The Mission from Oz 3/4
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Chapter 2
48 Hours Earlier
Lee adjusted his binoculars and looked again from the back seat of the staff car across the overgrown field to the abandoned barn to which the Gestapo had been summoned by a tip from an anonymous male caller. He was partly stalling for time and partly hoping there was some way he could convince the others it was a false alarm without raising too many suspicions. But no-there were two cars parked outside, mostly hidden but still obvious to a trained eye in the light of the full moon, and a glint or two of lamplight had shone through the cracks in the barn wall before being extinguished.
Dammit, Francine, he thought as he stifled a sigh.
His longtime colleague Francine Desmond, currently operating under the codename Glinda, was normally a cautious and reliable agent, but somehow she occasionally managed to get herself into serious scrapes that endangered everyone around her-in fact, she’d nearly gotten Lee’s wife Amanda killed a few times before the war, when they’d all worked for the FBI’s intelligence division and Amanda had been a young widow who’d stumbled into the espionage game after Lee had been forced to use her as an unwitting courier. He still didn’t know what had happened earlier in the week to make Francine miss her rendezvous both with him and with her Underground contacts, Franz and Gunther, but somehow Gunther had found her car several miles away in Schweinfurt and called London to arrange her rescue. Said rescue had evidently been successful up to this point, but now it was going south... and there was only so much Lee could do about it, since he’d stalled as long as was safe.
“There is someone in the barn,” he admitted in German and lowered his binoculars. “I couldn’t see movement, but there was a light. Let’s go.”
He and the three junior officers with him got out of the car, and one ordered the troops out of the truck behind them. Lee continued to survey the scene, listening as carefully as he could. The clatter of the troopers’ equipment covered any faint noises like creaking hinges coming from the barn; he could only hope that meant Franz and Gunther had managed to keep quiet while getting Toto and Francine into either a safe hiding place or the woods.
Lee waited as long as he dared before ordering the troopers to surround the building with a fifty-meter perimeter. Only then did he lead the junior officers up to the barn, listen a moment longer, and motion for one of them to kick in the door.
“Gestapo!” another announced as they switched on their flashlights and entered the barn. “Come out with your hands up!”
There were no sounds of surprise or running footsteps... but Lee’s heart sank when his flashlight beam swept down from the opposite barn door onto the form of a heavy-set man sprawled motionless on the floor.
Lee motioned for his juniors to search the rest of the barn, then went over to check on the downed man. The man’s foot had snagged on a loose floorboard, and he lay where he’d fallen; the floorboard had broken, but Lee couldn’t see anything underneath, not even something to pretend not to see. Putting a hand on the man’s back revealed that he was still warm-too warm-and breathing shallowly enough not to be visible from a distance. His pulse was rapid but not thready, and a quick check of his balding head uncovered no sign of a concussion. So Lee gently turned the man over-and found himself shining his flashlight at the face of a seemingly unconscious Pete Thornton.
Dammit, Francine.
“Anything?” he called to his juniors, aiming his flashlight at the wall instead.
“Nothing, Herr Major,” came three staggered reports.
“All right, check outside and into the woods. They can’t have gone far.”
Three affirmative replies came back, and the juniors clattered their way outside and shut the door behind them.
Lee watched them go and waited until the barn was quiet again to whisper, “Toto?”
Thornton startled. “What? Who’s there?” he whispered back in German.
“Scarecrow.”
Thornton’s eyes popped open. “Lee!” He sat up, scrabbling at Lee’s coat in evident panic, his hands finally finding purchase on one lapel and the edge of a sleeve. “Lee, I’m blind!” he breathed in English.
Lee switched to the same language. “Oh-sorry if I-”
“No! I’m blind!”
Lee swallowed hard and shone his flashlight back at Thornton’s face. Sure enough, Thornton’s pupils didn’t react at all. “Where’d they go?” he asked, lowering the flashlight again.
Thornton shook his head. “I dunno. Franz was keeping a lookout; he saw you drive up. Then when Gunther doused the light, all anyone said was ‘This way,’ and... I mean, it was hard enough to see even in broad daylight this morning, and my eyes had been getting worse all day. And then I lost hold of Glinda, and then I tripped, and now....” He sniffled congestedly.
“Dammit.” Lee listened for a moment to the sounds of the search outside. “Listen. I’m gonna have to take you in, for both our sakes, but I’ll get you a doctor as soon as I can.”
Thornton nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
“I don’t contact London directly, but Franz and Gunther do. Assuming they get away, I’m sure they’ll call for help.”
