Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  Tommy scowled, took an angry deep breath of the cooling air surrounding him, and jogged up the wooden steps to the small clinic-hut, grabbing at the door, and surging inside.

  There was a solitary kriegie sitting behind the desk, in the same position where Tommy had first met Nicholas Fenelli. The man looked up sharply.

  “What’s the problem, buddy?” he asked. “Gonna be dark soon, need to be in your hut.”

  Tommy stepped forward, out of the shadows by the door, into the light. He saw the captain’s bars on the man’s jacket, and so he threw a lazy salute in the officer’s direction. He did not recognize the man. But the reverse wasn’t true.

  “You’re Hart, ain’t you?”

  “Right. I’m looking for—”

  “I know who you’re looking for. But I was there today, and I heard Colonel MacNamara’s orders—”

  “You got a name, captain?” Tommy interrupted.

  The officer hesitated, shrugged, then replied, “Sure. Carson. Like the scout.” He held out a hand, and Tommy shook it.

  “Okay, Captain Carson, let me try again. Where’s Fenelli?”

  “Not here. And he has orders not to speak with you or anyone else. And you have orders not to try to talk to him.”

  “You been in the bag long, captain? I don’t recognize you.”

  “Couple of months. Came in right before Scott, actually.”

  “Okay then, captain, let me clue you on something. We may still be in the army, and we may still have uniforms and salute and call everybody by their rank and all, but you know what? It ain’t the same thing. Now, where’s Fenelli?”

  Carson shook his head.

  “He was moved out. They told me if you came looking not to tell you.”

  “I can go from hut to hut . . .”

  “And maybe get shot by some goon in the towers for your troubles.”

  Tommy nodded. The captain was right. There was no way, without being told where to go, for Tommy to go from room to room, searching for Fenelli. Not in the short amount of evening left before the lights went out.

  “You know where he is?”

  The captain shook his head.

  “This they who told you what to say if I came looking, this would be Major Clark and Captain Townsend, right?”

  The man hesitated, which of course told Tommy the answer. Then Captain Carson shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “It was them. And they’re the ones that helped Fenelli take his stuff. And they told me I was gonna have to help Fenelli in here, after the trial’s over and things get back to normal. That’s what they said. Back to normal.”

  “So you’re going to be helping Fenelli? You got any experience? I mean, with medical problems.”

  “My old man was a country doctor. He ran a little clinic where I used to work, summers. And I was premed at the University of Wisconsin, so I guess I’m as qualified as anybody else. You know, I wonder why there aren’t any real doctors here. I mean, you can find just about any other type of profession. . . .”

  “Maybe the doctors are smart enough not to go up in a B-17. . . .”

  “Or a Thunderbolt. Like I wasn’t.” Carson smiled. “You know, Hart, I don’t want to come across like such a hard case. If I knew, I’d tell you. Hell, I don’t even think they told Fenelli where they were moving him. And he knew you’d be coming around tonight, and so he told me to tell you he was goddamn sorry about today. . . .” Carson looked around for a moment, just double-checking to make sure the two men were alone. “And he left a note. You got to understand, Hart, those two guys were keeping a pretty close eye on Fenelli. Sitting on him pretty good. I didn’t get the impression he was all that happy to be hustled off to some new hut. And he sure wasn’t all that happy with the testimony today in court, but he wasn’t talking about it one way or the other, especially with me. But he managed to scribble down something and slip it aside. . . .” Carson was reaching into his pocket, as he spoke. He removed a torn scrap of paper, folded twice. He handed it to Tommy. “I didn’t read it,” Carson said.

  Tommy nodded, unfolded the scrap, and read:

  Sorry, Hart. Trader Vic was right about one thing: Everything in this damn place is a deal. Good deal for some, maybe a bad deal for others. Hope you make it home in one piece. After all this is finished, you ever get to Cleveland, look me up so I can apologize properly.

  He did not sign the note. It was written in a hasty, scribbled script, in thick dark pencil. Tommy read it through three times, memorizing it word for word.

