More niche fandom.
Title: Who You Are In The Dark (Part 2)
Fandom: Hogan’s Heroes
Characters: Wilhelm Klink, assorted Heroes.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, mostly.
Summary: In the aftermath of a horrible accident, Klink is forced to confront what kind of man he really is.
Author’s Note: In which I employ a rather common trope in Klinkfic but hopefully pull it off properly. Part 1 can be found here.
When Klink came to, he was propped up in one of the waiting room chairs. His gloves were gone, as was his hat. Someone had cleaned the bloodstains from his wrist. Hogan was up at the front desk talking to some white-coated doctor and Newkirk was dozing in a chair beside him.
“Did I faint?” Klink asked quietly.
Newkirk’s eyelids fluttered up. “Hm? Yeah. Dead away,” he grunted, still-half asleep.
“Oh.” Klink rubbed one eye socket with the heel of his hand and tried to rouse himself further. What time was it? He wasn’t sure how long he’d spent out in the woods with Carter, it had felt like hours.
Hogan returned and both men looked up at him with wary hope. “He’ll pull through,” he said with a faint smile. “The bullet missed his renal artery-that’s the artery in his thigh-and he should be able to at least stand up within the week. There might be a limp depending on how the wound heals and how much rest he gets, but he’ll walk again. Our boy’s a lucky man.”
“Lucky would be not getting shot in the first place,” Newkirk commented, though he was grinning.
“Thank god.” Klink ran a hand over his face and thinning hair. Wait. “What happened to my hat and gloves?”
“They were…stained,” Hogan said carefully, as if the mere mention of blood would send Klink into another swooning fit. “The orderly had to throw them out.”
“But my hat?”
“You were wringing it in your hands the entire time. Hope you don’t mind, but we didn’t think you’d want them back.”
“No, it’s fine. I never liked that hat anyway. It gives me an excuse to get a new one.” Klink sat back and plucked his monocle from his eye, compulsively rubbing it with the hem of his shirt. “Why are we still speaking-“
“There’s a lot of things we can’t talk about here,” Hogan cut in. “This is a public hospital. That’s why we’re talking…like this. When we’re back at camp, I’ll explain.”
Klink replaced his monocle and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re going to explain everything to me,” he said sternly, trying to reclaim his authority. “You weren’t supposed to be out there, you shouldn’t be dressed like that, and since when are you able to talk…like that? This is impossible!” He threw his hands in the air, wanting to tear his hair out but knowing he had far too little to spare.
Hogan held up his hand in a pacifying gesture that just made Klink feel more upset. “Just follow us a little while longer. Once we get back to camp, you’ll get what you want. Everything.”
“Colonel?” Newkirk didn’t seem very pleased about it.
“At camp. When we have privacy. It’ll be easier there.” Hogan gave Newkirk a look that Klink couldn’t quite interpret, and Newkirk reluctantly nodded. He turned his attention back to Klink. “Your staff car’s going to arrive soon. Carter should be fine here, he’s got all the necessary papers if anyone asks questions.”
Stolen, no doubt, or forged by that deviant Englishman. “Do I want to know how you got my staff car up here without my explicit order?”
“I’ll add it to the explanation pile.”
“All right.”
Klink sank down into his seat, wrapping himself tighter in his coat. He felt numb inside, a fruit with all the juice squeezed out. Sleep deprivation and stress had turned him into a complete zombie that mindlessly shuffled after his masters when the car arrived. As he got into his seat he noticed LeBeau was in the driver’s seat, still wearing the oversized Luftwaffe uniform. Klink wasn’t even going to ask.
“Clothes are in the back, mon colonel.”
“Thanks. A little privacy?” Klink obligingly turned his face to the window so the pair could change. It was strange having Hogan back in his leather flight jacket and pilot hat and hearing him speak American English again. It was like seeing Hyde turn back into Jekyll.
“When the staff car gets back to camp, you get out on the office side and we’ll slip off to the barracks. Do morning roll call and everything else like normal. Afterward, go in your office and wait fifteen minutes, then come to Barracks Two.” Hogan paused. “If that’s what you really want.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to? I told you, I want to know everything about your little operation.”
“Some people at camp make a pretty good living off staying in the dark. It’s safer that way.”
Klink hardly needed to guess. “I know nothing, nothing?” he asked, rolling his eyes.
Hogan chuckled. “Amoung others. They know they’re safer when they’re ignorant. Plausible deniability, it’s the easiest option.”
Normally Klink would choose the hide-saving option ninety-nine times out of a hundred and stay in the dark. But after all he’d been through that night, the exhaustion, the danger, the blood, they owed him for what they’d put him through. He was too angry to be sensible.
“Fifteen minutes. And then I want answers.”
Morning role call was a man short, of course. Schultz wavered and shifted as he nervously began his report, and Hogan was quick to hop in and claim that Carter was too sick to get out of bed, before giving Klink a pointed ‘agree with me’ look. Klink allowed it without ordering an inspection to check, much to Schultz’ surprise, and went to hide in his office.
He sat down and pulled over the nearest pile of accounting forms. After a few moments of trying to hold himself together, his forehead hit the desk. It was just…too much. Too much everything.
As much as he’d insisted that he be enlightened as soon as possible, Klink wanted to put it off for another twelve hours. He needed to sleep. When had he last seen his bed? The previous morning seemed very, very far away. Klink lifted his head a half-inch and let it hit the desk again. Whatever explanation they had, it had better be a damn good one for everything he’d been put through.
