"How did you hurt your foot?"
"S'long story." Hogan offered, concentrating fully on the steps he was taking. The thick stick they'd found twenty minutes before was helping to support his weight, and he was doing everything in his power to keep from leaning on the poor girl walking with him, but it was getting harder with every step. His ankle was swelling over the top of his boot and throbbed regularly even when he was resting.
"We have a long walk ahead of us." The girl said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. Hogan gave her an appraising side-long glance, once again finding himself unable to believe that she was only seventeen. She looked young, of course, but the more time he spent with her, the more she seemed like a woman of twenty-five.
"Alright. Let's call it a parachuting mishap."
"Parachute!? You mean you jumped out of a plane?"
"That's generally how it's done." Hogan quipped offering the girl a smirk when she grunted at him in dissatisfaction. "I'm sorry, Mozart. But there's a host of things I can't tell ya..for your own safety."
"Helen."
"That's your name?"
The girl was silent for a moment then said, "No...but it is a better name for me than Mozart."
The pair grew quiet as they navigated over a thick tree trunk lying over the path. The tree was thick enough that Hogan had to sit on the bark and rotate to get over it. Sitting down felt so good that once his feet were on the other side he stayed there, panting against the exertion of fighting the pain.
"It hurts alot?"
Hogan gave her a look through his eyelashes then gritted his teeth, pulling his foot up and resting it on the tree trunk. The simple act of elevating the foot almost immediately reduced the strength of the throbbing. "It's broken, so yes...it hurts alot."
"Broken!" The girl exclaimed with undisguised disapproval. "Are you crazy!? Who goes out to meet someone in the middle of the woods with a broken foot!?"
"Broken ankle. I do. And quiet down. We may not be the only people in the woods." Hogan said, gentling his tone as best he could despite the irritation that inevitably came with being injured. "I didn't have a choice. We knew that your organization was just starting. We don't often meet new underground groups face to face so soon, but establishing connections with Nesting Doll has been a priority. I had to come out personally just in case something exactly like this happened."
"In case you fell out of a plane and broke your ankle?" Helen asked, clearly confused. Her command of English was excellent, but Hogan realized that he had lost her somewhere along the way.
"In case the twenty-something guy named Mozart that I was expecting, turned out to be a seventeen-year-old girl named Helen."
The comment brought an end to the playful light in Helen's eyes and she grew sullen remembering why she was there in the first place.
"I'm sorry.." The American apologized immediately.
"No...no, you did nothing wrong. He was my brother. He is dead now, so it can't hurt to tell you, his name was Paul. He was very smart and very strong." Tears were bubbling in her eyes but Helen didn't seem the type to burst into wails, and after a moment or two of sniffling the tears dried. "He had a wife and two children. Daughters. They live with me...with us...now."
"That must be hard."
As Hogan carefully moved his foot back toward the ground he caught the slight shrug of Helen's shoulders but she said nothing.
Together they stood and Hogan braced himself for the slice of pain, pushing past it and forcing himself onward.
"I wonder what Hogan's gonna say when he gets back to camp." Newkirk muttered, breaking the brief silence.
"Oui...if he makes it back. The plan was that we would cover for them until they got back to the road. The other guards probably took the prisoners back to camp the minute we left. Colonel Hogan and the others are out there on foot." LeBeau said, pacing absently at the foot of the bed. "And as long as he's conscious he would never let Carter or Kinch try to carry him back."
"Wish he'd'a let me go. Bleedin' officers. Stubborn, ruddy block-headed fools..." Newkirk picked absently at a loose thread on his cap, then tossed, "Isn't that right, Schultzie?" toward the man in the bed. "We'd all be better off without 'em."
LeBeau gave a reproachful chortle and shook his head. "You better watch it, Pierre. By the time this war is over you may be an officer yourself."
Pursing his lips, Newkirk gave the Frenchman a mildly bewildered look and asked, "What are you talkin' about?"