  “Fenelli said to tell you to burn that, after you got it,” Carson said.

  Tommy nodded. “What has Fenelli told you? About this place. The clinic, I mean.”

  The captain shrugged his shoulders in exaggerated fashion. “Since I got here, all he does is complain. He’s damn fed up with never being able to really help no one, because the Krauts steal the medical supplies. He said the day he gets to retire from this job and get back to his reading and real studying would be the best day of his life. That’s what he said you’ve been up to, right, Hart? Reading those law books. He told me to be smart and do the same. Get some medical texts and start studying. We got plenty of free time, right?”

  “That’s the only thing we do seem to have enough of,” Tommy said.

  Night’s cold and dark had seized the camp as Tommy hurried beneath the encroaching gray-black skies. The last murky light streaked across the western horizon. There were only a few other stragglers making their way to their bunk rooms, and, like Tommy, they had their hats pulled down on their heads, their collars turned up against the few breaths of chilly wind that swirled in the alleyways between the huts. Everyone walked fast, eager to get inside before the grip of night tightened completely. His route from the medical services hut took him out to the main assembly area, now vacant, swept dry by the falling temperatures. To his left, he saw that the last of the moon, a single silver sliver, was just visible over the line of trees beyond the wire. He wished he could take a moment, wait for the stars to begin to blink and shine, injecting familiarity and the odd sense of companionship they gave him, into his troubled imagination.

  But instead, as the few other men still abroad in the camp hurried past him, he kept his pace quick and his head down. As he approached the doorway to Hut 101, he tossed a single glance back over his shoulder, toward the main gate. What he saw made him hesitate.

  There was a single electric light, beneath a tin shade, by the gate. In the weak inverted cone of light it shed, Tommy spotted the unmistakable form of Fritz Number One, lighting up a cigarette. He guessed the ferret was about to go off-duty.

  Tommy stopped sharply.

  Seeing the ferret, even that close to the end of the day, wasn’t all that unusual. The ferrets were always alert to the final comings and goings of the camp, afraid that some clandestine meetings were taking place just beyond their sight under cover of darkness. In this, of course, they were absolutely correct. Unable to detect, of course, but correct nonetheless.

  Tommy peered around for a moment, and saw that he was virtually alone, save for a distant figure or two, hurrying toward huts on the opposite side of the compound. And in that second, he made a sudden decision he knew was undoubtedly rash.

  He abruptly turned away from the door to Hut 101, and quickly trotted across the compound assembly area, his boots making dull thudding noises against the packed dirt. When he was twenty yards away from the main gate, Fritz Number One spotted the movement coming toward him, and pivoted to face Tommy. In the growing dark, Tommy was anonymous, just a dark form moving rapidly, and he saw some mingled alarm and inquisitiveness on the ferret’s face, almost as if he were frightened by the kriegie-apparition coming through the first gloom of night in his direction.

  “Fritz!” Tommy said briskly, not hiding his voice. “Come here.”

  The German stepped out of the light, threw a fast glance around himself, determining that no one else was close by, and then paced forward quickly.

  “Mr. Hart! Wha
t is it? You should be in your hut.”

  Tommy reached inside his flight jacket. “Got a present for you, Fritz,” he said sharply.

  The ferret stepped closer, still wary. “A present? I do not understand. . . .”

  Tommy reached inside his jacket, and extracted the ceremonial dagger from his socks. “I need these,” he said, holding up the socks. “But you need this.”

  With that, he tossed the knife into the dirt at the German’s feet. Fritz Number One stared down at the knife for a second, a look of astonishment on his face. Then he reached down and grabbed for it.

  “You can thank me some other time,” Tommy said, turning as Fritz Number One rose up, grinning widely. “And you can be assured I’ll ask for something, someday. Something big.”

  He did not wait for the German to reply; instead he jogged deliberately back across the yard, not turning even when he reached the entrance to Hut 101, and not hesitating until he’d slammed the door shut behind him, hoping that he had just done the right thing, but not at all sure that he had.

