CHAPTER 10

A SPY’S HIDEOUT

Pam stood rooted to the ground, her pulse pounding. Maybe this was where Arminger really lived. Then her pigeons would be here too!

Suddenly the ground beneath Pam’s feet began to tremble. Behind her, the trees shielding the road from view spit out the sound of a motor lumbering up the road. Someone was coming!

Pam dove out of sight into the foliage. She crouched in the brush, eyeing the road. Soon a truck rumbled into sight, and another, and another. Three trucks in all, with wooden crates stacked in their beds.

Pam watched them approach, holding her breath. The roar of their engines swallowed the woodland sounds. The lead truck thundered nearer, until it was close enough for Pam to confirm what she suspected. Her heart skipped a beat.

The driver of the truck was Arminger.

Pam’s chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe. She dropped to her haunches while her mind raced. It seemed she had what she wanted: Arminger, red-handed with her pigeons, and a passel of other people’s pigeons to boot. But she felt so frightened she could hardly move.

The other engines growled past. Gathering her courage, Pam lifted her head barely above the leaves. The trucks had stopped in front of one of the buildings, and the men were unloading the crates and carrying them inside. They seemed to be taking great care with the handling. Pam’s breathing quickened. What did they have in those crates?

Everything she’d heard and read about spies tumbled back upon her. Spies were everywhere, listening to every offhand comment, monitoring every newspaper report, gathering information on every street corner to use against America’s war effort. They planted bombs under factories and government buildings, and tried to assassinate American leaders. Pam remembered word for word one particular CPI poster: Germans are like hunters studying their game, and for the same purpose. Their object is to kill. To kill. To kill.

Icy talons of fear clawed at Pam’s spine. In those crates could be anything—weapons, poison gas, even bombs. The men had finished unloading and were standing outside, smoking and talking. Pam strained to hear their conversation, but she couldn’t make out words. Their voices were a low drone like the buzz of a horsefly. If only she dared to get closer ….

Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours, while Pam wrestled with herself—her cold fear versus her burning hatred for the likes of Arminger and his sons, if they were his sons at all. She was one girl against three men, all probably armed. If she got caught, there would be no one to come to her rescue; no one would even know she had been here. Arminger would go right on with his sinister plans, and no one would ever be the wiser.

In the end, Pam’s fear won out. She couldn’t bring herself to move any closer. Better to go home and get help, she told herself. She hoped it wasn’t too late for that already.

Pam shivered. The midday heat had melted into the long shadows leaning across the road. It would be a race now to get back to the creek before dark. With her heart as heavy as an anvil, Pam turned into the woods and trotted east. She felt the sun weaker, yet still warm, on her back. Inside she was cold. She hated herself for giving in to fear. Not only had she abandoned her dog, she had also abandoned her pigeons. The stolen pigeons were right there under her nose—they had to be—and she was too much of a chicken to go after them.

Then and there Pam changed her mind. It was one thing to spy on spies, to eavesdrop on their conversation, to try to foil their plans—that was deadly stuff, not something one lone girl should get mixed up in. It would be another thing entirely to sneak in before dawn while the men were asleep and rescue her pigeons. She could be in and out of their compound in a flash, her birds strapped safely in corselets in her basket. Pam’s confidence surged as the plan took shape in her mind. Odessa would fly with a message for Mama; Pam would spend the night in the woods and steal into the compound before first light.

Pam hiked a few miles further into the forest. She would have to be far enough away so that Arminger and his men couldn’t see the smoke from her campfire. And she would have to have a fire; nightfall would bring cold, not enough to freeze a body but enough to make a body feel frozen.

Once she found a good spot to camp, Pam sent Odessa off to Mama. Then, using her belt hatchet and pocket-knife, Pam set up a reflector for her campfire—green pine logs split in half and stacked between posts with the flat side to the fire. The idea was to deflect the heat in her direction. For kindling she picked up cedar shavings, pine straw, and small twigs. Then she gathered fallen logs and branches and separated them into stacks according to size, the biggest logs for keeping the flames going through the night. She shingled together fresh-cut pine branches, overlapping the needles like shingles on a house, to make herself a mattress and a blanket. Maybe she wouldn’t exactly be cozy in her spicy bed, but she’d be warm enough to sleep. All her senses would need to be alert tomorrow for her foray into Arminger’s territory.

Having seen to her warmth for the night, Pam turned her attention to satisfying her empty belly. Between the wild chestnuts, chinquapins, papaws, and wrinkled yellow persimmons, the trees yielded enough food to ward off hunger pangs. Most of the berry bushes had been well-scavenged by coons and possums, but beside a little stream she found some muscadine grapes, which she had for dessert.

Soon dusk had dropped a blanket across the woods. The stars, one by one, pricked through and blinked cold and distant above Pam’s head. To Pam the forest was a friendly place in the daytime, but nighttime transformed the trees into shadowy hulks where, she imagined, yellow-eyed creatures lurked in the darkness. The slightest noise, even the hoot of an owl, sent prickles down Pam’s spine. If only Bos were here to protect her. …

Pam dozed on and off through the night. Once, the fire went out and she was awakened by her own shivering. It took a while to get the fire started again and for her to get warm enough to drift back off. Somewhere in the midnight hours, a grunting sound broke into her sleep. She jerked awake and thought she was hearing Lula down in the barn. Then she remembered where she was, in the middle of a forest miles from home. She lay paralyzed by fear, listening to something grunting in the trees outside the clearing. She heard stamping and pounding, coming closer and closer; then terror seized her as something crashed headlong through the trees at the edge of her campsite and lumbered away into the night.