The fifteen minutes passed and Klink lingered in his office. He took up his riding crop and shrugged on his coat, spending a few moments looking for his hat before remembering that it had gone on to a better place. For the cost of his hat alone, he deserved that explanation. He wandered out into the dark prison yard, coat held tightly against him, and saw Hogan was waiting at the Barracks 2 door. When Klink approached he turned around and entered, letting his kommandant follow behind him.
The usually lively barracks were silent and the intense gazes trained on him made him cringe. The four troublemakers were standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the room with their arms folded. “Last chance, Klink,” Hogan said. “If you want to close your eyes and go back to the way things were, walk out now.”
“It’d be the easiest thing all around,” Kinchloe put in.
“No.” Klink had meant to sound firm and commanding, but instead his voice was shaking. The intense solemnity of the prisoners just made his anxiety worse. He’d expected a tunnel, some stolen uniforms, and a couple of German phrasebooks. What had they been doing to make them all so eager to warn him off?
“Fine,” said Hogan with a resigned sigh. “You asked for it.” Klink began to pull up a chair, ready to listen to Hogan unfold his fantastical story, but instead Hogan just walked over to a nearby bunkbed and hit it with his fist. As Klink stood gaping, the bottom bunk rolled upwards on a barely seen pulley system, while the frame underneath swung down until a deep hole in the floor. Hogan swung over and stood on the bedframe, now an obvious ladder to a tunnel below. “Come on down.”
Klink shakily followed Hogan down the ladder. Below the surface was a system of tunnels high and wide enough to walk through comfortably, nothing like the narrow crawl spaces the guards found during occasional inspections. The walls were supported by wooden beams and wires were strung across the ceiling, presumably to power the electric lamps illuminating this portion of the tunnels. He couldn’t tell how far the other paths went, but they were far enough that he couldn’t see the end of the passages that were left unlit. Klink wandered, as wide-eyed as a child, until he nearly tripped over a complex radio setup and fell back into a few open crates of canned food.
“You…you didn’t do all of this yourselves, did you?” he stammered to Hogan as the other three came down the ladder.
“Not completely. There was a mine here about seventy-five years ago. One of our agents had it secretly reinforced, then destroyed the entrance and erased all records of the mine before he had the proposed Stalag 13 site relocated to be right on top of the tunnels.”
“Of course we spruced it up a bit,” Newkirk said with a hint of smugness. “It helps to have actual shovels rather than spoons.”
Klink pressed his hands to his head. “Then this was planned? But why?” It seemed immensely complicated, when they could easily escape through the tunnels on their own.
“The basic idea was to provide a way station for escaping allied prisoners in the one place nobody would look for escapees, as well as for passing information on to the underground,” Hogan explained. “Of course we’ve expanded since then…espionage, sabotage, whatever needs to get done. We’re sort of a jack of all trades organization.”
So there really was an underground cell in the area, Right under his nose, under his very feet and far more expansive than even Hochstetter had dreamed. “But you didn’t count on me!” he pointed out, desperately grasping at straws, grinning in triumph before he saw Newkirk struggling not to laugh.
“You were part of the plan, Klink,” Hogan said, hands in his pockets in that smug way he did. “Our agent hunted down the officer with the lowest efficiency rating in the entire Luftwaffe and made sure he was selected. The real reason you’ve never had an escape or been transferred to another post is that we had to make sure you stayed in command. Guess you could call us your guardian angels.”
Klink didn’t feel very blessed. Stalag 13 was the one thing he’d actually done right in his life and now Hogan was saying that he’d actually been handpicked for his incompetence. His pride and joy had just been a cover for an Allied cell.
Hogan’s hand settled on his shoulder. It was usually a comforting gesture that meant Hogan was about to pull him out of trouble with some mad scheme or compliment his talents. Klink had always taken a bit of pride in the fact that he’d been able to earn the cocky American’s respect even as his captor. They played chess together, shared drinks, and Hogan was always ready to share a little of his Yankee ingenuity at winning over (or rebuffing) the opposite sex.
The American’s touch turned revolting as Klink realized that every word of praise, every kind compliment, had just been part of a master plan to manipulate him for enemy purposes. He shrugged Hogan’s hand away in disgust.
“I know this is probably a lot to take in.”
“You think so?” Klink snapped. Hogan didn’t seem to care.
“But you need to make a decision. If you want to give up your position we can send you on to England to wait out the war. We’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
Leave Germany, desert? Impossible. He’d been enough of a traitor already. Klink shook his head. “What’s my other option?”
Hogan crouched beside him. “Work with us,” he murmured. It was that tone he used when he needed to convince Klink that something was very, very important and the best course of action was to follow along with Hogan’s plan. “Be part of the underground, help us fight Hitler and his goons. You have access to things even we can’t manage, and the operation would go so much smoother with you on our side. You’d be indispensible.”
“You want me to betray my country?” Klink said, aghast. Doubly impossible. He was nothing if not loyal, he had a chestful of medals that pronounced it.
“We want you to help your country. A lot of Germans want Hitler out of power too.”
“I could…what if I just reported you?” Klink regretted the words as soon as he said them. The prisoners’ glares were harsh enough to set an entire forest on fire. They looked ready to rip him apart for merely having the idea and LeBeau took a half-step towards Klink before Hogan’s arm stopped him.
