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Bewarne’s Novel: First draft of beginning





	

	 Chapter 4: Day 3
	Filed under: General — bewarne @ February 23, 2008 9:03 am 
	
	
		(Last update February 23, 2008, not finished and plan to add and edit this more but could use editing on what is here so far)
“It Ain’t Necessarily So“ (or  “You Turned the Tables on Me”)
By the end of the next day, Katherine wondered why she had bothered taking a bath the night before. Whatever cleanliness she had felt hadn’t lasted through the first part of the day.
Either today had been cooler or she was becoming slightly acclimated to the heat. It was bad but she was able to deal with it just a bit better than she had the previous two days. Maybe it was both slightly cooler and she was starting the acclimation process.
But that night when they stopped, something turned the camp upside down. She was kept out of the way and not allowed to see enough to form an opinion on what was going on. But something was happening between Captain Kichner and Major Cleere. As if the power had shifted and then a formation was called and Sergeant Hauber was taken away and she was left without a guard so she wondered over to where the action was.
Major Cleere was yelling at Captain Kichner who was standing at attention taking it. And his men were behind him all standing at attention. Finally she got a piece of an idea but had trouble fitting it into her view of the world as she knew it and she couldn’t stand the confusion and shouted at the Major, “What is going on?” He turned to her as if he had forgotten she was there as well he had. She demanded to know, “Are you in charge here?”
“Yes.”
She turned to Captain Kichner, “And that makes you?”
“S.I.G. [4]” He was about to tell her what that was but she held up a hand  and murmured “Colonel Buck’s suicide squad.”
She was trying to absorb this — it all made sense but she had to completely revise her view of who everyone was and shifting the ideas and pigeon holes in her brain was not happening easily. The two officers who had heard her, who knew of few people who had ever heard of S.I.G.s were are first speechless.
She began to walk away but then she turned back to them having finally filtered in a piece of what the major had been yelling at the captain, who she now realize was a German Jew  disguised as a German officer.
“Am I to understand that you think one of these men who has been pretending to be a German is a spy?”
“Or a traitor.”
She turned to the captain, “Do you agree that it is one of your men?”
“That seems the most reasonable explanation.”
“In that case I think I can find your spy.”
They both turned to her incredulously, The major actually said, “What?”
She called out to those she had thought were British prisoners, “Does anyone have a deck of cards?” When no one answered, she asked again, “Oh come on. Someone has to have a deck of cards.” She turned to the major. “Promise you won’t punish anyone or confiscate the cards and have someone come up with some cards.”
“What do cards have to do with it?”
“So, I can find your spy.”
“With a deck of cards?”
“And a table and two chairs. You see - it is so hard to trust you because I have the mindset of not trusting him. but it looks like we are all in this together. But my brain is still trying to adjust and I feel a little fuzzy headed at the moment. Well, I was raised by Gypsies.”
“You mean you learned how to tell the future?”
She was exasperated. “No, Major, of course I can’t tell the future. I do not believe anyone can tell the future. What I can do is read the past and it is the past that concerns you here. Get a pack of cards from your men, Major. Sergeant Hauber, get me the table and the chairs from the captain’s tent.” The sergeant waited for his superior to confirm this order. “Come on, Captain. Do you have a better chance of finding your spy? If you could discover the spy among you, surely you would have discovered him by now. And this proves another contention of mine that people can’t tell a Jew from a non-Jew. For I am going on the assumption that if there is someone among you who is working for the enemy, he isn’t a Jew. Even though he seems to have fooled all of you. I guess it is possible for the man to be a traitor instead of a spy but I really feel the odds are that he is a spy - an Aryan pretending to be a Jew pretending to be a German soldier. That has got to be hard on the psyche. And I am sure I can figure out who is going through this kind of triple confusion among people who are going through only a double identity.”
“I do not believe you can find a spy that I haven’t detected.”
The major had returned with the cards, “Neither do I.”
“The proof shall be in the pudding, Gentlemen. Can you tell me what causes you to think there is a spy?”