After that, she couldn’t go back to sleep and didn’t dare move to feed the dying fire. From the quiet, she judged dawn to be near, so she waited impatiently for the inky sky to fade to gray. She wanted enough light to find her way to Arminger’s compound, but enough darkness to keep Arminger asleep in bed until she was safely away with her pigeons.

At last Pam rose stiffly from the ground. Her stomach was growling, but she was far too nervous to consider eating, even though she had saved some nuts from last night. When she stumbled over part of a deer’s antler at the edge of the clearing, she scolded herself for her night terrors. Autumn was rutting season for the deer; last night’s monster had been nothing more than two bucks fighting over a doe and the loser fleeing through the forest.

The hour or so before dawn is the only time a forest is truly still; the insects have quieted, the night-prowling creatures have returned to their dens, and the birds have not yet stirred. Every twig that snapped under Pam’s feet seemed to echo through the silence like a drum.

When Pam reached the edge of the compound, faint traces of pink were showing in the east. Here and there a bird had begun to twitter. With the first kiss of real sunlight the trees would be alive with chatter, and Pam’s opportunity would be past. She figured she had maybe thirty minutes to find her pigeons and get out.

The whitewashed buildings gleamed against the backdrop of the trees. As a ghostly half-light washed over the clearing, the outline of the buildings grew familiar. They were pigeon lofts, rows and rows of them. Anxiety pressed hard against Pam’s chest. How would she ever find her pigeons among all these birds?

Careful to keep her movements slow and soundless, Pam crept into the nearest loft. The sleepy pigeons stirred on their roosts, making throaty sounds that soothed Pam’s nervousness. In the presence of animals Pam never doubted herself. Her pigeons weren’t in this particular loft, but she would find them; she was sure of it.

The next building was a breeding loft, lined on three walls with nesting compartments. Although Pam didn’t expect to find her birds here—Arminger wouldn’t have had time to mate them—she peered quickly into each nest box just to be sure. One overzealous father, eager to protect his youngsters, rushed at Pam and pecked her on the cheek.

Her hand flew to the wound. “Ooww!” she cried out. Pigeons boiled out of their boxes, fussing loudly at the disturbance. Immediately Pam froze, knowing they would calm as soon as they realized she was no threat to their babies. She prayed that Arminger and his comrades were heavy sleepers.

Once the birds were quiet, Pam tiptoed out and went on to the next loft and the next. Every building was the same: scores of slim, sleek homers, but not hers. As bright daylight seeped steadily into the clearing, Pam began to get worried. Arminger would surely be waking any time now, and she still had one more row of lofts to go through, those closest to Arminger’s cabin.

She chided herself for saving these lofts for last. She should’ve searched them first, while she still had darkness as an ally. If anything happened in these lofts, like another irate pigeon attack, Arminger would hear the ruckus and come on the double. Pam’s stomach churned as she debated whether to take the risk of checking these lofts. What kind of treatment could a trespasser expect at the hands of German spies?

Then she thought of Caspian with his sharp, fiery eyes, and Orleans, and little Toulouse, and she burned with determination to get them back. She had come this far. How much time could it take to search a few more lofts? Anyway, she had a feeling about one of the lofts, the second one in the row. It was the only one in the compound that was sheltered by myrtle bushes. Almost as if Arminger had set out to design a loft where her pigeons would feel at home. She had a hunch that was where she’d find her birds.

Confidently Pam stepped inside, but disappointment rushed over her as she realized the loft was filled with youngsters, hardly more than squeakers. Some were not even fully feathered. Why had she been such a fool as to think Arminger would take any pains to comfortably house the pigeons he had stolen? No telling what he had done with her birds. Maybe they weren’t in the compound at all.

The thought plunged Pam into despair. What gave her the idea she could outwit a German spy? This whole expedition had been a waste of time. Mama would be furious with her, and Pam had put herself at risk for nothing. All for nothing. There was no use to even check the other lofts, nor was there time. Specks of dust were dancing merrily in the sunlight that streamed through the window.

Then Pam gasped. Footsteps, outside the loft! A voice, singing jauntily. It was Arminger!

Pam scanned the room, looking for a place to hide. In a pigeon loft? No such thing! She could hear the words to Arminger’s song clearly, something in a foreign language. He was on the other side of the wall. Surely he could hear her heart pounding.

Panic washed over her in waves. If she didn’t move now, do something … she didn’t even want to think about it. Her only chance of escape was to run for the woods. In the woods she could hide; there were hundreds of places to hide.

If she could make it out of the compound.

Quickly she calculated her chances. She was an excellent runner, but she was only a girl. Arminger was a grown man. And a spy Wouldn’t he as soon shoot you in the back as look at you?

The footsteps came closer. They were right outside the door. One more minute’s hesitation and she’d be caught. Pam hurled herself against the door with the force of a hurricane. She startled someone, a man. He staggered backward, cried out.

Pam streaked past, flew down the rows of white lofts. She heard shouting behind her. Was it Arminger? Did he have a gun? Her legs pumped.

Can’t look back, she thought. Run. Run!

Doors slammed. Pigeons squawked. Feet pounded behind her, gaining on her. Closer. Closer.

Arms seized her, pulled her to the ground.