Five Past Midnight Read online

  "I have," he whimpered. "I have nothing left to tell."

  It was the truth. The Gestapo had broken him. Dietrich had told them all he knew about his brother, his family, his career, and his religion. He had known nothing about his brother's treason, but Dietrich had held back nothing. He was bitterly ashamed of his weakness, but he was helpless against them.

  "Well, it hasn't made any difference anyway, has it? Get on with it, Sergeant."

  Dietrich closed his eyes, blocking out the light for the last time. Winge stood motionless for a respectful ten seconds before pressing the button on the upright with his thumb.

  With a searing squeal, the blade dropped in the post grooves. It fell for an eternity, for the blink of an eye.

  And with a ringing crack, the blade stopped one inch above Dietrich's neck. The Gestapo agent had replaced the safety bolt.

  "Not today, then, Inspector. Not today."

  The executioner released the neck brace and pulled Dietrich from under the lunette. The detective was quickly brought upright. When the straps were released, Dietrich swayed against the sergeant, who seized his arm to lead him from the execution chamber and along the hallway.

  Dietrich was propelled into his cell. He collapsed onto his cot.

  From the cell door Rudolf Koder said equably, "We'll return again tomorrow. Right at noon. You may survive our next visit. You may not."

  The door creaked shut. Dietrich pulled the vile blanket over him and brought his legs up against his chest. For twelve consecutive days he had been taken to the guillotine, then returned to his cell.

  Dietrich groaned, tightening the blanket around himself and laying his cheek against the cold metal of the cot. His entire frame shook with relief and with dread. His thoughts came only in simple pulses. All he wanted was to get out of this cell. Or out of this life. He didn't care which.

  2

  THE POWs heard the crippled bomber long before they could see it. Allied planes based in occupied Italy now flew so often over the castle ninety miles south of Berlin that the prisoners could identify them by the pitch of their engines. This was an American B-25 Mitchell, and one of its engines was sputtering. Several POWs lifted to their toes for a better view.

  "Stay in formation," shouted Lieutenant Gerd Heydekampf. "Close up there."

  Heydekampf was five feet three, and was known by the POWs and his fellow guards as Dreikasehoch, three cheeses high. The lieutenant was wearing a greatcoat, short boots, and trousers with ankle-length gaiters, which the Wehrmacht had begun issuing that winter to conserve leather that would otherwise be used in the army's tall marching boots. He had a square chin and a gold front tooth. He was almost sixty years old, a reservist recalled to duty when the younger guards had been transferred to the front. Most Colditz guards were in their fifties and sixties.

  "You there, Davis," Heydekampf ordered, pointing to a POW in the first British line. "Get back into line."

  Lieutenant Heydekampf was the camp's Lageroffizier (camp officer) , senior to all guards but the commandant. He had lost his left arm in the Great War. The left sleeve of his coat was tucked into his belt. He spoke English well, learned on the job. He was a kindly man who tolerated no cruelty by the guards toward the prisoners.

  Standing at sluggish attention, the British POWs were in five-by- five rows. The senior allied officer, RAF Group Captain Ian Hornsby, stood at the front center. The Americans were in the northernmost group, nearest the chapel. Twenty-two guards were in the yard, and more on the catwalks and towers.

  Captain David Davis of the Royal Ulster Rifles smiled evilly then drew a finger across his throat in an exaggerated motion. Not once since D-Day had Davis been addressed by a German guard without responding with the slashing pantomime. Earlier in the war Davis would have been sent to the cooler for five days for such insubordination. Now Lieutenant Heydekampf bit down and turned away. An endless topic of conversation in the guards' mess was their fate when the Americans or Russians—pray God it would be the Americans—overran the camp. Surely the POWs would not slit their throats once the guards threw down their rifles. But, just in case, none of the guards was going to be anywhere near Captain Davis on that day.

