Hart's War
Page 46
“I have searched. Unsuccessfully,” Visser said coldly. “A weapon such as that would be verboten. Prisoners of war are not permitted to have such a weapon in their possession.”
“And so, Hauptmann. The murder did not occur where the prosecution says it did, did not happen as the prosecution claims it happened, was not performed by the weapon the prosecution contends is the murder weapon, and left clear-cut evidence suggesting a completely different series of events. Is that not the sum of your testimony?”
“Yes. An accurate recitation, Mr. Hart.”
Tommy left unsaid the obvious. But he left his own words hanging long enough in the air so that every kriegie in the jam-packed room—those hanging from each window, and those gathered outside, having every element of the testimony relayed to them—could find the same conclusion.
“Thank you, Hauptmann. Most instructive. Your witness, captain.”
Tommy went and sat down, as Walker Townsend rose from his seat. The captain from Virginia seemed patient, and he, too, wore a small smile.
“Let me get this straight, Hauptmann. You hate Americans, although you lived as one for nearly a decade. . . .”
“I hate the enemy, yes, captain. And you are the enemy of my country.”
“But you had two countries . . .”
“I did, captain. But my heart only belonged to one.”
Captain Townsend shook his head. “That seems most obvious, Hauptmann. Now, you also believe Lieutenant Scott is an animal?”
Visser nodded. “He is fast. He is strong. And he has clearly been well-trained to be able to quote such great writers. But he occupies a position somewhat less than human. A cheetah is fast, captain, and a seal can be trained by the zookeeper to perform most wonderful tricks. I would remind you, Herr Kapitän, that less than a century ago, the slaveowners of your own state would have been likely to say much the same thing about their property working in their tobacco fields from dawn to dusk.”
Townsend seemed abruptly trapped by this last statement. The Nazi was infuriating. Arrogant and unshaken, absolutely persuaded by his beliefs and undaunted by any evidence to the contrary. Tommy could sense a sort of fury on the prosecutor’s part, angered by the obstinate and self-important tones Visser used, but unsure just how greatly they were damaging his case. Tommy hoped Townsend would slide into the mire created by the Nazi’s conceit.
But Townsend did not.
Instead, the prosecutor asked, “Why should we believe what you say about anything?”
Visser twitched his shoulders. “I do not care in the slightest what you do or do not believe, captain. It makes absolutely no difference to me personally whether we shoot Lieutenant Scott, or not, although I would prefer we do, because he himself is so untrustworthy. This, of course, is not truly his fault. It is a function of his race.”
Townsend gritted his teeth.
“It makes no difference to you, Hauptmann, but still you take the stand, swear to tell the truth, and then say that Scott did not commit this crime—”
Visser raised his only hand, cutting Townsend off.
“But, captain, that is not what I said,” he replied, slight amusement creeping into his voice. “Nor is that what I even suggested.”
Townsend stopped. He lifted a single eyebrow and stared at the unrepentant Nazi.
“You said—”
“What I said, captain, was that to trained eyes it was clear that the crime did not occur as you claim it did. I said nothing about Scott. In fact, he remains to me the chief suspect, and the man most likely to have committed the crime, however it was actually committed.”
Townsend broke into a grin. “Tell us how you reach that conclusion, Hauptmann—”
Tommy rose sharply. “Objection, Your Honor!”
But MacNamara shook his head. “You opened this can of worms, lieutenant. And now you must live with it. Sit down. Let the Hauptmann testify. You will have a chance to redirect some questions when Captain Townsend has completed his cross-examination.”
“Using your unique expertise, of course, Hauptmann,” Townsend added swiftly.
The German shifted in his seat, thinking before he answered.
“The evidence of the bloodstains on Lieutenant Scott’s clothing is compelling. Particularly the stains on the jacket, which are located in a fashion suggesting someone carried the body over his shoulder. This has already been discussed here. And, despite Lieutenant Hart’s quite entertaining theatrics with the homemade blade belonging to Scott, it was clear that the weapon was used in the crime—”
Townsend cut off Visser. “But you said . . .”
