Copyright © 1999 John Katzenbach.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-345-42624-X
Excerpt
Lincoln Scott spoke first.
"Well," he said quietly, "it seems bleak."
At first Tommy wasn't certain whether the fighter pilot was speaking about the case or the room, because the same could have been said of both. Everything accumulated by the other kriegies who'd once shared the space had been removed. All that remained was a single wooden bunk with a dirty blue ticking pallet stuffed with straw. A solitary thin gray blanket had been left behind on the top. Lincoln Scott tossed his remaining blankets and clothing down on the bed. The overhead electric bulb burned, although the room was filled with the remaining diffuse light of afternoon. His makeshift table and storage area were at the head of the bed. The flier looked inside and saw that his two books and store of foodstuffs were all intact. The only thing missing was the handmade frying pan, which had inexplicably disappeared.
"It could be worse," Tommy said. This time it was Scott's turn to look at him, trying to guess whether it was the accommodations or the case that he was speaking of.
Both men were quiet for an instant, before Tommy asked: "So, when you went to bed at night, after sneaking around to the toilet, where did you put your flight jacket?"
Scott gestured to the side of the door. "Right there," he said. "Everybody had a nail. Everybody hung their jackets there. They were easy to grab when the sirens or the whistles went off." Scott sat down heavily on the bed, picking up the Bible.
Tommy went over to the wall.
The nails were missing. There were eight small holes in the wooden wallboard arranged in groups of two, and spaced a couple of feet apart, but that was all.
"Where did Vic hang his coat?"
"Next to mine, actually. We were the last two in line. Everybody always used the same nail, because we wanted to be able to grab the right jacket in a hurry. That was why they were spaced out, in pairs."
"Where do you suppose the nails are now?"
"I haven't any idea. Why would someone take them away?"
Tommy didn't answer, although he knew the reason. It wasn't only the nails that were missing. It was an argument. He turned back to Scott, who was starting to leaf through the pages of the Bible.
"My father is a Baptist minister," Scott said. "Mount Zion Baptist Church on the South Side of Chicago. And he always says that the Good Book will provide guidance in times of turmoil. Myself, I am perhaps more skeptical than he, but not totally willing to refuse the Word."
The black flier's finger had crept inside the pages of the book, and with a flick, he opened the Bible. He looked down and read the first words he saw.
"Matthew, chapter six, verse twenty-four: 'No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.'"
Scott burst out with a laugh. "Well, I guess that makes some sense. What do you think, Hart? Two masters?" He snapped the Bible shut, then slowly exhaled. "All right, what's the next step? Now that I've gone from one prison cell to the next, what's in store for me now?"
"Procedurally? A hearing tomorrow. A formal reading of the charges. You declare your innocence. We get to examine the evidence against you. Then, next week, a trial."
"A trial. A nice word to describe it. And counselor, your approach?"
"Delay. Question authority. Challenge the legality of the proceedings. Request time to interview all the witnesses. Claim a lack of proper jurisdiction over the matter. In other words, fight each technicality as hard as possible."
Scott nodded, but in the motion of his head there was some resignation. He looked over at Tommy. "Those men just now, in the compound. All lined up and shouting. And then, when we passed through, the silence. I thought they wanted to kill me."
"I did, too."
He shook his head, his eyes downcast.
"They don't know me. They don't know anything about me."
Tommy didn't reply.
Scott leaned back, his eyes looking up to the ceiling. For the first time, Tommy seemed to sense a mingling of nervousness and doubt behind the flier's pugnacity. For several seconds, Scott stared at the whitewashed boards of the roof, then at the bare bulb burning in the center of the room.
"I could have run, you know. I could have got away. And then I wouldn't be here."
"What do you mean?"
