Hart’s War

Chapter Ten

Immediately after the regular evening Appell, Tommy Hart and Lincoln Scott headed directly for Colonel MacNamara's quarters. The two men walked swiftly yet silently across the assembly yard and directly into Hut 114, not speaking to anyone else, not speaking between themselves, passing small groups of kriegies getting ready to prepare their dinners.

For the most part, the men were carefully assembling various items gleaned from Red Cross parcels, combining foodstuffs-tinned beef or sausage, dried vegetables and fruits, and the ever-present processed milk called Klim that was the basis for virtually every sauce they could concoct. That afternoon, the Germans had provided some kriegsbrot and a meager issue of hard turnips and musty potatoes.

An enterprising kriegie cook could create an incredible range of meals from the materials in a Red Cross parcel, taking chances with ingredients (processed pork roll fried with strawberry jam garnished with tinned fruits). The more successful chefs often posted new recipes on the Stalag Luft Thirteen bulletin boards, and these recipes were attempted and revamped in dozens of different ways throughout the camp. The airmen replaced bulk with invention, and every new kriegie learned to both cook and eat slowly, trying to make each small, inadequate bite both evoke some memory of some fine meal eaten under far better circumstances, and at the same time last far longer than it deserved. No one wolfed down their food in Stalag Luft Thirteen.

As they passed down the central corridor of the hut, Tommy snuck a sideways glance over at Scott. As always, Scott was marching erect, with a tautness to his face that spoke of both anger and aggressiveness. Tommy thought there was some sort of enigmatic toughness to Scott that he did not even begin to understand, which sprang from some well within the man that Tommy doubted he would ever see.

In the same instant, he wondered what the black flier thought when he looked over at him. Scott had the rare capacity to make whoever was walking at his side appear smaller.

Tommy thought this quality came from what one had seen of life, and how it had been absorbed deep within, and Lincoln Scott had seen much. As for himself, he did not think Vermont and Harvard equaled the journey that Lincoln Scott had traveled, even though both men had arrived in the same place at the same time. There was one thing Tommy knew for sure: Scott still did not look like a prisoner of war. Perhaps he had lost weight this was inevitable given the stark and bare diet but there was no look of sullen resignation, nor one of cowed patience, which is its own type of defeat, in his quick dark eyes.

Tommy wondered about himself. Did Stalag Luft Thirteen melt the fighter out of him as surely as it did pounds? Had he lost desire?

Assertiveness? Pugnacity? The qualities that made a young man look forward to life. He sometimes dogged himself with questions, wondering whether he would be able to invoke these traits when he needed them most.

Especially now, he thought, when Phillip Pryce is gone, and there is only his memory to remind me when to call on them. Tommy bit down on his lip, wrestling with emotions. It was as hard to imagine Phillip dead as it was to believe him still alive. It was as if the Englishman had been plucked from Tommy's existence with the finality of death but none of the reality. He'd waved, and then he'd vanished. No explosion.

No fire. No shrieks for help. No blood. The portrait in his mind's eye of the wry, unafraid smile that Phillip wore in that last moment was like a hard blow to his stomach.

Tommy walked quickly and steadily at Lincoln Scott's side, but inwardly he felt alone.

"You gonna do the talking. Hart? Or should I?"

Scott's barely constrained ferocity ripped Tommy from his thoughts. He answered instantly.

"I'll start off, but make sure MacNamara knows your feelings. You understand what I'm saying?"

Scott nodded.

"Yeah," he said, lowering his voice.

"Be a gentleman, a very pissed-off gentleman, but don't say anything that insults the bastard, because he's the judge and he might choose tomorrow's proceedings as get-even time."

"That's close enough," Tommy said. He reached out and rapped sharply three times on the Senior American Officer's door. In the second they paused, waiting, Scott muttered, "I'll be a gentleman. Hart. But you know, I'm getting tired of being reasonable all the time. I sometimes think I'm gonna be reasonable right up to the moment I hear them give the command to fire."

"I'm not sure you have been," Tommy replied weakly, and Scott snorted, amused.

They heard a voice call for them to enter, and Scott swung open the door. Lewis MacNamara was seated in a distant corner of the room, his stockinged feet up on his bunk, a pair of scratched and bent reading glasses slid down on his nose.

He had a tin plate of half-eaten ubiquitous kriegie stew on the blanket beside him, and a dog-eared copy of Dickens's Great Expectations open in his hand. Tommy recognized this combination instantly. Standard kriegie approach to eating: take a bite, chew slowly, read a paragraph or two, take another bite.

Sometimes it seemed that Time was as much their enemy as the Germans.

MacNamara slowly lowered the novel, eyeing the two visitors with interest, as they took several quick steps into the center of the small room, and fixed themselves at attention.

The Senior American Officer had, by virtue of rank, acquired one of the rare two-person bunk rooms. But Major Clark, his roommate, was oddly absent. Tommy had the presence of mind to glance around, thinking maybe there would be some picture on the wall or souvenir propped in the corner that might tell him something about the SAO's personality that he could later use. But there was nothing that revealed anything.

