By that time he was hobbling badly, so he went well back among the trees, sat down against one, and focused on the dark and murky aura around his legs. You did good work, he told them, damn good, and I appreciate it. Now let's see what I can do for you.
He began to touch the sore places, willing increased blood flow into them, touched the energy vortices in his hip joints, knees, ankles, feeling their energy. Then he began manipulating the energy threads. The tissues were heavily loaded with fatty acids, and responded more slowly than he'd expected.
30 minutes though, the soreness was much reduced, and he got to his knees, to work on his buttocks by feel and visualization. That done, he took off his boots and gave attention to his blood-blistered toes. Finally he found a patch of feather moss, and lying down on it, went to sleep almost at once.
He awoke famished, and realized he had nothing with him to eat. In his intensity of the day and evening before, he'd failed to put any rations in his pockets; they lay in his musette bag, behind the TNT he'd piled in the south wing room.
His watch read 1833 hours. He'd slept the whole afternoon. And to his surprise, his legs had stiffened again, somewhat, so he sat down and began to work on them. Guys, he told them, I'm sorry, but I really didn't have any choice. He'd never "talked" to his body before while healing it- not as if its parts had a sentience of their own. When he'd thought to them, it had been to direct them, guide them, not apologize or acknowledge. But somehow it seemed the thing to do now.
This time he continued till the soreness was gone. His watch read 1911. He drank again, to put something in his stomach, and gave his attention to the evening.
Tonight some of the SS men would be on pass, would ride a truck to Kaufbeuren, probably; it was somewhat nearer than Kempten, and not a lot smaller. He really didn't know much about their lives, he realized. Presumably they'd bring back girls, and the cellar beneath the north wing would be dangerous for him. If he could blow the stack he'd made beneath the south wing, though, that should collapse the south wing interior, and the Voitar would end up part of the rubble. A train of gunpowder could serve as a fuse, with a candle for a timer if he could find one. But he'd need a detonator of some kind in lieu of the blasting caps.
He could always blow the stack with a plasma ball, as he'd done on the ridge, but it would be his dying act.
So. Detonators. Somewhere in the north wing, probably on the first floor, the SS would have its ordnance room. Find it, steal a few grenades, get the detonators out of them… The potato masher grenade was one German weapon he hadn't been taught to dismantle, but it was easy enough with American grenades; the German were probably no harder. The tricky part would be getting the grenades.
Once again topped off his canteen at the lake, then headed briskly for the schloss. Dusk was settling. The guardsmen on pass would have left for town already; maybe the cellar door would be unbarred.
When he reached the manor's grounds, he stopped, chagrined. Two men stood guard by the cellar entryway, one on each side. Clearly something had happened, and the only thing he could think of was, they'd discovered that a large amount of TNT was missing from the magazines. If so, they might have searched, maybe found the stash he'd made beneath the south wing.
For a moment he stood uncertain, then crossed the yard opposite the north ell and moved along the front of the building just far enough from the wall not to leave tracks in the flowerbeds. There were two guards at the front door, too; there'd been only one before. On the porch, he used the additional concealment of a pillar, and waited. Within a few minutes, Captain Kupfer arrived, a driver letting him off in front of the entrance. Daring, Macurdy followed him closely through the door.
An stopped. A guard now stood at the door to the cellar stairway, and another on the second floor landing, overlooking the foyer. Then it struck him: this evening they had submachine guns. Before, they'd had bolt-action Mausers, varnished and polished-fire one shot, then work the bolt-much more accurate at a distance, but close up, far less dangerous. Deciding, Macurdy walked toward the guard at the cellar stairway. The man's aura reflected boredom, resentment, inattentiveness. Heart in throat, Macurdy slipped past him and down the stairs, then turned toward the north wing. At the hell he saw the guards at the magazine doors. Now he had no doubt: His thefts had been discovered.
That left the question of his south wing stash, so he started for it. Peering around the south hell, he saw no one, so he continued to the room he'd made a bomb of. Was it booby-trapped? Wired to an alarm? He turned its knob and pushed; it made hardly a sound. Stepping inside, he closed it behind him and turned on the light. Things weren't as bad as he'd feared. The stack of TNT, and the musette bag on top of it, still were cloaked. Again he folded the towel against the bottom of the door, then ate a K ration and drank some water.
Now, he thought, to find the SS ordnance room and steal some grenades. Intent and somehow confident again, he retraced his way up the cellar stairs and past the guard, who, like the others, held his weapon at port arms, ready for quick use.
Macurdy, he told himself, the guards aren't your main problem. Just find their damned ordnance room.
There might, he thought, be a building diagram in Landgraf's office. Slipping past the staircase, he entered the corridor, stopped in front of the colonel's door, and put an hear to the panel. And heard the colonel's voice, apparently on the phone.
Macurdy straightened. He'd planned to warn Edouard Schurz before he blew the place; he might as well do it now. Warning Schurz was one of the details he'd deliberately omitted from his mission plan. He was confident the professor wouldn't expose him, but even Von Lutzow might object to warning the man: The reaction would be, why take the chance? So rather than disobey an order, Macurdy had said nothing about it.
Going to the staircase, he slipped past the guard and up to the second floor. Normally Edouard would be in the recreation room in mid-evening, so he peered in. Something new had been added-a radio, a large floor model, from which music issued-from Lohengrin, though he didn't know it. The only woman there was Berta, playing cards with a girl about 10 years old. Macurdy had never seen the child before. Otto was absent; Philipp sat turning cards as always, aimlessly it seemed; Manfred Eich sat in the broken-down easy chair by the window, reading. Edouard dozed with a magazine in his lap.
On an impulse, Macurdy tried to project a thought into Edouard's mind, but got no response, so he walked softly into the room and leaned near his ear from behind.
"Edouard," he whispered, "I am in the men's quarters. Come to me. Pretend that nothing unusual is happening. There is something urgent you must know."
Edouard opened his eyes, and for a long moment stared straight ahead, then got to his feet, lay the magazine on a shelf, and left. By that time Macurdy had backed out the door and moved quickly to the room, where he stood by the open latrine door. Edouard entered, looked around, and still failed to see him.
"In the latrine," Macurdy murmured, "in case anyone looks in," and watched a frowning Edouard walk past him not five feet away. Following him inside, Macurdy dropped his cloak and closed the door. "Here," he said quietly. Turning, Edouard stared first at the strange uniform, then at Macurdy's face. "Lieber Gott!" he breathed.
"Where is Otto?"
"Sent away. Back to the farm; he is too old even for the Volkssturm. And Marie is gone; the old woman. And Sofia, the red-haired gypsy, God knows where. What has become of Anna?"
"As soon as we reached England, she turned us in. She is working for the Americans now. As I have been, all along, investigating the aliens, though she didn't know it."