I paused to relight my cigarette.
“Six planes went on the mission, and none of them came back. Oh, they accomplished their mission all right. They blasted hell out of the steel works, which stopped working for the Germans or anybody else. But the planes never got back to base. One crashed and the entire crew was killed. The other five either crash-landed or the crews bailed out. Most of them were captured and put in prison camps. A few escaped into Yugoslavia and joined the Partisans.”
“What was wrong with the planes?” Maria asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “except they ran out of gas. The operations office made a stupid, inexcusable miscalculation, and the airplanes arrived over the target more than an hour before daylight. The hour they had to circle above the clouds before attacking made the difference between having enough gas and what happened.”
“What about your brother?” the girl said.
“He bailed out safely,” I said. “The whole crew got out all right. They started walking to Yugoslavia and they made it—all except Bob. Somewhere along the line he disappeared. Neither the Air Corps nor the State Department has ever been able to find a trace of him. He just vanished into thin air.”
Maria said, “I know how your family must feel. It must be terrible for all of you, the dreadful uncertainty, not knowing anything for sure. For a while we didn’t know for sure about my father.”
“Yes,” I said, “and there’s something even my family doesn’t know. I was the officer who made the fatal mistake.”
We heard the sentry returning through the woods, whistling. I told Maria to crouch behind the rock so that she wouldn’t be seen from the road if the sentry should use a flashlight.
I ran down the road until I was out of sight of the gate. I raised the railway guard’s carbine and squeezed three shots in quick succession. Then I ducked into the woods and doubled back to the fence as fast as I could move through the deep snow. I reached the fence in time to see the sentry open the padlock in the glare of his flashlight, slide through the gate, and run toward the spot from where I had fired. It didn’t take me long to grab Maria’s arm, hustle her through the gate, and snap the lock again.
We ran through the snow at the side of the road until we were out of breath; I was sure the shots would bring a Russian patrol. We’d leave tracks in the snow but we’d have made more noise in the hard-packed center of the road. The end of the snowstorm had brought that still, bitter cold when a running step echoes like hammer on anvil.
I suppose we’d put a hundred yards or so between us and the fence when we heard the guard’s carbine blast the padlock off the gate. We started to run again, and the siren went off; there must have been a switch in the sentry box. We ran until Maria tripped, let go my hand, and fell heavily. I picked her up and we heard the sound of a car coming toward us and saw the long beams of the headlights slashing into the shadows of the trees at the bend in the road ahead. The rising scream of the siren and the moving light and the throb of the car’s engine seemed to freeze us where we stood, locked in each other’s arms.
Then I knew another sound. Somewhere close behind us there was a running brook. Our only chance to get a head start on the Russian patrol was to follow that brook into the woods. If we left the road through the snow they’d follow our tracks in a minute.
Luckily the icy water wasn’t much above our ankles, and we were already numbed with the cold. We made good progress into the woods, following the center of the stream by the sound of the water alone. I looked back once, and the road was bright with the light of the oncoming car. The siren had died away. The roar of the car’s engine and the rushing of the water beneath us were the only sounds.
When we were well into the woods, the going became harder without even the little light from the stars. I stumbled and fell half a dozen times before I sensed that Maria was no longer close behind me. I didn’t dare call her. I turned back, putting my arms out straight in front of me the way a blind man does but I didn’t find her. I tried using my lighter, but it was dripping wet.
I lost my head. I found myself trying to run through the stream, stumbling and crashing on my face when the stones on the bottom rolled under my feet, calling Maria’s name at the top of my lungs.
Somehow I found her, down on her knees in the water. I picked her up in my arms and I knew she had fainted from exhaustion and the cold. I turned and went blindly forward again but slower so that I wouldn’t fall with her.
I’ll never know how far I walked before I knew there was a light ahead. My eyes must have seen it long before my brain accepted it.
Of course, when the Russians hadn’t found us on the road, they’d doubled to the other side of the woods.
I put Maria down in the snow at the side of the brook, unslung the carbine from my shoulder, and started to knock off the safety. But I had no choice. I threw the gun upstream as far as my strength would let me. I picked up the girl again and started for the light. No matter what happened to me I had to get help for her.
When the light grew brighter and brighter, I tried to run through the snow. Then I heard a shout. I heard the crack of a rifle bullet. I felt my knees give way under me. And then nothing more.
Chapter Three
DOUBTFUL SAFETY
When I opened my eyes someone was bending over me. My first thought was to ask the Russians to take care of Maria, to tell them she was innocent and that I had forced her to leave the train with me.
I tried to lift myself on one elbow, fighting to clear my brain enough to recall the Russian words. But a hand pushed me back on the snow, and a voice said, “Warten Sie einen Augenblick, mein Herr—wait a minute.”
For a moment I thought I must be delirious. I had expected to hear Russian. I wasn’t prepared for German.
If these men proved to be Austrian police, we might have an easier time with them. There wasn’t any love lost between the Austrians and the Red Army. Perhaps they weren’t policemen at all. They might be farmers or hunters who could be persuaded to let us go in return for the dollars in my pocket.
The voice above me called out, “Er ist nicht verwundet,” and another voice close by answered, “And neither is the girl. You’re not the marksman you used to be, Otto.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Otto. “It’s just as well I didn’t hit them. This man is carrying a Swiss passport. And a wad of traveler’s checks, too.”
Why hadn’t I destroyed Marcel Blaye’s passport? I could have thrown it away after leaving the train without exciting Maria’s suspicion.
Otto raised his voice, apparently addressing a third man who was some distance away. “Hermann, don’t stand there like a dunderhead with your mouth wide open. Quick, go get help. Hurry.”
I must have passed out again and for quite a time because when I regained consciousness I was being carried on a stretcher. I was wrapped in blankets, and my wet clothes had been removed. I could raise my head enough to see that Maria was on a stretcher ahead.
Then I heard Otto say, “Bring them in here. Quickly.” We were carried the length of a low wooden porch, then lifted into a brightly lighted room. It was the main room of a typical Central European hunting-lodge. A wood-paneled room with a high peaked roof, huge stone fireplaces at both ends, heads of deer and bear and mountain sheep on the walls, the rustic furniture. The kind of room to which Austro-Hungarian aristocrats repaired after the hunt, to wine and dine, gamble and make love to the music of a gypsy band. Perhaps we had been brought in by some rich man’s gamekeepers, if there were any rich men left other than commissars, someone who might hate Communism enough to help us get away. Otto and his helpers weren’t in uniform. They wore the short fur-lined jackets, the feathered felt hats, and the high laced boots of the Austrian countrymen.