‘Give me your right hand.’

Tentatively, Heck slid his right arm out of the sling. The whole of the arm was bandaged save the hand. Wilde took it in his own right hand and squeezed. Heck pulled back sharply and suppressed a cry of pain. There was no strength in the Dutchman’s arm or hand.

‘This is hopeless, Lieutenant. You’d only be a hindrance in the high mountains, and nothing is going to change before tomorrow.’

‘Then wait, Wilde. You can’t go there alone.’

‘I’m just going to scout the place out. After that, we’ll take it from there. In the meantime, eat well and sleep.’

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Just as aristocrats talk indiscreetly in front of their servants, never for a moment thinking they will hear or understand the conversation, so medical staff confer together in front of their patients.

Mo Heck’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep. The bandage had been taken off his arm by a nurse so that the doctor could examine the wound and she was now re-dressing it. The doctor was talking to the nurse in a casual way, sharing some scandalous gossip about a mutual friend and an intelligence officer newly arrived from Des Moines, Iowa. They were laughing and joking and wondering whether the new guy had a wife back home.

And then there was another voice, a second doctor. ‘Oh, Fred,’ he said, ‘sorry to interrupt but I was wondering if you could come take a look.’

‘Sure, Garret. What is it?’

‘The German who came in last night, the one with the bullet in his abdomen. We removed it OK and there’s an outside chance he’ll live, but I’d like your opinion on treatment. Colonel Appache is taking an interest in the guy.’

‘I’ll come with you now.’

*

Wilde spent the early evening with Angie Gray and Jerzy. The strange thing, given their surroundings and the terrible circumstances that had brought the three of them together here, was that they managed to laugh a lot.

Jerzy was a good lad – very intelligent and easy in his ways. He might have been only eleven but the way he looked at the doctor, Wilde knew the boy was in love with her. She, too, was smitten with him in a motherly sort of way.

Wilde had acquired another Harley from the motor pool at Garmisch and, at ten o’clock, he took his leave of Angie and Jerzy and rode south to Almrosen, reckoning to arrive around midnight. The roads were empty save for a couple of American roadblocks in Germany and a French military checkpoint at the Austrian border. It had begun to rain again and the damp, despondent soldiers waved him on with a couple of questions about the purpose of his journey and a cursory glance at his papers. American passports carried a lot of clout in Europe in the late summer of 1945.