The Tangled Web(99)

"What do we do now?" Beyshlag asked.

"Wait for Captain Duke Eberhard to wake up, I guess," Hertling said. "That horse knocked him cold as well as breaking his arm."

"We need to send a messenger to General Brahe."

"Nobody's going tonight," Schultz said. "It's getting dark."

"We don't know where he is," Merckel said. "The captain knew where he was yesterday evening. 'Somewhere between Landstuhl and Merkweiler' isn't very helpful as far as directions go."

"No," Beyschlag said. "We have to use the radio. We have to stay here and call the general for help."

"Do you know how to use it?" Merckel could be trusted to get to the heart of any issue, at least if there was a discouraging word to be found.

"No, but I know where it is. At least, I know where it should be, the 'tuna tin transmitter' and the antenna. They were in the captain's saddle bags." Beyschlag stood up.

"So if that horse wasn't one of the dead ones, you can get it. If the horse didn't fall on it and smash it, that is."

Hertling pushed his hair back from his forehead. "Merckel . . ."

Beyschlag shook his head. "Even if you don't know how to use it, Hertling, you must have seen the captain use it. You're always standing right behind his shoulder."

"I've seen him use it. That's not quite the same thing."

"Does Lieutenant Duke Friedrich know how to use it?"

"I think so, but I'm not sure."

"He's with his brothers. They may die. He won't want to leave them."

"He won't be leaving them right now," Hochban said, opening the door. "I gave him some of the opium too, for his foot."



"I'm pretty sure the antenna plugs into this hole," Hertling said. "Heisel, tie the other end of this wire to a rock and throw it over the highest thing you can find in the village."

"Did I enlist in the army to spend my days throwing rocks over chimneys?"

"You enlisted to do what you're told. I'll hold on to this end of the wire. If I plug it in first, it might take the tuna tin with it, and we'd end up with the transmitter halfway up the roof of a house."

"How do you send the clicks?"

"You send them with this switch here. One way you send and the other way you receive what other units send you, but I'm not sure which way is which."

"Try it both ways. It won't hurt the machine."

"You hope," Merckel said.

"The only ones I know are for 'SOS.' What good will it do to send that if nobody at the other end knows who is sending it or where we are?"

"Beyschlag, was there a book with this thing?"

Beyschlag stood up again.

Heisel opened the book to a display of the letters of the alphabet, each with a combination of dots and dashes underneath it. Hertling checked the S and the O against his memory. "Yes, that's it."

"What do we need to tell them?"

"We're here, in a mess."

"Duke Ulrich is going to die."

"We're somewhere between Landstuhl and Pirmasens. But . . ." Beyschlag looked at the map he has fished out of Duke Friedrich's doublet. ". . . we don't know exactly how far we are from either one." He looked up at Schultz. "Where are we? What's the name of this village?"

"Weselberg," Hochban said.

"Sure. It would have been way too much to hope that the name would be short. At least it has an S in it."

"Radio operators like very short messages," Heisel said.

"Jeffie Garand has a word he likes. SNAFU. Look up those letters, Beyschlag, and write them out for me. Does anyone have any paper?"

"Use the back page of the Morse code book. It's blank. More to the point, does anyone have a pencil?"

"Schultz, do you have a lantern or a lamp? It's getting dark."

Schultz dug out an ancient clay oil lamp. "Tell them that they have to go past the old mill at Obernheim, because we're closer to Pirmasens than that. Everyone knows where the mill is. The burned-out village was Harsberg."

"It's actually good that it's getting dark. They like to send the radio messages out right before dark or right after dark."

"Beyschlag, write out a whole message. I'll start with the SOS. Here goes."



"Do you think we sent it often enough?"

"How do I know?"

"I tried it ten times each way, with the switch up and the switch down."

"I don't actually know how fast these radio messages travel," Beyschlag said. "Faster than a horse can gallop, I'm sure. And the radio can travel at night, when a horse can't unless he knows the road. Like Heisel said, the radio likes to travel at night."

"So what do we do now?"