The First Wave by James R. Benn Page A

looked like it was tailored just for him, which it probably had been, strolled nonchalantly. He held a Webley revolver, smoke curling out of the muzzle, in one hand and in the other, a ring of jailer’s keys. The grin on his face was split by a scar that ran from the corner of one eye down to his chin, a souvenir of the explosion that had killed Daphne, ended their love affair, and broken his heart.
    “Gentleman, in a few minutes the St. George Hotel will be serving breakfast.Would you care to join me?”
    Lieutenant Piotr Augustus Kazimierz was the unlikeliest soldier I had ever seen. He was small, thin, pale, wore glasses, and had studied foreign languages at Oxford University before the war. Before the Germans invaded his native Poland and killed all of his family, which made him a very angry small, pale, thin guy who wore glasses. He had a heart condition that had kept him out of the army until he kicked up such a stink that the Polish Government in Exile commissioned him a lieutenant and sent him to work for General Eisenhower as a translator. That’s were he’d met Daphne Seaton. And me. I was still alive, Daphne was dead, and now Kaz didn’t care if he lived a minute longer.
    He’d gotten involved in the Norway job with me, and did pretty well as my Junior G-man, so Uncle Ike posted him as my assistant to his secret Office of Special Investigations. He wasn’t supposed to be in combat because of his medical condition, but working at HQ meant you could bend the rules a bit. That gave him the chance to get into the fight, which is what everybody else seemed to want to do over here. Between his bad ticker and the loss of everyone he loved, I understood that he didn’t particularly care about planning for the future.
    Kaz was supposed to be an egghead, a back room, quiet, paper-pushing staff officer. Instead, here he was leading a raid to spring us from a Vichy slammer, holding a smoking revolver in one hand and our ticket out of here in the other.
    “Kaz!” was all I could manage.
    “Yes, Billy, it is Baron Kazimierz to the rescue!” he said, as he tried to find the key for our cell among the dozens dangling from the chain. He winced as he struggled with the heavy ring of keys. I saw blood dripping from his sleeve. More boots thundered down the stairs as a team of Royal Commandos came into view.
    “Baron, you promised to stay behind us!” shouted a very exasperated Commando officer as he signaled his men to check the other cells.
    “Aha!” shouted Kaz as he found the right key and unlocked the door. “Yes, well, I saw that guard heading down here and thought he might be thinking of harming Billy and Major Harding.”
    “You mean that big fellow at the bottom of the stairs with a bullet in his chest?” asked Harding as he stepped out of the cell.
    “The one and the same, late but not lamented, Vichy jailer. He smelled quite bad. I trust you were not mistreated, Major?” Kaz asked.
    “No, we’re fine. Are you hit?”
    “Yes, I think I have been shot. In the arm. Quite amazing, it does not hurt at all,” Kaz said, and smiled weakly.
    “It will, Baron,” said a Royal Commando medic who began to strip off Kaz’s sleeve, applying sulfa and a bandage. “The bullet went clean through. Nothing to worry about.”
    “What about the other prisoners?” Harding looked to the Commando officer.
    “Place is cleared out, sir. You’re the only guests.We got word that a couple of American officers were being held here, and figured it must be you, since you didn’t contact headquarters this morning.”
    “All right. What’s the situation?” Harding asked Kaz as he led us out of the basement, stepping over the body of the guard lying in a darkening pool of his own blood.
    “Wait a minute,” I said. “What do you mean cleared out? They were holding dozens of civilian prisoners yesterday. Aren’t any of them still here?”
    “No, and no one seems to know where they were taken,” Kaz answered. “Perhaps