  None of the trio of men in the bunk room in Hut 101 slept well that night, all of them suffering from nightmares that pitched them sweatily from their reveries, waking them to the deep midnights of imprisonment more than once. No steady breathing, no light snoring, no real rest throughout the long Bavarian night. None of the three spoke. Instead, each man awakened sharply, and lay alone with his thoughts and terrors, fears and angers, unable to calm himself with the usual soft, safe, and familiar visions of home. Tommy believed, as he lay awake, that it was probably worst for Scott. Hugh, like Tommy, only faced failure and frustration. Defeat for them was psychological. For Lincoln Scott it was all the same, and one step more. Perhaps a fatal step.

  Tommy twitched and shivered beneath his blanket. For a moment or two, he wondered if he could ever continue with the law if, on the first occasion he stepped to the bar, he lost an innocent man to a firing squad. He breathed in slowly. He understood in the darkness of the bunk room that all the odds stacked against them, the cheating and lies that had been arrayed against the black flier, every aspect of the case that was so infuriating, that if he allowed all those evils to win and take Scott’s life, that he would never be able to stand up in any other courtroom and defend a man or an idea again.

  He hated this thought, and tossed about in the bunk, trying to persuade himself that he was simply being naive and juvenile, and that a more experienced attorney, like Phillip Pryce, would be able to accept defeats with the same equanimity as victories. But he also understood, deep within the same difficult crevasses of his heart, that he wasn’t like his friend and mentor, and that a loss in this trial would be his first and only loss.

  He thought it a terrible thing to be trapped, imprisoned behind the rows of barbed wire, and still be standing at a crossroads. He abruptly found his imagination crowded by the ghosts of his old bomber crew. The men of the Lovely Lydia were in the room with him, silent, almost reproachful. He understood that he was on that flight with really a single task that they all counted on him for: to find them the safe route home. He had not done it for them.

  In a funny way, he thought the odds of success about the same for the Lovely Lydia, when it had turned and started its bombing run directly into every gun in the convoy, and Lincoln Scott, imprisoned by his country’s enemies, only to find that arrayed against him were the men who should have been his friends.

  Tommy put his head back, his eyes open and staring up at the ceiling, almost as if he could look straight through the wooden planks and tin roof, to the sky and the stars.

  Who knows the truth about the murder of Trader Vic? he asked himself. Someone does, but who? He took another deep breath and continued to argue in his mind all the issues, over and over again, back and forth. He thought of what Lincoln Scott had said earlier and repeatedly: No one in the camp was really willing to help.

  Tommy took a sharp breath, as an idea grabbed hold of him. It was something so obvious, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. And for perhaps the first time that night, he managed a small grin.

  The men of Hut 101 awakened to the harsh noise of whistles and German shouts of “Raus! Raus!” punctuated by pounding against the wooden doors. They lurched from their beds as they had on so many mornings, pulling on their clothing and double-timing through the central corridor of the hut, heading to the morning Appell. But as they exited the doors to the barracks, they were greeted with the unusual sight of a squad of gray-clad German soldiers standing in formation in front of the hut, perhaps twenty men, armed with rifles. A thick-chested Feldwebel was at the foot of the stairs, a scowl across his face, directing traffic like a surly cop.

  “You men, in Hut 101, assemble here! Raus! Be quick! No one to go to Appell!” The Feldwebel motioned to a pair of Hundführers who snatched back the chains of their snarling dogs, making the animals leap in excitement, growling and barking.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Scott asked beneath his breath, as he stood beside Tommy in the midst of the gathered men from Hut 101.

  “I know,” Hugh answered for him. “It’s a bloody hut search. What the hell do the Krauts think they’re going to find? Another damn waste of all our time!” Hugh blurted out this last sentiment loudly, directing it at the German sergeant, who was struggling to get the kriegies into well-dressed lines. “Hey, Adolf! Better make sure you check the privy! Someone might be swimming to freedom!” The other men from Hut 101 burst into laughter and a couple of fliers applauded the Canadian’s sense of humor.

  “Quiet!” the Feldwebel shouted. “No talking! At attention!”

