Free Five Past Midnight by James Thayer

Germany's leading expert on POW escapes, and Colditz Castle had an escape museum toured by POW administrators from throughout the Reich. Nevertheless, Janssen and his experienced Lageroffizier Lieutenant Heydekampf had been fooled. Janssen had sworn again and again to Eberhardt that the prisoner had been dead when taken in a cart to the castle's cemetery.
    After the Colditz prisoners and guards at the graveside service had gone back to the castle, the minister who had said words over the grave had begun searching for edible portions of apples on the ground at the orchard next to the cemetery. The minister saw the POW emerge from his grave, like a demon from the center of the earth. According to Colonel Janssen, the minister was still trembling from the ordeal.
    Eberhardt idly scratched his chin, still staring at the POW's photograph. The general was suspicious of everything untoward. There had been few escape attempts from POW camps in Germany for the past half year. Eberhardt was aware of General Eisenhower's order to POWs to remain in their camps. The POWs were following the directive. Yet today a POW escaped from Colditz. The method of his ruse was not yet known, but clearly it was a plan unique in POW administration history. Was it possible that larger forces — those outside the Colditz wards — had ordered the escape ?
    And this POW was not the usual inmate. He seemed to have surrounded himself in mystery, telling neither the guards nor his fellow prisoners anything about himself. Even his name was unknown. All that Janssen knew of him was that he had been a frenzied escaper. And he had courageously rushed into a burning shed to rescue the castle's Lageroffizier.
    The general's deputy, Major Gustav Busse, came to the office door. Busse was also wearing his uniform overcoat. He held a yellow TDX sheet. "Sir, AWA has just sent another report. The Colditz POW was spotted at Bohlen, a village ten kilometers north of Colditz. An elderly woman found him in her house, eating pastry."
    General Eberhardt had never heard of the town of Bohlen. "You say north of Colditz? North?"
    "Yes, sir"
    American and British and Canadian POWs were incarcerated in the eastern parts of the Reich to make their potential escape routes longer So these escapees, from camps in Saxony and Thunngia and Brandenburg, usually headed east toward the Soviet line. It was known among POWs that the Red Army would gladly assist them in getting home and, in fact, treated them as honored guests, sating them with brandy and caviar. An Allied escape organization in Odessa sent the escapees to Leningrad, then Stockholm. Then why had this Colditz escapee journeyed north toward the heart of the Reich, not east?
    "There's more, General," Major Busse glanced at the TDX. "It seems the old lady and the POW had something of a talk. She said the POW belongs to an American army unit called the Rangers."
    "Rangers?" Two deep clefts formed between Eberhardt's brows. "That unit climbed the cliff at Pomte-du-Hoc, on the Normandy coast last June."
    "And this one claims to have sunk the submarine in the pen at Lonent Remember that? Our office was alerted about that sabotage."
    "Could the POW have been lying to impress the old lady?"
    Busse added, "He knew the submarine was the U-495 and that it was captained by Rolf Strenka."
    "Why is this American Ranger chatting with an elderly German lady, telling her this?"
    Busse shrugged. "She was charmed by him, sounds like So maybe he's just talkative and friendly and a bit of a braggart. You know how Americans are."
    "I've never met one," Eberhardt said dryly "And neither have you And why is this American escaping when the war — pardon the treasonable defeatism — is weeks or months from ending?"
    "I don't know, sir."
    The general's expression shifted as he glanced again at the POWs photograph. Eberhardt was the Führer's last shield against his enemies. Adolf Hitler's very life testified to the general's skill. Eberhardt had not