Hart's War Page 14

  Clark then took a step forward, toward Tommy. His voice was narrow, pinched, and angry.

  “I repeat: Lieutenant, you are dismissed!”

  Tommy saluted again, and rapidly headed toward Hut 101. He thought he’d seen several interesting things, not the least of which was the curious idea that it had taken over twelve hours to remove the murdered man’s body from the location where it had been discovered. But more curious was that the Germans were cleaning the Abort. This was a task the kriegies routinely performed for themselves.

  He stopped just outside the entrance to his hut, breathing hard. If there was any evidence remaining inside the Abort, it was gone now, he told himself. For a moment, he wondered whether Clark and MacNamara had seen what he and Hugh Renaday had: That Trader Vic’s killing took place somewhere else. He wasn’t certain about their abilities to read a scene like the one he’d investigated that morning.

  But he was certain of one thing: Heinrich Visser had.

  The question, he thought, was whether the German had shared his observations with the American officers.

  By all rights, he should have been exhausted by the day, but the questions and confusions he had gathered in his consciousness kept him lying rigidly in his bunk long after the lights went out, and past when each of the other members of the room had slipped into their own fitful night’s sleep. More than once he’d closed his eyes to the snores, the breathing sounds, and the darkness, only to see Vincent Bedford’s body stuffed into the Abort stall, or Lincoln Scott huddled in the corner of the cooler cell. In an odd way, all the troublesome images from that day that kept him awake were refreshing, almost exhilarating. They were different, unique. There was an excitement attached to them that quickened his heart and his head. When he finally did drop away, it was with the pleasurable thought of the meeting in the morning that he expected to have with Phillip Pryce.

  But it was not morning light that awakened him.

  It was a rough hand, closing over his mouth.

  He pitched directly from sleep into fear. He half-jerked up in the bunk, only to feel the pressure of the hand shoving him back down. He twitched, trying to rise, but then stopped, as he heard a voice hissing in his ear: “Don’t move, Hart. Just don’t move at all. . . .”

  The voice was soft, slithery. It seemed to sidle past the abrupt thudding of blood in his ears, the immediate racket of his heartbeat.

  He lay back on the bed. The hand still covered his mouth.

  “Listen to me, Yankee,” the voice continued in a tone barely above a whisper. “Don’t look up. Don’t turn around, just listen to me. And y’all won’t get hurt. Can you do that? Just nod your head.”

  Tommy nodded.

  “Good,” the voice said. Tommy realized that the man was kneeling by the side of the bunk, just behind his head, enveloped in darkness. Not even the occasional sliver of light from a passing searchlight sweep striking the exterior of the hut and penetrating past the window’s wooden shutters helped him to see who was gripping him so tightly. He realized it was the man’s left hand over his mouth. He did not know where the man’s right hand was. And he did not know whether it held some sort of weapon.

  Abruptly, he heard a second voice, whispering from the other side of the bunk. He was startled, and his body must have shaken slightly, because the grip across his mouth tightened even more.

  “Ask him,” the second voice demanded. “Just ask him the question.”

  The man at his side grunted quietly.

  “Tell me, Hart. Are you a good soldier? Can you follow orders?”

  Tommy nodded again.

  “Good,” the voice whispered, hissing still. “I knew it. Because, you see, that’s all that we want you to do. All that’s required of you. Just follow your orders. Now, do you remember what your orders are?”

  He continued to nod.

  “Your orders, Hart, are to help justice be done. No more. No less. You’ll do that, won’t you, Hart? See that justice is done?”

  He tried to speak, but the hand clamped across his mouth prevented him.

  “Just nod your head again, lieutenant.”

  He nodded, as before.

  “We’re just making sure of that, Hart. Because no one wants to see justice avoided. You’ll be absolutely certain that justice is done, won’t you?”

  Tommy did not move.

