Hart's War Page 20

Pryce nodded. “Perhaps. Are you always this angry, lieutenant? Do you always bristle at the people trying to help?”

  “No. Yes.” The black flier snorted. “I am who I am. Take it or leave it.”

  “Ah, an American attitude, to be sure.”

  “I am an American. I may be black, but I am an American.”

  “Then perhaps it would be wise,” Phillip Pryce gestured toward Tommy, “to trust your fellow American trying to help you.”

  Scott’s eyes narrowed, focused sharply on the older British flier. “While all my other fellow Americans are trying to kill me?” he asked with a noticeable sneer. “Trust, I’ve learned, is something best left to those who earn it, not those who ask for it. You earn it under pressure. In the air, flying wing to wing in a gusty crosswind. You earn it when you dive through a flight of Messerschmidts. It’s something that’s not easy to get, and once achieved not easy to lose.”

  Pryce burst out in laughter.

  “Absolutely!” he said. “You are absolutely correct!”

  He turned toward Tommy and Hugh. “The lieutenant is a philosopher, as well, Tommy. You did not tell me this.”

  Scott still didn’t seem to know what to make of the wiry, partially emaciated British gentleman laughing, wheezing, coughing, and obviously taking complete delight in the turns and twists of their conversation.

  “You’re a lawyer?” he asked again, slightly incredulous.

  Pryce turned back briskly. He stared directly at Lincoln Scott for several long seconds. And when he did answer this question, he did so in a deadly serious, low-pitched, and intense voice.

  “I am. And the bloody well best you will ever encounter. And this is what I suggest you do this morning. Tommy, pay close attention.”

  For a moment, Scott seemed hesitant. But as the wing commander continued to speak, he started to nod his head in agreement. Tommy and Hugh joined in, so that as Pryce spoke softly, the other men were gathered in a tight knot around him.

  The theater at Stalag Luft Thirteen was located in the center of the camp, next to the hut where the Red Cross parcels and mail were delivered, adjacent to the makeshift medical services building. It was slightly wider than the housing huts, low-slung and hot when the temperatures rose, freezing in the winter. But any performance was jam-packed, from the camp jazz band to The Front Page, performed on the slightly raised stage with dripping candles in footlights fashioned from processed meat tins. Occasionally a German propaganda newsreel was shown, or a feature film of happy, singing Bavarian maidens—all projected by an ancient, cranky machine that frequently broke the film strips—to the wild applause of the prisoners. The best seats in the front of the room were constructed from leftover crates. Others were rough boards nailed together to make uncomfortable pews. Some men would bring blankets to sit on, cramming their backs against the thin processed-wood walls.

  At precisely ten A..M. on the wristwatch that had been so coveted by Vincent Bedford, Tommy strode through the wide double doors that opened into the theater, flanked on one side by Hugh Renaday and on the other by Lincoln Scott. The men marched in step, shoulders drawn back tightly, their uniforms as pressed and as clean as they could make them. Their boots resounded off the flooring planks with determined precision. In unison, the three men wheeled directly up the center aisle, eyes to the front, quick-paced, maintaining formation, like a color guard on parade.

  The auditorium was filled to capacity and beyond. Men were jammed into every corner and cranny of the space, shoulder to shoulder, straining to see. Others hung outside, groups of fliers listening through the open windows. Kriegie heads pivoted like falling dominoes as the accused man and his two defenders paced by. A makeshift bar had been created at the foot of the stage, two two-board tables set next to each other, facing three chairs set behind a longer table propped in the middle of the platform. Each chair was occupied by a senior camp officer, with Lewis MacNamara in the center seat. He was fingering a wooden mallet that hovered over a hunk of two-by-four. A homemade gavel. Major Clark, accompanied by another officer whom Tommy recognized from the search the prior evening, was already seated at the prosecution’s table. In a far corner at the front of the stage, Hauptmann Heinrich Visser, accompanied again by a stenographer, was seated. He was pushing back on his wooden, stiff-backed chair, so that he was balancing against the wall, a slightly bemused look on his face. The kriegies had afforded him some space, so Visser and the stenographer were isolated, their steel-gray uniforms standing out amid the sea of woolen olive drab and tanned brown leather that the American fliers wore.

