Camp 30 (17 page)

“To leave you here is to risk your lives. I convinced the field marshal—who is my commander—that you could be helpful to our escape.”

“There's not a chance in hell we're going to help you,” Jack said defiantly.

“Just by being with us you offer assistance. They will be less likely to stop men travelling with their children. And if they do stop us, we will have two hostages.”

Hostages! We'd be hostages!

“Jack, it is time. You go next.”

Jack didn't move.

“Please, Jack, I do not wish to leave you here. It would be too dangerous. Down the ladder.”

Jack hesitated for a split second and then walked over to the hole in the floor. He started down the ladder, step by step, slowly disappearing into the hole.

“Now you, George.”

I didn't want to go, but I didn't want to stay, either— especially without Jack. I went to the hole and started down. Jack was waiting for me at the bottom.

“As soon as you get out of the hole at the other end get ready to run,” Jack whispered in my ear. “There's only the field marshal and he's old. I'm going to knock him down. You have to run for it.”

“But what about you?”

“Don't worry about me. Somebody has to warn the guards. Somebody has to—”

“Is everything all right?” Otto called down the hole.

“Sure. Everything's okay!” Jack yelled back. “My brother is just nervous about going in the tunnel. I told him he'll be fine—he just has to follow me.”

“Good! Listen to your brother, George. Do as he says and everything will turn out for the best!”

Jack nodded at me. “Just be ready. I'll tackle the field marshal as soon as I see your head pop out.”
Jack dropped to his knees and then disappeared into the rectangular opening. I got down on my knees and peered into the passage. It was well lit, with a series of lights hanging from a wire. I could clearly see Jack moving along. I could also see the wooden supports—the wood taken from the attic of the building—at regular intervals. They were keeping the tunnel from collapsing … collapsing and burying anybody who was in it at the time. How many feet of earth would be over my head, and how much would it weigh if it fell in and—?

“It will be fine, George,” Otto said as he reached the bottom.

I nodded.

“I will not allow anything to happen to you boys. You have my word of honour.”

“Really?” I didn't know what to think about Otto any more. And as for honour, was that something I could really count on from an enemy?

He nodded.

“I'll go.” I didn't see that I had any choice. I ducked my head so I could fit into the tunnel opening. Somehow it had seemed bigger when I was just looking at it. I felt my whole body get hot and sweaty. Was there enough air down here?

“George,” Otto said. He was kneeling right beside me. “I do not like this either, but there is no choice. Move, bit by bit, and you will soon be out. You must move.”

 
He was right. I put my head down and started crawling. How long had he said that it was … three hundred feet? That wasn't long, about the length of a football field. All I had to do was keep my head down and keep moving.

I looked in front of me. The tunnel dipped down and moved slightly to the right. I couldn't see where it went. I stopped moving. Then I realized that I couldn't see Jack any more. I was more scared to be left behind than I was to go forward. I started moving again. Besides, if Jack was going to do what he said he was going to do, I had to get as far ahead of Otto as I could. The farther ahead the better the chance I'd have to escape. Maybe I could even help Jack when it was time to jump the field marshal—he wasn't that big and he was pretty old—and then the two of us could get away. I doubled my pace.

The tunnel started to slope upward. That had to be a good sign. Then I felt cool air … a breeze. There was air flowing in from the far end. I passed by a light and saw that there were no more lights ahead. The illumination from this one stretched out ahead, getting dimmer and dimmer. Why wouldn't they have strung out a few more lights, since they'd gone to all this trouble? Then it hit me. I had to be so close to the end of the tunnel that they couldn't risk light leaking out, showing the exit.

I turned and looked behind me. Otto was well down the tunnel. He was too big to move as fast as I could. I was soon going to be through and able to help Jack before Otto could help the field marshal. This might work out. I tilted my head up to try to catch the light that remained and crawled as fast as I could. I came to the end. There was a ladder leading upward.

I stood and put a hand on the ladder. I looked up. The opening framed the stars in the sky. It looked pretty … but I didn't have time to stand there any longer. Otto was behind, but he'd be here soon. I started climbing. There were only a half-dozen rungs. I stopped just before my head poked out. I needed to just catch my breath, ready myself for what was going to happen, whether it was fighting or running. I heard sounds coming from beneath me. Otto was almost at the opening too.

Okay, it's now or never,
I said to myself.

I grabbed the top rung of the ladder and practically rocketed out of the opening. Jack was standing right there alongside the field marshal. He just stood there, doing nothing. Why wasn't he doing something?

Then I saw the darkened figures of two other men, guns in hand, standing above me. It was the guards! They'd discovered the tunnel and we were safe!

“Schnell! Schnell!”
one of the guards said as he reached down, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the opening.

“It's okay, it's me!” I screamed. “I'm not a prisoner! I'm—”

There was a sharp pain in the back of my head as something smashed against my skull and … everything went black.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“
GEORGE? GEORGE
, can you hear me?”

I tried to sit up but I felt woozy all over. I opened my eyes. It was dark and I couldn't focus.

“George, are you all right?” It was Jack.

“I don't feel so …” My stomach did a big flip and I knew I was about to be sick. I slumped forward, my head between my legs, working hard not to vomit.

“Are you fine?” I looked over. It was Otto.

“What happened … where are we?” I stammered.

“We are in a car,” Otto said.

I forced my eyes to focus. Jack was sitting on one side of me, Otto on the other. In the front seat there were three men, one of them the field marshal, and we were hurtling down a dark country road.

“But the tunnel … the guards were there.”

“Not guards,” Jack said. “Germans … Nazi agents.”

My head felt so foggy. How could any of this be?

“They were sent to bring us to safety,” Otto said. “They hit you when you started to scream. I was so worried … so worried that they had hurt you badly.”

