Archive of Our Own

“You cannot be serious.”

“Oh, I assure you.” Thorin rises from his chair slowly, his long fingers drumming the array of loose pages no longer quite contained by the manila folder on his desk. “I’ve never been more serious in my entire life.” 

Dominic Buckingham shakes his head in the temporary silence, annoyed by Thorin’s apparent lack of concern that anybody could overhear them with the goddamned door still wide open like this. He turns his head, a swift left-right along the thankfully deserted corridor before he nips inside the office and tugs the heavy door closed. The small gold name plate catches in the shaft of afternoon sunlight, the understated dark lettering bold against the glittering surface.

T. Thorin, Director.

The whole of Wilton Park is well aware that Thorin has a handful of further titles he could add to the plaque, but as 3rd Earl of Beckworth and a decorated army major, he likes to joke that there isn’t door on the whole estate large enough to contain them all. 

“Hardly the sort of conversation to be having in public, I think.”

“Oh, come on, Dominic. You know as well as I do that people never actually listen to things that they think they’re allowed to hear.”

Buckingham tuts, knowing full-well that Thorin is right, but there’s no need to be complacent just for the sake of it. He slopes into his usual corner, sinking into the empty chair. “You’ll never get approval, you know,” he warns. “There’s no way anyone is going to sign off on this kind of madness. 

“Madness?” This time Thorin smiles, eyes bright and too-wide, fixed on the spread of paper in front him. For a moment Buckingham wonders if he’s actually completely unhinged. “It’s not just madness. It’s solid gold, A-class lunacy. Isn’t it marvellous?” He sits down again, hands tapping a quick-step rhythm as they splay against his thighs. “And we both know that I don’t need approval.”

Wishing that it weren’t true changes nothing. Not only is Thomas Thorin the head of Department X, responsible for overseeing the planning and organisation of escapes for British prisoners of war held in Nazi prison camps, but he’s the director of the entire MI9 division, too. There are very few people that can or will prevent him from doing what he wants, and Dominic has know him a long time; long enough to know that the bastard is like a dog with a bone when it comes to situations like this. 

“But Tom,” he sighs, long and drawn-out, rubbing at his throbbing temples. “You have to be realistic. What you’re proposing – it’s absolutely unheard of. 

“And that’s why it’s so brilliant. Don’t you see?” The black and white photograph trembles slightly between Thorin’s delicate fingers, handling it like a priceless treasure. He smiles softly at the image of the man staring out from it, crisp and cold in immaculate uniform. “Old ideas are no good at all. We’re here to make new ones, and I’ll bet my right arm that nobody has ever had the opportunity to try anything like this before. The Jerries wouldn’t believe it even if he marched right up to them and told them who he really was. Hell,” he drags his spare hand through his Brylcreemed hair, the dark waves just beginning to grey at the edges, “even I wouldn’t believe you if you told me the truth. And that’s exactly why it will work.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Dominic wriggles further into his armchair, closing his eyes and tugging his necktie loose with two fingers. “Look. Besides the fact that you’re intending to send an untrained, inexperienced young man of all people, into the field— not just the fucking field, Tom, but the actual lion’s bloody cage – he’s an incredibly valuable member of my team, as you are fully aware. I’m not happy about you chucking him to the wolves and leaving me in the lurch with one man down.”

“Wolves don’t live in lion cages.”

“This is serious!”

Thorin shrugs, raising his eyebrows. The picture of innocence. “You’ll find a replacement,” he offers. 

“Oh, I’m sure. There must be hundreds of exceptionally talented cartographers that just happen to speak fluent German kicking around.”

“Well,” Thorin tactfully ignores Buckingham’s look of distain. “We’d better hope he makes a good job of it then. We could have him back here in a few months, you’ll hardly have time to miss him.” He pauses, words bitten back as a flurry of muffled footsteps pass by on the thick carpet in the hallway beyond the door. A giggle, low murmuring. Bizarre, really, that the rest of the world can still stop for a tea break when in here they’re grappling with a proposal that could turn the tide of the war.