“Ah, I said that the killing blow was struck by this other blade. The one that cannot be uncovered. But Captain Bedford also suffered what are called defensive wounds on his hands and chest. These are suggestive of him fighting back, even if briefly, against a man in front of him. A man, in all likelihood, wielding this homemade blade.”
Townsend looked confused for an instant. “But why would someone carry two—”
Visser interrupted the question. “One person did not carry both blades, captain. The evidence clearly suggests that two men were involved in this murder. Or should I say: one man accompanied by his murderous lackey, the Negro Scott. One who stood in front, occupying Captain Bedford’s attention while this second man, who struck silently, came up from behind.”
The courtroom surged with noise, pent-up kriegies again unable to keep from turning to their neighbors and whispering shock, surprise, and wonderment at the testimony. The voices of the Allied airmen burst forth, an excited, confused wave, which carried up and over the men at the front of the theater. Tommy did not turn toward either of the two men sitting beside him, but instead took note of several intriguing reactions. Townsend seemed to be momentarily nonplussed, his mouth slightly open. Visser had regained a totality of smugness, leaning back, relaxed and exuding superiority. Off to the side, Von Reiter’s eyes had narrowed and he wore a look of deep concentration. And in the center of the tribunal, Colonel MacNamara had paled, a stricken, worried, and anxious frown firmly scoring his face.
In that second, Tommy thought the Nazi’s arrogant opinion had meant something different to each man.
The babbling, tangled sounds of vying voices from the audience finally seemed to shake Colonel MacNamara from his shock, and he energetically once again began banging away with the gavel, and crying out for order. The noise subsided rapidly.
Into the abrupt silence, Walker Townsend stepped. He wore a cobra’s smile of his own.
“I see, Hauptmann. I see. One man owned a weapon. One man alone was seen abroad on the night of the murder. One man wore bloodstained shoes and jacket the following day. One man hated enough to kill. Motive. Opportunity. Means. But you think two men committed the crime. And you base this fantastic supposition on the most excellent training you have received from the German military. . . .” Townsend slid a long pause into his words, and then spoke in tones colored with the slick southernisms of his home state. “Well, hell’s bells, Hauptmann. It ain’t no wonder why y’all Krauts are losin’ the damn war so bad!”
Visser instantly stiffened in his seat. His own smile evaporated.
Townsend waved his arm wildly at the German. “No more questions of this expert,” he said sarcastically. “You can have ’im back, Tommy. For whatever the hell he’s worth!” Townsend took a pair of quick paces back to his seat and threw himself down.
Tommy stood, but did not move out from behind the defense table.
“Briefly, Your Honor,” he said, with a quick glance to MacNamara. “Hauptmann, once again, why are you here?”
Visser said sharply: “I am here because you called me, lieutenant.”
“No, Hauptmann. Why are you here? At this camp. Now. Why?”
Visser kept his mouth shut.
“Why do the Germans regard the murder of Captain Bedford as an event requiring an investigation? And why would they send to this camp someone seemingly as important as yourself?”
Colonel MacNamara took a deep breath. “Hauptmann Visser, you are excused! We thank you for your testimony.”
The German rose, and came to attention, saluting the court briskly and glaring toward his own commanding officer. Visser returned to his seat and immediately resumed his observer’s role. He removed one of his thin, brown cigarettes from a silver case, and then bent toward the stenographer at his side, who fumbled for a moment and then produced a match.
Colonel MacNamara waited, then turned to Tommy. “What else do you have for us, lieutenant?”
“One last witness, colonel. We would call at this point Lieutenant Lincoln Scott,” Tommy said firmly.
MacNamara nodded, but then the nod changed into a shake, and he glanced over at Commandant Von Reiter, before returning his eyes to Tommy.
“The defendant will be your final witness, lieutenant?”
