Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  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 Decline and 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.

  Chapter Six

  THE FIRST HEARING

  At the following morning’s roll call, the kriegies assembled in their usual ragged formations, except for Lincoln Scott. He stood apart, at parade rest, arms clasped behind his back, legs spread slightly, ten yards away from the nearest block of men, waiting to be counted like every other prisoner. He wore a blank, hard expression on his face and kept his eyes straight ahead, looking neither right nor left until the count was completed and Major Clark bellowed the dismissal. Then he immediately turned on his heel and quick-marched back to Hut 101, disappearing through the wooden door without a word to any other kriegie.

  Tommy thought for a moment of pursuing him, then turned away. The two men had not discussed the discovery of the knife—other than for Scott to deny any knowledge about it. Tommy had spent the night in his own bunk fitfully, nightmarishly, waking more than once in the dark feeling a sullen, helpless cold surrounding him. Now he quickly headed for the front gate, at the same time waving at Fritz Number One to provide an escort. He saw the ferret spot him and seem to hesitate, as if eager to avoid him, then seemingly think twice of that desire, stop and wait. Before he reached the ferret, however, Tommy was intercepted by Major Clark. The major wore a slight, mocking grin that did little to mask his feelings.

  “Ten A..M., Hart. You and Scott and the Canadian who’s helping out and anyone else you damn well need. We’re going to be set up in the camp theater. My guess is that we’re going to play to overflow crowds. Standing room only, huh, Hart? What sort of performer are you, lieutenant? Think you can put on a good show?”

  “Anything to keep the men occupied, major,” Tommy replied sarcastically.

  “That’s right,” Clark answered.

  “Will you provide me with lists of evidence and witnesses at that time, major? As you are required by military law.”

  Clark nodded. “If you want . . .”

  “I do. I’m also going to need to inspect the alleged evidence. Physically.”

  “As you wish. But I fail to see—”

  “That’s precisely the point, major,” Tommy interrupted. “What you fail to see.”

  He saluted and, without waiting for a command, turned sharply and headed toward Fritz Number One. Before he’d taken three steps, he heard the major’s voice bursting like a shell behind him.

  “Hart!”

  He stopped and pivoted.

  “Sir?”

  “You were not dismissed, lieutenant!”

  Tommy came to attention. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I was under the distinct impression we’d finished our conversation.”

  Clark waited a good thirty seconds, then returned the salute. “That’s all, lieutenant,” he said briskly. “Until ten A..M. Be on time,” he added.

  Once again, Tommy turned, heading rapidly toward the waiting ferret. He thought he’d taken a risk, but a calculated one. Far better to have Major Clark furious with him, because that would only serve to draw his focus away from Scott. Tommy sighed deeply. He thought things could not seem much worse for the black airman, and not for the first time since the discovery of the homemade knife the prior evening, To
mmy felt a deepening sense of discouragement travel through him. He felt as if he only had the flimsiest idea what he was doing—in fact, it seemed to him he hadn’t done anything—and realized that Lincoln Scott would be standing in front of a German firing squad if he didn’t come up quickly with some sort of genuine scheme.

  As he walked, he shook his head, thinking it was all well and good to suggest that they find the real killer, but he was unsure what the first step would be in that search. In that second, he longed for the simple navigational tasks aboard the Lovely Lydia. Find a marker, use a chart, note a landmark, make some simple calculations with a slide rule, bring out the sextant and take a sighting, and then chart a course to safety. Read the stars glittering above in the heavens and find the way home. Tommy thought it had been easy. And now, in Stalag Luft Thirteen, he had the same task in front of him, yet was unsure what tools to use to navigate. He walked along quickly, feeling the early morning damp loosen in the air around him. It would be another good day for flying, he thought to himself. This was incongruous. Far better to wake up to fog, sleet, and wildly tossing storms. Because if it were a clear, bright, warm day, this meant men would die. It seemed to him that death was better delivered on gray, cold days, the chilling, wet times of the soul.

  Fritz Number One was shuffling his feet as he waited. He made a smoking gesture, making a V with two fingers and then lifting them to his lips. Tommy handed him a pair of cigarettes.