“I have a duty to protect my men,.” Hogan’s voice was firm again, as hard and sharp as steel.
“O-of course, I understand, I wouldn’t ever dream of doing that, I was just about to say that it was a possibility but I would never ever do such a thing.” Klink backpedaled faster than a circus clown on a unicycle. Those looks…how had he missed the wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing in his camp? They could easily kill him down here.
“And you’d go down for it too. They’re going to want to know how we kept this running so long in your prison camp.”
And ‘complete and utter incompetence’ wasn’t going to be a good enough excuse. Klink hung his head again. “I couldn’t…I don’t…” He pressed his head tightly between his hands, as if trying to hold his sanity in before it ran away entirely. “Can’t I just pretend I never saw anything?”
Hogan shook his head, looking regretful. Almost sympathetic, though Klink knew that no true sympathy lay in his lying snake’s heart. “We told you. You’re down the rabbit hole now…or the tunnel, I guess. You can’t go back to how things were.”
***
Dawn was breaking over the camp when Klink emerged from the barracks. The guards were walking their beats, slow and steady like wind-up toys. He saw Schultz leaning against the mess hall and wondered how the fat guard lived with himself, knowing that his job was meaningless and he was just a pawn in some larger game. Then again Schultz had never cared much for party allegiances. It must be easier for him to let himself be controlled with bribes and threats. Klink went back to his quarters and poured himself a glass of brandy. He stretched out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, utterly exhausted but certain that he’d be unable to sleep with that horrible revelation buzzing around in his head.
He was unconscious before he could drink the brandy and didn’t wake up again until mid-afternoon. In the dim haze of half-sleep he wondered if the previous day had been a feverish dream, and he was going to wake up to be the toughest kommandant in all of Germany again. No such luck.
Klink sat up and reluctantly picked at the lunch Helga had left for him. Hogan had promised to let him mull the decision over but wanted an answer by nightly roll call. He didn’t have to wonder what would happen if he withheld, he’d seen the looks in their eyes. They could have killed him back in the woods and kept their secret safe. They could still do so now.
Klink paced, and nibbled his extremely unappetizing sandwich, and eventually found himself in his office contemplating the phone. There had to be a third option. Was there a friend in a high place who could help him out of this mess? Was there a friend in any place who could help him?
“Fraulein Helga, get me…” He paused, unsure with his knuckles pressed to his lips. God help him, he couldn’t think of any. Klink wouldn’t find out until later how many tense, desperate men were huddled around the telephone lines down in the tunnels, waiting to find out if their cover was going to be blown by a loyal-unto-death officer.
“The hospital.”
As it turned out there were several hospitals in the area, and since Klink hadn’t bothered to note the name in the midst of the chaos Helga had to call around to all of them. It didn’t help that Klink kept slipping up on the pseudonym.
“No Sergeant Fuhrmann, but we do have a Corporal Fuhrman.”
“Oh, of course. I was just confused, he’s up for a promotion, you see. But don’t tell him, it hasn’t been decided yet and I don't want to get his hopes up.”
“Of course. Would you like me to see how he’s doing?”
“Yes, please.”
Klink stood around and tapped his foot while the orderly put him on hold. She came back a few minutes later to report, “He’s sleeping right now. Would you like me to wake him up?”
“No, no, that’s fine. Let him rest, he’s had a hard night.”
“He was awake earlier. The nurse says he was very cheerful for a man with a bullet through his thigh.”
“That sounds just like good old Hansy,” Klink said, putting on false cheer to hide his intense relief. “Always so happy even in the worst circumstances. He’s always been the moral support of his unit.”
“And very popular, too. You’re the second caller he’s had today.”
“Who was the other one?”
“A General Kinchmeyer.”
Kinchmeyer? Who was…oh. Ohhhhh. That was just not even trying. Klink thanked the orderly and hung up, sitting down at his desk to look over his growing mountains of paperwork. If he decided to flee Germany there would be no reason for him to put in the effort to whittle it down. The next poor sap who wound up with his job would deal with it. Klink gathered it together and started doing it anyway, trying to find some small comfort in sums and categories the way he often did.
Several hours later he’d balanced the camp budget but found no peace of mind. Hogan was right, it was impossible for things to go back to being the way they were with the image of that massive tunnel complex burned into his mind. The paperwork was pointless. He was pointless. All his meticulous little calculations meant nothing when Hogan was probably checking his work just to make sure he was doing everything according to plan. It would have been so much easier if he’d just let himself stay in the dark.
Klink pushed himself to his feet and wandered back to his living quarters, strolling aimlessly until he wound up back on the couch. His riding crop, his futile little symbol of power, dangled loosely from his fingers. He should probably leave it behind when he fled the country, he’d want to look as unGerman as possible to avoid offending the Allied soldiers. Hogan had promised him he’d be safe but he couldn’t imagine he’d be treated kindly. His only claim to generosity was the fact that he’d never directly ordered a prisoner shot.
The stove creaked. Klink watched with an almost idle curiosity as it swung around in a half circle, exposing a hidden tunnel in the floor. LeBeau’s head popped out of the hole, followed quickly by his arms and torso. He leaned on the floorboards, looking almost like a little gopher in a red hat and jacket and gave Klink a contemplative stare.
Klink pointed at the tunnel. “Has that always been there?”
“Non. We installed it during your last trip to Paris.”