"Lieutenants…" MacNamara said as he touched his forehead with a return salute.

"Please, stand at ease. Why are you here?"

"Sir. We wish to report a theft, sir," Tommy answered sharply.

"A theft?"

"Correct."

"Please continue."

"A key piece of evidence acquired by myself, which I planned to introduce at trial tomorrow, was removed from Mr. Scott's quarters. We suspect this theft took place during the time he was confronting the men in front of Hut 101. Sir, we protest this action in the most vigorous way!"

"Evidence, you say. What sort of evidence?"

Tommy hesitated, and the SAO quickly added, "There's no one from the other side here, Mr. Hart. And I will keep whatever information you provide me in strictest confidence."

"I'm certain you will, sir," Tommy said, but did not believe it for an instant. He didn't dare to throw a glance at Lincoln Scott.

"Good." MacNamara's voice had a firmness to it that could have concealed irritation, but Tommy was unsure.

"I ask again: What sort of evidence?"

"It was a wooden board, sir. Ripped from the side of a building.

There were clear traces of Trader Vic's blood marking it.

Spatter traces, I believe they're called by professionals."

MacNamara started to open his mouth, then stopped. He swung his feet off the bed, staring down for a second at his wriggling toes concealed by threadbare socks. Then he sat up more sharply, as if paying closer attention.

"A wooden board, you say? A bloodstained wooden board?"

"Correct, sir."

"How can you be certain it was Captain Bedford's blood?"

"I can arrive at no other reasonable conclusion, sir. Nobody else has bled that substantially."

"True enough. And this board proved what? In your own estimation?"

Tommy hesitated, before replying: "A key element of the defense, sir.

It relates to where Trader Vic was actually murdered and attacks the prosecution's perception of the crime."

"It came from the Abort?"

"I didn't say that, sir."

"It came from some other location?"

"Yes sir."

"And you believe this shows what?"

"Sir, if we can show that the crime took place in some different spot, then it calls into serious question the entirety of the prosecution's case. They claim that Mr. Scott followed Captain Bedford out of Hut 101 and that the subsequent confrontation and fight took place between the buildings, by the Abort. Evidence that suggests a different scenario supports Lieutenant Scott's denials, sir."

MacNamara again paused, measuring his words carefully.

"What you contend is accurate, lieutenant. And now this item is gone?"

Before Tommy could reply, Scott burst out: "Yes sir! Stolen from my room. Lifted, robbed, filched, pilfered, poached, or purloined!

Whatever word you want, sir. Right when my back was ever so goddamn conveniently turned!"

"Watch your language, lieutenant."

Scott stared hard at the Senior American Officer. Then he slowly spat out his next words.

"All right, colonel. I'll watch my language. I would certainly hate to go to a firing squad with an excess goddamn on my lips. It might offend someone's delicate sensibilities."

MacNamara did not so much glare at Scott as he did shrug with a sort of acceptance of the black flier's fury, as if Scott's outrage was oddly unimportant. Tommy took note of this silently, and then stepped slightly forward, emphasizing his words with sharp hand gestures.

"Sir, you will recall that in some regards it was Trader Vic's accusation that Lieutenant Scott stole something from him that triggered all this. Certainly much of the animosity stemmed from that incident. And now, it is Lieutenant Scott who has been victimized, and what has disappeared is far more critical than any wartime souvenir, pack of smokes, or chocolate bar!"

MacNamara held up his hand. He nodded his head slowly.

"I am aware. What is it you want me to do?"

Tommy smiled.

"At a minimum, sir, I would think we should question every member of the prosecution under oath.

They are, after all, the ones who benefit from this illegal action.

I would think that we should further question every witness for the prosecution, because many of those men seem to carry the same animosity toward Lieutenant Scott that Captain Bedford did. We should also question some of the men who have been most overt in their threats toward Lieutenant Scott. And I would think that we should delay tomorrow's proceedings substantially. Furthermore, I would think that this theft of key evidence would underscore Scott's presumption of innocence. In many regards, the theft is de facto evidence of his total innocence! It is certainly equally likely that the board was stolen by the actual murderer! I would argue that you should immediately dismiss the accusation against Lieutenant Scott."

"Absolutely not!"

"Sir! The defense has been crippled by the illegal and immoral actions of others, right here inside the camp! That suggests " "I can see what it suggests, lieutenant! But it proves nothing. And there is no proof that this evidence actually existed or would have achieved the dramatic results you claim."

"Sir! You have the word of honor of two officers!"

"Yes, but beyond that " "What?" Scott interrupted.

"Is our word less substantial?

Less important? Less truthful? It somehow doesn't count for the same?

Maybe you think mine is less valuable. But Hart's word of honor is the same color as yours or Major Clark's or anyone else's in Stalag Luft Thirteen!"

