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.
Chapter Eleven
ZERO EIGHT HUNDRED
One of the camp’s least efficient ferrets had already counted the formation of airmen three times, and when he started in again, going down the five-deep rows with his monotonous eins, zwei, drei, he was met with the usual catcalls, insults, and general groaning from the assembled kriegies. Men stomped their feet against the damp, chilly morning air, made nastier by a stiff breeze slicing in from the north. The sky overhead was a slate gray marred with a pair of pinkish-red streaks on the eastern horizon, more of the indecisiveness of the German weather that seemed to be forever trapped between winter and spring. Tommy hunched his shoulders against the wind, shivering slightly in the weak light in the hour just past dawn, wondering where the prior day’s warmth had fled to and still filled with doubt about the gathering set for eight A..M. Just to his right, Hugh shuffled to get his circulation going and swore at the ferret, “Get it right this time, yah bloody idiot!” while to his left, Lincoln Scott stood motionless, as if unaffected by the cold and wet. Some moisture glistened on the black flier’s cheeks, making it appear almost as if he’d been crying.
The ferret hesitated, staring down at a notepad, on which he was listing numbers. This act of doubt, signaling that he might start over for a fifth time, brought a cascade of obscenities and useless threats from the Allied prisoners. Even Tommy, who usually kept quiet during all these small insults of assembly, muttered to himself a quick, “Come on, Jesus, get on with it. . . .” as a sharp sword of wind sliced through his battered old leather flight jacket.
But he stopped when he heard the voice directly behind him speaking softly, yet insistently: “Hart? Maybe I got something for you.”
He steeled himself, not turning, half expecting an insult. The voice seemed familiar, and after a moment, he recognized that it came from a captain from New York who lived in one of the bunk rooms across the hall from him. The captain was a fighter pilot, like Scott, who’d been shot down while escorting B-17s in a raid over Big B, which was Allied airmen’s slang for Berlin.
“You still looking for information, Hart? Or you got everything under control?”
Tommy shook his head, but didn’t turn back toward the man in formation behind him. Both Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday remained still, as well. “I’m listening,” Tommy said. “What is it you want to say?”
“Kinda pissed me off, you know,” the pilot continued, “the way Bedford always had whatever anyone needed. More food. More clothes. More of everything. Need this, he had it. Need that? He had that, too. And always got more for whatever it was than you wanted to give up. Didn’t seem hardly fair. Everybody in the bag supposed to have it more or less the same, but it sure weren’t the same for Trader Vic.”
“I’m aware. Sometimes seemed like he was the only kriegie in this place never losing weight,” Tommy responded. The man muttered a grunt in agreement.
“Hey,” the captain said, “of course, on the other hand, he sure didn’t end up the same neither.”
Tommy nodded. This was true, but, of course, there was no guarantee that they all wouldn’t end up just as dead as Vincent Bedford. He didn’t say this out loud, though he knew it was never far from any airman’s waking thoughts, and certainly featured in many kriegies’ dreams. It was one of the prisoner-of-war camp credos: Don’t speak of what truly frightens you, for that will surely come to pass.
“No kidding,” Tommy said. “But you’ve got something you want to tell me?”
From the adjacent formation on Tommy’s right, there was a scattering of angry shouts and complaints. Tommy figured the ferret counting that group had messed up again, as well. The New Yorker hesitated again, as if reconsidering what he was about to say. Then he grunted an obscenity or two, indicating that whatever internal argument he’d had, had been resolved, and he said, “Vic made a couple of trades, right before his death, that got my attention. Not just my attention, hell, a couple of other guys, too, noticed that Vic was being real busy. I mean, more busy than normal, and normal he was busy all the time, if you follow my drift.”
“Keep talking,” Tommy said quietly.
The fighter pilot snorted, as if finding the memory distasteful. “One of the things he got, man, I only saw it just the one time, but I remember thinking who the hell wanted that? I figured had to be some heavy-duty souvenir, yah know, but it sure was an unusual one, ’cause if the Krauts ever found it during one of their goddamn hut searches, well, anyone would know there’d be hell to pay, so I couldn’t see getting it, myself, but . . .”
“What are you talking about?” Tommy asked, probably more sharply than necessary, but still speaking under his breath.
The captain from New York paused again, then replied: “It was a knife. Like, a special knife. Like the type that Von Reiter wears when he’s got his fanciest gotta go meet the bosses uniform on.”
“L
ike a dagger? Real thin and long?”
