponless, helpless.
He hated it with every straining fiber of his being.
The guards took to muttering softly amongst themselves. Apparently they were either under the impression that Karl couldn't speak German (if so, he was quite happy to keep them in ignorance) or they didn't think that the contents of their conversation would help him.
"Keep back." One warned the other. "Johan doesn't particularly care where that knife goes…"
That bodes well, Karl thought drily.
He eyed the door. It was made of much heavier wood than most of the doors he'd seen in the occupied villages and villas, and bolted. He'd need a key for that too. A quick look-over of the two guards confirmed that neither of them had any keys. He'd expected veteran SS who could handle the screams of a prisoner and the smell of blood, but they both looked alarmingly young, like they'd just gotten out of basic training.
The door burst open, and the guards jumped.
"My apologies! The captain kept me awhile." The man standing in the moonlight spilling through the doorway was fresh-faced, pale, and rail-skinny, but had a genuinely cheerful smile. He turned to Karl. "Is this our guest?"
He was smiling, and it reached his eyes, but it was off. Or maybe it wasn't; it was sincere, and that was what made it eerie. Karl glared, keeping the other's merry blue eyes.
"I have heard so much about you! No need to switch to English, I know that you speak the Fatherland's language fluently."
"'Du'?" Karl growled in annoyance, switching to German. "I'm sorry, but I don't recall us herding pigs together."
Johan shrugged, still smiling. "We'll be getting to know each other quite well in the next few days. Would you unpack my kit?"
One of the guards pulled a knapsack out from under the table and began unrolling it and laying it out on the table. Karl got a glimpse of gleaming metal. "Now, most of its quite standard, but I have a few tools I made myself," Johan said proudly, "those, I find, work best for me. It's a great relief, to have total confidence in the tools of your trade when working. I'm sure you check your rifle regularly, right?" When Karl didn't answer immediately, Johan frowned at him, a worryingly convincing parody of concern.
"Here we go!" With a flourish, Johan pulled out a strange device from his knapsack. It looked to be a small wooden board; on it were leather straps, one large one further down, and five smaller ones at uneven intervals. Karl figured out what it was for when Johann placed it on the armrest of the chair and he saw that it was about the size of a grown-man's hand.
Karl tried to pull his hand away, despite knowing its futility, particularly since the cuff on the armrest restricted him from moving his hand move than a few inches. It was a matter of pride, truly.
Johan tightened all the straps and fixed it to the armrest, completely immobilizing Karl's fingers.
The pain was coming; Karl could sense it lurking around a corner from Johan's smile alone.
But it was still a shock when Johan stuck a knife under his index fingernail and wrenched it up sharply.
The fingernail landed somewhere beneath the armrest, and in its place was a hot and stinging pain, not unbearable but worse than Karl would've expected from a relatively minor injury. He remembered, out of the blue, Odette accidentally taking a toenail off when she was seven, running on bare feet after letting her nails grow out. It had seemed like such a babyish thing, then, to cry over something so small.
Johan ripped off another nail before Karl could react, this time his middle finger. He hissed.
"Sir," One of the guards said cautiously, as if speaking to a wild dog. "Shouldn't you be asking him questions?"
"Oh, do shut up lad."
With a few more yanks all of the fingernails on Karl's right hand were gone.
The nailbeds that remained bleed profusely, joining the strains on the armrest. His fingers were numb beyond the second knuckle but for the burning sensation of the nailbeds exposed to dry air.
Johan smiled, pleased. "Easy. Now, before we continue, I'd like to know your name."
Karl glared at him. He already the beginning of a strong hatred burning on his fingers, moving up his arm with a cramping sensation to rest hot and heavy in his chest.
"You won't tell me? That's rude." Johan unfastened the straps of his pinning board before fixing it on the other hand. "Tell me this then - what army group are you from? Do you know where they are now?" Johan slid the knife tip under the edge of his fingernail. "How about this…what made you decide to kill the Fuhrer?"
Karl set his jaw. The muscles in his left hand wanted to clench and hide his nails away.
Johan tore off the nail. He held up to light as if it was a curiosity, letting Karl see the cuticle and blood still clinging to the edges. At the edge of his vision, the young guard with the hook nose was going pale and green around the edges.
The rest went off in quick succession-
-rip, rip, rip.
Karl breathed carefully, and would've clutched the armrests so his hands wouldn't shake if his fingers would work properly. Come on. He thought, trying to bend them only for hot pain to stiffen his ligaments. It's only the nails.
"You're awfully quiet. Half the folks who come through here start talking by now." If anything, Johan's smile grew. "Looking to be a long-term guest?"
Karl's stomach clenched.