Thornton nodded again and coughed, a racking, rattling cough. “Mac’ll come,” he wheezed when the coughing fit passed, apparently as much to himself as to Lee. “Mac always comes.” His grip on Lee’s coat slackened, and Lee caught him as he started to sag forward.
Just then the door behind Thornton started to open, and Lee swiftly shifted back into character. “All right,” he growled in German. “Come on, old man. Get up.”
Thornton groaned as Lee hauled him to his feet and let his head loll against Lee’s shoulder. “My daughter,” he moaned in the same language, sounding delirious. “My daughter... where is my daughter....”
Lee looked past him to the junior officer who was silhouetted against the moonlight coming through the now-open door. “Anything?”
“Not yet, Herr Major,” replied the junior officer.
Thornton moaned again. “No... Anna... my daughter Anna, want to see....” He trailed off in another coughing fit.
“Well, we’ve got one, at least,” Lee replied to the junior officer. “I’m sure he’ll talk in a day or two, once he’s well enough. If not, Berlin will be able to get the truth out of him.”
The Present
“I wasn’t able to call off the search quite that soon,” Stetson concluded, “but Franz and Gunther evidently got themselves and Glinda out in one piece.”
Hogan nodded. “Yeah, I know that barn. It’s got some good hiding places.”
“So what’s wrong with Toto?” MacGyver asked.
Stetson grimaced. “Upper respiratory infection. Hiding in his sinuses for weeks, apparently, and I’m sure the flight over didn’t do him any favors; by the time I picked him up, it was in both lungs and both ears as well. But from what the doctor said, it sounds like the pressure in his sinuses from the infection was the last straw for his optic nerves. He’s breathing a lot better since the penicillin shot, but... he doesn’t act like his vision’s come back at all.”
MacGyver’s heavy sigh was as eloquent as a curse. “I shoulda come myself.”
“Look, we can all blame ourselves all we want, but the fact is, whether he realized he was sick or not, Toto chose to get on that plane. He did get Glinda out. And whether anyone thought about the effects on his sight, he would have been fine if someone hadn’t blown the whistle on the meeting with Franz and Gunther.”
“We’ve worked with Franz and Gunther before,” said Hogan. “They’re reliable. Question is, who else knew they were meeting there?”
“We’ll have to ask Toto in the car,” replied MacGyver. “Right now, all I’m worried about is gettin’ out of here.”
“Not so fast,” said Stetson. “Toto’s done a good job of sticking to his cover story, but it’s been almost too good a job for me to justify a transfer. Fitzner, at least, is suspicious. I think we need one more interrogation to make it look good.”
Hogan’s eyes narrowed. “Look good how?”
Stetson chuckled. “This is the only room in the building that isn’t bugged, and I know that because I checked it myself. We bring Toto into the interrogation room; we have a few minutes of radio theater; you guys declare yourselves satisfied that he knows something more than he’s telling; and I send the three of you on your way back to ‘Berlin.’”
“What about Dalton?”
“Well, his plane will be ready to move tomorrow. I don’t think I can stall Toeppich any further beyond that-he still hasn’t told me who his contact in England was, and I’m afraid to keep pushing in case he starts asking questions. I can kick any Gestapo queries about the plane repairs up the ladder to our man in Berlin, but Toeppich’s too much of a loose cannon to trust him go through the usual channels.”
Hogan grimaced. “We’ll have to send Toto and Tin Man out with Dalton, then. We can’t handle two separate escapes at the same time.”
MacGyver was frowning slightly when Hogan looked over at him. “Dalton,” he echoed. “I’ve heard you guys mention that name a couple times back at base.”
“I’ll introduce you when we get back,” Hogan promised. “He’s the guy in the cooler. But if we’re gonna stage an interrogation here, we’d better get going.”
Stetson nodded. “Yeah, I agree.”
MacGyver still looked somewhere between suspicious and concerned, but he didn’t say anything else. Stetson stood, and Hogan and MacGyver did likewise and followed Stetson to the door. Once they were in the hall, Stetson slid back into character and called for Fitzner.
“Yes, Herr Major?” Fitzner replied, hurrying back down the hall toward them.
“Have the prisoner Müller brought to the interrogation room at once.”
Fitzner blinked. “Interrogation, Herr Major? At this hour?!”
“I am well aware of the time,” MacGyver snapped. “But Gruppenführer Hausmann will be expecting us to report to him in person first thing in the morning. Especially with the current state of the roads, we cannot afford to wait. We must determine whether Müller is an Underground agent now so that we can get underway.”
