Free Return From the Inferno by Mack Maloney

up at the moment.
    The soldiers nudged the two girls forward, escorting them across the vast room and toward the pillow filled corner which was known as the First Governor's so-called "recreation area."
    The Fourth Reich high commander was sitting on his throne-like chair poring over a ream of paper as the girls and their escorts approached. Lost in the sea of documents was the Daily Situation Report, a written summary of the previous
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    day's activities within Bundeswehr Four. It carried three main items-one was a preliminary report which indicated that the crashed air pirate jumbo jet was probably shot down by unknown forces. Another reported an air strike by forces unknown on the city of Cleveland, which was now a major manufacturing center for parts and ammunition for the Fourth Reich's gigantic terror gun, the Schrecklichkeit Kanones.
    The third item was a report on a so-called special prisoner who escaped from one of the work farms over the night. The man, who had been sentenced to death by crucifixion only to have his execution botched, had been recovering on a work farm to the north. He'd somehow managed to sneak out of the heavily guarded camp and was now the subject of a massive search. He'd left behind a note indicating that his purpose of escape was not a flight to freedom.
    Rather, he wanted a private audience with the First Governor.
    Despite the potential implications of all three reports, the First Governor had barely given them a cursory glance.
    He was too busy drawing pictures.
    A small, moleish man, dressed in the uniform of a Fourth Reich propaganda officer, was uncomfortably perched on a huge satin pillow below and to the left of the large chair. He was surrounded with a myriad of artist's supplies-crayons, rulers, French curves, several large erasers-as well as a sea of crumpled pieces of paper.
    "Excuse us, sir," one of the Nicht Soldats said with a sharp salute. "I believe you requested these visitors?"
    The First Governor barely looked up.
    "Can either of you two men draw?" he asked, his voice unnaturally restrained and struggling in English. "With pen or ink?"
    The soldiers looked at each other briefly and both gave nonmilitary shrugs.
    "No, sir," came the crisp reply to the odd question. "You are in need of an artist?"
    "I have an artist," the First Governor declared, nodding toward the moleish man; his voice regaining some of its former voracity. "I need someone who can draw."
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    There was a confused silence as the mole man shifted even more uneasily in his pillow seat, scattering some of his artist's crayons in the process. It was obvious that the First Governor had desired his illustrative talents for a specific purpose but that the man was missing the mark. Perhaps dangerously so. The tension was only sharpened by the roar of two Fourth Reich Jaguars taking off from the Aerodrome's auxiliary runway, barely a half mile from the Reich Palast.
    Once the roar died down, the uneasy silence returned to the huge room. It was broken finally by an unlikely source.
    "I can draw," the young girl in the T-shirt and high heels said, her voice sounding very unsure and barely above a whisper.
    The First Governor looked up for the first time and examined both girls. Then he turned to the propaganda officer.
    "Please supply her with a pen and paper," he told the man in German. "And then everyone else is dismissed."
    The officer did as told, and then joined the pair of NS men and the relieved bikini-clad young girl as they briskly exited the room.
    "If I tell you a vision, can you draw it for me?" the First Governor asked the young girl, his heavily accented German sounding nearly incomprehensible.
    She nodded bravely if uncertainly. "I can try."
    The First Governor smiled and gently stroked her light brown hair.
    "Sit," he said, gently prodding her to her knees right in front of him. "Let us see how good you are."
    As the young girl took pen and paper in hand, the First Governor leaned back in his regal