"I didn't say that, lieutenant. It is none of those things. But it does lack corroboration." MacNamara spoke softly. Almost as if he were trying to be conciliatory.

"Other officers saw me obtain the board, "Tommy interjected.

"Who? Why are they not with you, now?"

Tommy instantly envisioned Trader Vic's roommates and the members of the jazz band that had confronted him in the corridor of Hut 101. He thought they were probably the men who had stolen the board. And he knew they would lie about the theft. But he knew who couldn't lie.

"I am unsure who they were."

"Do you think you can find them?"

"No. Except for one."

"And who might that be?"

"Captain Walker Townsend, sir. The chief prosecutor. He saw me with the item in question."

This name made the SAO stiffen, and rise to his feet. For several seconds, he seemed to be thinking deeply. He turned away from the two men, walked to one side of the small room, then turned, and took several strides back, so that he was once again facing the two lieutenants. Tommy could see the SAO calculating, almost as if he were inspecting the damage done by combat to an aircraft, trying to determine whether it would fly. Again, Tommy took note of MacNamara's reaction as much as he did anything the SAO had said. He hoped that

Lincoln Scott was equally alert.

Abruptly, MacNamara waved his hand in the air, as if he'd finished the equation in his mind, and written a result.

"All right, gentlemen. We will deal with this matter before the tribunal in court tomorrow. You can raise your questions then, and perhaps Captain Townsend and the prosecution will have some answers for you at that point."

MacNamara looked over toward the two younger men. He both frowned and smiled and in the same gesture, shook his head slightly.

"You may have struck a blow. Lieutenant Hart. A well-placed and accurate blow. Whether it does great injury to the prosecution remains to be seen. But I will keep an open mind on the issue."

Tommy nodded, although he wasn't sure he believed this and doubted that

Scott would consider it anything but a blatant lie. He saluted. He started to pivot toward the exit, but Scott, at his side, hesitated.

Tommy had a sudden surge of nervousness over what Scott was about to say, but he saw the black flier point down at the novel that had been left open on MacNamara's bunk.

"Do you enjoy Dickens, sir?" he suddenly asked.

Colonel MacNamara let a small look of surprise cross his face before he replied, "Actually, this is the first I've had time to read. I never was one for fiction, when I was younger. History and mathematics, mainly. That was the stuff that helped you into West Point and the reading that kept you there. I don't even believe they offered a class at the Point that read Dickens. Of course, I never had all the free time growing up and going to school that I've now got right here, thanks to the damn Krauts. But so far, this seems quite interesting."

Scott nodded.

"My own schoolwork was dominated by technical literature and textbooks, too," he said, a small smile filtering across his face.

"But I still made time for the classics, sir. Dickens, Dostoyevsky,

Tolstoy, Proust, Shakespeare.

Need to read Homer and some of the Greek tragedies, as well.

Hard to consider oneself properly educated without a fundamental grounding in the classics, sir. My mother taught me that. She's a teacher."

"That may very well be true, lieutenant," MacNamara responded.

"I hadn't considered it in precisely those terms."

"Really? I'm surprised. Well, regardless, Dickens was an interesting writer, sir," Scott continued.

"There's one important thing to remember, when reading any of his best works."

"What's that, lieutenant?" MacNamara asked.

"Nothing is exactly as it seems at first," Scott answered.

"That was Dickens's genius." Then he added, "Good night, sir. Enjoy your reading."

The two young airmen then exited the SAO's bunk room.

By the time they walked out of Hut 114, darkness had crept into the air around them, turning the world into the weak and faded, indistinct gray of dusk. The barbed-wire walls around the camp perimeter seemed like so many twisting lines of black penciled against the leftover daylight.

Most of the kriegies were already in their bunk rooms, preparing for the night, anticipating the evening chill that slipped inexorably over the camp. The two men could see an occasional airman hurrying through the start of the evening, his pace dictated less by the encroaching cold than by the night that threatened him. Darkness could always mean death, especially at the hands of some nervous, poorly trained teenage guard carrying a machine pistol. Tommy looked up, through the first moments of gloom, toward a nearby guard tower, and saw that there were two goons resting there, their arms on the edge, like men at a bar. But both goons were watching them closely, expecting them to hurry their stride.

"Not bad. Hart," Scott said. His own eyes had followed Tommy's, up to the guard tower and the two German soldiers watching them.

"I especially liked that part about tossing the charges. Won't work, of course, but it made him a bit nervous, and gave him something nasty to think about tonight when the Krauts shut off the lights, and I liked that."

"Worth a try."

"Anything's worth a try at this point. And you know who would have liked it? The old limey, the one they shipped out.

Pryce would have admired the maneuver, even if it didn't work."

"Probably right about that," Tommy replied.

"But there aren't a lot of tricks lurking at the bottom of this barrel, are there. Hart?"

"No. We still have Fenelli, the medic. His testimony should shed some doubt on things. And when he shoots his mouth off it will mess up

Captain Townsend's neat little package. But I wish we had something else. Something concrete.

