Blackbone (31 page)

David Gilman. Pigheaded, authoritarian, narrow-minded but handsome. She sat back and entertained thoughts about him that she had never even considered about Warren. For instance, what was he like in bed?

She found herself wanting to know all about him, and that was a hell of a lot more than she had ever wanted from Warren. But why? What made him so interesting? Because he hated her? Because he thought she was a nuisance?

Because he doesn’t yet think of me as a woman. To him, I’m just another guy around here, just another pain in the neck.

So, how would he behave if he suddenly discovered that Loring Holloway was a woman? How, indeed? And how would it help her with Kirst? She sat up sharply then, frightened at herself. Was she so deeply into this that she might offer herself to Gilman in order to gain control over Kirst?

There was a knock at her door. She opened it to find an orderly standing stiffly outside. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “Commandant’s having evening mess brought to his quarters and wonders if you’d care to join him.”

A laugh escaped her, puzzling the orderly. “Tell him yes,” she said, adding with a chuckle, “and ask him if it’s formal.”

They knew all about it now—Loring Holloway and her strange experiments, Kirst’s even stranger responses, Loring’s story about finding a demon in a bottle in Iraq, and Kirst somehow ingesting it, and that being the likely cause of all the trouble. They hadn’t found it hard to believe, and that had surprised Cuno until he’d realized they were ready to believe anything that would give them a scapegoat—and Kirst had been elected long before tonight.

Leaving them arguing over what to do, Cuno had fled back to the
Krankenhaus,
ashamed for opening his mouth. Steuben would be furious. It would be all over camp by evening mess. Cuno tried to convince himself that he had spoken out because there was too great a danger in ignorance, but he knew perfectly well that knowledge was the greater danger.

He slammed through the back door of the
Krankenhaus
and stopped facing Kirst’s cot. Startled, the MP on guard had his weapon up but relaxed when he recognized Cuno. Cuno stared at Kirst, still lying comatose on the cot, and thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they lynched him. A second later, he disappeared into his own quarters.

Drawn by the voices, Mueller came down the hall and caught the tail end of the argument in Bauhopf’s room. He buttonholed von Lechterhoeven and quickly got an explanation. Leaving the men making big talk about storming the
Krankenhaus,
he returned to his room in a daze and stopped at the door to stare at Kirst’s empty bunk.

The man has a demon inside him? What the hell kind of nonsense is that?

Just the kind a campful of trapped and demoralized prisoners would believe
, he thought, listening to the spillover hitting other rooms, voices rising, the outside door slamming as men took off to spread the tale.
Just the kind of nonsense the Americans might use to create a panic, maybe even a riot. But why?

So they can slaughter us.

Bruckner is right The Americans are behind the whole thing.

Mueller entered his room and went to the window. Outside, it was snowing harder. His mind raced. They wouldn’t make everybody troop over for a regular mess call tonight—not during a storm. Instead, they would run food details from the kitchen to the huts. That meant there would be no roll call. So why wait? Better to get his little band in place and out of the line of fire before those idiots decided to invade the
Krankenhaus.

Quickly he wrote a cryptic note, snagged one of the men in the corridor, and asked him to run it over to Hoffman. Then he ducked back into his room and ferreted out his warmest clothing.

By 1630 hours it was dark. The storm was at full intensity. The wind howled down the valley, banged off the steep slope of Blackbone Mountain, and fell back on the camp, pummeling the huts with sleet. A curtain of icy particles swept horizontally across the searchlight beams from the sentry towers, where the guards were wrapped in heavy coats, their hands encased in sheepskin gloves. Their weapons were too slick with ice to handle, but they took comfort in knowing no one would try to escape in this weather. And they found injustice in the thought that the Germans were snug and warm inside their huts.

From windows all over the compound, Germans watched the
Krankenhaus.
They stared with keen interest when NCOs from the MP mess kitchen came through the gate, struggling against the storm to deliver food to the guards watching Kirst. Bauhopf conferred with some of, the POWs, and they were busy hatching a plot to overpower the kitchen NCOs and steal their uniforms when the detail emerged from the
Krankenhaus
and slogged back up the slope.

Bauhopf was growing more obsessed by the hour, conscious that night was coming and with it the time when whatever was plaguing them would go to work again. So far, no one had come up with a workable plan for getting to Kirst. And they probably wouldn’t until after the next meal. Arguing had made everyone snappish and hungry. Bauhopf stayed by his shattered window, ignoring the cold wind breezing through, intent on watching the
Krankenhaus,
as if his riveted attention might produce inspiration.

Mueller buttoned up his coat, tightened the heavy shirt about his neck and ears then pulled the door open. Snow and wind flung him back. He forced himself out and shut the door. He jumped off the top step and landed in a crunch of foot-deep snow. Plowing as fast as he could across to Hut 9, he went in the back way and ducked quickly into the bathroom. Hoffman and Dortmunder were waiting for him, bundled up and ready to go. Mueller nodded and they moved quickly to the exit.

“You’re going out?” someone called after them.

“To the rec room!” Hoffman hollered back.

They were out the door a second later. Dortmunder slipped and fell in the snow. He got up cursing and followed the others in a crouched scramble toward the shower hut.

They flattened themselves at the corner and waited for the searchlights to pass then moved to the back windows. In all the excitement over finding Gebhard’s body in the shower hut, no one had remembered to seal the window he had used to gain entry. Mueller had found it unlatched and had stashed provisions and gear inside.

Hoisting himself up, he scrabbled for footing against the slick wall. Hoffman helped him over the sill then he and Dortmunder followed. Once inside, they shut the window.

Mueller lit a match. His gear was stashed in the farthest toilet cubicle: food, handmade digging tools, blankets, and candles.