Scott's voice was slow, deliberate. "We had already flown our escort mission, you see. We'd fought off a couple of attacks on the formation, and then delivered them to their field. We were heading home, Nathaniel Winslow and myself, thinking about a hot meal, maybe a poker game, and then hitting the hay, when we heard the distress call. Right in the clear, just like a drowning man calling out to anyone on the shore to please throw him a rope. It was a B-17 flying down on the deck, two engines out and half its tail shot away. It wasn't even from the group we were supposed to be guarding, you see, it was some other fighter wing's responsibility. Not the 332nd. Not ours, you see. So we didn't really have to do anything. And we were low on fuel and ammo, but there the poor bastard was, with six Focke-Wulfs making run after run at him. And Nathaniel, you know, he didn't hesitate, not even for a second. He turned his Mustang over on its wing and shouted at me to follow him, and he dove on them. He had less than three seconds of ammunition left, Hart. Three seconds. Count them: one, two, three. That's how long he could shoot. Hell, I didn't have much more. But if we didn't go in there, then all those guys were going to die. Two against six. We'd faced worse odds. And both Nathaniel and I got a kill in our first pass, a nice side deflection shot, which broke up their attack, and the B-17, it lumbered out of there and the FWs came after us. One swung around onto Nathaniel, but I came up before he could line him up and blew him out of the air. But that was it. No more ammo. Got to turn and run, you know, and with that big turbocharged Merlin engine, weren't none of those Kraut bastards gonna catch us. But just as we get ready to hightail it home, Nathaniel, he sees that two of the fighters have peeled off after the B-17, and again, he shouts at me to follow him after them. I mean, what were we going to do? Spit at them? Call them names? You see, with Nathaniel, with all of us, it was a matter of pride. No bomber we were protecting was going down. Got that? None. Zero. Never. Not when the 332nd was there. Not when the boys from Tuskegee were watching over you. Then, goddamn it, you were gonna get home safe, no matter how many damn planes the Luftwaffe sent up against us. That we promised. No black flier was going to lose any white boys to the Krauts. So Nathaniel, he screams up behind the first FW, just letting the bastard know he's there, trying to make the Nazi think he's dead if he doesn't get out of there. Nathaniel, you know, he was a helluva poker player. Helped put himself through college taking rich boys' allowances. Seven card stud was his game. Bluff you right out of your shorts nine times out of ten. Had that look, you know the one, the 'I've got a full house and don't you mess with me' look, when really he's only holding a lousy pair of sevens...."
Lincoln Scott took another deep breath.
"They got him, of course. The wing man came around behind and stitched him good. I could hear Nathaniel screaming over the radio as he went down. Then they came after me. Blew a hole in the fuel tank. I don't know why it didn't explode. I was smoking, heading down, and I guess they used up all their ammunition getting me, because they broke off and disappeared. I bailed out at maybe five thousand feet. And now I'm here. We could have run, you know, but we didn't. And the damn bomber made it home. They always made it home. Maybe we didn't. But they did."
Scott shook his head slowly.
"Those men out there in that mob. They wouldn't be here today if it'd been the 332nd flying escort duty over them. No sir."
Scott lifted himself from the bed, still clutching the Bible in his hand. He used the black-jacketed book to gesture toward Tommy, punctuating his words.
"It is not in my nature, Mr. Hart, to be accepting. Nor is it in my nature to just let things happen to me. I'm not some sort of carry your bags, tip my hat, yessuh, nosuh, house nigger, Hart. All this procedural crap you mentioned, well, that's fine. We need to argue that stuff, well, you're the lawyer here, Hart, let's argue it. But when it comes right down to it, then I want to fight. I did not kill Captain Bedford and I think it's about damn time we let everyone know it!"
Tommy listened closely, absorbing what the black man had said and how he'd said it.
"Then I think we have a difficult task ahead of us," he said softly.
"Hart, nothing in my life up to this point has been easy. Nothing truly worthwhile ever is. My preacher daddy used to say that every morning, every evening. And he was right then, and it's right now."
"Good. Because if you didn't kill Captain Bedford, I think we're going to have to find out who did. And why. And I don't think that will be an easy task, because I haven't got even the slightest idea how to get started."
Scott nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, but before any of the words came out, he was distracted by the sound of marching boots coming from the exterior corridor. The steady resonant noise stopped outside the doorway and seconds later the single thick wooden door to the bunk room flew open. Tommy turned swiftly toward the sound, and saw that MacNamara and Clark, along with a half-dozen other officers, were gathered in the hallway. Tommy recognized at least two of the men as former occupants of Trader Vic and Lincoln Scott's bunk room.
MacNamara stepped into the room first, but then stood just to the side. He didn't say anything, but crossed his arms, watching. Clark, as always, was directly behind him, passing rapidly into the center of the room. The major stared angrily at Tommy, then fixed Lincoln Scott with a harsh, angry stare.
"Lieutenant Scott," Clark hissed, "do you still deny the charges against you?"
"I do," Scott replied, equally forcefully.
"Then you will not object to a search of your belongings?"
Tommy Hart stepped forward. "We do indeed object! Under what rule of law do you think you can come in here and search Lieutenant Scott's personal property? You need a warrant. You need to show cause at a hearing, with testimony and with supporting evidence! We absolutely object! Colonel ..."
MacNamara said nothing.
Clark turned first to Tommy, then back to Lincoln Scott. "I fail to see what the problem is. If you are indeed innocent, as you claim, then what would you have to hide?"
"I have nothing to hide!" Scott answered sharply.