The real murder weapon, maybe. Some other witness.

Something. Something convincing. That's why that damn board was so critical."

Scott nodded.

"It would be nice."

They took a few steps through the start of the evening, and then Tommy asked the black flier, "Tell me, Scott, what's your take on MacNamara?"

Scott hesitated, then asked his own question.

"How so? Do you mean as an officer? Or as a judge? Or, maybe, as a human being? Which?"

"All. Or whichever you want to answer. Come on, Scott, what's your impression?"

Tommy could see a small grin creep across the black airman's lips.

"As an officer, he's a by-the-book professional military man. A career officer looking for advancement and probably being eaten alive every second he has to sit here, completely forgotten, while his classmates from West Point go and do what West Pointers do, which is generally to send men out to get killed and then get to pin medals on their own chests and enjoy their promotions up the military ladder. As a judge, well, I suspect he'll be more or less the same, though he will bend over backwards at odd moments to appear that he's being fair."

"I agree," Tommy said.

"But there's a difference between actually being fair and appearing to be fair."

"Bingo," Scott said quietly.

"Now, as a person, well… Do you have any idea. Hart, just how many

Lewis MacNamaras I've met in my life?"

"No" "Dozens. Hundreds. Too many to count."

"I don't follow."

Scott sighed and nodded.

"MacNamara is the difficult type that vociferously and publicly denies being even a tiny bit prejudiced, then automatically raises the bar just a little farther whenever a Negro threatens to reach up and leap over.

He'll talk about fairness and equality and meeting established standards, but the truth is that the standard I have to surpass is far different from the one that you do. Hart. And mine always gets a little tougher the closer I get to success.

I've seen MacNamara in the schools I've attended, from elementary school on the South Side of Chicago right through the university.

MacNamara was the Irish policeman who walked my block taking payoffs and keeping everyone in line, and the grade school principal who made us share every book three ways in each class and prevented anyone from taking the book home at night and really studying what was in it.

MacNamara was there when I enlisted and went through basic training. He was the officer who looked down at my academic record, including a Ph.D." and then suggested I become a cook. Or maybe a hospital orderly. But something menial and unimportant. And then, when I scored the highest grade on the entrance exam for flight school, it was a MacNamara who demanded I retake the test. Because of some irregularity.

The only irregularity was that I outperformed all the white boys. And when I finally qualified, MacNamara was down there in Alabama, waiting for me. I told you before: cross-burnings outside the camp and almost impossible standards inside.

The MacNamaras down there would flunk you out of the program for a single mistake on a written exam.

You'd wash out for any error, no matter how minor, in the air.

You want to know why the boys from Tuskegee are the best damn fighter pilots in the army air corps? Because we had to be! Like I say, one set of rules for you, Hart, a different set of rules for me. You want to know the fanny thing?"

"The funny thing?"

"Well," Scott said, smiling, "it's not precisely fanny. But ironic, okay?"

"Well, what's that?"

"That when all is said and done, it's a whole lot easier for me to deal with the Vincent Bedfords of the world than it is the Lewis MacNamaras.

At least Trader Vic never tried to hide who he was and how he felt. And he never claimed to be fair when he wasn't."

Tommy nodded. The two men were walking through the brisk air. There was a freshness to the evening breeze, one that evoked memories of

Vermont in him.

"It must be difficult for you, Scott. Difficult and frustrating,"

Tommy said quietly.

"What?"

"To always immediately see hatred in everyone you meet and to always be so damn suspicious about everything that happens."

Scott started to reply, his right hand raised in a small dismissive wave that stopped midway in the air in front of them.

Then he smiled again.

"It is," he said. He coughed briefly.

"It is indeed a difficult chore." He shook his head, still grinning.

"One that, as you can tell, seems to occupy my every waking minute." He tossed his head back, a quick burst of laughter escaping from his lips.

"You caught me on that. Hart. I seem to keep underestimating you."

Tommy shrugged.

"You wouldn't be the first," he said.

"But don't you underestimate me," Scott said.

Tommy shook his head.

"That would be the one thing I doubt I would ever do, Scott. I might not understand you, and I might not like you. I might not even completely believe you.

But I'll be damned if I'll ever underestimate you."

Scott smiled and laughed again.

"You know something, Hart?" he said briskly.

"I must admit you keep surprising me."

"The world is filled with surprises. It's never quite the way it seems. Isn't that precisely what you told MacNamara about Dickens's world?"

Scott kept smiling and nodded.

"Vermont, huh? You know, I've never been there. Visited Boston once, but that was as close as I got. Do you miss it?"

He paused, shook his head, then added, "That's a stupid question, because the answer is so obvious. But I'll ask it anyway."

"I miss everything," Tommy replied.

"I miss my home. My girl. My folks. My little sister. The damn dog.

