“And with those ears,” Mole said with a laugh, “Mouse can help you monitor the movement of every Fritz in Berlin.”

Charlie ducked back behind Thomas and tugged his hair down over his ears.

Frederick saluted Mole. “I guess that means I’m with you, sir.”

“Sorry, Eton,” Mole said, lighting a new cigarette, “but those spindly legs of yours couldn’t push through a wall of wet sand, much less a tunnel face of packed blue clay.”

George snorted.

Frederick tried to ignore him by keeping his attention glued on the large clay kicker, but the flare of his pinched nostrils told George he was getting to the snooty, eager soldier, so George laughed harder.

“Then who am I working with?” Frederick asked.

Boomer slapped him on the back, knocking the helmet from his head. “Eton, you get to work with the most important member of our crew.”

“Who might that be?” Frederick asked, bending down to fetch his helmet.

Boomer walked over to a corner of the room, retrieved the birdcage from its post, and handed it to Frederick. “Meet your partner. Feathers.”

After the men finished their card game and fed the boys a cold meal of bully beef, a tinned corned beef, and K-Brot, a bread sometimes made of such things as dried potatoes, oats, barley, and pulverized straw, Bagger and the other men exited the dugout, leaving the boys with one order—get some rest before their first shift. Thomas hoped the other boys would go to sleep right away so he could start his search for James, but as exhausted as everyone was, no one appeared eager to close their eyes and sleep underground for the first time.

George, lying on the wire bunk above Thomas, regaled his captive audience with stories about life on the streets of London, occasionally asking Charlie to verify his description of London’s seedy underbelly. Every time his voice would start to quiet and the silences between his words stretched long, Thomas hoped he was finally falling asleep, but then George’s head would pop out over the edge of his bunk, his red hair dangling in messy curls like a mane of fire, and he’d begin his next tale.

Seated on the bottom bunk across the dugout, Frederick seemed to grit his teeth against George’s ramblings and scribbled furiously with a fancy fountain pen in the notebook from his kit bag.

Charlie sat in the bunk above Frederick, sketching pictures of Feathers with the nub of a pencil. As he drew, he fed the canary pieces of the bread he’d tucked in his pocket during dinner through the bars of the cage on a shelf in the dugout’s corner. He didn’t speak, but nodded in agreement any time George asked, “Ain’t that right, Mouse?”

After an hour, George’s story about running messages for some man named Grugar trailed off until the only sounds coming from above Thomas’s bunk were stuttered snores.

“I thought he’d never shut up,” Frederick mumbled, taking his glasses and setting them on the top corner of his bunk. Tucking his book and pen under the coat he’d rolled as a pillow, he adjusted the scratchy wool army blanket from his bag and turned toward the wall.