The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [74]
Oberg’s face cracked into a half-smile. He laughed softly. “Very well recited, Lance Corporal Linden.”
Mike looked around the room. The brutal brownshirts awaited a signal. He gritted his teeth and gulped.
Oberg stared through the monocle. Then he resumed his rocking and slapping the riding crop in his palm. “Are you certain you have no more to say, Lance Corporal Linden?”
Mike did not answer.
“You wouldn’t be holding some information, Lance Corporal Linden?”
Mike could hear the big clock ticking on the wall. It echoed through the stone room....
Oberg looked up at the clock. He glanced toward the door through which Elpis was taken. “Book him. Sabotage and espionage.” Oberg arose and the brownshirts came to attention. He motioned to his clerk. “Get this information on the Arkadia over to Gestapo in the morning.” He nodded to Mike. “I’m sure Gestapo will make you more anxious to talk.” Oberg turned to his mistress. “You may go home,” he said. “I shall not want you tonight.”
The woman yawned.
Mike was thrown into a black cell. He crawled to his feet and groped about blindly. “Ben,” he called. “Ben.”
“Over here, matey.”
Mike stumbled over sleeping bodies in the dark. The stench of the place was terrific. He made out Ben’s immense form kneeling over the prostrate body of Yichiel.
“They gave him a pretty good working over,” Ben said.
Yichiel groaned and rolled over.
“They took his wife away.... Oberg...”
“The bloody bastard! And when he finishes with her he’ll turn her over to his guards....”
Mike slipped down to a sitting position on the icy stone floor. He did something he had not done since his childhood. Michael Morrison cried openly and unashamed.
Ben’s hand patted his back. “It will be all right, cobber. They won’t keep us ’ere long. In about a week we’ll be processed and sent to the P.O.W. side of the jail. It’s a lot better over on that side....”
Mike pulled himself together and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
“They’ll run us down to Field Police—Gestapo—and they’ll question us and charge us with everything, includin’ startin’ the war. But they’re just bluff, all bluff. Just stand up to them and demand your rights as a British soldier and they’ll send you to the P.O.W. side....”
“Who—who does the questioning at Gestapo?”
“Oh, he’s a mean bugger, chap named Heilser. But don’t worry none, Jay—he’s all bluff.”
FOUR
“Out of the night that covers me,
Out of the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul!”
“Quiet in there, schweinhund! Quiet in there, or I kill you....”
“Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.”
Ben finished his song, ignoring the crazed head guard, a sadistic Austrian named Hans, who continued to rave outside the cell.
“Beautiful song, ain’t it, Jay?” Ben said. “You know, Jay, can’t say as I like the ’ospitality ’ere.”
Ben had managed to calm Mike considerably. His example of courage, of defiance in the face of the brutal guards was a tonic. And some of Mike’s fear had vanished in the two days in Averof. He knew that hell could be no worse for he had now seen the cesspool of humanity.
Their cell couldn’t have held forty men properly. It contained ninety “Greek saboteurs.” There were no bunks, no heat, no toilet facilities, no water. Only stone and bars. The other “saboteurs” ranged from a boy of ten who had stolen a carton of cigarettes to a man of eighty who had stolen a loaf of bread. Several of the inmates were in a stage of babbling idiocy and there were a dozen obvious T.B. cases ... Lice swarmed everywhere. Mammoth rats roamed.
At night the stone turned icy and the only warmth became the heat of the tightly packed bodies. Then-daily meal was a slimy bean soup, without beans. Ben told Mike he would learn to love the stuff and Ben taught Mike how to filch potato peels and garbage from the galley during the visits to the toilet. Ben, an old hand at Averof, immediately found a guard who would pass notes to the outside and who would smuggle in food. Money talked in Averof.