How many damned tunnels were in this camp? It seemed a miracle the place didn’t sink into the ground. Klink folded his arms, his riding crop resting in his lap. “So what do you want?”
LeBeau made a small shrug. He was acting as if this was a social call and he’d come in through the door instead of the floor. “I wanted to see if you’d made your decision yet.”
“I haven’t.” Klink shifted on the couch, rolling his crop between his hands. “Why did you even let me down there? You could have just made something up.” Like they always did. He was a fool to go down that ladder.
“We thought about it. Some of us wanted to keep up the act. And some of us thought you deserved something better for what you did for Andrew. It wasn’t an easy choice to make.”
Klink shook his head, aching inside. So they had respected him enough to destroy his life as he knew it, that was a respect he could do without. “How can I possibly choose between desertion and treachery? I’m a loyal German.”
LeBeau snorted in derision. “I’ve been here long enough to see what side you’re really on. It’s the side you’ve always been on.”
“Yes, the side of-”
“Your own side.” LeBeau pointed at him accusingly. “Not your country, you. You’ve never wanted to do anything but protect your own bosche skin.”
It stung, and it stung more because it was true. “You’re really not convincing me to be sympathetic to your cause,” Klink pointed out, trying to hide how much the accusation hurt. “So I’m a coward. So what?”
“Last night, you stayed with Andrew even though it put you in danger with no possible gain for yourself.” LeBeau folded his arms on top of the floorboards. “How did that feel?”
“It…felt…” It had been terrifying. He hadn’t been able to think about anything but the moment, just keeping Carter alive for a few moments longer until help arrived. It was instinct. Klink shrugged. “I don’t know how it felt. I just did it. I’m not sure I was even thinking about it.” Perhaps if he had he wouldn’t be in this mess.
Superior, that was the word for how LeBeau was looking at him, that was why it felt so unpleasant. He was used to the Frenchman outright hating him over that whole invading his country business but this felt almst like pity. “Tell me something,” LeBeau said, thumb flicking over his chin. “Would Major Hochstetter have saved Carter’s life?”
“Of course not.”
“General Burkhalter?”
“No.”
“Hitler?”
Klink hesitated, wary of saying anything negative about his beloved Fuehrer, but finally had to admit he wouldn’t.
LeBeau nodded triumphantly. “They’d all have left him to die. Why did you save him?”
“Because I…well…” It was something he’d been trying not to ask himself ever since he’d been left alone in the woods. Klink stuttered and struggled with his response before he finally had to conclude, “I just thought I needed to do it. He’s my prisoner, he’s my responsibility.”
“I don’t think many kommandants see it that way.” LeBeau stood up again, resting against the wall. “You’ve been a coward your entire life. Last night you saved an Allied prisoner because it was the right thing to do, and never mind the consequences. If you work with us you have a chance to do it again and make up for an entire lifetime of cowardice. Or…” LeBeau shrugged. “You can write this off as temporary insanity and go back to making your own life your first priority. You know what’s happening in Germany is wrong and you know what a pack of monsters is running the place. Are you going to just keep sitting back and taking it?”
Just the thought was making Klink’s hands tremble. “What if we fail?” He’d been a failure his whole life, he couldn’t even run a prison camp without the prisoners taking it over. He would probably be a horrible spy too.
“Then we failed doing the right thing. To me, that’s all that matters.” LeBeau lifted his chin and puffed out his chest, the perfect picture of French pride. It occurred to Klink that he had no idea what LeBeau had done before the war. Perhaps he, too, had sat back at a cushy desk job and let things pass by until his country crumbled before the German war machine.
There was a knock on the door, probably Helga with his dinner. LeBeau scurried back down the tunnel and pulled the stove back over the hole.
“LeBeau!” Klink called out softly.
The stove creaked back a few inches. “What?” said the little crack in the floor.
“I’ll…I’ll think about it, all right?”
“Right. Bonsoir, Colonel Klink.” The stove slid closed again. Klink let out a huge breath and fell back, knocking his head on the table that hadn’t been that close to the sofa arm five minutes ago. As he rubbed his dented head he pondered LeBeau’s question again. Saving Carter hadn’t felt good, or brave, but it certainly hadn’t felt shameful.
He was very, very sick of feeling shameful.
***
Crossing the length of the prison yard for evening role call felt as solemn as walking to his own execution. Klink’s knuckles were white around his riding crop but he kept his head held up. His bones seemed to turn to iron, as if there was a determination and strength inside him he hadn’t felt since the first World War.
By now the word must have spread, every prisoner in the camp was staring intently at him as they stood at attention in their neat little rows. Of course they’d spent their entire captivity watching him, manipulating him, using him, but this was the first chance they’d given him to decide his own destiny. Even Schultz seemed to notice the tension in the air, and Klink brushed off the sergeant’s tentative inquiry into his health. He looked nobody in the eyes and focused on the feel of the crop’s grip under his bare, frigid hands and the little gap in the ranks made by Carter’s disappearance.
Hogan waited for him at the Barracks 2 door as the prisoners dispersed back to their huts. He let Klink first and shut the door behind him, making the little building feel like a cage.
“Well, Klink?”
Klink closed his eyes. This was foolishness, absolute foolishness. But that horrible feeling of being nothing but a failure and a pawn had faded, and it was only in its passing that he realized how much of his life had been spent cowering. He could stand up again.