  The room, which had been noisily buzzing with anticipatory conversation, fell into a complete silence as the three men marched past, maintaining their lockstep and rhythm. Wordlessly, Lincoln Scott and Hugh took seats at the defense table. Tommy, standing between the two, remained on his feet, staring up at Colonel MacNamara. He held several legal texts in one hand and a notepad in the other. These he abruptly dropped to the tabletop with a solid thud, like the report of a distant mortar round.

  Colonel MacNamara stared down at the three men, fixing each in turn, then said briskly: “Are you ready to proceed, lieutenant?”

  Tommy nodded. “Yes. Are you planning on presiding, colonel?”

  “I am. As Senior American Officer, it is my duty—”

  “I would object!” Tommy said loudly.

  MacNamara stared at him. “Objection?”

  “Indeed. The potential exists for you to be called as a witness in this matter. That would preclude your being able to preside.”

  “Witness?” MacNamara looked both puzzled and slightly angry. “How so?”

  But before Tommy could reply, Major Clark leapt up. “This is unreasonable! Colonel, you are required by your position as commander of the American sector to preside over these proceedings. I don’t see what testimony you could possibly give—”

  Tommy interrupted. “A defense in a capital case should have the widest possible leeway in bringing forth evidence—any evidence—they believe will help their case. Anything less would be unfair, unconstitutional, and more fitting for the jackbooted thugs we are fighting than freeborn Americans!”

  With these final words, Tommy swung around waving his arm at Heinrich Visser and the stenographer, who scratched away at his pad, although his forehead seemed to have reddened. Visser dropped his chair legs forward, like twin shots, and seemed about to stand, but he did not. Instead he merely stared straight ahead and continued to smoke his cigarette.

  MacNamara held up his hand.

  “I will not limit the defense, you are correct. As for my own potential testimony, well, that remains to be seen. We will cross that particular bridge if and when we arrive at it.”

  He made a slight nod toward Visser, as he spoke.

  Tommy nodded, as well. Behind him, amid the packed crowd of kriegies, he could hear a few mumbled words, but these were followed by numerous hushings. The men wanted to hear.

  MacNamara continued. “Today we are here merely for a plea. And lieutenant, as you have requested, Major Clark has compiled a list of witnesses and evidence. Let’s get on with the business, please.”

  Major Clark turned to Tommy. He gestured toward the man seated beside him. “Lieutenant Hart, this is Captain Walker Townsend. He will be assisting me in these matters.”

  Captain Townsend, a lean, athletic man with thinning, sandy-colored hair and a pencil-styled mustache on his upper lip, half-rose from his seat, nodding toward the three men at the defense table. Tommy guessed that he was probably in his early thirties.

  “He will be in charge of the witnesses and evidence. You may make necessary arrangements through him,” Major Clark continued in his snappy, military voice. “I believe that is all we have, for this moment, colonel. We can proceed with the recording of the plea.”

  MacNamara hesitated, then said in a loud, penetrating voice:

  “First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, you are accused of the premeditated murder of Captain Vincent Bedford.
For the record, how do you plead?”

  Scott fairly leapt to his feet to answer, but held his tongue for several seconds. When he did speak, it was loud, decisive, and with unbridled intensity. “Sir!” His voice filled the entire auditorium. “Not guilty, Your Honor!”

  MacNamara seemed about to reply, but Scott beat him to the silence that had filled the room, half-pivoting where he stood, so that he partially faced the kriegie audience. His voice soared like his preacher father’s, filling the air above the crowd of men.

  “It is true that I despised Vincent Bedford! From the first minute that I arrived in this camp, he treated me like a dog. Worse than a dog! He insulted me. He baited me. He taunted me with obscene and hate-filled names. He was an utter racist and he hated me every bit as much as I came to hate him. He wanted me dead from the moment I arrived here! Every man here has heard how he tried to kill me, by trying to get me to cross the deadline. But to this, I did nothing! Any other man here would have been justified in fighting Vincent Bedford and maybe even killing him for what he tried to do! But I did nothing of the sort!”