"Oh come on! All the dangerous missions that we've pulled off. All the crazy schemes. All the captured POWs that we've liberated. To the generals we say, 'give us more pay'. But that isn't the way of the military. No, they promote you so that they can retire you. It's all economics."
Newkirk chuckled and shook his head. "You're gettin' philosophical in your old age, Louie."
A string of unamused French greeted the remark and Newkirk smirked triumphantly. "Not to mention that you'll be demoted to master dish-washer if you keep talkin' about top secret information in front of the enemy."
LeBeau followed Newkirk's pointed finger and drew a little closer to the plastic confines of the oxygen tent. "Hey Schultzie, do you solemnly swear never to breathe a word about this to anyone, so help you strudel?"
"YahVol!" Newkirk grunted in a fare immitation of the German.
"Nothing to worry about. He's sworn to it on strudel." Louie grinned a little then grew silent, watching the pale face through the plastic. He'd never noticed the gray spots on Schultz's face. Age marks, that disappeared when the man was smiling. Now, against the ashen palor of his skin, the spots looked like deep shadows. It was a color combination that did not belong in nature. For some reason he was instantly reminded of something that happened when he was very young.
Newkirk watched his mate disappear from the here and now for a few minutes then quietly asked, "And where were you just now?"
Louie stepped away from the bed and went to sit next to the Englander. "Where were you in 1908?"
"I believe I was a cinder in me mum's eye. I wasn't born yet, mate."
LeBeau smirked, crossing his arms, surprised as always to be reminded of how much older he was than Newkirk. "The world mourned the dearth of you, I'm sure."
"Jolly joker..." Newkirk chuckled without thinking, and both men silently glanced to the man in the bed before LeBeau continued.
"I was seven years old then. We were living in Paris, in a boarding house that a rich woman had built. We weren't very close to the Eiffel Tower..you know, the rich part of Paris, but we could see it from the roof any time we liked. Anyway...there was a big race that year. An automobile race from New York to Paris. It was such a romantic, adventurous and fantastic idea..it occupied the mind of every little boy and girl that I knew. We would constantly have make believe races up and down the alleys. And because it was a race around the world we would encounter kangaroos in Australia, or cowboys and Indians in the American West, polar bears at the North Pole. And of course it was nothing at all to cross the ocean with a boat. Our cars could float across!" LeBeau was grinning at the memory, Newkirk along with him.
"We followed that race religiously, stealing newspapers so that we could clip out the articles and paste them into books. All of us picked out our heroes. The drivers that we were routing for. Of course all of us cared the most about the French drivers but, we also picked others. The best part was that we knew we would be the boys and girls who would be there to greet the winner. Not the Americans, or the Germans, or any other people in all the world...because all of those fantastic machines and all of those drivers were coming to Paris. We felt like kings, to know that the whole world was gradually turning its eye toward us."
"Who won?"
LeBeau shrugged and tossed a hand, "An American. I can't even remember his name, but the car was a Thomas Flyer. A great white monstrosity with yellow trim wheels. Piled high with luggage and warm weather gear and everything the driver's would need. It wasn't the first automobile I had seen, but it was the brightest one."
Newkirk chuckled beside him and LeBeau shrugged. "It baffled all the adults. Who would have the gall to paint a machine white!? Especially a machine that was supposed to cross deserts and climb mountains and ford rivers. When the car arrived it was so banged up and dirty, even after they washed it. The fact that the car was white was all that my mother and father could talk about the whole day."
"An American, eh? Sounds like them."
The house loomed out of the blinding light of an early sunset looking no less glorious than the pearly gates. Hogan was about ready to cut his own foot off by the time he eased down into a kitchen chair, allowing Helen to help him elevate his leg on a second chair. His ankle felt like cracked China and he guarded the limb ferociously after he became the focus of a buzz of attention inside the small home.
The woman who had welcomed them into the home was introduced by Helen as Charlotte, the two young girls playing with plain, unpainted wooden blocks and rag dolls on the floor were "Lily and Heina."