His eyes opened and a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“When do I start?”
Fandom: Hogan’s Heroes
Characters: Wilhelm Klink, assorted Heroes.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, mostly.
Summary: In the aftermath of a horrible accident, Klink is forced to confront what kind of man he really is.
Author’s Note: In which I employ a rather common trope in Klinkfic but hopefully pull it off properly. Part 1 can be found here.
When Klink came to, he was propped up in one of the waiting room chairs. His gloves were gone, as was his hat. Someone had cleaned the bloodstains from his wrist. Hogan was up at the front desk talking to some white-coated doctor and Newkirk was dozing in a chair beside him.
“Did I faint?” Klink asked quietly.
Newkirk’s eyelids fluttered up. “Hm? Yeah. Dead away,” he grunted, still-half asleep.
“Oh.” Klink rubbed one eye socket with the heel of his hand and tried to rouse himself further. What time was it? He wasn’t sure how long he’d spent out in the woods with Carter, it had felt like hours.
Hogan returned and both men looked up at him with wary hope. “He’ll pull through,” he said with a faint smile. “The bullet missed his renal artery-that’s the artery in his thigh-and he should be able to at least stand up within the week. There might be a limp depending on how the wound heals and how much rest he gets, but he’ll walk again. Our boy’s a lucky man.”
“Lucky would be not getting shot in the first place,” Newkirk commented, though he was grinning.
“Thank god.” Klink ran a hand over his face and thinning hair. Wait. “What happened to my hat and gloves?”
“They were…stained,” Hogan said carefully, as if the mere mention of blood would send Klink into another swooning fit. “The orderly had to throw them out.”
“But my hat?”
“You were wringing it in your hands the entire time. Hope you don’t mind, but we didn’t think you’d want them back.”
“No, it’s fine. I never liked that hat anyway. It gives me an excuse to get a new one.” Klink sat back and plucked his monocle from his eye, compulsively rubbing it with the hem of his shirt. “Why are we still speaking-“
“There’s a lot of things we can’t talk about here,” Hogan cut in. “This is a public hospital. That’s why we’re talking…like this. When we’re back at camp, I’ll explain.”
Klink replaced his monocle and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re going to explain everything to me,” he said sternly, trying to reclaim his authority. “You weren’t supposed to be out there, you shouldn’t be dressed like that, and since when are you able to talk…like that? This is impossible!” He threw his hands in the air, wanting to tear his hair out but knowing he had far too little to spare.
Hogan held up his hand in a pacifying gesture that just made Klink feel more upset. “Just follow us a little while longer. Once we get back to camp, you’ll get what you want. Everything.”
“Colonel?” Newkirk didn’t seem very pleased about it.
“At camp. When we have privacy. It’ll be easier there.” Hogan gave Newkirk a look that Klink couldn’t quite interpret, and Newkirk reluctantly nodded. He turned his attention back to Klink. “Your staff car’s going to arrive soon. Carter should be fine here, he’s got all the necessary papers if anyone asks questions.”
Stolen, no doubt, or forged by that deviant Englishman. “Do I want to know how you got my staff car up here without my explicit order?”
“I’ll add it to the explanation pile.”
“All right.”
Klink sank down into his seat, wrapping himself tighter in his coat. He felt numb inside, a fruit with all the juice squeezed out. Sleep deprivation and stress had turned him into a complete zombie that mindlessly shuffled after his masters when the car arrived. As he got into his seat he noticed LeBeau was in the driver’s seat, still wearing the oversized Luftwaffe uniform. Klink wasn’t even going to ask.
“Clothes are in the back, mon colonel.”
“Thanks. A little privacy?” Klink obligingly turned his face to the window so the pair could change. It was strange having Hogan back in his leather flight jacket and pilot hat and hearing him speak American English again. It was like seeing Hyde turn back into Jekyll.
“When the staff car gets back to camp, you get out on the office side and we’ll slip off to the barracks. Do morning roll call and everything else like normal. Afterward, go in your office and wait fifteen minutes, then come to Barracks Two.” Hogan paused. “If that’s what you really want.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to? I told you, I want to know everything about your little operation.”
“Some people at camp make a pretty good living off staying in the dark. It’s safer that way.”
Klink hardly needed to guess. “I know nothing, nothing?” he asked, rolling his eyes.
Hogan chuckled. “Amoung others. They know they’re safer when they’re ignorant. Plausible deniability, it’s the easiest option.”
Normally Klink would choose the hide-saving option ninety-nine times out of a hundred and stay in the dark. But after all he’d been through that night, the exhaustion, the danger, the blood, they owed him for what they’d put him through. He was too angry to be sensible.
“Fifteen minutes. And then I want answers.”
Morning role call was a man short, of course. Schultz wavered and shifted as he nervously began his report, and Hogan was quick to hop in and claim that Carter was too sick to get out of bed, before giving Klink a pointed ‘agree with me’ look. Klink allowed it without ordering an inspection to check, much to Schultz’ surprise, and went to hide in his office.
He sat down and pulled over the nearest pile of accounting forms. After a few moments of trying to hold himself together, his forehead hit the desk. It was just…too much. Too much everything.
As much as he’d insisted that he be enlightened as soon as possible, Klink wanted to put it off for another twelve hours. He needed to sleep. When had he last seen his bed? The previous morning seemed very, very far away. Klink lifted his head a half-inch and let it hit the desk again. Whatever explanation they had, it had better be a damn good one for everything he’d been put through.
