"So, you enjoyed your little reprieve, Colonel?"
Hogan kept quiet, arms crossed, hands tucked into the warmth of his armpits. The only reason he was warm now was because he'd been allowed to retrieve his uniform before leaving Stalag 13. He had been under constant guard in the barracks and was searched twice by two different soldiers, before he was shoved into the back of Hochstetter's car. As nice as the forty-eight hours of rest might have been, he'd spent most of it awake and worrying about his men.
Now he was exhausted, achy and not in the mood to pander to Hochstetter's ego.
A great way to test a man, Hogan thought, was to ignore him and see what he did in response. It was about time that he started to get to know this particular enemy a little better, Robert thought, and closed his eyes.
Hochstetter didn't respond to the insult and it wasn't long before Hogan was dozing lightly.
Three hours passed in silence and they should have been approaching Leipzig, but when Hogan opened his eyes he saw miles of forest, and nothing else. 'What, were they taking a back route?' he wondered. When he glanced over at the major the man was lost in thought, staring out the window. Not at all concerned about his prisoner, or their destination.
An hour and a half later they were preparing to cross the border into Austria. The town seated at the border bustled with the afternoon rush hour and the car slowed to a crawl. Austrians desperate to get back home after a long day pretending to support their Arian brothers, sat patiently in their cars ignoring the dismal scenery.
Railroad buildings lined the road on one side, and a giant textile mill on the other. Ahead Hogan could see several bridges rising over the Danube and Inn Rivers. This close to a border crossing was not an ideal place for an American POW to try to disappear but it was better, Robert was sure, than wherever Hochstetter intended him to go.
Hogan studied the major quietly without actually looking at him, waiting for the right moment. It came when a series of Hitler Youth on bicycles went flying past the car, loudly taunting the drivers at random. Hochstetter leaned toward the window and Hogan leaned into his door, popping the latch.
He heard a hollow 'click click' before he could launch himself into the street and looked back to find a Luger trained at his back, along with Hochstetter's full attention.
"This is Passau, Germany, Colonel. The hometown of Herr Hitler. What do you think would happen if you were to be discovered here?"
On second thought….
Hogan pulled the door closed until it latched and gently lifted his hands into the air, waiting until the gun lowered before he clasped his hands in front of him.
"My mistake, Major. I've never been to this part of Germany."
"It is a cesspool, I don't blame you." Hochstetter commented, then returned his attention to his own musings out the window.
They passed quietly through Passau and into Austria, picking up speed for another hour and a half before they slowed outside the city of Linz.
Hogan had been studying Hochstetter while he furiously tried to plan an escape. The man had stopped gloating the minute they left Stalag 13, growing silent and more serious with each mile. Now his face was white, and his jaw so tightly clinched that his neck looked swollen. A wisecrack came quickly to mind but Hogan ignored it. Something was wrong.
The architecture out the window had changed, reflecting the resources of the country. More lime, stone and brick, than wood, and unlike countries to the east, Austria was relatively untouched by the war.
Hogan jumped when the car passed a line of shuffling prisoners, their bodies bursting into his field of vision unexpectedly. Dressed in striped rags, chained at the ankle, and coated in white dust, the men looked like walking ghosts. Each with a red triangle sewn to his sleeve. Before they had passed the procession at least one of the prisoners had collapsed, bringing the group to a halt.
They left the city a few minutes later, passing only a half mile of thick forest before the land opened up, raw and broken from relatively recent construction. Then he saw the camp. Nothing more than a glimpse of a guard tower and a short row of barracks, but he had a good idea of what he was looking at.
"Where are we, Hochstetter?" Hogan demanded, an unspoken warning in his voice.
"Just outside Linz, Austria, Colonel Hogan. This is a labor camp for prisoners of the Third Reich. It is called Gusen."
Barbed wire, white washed buildings, shadows that had once been human beings shaved bald and dressed in striped rags. "It's a concentration camp."
"Yah." Hochstetter said, finally meeting Hogan's eyes. To the American's surprise all he saw was a carefully controlled, blank expression.
"You can't put a POW in a concentration camp…" Hogan said carefully.
"You are no longer a POW, you are a spy. A criminal. This is precisely where you should go!" Hochstetter barked viciously, then snapped a string of orders in German to the driver who responded with frantic, muffled affirmations.
