Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [15]
Scheller rose from the bench. "Remember your pledge, Otto." He stepped toward the door. "I'll try to get in next week again. Wait for me. You'll wait for me?"
The cyanide pill in his hand, Dietrich lay back on the cot and turned to the wall, not strong enough to watch his friend disappear through the door.
6
LIEUTENANT HEYDEKAMPF detested these marches, but the Geneva Convention allowed them so he bit down and paced along the wall near the chapel, waiting for it to end. Every time news of an Allied victory reached Colditz Castle, the POWs would march in brisk formation, to and from in the tiny yard, flaunting the Allied achievement. The British and American POWs had become expert in tight about-faces.
Today the POWs were marching to celebrate the United States Ninth Army's capture of Essen, an event that had happened just the day before, April 9. Heydekampf knew the POWs had a radio hidden in the castle because the entire POW population learned the BBC news on the same day it was broadcast. Despite searches that had entirely destroyed the wards of the SAO and Captain David Davis — who Heydekampf suspected was chief of X-Organization, the POW escape committee — Heydekampf s flying squads had been unable to find the radio.
The left side of Heydekampf's scalp was open and raw from the fire, so he was without his cap. Bandages were patched around his neck and wrist, but he seemed to hurt all over. Even his missing left hand seemed to be pumping pain into him.
The POWs were using an American marching chant: "She left. She left. She left, right, she left. You had a good home. You had a good job. You had a good life, but she left, right, she left." The interminable refrain crawled up Heydekampf's back. With the war going as it was, the POWs marched every day.
The chant abruptly stopped, and Heydekampf’s head jerked up at a new sound. The wail of a cat whose tail was being pulled. Or the screech of fingernails dragged across a blackboard. A chilling noise he had never before heard. Coming from the formation of marchers.
He blew his whistle and the parade halted. The sound continued. The devil's dog braying, it sounded to Heydekampf.
"What is that noise?" he demanded in English. "What have you got?"
Harold MacMillan, of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, called out, "Bagpipes, sir." He was standing at attention at the back of the POW formation.
Heydekampf charged across the yard to the POW. MacMillan held the bag under his arm. His fingers were on the chanter. Three drones lay across his shoulder. MacMillan was the shortest man at the castle, barely five feet one. He said in a thick Scots brogue, "The windbag has the Black Watch pattern. Lovely, isn't it?"
For a moment the German lieutenant was frozen by the sheer brazenness of the bagpipes. This musical instrument — if it could be called that — lifted the POWs' impudence to an outrageous new height.
He sputtered, "Where did you get that, MacMillan?"
"Lieutenant, may I speak with you?"
Startled at the voice, Heydekampf turned to find the camp commandant, Colonel Janssen, standing at his shoulder.
"Of course, sir."
The colonel led him to a spot near the blackened ruin of the delousing shed. The ward wall above the shed had been colored by the flames. That section of the castle, called the Saalhaus, was for senior POW officers, and in ancient times had been the armory. The stone had resisted the fire.
Janssen had won an Iron Cross at Flanders in the Great War, and he wore the decoration on his tunic. With the shortages, he had lost weight, and his gray uniform coat hung loosely on him. He had a miser's face, with tiny features and suspicious eyes.
He said, "Lieutenant, about the bagpipes."
"Yes, sir?"
"I am allowing the prisoners to accompany their marches with that infernal instrument. I see no harm in it."
The parade resumed. The bagpipes' caterwauling made Heydekampf ball his fists. The prisoners marched in time, their wood clogs clacking against the cobblestones.
Lieutenant Heydekampf said through teeth clenched against the din, "Where'd it come