The fifteen minutes passed and Klink lingered in his office. He took up his riding crop and shrugged on his coat, spending a few moments looking for his hat before remembering that it had gone on to a better place. For the cost of his hat alone, he deserved that explanation. He wandered out into the dark prison yard, coat held tightly against him, and saw Hogan was waiting at the Barracks 2 door. When Klink approached he turned around and entered, letting his kommandant follow behind him.
The usually lively barracks were silent and the intense gazes trained on him made him cringe. The four troublemakers were standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the room with their arms folded. “Last chance, Klink,” Hogan said. “If you want to close your eyes and go back to the way things were, walk out now.”
“It’d be the easiest thing all around,” Kinchloe put in.
“No.” Klink had meant to sound firm and commanding, but instead his voice was shaking. The intense solemnity of the prisoners just made his anxiety worse. He’d expected a tunnel, some stolen uniforms, and a couple of German phrasebooks. What had they been doing to make them all so eager to warn him off?
“Fine,” said Hogan with a resigned sigh. “You asked for it.” Klink began to pull up a chair, ready to listen to Hogan unfold his fantastical story, but instead Hogan just walked over to a nearby bunkbed and hit it with his fist. As Klink stood gaping, the bottom bunk rolled upwards on a barely seen pulley system, while the frame underneath swung down until a deep hole in the floor. Hogan swung over and stood on the bedframe, now an obvious ladder to a tunnel below. “Come on down.”
Klink shakily followed Hogan down the ladder. Below the surface was a system of tunnels high and wide enough to walk through comfortably, nothing like the narrow crawl spaces the guards found during occasional inspections. The walls were supported by wooden beams and wires were strung across the ceiling, presumably to power the electric lamps illuminating this portion of the tunnels. He couldn’t tell how far the other paths went, but they were far enough that he couldn’t see the end of the passages that were left unlit. Klink wandered, as wide-eyed as a child, until he nearly tripped over a complex radio setup and fell back into a few open crates of canned food.
“You…you didn’t do all of this yourselves, did you?” he stammered to Hogan as the other three came down the ladder.
“Not completely. There was a mine here about seventy-five years ago. One of our agents had it secretly reinforced, then destroyed the entrance and erased all records of the mine before he had the proposed Stalag 13 site relocated to be right on top of the tunnels.”
“Of course we spruced it up a bit,” Newkirk said with a hint of smugness. “It helps to have actual shovels rather than spoons.”
Klink pressed his hands to his head. “Then this was planned? But why?” It seemed immensely complicated, when they could easily escape through the tunnels on their own.
“The basic idea was to provide a way station for escaping allied prisoners in the one place nobody would look for escapees, as well as for passing information on to the underground,” Hogan explained. “Of course we’ve expanded since then…espionage, sabotage, whatever needs to get done. We’re sort of a jack of all trades organization.”
So there really was an underground cell in the area, Right under his nose, under his very feet and far more expansive than even Hochstetter had dreamed. “But you didn’t count on me!” he pointed out, desperately grasping at straws, grinning in triumph before he saw Newkirk struggling not to laugh.
“You were part of the plan, Klink,” Hogan said, hands in his pockets in that smug way he did. “Our agent hunted down the officer with the lowest efficiency rating in the entire Luftwaffe and made sure he was selected. The real reason you’ve never had an escape or been transferred to another post is that we had to make sure you stayed in command. Guess you could call us your guardian angels.”
Klink didn’t feel very blessed. Stalag 13 was the one thing he’d actually done right in his life and now Hogan was saying that he’d actually been handpicked for his incompetence. His pride and joy had just been a cover for an Allied cell.
Hogan’s hand settled on his shoulder. It was usually a comforting gesture that meant Hogan was about to pull him out of trouble with some mad scheme or compliment his talents. Klink had always taken a bit of pride in the fact that he’d been able to earn the cocky American’s respect even as his captor. They played chess together, shared drinks, and Hogan was always ready to share a little of his Yankee ingenuity at winning over (or rebuffing) the opposite sex.
The American’s touch turned revolting as Klink realized that every word of praise, every kind compliment, had just been part of a master plan to manipulate him for enemy purposes. He shrugged Hogan’s hand away in disgust.
“I know this is probably a lot to take in.”
“You think so?” Klink snapped. Hogan didn’t seem to care.
“But you need to make a decision. If you want to give up your position we can send you on to England to wait out the war. We’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
Leave Germany, desert? Impossible. He’d been enough of a traitor already. Klink shook his head. “What’s my other option?”
Hogan crouched beside him. “Work with us,” he murmured. It was that tone he used when he needed to convince Klink that something was very, very important and the best course of action was to follow along with Hogan’s plan. “Be part of the underground, help us fight Hitler and his goons. You have access to things even we can’t manage, and the operation would go so much smoother with you on our side. You’d be indispensible.”
“You want me to betray my country?” Klink said, aghast. Doubly impossible. He was nothing if not loyal, he had a chestful of medals that pronounced it.
“We want you to help your country. A lot of Germans want Hitler out of power too.”
“I could…what if I just reported you?” Klink regretted the words as soon as he said them. The prisoners’ glares were harsh enough to set an entire forest on fire. They looked ready to rip him apart for merely having the idea and LeBeau took a half-step towards Klink before Hogan’s arm stopped him.