The man of the house was well into his sixties and walked with difficulty, using counters, tables and chairs to maintain his balance along with a cane. He lurched into the room, dragging one leg with every step, but his brown eyes were intelligent and piercing and seemed to understand the situation with a single glance.
"This is my father," Helen, explained, guiding the older man with practiced ease to a chair that she had set directly next to Hogan's wounded ankle. "He is a doctor."
The whiskered older man gave him a wane, toothy smile then turned to his work, leaning over Hogan's leg and immediately prompting a stifled curse from the man as he prodded the swollen appendage. "Broken?" The doctor asked, then looked to his daughter when Hogan didn't respond right away.
"Yah, father."
"Two days ago." Hogan managed through gritted teeth before he braced himself with a white knuckled grip on the seat of the chair he'd plopped down in. The doctor began the process of removing his boot, using remarkable care that seemed at odds with his mobility issues. The pain was unbearable, and the first shout of agony that Hogan couldn't silence prompted the doctor to stop what he was doing.
"Kleine, schnappes bitte." The doctor said softly, and Helen nodded, leaving the room.
"Kleine?" Hogan asked, taking deep breaths to combat the spinning of the room.
"It means 'baby', in your English. She is the youngest." The doctor said neither overly friendly, nor hostile to the stranger.
Hogan closed his eyes, working on settling his stomach so that he could ingest the alcohol that was undoubtedly meant for him. When it arrived in a glass instead of a bottle he gulped it down, breathing through the burn. He was already sweating from the exertion of the walk, but the flush of blood to his face made him feel like he'd stepped into a sauna and he took another minute to acclimate, removing his bomber jacket.
As soon as the coat was free of his shoulders every person in the room heard the smack of the packet of secrets dropping to the floor. Hogan had forgotten that it was still tucked into his zipped jacket. Quietly Helen picked up the package and disappeared into another room with it.
The doctor began again without much warning, finally pulling the boot free of Hogan's foot and eyeing the tight bandaging job that had been Hogan's only allowance of medical assistance. Wilson had been unhappy. Hogan had been adamant.
"It has been set?" The doctor asked and Hogan nodded, his face still tightly fixed with pain. "We must undo the bandage, allow the swelling to go down, then tie them again." The man informed him, already beginning the task even as he explained it.
Hogan was so closely focused on the doc's every move that he didn't even notice the miniature presence at his elbow until something soft and made of cloth was pressed against his hand. When he looked down he watched as a rag doll repeatedly smacked its head against his hand, controlled by the motions of the youngest of the two children. Hogan barely remembered that the girl's name was Heina.
A moment later he realized that Heina wasn't hitting him with the doll, but that the doll was kissing his hand. The tiny squeaking noises were coming from the little girl's lips, and the doll's head was aimed strategically at the myriad of thorn marks on the back of his hand.
"Danke, Fraulein." Hogan managed and reached his fingers out to shake the dolls hand. Heina greeted him with bright blue eyes and a brilliant grin, and giggled before gathering her doll and running out of the room.
The first smile Hogan had seen on the man's face appeared as the patron of the house watched his granddaughter leave. "She is smart, Heina. She will be a doctor some day, too." The smile fell a little as the doctor focused on the bruising pattern that marbled Hogan's ankle, but the colonel knew enough to understand that it wasn't his injury upsetting the doctor.
"Paul was your son?"
"Yes." The man said simply. "I wanted him to be a doctor too. But..." The man shrugged and turned his attention to Helen who had reentered the room with a pot of water. The doctor reached in without hesitation and pulled a soaked cloth from the basin, wringing it out then folding it into a precise rectangle. He wrapped the ice cold compress around the wounded appendage, applying two more cloths before he sat back to look over his work.
"We will let those take care of some of the swelling, then put your foot into a cast."
"Wait a minute...a cast, how long is that going to take?"