  Major Clark had leapt to his feet, waving his arms, trying to get the court’s attention. He began to yell, “Objection! Objection!” but Scott’s voice was the greater, and the black flier prevailed.

  “I came here to kill Germans!” Scott shouted, suddenly swinging about and pointing an accusing finger directly at Visser. “Germans like him!”

  Visser’s face instantly paled, and he abruptly dropped the cigarette from his solitary hand to the floor, grinding it beneath his boot. He half-rose in his seat, then slumped back. He fixed the black flier with an unbridled look of hatred. Scott met the gaze with a similarly hard look of his own.

  “Maybe some people in the camp have forgotten that’s why we’re here,” he said loudly, swinging his eyes to MacNamara and then Clark and finally back to the assembled kriegies. “But not me!”

  He paused, letting the sudden silence grip the theater.

  “I have been goddamn successful at killing the enemy! There were nine swastikas painted on the side of my bird before I got shot down.” Scott stared across the rows of men. “And I’m not alone. That is why we’re here!”

  And then he paused again, just snatching a quick burst of air, so that his next words resonated throughout the auditorium. “But someone at Stalag Luft Thirteen has something else in mind! And that someone killed Vincent Bedford. . . .”

  Scott drew himself up, his voice barreling through the still air of the theater. He jabbed the air with his finger. “It could be you, or you, or the man next to you. . . .” As he spoke, he pointed randomly into the audience, fixing each kriegie that he selected with a steady, unwavering gaze. “I don’t know why Vincent Bedford was killed. . . .” He took a deep breath, and then shouted: “But I’m going to find out!”

  Then Scott swung back, facing MacNamara, whose face had reddened, but who at the same time seemed to be listening intently to every word the black flier said, and who seemed to have collected his own anger and stored it someplace deep within himself.

  “Not guilty, colonel. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not damn guilty! Not in the slightest!”

  And then he abruptly sat down.

  The room immediately burst into a tangled Babel of voices, explosions of hurried, excited speech as the collected kriegies reacted to Lincoln Scott’s words. Colonel MacNamara oddly allowed the cacophony to continue for a minute before he started to hammer the hunk of wood, bellowing for order and silence.

  “Good job,” Tommy whispered directly into the black flier’s ear.

  “That’ll give them something to think about,” Scott responded. Hugh was fighting to keep from grinning.

  “Order!” MacNamara shouted.

  As swiftly as it had burst forth, the noise started to dissipate, suddenly leaving only the sound of the mallet striking the wood. Into this vacuum, Tommy leaped. He shoved his chair back and rose to his feet. He made a small gesture toward Scott and Hugh, and they, too, pushed up. The three men snapped their heels together, coming to attention.

  “Sir!” Tommy bellowed, drawing every bit of stentorian presence from deep within his chest. “The defense will be ready to proceed at zero eight hundred hours on Monday, directly after the morning Appell!”

  The three men saluted in unison. MacNamara wordlessly nodded just slightly, and lifted two fingers to his own forehead, returning the salute. Then the accused and his two defenders pivoted, and assuming the same winged formation they used when entering the room, the three men exited the bar, and marched down the center aisle again. Silence followed their heavy tread on the wooden flooring. Tommy could see surprise, confusion, and doubts on the faces of the men jammed into the theater. This was what he had expected their performance would engender. He had anticipated, as well, Major Clark’s tight-faced anger and Colonel MacNamara’s more calculated reaction. However, the look that had taken him aback had been the wry, almost delighted smile on the face of Clark’s assistant, Walker Townsend. The captain had seemed oddly energized, as if he’d just heard some great and glorious piece of good news, which was, Tommy Hart thought to himself, the precise opposite response that he’d expected from the challenge they had thrown down.