“Why would you need to know that?” asked Kichner.
“Captain, it isn’t a military secret.” The major overruled him and told her, “One of the Italian women left a note in his jacket which he didn’t find until just a little while ago after we stopped for the night.”
“Of course she did.”
Kichner frowned at her but gave her more facts, “The note said that someone had gotten a message to her father that said we were not what we seemed and that we, Germans, were working for the British and the British prisoners were commandos. She said her father was still thinking about whether to give the information to Colonel Runstedt but probably would after we left – which was wise as there was nothing one German Colonel and some Italian civilians could have done while we were there. But they did have a radio.”
Cleere asked her, “Why would you think you can find a spy?”
“I am more confident that I can find a spy in your midst, than you, Captain, are confident that you can seduce any woman you come across.”
“I don’t always succeed.”
“That is why I am more confident.”
“If you not only find someone you think is a spy but convince me of that, I will take you dancing when we get back to civilization.”
She smiled sweetly, “I don’t think so.”
“What? You don’t dance?”
“First of all, what would make you think I wanted to go dancing with you? But, of course, I dance, I was raised by Gypsies. It is follow I don’t do.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Captain, please confirm my request to your sergeant and gather your people around the table.” As soon as the table appeared she started separating the cards and returned most of the non-descript cards to the major. She was left with face cards, aces and tens. She was only going to do a shorten version of Gypsy fortune telling.
“Gentlemen, I am going to define these cards for you once. Do not try to remember or try to figure out their full meaning, your subconscious will do that. Just listen to my descriptions.”
When she finished one of the men said, “That death card means death doesn’t it?”
“Sort of. But it doesn’t predict your own death – nothing can do that. The death card can refer to death that surrounds you. It can be change. It can be a lot of things. Don’t worry about it if it appears. I would expect it to appear often in a group that deals in death as much as you all do.” She was shuffling the cards now. “Gypsies have special knowledge of the unconsciious mind and can use cards to focus a mind so that it can be read [5]. Here is how it works: Each of you in turn will come and sit here.
You will shuffle the cards while answering the following questions:
 Where were you born and where did you go to school.
What did your father do for a living.
Tell me where your mother, siblings, wives, and any children are now.
What was the passage you read for your bar mitzvah.
When did you join the S.I.G. and how did you find out about it.”
She had subtlety maneuvered the sergeant to be on her right and it was he she first turned to. “You are first sergeant.” He hesitated. “Nu?” She said. That little touch of Yiddish surprised them all but it was one of the most commonly known Yiddish expressions.
Sergeant Hauber came and sat and started shuffling. “What were those questions again?” She told him one at a time and and he gave her the answers. “Now, without looking at them, lay down any five cards from the ones in your hand. From left to right.”
“How do I decide which ones to pick?”
“That is entirely up to you. Go with your first thought.”
He stopped shuffling and laid down the top five cards.
She glanced at the cards and reached for them with one hand and held out her hand for the rest of the cards with the other one. She mixed them a bit as she looked up at the man who had been on the sergeant’s right. “Your turn.” He hesitated. “Sergeant, tell this gentleman that it didn’t hurt.”
The soldier with whom she had had no dealings at all frowned at her and came over and reached out for the cards and he too asked for the questions, gave her the answers and laid down five cards from the bottom of the deck after he stopped shuffling.
She glanced at these cards and reached for them at the same time that she held out her hand for the rest of the deck.
“Don’t we get a reading?”
“If you want a reading, ask me afterwards.” She glanced up at Captain Kichner who was next. She smiled and held out the deck. He didn’t move. She reached up to rub her left jaw, “Come on, Captain. You owe me. And this is your chance to get information you have failed to obtain any other way.”