I miss Harvard, for Christ's sake, which is something I never thought

I'd say out loud. Do you know what I miss? The smells. I never thought being free had a distinct odor to it, but it does. You could taste it in the air, every time the wind picked up. Fresh.

It was in my girl's perfume when I took her out on our first date. In my mother's cooking on Sunday morning. Sometimes I walk out of the huts and all I see is the wire, and I think I'll never get beyond it and never smell any of those things ever again. Not for even a minute.

Not ever again."

The two men took a few more steps forward, right to the entrance to Hut

101. There Scott stopped. He turned his head about for a moment, checking to see if anyone was watching them. It seemed as if they were alone right there in the final moments of day's light, before the crush of darkness fell over the camp. Scott reached down into his breast pocket and removed a frayed and cracked photograph. He took a slow, lingering look at the picture, then handed it over to Tommy.

"I was lucky," Scott said quietly.

"The morning of my last mission, I just grabbed their picture and stuck it in my flight suit, right next to my heart. I don't know why. Never did it on any other mission excepting that last one. But I'm real glad

I have it."

There was a little light coming from the edge of the doorway, and he twisted so that it fell across the photograph. It was a simple snapshot of a young, delicate, cocoa-colored woman sitting in a rocking chair in the living room of a trim, well-furnished house, cradling a small baby in her arms.

Tommy stared at the picture. He saw the woman's eyes were alert and filled with a soft joy. The baby's right hand was outstretched, reaching up toward its mother's cheek.

There was a small crack in Lincoln Scott's voice when he added, "I don't know if they've been told I'm alive. It's a very hard thing.

Hart, to imagine someone you love thinks you dead…" He stopped.

Tommy returned the picture to Scott.

"Beautiful," he said.

This was the obligatory response, but a truthful one, nonetheless.

"I'm sure the army has informed them you're a prisoner."

Scott nodded.

"Yes, I suppose so. But then, you might suspect I would have received a letter or a package or something from home, and I haven't. Not a word." He took another long look at the photograph before returning it slowly to his pocket.

"I've never seen the baby. He was born after I was shipped overseas.

Makes it hard to imagine he's real. But he is. Probably cries a lot.

I did when I was little, or so my mother likes to tell me. I suppose I'd like to live to see him, if only just one time. And I'd like to see my wife again, too." He hesitated, then added, "Of course, that's no different for you, or MacNamara or Clark or Captain Townsend or the Krauts or anyone else in this damn place. Even Trader Vic. He probably wanted to go back to Mississippi as bad as anyone. I wonder who he had waiting for him back home?"

"His boss at the used-car dealership," Tommy said.

There was a bridge game going on in one bunk room, with as many kibitzers following the play as there were players. Unlike poker, or Hearts, both of which lent themselves to more rowdy levels of participation and overflow crowds of observers, the bridge game flowed quietly until the last few tricks of the hand, which prompted intense and raucous discussion about the precise manner in which the cards were played. Kriegies loved the arguments as much as they loved the games; it was another way that something modest was exaggerated, stretched out to consume more of the frustrating minutes of imprisonment.

The door to Scott's room, with its offensive carving, had been replaced, just as the Germans had promised. But as the two men approached, they saw that it was ajar. Tommy might have been surprised, but he immediately heard loud humming and snatches of song coming from the bunk room, and he recognized Hugh Renaday's rough voice amid the mingled off-key tunes and lavishly obscene lyrics.

They stepped in, and saw the Canadian in the process of making up his sleeping area. Tommy's modest accommodations were pushed to the wall, his law books stacked beneath the bunk, some spare clothes hung from a string between two nails. It wasn't much, but some of the starkness and painful isolation of the room had been diminished. Hugh was tacking an out-of-date calendar to the wall. The year-old date was less significant than the portrait of the scantily clad and significantly endowed, doe-eyed young woman that graced the month of February 1942.

"Can't be without February," Hugh said, as he stepped back, admiring the picture.

"She cost me two packs of smokes. I fully intend to find her after the war and propose to her perhaps ten seconds after we've been introduced.

And I won't be taking no for an answer."

"Funny," Tommy said, staring attentively and admiringly at the pin-up.

"She doesn't look very Canadian. I doubt she's ever chewed on a piece of blubber or even harpooned a seal.

And her outfit, well, it doesn't look like it would be terribly effective in the northern wintertime…"

"Tommy, my friend, I do believe you're missing the point here entirely." He laughed, and so did Tommy. Then Hugh reached out and grasped the black flier's hand, shaking it hard.

"Glad to be here, mate," he said.

Scott replied, "Welcome to the Titanic" He turned and started toward his bunk, but then stopped abruptly. For an instant, he remained rigid, then he pivoted back toward Hugh.

"How long have you been here?" Scott abruptly demanded.

The Canadian looked surprised, then shrugged.

"Half hour, maybe. Didn't take too long to unpack and stow my things.

Fritz Number One brought me over, after the South Compound's Appell. We had to stop and check something with Visser, and then with one of Von

Reiter's adjutants.