Dortmunder listened to the wind outside. “We may escape,” he said, “but we could die of exposure in this storm.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Mueller. “It’ll be dry in the shaft. We’ll shore up the hole, let the snow cover it, then move on up the tunnel. When the storm lifts, there will be more than twelve inches of snow out there. Nobody will ever think to look, and no one will ever know where we’ve gone.”
 

“Except Bruckner,” Hoffman said.

“He won’t talk.”

“Why not?”

“He’s leading the next group.”

The door to Gilman’s quarters was standing open, but Loring knocked anyway. Gilman motioned her in. She stood aside as he helped the orderly convert his desk into a dining table, opening a beer-barrel-sized canister and hauling out the dinner in fitted trays. Gilman placed a candlestick at the center of the table and lit the candle, with a wink at Loring. She was wearing a wool sweater and dark slacks. She spun around and gestured for his approval,

“What do you think?”

“Very nice,” said Gilman. “Beats that thing you were wearing last night.”

“I thought you liked that.”

“I did, but it’s a little too glamorous for this place.”

The table was finally set. Two steaming plates of roast beef, boiled potatoes, vegetables, bread, and peach cobbler for dessert. The orderly uncorked a bottle of wine, poured two glasses, then killed the overhead light before leaving. As the door closed, Gilman held a chair for Loring and she sat down. He sat across from her in the shimmering candlelit gloom. She smiled as the storm howled outside.

“It’s like a private room at the Waldorf,” she said.

“Actually, the chef is vacationing from the Plaza, but he has to go back tomorrow, so eat hearty because pretty quick it’s back to K rations.”

Loring picked up her wineglass. “To the chef.”

“To the chef.”

Gilman filled his face like he hadn’t eaten for a month. Now and then he grinned at Loring, who for the occasion mustered all her best finishing-school etiquette.

“I was thinking,” said Gilman, “maybe later for fun we could go down to the camp and beat the crap out of Kirst. What do you say?”

“I think you still don’t want to believe me.”

“I’m only curious, Miss Holloway—”

“Loring.” She smiled. “As long as we’re having a romantic evening together, you might at least use my given—”

“We’re not having a romantic evening. We’re having dinner.”

She gestured at the layout. “Do you dine like this with Major Borden?”

Gilman put his fork down. “Just tell me one thing. Why are you here?”

“Oh, come on, Major—”

“David.”

She caught his determined gaze. “All right. David.”

“Thank you. Now, I don’t mean
why
are you here. I mean why are
you
here? Why
you
and not somebody else?”

She stared at him. “I thought we were sitting here pretending nothing else existed.”

“Sorry. I don’t believe in time out.”

“Evidently not. So, let’s put it on the proper, footing. Finish this sentence—You’re trying to find out what would make a woman like me...”

“... come rooting around a detention camp, behaving as if she’s on a dangerous mission.”

Loring stared at him darkly. “Major, I’ve had about enough of your pigheaded attitude.”

“And I’ve had enough of your magic tricks.”

She stood up.

“Sit down.”

Surprised, she sat.

He poured more wine. “Miss Holloway... Loring. We are going to sit here until you tell me what I want to know. We may sit here all night, in which case we are both going to get very tired. I at least have a cot to take a snooze on. I sure don’t know what the hell you’re going to do. But you’re not leaving until you come clean with me.”

“You want to know why
I
came.”

“I think you’re getting my drift.”

Loring drank more wine and studied the glass, pursing her lips in a bitter grimace. “I’m here... because I killed some people in Iraq.”

Gilman looked up slowly, sensing the first glimmer of recognition, of commonality between them. “Go on,” he said.

Sergeant Vinge came out of the barracks bundled up against the storm. His eyes were slits underlined by a heavy muffler that protected his nose and mouth. He stood at the crest of the hill and looked down at the compound, irritated that he couldn’t get inside tonight, sure that in the storm his black wildcat had come down to seek shelter beneath one of the huts. Ever since the other evening he had grown increasingly certain that his life simply could not go on unless he had that black pelt tacked to the wall over his bunk.

He tramped over to the armory and checked out his carbine. Then, fighting the wind and sleet, he made his way down to the fence and peered through the chain links.

“Hey, Vinge—what are you doing?”

It was Cokenaur, standing in the gate guard post, freezing his buns off. Vinge trudged over to join him. Cokenaur made room for him in the tiny phone-booth-sized shelter and they stood facing each other. Vinge hugged his weapon and kept an eye on the compound. Cokenaur’s carbine was slung over his shoulder.

“Bring any smokes?”

Vinge produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Cokenaur shivered as he lit one and offered it to Vinge, who shook his head. Cokenaur drew in the smoke and studied Vinge.

“Expecting something?” he said.

“Waitin’ for the A train.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t coming through tonight.” Cokenaur sneezed. “Shit on this post. Hey, I can’t see anything with you standing in the doorway. What are you looking for anyway?”

“Nothing.” Vinge glanced at Cokenaur thoughtfully and debated telling him the truth. He decided not to—better to bag the little mother and surprise everybody. He cracked a smile. “Keep warm.”

Vinge hiked back up the hill and entered the rec hut. Parking himself by the window, which gave him a view of the entire compound, he turned the table lantern down low and glanced once at the five guys playing poker in the opposite corner. They were oblivious to him. Vinge leaned closer to the window, looked out, and waited.

Mueller poked the shower-hut window open a few inches. Shielding his eyes against the blizzard, he tried to see past Hut 10 and up to the fence surrounding the mine shaft. From here it seemed covered in white. The branch he had thrown to mark the spot must have been buried in snow hours ago. He let the window drop back into place then turned and walked the length of the shower, glancing up at the cold, dead pipes.