"Whether he does, or does not, is irrelevant!" Tommy's voice was raised, insistent. "Colonel! A search is unreasonable and clearly unconstitutional!"
Colonel MacNamara finally answered in a cold, slow voice. "If
Lieutenant Scott objects, then we will bring this matter up at tomorrow's hearing. The tribunal can decide...."
"Go ahead," Scott said briskly. "I did not do anything, so I have nothing to hide!"
Tommy glared at Scott.
The black flier ignored Tommy's look and sneered at Major Clark.
"Have at it, major," he said.
Major Clark, with two other officers at his side, approached the bed. They quickly felt through the stuffed mattress and rifled the few clothes and blankets. Lincoln Scott stepped a few feet away, standing alone, back up against one of the wooden walls. The three officers then flipped through the pages of the Bible and The Fall of the Roman Empire, and examined the makeshift storage table. Tommy thought, in that second, that the men were making the most perfunctory of searches. None of the items they inspected was really being closely scrutinized. Nor did they seem particularly interested in what they were doing. A sense of nervousness flooded over him, and he once again burst out, "Colonel, I repeat my objection to this intrusion! Lieutenant Scott is not in a position to intelligently waive his constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure!"
Major Clark seemed to smile at Tommy.
"We're almost finished," he said.
MacNamara did not reply to Tommy's plea.
"Colonel! This is wrong!"
Suddenly the two officers accompanying Major Clark reached down and lifted the corners of the wooden bunk. With a scraping noise, they shifted it perhaps ten inches to the right, dropping it back to the wooden flooring with a resounding clunk. In almost the same motion, Major Clark bent down to one knee, and started examining the floorboards that were now exposed.
"What are you doing?" Lincoln Scott demanded.
No one answered.
Instead, Clark abruptly worked one of the boards loose, and with a single, sharp motion, lifted it up. The board had been cut and then replaced in the floor. Tommy instantly recognized it for what it was: a hiding place. The space between the cement foundation and the wooden flooring was perhaps three or four inches deep. When he'd first arrived at Stalag Luft Thirteen, this had been a favorite kriegie concealment location. Dirt from the many failed tunnels, contraband, radios, uniforms recut into civilian clothing for escapes planned but never acted upon, stockpiles of useless emergency escape rations—all were hoarded in the small vacant space beneath the floor in each room. But what had seemed so convenient to the kriegies had not failed to gain the attention of the ferrets.
Tommy remembered that Fritz Number One had been inordinately proud of himself the day he'd uncovered one of the hiding places, because the discovery of one led him immediately to the uncovering of more than two dozen similar locations in different bunk rooms in other huts. Consequently, the kriegies had abandoned stashing items beneath the flooring over a year earlier, which frustrated Fritz Number One, because he kept searching the same spots over and over again.
"Colonel!" Tommy heard himself shouting. "This is unfair!"
"Unfair is it?" Major Clark replied.
The stocky senior officer reached down into the empty space and came up, smiling, clutching a long, flat homemade blade in his hand. The blade was perhaps a foot long, and one end had been wrapped with some sort of material. The piece of metal had been flattened and sharpened and caught a malevolent glint of light, as it was removed from beneath the flooring.
"Recognize this?" Clark said to Lincoln Scott.
"No."
Clark grinned. "Sure," he said. He turned to one of the officers who had been hanging at the rear of the group. "Let me see that frying pan." The officer suddenly held out Lincoln Scott's handmade cooking utensil. "How about this? This yours, lieutenant?"
"Yes," Scott answered. "Where did you get it?"
Clark clearly wasn't answering the question. Instead, he turned, holding both the homemade frying pan and the homemade knife. He glanced at Tommy but directed his words to Colonel MacNamara. "Watch carefully," he said.
Slowly, the major unwrapped the odd olive drab cloth that Scott had used to make the handle of the frying pan. Then, just as slowly and deliberately, he unwrapped the blade's grip. Then he held up both strips of cloth. They were of the same material and of nearly identical length.
"They look to be the same," Colonel MacNamara said sharply.
"One difference, sir," Clark replied. "This one"—he held up the one that had wrapped the knife handle—"this one here appears to have Captain Bedford's blood staining it."
Scott straightened rigidly, his mouth opened slightly. He seemed about to say something, but instead turned and looked at Tommy. For the first time, Tommy saw something that he took to be fear in the black flier's eyes. And, in that second, he remembered what Hugh Renaday and Phillip Pryce had spoken of earlier that day. Motive. Opportunity. Means. Three legs of a triangle. But when they had talked, the means had been missing from the equation.
That was no longer true.