[Hogan's Heroes] Enfilade: Room Six (PG) a WW2 fic crossover with the Howling Commandos
Wrapped in her furs despite being indoors, Marya played with the LORAN-G tracker before brainstorming ways to secret it high upon the Dragon of Death. Such a small box of dulled metal, unmarked by any manufacturer's stamp of pride, engineered to signal location from a land tower. She shook it hard, traced the sealed seam guarding its guts and stroked the minuscule antenna to test its strength. Nimrod trusted her with this amazing bit of technology and glue extracted from barnacles to affix it to a stable point. The fact that "stable point" would be the extremely mobile submarine Dragon of Death shouldn't make a difference to a following vessel or plane, right? If she were caught by the Dragon's crew or by German agents while planting a tracker upon an ally's submarine, she would be tortured, right? If she gave a tidbit of information about the name of the tracker growing from LORAN meaning long range navigation and G meaning a shortened version of British navigation tracker named Gee, they would believe her, right? That ought to satisfy captors until she could finagle her way free, right?
Marya reviewed her policy upon torture: tell everything.
Nimrod. Marya still did not know who this was and she didn't think Hogan did, either. Man? Woman? Group? Comintern escapee? In Marya's youth, cherished Sabbath teacher Matushka Galina claimed all non-biblical tales about Nimrod were mere fables and that Nimrod remained a plain and simple good hunter as described in Genesis, probably someone you could trust to place a succulent bear steak upon your table. Thinking about the lesson as an adult, Marya suspected Matushka painted the best stories herself as she catered the Bible to her young pupils in Pskov.
IOIOIOIOIO
January 28, 1945 2330 hours
How easy it is to lie, reflected Marya, and how easily truth turns to lies and vice versa. For example, boarding the Wilhelm Gustloff as a refugee in order to covertly safeguard the Amber Room worked as a Plan A, fully endorsed by Nimrod who supplied the tracker for the ship relayed through Hogan. Upon meeting an unexpected ally named Wolfgang who lied by presenting himself as a German private too humble to be noticed while on leave, Marya devised Plan B: using Wolfgang's communiques with a Captain Okada to switch the amber cargo to the enormous submarine thirty feet in front of her. As she waited upon the dock, von Strucker gathered their luggage from their room, a stingy single valise on her part but a large satchel on his. Eh, she had peeked inside while he slept to spy a general's uniform, one framed family photo, and a Walther PPK amid toilet articles.
The time to place the tracker was now.
From inside her ushanka came mewls, meows and mrrrrrrrs. Marya stepped near enough to the dock's edge to make an observer queasy for her safety, doffed her ushanka and comforted the tiny orange kitten inside. "All over in an instant, small one, my Kalina. Be brave, darling."
urrrrrreeeeeooooorarRRRRRHHHHEEEEOWWW
And then Marya rolled up Kalina's transport tightly and arced it through the air to land upon the submarine's slippery deck.
"My baby!" shrieked Marya. "I must save my baby!"
Naval personnel in German uniforms pounded along the pier to join her. They looked down into the black waters as if to spot a drowning infant amid chunks of ice, but Marya pointed to the Dragon of Death. "There! There! See her? Help me save her, please! I have reward!"
Kalina streaked from the deck to the shoulders of the Dragon and then up, up, up its gargantuan neck to the crest of the figure as she followed her instincts to climb away from danger. Marya could not hear its terrified mews as it reached the top, but she could imagine its fear.
Marya cried louder. "Such a tiny little girl, oh do not abandon her, meinen Freunden!"
The crane gripped the last crate of Amber Room panels, its hooks cinching the net surrounding the stout wood. As the operator swung it up into the air, Marya screamed again.
"My small one! Nooooooooo!"
An armed Japanese sailor advanced to investigate the commotion, Marya assumed. She cried real tears, wringing her hands and bending to sob in sorrow. The German sailors split up, one backing up to the opposite edge of the pier to see the sub's crest better. "A cat? It is! A cat!"
The German soothing Marya's tense shoulders as she bent down to cry let go of her. "Now? You fuss over a cat now, with the Russian army coming through the front door?"
The Japanese sailor held his Arisaka ready to bayonet the screamer as he spewed questions no one understood until the two Germans indicated the foofaraw involved a kitten. They mewed and petted the air as they pointed to the submarine while Marya wailed. The sailors of two belligerent powers laughed together at Marya's distress until she ducked from their midst.
"I'll save you, Kalina!" she shouted as she clawed her way upon the swinging netted crate that the crane operator aimed towards the open cargo hatch. When the crane's cargo neared the Dragon's neck, Marya jumped. She clung to the scales representing real dragon armor; she climbed joint by joint, rivet by rivet until she reached the top.
Kalina retreated four feet down the dragon's nose and Marya knelt to ease the frightened kitty into her grasp. As she gestured and mumbled real comfort to the creature, she searched the right deep pocket of her coat to extract the glue, crushing its canister against the crest behind the dragon's eye. Still crooning nonsense words to Kalina, Marya dove into the left deep pocket and plucked out the LORAN-G to smear it onto the gluey steel. She pressed the tracker down hard. There, any onlooker from below would take the bump for an ultra realistic scale, and a sniper looking out the eye would look forward to a target and not up and back to the eyelid.
Kalina melted her body to the red steel nose, her tail quivering. She would fall, she would fall.
She could not fall until she played her part to the end.
"Kalina, Kalina ... " said Marya calmly, now that she had completed her immediate mission. "Come here, darling. Come to Mama."
Kalina jumped at Marya, who never knew if the kitten tried to get by her to escape or really wanted to come to her embrace. Kalina clung with all claws to the inside of Marya's fur coat, making Marya wince. The Russian spy waved a triumphant fist at her world: Wolfgang who had fetched the luggage, the two German sailors, the Japanese sailor, and the crane operator. The crane operator finished loading the final crate through the hatch and swung the crane to the Dragon's neck. Marya blew him a kiss that he likely didn't see in the darkness as she scrambled downwards.
Marya held to the cable with all her strength while Kalina rowred against her bosom.
"Wolf! I saved her!" she crowed as the three sailors returned to duty, the Japanese to a shouted order from an unseen officer aboard the Dragon of Death and the two German sailors to resume patrol at the gangplank of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Marya had glimpsed hundreds of hopefuls waiting in line since they lacked Marya's forged ticket; the throngs appeared to have taken shelter from the cold wherever they could away from the frigid pier.
Wolfgang stepped close when Marya debarked. "It was foolish to risk yourself for a cat, Marya. What would happen to" --- he lowered his voice --- "your precious Amber Room?"
The nervous reaction set in at his harsh words and the realization of their truth. Marya sniffled and it was not simply the minus fifteen C of a January night. She shivered until he clasped her to his chest, his breath steaming into her ear. "Marya --- "
"Not so rough, Wolf --- oh! Kalina!"
Kalina had had enough excitement for this night. She squirted like a watermelon seed up through Marya's lapels and then downwards to the dock, where she disappeared amid other, less important, crates.
"Kalina!" Marya twisted in von Strucker's grip. "Let me go!"
"Kalina is gone. Face facts, schatzi."
The Japanese sailor approached again and gestured curtly with his Arisaka to follow.
Wolfgang ushered his friend onto the gangplank of the Dragon of Death for a witching hour departure.
Marya wedged her forged ticket to the Gustloff in a crack between pier planks for some lucky soul to discover.