Fitzner started to protest again, but Stetson growled dangerously, “I gave you an order, Fitzner.”
Fitzner clicked his heels and left without another word, and Hogan and MacGyver followed Stetson to the interrogation room. They arrived in time to see Toto being escorted in from the other direction, one Gestapo goon holding each arm and a third in front with the keys. Stetson gestured for the key-holder to unlock the door, and the three free agents hung back while the others hustled Toto in and shoved him down into a chair.
“Oh, my head,” Toto moaned in German. “Can’t I go home, please?”
“Not yet,” Stetson replied and motioned for the guards to leave the room. They did so, closing the door behind them, and Hogan heard the click of the automatic lock.
“Please, Herr Major. I’ve told you the truth. Please let me go home with my daughter.”
“There is no such person as Anna Müller in Düsseldorf,” said Stetson, pointing to the overhead light.
Hogan spotted the bug, its cord twined around the cord of the hanging light, and glanced at MacGyver, who nodded slightly and started stalking around behind Toto.
Toto, meanwhile, was shaking his head wearily. “Anna lives in Berlin. I had met her in Schweinfurt, and she was taking me home. But I was very sick, and we were worried about bombing, so we stopped at the barn to spend the night.”
MacGyver pressed his right fist to the back of Toto’s right shoulder in three gestures Hogan couldn’t see, but whatever they were, Toto relaxed ever so slightly.
“Explain, then, why we cannot find your daughter,” MacGyver demanded.
“I can’t,” Toto groaned. “It’s not like Anna to abandon her father like that.”
“Explain why we received a report that there was an Underground rendezvous occurring in that location.”
“I can’t.”
“Explain why you were on the ground in front of the far door of that barn!”
“It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I fell.”
Hogan decided it was his turn. “Your daughter was not with you then?”
“No. I called to her, but she didn’t answer.”
“So she had already abandoned you.”
“No, she-she must have gone outside for something, maybe to bring a blanket in from the car. She wouldn’t-she couldn’t-not after... not after I-I-”
MacGyver was gesturing into Toto’s shoulder again. “Well?” he pressed when Toto faltered to a stop. “After you what?”
Toto shook his head. “No... no, it’s not fair, I won’t....”
“Speak!” Stetson barked.
Toto closed his eyes with a shudder. “She’s already had so much trouble this week.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“In Schweinfurt. I had to take the bus-”
But before Toto could ‘break’ any further, the conversation was interrupted by an alarm, followed by a distant explosion. There were shouts, shots, and running steps from the halls... and the guards outside the interrogation room were among those who took off running, leaving the four agents locked inside. Stetson shouted for them to come back and banged on the door, to no avail, a fact confirmed when he slammed his fist against the door one last time and turned back to the others with a wordless snarl.
MacGyver nudged Toto, who stood and moved out of the way as MacGyver stepped up on the chair, ripped the bug out of the ceiling, and jumped down again with the mic and the cord in his hand. “Pencil,” MacGyver demanded softly in English.*
“Times I’m actually glad I can send people to the Russian Front,” Stetson groused in the same language, pulling a pencil out of his coat pocket and handing it over while MacGyver produced his Swiss Army knife and started stripping the ends of the bug’s cable.
“Is that Franz and Gunther?” Toto asked.
“Couldn’t be,” Hogan replied. “London would have told them Tin Man was coming in. They wouldn’t try to assault Gestapo Headquarters on their own.”
“No,” Stetson agreed, “but it could be black marketeers. We made a big bust last week, before this whole mess with Glinda.”
Toto huffed. “I hate this sort of coincidence. This whole mission’s been full of them.” He started fumbling for the chair, and Hogan helped him sit down again.
“What did happen in Schweinfurt?” Stetson asked.
Toto scrubbed at his eyes and sighed. “Glinda stopped for lunch on her way down here. One of the local cops, this real hotshot rookie, saw her and tried for a quick score. Faked up a parking violation and told Glinda he’d let her off the hook for ‘a favor.’”
Stetson rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. She slapped him.”
Toto nodded. “And he arrested her for assaulting a police officer. I had to pay a thousand Marks to bail her out. But her car was already at the police station when Gunther found it, so there’s no telling what the cop did to it before I got there.”
Stetson sobered. “You’re thinking a tailing device?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Franz and Gunther had plenty of opportunities to betray me if they’d been unreliable, but they didn’t-at least, I don’t think they meant to leave me behind when I tripped. Glinda was sure she didn’t let anything slip. And the barn’s several miles from the nearest house, so it’s not like there were any neighbors to get nosy. But if that cop was willing to use his badge to coerce Glinda before she rejected him....”