The voices recede after what seems like an age. “I don’t know, Dominic,” Thorin says, voice falling an octave into a desperate whisper. “What do you want me to suggest? That we just attempt to dress someone else instead? Or leave it alone altogether? I’d really rather not send him either, but I can’t help it if your boy happens to be the spitting bloody image, can I? You do understand what this means. I know you do. Just think of it, Dominic; all those boys back on the ground, all those pilots back in the sky. Think of what that could do for all of us.”

The heavy sound of Buckingham’s resigned sigh echoes round the room until it dissolves into nothing, interrupted only by the ticking clock on the wall behind him. Thorin sits with his fingers caged, watching and waiting. Lean on people with his stubborn patience is his speciality, and today is no exception.

“I suppose you have the means to get him to into France?” Buckingham knows he sounds petulant, but he couldn’t care less. 

“I do.”

 “And from there across the border?”

 “I should think it’ll be relative child’s play. Remember, by that point he will have Trexler’s genuine papers. He can go wherever he wants, given we provide him with the right permits.” 

“Fine.” Buckingham throws up his hands, suddenly feeling the weight of the world on his aching shoulders. “I really don’t know what to say. I want to find a huge hole in this whole idea but… I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I—”

 “The more you agree it’s a stroke of genius?” The photograph lies between them like a mute taunt. Thorin’s eyes speak of soft awe, battling to believe the improbability of what he’s seeing. “You have to admit, the resemblance is truly astonishing.”

“It’s uncanny.” Both men sit in silence for a moment, unable to take their eyes from it, though Buckingham doubts that Thorin is experiencing the same sickly twisting of his insides that he is. “I’ll give you my word, Tom. If you can get him to agree, then I’m all in and I’ll do everything I can to help you out. But I won’t have you making this into an order. What you’re asking of him – it’s enormous. If he goes, it has to be his own decision.”

“Deal.” The folder slams closed, Thorin carefully tucking the pages back inside the cover until they’re as neatly arranged as when it first arrived on his desk two hours earlier. 

Buckinghams stands and nests his hands in his pockets, shoulders rolled forward in a way that always serves to make him look far shorter than he is. He’s never been comfortable with his height, tall and thin as a bottle-brush, with hair to match. “I suppose we ought to tell him,” he says.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Dominic,” Thorin smiles absentmindedly, already lost in his tangled web of thoughts. “Please bring Kili to my office.”

“Kilian. A word, if I may?” Buckingham pokes his head round the door to the room they’ve nicknamed the Workshop, pleased to find it empty but for Kili. He’s purposely timed it just right that everyone else is conveniently in the dining hall for lunch, but he knows Kili has a tendency to forget to eat when he’s particularly busy. 

“Just... one... second.”  

Kili is bent almost in half, his upper body folded over the vast table and nose almost touching the huge sheet of paper draped over it. The tip of his tongue is just visible between his lips, poked out in the depths of concentration that Kili has sunk himself into and making him look far younger than his twenty-five years.

Buckingham drifts closer, admiring the intricate swathes of colour, the greens and blues and browns of the Swiss-German border springing to life from the map. “That’s a bloody work of art, that is,” he says approvingly.

“Thanks.” Kili briefly raises his head and smiles warmly over the pair of magnifying glasses that have slid halfway down his nose. His right hand hovers mid-air, poised to continue the fine lines of ink he’s painstakingly updating the huge sheet of paper laid out underneath him with. 

Buckingham gestures for him to continue, waiting until Kili can more conveniently pause his work. He walks slowly around the room, pausing to flick through a stack of ready-printed silk squares on the long bench at the side of the room.    

“Where are these off to?” he asks over his shoulder. The maps are small enough to tuck into the back of a boot, but durable enough to survive the rough conditions a soldier might encounter en-route to safety, and the silk doesn’t rustle the way paper does. Kili has done a beautiful job of drafting these, large-scale plans of Danzig port where the Swedish ships come in to unload coal, providing a possible escape route if any quick-footed Brits can manage to slip onboard one without being seen.

 “EMI.”