Hogan felt his heart start to pound faster, making his ribs hurt. He was scared. It wasn't a feeling he liked, and normally his solution would be to reason his mind away from the fear. Just as he was coming up with his first logical argument for not being afraid they passed through a series of stone and barbed wire fences, each one guarded by well-armed SS men.
No one in Germany could ignore the rumors of concentration camps. LeBeau had come to Stalag 13 with his own horror stories of the labor camps in France. Some camps, so the rumors went, had been built for the sole purpose of exterminating mass numbers of people. All the people that Adolf didn't want in his fatherland.
Labor camp or death camp the running theme had been that nobody who went in the gates, ever made it out again. The point was either to put you to death, or work you to death.
Hogan took a deep breath and tried not to fidget. This had to be Hochstetter's way of getting payback for the ample number of times that Hogan and his men had nearly brought him to ruination. It also explained why Hochstetter had been so content to sit back and wait.
The car drew to a squeaking halt outside an administration building that was separated from the rest of the large camp complex by barbed wire topped granite walls. Hogan was jerked out of the back by the driver and Hochstetter took his time stepping out of the other side of the car, looking over the compound as if he were returning home. Or so Hogan thought until the major turned around and Hogan saw his face.
Disgust was what he read there. Disgust, but a determination to go through with it. Hogan was baffled as he was led into the administration building and down a corridor. He caught a brief glimpse of a stern faced secretary and another hallway extending beyond her, then was shoved towards an iron door that opened for him, and shut behind him.
The room he now stood in was lit by a single bare bulb. The walls were stone, and the room bare of any furniture or decoration. The door was the only opening, and was being locked and guarded. There was so much nothing in the room, Hogan immediately felt his hopes plummet. Despite his fear, the trip down had been a feast for eyes that rarely saw anything in the way of variety. To go from that, to this. Hogan wondered if it wouldn't have been better to risk getting shot by Hochstetter, or caught by German forces in Passau, than to be consigned to this nothing.
It took a bit for his eyes to adjust and pick out the handmade 'décor' that he hadn't seen before. Etchings, scrapes, claw marks. A hundred messages left by a hundred previous occupants, some scrawled over top others. Written in Polish, German, Russian and several languages he couldn't recognize, let alone read.
Hogan stepped close to the wall and ran his fingers over the gouges, wondering vaguely how long it would be before he felt the need to add his own legacy.
In the end he wouldn't get the chance. He was in the room less than two hours before an SS guard opened the door and tossed a set of striped clothes into the room.
"You will change. Leave your clothing by the door."
Then he was shut in again with a clang.
Hogan walked over to the pile immediately spotting the lice, a few moths camped out in the folds and ugly stains around the armpits and crotch. There was no way, he thought, kicking at the pile until he found the red triangle that he was looking for. Exactly like that worn by the work detail he had passed.
He was left alone for ten minutes before the door opened again. The guard stared at him, then at the pile of untouched rags on the floor, then shut the door presumably to go and inform his superior. Minutes later the door opened and Hochstetter stepped in. Behind him was a string of guards, big beefy types that the major directed with a single wave of the hand.
They chased Hogan into a corner and overwhelmed his desperate struggle with sheer numbers. His arms pulled hard behind his back, Hogan was forced into the center of the room. One of the guards had taken his hat and handed it over to Hochstetter.
"Take off the jacket." Hochstetter ordered.
Hogan fought, stepping on toes, biting anything that came in reach of his mouth, clipping one guard in the chin with the back of his head before they managed to rip the bomber jacket away.
"The ribs on the left side." Hochstetter stated, then nodded his head.
One of the guards produced a set of brass knuckles and came at Hogan swinging. The colonel desperately tried to protect his already wounded side. The first punch that found its mark hurt like hell and knocked the breath from his lungs. The guard didn't stop until they all heard the snap of bone breaking. Then, coldly and efficiently the guard nodded to Hochstetter and stepped away.
Hogan couldn't breathe. He was wheezing and each breath sliced through his core like a hot poker. He felt like he was going to puke, and was spitting blood out of his mouth. He'd bit the inside of his cheek, but it didn't matter where the blood came from. At least one of the guards holding him seemed to get gleeful at the sight of crimson.