“He’d be the type to use the Gestapo for revenge afterward,” Hogan agreed.
Stetson visibly bit back a curse. “Well, two can play at that game. I’ll send one of my captains to check it out-that kind of thing is illegal even in Germany. ’Course, we have to get out of here first....”
“’M workin’ on it,” said MacGyver abstractedly. He had by this point stripped the outer insulation off most of the bug cable, discarded the bug itself, stuck one end of one wire into the exposed graphite at the blunt end of the pencil, and wrapped the same end of the other wire around a rivet on the door. He finished stripping and separating the other ends and shot an appraising glance up at the light, then shook his head. “This cable’s too short. Gonna have to use the light switch. You guys hang tight.” He expertly switched from the knife blade to the screwdriver blade of his tool as he turned to the light switch.
Toto chuckled bitterly. “It won’t make any difference to me.”
“We’re gonna get you outta here,” MacGyver insisted, starting to unscrew the face plate.
Toto’s face softened. “I know you will.”
“And while I don’t wanna say ‘I told you so’-”
“Oh, don’t start, Mac!”
“Our deal was no field work!”
“Unless absolutely necessary, and it was! The only other available agent in the whole of Europe was Dorothy, and not only is her German still not good enough to pass, Scarecrow had left strict orders with Conlon that she’s not to leave London!”
Hogan frowned. “Dorothy?”
“My wife,” Stetson admitted as MacGyver turned off the light. “It was her mother’s name. That’s what gave Conlon the idea of giving the rest of our team and these two codenames from The Wizard of Oz.”
MacGyver grumbled something Hogan didn’t catch and peered into the switch box. “Not quite enough light. I need a belt buckle.”
Hogan whipped off his own belt and held the shiny buckle up to reflect what little light was coming in from the window in the door over to the switch box. Stetson did the same.
“Perfect.” MacGyver wired the loose ends of the cable into the switch, slid a glove onto his right hand for insulation, and moved to the door.
Then he nodded at Hogan, who slipped behind him and flipped the switch. Not only did the light come on, but MacGyver used the point of the pencil as an arc welder to cut open the lock plate of the electrified door. Once that was done, he handed the contraption to Hogan, who switched off the light again, and manually opened the lock while Stetson helped Toto to his feet and put handcuffs on him. MacGyver then opened the door, and Hogan pulled the cable out of the switch, stuffed the pencil and cable into his own pocket, and helped Stetson steer Toto out into the hall.
They were just finishing the paperwork farce in Hochstetter’s office when the alarm finally shut off. Fitzner passed the door a moment later, then doubled back in surprise.
“Ah, Fitzner,” Stetson said, putting his pen back in its stand and himself back into character, before Fitzner could get further than opening his mouth to ask something. “Find me the guards who were assigned to the interrogation room, will you? I’ll want a complete report on the assault on this building-”
“It was the black market, sir,” Fitzner blurted out.
“-after I have dealt with their desertion of their posts.”
Fitzner gaped like a fish, closed his mouth again, and clicked his heels with a nod. “Yes, Herr Major.” And he left.
Stetson stood and ushered Hogan, MacGyver, and Toto outside, conspicuously bidding the two ersatz Gestapo men farewell. Then MacGyver got in the back seat with Toto, and Hogan slid into the driver’s seat and drove off as quickly as was safe.
“We’re clear,” he announced once they were well away from Gestapo Headquarters and he was sure they weren’t being followed.
Toto sighed in relief and slumped against MacGyver, who started taking off his handcuffs. “I owe you yet another one, Mac,” Toto whispered.
“Hey,” MacGyver replied. “Who’s keepin’ score?”
“Thank God you taught me Sign. I’m not sure I would have recognized your voice otherwise; my ears still aren’t quite up to snuff. And my eyes....”
“Can you see anything at all?”
“Sometimes dark shapes against bright light, but that’s all.”
“Well. We’ll get you home. You’ll just have to leave it to Scarecrow and Papa Bear to end the war,” MacGyver added in a tone that Hogan suspected went with a teasing smile.
“You never know,” Hogan replied with a teasing smile of his own. “We just might.”
Next
* This idea actually comes from the Mission: Impossible Season 4 episode “Death Squad” (which featured guest star Leon Askin, better known as Gen. Burkhalter!), but it’s always struck me as Mac’s improvisational style.