“I have a duty to protect my men,.” Hogan’s voice was firm again, as hard and sharp as steel.
“O-of course, I understand, I wouldn’t ever dream of doing that, I was just about to say that it was a possibility but I would never ever do such a thing.” Klink backpedaled faster than a circus clown on a unicycle. Those looks…how had he missed the wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing in his camp? They could easily kill him down here.
“And you’d go down for it too. They’re going to want to know how we kept this running so long in your prison camp.”
And ‘complete and utter incompetence’ wasn’t going to be a good enough excuse. Klink hung his head again. “I couldn’t…I don’t…” He pressed his head tightly between his hands, as if trying to hold his sanity in before it ran away entirely. “Can’t I just pretend I never saw anything?”
Hogan shook his head, looking regretful. Almost sympathetic, though Klink knew that no true sympathy lay in his lying snake’s heart. “We told you. You’re down the rabbit hole now…or the tunnel, I guess. You can’t go back to how things were.”
***
Dawn was breaking over the camp when Klink emerged from the barracks. The guards were walking their beats, slow and steady like wind-up toys. He saw Schultz leaning against the mess hall and wondered how the fat guard lived with himself, knowing that his job was meaningless and he was just a pawn in some larger game. Then again Schultz had never cared much for party allegiances. It must be easier for him to let himself be controlled with bribes and threats. Klink went back to his quarters and poured himself a glass of brandy. He stretched out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, utterly exhausted but certain that he’d be unable to sleep with that horrible revelation buzzing around in his head.
He was unconscious before he could drink the brandy and didn’t wake up again until mid-afternoon. In the dim haze of half-sleep he wondered if the previous day had been a feverish dream, and he was going to wake up to be the toughest kommandant in all of Germany again. No such luck.
Klink sat up and reluctantly picked at the lunch Helga had left for him. Hogan had promised to let him mull the decision over but wanted an answer by nightly roll call. He didn’t have to wonder what would happen if he withheld, he’d seen the looks in their eyes. They could have killed him back in the woods and kept their secret safe. They could still do so now.
Klink paced, and nibbled his extremely unappetizing sandwich, and eventually found himself in his office contemplating the phone. There had to be a third option. Was there a friend in a high place who could help him out of this mess? Was there a friend in any place who could help him?
“Fraulein Helga, get me…” He paused, unsure with his knuckles pressed to his lips. God help him, he couldn’t think of any. Klink wouldn’t find out until later how many tense, desperate men were huddled around the telephone lines down in the tunnels, waiting to find out if their cover was going to be blown by a loyal-unto-death officer.
“The hospital.”
As it turned out there were several hospitals in the area, and since Klink hadn’t bothered to note the name in the midst of the chaos Helga had to call around to all of them. It didn’t help that Klink kept slipping up on the pseudonym.
“No Sergeant Fuhrmann, but we do have a Corporal Fuhrman.”
“Oh, of course. I was just confused, he’s up for a promotion, you see. But don’t tell him, it hasn’t been decided yet and I don't want to get his hopes up.”
“Of course. Would you like me to see how he’s doing?”
“Yes, please.”
Klink stood around and tapped his foot while the orderly put him on hold. She came back a few minutes later to report, “He’s sleeping right now. Would you like me to wake him up?”
“No, no, that’s fine. Let him rest, he’s had a hard night.”
“He was awake earlier. The nurse says he was very cheerful for a man with a bullet through his thigh.”
“That sounds just like good old Hansy,” Klink said, putting on false cheer to hide his intense relief. “Always so happy even in the worst circumstances. He’s always been the moral support of his unit.”
“And very popular, too. You’re the second caller he’s had today.”
“Who was the other one?”
“A General Kinchmeyer.”
Kinchmeyer? Who was…oh. Ohhhhh. That was just not even trying. Klink thanked the orderly and hung up, sitting down at his desk to look over his growing mountains of paperwork. If he decided to flee Germany there would be no reason for him to put in the effort to whittle it down. The next poor sap who wound up with his job would deal with it. Klink gathered it together and started doing it anyway, trying to find some small comfort in sums and categories the way he often did.
Several hours later he’d balanced the camp budget but found no peace of mind. Hogan was right, it was impossible for things to go back to being the way they were with the image of that massive tunnel complex burned into his mind. The paperwork was pointless. He was pointless. All his meticulous little calculations meant nothing when Hogan was probably checking his work just to make sure he was doing everything according to plan. It would have been so much easier if he’d just let himself stay in the dark.
Klink pushed himself to his feet and wandered back to his living quarters, strolling aimlessly until he wound up back on the couch. His riding crop, his futile little symbol of power, dangled loosely from his fingers. He should probably leave it behind when he fled the country, he’d want to look as unGerman as possible to avoid offending the Allied soldiers. Hogan had promised him he’d be safe but he couldn’t imagine he’d be treated kindly. His only claim to generosity was the fact that he’d never directly ordered a prisoner shot.
The stove creaked. Klink watched with an almost idle curiosity as it swung around in a half circle, exposing a hidden tunnel in the floor. LeBeau’s head popped out of the hole, followed quickly by his arms and torso. He leaned on the floorboards, looking almost like a little gopher in a red hat and jacket and gave Klink a contemplative stare.
Klink pointed at the tunnel. “Has that always been there?”
“Non. We installed it during your last trip to Paris.”