  The ferret lit one, and placed the other carefully in his breast pocket. “Not so many good American smokes now, with Captain Bedford dead,” he said, eyes sadly following the thin trail of smoke rising from the end of the burning cigarette. The ferret smiled wanly. “Maybe I should be quitting. Better maybe to quit than smoke the ersatz tobacco we are being issued.”

  Fritz Number One strode along with his head declined, giving him the appearance of a lanky, gangly dog that has been disciplined by its master. “Captain Bedford always had plenty of smokes,” he said. “And he was most generous. He took good care of his friends.”

  Tommy nodded, but was suddenly alert to what the ferret was saying. “That’s what the men in his bunk room said, too.”

  Almost exactly, Tommy thought to himself. Word for word.

  Fritz Number One continued. “Captain Bedford, he was liked by many men?”

  “It seemed that way.”

  The ferret sighed, still walking along rapidly. “I am not so sure of this, Lieutenant Hart. Captain Bedford, he was very clever. Trader Vic was a good name for him. Sometimes men are too clever. I do not think clever men are always so well liked as they maybe believe. Also, in war, to be so clever, this is not a good thing, I also think.”

  “Why is that, Fritz?”

  The ferret was speaking softly, his head still bent.

  “Because war, it is filled with mistakes. So often the wrong die, is this not true, Lieutenant Hart? The good man dies, the bad man lives. The innocent are killed. Not the guilty. Little children die, like my two little cousins, but not generals.” Fritz Number One had deposited an unmistakable harshness in the soft words he spoke. “There are so many mistakes, sometimes I wonder if God is really watching. It is not possible, I think, to outwit war’s mistakes, no matter how clever you may be.”

  “Do you think Trader Vic’s death was a mistake?” Tommy asked.

  The ferret shook his head.

  “No. That is not what I mean.”

  “What are you saying?” Tommy demanded sharply, but beneath his breath.

  Fritz Number One stopped. He looked up quickly, and stared at Tommy. He seemed about to answer, but then, in the same moment, looked past Tommy’s shoulder, his eyes directed at the office building where the commandant administered the camp. His mouth was partly open, as if words were gathering within his throat. Then, abruptly, he clamped shut, and shook his head.

  “We will be late,” he said between tightly pursed lips. This statement, of course, meant nothing, because there was nothing to be late for—save the mid-morning hearing still several hours distant. The ferret made a quick, dismissive gesture, pointing toward the British compound, and hurried Tommy in that direction. But not fast enough to prevent Tommy from tossing a single glance over his shoulder at the administration building, where he caught sight of Commandant Edward Von Reiter and Hauptmann Heinrich Visser standing on the front steps, busily engaged in a rapid-fire conversation, both men seemingly on the verge of raising their voices angrily.

  Phillip Pryce and Hugh Renaday were waiting for Tommy just inside the entrance to the British compound. Hugh, as always, was pacing about, almost making circles around their older friend, who wore his anticipation more subtly—in the lift of his eyebrows, the small upward turn at the corners of his mouth. Despite the fine morning that was rising around them, bright sunshine and advancing temperatures, he still draped a blanket across his shoulders, again giving him an antique, almost Victorian look. His cough seemed immune to the advantages of the spring weather, still punctuating much of what he said with dry, hacking sounds.

  “Tommy,” Pryce said, as the American quickly approached. “Let us walk a bit on this excellent morning. Walk and talk. I’ve always found that sometimes movement can stimulate one’s imagination.”

  “More bad news, Phillip,” Tommy replied.

  “Well I have interesting news,” Hugh replied. “But you first, Tommy.”

  As the three men traveled around the perimeter, just inside the British camp’s similar barbed-wire deadline and looming guard towers, Tommy filled them in on the discovery of the knife.

  “Had to be planted there,” he concluded. “I mean, the whole show was orchestrated like some carnival magic act. Poof! The murder weapon. The alleged murder weapon. It made me furious, too, the way Clark baited Lincoln Scott into agreeing to the search. I would bet my GI insurance that they already knew the knife was there. Then they make this little scene of searching his stuff, not that he has much, and then wham! Bang! They pull back the bed and find a loose board. Scott probably didn’t even know there was a hiding place underneath the flooring. Only the old boys in the camp know about those spaces. Totally transparent, the whole performance . . .”