  “I know you will,” the voice hissed a final time. “We all know you will. Everyone in this place . . .” Tommy could sense the man on his left moving away from the bunk over toward the bunk-room door. “Don’t turn. Don’t speak. Don’t light a candle. Just lie there, Hart. And remember you only have one job ahead of you: just follow orders. . . .” the man said. He squeezed painfully hard one time, then released his grip, before slinking away into the darkness. Tommy could hear the door creak open and then close. Gasping for breath like a fish suddenly plucked from the ocean, Tommy remained rigidly on his bed as he’d been told, the normal night sounds of the other men in the room slowly returning to his ears. But it was some time before his heart rate slowed from the deep drumming that pounded in his chest.

  Chapter Five

  THREATS

  Tommy kept his mouth shut as the kriegies flooded from the huts for the morning Appell. The early sky had lightened slightly, turning from dull, metallic gray to a horizon of tarnished silver that held out the hope of clearing. It was not as cold as it had been the day before, but there was still an unpleasant dampness in the air. Around him, as always, men complained, men grumbled, men muttered obscenities, as they formed the usual five-deep rows and began the laborious process of being counted. Ferrets moved up and down the rows, calling out numbers in German, starting over and repeating themselves when they lost track or were distracted by some kriegie asking a question. Tommy listened carefully to every voice, straining hard to recognize in the snatches of words that flowed at him from the collected airmen the sounds of the two men who’d visited him in the night.

  He stood at parade rest, pretending to be outwardly relaxed, trying to appear bored as he had for hundreds of similar mornings, but inwardly stretched taut with an unruly turmoil and an unfamiliar anxiety that, had he been slightly older and more worldly, he might have recognized as fear. But it was a far different fear from the fear he and all the other kriegies were accustomed to, which was the universal fear of flying straight into a squall of tracer rounds and flak. He wanted to pivot around, to search the eyes of the men surrounding him in the formation, thinking suddenly that the two voices who’d arrived at his bunkside in the midnight of the camp would be watching him carefully now. He surreptitiouslyshifted his eyes about, darting glances to the right and left, trying to pick out and identify the men who had told him that his job was simply to follow orders. He was surrounded, as always, by the men who flew in all the ships of war. In Mitchells and Liberators, Forts and Thunderbolts, Mustangs, Warhawks, and Lightnings.

  Someone was watching him, but he did not know who.

  The catcalls and complaints of that morning were the same as every morning. The ragged lines of U.S. airmen were no different from what they were any day—except for the two men absent. One dead. One in the cooler and accused of murder.

  Tommy exhaled slowly and had to control himself to keep from twitching. He could feel his heart accelerate, almost as fast as it did during the night when he’d been awakened by the hand closing over his mouth. He felt almost light-headed and his skin burned, especially his back, as if the eyes of the men he sought were scorching him.

  The morning air he gasped at was cool, suddenly tasting to him like a smooth pebble plucked from the bottom of one of the trout streams of his home state, placed under his tongue on a hot day. He closed his eyes for a moment, envisioning fast, dark waters bubbling with white froth as they coursed through some narrow rapids on the Battenkill or the White River, waters that had fallen out of the crags of the Green Mountains, made by late-melting snow and racing toward the larger watersheds of the Connecticut or Hudson. Th
e image calmed him.

  He heard a ferret close by, grunting out numbers.

  He opened his eyes and saw that they had nearly completed the count. He looked across the yard and, almost as if on cue, saw Oberst Von Reiter, accompanied by Hauptmann Heinrich Visser, emerging from the office building and making their way past the cordon of saluting camp guards through the front gate toward the assembled fliers. As always, Von Reiter was dressed with rigid precision, each crease of his immaculately tailored uniform slicing the air, and Tommy imagined that as he strode forward they made the same whistling sound as a sabre slashing the wind did. Visser, on the other hand, appeared slightly less neat, a little crumpled, almost as if he’d slept in his uniform the night before. The empty sleeve of his greatcoat was pinned together but still flapped as he kept pace with the taller camp commandant.