Numbers stuff" mainly. Paperwork. I guess they want to make sure they get the count straight in both camps. Don't want to go chasing about, sounding off all their whistles and alarms, looking for someone who's merely switched compounds."

"Did you see anyone when you arrived?" Scott questioned sharply.

"See anyone? Sure, there were kriegies all over the place."

"No, I mean in here."

"In here? Not a soul," Hugh replied.

"Door was shut tight.

New door, too, I noticed. But what's eating you, mate?"

"That," Scott said, suddenly pointing to a corner of the room.

Tommy pushed to Scott's side. He saw what the black airman was pointing toward instantly. Resting upright in the far corner of the bunk room was the missing wooden board that had been marked with Trader Vic's blood.

He covered the distance in a single stride, grabbing at the hunk of wood, quickly turning it over, back and forth, in his hands, examining it. Then Tommy looked up at Lincoln Scott, who remained in the center of the small space.

"See for yourself," he said bitterly.

Tommy pitched the board to Scott, who seized it from the air. He turned it over once or twice, just as Tommy had.

But Hugh was the first to speak.

"Tommy, lad, what the hell's the matter? Scott, what's with the hunk of wood?"

Scott shook his head and muttered an obscenity. Tommy answered the question.

"That's all it is, now," he said.

"Might as well toss it in the stove. This morning, it was a critical piece of evidence. Now, it's nothing. Just firewood."

"I don't get it," Hugh said. He took the board from Scott.

It was Scott who explained, as he handed it over.

"A little while ago, it was a board that Tommy discovered right outside Hut 105, covered with Trader Vic's blood. Proof in our hands that he was killed someplace other than where his body was found. But someone has gone to considerable trouble in the last few hours to steal the board from this room and then clean it of any traces of Vic's blood.

Probably poured boiling water all over it, right into every little crack and splinter, and then scrubbed it with disinfectant."

Hugh lifted the board to his nose, sniffing.

"You're right about that. Smells of lye and suds…"

"Just as if it came from the Abort," Tommy said.

"And I'll wager you a carton of smokes that we could go over to Hut 105 and find that someone has cut in a different piece of wood at the spot where I ripped this out."

Scott nodded.

"No bet," he said.

"Damn."

He smiled wryly.

"They're not stupid," he added cautiously, sadness filling every sound he spoke.

"Stupid would have been just to steal the damn board. But stealing it, cleaning it of all traces, and then returning it to this room, now, that's clever, isn't it, Mr. Policeman?"

He looked over at Hugh, who nodded and continued to inspect the board.

"If I had a microscope," he said slowly, "maybe even just a magnifying glass, I could probably find traces that the cleaning job left behind."

Tommy gestured widely.

"A microscope? Here?" he asked cynically.

Hugh shrugged.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Might as well ask for a winged chariot to carry us home."

"They're very damn clever," Scott continued, pivoting toward Tommy.

"This morning we had a piece of hard evidence.

Now we have nothing. Less than nothing. And poof!

There goes tomorrow morning's arguments, counselor. And right alongside any hope of delaying the trial."

Tommy didn't at first reply. No sense in adding words to the simple truth.

"Actually," Hugh was quick to interject, "now you've got a problem. You told MacNamara about this theft?"

Tommy instantly saw where the onetime policeman was heading.

"Yes. Damn. And now we've got a board that doesn't show what we claimed it did. That hunk of useless wood is as dangerous now as any of the evidence the prosecution does have. We damn well can't hold it up and say it used to have Vic's blood on it. Nobody would believe that for a second."

Tommy turned to Scott.

"Now we've got the board, and its presence in our possession turns us into a pair of liars."

Hugh smiled.

"But they just still might believe you if you continue to say it was stolen."

As he spoke, Hugh took the board and carefully propped it up against the edge of his bunk. Then, as his words dwindled into the air of the bunk room, he suddenly lifted his right leg and slammed it against the board. The savage kick splintered the board into two pieces. A second, equally hard kick turned it into kindling.

Tommy grimaced, shrugged, and said, "The cooking stove is down the corridor."

"Then I need to cook something," Renaday replied. He gathered the chunks of wood in his arms and exited the room.

"I guess that board is still stolen," Scott said.

"I wonder if the bastards who stole it in the first place thought ahead far enough."

"I doubt they'd anticipate us destroying it," Tommy replied.

He felt slightly uneasy at what they'd done. My first real case, he thought, and I destroy evidence. But before he had the chance to temporize about the morality of what they'd accomplished with two well-placed kicks, Lincoln Scott was speaking.

"Yeah. They were probably counting on us being honest and playing by the rules, because that's what we've been doing, right up to now. The problem is. Hart, no one else seems to be. Think about it: the carving on the door. Somebody knew that would bring me out of the room. Somebody knew I'd react the damn fool way I did, challenging everybody to a fight. K.KK and nigger. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull. And I fell for it, went dashing out front, ready to fight the whole damn camp if necessary. And, right as I'm making a fool out of myself, someone sneaks in here and lifts the only solid piece of evidence we've got. And then, as soon as my back was turned again, zip, they brought it back. But ruined as evidence. And worse, because with that board sitting in the corner, we're going to appear to MacNamara and the entire camp to be a pair of liars."