His eyes narrowed but he moved, sat in the chair and took the cards. She started to recite the questions but he looked at her coldly and said, “I remember the questions. The answers are, I was born in Heidelberg. My father owned a motor dealership and repair shop. He is dead as are my mother, sister and brother. My wife divorced me and I have no idea where she moved to. No children. Passage I studied for my bar mitzvah was XXXX.” He stopped shuffling and cut the deck and then took the first five cards and handed over the rest of the deck which she took with her left hand while glancing down at the cards. Sbe stopped for a moment with surprise.
“Something wrong?”
“I am not used to seeing those first two cards together is all. Thank you Captain.  Next.”
The hesitations stopped and she did three more men she had never met. Then it was Leutnant Hofmann. She smiled at him sweetly and offered him the cards and he smiled back and took them and started shuffling and answering the questions. He too remembered them all. “I was born in Frankfurt on Rhine but we moved to Tel Aviv when I was nine. My father runs a jewelry store, my mother and brother still live there. No wife no children. Biblical passage was dfghjk. He laid down his cards and tried to hand her the deck but she didn’t reach out to take it. She glanced only briefly look at the cards he had laid down but said, “Same passage the sergeant did.”
“Surely that is not unusual.”
“Not unusual at all, although if someone didn’t have a passage himself never having thought he would need one, he might pick the same passage that someone else had mentioned. Just to be sure, recite some of it for me.”
“I don’t remember it – its been a long time and since I speak Hebrew, it wasn’t as big a thing with me to learn it.”
“Makes sense.  Let me refresh your memory, it starts off, ‘    ’.”
“Sorry.  Don’t remember.”
“But you remembered the chapter and verse number to give us. Do you at least remember what it was about?”
“How much do you remember of things you learned when you were 13. We weren’t religious; it was just a silly ritual to get through. I hardly remember any part of it.”
“So, you had been living in America before you returned and immediately joined the S.I.G.s.”
“Yes.”
“Most of the group were Palestinians and joined from the Palmach and the Haganah.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yet, you were made an officer.”
“I had the education and certain skills and they thought I had leadership potential.”
She turned to the others, “Who knew this man when he joined up?”
“I met him when we joined at the same time.”
“Did he seem to have some military training already?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get your military training?”
“You think I’m the spy?”
“Yes, I do.”
“On the basis of this?”
“This and the tells you have been exhibiting.”
“What?”
“You don’t play poker? A tell is a mannerism that someone exhibits when they have a good hand or a bad hand. It is what people reveal in body language when they lie.”
“You think you can tell when someone is lying?”
“I was raised by Gypsies. Gypsies think that a five year old child who can’t tell when someone is lying is retarded. Gypsies live in a world of lies.”
Kichner had begun moving towards the table and was now within Lt. Hofman’s line of sight. “You don’t believe this do you, Captain?”
“Some of it is falling together with things she cannot know.”
“She may be the spy.”
“And I would willingly believe that if she knew the information that we have learned has been passed on. But she was never in a position to find out any of it. She was always with Major Cleere, Sergeant Hauber, or myself. I made sure she never passed on any information last night in note or word. And she didn’t know we weren’t Germans. But you did.”
“All of us did. You are only focusing on me because of her mumbo jumbo which you cannot believe in.”
“No, it is entirely your answers to her questions, not the silly cards.”
Others were moving up also. Seems once the thought was put into their minds, many found reason to suspect him. The guy to his right was not one of the Germans who had all been disarmed but one of the British non-coms who still had his sidearm. Koch moved quickly and totally unexpectedly from a totally relaxed position, took the sidearm and brought it to bear. She bent the cards in her hand and sprang them at him and then ducked down off the chair behind the weak table and so didn’t see Kichner throw the knife nor it spring from leut’s body.”
The major threw a fit. “I didn’t want him dead. He had valuable information.”
Captain Kichner just looked at him.
Katherine got up from the ground and said, “Major, how do you think it would help you to have him alive? Do you think he was going to tell you what he knew.”
“With some persuasion.”
“And how long did you think you were going to have for this persuasion? You actually think a few hours or even a day of concentrated effort would get you the truth? Maybe it would if you were willing to use Gestapo techniques but when you have no way to prove any part of what someone tells you and you cannot keep them around to test what they tell you, you have no idea if they are just telling you what they think will make sense.”