“That’s the type. This was SS super special, too. I saw it had one of those death’s head skulls on the handle. Very Nazi. The real deal. Probably only get that for doing something real wonderful for the fatherland, yah know. Like burning books or maybe beating up on women and kids, or shooting unarmed Russians. Anyway, I couldn’t see it as a souvenir. No sir. Get caught with that in your kit, and the Krauts were likely to slam your butt into the cooler for a fortnight. They take that ceremonial stuff pretty seriously. Krauts got no sense of humor whatsoever.”
“Where did you see it?”
“Vic had it. I saw it just once. I was in his room, playing some cards with his roommates when he came in with it. Said it was a special order. Wouldn’t say who it was going to, but Vic sure made it seem like somebody had paid him something extra special for it. A big deal trade, I’d guess. Somebody wanted that knife something fierce. He squirreled it away with the rest of his loot, wouldn’t say who it was going to. I didn’t think much about it, until Vic got killed and they said it was with a knife, and I was wondering whether it mighta been that very same knife. Then I heard that it was some homemade job that Scott made up. Then I heard some scuttlebutt that maybe it wasn’t, and I started thinking about that knife again. Anyway, don’t know if it’s helpful, or not, Hart, but thought you might be interested. Wish I knew who got it. That would help a whole lot more. But still, there it is. Someplace in this lousy camp’s an SS dagger. And I’d be wondering about that, if I was you. Would be kinda unusual, too, if it turned out that Trader Vic got murdered with a weapon that he made a deal for.”
“Where do you think he got it?”
The captain from New York snorted a small laugh.
“Only one ferret’s got that sort of juice, Hart. You and I both know.”
Tommy nodded. Fritz Number One.
He heard, in that second, a catch in the captain’s voice, as the man continued.
“One other thing’s been bothering me. Don’t know if it’s important, or not . . .”
“Go on,” Tommy said.
“It could be nothin’. I mean, who knows about this shit, right?”
“What was it?”
“You remember back a coupla weeks when the tunnel out of 109 collapsed? The one where the two guys got caught and died?”
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Yeah. Right. Sure as hell that MacNamara and Clark remember. I think they were counting on that sucker. Anyways, right around that time Vic was real busy. I mean, real busy. I saw him ducking out more than once, middle of the night.”
“How would you know that?”
The captain laughed briefly. “C’mon, Hart. There’s some questions you shouldn’t wanna be asking, unless you got some special reason. Look at me, man. I ain’t more than five feet six. Just barely qualified for fighters wid’ my height. And I usta be a motorman in a subway. Now, that should tell you that maybe because I ain’t some big, tall college guy like yourself and Scott, there, that maybe somebody’s got some other type job for me every so often. You know, the type of job where tall ain’t no special advantage, yah don’t mind much getting your hands dirty, and it sure as hell helps to be usta being underground.”
Tommy nodded. “I got you.”
The pilot continued. “You know, the night those guys died, I was supposed to be with ’em. Hadn’t been for my sinuses actin’ up, I’da been buried in that sand, too. Right alongside ’em. I been thinking about that a lot.”
“Lucky.”
The fighter pilot caught his words, then continued: “Yeah. Guess so. Luck’s a funny thing. Sometimes real hard to tell exactly who’s got it and who ain’t, you follow what I’m saying? Scott, there. You can ask him about luck, Hart. All fighter jockeys know about luck. Good luck. Bad luck. Whatever the fates got in store for you kinda luck. Goes with the job description.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is this: I heard, real reliable, that Trader Vic came into some pretty unusual stuff right about that same time. Stuff that some folks in here would find mighty valuable. Like Kraut identity cards, travel vouchers, and some currency. You know, Reichsmarks and that sort of stuff. He also came up with something very interesting: a train schedule. The honest-to-God real deal, that bit of info. Now ain’t that the sort of information that can only come from one place and costs a helluva lot and that some people around here would do anything to get their hands on. And I do mean anything.”
“When I saw them divvying up Vic’s stuff after he was killed I didn’t see anything like that,” Tommy said.
“No. And you wouldn’t. Because stuff like what we’re talking about would go direct to the right folks. No matter how good he’s got his stuff stashed, why, those documents and papers and shit would be very dangerous. And you could never be completely sure that the Kraut who traded for the stuff wouldn’t come right back at you, searching for your stash with a buncha other goons. And if they found any of that stuff, they’d likely seize just about everything you had before tossing you in the cooler for the next hundred years, so it was stuff you’d be turning over to the right folks real goddamn fast, you see what I’m saying? The folks that have some use for that stuff would know what to do with it, and they would be doing whatever it was real quick, you know?”