How many damned tunnels were in this camp? It seemed a miracle the place didn’t sink into the ground. Klink folded his arms, his riding crop resting in his lap. “So what do you want?”
LeBeau made a small shrug. He was acting as if this was a social call and he’d come in through the door instead of the floor. “I wanted to see if you’d made your decision yet.”
“I haven’t.” Klink shifted on the couch, rolling his crop between his hands. “Why did you even let me down there? You could have just made something up.” Like they always did. He was a fool to go down that ladder.
“We thought about it. Some of us wanted to keep up the act. And some of us thought you deserved something better for what you did for Andrew. It wasn’t an easy choice to make.”
Klink shook his head, aching inside. So they had respected him enough to destroy his life as he knew it, that was a respect he could do without. “How can I possibly choose between desertion and treachery? I’m a loyal German.”
LeBeau snorted in derision. “I’ve been here long enough to see what side you’re really on. It’s the side you’ve always been on.”
“Yes, the side of-”
“Your own side.” LeBeau pointed at him accusingly. “Not your country, you. You’ve never wanted to do anything but protect your own bosche skin.”
It stung, and it stung more because it was true. “You’re really not convincing me to be sympathetic to your cause,” Klink pointed out, trying to hide how much the accusation hurt. “So I’m a coward. So what?”
“Last night, you stayed with Andrew even though it put you in danger with no possible gain for yourself.” LeBeau folded his arms on top of the floorboards. “How did that feel?”
“It…felt…” It had been terrifying. He hadn’t been able to think about anything but the moment, just keeping Carter alive for a few moments longer until help arrived. It was instinct. Klink shrugged. “I don’t know how it felt. I just did it. I’m not sure I was even thinking about it.” Perhaps if he had he wouldn’t be in this mess.
Superior, that was the word for how LeBeau was looking at him, that was why it felt so unpleasant. He was used to the Frenchman outright hating him over that whole invading his country business but this felt almst like pity. “Tell me something,” LeBeau said, thumb flicking over his chin. “Would Major Hochstetter have saved Carter’s life?”
“Of course not.”
“General Burkhalter?”
“No.”
“Hitler?”
Klink hesitated, wary of saying anything negative about his beloved Fuehrer, but finally had to admit he wouldn’t.
LeBeau nodded triumphantly. “They’d all have left him to die. Why did you save him?”
“Because I…well…” It was something he’d been trying not to ask himself ever since he’d been left alone in the woods. Klink stuttered and struggled with his response before he finally had to conclude, “I just thought I needed to do it. He’s my prisoner, he’s my responsibility.”
“I don’t think many kommandants see it that way.” LeBeau stood up again, resting against the wall. “You’ve been a coward your entire life. Last night you saved an Allied prisoner because it was the right thing to do, and never mind the consequences. If you work with us you have a chance to do it again and make up for an entire lifetime of cowardice. Or…” LeBeau shrugged. “You can write this off as temporary insanity and go back to making your own life your first priority. You know what’s happening in Germany is wrong and you know what a pack of monsters is running the place. Are you going to just keep sitting back and taking it?”
Just the thought was making Klink’s hands tremble. “What if we fail?” He’d been a failure his whole life, he couldn’t even run a prison camp without the prisoners taking it over. He would probably be a horrible spy too.
“Then we failed doing the right thing. To me, that’s all that matters.” LeBeau lifted his chin and puffed out his chest, the perfect picture of French pride. It occurred to Klink that he had no idea what LeBeau had done before the war. Perhaps he, too, had sat back at a cushy desk job and let things pass by until his country crumbled before the German war machine.
There was a knock on the door, probably Helga with his dinner. LeBeau scurried back down the tunnel and pulled the stove back over the hole.
“LeBeau!” Klink called out softly.
The stove creaked back a few inches. “What?” said the little crack in the floor.
“I’ll…I’ll think about it, all right?”
“Right. Bonsoir, Colonel Klink.” The stove slid closed again. Klink let out a huge breath and fell back, knocking his head on the table that hadn’t been that close to the sofa arm five minutes ago. As he rubbed his dented head he pondered LeBeau’s question again. Saving Carter hadn’t felt good, or brave, but it certainly hadn’t felt shameful.
He was very, very sick of feeling shameful.
***
Crossing the length of the prison yard for evening role call felt as solemn as walking to his own execution. Klink’s knuckles were white around his riding crop but he kept his head held up. His bones seemed to turn to iron, as if there was a determination and strength inside him he hadn’t felt since the first World War.
By now the word must have spread, every prisoner in the camp was staring intently at him as they stood at attention in their neat little rows. Of course they’d spent their entire captivity watching him, manipulating him, using him, but this was the first chance they’d given him to decide his own destiny. Even Schultz seemed to notice the tension in the air, and Klink brushed off the sergeant’s tentative inquiry into his health. He looked nobody in the eyes and focused on the feel of the crop’s grip under his bare, frigid hands and the little gap in the ranks made by Carter’s disappearance.
Hogan waited for him at the Barracks 2 door as the prisoners dispersed back to their huts. He let Klink first and shut the door behind him, making the little building feel like a cage.
“Well, Klink?”
Klink closed his eyes. This was foolishness, absolute foolishness. But that horrible feeling of being nothing but a failure and a pawn had faded, and it was only in its passing that he realized how much of his life had been spent cowering. He could stand up again.
His eyes opened and a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“When do I start?”