“How?”
Ulster Scarlett grinned a confident smile. The smile of wealth. “That’s my business.… What choice have you got?… Kill me and you’re a prisoner anyway. Maybe a dead man. And you haven’t much time.…”
“Get up! Put your arms out against the rock!”
Scarlett complied as the German officer took Scarlett’s revolver out of his holster and removed the cartridges.
“Turn around!”
“In less than an hour others’ll be coming up. We were an advance company but not that far ahead.”
The German waved his pistol at Scarlett. “There are several farmhouses about a kilometer and a half southwest. Move! Mach schnell!” With his left hand he thrust Scarlett’s empty revolver at him.
The two men ran across the fields.
The artillery to the north began its early morning barrage. The sun had broken through the clouds and the mist and was now bright.
About a mile to the southwest was a cluster of buildings. A barn and two small stone houses. It was necessary to cross a wide dirt road to reach the overgrown pasture, fenced for livestock, which were not now in evidence. Chimney smoke curled from the larger of the two houses.
Someone had a fire going and that meant someone had food, warmth. Someone had supplies.
“Let’s get into that shack,” said Ulster.
“Neim! Your troops will be coming through.”
“For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to get you some clothes. Can’t you see that?”
The German clicked the hammer of his Luger into firing position. “You’re inconsistent. I thought you proposed taking me back—far back—through your own lines for interrogation?… It might be simpler to kill you now.”
“Only until we could get you clothes! If I’ve got a Kraut officer in tow, there’s nothing to prevent some fat-ass captain figuring out the same thing I have! Or a major or a colonel who wants to get the hell out of the area.… It’s been done before. All they have to do is order me to turn you over and that’s it!… If you’re in civilian clothes, I can get us through easier. There’s so damned much confusion!”
The German slowly released the hammer of his revolver, still staring at the lieutenant. “You really do want this war to be over for you, don’t you?”
Inside the stone house was an old man, hard of hearing, confused and frightened by the strange pair. With little pretense, holding the unloaded revolver, the American lieutenant ordered the man to pack a supply of food and find clothes—any clothes for his “prisoner.”
As Scarlett’s French was poor, he turned to his captor. “Why don’t you tell him we’re both German?… We’re trapped. We’re trying to escape through the lines. Every Frenchman knows we’re breaking through everywhere.”
The German officer smiled. “I’ve already done that. It will add to the confusion.… You will be amused to learn that he said he presumed as much. Do you know why he said that?”
“Why?”
“He said we both had the filthy smell of the Boche about us.”
The old man, who had edged near the open door, suddenly dashed outside and began—feebly—running toward the field.
“Jesus Christ! Stop him! God damn it, stop him!” yelled Scarlett.
The German officer, however, already had his pistol raised. “Don’t be alarmed. He saves us making an unpleasant decision.”
Two shots were fired.
The old man fell, and the young enemies looked at each other.
“What should I call you?” asked Scarlett.
“My own name will do. Strasser.… Gregor Strasser.”
It was not difficult for the two officers to make their way through the Allied lines. The American push out of Regneville was electrifyingly swift, a headlong rush. But totally disconnected in its chain of command. Or so it seemed to Ulster Scarlett and Gregor Strasser.
At Reims the two men came across the remnants of the French Seventeenth Corps, bedraggled, hungry, weary of it all.
They had no trouble at Reims. The French merely shrugged shoulders after uninterested questions.
They headed west to Villers-Cotterêts, the roads to Epernay and Meaux jammed with upcoming supplies and replacements.
Let the other poor bastards take your deathbed bullets, thought Scarlett.
The two men reached the outskirts of Villers-Cotterêts at night. They left the road and cut across a field to the shelter of a cluster of trees.
“We’ll rest here for a few hours,” Strasser said. “Make no attempt to escape. I shall not sleep.”
“You’re crazy, sport! I need you as much as you need me!… A lone American officer forty miles from his company, which just happens to be at the front! Use your head!”