The police by now had found the signal panels, the radio, and the weapons, including the Sten submachine gun Captain Hughson had loaned Canidy on Vis.
“Where did the truck come from?”
“We stole it,” Ferniany replied, just a little smugly.
“How do you plan to get rid of it?” Canidy asked.
Ferniany looked at him, making it clear he didn’t think much of the question.
“Abandon it, when we’re through with it.”
“How many trucks do you think are stolen in Budapest and then abandoned in Pecs?” Canidy asked.
“Did it occur to you that the police might find that curious? Or that the SS, now that they’re aware there are people in here with transmitters and signal panels and English weapons, might be absolutely fascinated to learn that a truck had been stolen in Budapest and abandoned here?”
“We’ll hide it in the forest,” Ferniany said lamely.
“Bury it, even.”
“The damage is done,” Canidy said.
“As soon as the team has gotten our people out of St. Gertrud’s, you do whatever you can about the truck. Either, preferably, get it back to Budapest and abandon it there or take it someplace else. But get it away from here.”
Ferniany did not seem to understand that stealing the truck had been a stupid thing to do. If they had been caught in the act of stealing it, or once they had it in their possession, even the dumbest Hungarian cop would have made the connection between someone barely escaping from the radio-detection operation and someone heading out of town in a stolen truck.
And if he sensed that Canidy was furious, he showed no sign of it.
“You said, ‘as soon as the team’ gets our people out… ,” Ferniany challenged.
“Yes, I did.”
“Major,” Ferniany explained patiently, almost tolerantly, “without the signal panels and the radio, there’s no way we can expect the team to get in here,” Ferniany said.
“We’re going to have to do this ourselves.”
“You’ve got some kind of a plan?” Canidy asked. It was all he trusted himself to say.
“Prisons are designed keep people in,” Ferniany said, solemnly announcing a great philosophical truth.
“And?”
“From seven o’clock at night until five o’clock in the morning, there are on duty only six people: five guards and a sort of clerk. And there is only one guard on the motor pool where they keep the trucks and motorcycles.”
“You mean the mine trucks, the ones they carry the prisoners back and forth to the mine in?”
“Right,” Ferniany said.
“So what you’re going to do is knock over the guard at the motor pool, steal a mine truck, and drive it to the prison. You’ll be a little early, but they’ll recognize the truck and pass you inside, whereupon you and your three men will take on the five guards and the clerk, grab Fulmar and Professor Dyer, and make your escape?”
“I detect a little sarcasm,” Ferniany said.
“Not a little,” Canidy said.
He let that sink in, and waited for an angry response. He was surprised when none came.
“Right up there in importance with getting Fulmar and Dyer out,” Canidy said, “is getting them out without calling anybody’s attention to the fact that they are anything but what they were–thanks to your stupidity, we should keep that in mind–arrested for: black marketeers. Don’t you think the Germans would be goddamned curious to learn why two people–who just happen to fit the descriptions of two men the whole goddamned SS is looking for–were busted out of an obscure Hungarian prison with more shooting and dead bodies strewn all over than in a Jimmy Cagney gangster movie?”
Ferniany’s face colored with anger.
“I’m right on the edge of telling you to go fuck yourself, Canidy,” Ferniany said.
“You really wouldn’t want to do that, would you?” Canidy asked primly.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Ferniany said.
“According to you, I don’t do anything right.” He paused, but then was carried along by his momentum: “Fuck you, Canidy. Stick this whole operation up your ass. I’d like to hear how you plan to get them out, you wiseass sonofabitch.”
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Canidy said, even more primly.