Beautiful as Kili’s maps might be, they’re always left with the delicate issue of exactly how to get them into the camps when the Germans routinely filter and search all incoming mail. They’re all rather proud of their latest scheme. It hadn’t been too hard to get the record company on board after they’d approached them with the idea of hiding the thin, silk maps and bank notes within the dry laminate of gramophone records and sending them onward to the camps as part of the prisoner’s leisure package allowance. Of course, the records - though perfectly playable - have to be broken apart to get the contents out, which has given rise to the process being somewhat drily known as ‘Operation Smash Hit’.  

“And then on to Marburg?” 

“Eichstätt, I think. Later in the week.” Kili finally puts his pen aside, rubbing his ink-stained fingertips on the blotter next to him. “Right. You’ve got my full attention. What can I do for you?”

“It’s not so much something for me, actually,” Buckingham winces. “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind popping down to Major Thorin’s office for a moment.”

“For Thorin?” Kili’s face falls, his smile melting like snow in spring. 

 “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble,” Dominic says reassuringly, immediately making Kili worry even more. A small crease appears between his eyebrows, a feature that has become familiar to Kili’s co-workers in the two years he’s been part of the Y team at Wilton Park where he works under Buckingham, producing the maps and other escape aids for British prisoners of war in Germany. 

As happy as Kili is to help in any way he can, he secretly he loves that the job affords him a quiet life in a world where one is so hard to come by. Winter sees snowflakes melting against his window while he presses up as close to the stove as he dares, warm inside with an endless supply of tea. Summer brings snatched games of afternoon football with the boys from the interrogation unit, the white clouds billowing above them and a million miles away from the harsh reality of the world they occupy. 

He spends his days at the MI9 headquarters in Hut 20 in the grounds of Wilton Park estate, engrossed in his tasks – more stressful than he’d imagined at first, by a long stretch – but he returns home to his small digs at Hyde Green just off the Amersham Road every night, mentally exhausted but content. 

He’s unwillingly become something of a celebrity within the small, closely-knit group, not only for his meticulous work and his generous, easy smile, but his ability with language has lead him to being dragged over to ‘The Big House’ on more than one occasion to translate for the interviews of captured German prisoners.  

Fondness follows Kili around like a shadow, a trail of soft smiles and more than a his fair share of hopeful glances from underneath low, fluttering eyelashes. Kili usually blushes and sends his admirers away with a wink, but he’s always relaxed with those he counts as his friends, most especially around Dominic, who has proved to be the most wonderful mentor.

Buckingham’s hand finds his shoulder now, the weary warmth of it familiar to Kili. Too many long evenings in here spent scratching their heads, coffee and sandwiches carefully packed by Dominic’s wife seeing them through the small hours. 

 “Alright.” Kili stands uncertainly, hands feeling suddenly too big with nothing to occupy them. He doesn’t remember the last time he actually had an face to face encounter with ‘Big Tom’, as some of the secretaries like to refer to him with a saucy wink; not since he was first recommended for the position and traveled to Thorin’s personal home at Erebor estate to begin the lengthy recruitment procedure. “Should I bring anything with me?”

 “No, Kili,” Dominic says. “Just yourself.”

“Ahh, there you are.” Thorin gestures to the chair opposite, leaning back in his own with his feet propped up in front of him. “Sit, sit. Excellent. Tell me Kili. How are you?”

“Well.” Kili clears his throat and wonders what the answer ought to be. “To tell you the truth, I’m... busy, Sir.”

“Ah! Of course you are,” Thorin laughs. “Our wunderkind. And please, I must have told you a hundred times. Call me Tom.”

“Very good, Sir.”

“A drink, perhaps?” Thorin tips himself out of his seat and strides to the sideboard, indulging an empty crystal tumbler with an inch of whiskey and holding it out toward Kili. 

“Thank you, but no.” Kili glances at the clock. One in the afternoon. He doesn’t know whether he’s impressed or concerned that Thorin has clearly already sampled some for himself today, judging by the cold ring of condensation left on the wood in front of his seat. “Not while I’m working, anyway. It… it ruins my concentration.”