  Or anywhere near the nameless American who always lined up during the roll call in the back row, staring straight ahead, chewing rapidly on nothing. The American was captured six months ago, dressed in a U.S. Army Air Force uniform. He had refused to divulge his name or rank to his interrogators at Dulag Luft, the airmen's reception camp at Oberursel. At Dulag Luft, he had defeated sophisticated interrogation techniques by simply saying nothing, not one word to the interrogator. Instead, after three hours of questioning, the American had reached across the desk to grab the interrogator by the lapels, used him as a battering ram to break open the interrogation room's door, then sprinted across the campground toward a command car, dragging the hapless interrogator along as a shield. The escape attempt had been foiled by a sentry who had shot the American in the leg, a poor marksman, as he was aiming for his back. After the American had recovered in the camp hospital, he was shipped in manacles to the castle.

  None of the guards believed the American to be a flyer. He lacked the airmen's camaraderie and high spirits, unmistakable among flyers even in the meager conditions at the castle. There was a ruggedness about him, and a recklessness that bordered on indifference to his own safety. The American had attempted six escapes from Colditz, one a month since his arrival, receiving twenty-one days in a solitary-confinement cell each time. He was either escaping or serving time for it.

  Still out of sight behind the walls of the prison, the Mitchell bomber drew closer. Its damaged engine drummed unevenly, fluttered, then quit altogether. One engine continued to thunder. Some POWs cocked their ears to better pick up the sound. They could tell the plane was on a northwesterly course. Perhaps its target had been the Leuna synthetic oil plant near Leipzig.

  Several intoned silent prayers. Others whispered, "Come on, old fellow," and, "You'll make it, friend."

  "Silence there," Heydekampf ordered. "Back to attention." But he, too, turned to glance over the roof of the castle, searching for the plane.

  Because they were in a forty-yard-square courtyard surrounded by five-story walls, the guards and POWs would not see the plane unless it passed directly overhead. The bomber sounded like it might oblige. Near the passage to the German yard the camp commandant, Colonel Erich Janssen, also stared into the sky. He monitored the roll calls but let Hey- dekampf do the work, and seldom said anything, merely nodding when Heydekampf gave him the completed roster at the end of the roll call. The sound of the failing bomber grew louder.

  Built on a high promontory jutting out over the Mulde River, which flowed north to the Elbe, Colditz was perhaps the least attractive, least romantic castle in Germany. The citadel consisted of a series of wings erected over the centuries that had resulted in a figure eight, with two baileys in the middle of the wings. The south bailey was the prisoners' yard. The north was the guards' recreation area. The castle resembled a dormitory, with four- and five-story edifices surrounding the courtyards. The windows were evenly spaced and barred, some looking into the yards, others looking over the apple and pear trees of Upper Saxony. Two Moorish cupola towers were the structure's only ornament. The lower walls were seven feet thick. The wooden roofs were sharply canted. Dormers extended from the roofs in a haphazard fashion, and brick chimneys dotted the roofs. The entrance to the POW yard was over a moat and through mammoth oak doors. The ground fell away from the castle in terraces, on the west toward the town and in other directions toward orchards. The castle loomed over the medieval town of Colditz, where it was visible from every intersection.

  With its guests' propensities for escape in mind, the castle had been modified. A machine-gun tower had been built in the northwest corner of the terrace outside the walls, giving a sight line down the north and west walls. Catwalks had been erected to eliminate guards' blind spots in the courtyard and on approaches t
o the gate. The castle's eighty-foot- high exterior walls were floodlit, as was the POWs' bailey. Microphones and primitive seismographs had been planted in the walls to detect digging. The lights went off only during air raids. Guards were on duty all night in the courtyard.

  But since D-Day, escape had lost much of its allure, and attempts had largely stopped at Colditz and other POW camps. General Eisenhower had recently ordered POWs to stay behind the wire. "We'll get to you soon," Colditz's senior POW officer had heard Ike say over the camp's hidden radio. The prisoners knew Ike would keep his word, and so did the guards. The POWs could now hear Allied guns night and day to the south.