Chapter 2
48 Hours Earlier
Lee adjusted his binoculars and looked again from the back seat of the staff car across the overgrown field to the abandoned barn to which the Gestapo had been summoned by a tip from an anonymous male caller. He was partly stalling for time and partly hoping there was some way he could convince the others it was a false alarm without raising too many suspicions. But no-there were two cars parked outside, mostly hidden but still obvious to a trained eye in the light of the full moon, and a glint or two of lamplight had shone through the cracks in the barn wall before being extinguished.
Dammit, Francine, he thought as he stifled a sigh.
His longtime colleague Francine Desmond, currently operating under the codename Glinda, was normally a cautious and reliable agent, but somehow she occasionally managed to get herself into serious scrapes that endangered everyone around her-in fact, she’d nearly gotten Lee’s wife Amanda killed a few times before the war, when they’d all worked for the FBI’s intelligence division and Amanda had been a young widow who’d stumbled into the espionage game after Lee had been forced to use her as an unwitting courier. He still didn’t know what had happened earlier in the week to make Francine miss her rendezvous both with him and with her Underground contacts, Franz and Gunther, but somehow Gunther had found her car several miles away in Schweinfurt and called London to arrange her rescue. Said rescue had evidently been successful up to this point, but now it was going south... and there was only so much Lee could do about it, since he’d stalled as long as was safe.
“There is someone in the barn,” he admitted in German and lowered his binoculars. “I couldn’t see movement, but there was a light. Let’s go.”
He and the three junior officers with him got out of the car, and one ordered the troops out of the truck behind them. Lee continued to survey the scene, listening as carefully as he could. The clatter of the troopers’ equipment covered any faint noises like creaking hinges coming from the barn; he could only hope that meant Franz and Gunther had managed to keep quiet while getting Toto and Francine into either a safe hiding place or the woods.
Lee waited as long as he dared before ordering the troopers to surround the building with a fifty-meter perimeter. Only then did he lead the junior officers up to the barn, listen a moment longer, and motion for one of them to kick in the door.
“Gestapo!” another announced as they switched on their flashlights and entered the barn. “Come out with your hands up!”
There were no sounds of surprise or running footsteps... but Lee’s heart sank when his flashlight beam swept down from the opposite barn door onto the form of a heavy-set man sprawled motionless on the floor.
Lee motioned for his juniors to search the rest of the barn, then went over to check on the downed man. The man’s foot had snagged on a loose floorboard, and he lay where he’d fallen; the floorboard had broken, but Lee couldn’t see anything underneath, not even something to pretend not to see. Putting a hand on the man’s back revealed that he was still warm-too warm-and breathing shallowly enough not to be visible from a distance. His pulse was rapid but not thready, and a quick check of his balding head uncovered no sign of a concussion. So Lee gently turned the man over-and found himself shining his flashlight at the face of a seemingly unconscious Pete Thornton.
Dammit, Francine.
“Anything?” he called to his juniors, aiming his flashlight at the wall instead.
“Nothing, Herr Major,” came three staggered reports.
“All right, check outside and into the woods. They can’t have gone far.”
Three affirmative replies came back, and the juniors clattered their way outside and shut the door behind them.
Lee watched them go and waited until the barn was quiet again to whisper, “Toto?”
Thornton startled. “What? Who’s there?” he whispered back in German.
“Scarecrow.”
Thornton’s eyes popped open. “Lee!” He sat up, scrabbling at Lee’s coat in evident panic, his hands finally finding purchase on one lapel and the edge of a sleeve. “Lee, I’m blind!” he breathed in English.
Lee switched to the same language. “Oh-sorry if I-”
“No! I’m blind!”
Lee swallowed hard and shone his flashlight back at Thornton’s face. Sure enough, Thornton’s pupils didn’t react at all. “Where’d they go?” he asked, lowering the flashlight again.
Thornton shook his head. “I dunno. Franz was keeping a lookout; he saw you drive up. Then when Gunther doused the light, all anyone said was ‘This way,’ and... I mean, it was hard enough to see even in broad daylight this morning, and my eyes had been getting worse all day. And then I lost hold of Glinda, and then I tripped, and now....” He sniffled congestedly.
“Dammit.” Lee listened for a moment to the sounds of the search outside. “Listen. I’m gonna have to take you in, for both our sakes, but I’ll get you a doctor as soon as I can.”
Thornton nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
“I don’t contact London directly, but Franz and Gunther do. Assuming they get away, I’m sure they’ll call for help.”