“See, Dominic?” The glass clicks as Thorin places it back down on the polished tray. He talks straight over the top of Kili’s head, making him twist awkwardly in the seat to keep both of the other men in the room within his vision. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about. Focused on the job in hand. Determined, even in the path of temptation.”

“His attitude was never in question, Tom. It’s not Kili that’s the issue here.” 

“Issue?” Kili’s eyebrows lock in the middle, quirked into a desperate question mark, but his superiors seem to be locked in some kind of staring contest, both wearing a look of grim determination as they wrestle their gaze above Kili’s head. 

“We have been presented with something of an… opportunity.” Thorin breaks away first, his face immediately returning to the smooth, impassive countenance that he’s famous for. “I believe you understand that what I have brought you here to discuss today will not leave this room?” 

“Of course, Sir.”

“Very well then. We have found ourselves in possession of some highly classified information – what’s new there?” he laughs, raising his eyebrows at Kili, who manages a nervous smile in return, “regarding a senior member of the security staff at Oflag VI-B.” 

“Warburg?” 

“That’s right.” He gently drums his fingers on top of a closed file on the desk. Between them, Kili can just make out the ominous red stamp on the cover. 

M.I.9 BULLETIN

IMPORTANT

This document is the property of H.B.M Government and it will be kept under lock and key when not in use. All persons are hereby warned that the unauthorised retention or destruction of this document is an offence against the Official Secrets Act.  

Thorin settles himself back in his seat, plucking a packet of Woodbines from the chest pocket of his tweed jacket. “Several weeks ago, we were informed by our contact in Warburg Camp that the security officer for Section B, a certain Hauptmann Rudolf Trexler, would be temporarily absent from the camp for his allotted period of personal leave.”

“Nothing unusual there,” Dominic chips in. “They’re all entitled to leave at some point of other, and of course in a position like Trexler’s, he would be covered during his time away.”

“Correct,” Thorin nods. “Ordinarily we would be able to do little with this sort of information.”

“But?” Kili coaxes. 

“But indeed. Turns out that Trexler comes from the charming village of Dörlinbach, in the Schutter Valley.”

“The Black Forest,” Kili murmurs. “Couldn’t be closer to the border if he tried.”

Thorin leans forward, waving away the thick cloud of smoke that now surrounds his head. He studies Kili with an almost feral fascination, mouth curling into a satisfied smile. 

“You carry those maps in your head, don’t you Kili. Oh yes.” Ash falls into the ivory tray and Kili watches as it singes and curls in on itself, flame-red to grey. “I think this is going to work very well indeed.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, Sir – I’m still a little lost. You’ve got a German captain going on leave, I’m not sure how—”

“I’m coming to it, Kilian. The thing is, we’ve lost a few too many good men to these bloody prisons. Warburg, in particular, holds some of our most prestigious pilots. To say that it would be something of a boost if we could even have a handful of them back in the sky is an understatement. All these brilliant boys, just sitting there idling way their time until we can call this whole thing a day. We’re sick of waiting, and so are they.” 

“Which is why we’ve been helping them escape,” Kili points out. “That’s sort of the reason for our existence here, isn’t it?”

“Well, precisely. But the thing is, Kili; these escape attempts – although great for the old morale, and a good wind up for the Jerries – they’re rarely a success, are they? I’d say ninety-five percent of the lads are recaptured before they’ve even had a really good stab at it. Not to mention that most of these attempts involve tunnelling, and through sheer logistics we’re talking a maximum of ten, maybe twenty men in one go.”

“It just so happens that we have a very active team located in the area where Trexler lives.” Buckingham wanders round to join Thorin, the light from the window catching in his blond hair like a crown. “Their cover is well-established, been there for months. We thought perhaps it might be apt to pay him a little visit, see if we could shake something useful out of him. Only when our gents got to him, they noticed something really rather remarkable.”

“Which is?”

“He bears an unbelievable resemblance to one of the members of staff involved with MI9.”