  Tommy watched the Hauptmann’s eyes, and saw that as he approached, they were sweeping across the rows of kriegies, taking in and measuring the men as they came to attention. He had the sensation that Visser looked on them with some anger that he concealed carefully but not totally. Von Reiter, Tommy thought, even with all his military bearing and Prussian appearance, like a caricature from a propaganda poster, remained nothing more than a glorified jailer. But Visser, he was the enemy.

  Colonel MacNamara and Major Clark stepped from the formations to confront the two German officers. There was a quick exchange of salutes and whispered conversation, then MacNamara turned, took a step forward, and loudly addressed the assembly.

  “Gentlemen!” MacNamara shouted. Any residual noise among the kriegies ended instantly. The men craned forward to hear the commanding officer speak. “You are by now all aware of the despicable murder of one of our number. It is now time to end all the rumors, scuttlebutt, and loose talk that has surrounded this unfortunate event!”

  MacNamara paused, waiting until his eyes rested on Tommy Hart.

  “Captain Vincent Bedford will be interred with military honors at noon today in the burial ground behind Hut 119. Shortly after that point, the man accused of his murder, Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, will be released from the cooler into the custody of his counsel, Lieutenant Thomas Hart of Hut 101. Lieutenant Scott will be confined to his quarters in that hut at all times, unless engaged in legitimate inquiries in preparation of his defense.”

  MacNamara swung his eyes away from Tommy and back to the rows of men.

  “No one is to threaten Lieutenant Scott! No one is to speak with Lieutenant Scott unless they have pertinent information to impart! He is under arrest and is to be treated that way! Do I make myself clear?”

  This question was answered without a sound.

  “Good,” MacNamara continued. “Lieutenant Scott will appear before a military court-martial tribunal for a preliminary hearing within twenty-four hours. His trial on the accusations is scheduled for next week.”

  MacNamara hesitated, then added: “Until that tribunal reaches a conclusion, Lieutenant Scott is to be treated with courtesy, respect, and total silence! Despite your feelings and the evidence already collected, he shall be presumed to be not guilty until a military court determines otherwise! Any violation of this order will be dealt with harshly!”

  The colonel had drawn himself up, shoulders back, legs spread, his hands clasped behind his back. The force of his command was like an ocean wave flooding over the kriegies. There wasn’t even a grumble from the back of the ranks of men.

  Tommy exhaled slowly. He thought it would have been hard for the Senior American Officer to make a statement to the camp that was more prejudicial. Even the words not guilty were spoken in a tone designed to imply the precise opposite. He wanted to step forward out of the lines and say something in defense of Lincoln Scott, but bit his lip, reined in an urge he knew would help no one and might actually harm his case, and remained silent.

  MacNamara waited for an instant, then swung toward the German officers. They saluted, Von Reiter as always lifting his leather riding crop to the brim of his cap, then snapping it down to his polished boots with a cracking sound.

  Major Clark marched to the front of the formation, moving like a middleweight closing in on an injured opponent hanging from the ropes. He faced the airmen, and bellowed: “Dismissed!”

  In silence, the kriegies dispersed across the compound.

  Fritz Number One was nowhere to be found, which surprised Tommy, but one of the other ferrets was aware of the order allowing him to travel to the British portion of the camp, and after Tommy had plied him with a pair of cigarettes in order to tear him away from what the ferret considered the absolutely essential duty of crawling around and poking through the muddy dirt under Hut 121, escorted him through the gate, past the offices and the shower block and the cooler, and up to the North Compound.

  Hugh Renaday was waiting just inside the barbed wire, pacing aggressively as was his style, circling around within a small space, smoking continuously. He stopped and waved as Tommy hurried toward him.

  “Eager to get to it, counselor. Come on, Phillip’s as excited as a hound in heat. He’s got some ideas . . .”

  Hugh stopped, in the midst of the rush of words, staring at his friend. “Tommy, you look terrible. What’s wrong?”

  “Does it show all that much?” Tommy replied.

