Camp 30

PUFFIN CANADA
 

CAMP 30

ERIC WALTERS
is the author of thirty-two acclaimed and bestselling novels for children and young adults. His novels have won numerous awards, including the Silver Birch, Blue Heron, Red Maple, Snow Willow, Ruth Schwartz and Tiny Torgi, and have received honours from the Canadian Library Association Book Awards and UNESCO's international award for Literature in Service of Tolerance.
Run,
his novel about Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope, has been a bestseller.
Camp 30
is the sequel to
Camp X
.

Eric resides in Mississauga with his wife, Anita, and children, Christina, Nicholas and Julia. When not writing or touring across the country speaking to school groups, Eric spends time playing or watching soccer and basketball, or playing the saxophone.

To find out more about Eric and his novels, or to arrange for him to speak at your school, visit his website at
www.interlog.com/~ewalters
.

Also by Eric Walters from Penguin Canada

The Bully Boys

The Hydrofoil Mystery Trapped in Ice

Camp X

Royal Ransom

Run

Other books by Eric Walters

Overdrive

I've Got an Idea

Underdog

Death by Exposure

Road Trip

Northern Exposures Long Shot

Tiger in Trouble

Hoop Crazy

Rebound

Full Court Press

Caged Eagles

The Money Pit Mystery Three-on-Three

Visions

Tiger by the Tail

War of the Eagles

Stranded

Diamonds in the Rough

STARS

Stand Your Ground

CAMP 30

ERIC WALTERS

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc., 2004

Published in this edition, 2004

(OPM) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Copyright © Eric Walters, 2004

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Walters, Eric, 1957–

   Camp 30 / Eric Walters.

Sequel to: Camp X.

For children aged 8–12.

ISBN 0-14-301678-4

1. Camp 30 (Bowmanville, Ont.)—Juvenile fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, Canadian—Juvenile fiction. 3. Prisoners of war—Germany—Juvenile fiction. 4. Prisoners of war—Canada—Juvenile fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Camp Thirty.

PS8595.A598C35  2004a       jC813'.54          C2004-906157-7

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

For my good friend Lynn-Phillip Hodgson, who is not only

the world expert on Camp X and Camp 30, but gave me

both his encouragement and expertise in creating this novel

CAMP 30

CHAPTER ONE

AUGUST
7, 1942

“
GREAT SHOT, JACK
!” I exclaimed as the newspaper skittered across the porch and bumped into the front door of the house.

“I'm getting to be as good with my left arm as I am with my right,” Jack said. Good thing, too, because my brother's right arm was encased in plaster to allow his broken wrist to mend.

“You do the next one,” he offered.

“Sure.” I was trying to sound confident even though I wasn't. I pulled a paper out of the bag slung over my shoulder, folded it, cocked my arm and let it fly. The paper flew end over end, slammed into the porch railing and fell back into the bushes.

“You throw like a girl,” Jack said.

“Shut up!” I snapped. I walked across the grass,
retrieved the paper and tossed it over the railing and onto the porch.

“Maybe I should call you Georgia instead of George.”

“I'm telling you to shut up!”

“And just what are you gonna do to make me?”

That was a good question. My brother wasn't just older, he was bigger and tougher, too.

“You gonna tell Mommy on me? You gonna tell her that I was mean to her little baby boy—I mean, baby girl?” He laughed at his lame joke and then reached over to tweak my cheek. I knocked his hand away.

“Oh, so you want to fight me, do you?”

He dropped his newspaper bag to the pavement and started bouncing around, fists out like a prizefighter.

“I can take you with one hand tied behind my back!” He put his broken hand behind him. “Does little Georgie think he's a tough guy now 'cause he's just turned twelve? I'm still your big brother and I'll always be your big brother!”

“You'll always be two years older than me but that doesn't mean you'll always be two years bigger than me.”

“Ooh! That sounds like a threat,” Jack replied, and he jabbed me in the shoulder. It hurt but I tried not to react.

“Maybe I should knock you around now before you get so
big and tough
that I won't be able to.” He laughed and punched me again.