When Kili swallows, his throat feels shredded, closing in on itself around a jagged lump. He looks from Thorin’s eyes filled with steely determination to Buckingham’s, altogether warmer and deeply apologetic, and then finally to his own hands, crossed with strange lines and creases like contours. He wonders what they reveal about the landscape of him as a man, if somehow they’ve always held the course of his destiny in their river-like branches.

“And what,” he asks, although he already knows the answer, “does this have to do with me?”

“I think you’d better take a look for yourself.”

“Are we related?”

 “I don’t think so.” 

Kili drops the picture. He wants to burn it, watch it turn to dust. His fingers feel numb, the trembling of his hands still evident in the fluttering paper as it drifts down onto the polished desk. He balls his fists to stop them shaking; into his pockets, out again. He should turn away, but instead he finds himself snatching the photograph back up again, holding it even closer to his eyes than before.

“Are you sure?” 

“I can look into it for you, I suppose,” Thorin offers. “Do some digging into his family tree. You still have family there?”

“I don’t know,” Kili murmurs. “No. No, don’t. I don’t want to know.”

Everyone tells him he looks like his father, his father’s side. Kili wouldn’t know for sure, having never met him, but he knows his dark, melting eyes are all his mother’s. He wonders if it’s possible, some cousin of a cousin, a genetic fluke giving him a twin that he’s never met; but it makes no difference. He might look like Trexler, but clearly their ideologies are as far apart as it’s possible for them to be. 

Thorin watches him, quiet and thoughtful. “You understand what I’m asking of you?”

“You want—” Kili is only half aware that he’s speaking, his mind trying to find a meaning in the shades of grey between his fingers, “You want me to be him.”

“In a nutshell, yes.” The simplicity of it makes Kili want to laugh. “What you need to understand is that even if you don’t get any further than getting into the camp and taking over Trexler’s day to day duties – even if, Kili, you can’t find a way to safely reveal your identity to our officers without being discovered, your presence there would be of immeasurable help. Just writing a weekly letter to us with any information you might overhear could make all the difference.”

“That’s all very well, Sir, but aren’t you overlooking the obvious? I might look a bit like Trexler,” Kili admits, more painfully than he’d like, “but I’m not him. These people see him day in, day out. They live with him. Surely someone is going to realise very quickly that I’m a... a mole?”

“In my experience, people see what they want to see. The mind is a fascinating thing. As I’ve already discussed with Dominic, I don’t think that anybody would even entertain the idea that something like this was possible. It’s my honest opinion that if you tell them you’re Trexler, they will see Trexler.” Thorin immediately opens the file and starts laying out typed pages and photographs, so many that they cover the desk all most entirely. “Of course, it’s entirely up to you. No-one will think anything less of you should you decide it’s not for you. Your work here is invaluable and I know that Dominic, not to mention myself, would be just as thrilled to have you stay right where you are. The choice, Kili, is yours.”

Choice.  

Kili blinks fast and turns his gaze through the window to the garden, the lawns just emerging into lush green from a long, slow spring. A sparrow lands on the ledge and flutters furiously against the glass, rearing back in alarm to have found itself confronted with an unexpected barrier.

Suppose he could lie to himself and say that he has one - a choice - would it make him feel any better? He knows it isn’t true just as much as Thorin does, now pacing slowly round the room enveloped in another cloud of smoke. 

Everyone is aware of Kili’s situation. Given the level of secrecy that goes with the job, Thorin has delved into Kili’s background until it’s clear he’s no threat to national security. Nobody ever says anything about it – at least not to Kili’s face - but he’s certain there is talk. His heritage, his being half-German in a time when being such a thing is about as undesirable as anyone could be.

He thinks of his mother, small quick hands and lines just starting to gather at the corner of her eyes; alone back in her shop in London. He’s asked her to leave the city and to come with him to the relative peace of the countryside, but she only smiles and tells him that everything she has worked for is right there. It isn’t easy for her. She may have lived in London since her teens, but the last few years have brought graffiti, loss of customers. Kili visits her every weekend when the travel isn’t disrupted; and she sends him back home with what he’s sure is half her own rations too. 

“How is Halldis, incidentally?” Thorin asks.

