“I sure as hell hope so,” was all Cole could say. They had put their trust in Madame Jouret and Lena to get them out of the château. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them — they had fought tooth and nail alongside them today — but Vaccaro was right that the tunnel was so dark that it seemed possible that it didn’t lead anywhere but deeper into the darkness, maybe all the way to the center of the earth.
Cole had no choice but to follow the girl through the dark confines of the tunnel. The walls seemed to shrink in on them, and the ceiling grew lower so that he had to duck his head. Initially, near the doorway into the cellar, the tunnel walls had been lined with bricks, though they were damp and crumbling.
The deeper into the tunnel that they went, the more rudimentary its construction became. Soon the walls were only bare dirt, laced in places with tree roots. A few boards held the roof up; these boards were themselves shored up with posts they had to squeeze past without jostling for fear of bringing the roof down on their heads.
Vaccaro managed to bump into one of these posts, bringing a shower of dirt onto their heads. Then a few rocks fell, followed by the entire board, which glanced off his helmet with an audible clang.
“Watch where you’re going, city boy,” Cole grumped as a few small stones pinged off his helmet. “You’ll bring the whole damn roof down on our heads.”
They kept going, careful not to bump into anything. Nobody liked the thought of being buried alive.
Finally, Lena halted at the foot of a short ladder. Just beyond the ladder, the tunnel ended in a seeping dirt wall. It was quite damp here, with a few drops of water filtering down through the ceiling. Cole gulped in spite of himself — he couldn’t wait to get out of this place.
“Give me some light, please,” she said.
Cole shined the flashlight up to reveal a hatch of some kind hammered together out of heavy boards. The girl went up the ladder and pushed at the hatch. It appeared that the weight might be too much for her and that they were all trapped.
Slowly, a crack appeared at one edge. She paused to listen, her arms trembling with the effort of holding up the heavy hatch.
Cole wanted to help her, but there was no room on the ladder for more than one person. He did, however, draw his pistol, just in case somebody was waiting on the other side.
However, Lena seemed to have judged that the coast was clear. With a grunt, she shoved the hatch the rest of the way open. A square of gray dusky light appeared. Cold, fresh, winter air filled the stagnant tunnel, and Cole breathed deeply.
Lena went up the ladder and then beckoned for Cole and the others to follow.
He saw that the hatch opened into the interior of a stone-walled springhouse. He was familiar with springhouses from his own upbringing in the rural mountains, where folks didn’t have electricity, much less an icebox. A springhouse provided cool storage for your milk and butter, maybe even fresh meat. He looked over and saw the shallow, stone-lined pool that would have held bottles of milk and cream in summer. This explained the water dripping into the tunnel below.
He had to hand it to the previous château residents who had built this tunnel. It was likely that it had come in handy more than once. There was no doubt that it had saved their lives tonight.
There wasn’t enough space for them all inside the springhouse, so they stooped to go out the low door and found themselves looking back at the château some distance away through the trees. It seemed impossible that they had traversed this distance underground.
Silhouetted against the old stone walls of the château, he could see a figure at one of the lower windows. The sound of breaking glass reached them, followed by several quick shots.
“I reckon they’ll be disappointed when they find out we ain’t there,” Cole said. “Then they’ll surely come looking for us. We’d best get a move on.”
“This way,” the girl said, and slipped away through the trees like a nymph, so that even Cole had to hurry to keep up.
The Germans had managed to get inside the château. They had been disappointed to find it empty. Their search of the house had mostly been fruitless, although they had come across a half-empty decanter of brandy in the drawing room, along with clear signs that the group must have spent the night there.
“They have not disappeared into thin air,” Messner announced. “Once it is daylight, we will search for them.”
They camped out in the empty house, sleeping on the furniture and polishing off the brandy. The next morning Dietzel’s skill as a Jaeger eventually rewarded them with being able to find their quarry’s trail. They had been searching in larger and larger rings around the perimeter of the château, but so far had found nothing.
Where Bauer and his escort had gone was a mystery — until now.
“Over here!” Dietzel shouted.