Thornton nodded again and coughed, a racking, rattling cough. “Mac’ll come,” he wheezed when the coughing fit passed, apparently as much to himself as to Lee. “Mac always comes.” His grip on Lee’s coat slackened, and Lee caught him as he started to sag forward.
Just then the door behind Thornton started to open, and Lee swiftly shifted back into character. “All right,” he growled in German. “Come on, old man. Get up.”
Thornton groaned as Lee hauled him to his feet and let his head loll against Lee’s shoulder. “My daughter,” he moaned in the same language, sounding delirious. “My daughter... where is my daughter....”
Lee looked past him to the junior officer who was silhouetted against the moonlight coming through the now-open door. “Anything?”
“Not yet, Herr Major,” replied the junior officer.
Thornton moaned again. “No... Anna... my daughter Anna, want to see....” He trailed off in another coughing fit.
“Well, we’ve got one, at least,” Lee replied to the junior officer. “I’m sure he’ll talk in a day or two, once he’s well enough. If not, Berlin will be able to get the truth out of him.”
The Present
“I wasn’t able to call off the search quite that soon,” Stetson concluded, “but Franz and Gunther evidently got themselves and Glinda out in one piece.”
Hogan nodded. “Yeah, I know that barn. It’s got some good hiding places.”
“So what’s wrong with Toto?” MacGyver asked.
Stetson grimaced. “Upper respiratory infection. Hiding in his sinuses for weeks, apparently, and I’m sure the flight over didn’t do him any favors; by the time I picked him up, it was in both lungs and both ears as well. But from what the doctor said, it sounds like the pressure in his sinuses from the infection was the last straw for his optic nerves. He’s breathing a lot better since the penicillin shot, but... he doesn’t act like his vision’s come back at all.”
MacGyver’s heavy sigh was as eloquent as a curse. “I shoulda come myself.”
“Look, we can all blame ourselves all we want, but the fact is, whether he realized he was sick or not, Toto chose to get on that plane. He did get Glinda out. And whether anyone thought about the effects on his sight, he would have been fine if someone hadn’t blown the whistle on the meeting with Franz and Gunther.”
“We’ve worked with Franz and Gunther before,” said Hogan. “They’re reliable. Question is, who else knew they were meeting there?”
“We’ll have to ask Toto in the car,” replied MacGyver. “Right now, all I’m worried about is gettin’ out of here.”
“Not so fast,” said Stetson. “Toto’s done a good job of sticking to his cover story, but it’s been almost too good a job for me to justify a transfer. Fitzner, at least, is suspicious. I think we need one more interrogation to make it look good.”
Hogan’s eyes narrowed. “Look good how?”
Stetson chuckled. “This is the only room in the building that isn’t bugged, and I know that because I checked it myself. We bring Toto into the interrogation room; we have a few minutes of radio theater; you guys declare yourselves satisfied that he knows something more than he’s telling; and I send the three of you on your way back to ‘Berlin.’”
“What about Dalton?”
“Well, his plane will be ready to move tomorrow. I don’t think I can stall Toeppich any further beyond that-he still hasn’t told me who his contact in England was, and I’m afraid to keep pushing in case he starts asking questions. I can kick any Gestapo queries about the plane repairs up the ladder to our man in Berlin, but Toeppich’s too much of a loose cannon to trust him go through the usual channels.”
Hogan grimaced. “We’ll have to send Toto and Tin Man out with Dalton, then. We can’t handle two separate escapes at the same time.”
MacGyver was frowning slightly when Hogan looked over at him. “Dalton,” he echoed. “I’ve heard you guys mention that name a couple times back at base.”
“I’ll introduce you when we get back,” Hogan promised. “He’s the guy in the cooler. But if we’re gonna stage an interrogation here, we’d better get going.”
Stetson nodded. “Yeah, I agree.”
MacGyver still looked somewhere between suspicious and concerned, but he didn’t say anything else. Stetson stood, and Hogan and MacGyver did likewise and followed Stetson to the door. Once they were in the hall, Stetson slid back into character and called for Fitzner.
“Yes, Herr Major?” Fitzner replied, hurrying back down the hall toward them.
“Have the prisoner Müller brought to the interrogation room at once.”
Fitzner blinked. “Interrogation, Herr Major? At this hour?!”
“I am well aware of the time,” MacGyver snapped. “But Gruppenführer Hausmann will be expecting us to report to him in person first thing in the morning. Especially with the current state of the roads, we cannot afford to wait. We must determine whether Müller is an Underground agent now so that we can get underway.”
