“Who’s this fellow?” the officer repeated. His faded insignia showed he was a captain in the Tank Corps.
Lennox rose to his feet, and unconsciously stood beside Johann. Something in the officer’s high-pitched voice, in his way of repeating the question so insistently, annoyed Lennox. What did he think Lennox was? A blasted idiot? Johann wouldn’t have been alive if he had been an enemy. Lennox remembered Miller’s words that afternoon. He repeated them now. “He’s all right,” he said, and then remembered to add “sir.” Johann’s anxious face was turned towards him. The boy’s light blue eyes were worried as he listened to the English voices. The officer’s hand left his shoulder, and the worried look eased.
“He’s a friend, sir,” the captain reported in his turn to a colonel who was watching the group curiously.
The colonel nodded. “Where are all the guards?” he asked Lennox.
“They left before the fight started, sir,” Lennox answered. He looked bitterly at the officers’ insignia. All that old stuff again, sirs and salutes and sirs. “Johann, here, scared the daylight out of them with the news.”
“And what was that?” the colonel asked quickly.
“The South Tyrol is no longer Italian.”
The colonel half-smiled and glanced at Johann’s face. “And Johann belongs to the South Tyrol?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any other news? We heard rumours of peace on our journey north.”
“The Eyties have surrendered, sir.”
The officers exchanged broad grins. “Better tell the others,” the senior officer said. “And tell them there’s no more fighting to be done here meanwhile. Seemingly the rest of the guards have upped and left us.” He stood watching Johann. “I’d like to see you once we straighten things out here,” he said in very precise German.
Johann looked worried. He answered quickly, and at some length.
“What the dickens is he talking about?” the colonel asked in amazement.
“I didn’t catch all of it, sir, but I think he was saying that he wants to leave now. He says he has proved that we can trust him.”
“Yes, but he’s just the chap we need. Tell him to stay here meanwhile. Better keep beside him. You seem to understand his lingo.”
“I’ve got accustomed to the accent, sir.”
“Well, stay with him. We want to be sure we don’t misunderstand him when we have time to question him.”
Lennox said, “Yes, sir.” He spoke without any enthusiasm. He had a uniform upstairs. He had a map and money. He had his plan. Now would be the time to use them. Darkness was coming, and he could have been far from here by daybreak. He would have managed it, too; this time he would have escaped. It was just his blasted luck, he thought: seven months of planning for nothing. And then, as he saw Miller lying at his feet, his lips tightened, and he stopped grousing about his luck.
The colonel had looked at Lennox keenly for a moment before he turned away to attend to the decisions which were being carried out. As senior officer, he had much to organise quickly.
The wounded were taken to be patched up in the camp hospital across the courtyard. The dead were carried out of the hall, and the Germans’ weapons, uniforms, and papers were removed for future use. Extra men were sent out to join the two who had remained on guard over the captured lorries. A detail was dispatched to the kitchen and store-rooms to forage for food. Officers were in the Commandant’s office, examining papers and maps. One of them was installed at the telephone: he had taught Romance languages at a university, and could cope with any sudden calls to the Commandant from the town. Another, who had been an advertising artist, was making sketches of various sections of the enormous relief-map which was cemented into one wall of the office. A party had gone down to the blackness of the detention-cells, where they found the gaoler had long left his basement post, and seventeen cold, filthy, and truculent Tommies were helped upstairs. Others searched the castle and outbuildings with care. The guard-room was emptied of weapons and ammunition. The commissary was ransacked for useful equipment. Armed sentries, in German coats, were posted round the camp. The searchlight at the gate was manned, ready to give its usual five-minute sweep, so that any Germans in the town would see its customary watchfulness.
The men and officers accomplished their jobs quickly and efficiently. But there was an underlying cheerfulness which would break out into a laugh, or a quip, or an exchange of good-natured libels. The younger officers were as excited as the men. Only the senior officer, and the two majors who stood talking to him, were grave. Only Lennox and Johann Schichtl, standing together in the hall, were silent. And both were equally impatient.