“Yes sir.”
“In that case we will hear from him in the morning. That way we will have time for the direct, the cross, and final arguments. Then the tribunal will begin deliberations.” He smiled, but not humorously. “This will give both sides a little extra time to prepare.”
Then he banged his gavel hard, ending the day’s session.
Chapter Sixteen
A SURPRISING ORDER
The morning count seemed interminable. Every mistake, every delay, every time a ferret retraced his steps down the lines of Allied airmen mumbling numbers, the men cursed and raged and held their positions, as if by standing even more still they could somehow hurry the process. The ever-erratic weather had changed once again; as the filmy gray of the early morning burned away around them, the sun rose eagerly into a deepening blue sky, throwing warmth over the impatient kriegies. When the dismissal finally came, the formations broke apart rapidly and crowds of men streamed toward the theater, vying for the best seats in the courtroom. Tommy watched the flow of men and realized that the entire camp would be gathered at the trial that day. The excited kriegies would shoehorn themselves into every available space in the theater building. They would hang from the windows and crowd forward to the doors, trying to find a spot where they could both see and hear. He stood for a moment, probably the only man in the entire camp feeling no hurry, no urgency. He was a little unsettled and perhaps more than a little nervous about what he would do and say that day and wondering whether any of it would have the single necessary effect of saving Lincoln Scott’s life. The black flier stood at his side, also watching the camp disperse in the direction of the trial, his face impassive, wearing the iron look that he almost always adopted in public, but with his eyes darting about, taking in the same things that Tommy saw.
“Well, Tommy,” Scott said slowly. “I suppose the show must go on.”
Hugh Renaday also stood nearby. But the Canadian had his head turned skyward, his gaze sweeping the wide blue horizon. After a moment, he spoke softly. “On a day like this, visibility unlimited, you know, if you just look up for a long enough time, you can almost forget where you are.”
Both Tommy’s and Lincoln Scott’s eyes turned up, following the Canadian’s. After a second’s silence, Scott laughed out loud. “Damn it, I think you’re almost right.” He paused, then added, “It’s almost like for just a couple of heartbeats you can kid yourself that you’re free again.”
“It would be nice,” Tommy said. “Even the illusion of freedom.”
“It would be nice,” Scott repeated softly. “It’s one of those rare things in life where the lie is far more encouraging than the truth.”
Then all three men lowered their eyes, back to the earth and the wire and the guard towers and the dogs—the constant reminders of how fragile their lives were. “It’s time to go,” Tommy said. “But we’re not in a hurry. In fact, let’s show up a minute late. Exactly one minute. Just to piss off that tightass MacNamara. Hell, let ’em start without us. . . .”
This made the other two laugh, even if admittedly not a particularly sound strategy. As they crossed the assembly yard, all three men suddenly heard the start-up of construction noise, coming from the nearby thick forest, on the far side of the wire. A distant whistle, some shouts, and the rat-a-tat of hammers and the ripping sound of handsaws. “They start those poor bastards early, don’t they?” Scott asked rhetorically. “And then they work them late. Makes you glad you weren’t born a Russian,” he said. Then he smiled wryly. “You know, there’s probably a joke in that somewhere. Do you suppose right now one of those poor s.o.b.’s is saying he’s glad he wasn’t born black in America? After all, the damn Germans are just working them to death. Me? I’ve got to worry about my own countrymen shooting me.”
He shook his head and continued to stride forward, at a determined pace. As they marched across the yard, at one point the black flier glanced over toward the two white men and grinned as he said, “Don’t look so glum, Tommy, Hugh. I’ve been looking forward to this day since I was first accused of this crime. Usually lynchings don’t work this way for black folks. Usually we don’t get the chance to stand up in front of everyone and tell them how goddamn wrong they are. Usually we’re just beaten down in silence and strung up real quiet and with hardly a mouse squeak of any protest. Well, that’s not what’s going to happen today. Not in this lynching.”