“I thought you were dead,” Jack said.

I reached up to the aching spot on the back of my head. It was tender to the touch and swollen.

“You were out for a long time,” Jack told me.

“How long?”

“Close to two hours. It's almost one in the morning.” “I just hope Mom is sleeping or she'll be worried to death,” I said.

“I hope she's awake and she notified the camp and they're searching the compound for us right now,” Jack said. He turned to Otto. “That'll be an end to your plans to have the other prisoners escape.”

Otto shook his head. “Those plans have changed … been rescheduled.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Originally the second wave was not to start their escape until we were far gone. We were to have a four-hour head start. Instead, there are already men in the tunnel, waiting only until the stroke of one to begin leaving.”

“How many men are going out?” I asked.

“There is no harm in telling you now. It will be over three hundred men.”

“Three hundred!” Jack exclaimed.

“We have been planning this as long as we have been digging the tunnel,” Otto said. “Over sixteen months of preparation. Planning routes, preparing false papers and identification and making civilian clothing.”

It was at that instant that I realized that Otto was not in either dirty coveralls or his uniform. He was dressed in a suit and tie. He didn't look like a prisoner or a German soldier.

“But even if hundreds of people do get out, how far can they get anyway?” Jack asked. “They're all going to be recaptured.”

“There is no question that escape is most difficult. Almost all will be found, but it will be a massive undertaking requiring thousands and thousands of your soldiers. And who knows, some may even make their way back to Germany.”

“Not a chance,” Jack said, and he snorted. “They'll all be caught.”

“Perhaps. Although without realizing it you boys have made their escape more possible.”

“Us?”

“I wish there had been another way,” Otto said. “I feel badly that I tricked you. Those things you brought into the camp. Those little articles of daily life were part of the escape plan. If one of our men is stopped and searched and can produce a few tokens, such as dry-cleaning tickets or a movie stub, he can try to
prove he lives in Toronto and is not an escaped prisoner. It might be enough to fool a checkpoint or a search.”

So he'd been gathering that stuff, just as Bill had said he would. Maybe
that
was what he was hiding in that bag he always carried arround.

“So we brought you a couple of stubs, so what?” Jack said.

Otto had figured us for spies because we'd found the tunnel, but obviously he had no idea how far our involvement went.

“We used those few things to reproduce samples for all the escaping prisoners,” Otto said. “And of course those stamps and postcards you brought were invaluable. We used those to send correspondence—uncensored— to our contacts. They were mailed when prisoners were out walking. We made a promise to return, but said nothing about dropping a postcard into a letterbox. That is how everything was arranged … like this ride.”

I didn't know what to say. None of this was really any surprise. Bill had told us exactly what all those things would be used for. But if Bill had seen all this coming, why were we in a car hurtling through the Ontario night, while back at the compound hundreds of prisoners were starting to crawl out of the tunnel? Their escape plan had worked, and rather than helping to stop them, we'd aided the enemy.

“You're all going to get caught,” Jack said again. “Unless this car can fly or float, you're not getting back to Germany in this thing.”

“You are correct. This car can only go so far … but we hope it will be far enough. Now, it is time for sleep. Put your heads down and try to rest.”

My head was hurting and I felt groggy. Maybe if I did close my eyes I could blot out what was happening and try to forget the role we'd played in helping it all to take place.

I started thinking about my bed, in my bedroom, in my house, with Jack asleep in his bed down the hall and Mom in her room, just a call away. I started to feel a warmness creeping through my body. Maybe I could sleep a little.

I awoke with a start, not knowing where I was. I looked around, unable to make sense of my surroundings for a second, until it all came back in a rush. I was in the back seat of the car. Jack was lying down beside me, a slight whistling sound coming out of his nose as he slept. Four men—Otto, the field marshal and the two agents— were standing in front of the car, a map stretched across the hood, flashlights out, loudly discussing something. Were they lost? Was it the map we'd brought into the compound? Maybe the changes Bill had made to it were causing the problems.

As I watched, one of the men bundled up the map, the flashlights were turned off and the four men climbed back into the car. They were talking—arguing—loudly, in German. The four doors slammed. Jack startled and sat up.

“What's wrong?” I asked Otto as he settled in beside me.

“The map … crazy map … it does not correspond to the signs along the road. The signs show one way and the map shows another. These distances are wrong, and we cannot afford to be late.”

“Late for what?” I asked.

“Our rendezvous. Our meeting.”

“Meeting with who?”

Otto didn't answer at first. I could see from his expression that he was thinking things through before speaking. “At this point there is no harm in telling. You were correct, this car cannot take us to Germany, but we will be meeting something that can.”

“A plane or a ship,” Jack said.

“Not a ship,” Otto said. “A submarine.”

“But you can't get a submarine into Lake Ontario. You said that yourself,” I said.

“You can have one slip into the St. Lawrence River and go as far upriver as the first rapids near Cornwall.”

“That's why you were interested in rapids, to see how close it could come,” Jack said.

“We are racing to that spot to meet it. We must be there before sunrise or it cannot risk surfacing.”

“And if you don't get there in time?” Jack asked. “Does it leave without you?”

If that was the case, maybe all wasn't lost—maybe that stupid map would be enough to foil their attempt.

“It delays things. We stay hidden until the next night,” Otto explained. “That greatly increases the danger of discovery, although with hundreds of prisoners free around Bowmanville I do not think anybody will be searching for us this far away.”

I felt my sense of hope deflate. He was right.

“Even if you get to the submarine, what makes you think that it can get back down the St. Lawrence without being detected?” Jack asked.

“It got upriver without being seen.”

“But nobody was looking for it,” Jack argued.