  Tommy pivoted about as best he could, and as he looked, he saw Hauptmann Visser, accompanied by an ashen-faced Fritz Number One, emerge from the rear of the formation of German soldiers.

  The Feldwebel spoke in German, and one of the kriegies softly translated, the words being passed down the rows of men.

  “Prisoners of Hut 101 all present and accounted for, Hauptmann!”

  “Good,” Visser said. He gestured to Fritz Number One. “Begin the search.”

  Fritz barked out an order, and half the squad of goons peeled off and tramped into the hut. After a moment, both Fritz and Visser followed them.

  “What’re they really searching for?” Scott whispered.

  “Tunnels. Dirt. Radios. Contraband. Anything out of the ordinary.”

  From inside the hut, there was the sound of tramping feet and deep thuds and cracks, as men went from room to room.

  “They ever find anything?”

  “Not usually,” Hugh replied. He smiled. “Krauts don’t really know how to perform a proper search,” he said. “Not like a policeman. Usually they just tear up stuff, make a damn mess of things, and come away angry. Happens all the time.”

  “Why did they pick this hut? This morning?”

  “Real good questions,” Hugh replied.

  Real good questions, Tommy repeated to himself.

  After a few minutes, as the kriegies remained in their almost orderly rows, they saw German soldiers begin to exit the hut. The goons came out singly or in pairs, and almost all were empty-handed, grinning sheepishly, shrugging, and shaking their heads. Tommy noticed that most of the squad of goons were old, many of them nearly as old as Phillip Pryce had been. The others, of course, were impossibly young, barely into their teens, with uniforms they didn’t quite fit into hanging poorly from their young limbs. After a few more seconds, there was a shout of excitement from deep within the hut. A moment passed, and then one man emerged, grinning, holding a makeshift radio that had been concealed in an empty coffee tin. The German held this up high, a look of delight on his wrinkled, old man’s face. Right behind him was another goon, barely a third the older man’s age. He, too, was smiling and excited. From several rows behind him, Tommy heard an airman mutter, “Ahh, goddamn it! They got my radio! Son of a gun! I traded three cartons of smokes for that!”

  Perhaps the last to emerge from the hut were Fritz
Number One and Heinrich Visser. The one-armed German officer scowled at Tommy. With his only hand, he gestured at Tommy, Hugh, and Lincoln Scott, pointing a sharp index finger at each man. Visser did not see Fritz Number One, standing just to his side and behind him, just shake his head slightly back and forth.

  “You three!” he said loudly. “Step forward!”

  Wordlessly, the three men stepped away from the formation.

  “Search these three! Immediately!” Visser ordered.

  Tommy raised his hands above his head, and one of the German goons started to pat him down. The same was being done to Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday, who laughed when he was touched.

  “Hey!” Hugh said, eye to eye with Visser, “Hauptmann, tell your goons not to be quite so friendly and a little less familiar. They tickle!”

  Visser locked eyes with the Canadian humorlessly. He said nothing. Then, after a second, he turned to the soldier who had patted Tommy down.

  “Nein, Herr Hauptmann,” the goon said, rising and saluting.

  Visser nodded. He stepped closer to Tommy, staring at him. “Where is your evidence, lieutenant?”

  Tommy did not reply.

  “You have something that belongs to me,” he said. “I want it returned.”

  “You’re mistaken, Hauptmann.”

  “Something you perhaps intended to use this morning at the trial.”

  “You’re still mistaken, Hauptmann.”

  The German stepped back. He seemed to consider what he was about to say, then opened his mouth slowly, only to be interrupted by a shout from the rear.

  “What is going on!”

  All the men turned, and saw that Commandant Von Reiter, with both Colonel MacNamara and Major Clark at his side, trailed by his usual coterie of bustling adjutants, was hurrying forward, quick-marching past the squad of soldiers, who instantly snapped to rigid attention.

  Von Reiter stopped in front of the gathered men. His face was slightly flushed and the riding crop he liked to carry danced nervously in his hand.