But when the colonel came over to them once more he didn’t waste much time in finding out what he wanted to know. Johann, in spite of his obvious impatience, answered each question quickly and directly. Lennox translated, when necessary, with equal simplicity. The officers grouped round the colonel watched the boy’s face as they listened to Lennox.
First of all, they were assured, they need have no fears about Falcone or the five guards who had been the last to desert from the camp, and who were the only Italians to see the revolt begin. For these men had been strong Fascists like the Commandant. They would never reach the town. (“We’ve taken care of that,” Johann said with a grin. “It is easier to kill them now than to have to search them out later.”)
Those who had deserted earlier in the day had slipped away, one by one, each thinking he was the only man with foresight in the camp. And so each would believe that the camp was still guarded by those he had left behind.
None of the Germans in the courtyard had escaped to give warning.
No house was near the camp, and no one in the town could have heard the shots.
No one would come to the camp tonight. The first arrivals would be at six tomorrow morning, when the daily food supplies were brought to the camp.
The staffs of the kitchen, commissary, and post office, who were civilians recruited from the town, generally arrived at seven o’clock each morning.
So much for the camp’s routine and personnel.
As to the town (“Bozen,” Johann said pointedly, as the colonel again made the tactical error of using the Italian form of Bolzano), only Italians had occupied the barracks until recently. After Mussolini’s fall some Germans had been placed in command. That was what caused the trouble in the town this afternoon. The Italian soldiers had said the war was over. They had put down their guns and tried to walk out. The Germans had shot at them. And then the Italian officers, who until then were not sure what they should do, had ordered their men to shoot back. There were not many Germans in the barracks so they were all killed. A number of Italians were killed, too, and the rest had left the barracks. Some of them had taken rifles and ammunition, but many didn’t. These had stripped off their uniforms, and had left their guns in the barracks. They were pretending now to be civilians.
The Nazis would probably take over the town, for they were already in firm control of the station and the railway to the Brenner Pass. They were playing a double game: they were backing the Fascist Italians, who were still working with the Nazis, and they were trying to win the support of the Tyrolese. Some of the Tyrolese listened to the Germans, believing that Hitler would free them from the Italians as his secret propaganda had promised for many years. But other men of the Tyrol only saw the Germans as new dictators to oppress them.
When Johann ended the colonel exchanged glances with the two majors. “At least,” he said, with a wry smile, “we are probably safe enough here for the next few hours. We have time to eat and finish our plans.”
One of the majors—he was an American wearing Rangers’ insignia—said, “But it’s a hell of a set-up.”
The other major nodded. “Absolutely.” He looked at Johann again. “It seems we have three kinds of Italians to deal with. Those who won’t fight at all; those who won’t fight against the Germans; and those who want to fight Germans. And there are two kinds of Tyrolese: those who are pro-Nazi, mainly because they hate the Italians; and those who hate the Nazis and who want to get rid of the Italians by themselves. That gives us five different sets of people to handle, not to mention the Germans.”
“Personally,” the American said, “I’ll be glad when we come up against the Germans. At least, you know what to shoot there.”
The colonel was still watching Johann. Half to himself he said, “If we only knew more about politics here we might be better able to—” He turned to Lennox. “Do you know anything about the political quarrels in this district?”
“A little. But Johann could tell you much more, sir.”
“If we had time...” the colonel said. “If I were sure of enough time...” He had started worrying again. “Pass out the food, anyway,” he said to the majors. “Share round any weapons you’ve found. Make a division of the men into those who are fit to travel and fight, those who are not. Find out their special branch of the service and decide how we can best use them.”
The officers hurried away. The colonel still watched Johann.
“Go ahead,” the older man said. He watched Lennox with thoughtful eyes.
Lennox said quietly, “Johann, who told you to give the prisoners information? Who told you to spread the news among the guards so that they’d desert? Someone you met down in Bozen, when you were off duty today?”
A careful look spread over Johann’s face, and wiped all the emotion out of it.
“Someone told you, didn’t he, Johann?”
Johann didn’t answer. I bet I’m right, Lennox was thinking. Johann was no fool; but there was a cleverer man than he would ever be behind all this.