  “Yes,” Pryce said, nodding, “but nastily effective. No one, of course, will see the transparency, but the word that the murder weapon has been discovered will likely further poison the atmosphere. And giving it all the veneer of legality, as well. The issue, Tommy, of course, is less how it was planted than why. Now, perhaps the how will provide us the why, but the reverse is often true, as well.”

  Tommy shook his head. He was a little embarrassed, but spoke quickly, so as not to display it. He had not yet made that particular leap of logic.

  “I don’t have an answer to that, Phillip. Other than the obvious: to close all the loopholes through which Lincoln Scott might manage to extricate himself.”

  “Correct,” Pryce said, with a small flourish of his hand in the air. “What I find most interesting is that we seem, once again, to be thrust into an unusual situation. Do you not see what has taken place, so far, with each aspect of this case, Tommy?”

  “What?”

  “The distinctions between truth and falsehood are very fine and narrow. Almost imperceptible . . .”

  “Go on, Phillip.”

  “Well, in every situation, with every piece of evidence that has surfaced so far, Lincoln Scott is pushed into the awkward position of providing an alternate explanation to the arrival of a fact. It is as if our young black flier must counter everything by saying, ‘Now see here, let me give you another reasonable explanation for this and for that and for this, too.’ But is this something that young Mr. Scott seems capable of?”

  “Not very bloody likely,” Hugh muttered. “It wasn’t hard for me to trip him up, and I’m on his bloody side. And it seems Clark only had to say, ‘If you have nothing to hide . . .’ and Scott eagerly jumped into his trap.”

  “No,” Tommy agreed rapidly. “He is very intelligent and al
ways at least a little bit angry and obviously goddamn headstrong. He is a fighter, a boxer, and I think he’s used to direct confrontation. Even violent ones. This is, I think, a poor combination of traits to have in an accused man.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” Pryce said, nodding. “Does this not make you think of a question, or two?”

  Tommy Hart hesitated, then replied forcefully.

  “Well, a man is murdered and the accused is black and a loner and unpopular, which makes him terribly convenient for most everyone involved, and there is a stack of decidedly obvious evidence against him that is difficult to counter.”

  “A perfect case, perhaps?”

  “Very perfect, so far.”

  “Which should make one wonder. In my experience, perfect cases are rare.”

  “We need to create a less perfect scenario.”

  “Precisely. So, where does that leave us?”

  “In trouble, I think,” Tommy said, smiling wryly.

  The older man grinned, as well. “Yes, yes, that would seem so. But I am not completely sure of that. Regardless, do you not think it is time to turn some of these disadvantages to our benefit? Especially Mr. Scott’s aggressive behavior?”

  “Sure. Okay. But how?”

  Pryce laughed out loud. “Well, isn’t that the eternal question? Same for a lawyer, Tommy, as it is for a troop commander. Now, listen to Hugh for a moment.”

  Tommy turned toward the Canadian, who was on the verge of laughing. “Little bit of the old but unfamiliar and hardly common in Stalag Luft Thirteen sort of good news, Tommy, of which we’ve had so precious little. I found the man who examined Captain Bedford right where you said he’d be, in the medical services hut.”

  “Good. And he said?”

  Hugh continued to smile. “Most curious, what he had to say. He said he was ordered by Clark and MacNamara to prepare Bedford’s body for burial. He was told not to perform any sort of even half-baked autopsy. But the fellow couldn’t really help himself. You know why? He’s a young guy, what you folks in the States call a real go-getter, a hotshot first lieutenant decorated in combat who doesn’t particularly like taking damn fool orders and who has coincidentally spent the past three years working in his uncle’s mortuary in Cleveland, Ohio, while putting money away to attend medical school. He got drafted after finishing a single semester. Gross anatomy, you know, right off the bat in medical school. So, there was this body and the lad was shall we say ‘academically’ curious. About such delightful things as rigor mortis and lividity.”