“I think I’m getting the picture—” Tommy started, only to have his words sliced off by the captain directly behind him.
“But yah can’t, not really, ’cause even I don’t get it. Those guys get killed in the tunnel, and then, just afterward, Bedford gets all these valuable papers, schedules and crap that the escape committee needs, whoever the hell they are, bunch of anonymous bastards, if you ask me. Even when I was digging, I never knew who the hell was planning the show. All they care about is how many yards we done, and how many yards we got left to do. But I did know this: They would give their right arms for those papers. . . .”
The pilot snorted another laugh, as if he’d inadvertently made a joke. “Hell,” he said briskly, “then they’d all look just like that goddamn Nazi, Visser, that’s skulking around here and always keeping his beady little eyes on you, Hart.”
Even Tommy smiled at that thought.
The New Yorker coughed, and continued, “But I’m thinking that the stuff has gotta be worthless to anybody planning an escape, ’cause the Krauts are now dropping satchel charges into the goddamn tunnel and filling it in. The timing don’t make sense. I mean, they needed that stuff before the damn tunnel got caved in. Weeks before, so’s the forgers can prepare documents and the tailors making escape clothes can work on their stuff and guys heading out can memorize the schedule and practice speaking Kraut. Not after, and that’s when Vic got it. Maybe you can dope it out, Hart. But I can’t, and it’s been on my mind for weeks. It bothers me.”
Tommy nodded, but didn’t reply at first, thinking hard. “You still digging?” he asked suddenly.
The captain hesitated, then replied with a shrug in his voice. “Ain’t supposed to be answering that question, Hart, and you sure as hell know you ain’t supposed to be asking it.”
“Sorry,” Tommy replied. “You’re right.”
The man hesitated slightly, then continued, “But hell, Hart, I just want out of here. I want out of here so damn bad some days I think it makes me more hungry than anything. I ain’t never been locked up before, and I’m damn certain I ain’t never gonna be locked up again. When I get back to Manhattan, let me tell you, I’m gonna be walkin’ the straight and narrow, for sure. You get under the ground working, that’s what you keep thinkin’ about. All that loose sand and dust. Cave-ins all the damn time. Can’t hardly breathe. Can’t hardly see. Man, it’s like digging your own grave. Scare the bejeesus out of you.”
At that moment, Hugh, who’d been craning to hear the fighter pilot’s words, interjected, “Maybe one of Vic’s friends could provide some answers about where that knife and those documents disappeared to, what do
you think?”
The captain from New York burst out in a short, nasty half-cough, half-wheezing tone of amusement. “Vic’s friends? Friends? Man, have you ever got the wrong impression.”
“What do you mean?” Tommy asked.
The pilot hesitated, then said slowly, “You know all those guys, the ones that keep getting into Scott’s face? Vic’s roommates and the others. The ones causing all the trouble?”
“Yeah, we know ’em,” Hugh said, bitterly.
“Well, they like to say they were Vic’s friends. That Vic was taking care of ’em and all that. Load of crap, let me tell you. Absolute one hunnert percent bull. Makes for some sort of real convenient explanation for what they’ve been doing to Scott, which ain’t the way a lot of us in the bag would be playing it, no sir. But let me tell you something, Hart. Trader Vic was all about helping out Trader Vic. Nobody else. Vic had no friends. None. None whatsoever.”
The man paused, then added, “That’s something you might want to think about.”
From the front of the assembly, a German adjutant shouted, “Achtung! Attention!” Tommy craned his head slightly, and saw Von Reiter had arrived at the head of the formations and was receiving obligatory salutes from the ferrets who had finally satisfactorily completed the count. All kriegies present and accounted for. Another day in the bag ready to begin. MacNamara was summoned forward, where, after the usual momentary exchange between the commanding officers, he turned and dismissed the Allied airmen. As the blocks of men instantly dissolved, Tommy quickly pivoted to try to catch the captain from New York, but the pilot had already melted into the mass of kriegies momentarily milling about before starting another day of captivity. Only this day held out the promise of being far different from all that had gone before.
Tommy had not moved more than ten yards through the dispersing airmen when he heard his name being called and he turned and saw Walker Townsend waving at him. He paused, sensing Hugh Renaday and Lincoln Scott coming to a halt beside him, and the three of them watched the captain from Richmond trot up to them. He wore his usual wry half-smile, and had his cap pushed back on his forehead in a relaxed manner that contradicted the biting wind that pushed sharply at all of them.
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