Fitzner started to protest again, but Stetson growled dangerously, “I gave you an order, Fitzner.”
Fitzner clicked his heels and left without another word, and Hogan and MacGyver followed Stetson to the interrogation room. They arrived in time to see Toto being escorted in from the other direction, one Gestapo goon holding each arm and a third in front with the keys. Stetson gestured for the key-holder to unlock the door, and the three free agents hung back while the others hustled Toto in and shoved him down into a chair.
“Oh, my head,” Toto moaned in German. “Can’t I go home, please?”
“Not yet,” Stetson replied and motioned for the guards to leave the room. They did so, closing the door behind them, and Hogan heard the click of the automatic lock.
“Please, Herr Major. I’ve told you the truth. Please let me go home with my daughter.”
“There is no such person as Anna Müller in Düsseldorf,” said Stetson, pointing to the overhead light.
Hogan spotted the bug, its cord twined around the cord of the hanging light, and glanced at MacGyver, who nodded slightly and started stalking around behind Toto.
Toto, meanwhile, was shaking his head wearily. “Anna lives in Berlin. I had met her in Schweinfurt, and she was taking me home. But I was very sick, and we were worried about bombing, so we stopped at the barn to spend the night.”
MacGyver pressed his right fist to the back of Toto’s right shoulder in three gestures Hogan couldn’t see, but whatever they were, Toto relaxed ever so slightly.
“Explain, then, why we cannot find your daughter,” MacGyver demanded.
“I can’t,” Toto groaned. “It’s not like Anna to abandon her father like that.”
“Explain why we received a report that there was an Underground rendezvous occurring in that location.”
“I can’t.”
“Explain why you were on the ground in front of the far door of that barn!”
“It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I fell.”
Hogan decided it was his turn. “Your daughter was not with you then?”
“No. I called to her, but she didn’t answer.”
“So she had already abandoned you.”
“No, she-she must have gone outside for something, maybe to bring a blanket in from the car. She wouldn’t-she couldn’t-not after... not after I-I-”
MacGyver was gesturing into Toto’s shoulder again. “Well?” he pressed when Toto faltered to a stop. “After you what?”
Toto shook his head. “No... no, it’s not fair, I won’t....”
“Speak!” Stetson barked.
Toto closed his eyes with a shudder. “She’s already had so much trouble this week.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“In Schweinfurt. I had to take the bus-”
But before Toto could ‘break’ any further, the conversation was interrupted by an alarm, followed by a distant explosion. There were shouts, shots, and running steps from the halls... and the guards outside the interrogation room were among those who took off running, leaving the four agents locked inside. Stetson shouted for them to come back and banged on the door, to no avail, a fact confirmed when he slammed his fist against the door one last time and turned back to the others with a wordless snarl.
MacGyver nudged Toto, who stood and moved out of the way as MacGyver stepped up on the chair, ripped the bug out of the ceiling, and jumped down again with the mic and the cord in his hand. “Pencil,” MacGyver demanded softly in English.*
“Times I’m actually glad I can send people to the Russian Front,” Stetson groused in the same language, pulling a pencil out of his coat pocket and handing it over while MacGyver produced his Swiss Army knife and started stripping the ends of the bug’s cable.
“Is that Franz and Gunther?” Toto asked.
“Couldn’t be,” Hogan replied. “London would have told them Tin Man was coming in. They wouldn’t try to assault Gestapo Headquarters on their own.”
“No,” Stetson agreed, “but it could be black marketeers. We made a big bust last week, before this whole mess with Glinda.”
Toto huffed. “I hate this sort of coincidence. This whole mission’s been full of them.” He started fumbling for the chair, and Hogan helped him sit down again.
“What did happen in Schweinfurt?” Stetson asked.
Toto scrubbed at his eyes and sighed. “Glinda stopped for lunch on her way down here. One of the local cops, this real hotshot rookie, saw her and tried for a quick score. Faked up a parking violation and told Glinda he’d let her off the hook for ‘a favor.’”
Stetson rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. She slapped him.”
Toto nodded. “And he arrested her for assaulting a police officer. I had to pay a thousand Marks to bail her out. But her car was already at the police station when Gunther found it, so there’s no telling what the cop did to it before I got there.”
Stetson sobered. “You’re thinking a tailing device?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. Franz and Gunther had plenty of opportunities to betray me if they’d been unreliable, but they didn’t-at least, I don’t think they meant to leave me behind when I tripped. Glinda was sure she didn’t let anything slip. And the barn’s several miles from the nearest house, so it’s not like there were any neighbors to get nosy. But if that cop was willing to use his badge to coerce Glinda before she rejected him....”
