And if it wasn’t too late. What was the date? He had no way of knowing. He hurried to find clothes that might fit him from the four dead men. He had to settle for the shirt and jacket from one soldier, the trousers from another, and the boots from a third. All of the clothes were damp with blood, but that couldn’t be helped. He stuffed his pockets with ammo clips. A gray woolen cap, free of bloodstains, lay on the ground. He put it on, and his fingers found the gash and the scabbed crust on the right side of his head. A fraction of an inch more, and the bullet would have smashed his skull.
Michael strapped the submachine gun around his shoulder and started along the road to the rocky slope. The fifth of June, he thought. Had it passed already? How many days and nights had he been here, believing himself a wolf? Everything was still dreamlike. He quickened his pace. The first task was getting into the plant; the second was getting to the stockade and freeing Chesna and Lazaris. Then he would know if he had failed or not, and whether tattered bodies lay in the streets of London because of it.
He heard a howl, a floating quaver, behind him. Golda’s voice. He didn’t look back.
On two legs he climbed toward his destiny.
9
They had made a meager effort to fill up the hole he’d dug under the fence, but it was obvious their shovels had been lazy. It took him a few minutes to scoop the loose dirt out, and he winnowed under again. The thumping heartbeat of the plant was in operation again, light bulbs glowing on the catwalks overhead. He went through the alleys, threading his way toward the edge of the airfield, where the stockade was. A soldier came around a corner and strolled in his direction. “Hey! Got a smoke?” the man asked.
“Sure.” Michael let him get close and dug in a pocket for cigarettes that weren’t there. “What time is it?”
The German checked his wristwatch. “Twelve-forty-two.” He looked at Michael and frowned. “You need a shave. If the captain sees you like that, he’ll kick your-” He saw the blood, and bullet holes stitched across the jacket. Michael saw his eyes widen.
He hit the German in the stomach with the gun butt, then cracked him across the skull and dragged his body to a group of empty chemical drums. He took the watch, heaved the body into a drum, and put the lid on it. Then he was on his way again, almost running. Forty-two minutes after midnight, he thought. But of what day?
The stockade building’s entrance was unguarded, but a single soldier sat at a desk just inside the door, his boots propped up and his eyes shut. Michael kicked the chair out from under him and slammed him against the wall, and the soldier returned to dreamland. Michael took a set of keys from a wall hook behind the desk and went along the corridor between several cells. He smiled grimly; the log-sawing snore of a certain bearded Russian reverberated in the hallway.
As Michael tried various keys in the lock of Lazaris’s prison, he heard a gasp of surprise. He looked at the cell two doors down and across the corridor, and behind the barred inset Chesna, her eyes brimming with tears in her dirty, haggard face, tried to speak but couldn’t form words. Finally they burst out: “Where the hell have you been?”
“Lying low,” he said, and went to her cell door. He found the right key, and the latch popped. As soon as Michael had pulled the door open, Chesna was in his arms. He held her as she trembled; he could feel her ribs and her clothes were grimy, but at least she hadn’t been beaten. She gave a single, heartbreaking sob, and then she struggled to gather her dignity. “It’s all right,” he said, and kissed her lips. “We’re going to get out of here.”
“Well, get me out of here first, you bastard!” Lazaris shouted from his cell. “Damn it, we thought you’d left us to rot!” His hair was a crow’s-nest stubble, his eyes glaring and wild. Chesna took the submachine gun and watched the corridor as Michael found the proper key and freed Lazaris.
The Russian emerged smelling of something more pungent than roses. “My God!” he said. “We didn’t know if you’d gotten away or not! We thought they might have killed you!”
“They gave it a good shot.” He glanced at the wristwatch. It was creeping up on one o’clock. “What’s the date?”
“Hell if I know!” Lazaris answered.
But Chesna had kept count of their twice-daily feedings. “It’s too late, Michael,” she said, “You’ve been gone for fifteen days.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“Today is the sixth of June,” she went on. “It’s too late.”
Too late. The words had teeth.
“Yesterday was D day,” Chesna said. She felt a little light-headed, and had to grasp hold of his shoulder. For the last twenty-four hours particularly, her nerves had been worn to a frazzle. “It’s all over by now.”
“No!” He shook his head, refusing to believe it. “You’re wrong! I couldn’t have been a… couldn’t have been gone that long!”
“I’m not wrong.” She held his wrist and looked at the watch. “It’s been the sixth of June for one hour and two minutes.”
“We’ve got to find out what’s going on. There must be a radio room here somewhere.”
“There is,” Lazaris said. “It’s in a building over by the fuel tanks.” He explained to Michael that he had been forced to work along with some other slave laborers to unclog an overflowing cesspool near the soldiers’ barracks, which accounted for the reek of his clothes. While up to his waist in shit, he’d been able to gather information about the plant from his fellow laborers. Hildebrand, for instance, lived in his lab, which was at the center of the plant near the chimney. The huge fuel tanks held oil to heat the buildings during the long winter months. The slave laborers were kept in another barracks not far from the soldiers’ quarters. And, Lazaris said, there was an armory in case of partisan attack, but exactly where that was he didn’t know.
“Can you get in that man’s clothes?” Michael asked Lazaris, once they were back to where the guard lay sprawled. Lazaris said he’d give it a try. Chesna went through the desk, and found a Luger and bullets. In another few moments Lazaris was in a Nazi uniform, the shirt taut at his shoulders and the trousers drooping around his legs. He pulled the belt to its last notch. At least the guard’s flat-brimmed cap fit. Lazaris still wore the boots that had been issued to him when they’d left Germany, though they were encrusted with indelicacies.
They started toward the radio room, Chesna still hobbling but able to walk on her own. Michael saw the radio tower, two lights blinking on it to alert low-flying aircraft, and steered them in that direction. After fifteen minutes of dodging through the alleys, they reached a small stone structure that was, again, unguarded. The door was locked. One of Lazaris’s shitty boots kicked compliance into it. Michael found a light switch, and there was the radio under a clear plastic cover atop a desk. Chesna had had more experience with German radios than he, so he stood aside as she turned it on, the dials illuminating with dim green, and began to search the frequencies. Static crackled from the tinny speaker. Then a faint voice, in German, talking about a diesel engine that needed overhauling: a ship at sea. Chesna came upon a Norwegian voice discussing the king-mackerel catch, possibly a code being transmitted to England. Another change of frequencies brought orchestral music into the room-a funeral dirge.
“If the invasion happened, it ought to be all over the airwaves,” Michael said. “What’s going on?”
Chesna shook her head, and kept searching. She found a news report from Oslo; the crisp German announcer talked about a new shipment of iron ore that had just sailed for the glory of the Reich and that a line for milk rations would be formed at six o’clock in front of Government Hall. The weather would continue unsettled, with a seventy-percent chance of rainstorms. Now back to the soothing music of Gerhardus Kaathoven…