“I must leave,” Johann was saying. “I must go now. I have told you everything. I must go.”
“To see this man?” tried Lennox.
Johann looked at him unhappily. “Our plans have changed. I must report,” he admitted.
“Changed? You mean the Germans who arrived here and are now killed have altered the plans?”
Johann said nothing.
“But, Johann, they are dead. They won’t inform. How can they alter any plans?”
Johann still said nothing.
Lennox looked at the officer. “Sorry, sir. That’s as far as we get.”
“You didn’t do badly. At least you’ve discovered the boy is part of an organisation. Pity he has suddenly shut up like this. Might have been helpful.”
Jock Stewart appeared with a rough bandage round his head and a stack of thick sandwiches in his arm. “Best chuck we’ve had here yet,” he said cheerfully, and handed out the slabs of bread with their generous slices of cheese. “Eyties’ larder,” he explained. “Soup is being heated now. Won’t be long, sir.” Then as Lennox took his allotted sandwiches, Stewart suddenly said, “Hey! I’ve got something for you. Didn’t get time to hide them before the Jerries arrived. There in my pocket. No. The left one.”
Lennox obeyed. He pulled out the German buttons which Miller had got for him. They gleamed in his soot-smeared palm.
“Not much good to you now,” Stewart said, with his usual combination of the practical and the obvious.
Lennox’s lips tightened as he looked at the buttons. And then he saw that both the colonel and Johann were staring at them too.
“When did you plan to leave?” the colonel was asking quietly, almost sympathetically.
“Tomorrow or the next day, sir. Before the moon grew too big.” Lennox made an attempt to smile. Suddenly he handed the buttons to Johann. “Perhaps you’ll find someone else who needs them.”
“They were for you?”
“Yes.”
“Not for Miller?”
“No.”
“For you? You were planning to escape?”
“I was.” Seven months of work, of planning, of worrying. Seven months of self-centred concentration. That’s what these seven months had done to him. That’s all they had produced.
Johann’s face changed. “Then you are the one we want. Please come. The man you were asking about wants to see you. Let us go at once. We are late. Very late.”
The colonel had understood part of these words. “He wants to see you?” He looked at the puzzled Lennox. “That means he wants to see the man who was determined enough to escape from this prison camp.” He paused for a moment. And then, with a mental jump which seemed at first inconsequential, he said, “I believe any man sent here had a record of escapes from other camps. And the corporal told me that any who tried to escape from here were shot if they were found. Is that so?”
“Shot while resisting arrest,” Lennox said bitterly. “Their bodies were sent back here to prove that to the others.”
“But escaped prisoners are unarmed: weapons are the one thing that a guard can’t be bribed to procure.”
“They were unarmed, sir.”
“I see.” The colonel was silent. Then to Johann he said very carefully, “Why does this man in Bolzano—Bozen, I mean—want to see the prisoner who planned to escape? For what reason?”
Johann was undecided, hesitating, worried. And then, as if realising that the quickest way to end all this questioning was to give direct answers once more, he said simply, “We need him. To go with us into the mountains. We need him. When your armies will be coming up to the Brenner Pass we need someone who can”—he fumbled for the right word—“connect us with you.”
Lennox translated the boy’s sentences quickly. “Liaison officer is what he means, I think,” he concluded.
The boy nodded eagerly as he heard “liaison.” “That’s the word. We need liaison. We are working alone. We need someone to connect us with you, to tell you what we have done and why we have done it. Or else the Allies would think when they came that we were only joining the winning side, that we hadn’t earned the right to be masters in our own land.”
Lennox translated again.
“So that’s it!” the colonel said. Then, “Suppose we agreed to this, and gave you a liaison officer, would the man in Bozen help us now? When we leave here we will fight our way south to join our troops coming north. But we need more guns—many more. And we need help for the wounded who can’t travel with us. Can your people help them?”
Johann considered these problems. “Perhaps. I don’t know. He could tell you.”
“Who is he?”
“The man in Bozen.” And that was all Johann would say.