Something frightening occurred to Tommy at that moment.

He slowly inhaled, staring across at Lincoln Scott, who was continuing to speak.

The black flier sighed deeply.

"Our expert barrister is suddenly removed. Our pathetic evidence is destroyed. All the lies make sense. All the truths seem nonsense."

What Tommy saw, in that moment, was that slowly but surely they were being squeezed into a location where all that remained of their defense was Scott's denials. He suddenly saw that no matter how forceful they were, they were still exceedingly fragile. And any discrepancy, any inconsistency, might turn the strength of those denials into ammunition against him.

He started to say this, but stopped when he saw the stricken look on Lincoln Scott's face. It seemed to him, in that second, that much of

Scott's rage and frustration slid away from him, leaving behind nothing except a great, ineffable sadness.

Scott's shoulders slumped forward. He put a hand to his eyes, rubbing hard. Tommy looked across the small room at Scott and realized, in that precise second, why the black flier had greeted everyone with distance and standoffishness from his first minute in the captivity of Stalag Luft Thirteen. What he saw was that there is nothing more hurtful and lonely in the world than to be different and isolated, and that Scott's only defense against the jealousy and racism he knew would be waiting for him had been to fire his own anger first, like the fighter pilot he was.

Tommy realized that everything in the case was a trap. But the worst of the traps was the one Scott had inadvertently created for himself.

By not allowing anyone to know who he really was, he had made it easy for them to kill him. Because they would not care. No one knew about the wife, the child, waiting at home, nor did they know about the preacher father who urged him forward to advanced degrees or the mother who made him read the classics. Lincoln Scott had made it seem to all the other kriegies that he wasn't like them, when, in truth, he was no different, not in the slightest.

It must be a terrible thing. Tommy guessed, to believe that the nails and wood that you purchased yourself to build walls were now being used to fashion your own coffin.

"So, counselor, what's left? Not much, is there?"

Tommy didn't reply. He watched Scott put a hand to his forehead, as if in pain. When he pulled it away, he looked over at Tommy. There was anguish in his words, and Tommy abruptly realized how hard it must be for those who are accustomed to staring across the ring or through the sky and seeing their enemy clearly arrayed before them to be suddenly trying to fight against something as elusive and vaporous as the hatred Scott was now up against.

"Some people seem to be going to a whole lot of trouble just to make absolutely damn for certain sure that this poor old nigger gets shot.

And they sure as hell seem to have some damn fast timetable, too."

Then without another word, Lincoln Scott threw himself down on his bunk, tossing his thick forearm over his eyes, blocking out the unrelenting light from the single overhead bulb. He remained in that position, motionless, not even looking up, when Hugh reentered the bunk room. He stayed that way, not moving, like a man on a slab, right to the moment that the Germans cut the electric power to the huts, plunging all three men into the usual complete darkness of prisoner-of-war camp.

It was nearly midnight by the luminous dial on the watch that Lydia had given him and Tommy found himself unable to sleep, filled with an unruly nervousness that was not dissimilar to the anxiety he felt on the eve of his first combat mission.

Within himself, he could sense some doubt, some fear, some frustration at the capriciousness of the world that had put him in this situation.

He sometimes thought that true bravery was merely acquiring the ability to act, to do what needed to be done, in the face of all these emotions that urged him to find someplace safer and hide. He listened to the light sounds of sleep coming from the two other men in the room, wondering for a moment why they were not equally energized and didn't find sleep equally elusive. He supposed there was resignation in Lincoln Scott's breathing, and acceptance in Hugh Renaday's.

He felt neither of these emotions.

What he thought was that nothing had gone right in the camp from the moment Fritz Number One found Trader Vic's body. The steady routine of camp life-critical to both captors and captured-had been disturbed profoundly, and promised to be further disrupted when the black airman's trial started in the morning.

He mentally chewed on this idea for a moment, but it only led him to more confusion. There seemed to him to be so many layers of hatred at work, and for an instant he felt despair at ever sorting all of them out. Who was hated the most?

Scott? The Germans? The camp? The war? And who was doing the hating?

Tommy slowly exhaled, and thought that questions made for poor armor, but they were all he had. His eyes open to the night, he stared up toward the ceiling of the bunk room, wishing that he could look up into the stars at home, and find the same comforting trail through the blinking celestial canopy that he'd always sought out when he was younger. It was an odd thing, he realized, to go through life believing that if a person could find one familiar route through the distant heavens, then they would believe that a similar course could be charted through the nearby swamps and shoals of earth.