  “Pale and drawn, my friend. Couldn’t you sleep?”

  Tommy managed a smile. “More like someone didn’t want me to sleep. Come on, I’ll fill you and Phillip in at the same time.”

  Hugh clamped his mouth shut, nodded, and the two men quick-marched through the compound. Tommy smiled inwardly as he recognized one of his friend’s better qualities. Not too many men, when their curiosity is pricked, are able to instantly silence themselves and start scrutinizing details. It is a quality that borders on the taciturn, perhaps an angle off the reflective. Tommy wondered whether Hugh was as quietly efficient with both his observations and his emotions in the cockpit of a bomber. Probably, he thought.

  Phillip Pryce was in the bunk room he shared with Renaday, monkishly hunched over a rough-hewn wooden desk, scribbling notes on a sheet of writing paper, gripping a small needle of pencil tightly in his long patrician fingers. He looked up and coughed once hard, as the two men entered the room. A cigarette stub was perched on the end of the table, burning, ashes littering the planks of the floor below. Pryce smiled, looked around himself for the smoke, picked it up, and waved it in the air like a philharmonic conductor directing the crescendo of a symphony.

  “Many ideas, my dear boys, many ideas . . .” Then he looked at Tommy more closely, and said, “Ah, but I see that more has happened in the space of a few short hours. And what new information do you have for us, counselor?”

  “A little middle-of-the-night visit from what I took to be the Stalag Luft Thirteen vigilante committee, Phillip. Or perhaps the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.”

  “You were threatened?” Renaday asked.

  “No. More like I was reminded . . .” Tommy launched into a brief description of being awakened by the hand on his mouth. He discovered that merely by telling his two friends what had happened, some of the echoes of anxiety within him fled. But he was also smart enough to understand that the sensation of wellbeing was as false as perhaps his fear was. He more or less decided to maintain a certain degree of wariness, some position between the two extremes of fear and safety. “ ‘Just follow orders’ . . . that’s what they told me,” he said.

  “Bastards,” Hugh blurted. “Cowards. We should take this directly to the SAO and—”

  Phillip Pryce held up his hand, shutting his roommate off mid-complaint. “First off, Hugh, my boy, we’re not going to impart any information—even of threats and intimidation—to the opposition. Weakens us. Stengthens them. Right?” He reached for another cigarette, replacing the one that he’d neglected. He lit this, then blew out a long, narrow stream of smoke, which he watched as it hung in the air.

  “Please, Tommy, if you will. A complete description of everything
that you saw and did after Hugh left your side. And, if you can, re-create every conversation word for word. To the best of your memory . . .”

  Tommy nodded. Taking his time, using every bit of recollection he had, he painstakingly retraced all his steps of the previous night. Hugh leaned up against a wall, arms crossed, concentrating, as if he were absorbing everything Tommy said. Pryce kept his eyes raised to the ceiling, and he leaned back on his chair, the wooden slats creaking as he rocked slightly.

  When Tommy finished, he looked over at the older Englishman, who stopped rocking and leaned forward. For just an instant, the weak light filtering through the grimy window gave him a dark and shadowy appearance, like a man rising from bed after an intimacy with death. Then, as abruptly, this cadaverous look dissipated, and the angular, almost academic appearance returned, accompanied by a wry and engaged smile.

  “Yankee these nocturnal visitors called you, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “How intriguing. What an interesting choice of words. Did you detect any other obvious southernisms about their language? A slow, sibilant drawl, perhaps, or some other, colorful contraction, like a y’all or an ain’t that would support the geographical impression?”

  “There was a y’all,” Tommy replied. “But they whispered. A whisper can sometimes hide inflection and accent.”

  Pryce nodded. “Most true. But the word Yankee does not, correct? It immediately leads one in a most obvious direction, true?”

  “Yes. Another northerner would never use that word. Nor would someone from the Midwest or West.”

  “The word prompts assumptions. Draws one inevitably to conclusions. Makes one think clearly in a certain manner, does it not?”