  Only the American had tried to escape Colditz since Eisenhower's order. More interested in the American than in the approaching Mitchell, Lieutenant Heydekampf glanced at him again. Until last autumn, food had been adequate for the prisoners. Now the POWs were slowly wasting away. The lost weight had sharpened the angles of the American's face. With the wide cheekbones, cleft chin, and the three-day stubble he always wore, his face resembled a gnawed bone. His eyes were the gray-blue of smoke. He had thin, bloodless lips. His blond hair was sparse, and he kept it shorter than the POW fashion, little more than bristles along the sides of his head. He was taller than the other prisoners, and until recently his shoulders had sloped with muscles and his arms had filled his shirts. But he was thinning quickly, with the rest of them, and now the cords on his neck stood out and his clothes fit sloppily. The American had an aura of restrained violence about him, a brawler's presence. The guards knew he was incessantly calculating, searching for weakness and an avenue to exploit. The commandant had ordered that one of the guards on the catwalk above the potato cellar stairs was always to watch the American when he was in the yard. Hey- dekampf and the other guards often speculated about the American. They had concluded he was both dangerous and mad, an alarming combination.

  The POWs' breaths showed in the raw air of morning, the steam almost filling the small bailey. Their eyes were on the gray sky. The bomber's remaining engine blustered, echoing between the walls of the courtyard and rattling the windows. The plane sounded as if it was aimed right at the castle. Then the second Wright engine quit, and the abrupt silence in the POW bailey was startling. Heydekampf followed the gaze of the prisoners to the small patch of leaden clouds visible above the castle walls.

  The B-25 suddenly filled the sky over the bailey, eight hundred feet above the castle roofs. The bomber was canted on its starboard wing so that the POWs could see the white star on the fuselage. Fire had engulfed the engine cowling on that side. Smoke and flames soared behind the wing as far as the tail gunner's bubble. The plane's nose had been hit by flak and was a blackened and gaping hole. The canopy behind the cockpit was a twisted mass of metal churned by white flames. The roof gunner's bubble was filled with flame, resembling a beacon. The hydraulics had gone awry; the left landing gear was down and the bomb bay doors were open.

  The Mitchell was a medium bomber, with a payload of over two tons. This plane was carrying incendiaries, firebombs the size of milk canisters. The flak had detonated incendiaries that were still in their bomb bay cradles. The plane had become a roaring torch.

  Heydekampf swallowed hard, at once pitying the Mitchell crew and relieved the bomber would fly well over the castle. The plane would land in the orchards north of the castle or in the Mulde River.

  The lieutenant's relief was short-lived. Canisters were spilling from the open bomb bay. The plane was quickly out of sight again but the bombs remained, sprinkled across the sky in a ragged formation. And they were growing larger.

  Heydekampf blew his whistle. "Dismissed," he yelled in English. "Get into the building."

  The POWs were motionless, transfixed by the specks in the sky.

  "Now," he bellowed. "Get going."

  A stampede began. Guards and prisoners dashed for the doors to the scullery, prisoners' kitchen, chapel, parcel room, solitary block, and the stairs down to the potato cellar, anywhere away from the courtyard. They quickly filled the barbershop, the guardhouse, and the shower room.

  Heydekampf raced for the delousing shed at the southwest corner of the yard, where fire-fighting equipment was stored. The shed was a temporary structure made of clapboard with a shingle roof. The lieutenant yanked on the latch cord and rushed inside.

  On one wall of the shed were shelves containing insecticide powders and solutions, an assortment of barber sheers, and a dozen flit-guns.

  A shower had been rigged but most of the delousing was done with the sprayers. A footbath was in the center of the hut. Tin tubs used to chemically wash clothes were in another corner. Nits, ringworm, fleas, chig- gers; the shed had seen them all. Along another wall were stirrup pumps and buckets of sand.

  The lieutenant grabbed a pump and was turning toward the door when an incendiary bomb shot through the shed's roof, showering the room with shingles. The canister slammed into the cement floor and burst open, spewing phosphorous to all corners of the shed and immediately igniting. A second canister blew through the roof, splintering the storage shelves before it split open on the floor and splashed more chemically fed fire across the room.

  Furious flames blocked the door, crawled up the wood walls, and surged into the shower and tubs. Acrid black smoke blinded Hey- dekampf. Fire climbed his legs. The German was surrounded by shimmering sheets of orange flame. He tried for the entry, but the inferno beat him back. He doubled over, his lungs unable to draw in the baked air. He dropped the pump. His cap fell to the pool of flames on the floor. Fire splattered onto his uniform. His hair ignited. He sank to his knees, keenly aware that he was about to die.