Tommy knew this was true.
The night before, after the completion of Visser’s testimony, the three men had returned to Hut 101 and sat around the bunk room. Hugh had fixed a modest meal, more of the processed meat fried alongside a canned vegetable paste from a Red Cross parcel, creating a taste that was somewhere between grease and stew and like nothing they had ever experienced before, which was, on the whole, a positive thing. It was the sort of concoction that would have been revolting back in the States, but there, inside Stalag Luft Thirteen, bordered on the gourmet.
Between bites, Tommy had said, “Scott, we need to be sure you’re prepared for tomorrow. Especially for cross-examination . . .”
And Scott had replied, as he mouthed some of Hugh’s invention, his hunger apparently restored by the prospect of testifying, “Tommy, I’ve been preparing for tomorrow for the entirety of my life.”
So instead of talking about the two knives, the bloodstains, and Trader Vic’s racist baiting, Tommy had suddenly asked Lincoln Scott: “Lincoln, tell me something. Back home, when you were growing up, and it was a Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining and it was warm and you didn’t have anything that anyone was making you do—you know, chores finished, homework finished—what would you do with yourself?”
Lincoln Scott had stopped eating, slightly taken aback. “You mean, free time? When I was a kid?”
“That’s right. Time to yourself.”
“My preacher-daddy and my schoolteacher-mother didn’t really believe in free time,” he said, smiling. “ ‘Idle hands are the Devil’s playground!’ I heard that more than once. There was always time to work at something that was going to make me smarter or stronger or—”
“But . . .” Tommy had interrupted.
Scott had nodded. “There’s always a ‘but.’ That’s the one thing in life you can count on.” He had burst into a small laugh. “You know what I liked to do? I’d sneak down to the freight yards. There was a big water tower down there, and I knew just how to climb up on it, so that I could get a view of the whole place. You see what I’m saying? From where I would perch, I could see the whole switching system. It’s called a roundhouse. Train after train, rattling through the yard, tons of iron being moved about by someone throwing those electric switches, moving cattle one way to the stockyards, and shifting corn and potatoes onto a track heading east, just moving out in time to miss the steel carriers coming in from the mountains. It was like a great elaborate dance,
and I thought the men who ran the yards were like God’s angels, moving everything through the universe according to a great, unwritten plan. All that speed and weight and commerce coming together and being sent out, never ending, never stopping, never even pausing for a breath of air. Man’s greatest works on constant display. The modern world. Progress at my feet.”
The men had remained silent for a moment, before Hugh had shaken his head. “It was sports for me,” he had said. “Hockey with the other lads on a frozen pond. What about you, Tommy? It was your question. What did you do when you had the time?”
Tommy had smiled. “What I liked to do is what landed me here,” he had said softly. “I liked to chart the stars in the heavens. They’re different, you know. They make the smallest adjustments for the time of night and the time of the year. Positions change. Some shine more brightly. Others dim, then reemerge. I liked to look up at the constellations and see the endlessness of the night. . . .”
The others had remained quiet, and Tommy had shrugged. “But I should have had another hobby. Like tying flies or playing hockey, like you, Hugh. Because when the air corps found out I could perform celestial navigation, well, next thing I knew I was in a bomber, flying hell for leather above the Mediterranean. Of course, most all our sorties were in the daylight, so the usefulness of my ability to chart a course using the stars was, ah, limited. But that’s the air corps way of thinking and that’s what landed me here.”
Both men had laughed. To make a joke about the army was always worth a laugh. But after a few seconds, the smiles had seeped away and they grew silent until Lincoln Scott had said, “Well, maybe you’ll be able to navigate us out of here one day.”
Hugh had nodded.
“That would be a happy day,” he had said, which was the last time they talked of that most difficult of subjects, though throughout the long night in the bunk room that thought had never strayed far from Tommy Hart’s imagination, as sleep eluded him and his mind increasingly centered on the courtroom and the drama that awaited them in the morning.