It’s as if everyone can read Kili’s mind. It feels odd hearing her name used so casually, as if they’re old friends. The pacing stops and Thorin perches on the corner of the desk nearest Kili. “What a thing that would be for her, being able to tell everyone about her son, a hero. How proud she’d be.”

 Kili wasn’t born yesterday. Thorin might be doing his best but they both know that they can’t tell her anything. She doesn’t even know exactly what Kili does or who he works for. They can’t tell anyone anything. With something this delicate, Kili would be lucky if anyone even found out about it during his lifetime. 

Not that he predicts he’s going to be around for very much longer.

“What will you say to her?” Kili asks. “If I don’t come back, what will you say?”

“It won’t come to that.” Thorin shakes his head adamantly. “I give you my word, I will do everything in my power to bring you home safe and sound. For now, you can tell her that you’ve had to transfer elsewhere for a few months. I’m more than happy to write to her and let her know that you’re well, if you’d like.”

If it’s for anyone, it’s for her that he says yes. Not for himself, certainly. Kili sees it so clearly now. He thought he’d gotten lucky, seeing out the war safely tucked away at work and home, helping the real brave ones fight their good fight; but cold truth of it is that they are all prisoners of this war just as much as the men he is being asked to help. 

Kili, hands tied. A disgrace if he doesn’t, probably dead if he does. 

Dominic, silent and statue-still in the corner, torn between wanting to keep Kili safe and hoping Kili can do his part to keep them all safe.

Thorin, the carefully crafted veneer of his face that doesn’t quite hide his desperation in the face of constant pressure, the need to prove themselves over and over and it never quite being enough. 

“She thinks I’m reckless,” Kili whispers, eyes unfocused and only half following the drops of afternoon sun dancing across the dark oak. 

“Are you?” Thorin asks.

“If you’d asked me ten minutes ago, I would have said no.” 

“You know,” Thorin adds, “Of all the people I hate to ask this of, it’s you.” For the first time this afternoon Kili actually believes him. “The idea of placing you in danger doesn’t sit well with me. If it was any other way, I would find one. But you know that there isn’t. If it is going to be anyone, it has to be you.”

Choice. 

Kili could just as easily say he has none; but the strange and brutal fact of it is that part of him wants this. He’s always felt like he was missing something, meant for more; fingers spread wide across mountain ranges and state lines, searching.

Trexler’s eyes bore into him from the desk, cold and lifeless, but the pulse of him spills into Kili all the same and he feels like his insides are copper wire, frayed and exposed at the surface; sharp and electric and suddenly acutely aware of the current running within his veins. 

He wonders what it would be like, to shed Kili and step into this other man’s clothes, to do something bigger than himself. Something reckless.

“Alright,” Kili hears himself say, soft and low and determined, a single word to seal his fate. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

“Does he have a family? A wife, children?” 

Information arrives in a torrent, fast enough to send Kili’s head spinning. Buckingham had left the room immediately to make the necessary arrangements, and Kili has found himself left with Thorin and being dragged straight into the deep end of Trexler's personal life.

“When he’s at home, Trexler lives with his mother and his wife, Elke.” 

Another photograph. A young woman, pretty and windswept, hanging washing in a wooded garden. From the way she’s absorbed in her task, frozen in time wrangling an uncooperative sheet, Kili can tell she has no idea she’d been a subject for the camera and he immediately feels bad that she’s essentially been spied on against her will. 

“You won’t do anything to hurt them, will you?”

“Good lord Kili, of course not. They have been informed that Trexler has had to return to Warburg on urgent business. They aren’t expecting him home on leave again for some time. Years, probably.”

“Does he write to her?” The idea of it leaves Kili feeling ill. Pretending to be Trexler for the benefit of the war effort is one thing. Assuming someone’s love life is quite another. He has no idea he’d even begin. He can only hope that Trexler isn’t the type to fill page after page to his wife, sweet with talk of how it’ll be when he’s finally back in her arms.

“Only very rarely, from what I can gather. I wouldn’t worry about it,” Thorin says airily. “If it comes to it, we can take care of that side of things. You just concentrate on getting our boys home.”