“He’d be the type to use the Gestapo for revenge afterward,” Hogan agreed.
Stetson visibly bit back a curse. “Well, two can play at that game. I’ll send one of my captains to check it out-that kind of thing is illegal even in Germany. ’Course, we have to get out of here first....”
“’M workin’ on it,” said MacGyver abstractedly. He had by this point stripped the outer insulation off most of the bug cable, discarded the bug itself, stuck one end of one wire into the exposed graphite at the blunt end of the pencil, and wrapped the same end of the other wire around a rivet on the door. He finished stripping and separating the other ends and shot an appraising glance up at the light, then shook his head. “This cable’s too short. Gonna have to use the light switch. You guys hang tight.” He expertly switched from the knife blade to the screwdriver blade of his tool as he turned to the light switch.
Toto chuckled bitterly. “It won’t make any difference to me.”
“We’re gonna get you outta here,” MacGyver insisted, starting to unscrew the face plate.
Toto’s face softened. “I know you will.”
“And while I don’t wanna say ‘I told you so’-”
“Oh, don’t start, Mac!”
“Our deal was no field work!”
“Unless absolutely necessary, and it was! The only other available agent in the whole of Europe was Dorothy, and not only is her German still not good enough to pass, Scarecrow had left strict orders with Conlon that she’s not to leave London!”
Hogan frowned. “Dorothy?”
“My wife,” Stetson admitted as MacGyver turned off the light. “It was her mother’s name. That’s what gave Conlon the idea of giving the rest of our team and these two codenames from The Wizard of Oz.”
MacGyver grumbled something Hogan didn’t catch and peered into the switch box. “Not quite enough light. I need a belt buckle.”
Hogan whipped off his own belt and held the shiny buckle up to reflect what little light was coming in from the window in the door over to the switch box. Stetson did the same.
“Perfect.” MacGyver wired the loose ends of the cable into the switch, slid a glove onto his right hand for insulation, and moved to the door.
Then he nodded at Hogan, who slipped behind him and flipped the switch. Not only did the light come on, but MacGyver used the point of the pencil as an arc welder to cut open the lock plate of the electrified door. Once that was done, he handed the contraption to Hogan, who switched off the light again, and manually opened the lock while Stetson helped Toto to his feet and put handcuffs on him. MacGyver then opened the door, and Hogan pulled the cable out of the switch, stuffed the pencil and cable into his own pocket, and helped Stetson steer Toto out into the hall.
They were just finishing the paperwork farce in Hochstetter’s office when the alarm finally shut off. Fitzner passed the door a moment later, then doubled back in surprise.
“Ah, Fitzner,” Stetson said, putting his pen back in its stand and himself back into character, before Fitzner could get further than opening his mouth to ask something. “Find me the guards who were assigned to the interrogation room, will you? I’ll want a complete report on the assault on this building-”
“It was the black market, sir,” Fitzner blurted out.
“-after I have dealt with their desertion of their posts.”
Fitzner gaped like a fish, closed his mouth again, and clicked his heels with a nod. “Yes, Herr Major.” And he left.
Stetson stood and ushered Hogan, MacGyver, and Toto outside, conspicuously bidding the two ersatz Gestapo men farewell. Then MacGyver got in the back seat with Toto, and Hogan slid into the driver’s seat and drove off as quickly as was safe.
“We’re clear,” he announced once they were well away from Gestapo Headquarters and he was sure they weren’t being followed.
Toto sighed in relief and slumped against MacGyver, who started taking off his handcuffs. “I owe you yet another one, Mac,” Toto whispered.
“Hey,” MacGyver replied. “Who’s keepin’ score?”
“Thank God you taught me Sign. I’m not sure I would have recognized your voice otherwise; my ears still aren’t quite up to snuff. And my eyes....”
“Can you see anything at all?”
“Sometimes dark shapes against bright light, but that’s all.”
“Well. We’ll get you home. You’ll just have to leave it to Scarecrow and Papa Bear to end the war,” MacGyver added in a tone that Hogan suspected went with a teasing smile.
“You never know,” Hogan replied with a teasing smile of his own. “We just might.”
Next
* This idea actually comes from the Mission: Impossible Season 4 episode “Death Squad” (which featured guest star Leon Askin, better known as Gen. Burkhalter!), but it’s always struck me as Mac’s improvisational style.