Captain Kichner said, “I thought you could tell if someone were lying.”
“Another problem with the idea is that you, Major, couldn’t do the things that it would take to get someone to talk. The captain here might be willing and able to do it but I wouldn’t be willing or able to stay around through such an interrogation to find out whether he was lying and I have no idea if someone would exhibit distinctive tells under torture, but I suspect torture would throw off everything I know about lies – the only lies I have known are those given voluntarily. I cannot imagine what would happen under torture. And it takes a lot longer than that to torture the truth out of someone even if you use the ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques of our enemy and I am not sure you and your men are up to doing it or even just sitting by while Captain Kichner and his men do it. But there was really no choice anyway, although we should all have foreseen his attempt at killing some of us when he gave up on his own life. And how much time do you have before you do whatever you are going to do?”
“However that might be, I doubt you could have allowed the torture to continue for long enough for it to produce anything. You just have to figure that the enemy knows you are coming – assuming they believe the information when it is passed on. And where are you going?”
“Why should I tell you? You are a nurse.”
Kichner had moved with them and she now turned to him. “Captain, do you still believe I am a nurse?”
“I suspect you are a few other things besides.  Don’t know if you are also a nurse.”
“Which reminds me to ask - since you must have wanted not to have to fire on that British column, why did you try so hard to stop me from firing that mortar.”
“If I had been trying to stop you, I would have.  I could have thrown a knife or just about anything else.”
“How had you been planning to get out of attacking the British force.”
“Actually, I hadn’t figured out something when you provided the means. I still had to make it look good or we would have had a pitched battle at the top of that ridge against the oberleutnant’s troops. That I was trying to avoid.”
“But they had the mortars.”
“I admit that I had no plan.  Was just trying to see an opening. You were a God Send.”
“So, God gets the credit for my abilities and quick thinking?”
“Tell me how you were able to do it.”
“Ah, some of it was that I learned to juggle while with the Gypsies - who are actually called Rom. And I have an uncle in the German army who showed me mortars one day so I had lifted a shell and knew what to expect and he had actually explained me me how the mortar worked.”
“So, you had a lot of strange skills that helped you do this. God should get some of the credit for putting you in the right place at the right time.”
“Leave it to a monotheist to credit God - I don’t believe even God can predict the future and arrange all that. And if he could, why not do something to stop some of the worse situations people are finding themselves in these days.  All I did was save you from having to figure out something.  You had weapons and men, I suspect you don’t think you really needed me.”
“So, you think it was coincidence?”
“What else?”
“So, what are you?” the major asked.
“Let’s just say that if I knew what was going on, I might be able to help and since my impression is that the enemy already knows some of it, I don’t see why you cannot share some of the basics of your mission with me. Although, it means the next time there is a security breach, I am going to be a suspect.”
Captain Kichner, leaned towards her.  “I could believe that you are a German spy.’
“Except that everything I have done that would lead you to think I was a spy has been done to help the British.”
“Could be an elaborate ruse.”
“Captain, you have an extraordinarily suspicious mind. But he is right, of course, Major. You have to weigh the pros and the cons but in my opinion, you would do well to allow me some knowledge of what we are headed into. Am I wrong in my impression that the Germans already know much of it? Just tell me what you believe the enemy already know.”
                Copyright 2007-2008 by B. E. Warne: All rights reserved.
	
	
	
                        	




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PagesAbout / Introduction
Acknowledgments
Chapt 1: Day 1-Begin
Chapter 2: Day 1-End
Chapter 3: Day 2
Chapter 4: Day 3
Characters
Title Suggestions
X-notes
Copyright Notice
	Footnotes
	Inspiration
	References/Sources
	Songs & Music

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