Kili sets his mouth into a line of grim determination. Thorin has at least been able to provide him with a map of the camp, an overhead engineer's plan of the whole thing. This, at least, Kili feels he can work with, the safe and comfortable world of measured distances. He pours over the area maps too, names only vaguely familiar to him now burning at the forefront of his mind.

Warburg. Dössel. Paderborn. He starts from the camp perimeter and works his way out, fingers trailing over the names of villages and rivers and forests.

“Your first task, besides assuming Trexler’s duties, is to make contact with Lieutenant Oscar Norris.” Thorin retrieves a photograph and hands it over.

The face isn’t one Kili is familiar with, and he peers at the narrow eyes half-hidden under the peaked officer’s cap to try and commit them to memory. “Should I recognise him?”

“From the picture? I wouldn’t say so. The two of you could probably walk past each other on the street and be none the wiser,” Thorin smiles, just a little. “But you probably know him better as ‘i’.”

The revelation makes Kili double-take. He certainly does know Norris, then. MI9 has had quite the line of communication going with the wily Liverpudlian for the last six months, ever since Norris was transferred to Warburg from Lübeck camp after yet another failed escape attempt and assumed the role of intelligence officer, sneaking communication through to Wilton Park from inside the prison.

Kili himself has sent a coded letter or two to Norris, posing as a fictitious brother and asking for specifics about the camp grounds and surrounds to help him update his information. Norris’s replies have always been a goldmine, rammed with as many useful facts as he can manage within the confines of their seemingly innocent code. The pages are full of meaningless chatter about ill-fitting bathrobes and cousin Elsie’s unsuitable engagement, but in reality they contain locations of new infrastructure that the Germans seem intent on throwing up every week, estimates of distances, patrols – anything he or any other escaping officer might have seen during their time outside the wire.

Kili bites the inside of his cheek and swallows a smile, wondering if Thorin has paid enough personal attention to the letters to work out that Norris insists on referring to him as ‘Aunt Jemima’ yet. The undeniable sense of humour between the carefully crafted lines, despite the incredible importance of their correspondence - and the potential consequences for Norris should he be discovered by the German censors that filter the mail in the camp before sending it onward - leads Kili to imagine they’d get on, suddenly feeling a little more reassured about the prospect of meeting at least one friendly face once he’s plunged into his double life.

 “In the interests of security, we’ve decided that for now it’s wise to inform only him of your arrival. I cannot underline how imperative it is that the Germans suspect nothing, Kili. We can’t go telling everyone what you’re up to and have half the camp clamouring to see you the minute you step through the gate.” Thorin pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, looking just as tired as Kili feels. “You must promise me that you won’t even attempt to isolate Lieutenant Norris until you feel it is absolutely safe to do so, however long that might take. When the time is right, he will introduce you to the relevant people, and from there you can decide who to tell on a need-to-know basis.”

“I understand, Sir.” 

“For the love of god, Kilian.” Thorin clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, moving to pour them both yet another coffee. “It’s Tom.”

Kili scans through a printed report while Thorin is turned away, details of the number of accommodation huts. From what he can gather the population at Warburg has been thrown together by the emptying of four other POW camps, resulting in the vast sprawl that contains what seems to Kili like thousands of soldiers. “How many men are in there?” he asks. 

“Warburg is divided into five sections, or battalions, as the Germans call them; A to E. There’s also a labour camp, here,” Thorin sets down the cups and taps his finger against a section of the plan, “which is occupied by Russian prisoners. Trexler was in charge of Section B, where there are approximately six hundred officers, mostly British RAF, along with a handful of Australians and New Zealanders.”

“Six hundred?” Kili’s hope sinks like a stone. “How on earth am I supposed to break six hundred people out of—”

“Kili, Kili.” Thorin reaches for his shoulders with both hands. “First things first. It’s not your job to crack them all out of there. What we want you to do is assist, not mastermind. We’re going to be loading you up with as much equipment as we can. Papers, blades, compasses, you name it. It’ll be a windfall like they haven’t had before. Everyone will be better equipped, and with what information you can give them about times and locations of patrols, it should be a relative walk in the park. But don’t think for am minute that I’m expecting you to get six hundred men through the gate. One, two, ten; any number would be an enormous achievement.”