“Stop it now!” I yelled. I was used to this kind of teasing from my brother, but I wasn't really in the mood for it.

“Or what, Georgie?”

“Or this.” I slipped the newspaper bag off my shoulder and let it drop to the ground. “Deliver your own papers.” I turned and walked away.

“Come on, George, I was just goofing around!”

I kept walking.

“Don't be such a baby!”

I didn't even slow down.

“Okay … you win!”

Now I stopped and turned around. “Win what?” I asked.

“I won't do it again,” he said. I started to walk back. “At least I won't do it again
today
.”

That was what I'd expected. It was good enough for now. I picked up the bag and slung it back over my shoulder. We walked along again in silence. It was a hot day— a real scorcher—and we were nowhere near done.

“You're awful quiet today,” Jack said.

“Just thinking.”

“That's a first.”

I shot him a dirty look.

“So what were you thinking about?” Jack asked.

“I was thinking about how all of this is pretty strange.”

“Delivering papers is strange?” Jack asked as he tossed another paper up onto a porch. I wished
he
would hit the bushes every now and again.

“Yeah.”

“How do you figure that? We're on the same route, same houses, delivering the same paper we always do,” Jack said.

“That's what's so strange,” I replied.

Jack shot me a my-brother-is-an-idiot look.

“Just think. After everything that's gone on over the last few weeks—all those things that nobody would believe even if we could tell them—here we are acting like absolutely nothing happened. It's like it was all just a dream.”

“Maybe for you. I carry around a reminder everywhere I go,” he said, holding up his arm. “And every time I look in a mirror or try to eat anything.”

“How is your jaw?”

“Better, but still not perfect, not by a long shot.”

Jack's jaw had been fractured at the same time his wrist had been broken.

“But think about it,” I continued. “Here we are delivering the
Whitby Reporter,
the paper that Mr. Krum used to own, and now he's dead, and—”

“He's lucky he
is
dead or he'd have to deal with me!”

“Or Bill or Little Bill or the other agents at Camp X.”

“Keep your voice down!” Jack cautioned.

I looked around. “There's nobody to hear me. Besides, talking to you is the only thing that reminds me it was real.”

“Then just don't talk about that stinking Krum! He was nothing more than a Nazi, a traitor, a spy!”

Jack took another paper and heaved it onto the porch of the next house. This time it smashed against the door with a thunderous crash. The glass at the top of the door rattled and shook, and for an instant I thought it might shatter.

“You almost put that one
through
the door,” I said.

“At least I hit the door instead of the railing or the—”

“Young man!” We turned back around. A woman—an old, wrinkled woman who was probably at least seventy— was poking her head out of the door Jack had just hit with the paper.

“Do you realize that you nearly scared me half to death?” she called out.

“Sorry, ma'am,” Jack said. “It sort of got away from me. I'm not so good with my left hand.” He held up his right arm to show her the cast.

“I nearly jumped right out of my skin. It sounded like somebody shooting at my house.”

Jack and I exchanged a look. It had been loud, but nothing like a gunshot. We knew, from right up close, what that sounded like.

“I imagine I should just be grateful to be getting my paper again,” she continued.

After Mr. Krum's death the paper hadn't been
published for two weeks. Then, on the front cover of the first new issue, was the story about how he'd died.

“I was so saddened to hear about the publisher's death in that automobile accident,” she said. “Mr. Krum was such a nice man.”

Without looking I sensed my brother stiffening beside me. I knew he wanted to say something—about how Krum had
really
died, about what sort of man he
really
was—but he couldn't. He was—
we
were—sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act.

“Say … your arm … Were you one of the boys in the car? I heard that two of Mr. Krum's paper boys were in the car with him when he died.”

“We were both in the car,” I lied. Neither of us had been in the car with Mr. Krum when he'd died, because he hadn't really died in a car crash.

“How awful for the two of you!” she exclaimed. “Thank the good Lord that you both survived.” She paused. “I heard it was mechanical failure, that something went wrong with his steering.”