The one thing that Hogan couldn't comprehend was the major. He wasn't gloating. He hadn't enjoyed the physical maltreatment of the American. He had in fact flinched when the guard finally broke a rib. The man was acting like a conflicted human being, and not the devil Schultz thought him to be.
"Take the gefangniskleidung with you, and wait in the outer office. I will call when I need you." Hochstetter ordered, standing like a statue as the flood of SS soldiers left the room, taking only the striped rags with them. Hogan was allowed to collapse to his knees, and he threw out his right hand to keep himself from going face first into the concrete.
He wasn't sure when he was going to pass out, but was fairly certain it would happen. He didn't bother to look up when the door closed. He heard Hochstetter swallow audibly, and was shocked when the German's voice quaked. "You have held up well, Hogan. Admirably."
Between pained, shallow breaths, Hogan managed to demand, "What?" He lifted his head, finally, squinting at the face almost obscured by the brightenss of the bare bulb. Hochstetter suddenly looked remarkably unsure of himself. He stood with his hands hanging at his sides, fists clenching and unclenching.
"Some of us have heroes, Hogan." Hochstetter blurted. "Legends. People that in our minds can do no wrong, but in reality, act as nothing but disappointment."
Hogan was growing disgusted. He didn't understand any of what Hochstetter was blabbering about, and the major himself seemed so lost in what he was trying to say. Hogan suddenly wanted to know why he had to have a rib broken before he was forced to listen to this.
He had to try to get up. If for no other reason than to find a corner very far away from the major to faint in.
"Papa Bear…the master of the underground. When I first heard the code name I assumed that it had to represent many people, not just one man. Then when I suspected that he was working out of, or very near Stalag 13. It was so incredibly impossible to imagine that Papa Bear might actually be an allied prisoner, and yet all the evidence…" Hochstetter trailed off, watching the colonel half crawling to the wall where he painfully struggled to his feet. He could do nothing to help the American, he knew. And was just as certain that Hogan wouldn't accept his help either.
"Anyone talented enough to run the underground from a prison, and loyal enough to do so without trying to escape himself. I made it my duty to discover this man. To be absolutely sure of who it was, and to catch him in the act of sabotage so that everything would be in order."
"Is this going in your autobiography, Hochstetter?" Hogan bit out through the pain, not yet able to straighten his back, but on his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. "You'll have to forgive me…but I'm not up to taking dictation at the moment."
The major stared at him then quietly responded, "No…nor will you enjoy the rest of what I have to say but…I.." The man fell silent long enough that Hogan was forced to look up at his face again and he was shocked to see the Gestapo man swimming in emotional turmoil, desperately struggling to maintain his composure.
Angrily Hogan said, "I thought the Gestapo had strict rules about enlisting human beings, Major. Isn't there something in the NAZI handbook about viewing anyone who looks different, sounds different, or thinks different as subhuman? You're starting to act an awful lot like one of the little people." Hogan was riled. He was hurting and tired and stuck in a freezing hole with no hope of rescue or escape and the man that had put him in that state was suddenly eliciting undeserved pity. It was a mind game, Hogan was sure of it, and he fought it, letting the rage consume him.
"Don't tell me you just grew a conscience on the drive down!"
"No." Hochstetter said briskly, coming to a decision. "In that you are correct, Colonel, there are consequences and I will have to accept them."
Hogan's head was spinning. Nothing made sense to him anymore and his side was on fire.
Hochstetter must have noticed. He quickly closed the distance between himself and the prisoner, dropping his volume and putting out a hand to steady the man. "Before you pass out there is something you should know, Colonel. As much as I would like to house you in comfort, for appearances sake I can not. I will keep you alive and see that you keep your uniform. You are here for a purpose, a special mission that you will accomplish or die trying. You have no choice in this matter, Colonel, and you should consider the safety of your men as my…collateral."
"Collateral?" Hogan was sinking to the floor. Getting closer to the hard surface so that when he did black out he wouldn't cause more damage than Hochstetter had already done. He could feel the major helping him, supporting his descent until Hogan was seated on the hard floor, leaning back against the wall.
"We will speak again, Hogan. I will explain all that I can, but for now, there is much to be arranged."
The muscles in Hogan's back seized, no longer capable of supporting him and protecting the broken rib. The pain put Hogan out quickly, leaving him in a confused, but blessedly painless, darkness.