 “But you said earlier about not getting enough out in one go, what about—”

“Secondly, what you need to remember is that these boys are far more experienced in the escape department than you are. Alright, the fact that they’re in there and not here means they might not have been too successful so far, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they can’t be. It’s all down to luck. Norris has told us that they’re currently up to something new, something really big. The tunnels aren’t working for them, so they’ve changed tack.”

“To what?”

“I’m actually not too sure.” Thorin flashes Kili a bemused smile, withdrawing his hands and letting them fall into his lap. “Obviously he can’t give us too many details in case his letters are decoded, but from what I can gather it sounds like the most audacious, biggest escape that has ever been attempted.”

The last box hits the table with a muffled thud. Kili eyes the pile and sucks air between his teeth. It’s going to take him months to get through all of this. The anteroom is stuffed with documents; anything that Thorin has been able to drag out that so much as references Warburg, Trexler’s private letters, lists of camp personnel and captured officers. 

“Right. Got everything you need?”

And then some, Kili thinks wryly. “Yes, Sir,” he says, trying to look upbeat. “How long did you say I had to go over this?”

“Trexler has eight more days of leave before he’s due back at the camp,” Thorin tells him. “Buckingham is currently arranging your drop into France for three days from now. That’ll give you a few days in the safe house to get kitted out, and then you’ll take the train into Germany and enter the camp as if you were merely Trexler returning as scheduled.” 

“Three days?” It comes out more indignantly that Kili had intended, and Thorin’s secretary frowns at him as she swishes in to let them know that there’s yet another phone call that Thorin really ought to go and take. Kili wonders if he would wake up if asked her to pinch him. Thorin is saying something else about parachutes and bicycles, but all Kili can really hear is the way his heart is hammering in his chest, trying to hold him back with a rhythmic wait, what? wait, what?

“I’ll leave you to it then, Kilian.” Thorin pats him on the shoulder and turns to leave, but he doesn’t. He stares at his feet, fingers clawed at the end of his cuffs.

“Major Thorin?” Kili offers eventually. “Is everything—”

“Just one more thing.” 

When he turns, it’s more awful than Kili could have imagined. Men like Thorin don’t break. Not at home, not at work, not even with as much knowledge of unthinkable things as Thorin has. There have been nights that Kili has woken up and found himself crying, just one or two in the whole time since the war broke. He never senses it coming, but it creeps up on him out of the blue and hits him in the grey morning hours, noiseless tears for people he can’t help and things he wishes he’d never heard. 

But men like Thorin—

 “As your superior, I cannot ask you to do this for me.” Misery clings along Thorin’s lower lashes. He makes a strange sound, a muffled choke that he masterfully turns into a cough. “But perhaps… perhaps as a friend—”

He reaches into the silk pocket inside his jacket and holds out the contents to Kili with a shaking hand. The man in the picture is young and bright eyed, smart in his RAF blues. Though he isn’t exactly smiling, his mouth is turned up in such a way that he looks like he might have just finished laughing, the shadow of the joke still present there in his gaze, holding Kili’s own with some unknown gravity. He looks warm, Kili thinks immediately, the only stupid word that springs to mind as his eyes flit across the elegant features of his face.

“Sir?”

“I appreciate that showing favour will be very difficult.” Thorin raises his hand to gesture to the photograph, carefully creased across the middle in a way that suggests it’s been looked at often. “I’m not asking that you do it first, and I’m not asking that you put yourself in danger if it can’t be done. But Kili… whoever you can get out, however many – not without this man. Not without him.” 

He folds it into his pocket carefully when Kili hands it back, gently patting over the top of it and pulling himself together with a deep breath. “I’m sorry about that. Sometimes it’s just… well. This bloody war, eh?”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Fili Durin,” Thorin says. “And he’s my nephew.”