This thought made him smile bitterly to himself, because in it he recognized Phillip Pryce's handiwork. What made Phillip such a fine barrister, Tommy thought, was that he was psychologically always a step or two ahead. Where others saw mere facts stiffly arrayed, Phillip saw huge canvases, drawn to the edge in nuance and subtlety. He did not know that he could ever fully achieve Pryce's capabilities, but he thought achieving some would be far better than none.

Tommy asked himself: What would Phillip have said about the disappearance and sudden reappearance of the crucial wooden board?

Tommy breathed slowly. Phillip would say to look to who gains what.

The prosecution gains. Tommy considered.

But then Phillip would ask: Who else? The men who hate Scott for his skin, they too gained. The real killer of Vincent Bedford, he gained as well. The people who didn't gain were the defense, and the Germans.

He continued to breathe in and out, slowly.

That was an odd combination. Tommy thought. Then he asked himself:

How are these others aligned?

He did not know the answer to that question.

Like a sudden storm surge ripping across a cold mountain lake, driving whitecaps onto still waters. Tommy danced amid all the conflicting ideas within him. Some men wanted Scott executed because he was black.

Some men wanted Scott executed because he was a murderer. Some men wanted Scott executed for revenge.

He inhaled sharply, holding his breath.

Phillip was right, he thought suddenly. I'm looking at it all backward. The real question is: Who wanted Vincent Bedford dead?

He did not know. But someone did, and he still hadn't any idea who.

Questions made a racket in his head, so that when the soft sound of feet outside the closed bunk room door finally penetrated to his ear, he was startled. It was a padding sound, men in their stockings, moving carefully to conceal their travel.

He felt his throat abruptly constrict, his heart begin to race.

For an instant, he thought they were about to be attacked, and he pushed himself up onto an elbow, about to whisper an alarm to Scott and

Renaday. His hand reached out in the darkness, seeking some kind of weapon. But in that momentary hesitation, the footsteps seemed to fade. He bent forward, listening hard, and heard them rapidly disappear down the central corridor. He took another deep breath, trying to calm himself. He insisted in that second that it had just been an ordinary kriegie, forced to use the solitary indoor toilet late at night. The same toilet that had caused so much trouble.

Then he stopped, and told himself that was wrong. There were two, and more probably three, sets of footsteps outside the door. Three men trying to move silently with a single purpose.

Not a lonesome flier feeling ill. And then he realized there was no accompanying sound of rushing water coming from the toilet.

Tommy swung his feet out of the bunk, rising silently and tiptoeing across the room, making absolutely certain he didn't disturb his sleeping companions. He pressed his ear up against the solid wood of the door, but could hear nothing else. The blackness seemed complete, save for the occasional wan light from an errant searchlight, as it swept the outside walls and rooftops and penetrated through the cracks in the wooden window shutters.

He slowly, gingerly, swung open the door just the smallest fracture, so that he could slip through noiselessly. Out in the corridor, he crouched down, trying to make himself hidden.

He pitched forward slightly, at the waist, craning to make out noises in the darkness. But instead of sound, a flicker of light caught his eye.

At the far end of the hut, at the distant entrance that he and Scott had used on their own midnight excursion, Tommy could see a lone candle's flame. The light was like a single, faraway star.

He held himself still, watching the candle. At first he could not make out how many men were waiting by the door, but more than one. There was a momentary silence, and he could make out the sweep of the searchlight as it crept past the entrance.

The searchlight was like a bully, swaggering about the camp. In almost the same instant, the candle was extinguished.

He heard the creak of the front door to Hut 101 opening, and the small thud of it being closed seconds later.

Two men, he thought. Then he instantly corrected himself.

Three men.

Three men went through the front door a few minutes after midnight.

They used a candle's light just as he and Scott had, to put on their flight boots while they waited for the searchlight to creep past. And then, just as he and Lincoln Scott had a few nights earlier, they'd immediately jumped into the darkness traveling behind it.

He took another slow, long breath. Three was very dangerous, he thought. A large and clumsy group to slip outside.

One was the easiest, moving alone, patiently and cautiously.

Two, as he'd found out with Scott, was tricky. Two men had to work in a coordinated fashion, like a pair of fighters diving to an attack, one plane in the lead, the other covering the wing.

Two men were likely to talk, even though in whispers. Two men raised the chance of detection considerably. But three men exiting, one after the other, like diving from a stricken bomber into a sky filled with flak and pirouetting planes and falling through the air before opening a parachute, three was very dangerous and almost foolhardy. Three men would invariably make too much noise. Three men would find fewer accommodating dark spots to hide in. The exaggerated movement of three men was likely to catch the eyes of the tower goons, no matter how sleepy and inattentive they might be.

Three was taking a huge risk.

And so the reward for those three men had to be great.

He slumped up against the wall, composing himself before he slid back into Scott's bunk room.

Three men in the corridor, sneaking out into the midnight.

Three men chancing their lives on the eve of the trial.

Tommy did not know how these things were connected.

But he thought it might be a good idea to find out. He just did not know how.