  And as he marched forward, he felt a quiver within him, almost a cold shaft that went through his heart like the first icy breath on a winter morning back home in Vermont. But this lacked the clarity of those times, replacing it with a darkness and a murkiness that seemed almost fog-ridden. Somewhere in that audience, facing him, he knew, was the real reason Vincent Bedford had died. And that man was likely to be less enthusiastic about the threat Lincoln Scott had publicly issued.

  And that man might do something about it.

  Tommy reached out, shoulders still locked squarely, head back, and pushed open the doors, rapidly exiting the packed theater and rushing out into the midday sunshine of late spring at Stalag Luft Thirteen. He stopped and gasped sharply, breathing in deeply from the rusty, tainted, impure, and barbed-wire enclosed air of imprisonment.

  Chapter Seven

  MOUSE ROULETTE

  After the hearing, they left Lincoln Scott alone in his bunk room. The black flier had been electric, excited, by the morning’s action. He had shaken hands with both Tommy Hart and Hugh Renaday, and then suddenly dropped to the floor and started in on rapid-fire push-ups. They made plans to meet later in the day to map out their next step, and Tommy left Scott behind, the Tuskegee airman dancing lightly in a corner of the room, shadowboxing imaginary opponents, snapping hard left jabs and swooping right haymakers, using the bright midday light that filtered through the bunk-room windows and threw just enough darkness into the corners to create the shadows necessary for the mock-fight.

  Hugh spotted a ferret snooping around Hut 105, probing the dirt in a small garden by the side of the barracks. The ferret demanded three cigarettes to accompany the two men back to the British camp, where they intended to inform Phillip Pryce about the morning’s session. Tommy negotiated him down to two smokes, and the three men rapidly crossed the exercise area, heading to the front gate. A baseball game had started up, and there were some men doing calisthenics on the side, calling out numbers in unison. Both groups paused slightly as they passed by—not stopping what they were doing, but slowing, taking note. Tommy braced for a verbal onslaught, but nothing was said in their direction, no catcalls, no obscenities, no epithets.

  He took this as a positive sign. If they’d managed to sow some doubt amid the kriegies with the forcefulness of Lincoln Scott’s words of denial, then that was good. Perhaps the same questions were rooting in the minds of the three judges.

  He wished he knew more about the two officers who sat by MacNamara’s side on the tribunal. He made a mental note to find out who they were and where they came from, and how they’d arrived at Stalag Luft Thirteen. He wondered whether the circumstances of each kriegie’s capture wasn’t some sort of window on who they were, or who they might become, and thought to
ask Phillip Pryce about this. He thought, too, that he needed to understand the SAO better, as when all was said and done, he doubted whether the two men flanking him on the tribunal would vote against him. He recalled what Phillip Pryce had said on the first day—“all the forces at work”—and reminded himself to take better care of answering that question.

  He found himself walking swiftly, almost a half-trot, as if the weight of the things he needed to do was prodding him in the back. He guessed that some of the same thoughts were powering Hugh as well, because the Canadian was keeping pace without complaint or question. The German ferret, however, dragged behind lazily, and more than once the two airmen gestured for him to hurry.

  “Tommy,” Hugh said quietly, “we need to find the murder location. Every hour that passes it gets colder. The man we’re looking for has had more than enough opportunity to cover it up. In fact, I have my doubts we’ll ever find it.”

  Tommy nodded his reply, but said, “I have an idea, but I need to wait just a little longer.”

  Hugh snorted once and shook his head. “We’ll never find it,” he repeated.

  The gate swung open for them—Tommy took note that the regular gate goons were becoming accustomed to their back and forth travels, which he thought might be a valuable thing, although he didn’t know precisely how. They continued through the area between the camps. There was singing coming from the shower house, and Renaday started to hum along as they both recognized the words to “Mademoiselle from Armentières,” bellowed at the usual high volume:

  “. . . Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous? Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous? Mademoiselle from Armentières, hasn’t been fucked in forty years, hinky-stinky parlez-vous . . .”

  Like many of the British songs, this one dated back to the First World War, and grew increasingly ribald.

  Tommy had his attention on the shower house when he suddenly heard the brusque, harsh German command from behind, overcoming the echoes of the song: “Halt!”