  And he journeyed straight to hell, surely for out of the wall of fire stepped the devil, his skin leaping with flame, his eyes sinister red embers. Fire roiled around Satan's head in a profane imitation of an angel's halo. The devil's arms—limbs of flames—reached for the German.

  Satan had the same features as the crazy American. It figured, was Heydekampf's last thought. He toppled toward the footbath.

  The American scooped up the lieutenant and charged back out the delousing-shed door trailing flames. POWs immediately smothered the two men with their coats. They wrestled them to the cobblestones and rolled them over and over, choking the flames.

  Two other incendiaries had landed in the yard. Guards and prisoners used shovels and sand from the fire station in the British orderlies' quarters to douse them. Other POWs returned to the yard and ran over to the lieutenant and the American.

  The blankets were lifted. Lieutenant Heydekampf s clothes had become charred shreds. The hair on the left side of his head was scorched. His neck and wrist and calves were raw. The soles of his boots had been burned off.

  The crowd around them grew larger. The American rolled to his knees. Smoke wafted from his blackened jacket and pants. His right ear was singed and his right arm would require salve. His eyebrows had been burned almost to the skin.

  Lieutenant Heydekampf opened his eyes. Through heat-blistered lips he gasped, "You!" He coughed roughly and panted for breath. "I thought you were the devil."

  The American grinned and spoke to a German guard for the first time since his capture. "I've been called that before."

  3

  THE AMERICAN scraped a rusty nail with a fingernail file. The filings dropped to a tiny red pile on a copy of the Overseas Kid, the German propaganda newspaper for POWs, used mainly for toilet paper. The American worked rhythmically until the nail shone like new.

  Next he began filing a piece of charcoal. A cone of shavings grew on the paper. Also on the table was a tin marked NUR FÜR KRIEGSGEFAN- GENE (FOR POWs ONLY), a grainyjam distilled from sugar beets. Leaning against the wall was a baseball bat he had carved from a pole stolen from the castle shop.

  He was on the first floor of the British ward. At his elbow was dinner: one-seventh of a loaf of black bread and three small potatoes. At the stove near the door Lieutenant Reginald Burke of the Royal Tank Regiment was
stirring tomcat stew, a catchall for anything available that day.

  "Are yours in, Yank?" Burke called from the stove.

  The American threw him the three potatoes. Burke sliced them, letting the wedges drop into the kettle. The stew also contained a handful of barley and kohlrabi, a plant resembling a turnip. He tossed in a pinch of salt. Pepper was not issued because a POW who was attempting escape had once thrown it into a guard's eyes. Tomcat stew was inedible to anyone but the starving.

  The POWs knew the American as John, and they knew it was a pseudonym adopted to protect his life, for reasons they could only guess. The American had told only the senior allied officer his true name.

  Burke was a Londoner, with hooded eyes and ears that stuck out at ninety degrees from his head. The turret of his Churchill tank had been on fire when he fled through the hatch, and the burn scar on his neck resembled purple crepe. He lifted a pot from the stove, then moved to the table to fill the American's cup. The ersatz coffee smelled like a wet dog.

  Two other kriegies were lying on their bunk beds, weak from pneumonia and dysentery. The Colditz infirmary was full. The American opened a D-bar from a Red Cross parcel. He cut the chocolate into fourths. Then with his spoon he gathered the crumbs that had fallen from the bar while he quartered it. He placed these atop the chocolate pieces, careful to apportion the crumbs evenly.

  Burke ladled stew into a bowl. "This is as ready as it'll ever be."

  The American rose from the table to take a bowl and cup from Burke. He carried them to a bunk where Captain Lewis Grimball of the Wiltshire Regiment was shivering under his blanket. The spring thaw had not reached the castle's interior. The American helped him to a sitting position. Grimball coughed raggedly. The American wiped spit from the corner of Grimball's mouth then held the cup to his lips.

  Grimball sipped, then wheezed, "This tastes like bloody dirt, John."

  "Here's your chocolate." The American placed the candy in his hand, then stirred the nail rust and charcoal powder into the ersatz coffee, and handed it to the Brit. Rust prevented anemia and the charcoal helped control dysentery.