I said yes anyway. I can be stubborn that way, especially when I sense that an opportunity, no matter how chancy, might be the only one to come along. And a few days later there I was, entering a train compartment to talk to the young man who we had decided was our hottest prospect.
“Morning, Lieutenant. I’m from the American legation in Bern and I have some questions for you. The first thing I need to know is your name.”
The young airman looked suitably intimidated and clutched his escape kit to his chest. But he answered without first asking for my name, which I took as a good sign. Easily cowed by authority I surmised, even though he carried a decent rank of his own.
“Lieutenant Seymour Parker. Emporia, Kansas.”
“Navigator, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“I know a lot of things. Come with me, please. We’ve got some more questions for you.”
“Are you an officer?”
“Like I said, I’m with the legation.”
“But the Swiss officers said…”
“They’ve been notified. So has your CO. Let’s go.”
He looked around at his seatmates, who shrugged. I got the impression they hadn’t known one another long, or else they would have risen to his defense.
Parker rose awkwardly. A long flight in a Fortress stiffened you up, especially when followed by an uneasy night of sleep on a Swiss cot in an empty schoolhouse. He followed me meekly up the aisle to where Butchart was waiting, just as the train was pulling into Adelboden. We had arranged for the legation to send down a car and driver, which seemed to impress him. Butchart and I sat on either side of him on the backseat of a big Ford.
If I had been in Parker’s shoes, I would have been asking a million questions. He tried one or two, then stopped altogether when Butchart told him brusquely to shut up. If we had been Germans posing as Americans we could have hijacked him every bit as easily. Butchart looked over at me and nodded, as if he was thinking the same thing.
The roads were clear of snow, and we made it to Bern in about an hour. We said little along the way, letting the pressure build, and when we reached the city we took him to an empty back room in one of the legation offices. Seeing the American flag out front and hearing other people speaking English seemed to put him at ease. We shut the door and settled Parker into a stiff-backed chair. The first thing Butchart asked was how many missions he’d flown.
“This, uh, this was my first.”
Perfect, and we both knew it. Enough to get a taste of terror without growing accustomed to it.
“Some of your crewmates looked pretty experienced,” I said.
“They are. I was a replacement.”
“So what happened to you guys up there?” Butchart asked. “You fuck up the charts or something, get everybody lost?”
Parker reddened, and for the first time defiance crept into his voice.
“No, it wasn’t like that at all. We were in the middle of the formation and took some hits. Didn’t even reach the target. We came out below Regensburg with only two engines, and one of those was smoking. Lieutenant Braden, he’s our pilot, asked me to plot a course toward Lake Constance.”
“Well, you did that part okay, I guess.”
Butchart then eased up a bit by asking a few personal questions. He companionably pulled up a chair next to Parker’s and started nodding sympathetically as the kid answered. I say “kid,” but Parker was twenty, the son of a wheat farmer. He was a third-year engineering student at the University of Kansas, which explained how he had qualified for navigator training.
As he spoke it became clear that he was a man of simple, innocent tastes. He liked to read, didn’t smoke, preferred soda over beer, and didn’t have a serious girlfriend. Up to the time of his arrival in England he seemed to have believed that his hometown of Emporia was the center of the universe, and his college town of Lawrence was a veritable Athens. The most important bit of intelligence to come out of this part of our chat was that he had spent the previous summer as a lifeguard at a local pool.
“A lifeguard, huh?” Butchart sounded worried. “You volunteered?”
“Sure.”
“And went through all the training?”
“Well…”
“Well what?”
“I was kinda filling in. All the regulars had enlisted, so there really wasn’t time for me to take the courses.”
“Sorta like with your bombing mission?”
“I guess.”
Parker went meek and quiet again, as if we’d just exposed him as a fraud.
“Can I ask you guys something?”
“Sure,” Butchart said.
“What’s this all about? I mean, I know you mentioned something about a job. But what kind of job?”
“A onetime deal. A mission, provided you qualify. You’d be sent home on a prisoner exchange. But you’d have to memorize some information for us to pass along to the generals once you got back to the States. Facts and figures, maybe a lot of them.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’ll bet. And in return you’d get a free trip home. Not bad, huh?”
He smiled at that, then frowned, as if realizing it sounded too good to be true.
“But why me? There are plenty of other guys who’ve earned it more.”
“Do you always look a gift horse in the mouth? Did you turn down the lifeguard job?”
“No, but… “
“But what?”
“I dunno. Something seems kinda funny about the whole thing.”
I tried to put him at ease.
“Look, you’re a navigator, which means you probably have a head for numbers and memorization. So there you go. You said it yourself, you’d be good at it.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
Butchart spent the next few minutes going over the preparation that would be required. He also described the likely route home-up through occupied France in the company of German escorts from the SS. Parker’s eyes got a little wide during that part, and Butchart nodded at me in approval.
“So let’s say you get caught, Parker. Let’s say that halfway through this nice little train ride to Paris, one of those Krauts gets suspicious and takes you off at the next stop for a little questioning. What do you do then?”
“You mean if I’m captured?”
“No, dumb ass. You’re already captured. That’s why you’re part of an exchange. But let’s say they decide to check you out, grill you a little. What you gonna tell ‘em?”
“Name, rank, and serial number?”
“Yeah, sure. But what else?”
“Well, nothing, I hope.”
Butchart got in his face like a drill sergeant.
“You hope?”
“Okay, I know. Or know I’ll try.”
“C’mon, Parker, you can level with us. You really think you could handle some Gestapo thug getting all over you? What would you tell him?”
“I like to think I wouldn’t say a damn thing.”
“You mean like if they try this?”
Butchart slid a knife from his belt. Then he grabbed Parker by a shank of hair and pulled back his head. Before the kid even realized what was happening, Butchart had put the flat of the blade against the white of Parker’s neck-steel on skin, as if he were about to peel him like a piece of fruit.
Parker swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. For a moment I thought he was going to cry.
“Whadda you doin’?”
“Checkin’ you out.”
Butchart yanked Parker’s head lower while holding the blade steady. Sweat beaded at Parker’s temples, and his eyes bulged. When he next spoke his voice was an octave higher.
“I’m not the enemy, okay?”
“Oh, yeah? How do we know that for sure?”
Another tug on his hair, this time eliciting a sharp squeal of pain.