Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  “Let him talk!” came the almost instant reply.

  The SAO reached for the gavel again, but a grudging silence crept back into the courtroom.

  “You don’t think that’s far-fetched, lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know, captain. I have not now, nor have I ever committed a murder! So I have no experience. You, sir, on the other hand, have prosecuted numerous murder cases. Perhaps you should provide us with the answer. Have none of the cases you’ve prosecuted ever been unusual? Surprising? Have events never been mysterious and answers hard to come by? You’re far more expert than I, captain, so perhaps you should be answering these questions.”

  “It’s not my job to answer questions here, lieutenant!” Townsend replied, anger creeping into his own voice for perhaps the first time. “You’re on the witness stand.”

  “Well, captain,” Scott responded coldly, infuriatingly, and Tommy thought, nearly perfectly, “it is my belief that that is what we are put on this earth to do. Answer questions. Every time any one of us stepped up into a plane to go into battle, we were answering a question. Every time we face the real enemies in our lives, whether they are Germans or southern cracker racists, we are answering questions. That’s pretty much all that life is, captain. But maybe here, in the bag, stuck behind the wire, you’ve forgotten all that. Well, I, for damn certain, haven’t!”

  Townsend paused again. He shook his head slowly back and forth, and then started to walk back toward the prosecution’s table. He was halfway there, when he stopped, and looked up at Scott, as if something had just occurred to him, a question that was more an afterthought. Tommy instantly recognized this for what it was, which was a trap, but there was nothing he could do. He hoped that Scott would see through the histrionics, as well.

  “Ah, lieutenant, just one final inquiry, then, if you don’t mind.”

  Tommy abruptly reached out and pushed one of his law books to the floor, where it fell with a thudding sound that distracted Scott and Townsend. “Sorry,” Tommy said, reaching down and making as much disturbance collecting the law book as he could possibly manage. “Didn’t mean to interrupt you, captain. Please continue.”

  Townsend glared, then repeated, “One more question, then . . .”

  Lincoln Scott’s eyes caught Tommy’s for a split second as he read the warning in Tommy’s small accident, then he nodded toward the prosecutor. “What would that be, captain?”

  “Would you be willing to lie to save your own life?”

  Tommy pushed back, rising from his seat, but Colonel MacNamara had anticipated the objection, and he waved his hand sharply in front of himself, making a slicing motion to cut Tommy off. “The defendant shall answer the question,” he said swiftly. Tommy grimaced, and felt his insides constrict. He thought this the worst question, an old-fashioned trick of the prosecutor’s trade, one Townsend could never get away with in a real court, but there, inside the shadow trial of Stalag Luft Thirteen, it was allowed in ultimate unfairness. There was no way to answer the question, Tommy knew. If Scott said yes he made everything else he’d said appear to be a lie. If Scott said no, then every kriegie in the audience, every man who’d felt the cold breath of death on their neck and knew they were wildly lucky to still be alive, would believe that he was lying right then, because it was worth anything to stay alive.

  Tommy locked eyes for a moment with Lincoln Scott, and he thought the black flier saw the same danger. It was like passing between the twin terrors of Scylla and Charybdis. One couldn’t extract oneself without suffering a loss.

  “I don’t know,” Scott replied slowly but firmly. “I do know that I’ve told the truth here today.”

  “So you say,” Townsend said with a snort and a shake of his head.

  “That’s right,” Scott boomed. “So I say!”

  “Then,” Townsend said, trying successfully to infect his words with a deadly combination of frustration and utter disbelief, “I have nothing else at this time for this witness.” He resumed his seat.

  Colonel MacNamara eyed Tommy. “Do you wish to redirect, counselor?” he asked.

  Tommy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No sir.”

  The SAO glanced down at Lincoln Scott. “You are dismissed, then, lieutenant.”

  Scott rose, pivoted, and saluted the tribunal sharply, then, shoulders straight, marched back to his seat.

  “Anything else, Mr. Hart?” MacNamara asked.

  “The defense rests, colonel,” Tommy said loudly.

  “All right, then,” MacNamara said. “We will reconvene this afternoon for final arguments from both sides. Gentlemen, these should be brief and to the point!” He banged his gavel down hard. “Dismissed!” MacNamara said.

  There was a rustling as men started to rise, and in that moment of confusion, a voice rang out: “Let’s shoot him now!” Only to be met by a second voice, equally outraged, crying, “You southern bastards!” Immediately there was a tangle of men, pushing, shoving, their voices all blending together in a cacophony of angers and opinions. Tommy could see kriegies restraining kriegies, and men looking to take a swing at each other. He wasn’t sure how the camp divided on the question of Lincoln Scott’s guilt or innocence, only that it was filling the men with tension.

  MacNamara banged away. In a second, silence slipped over the angry men. “I said ‘Dismissed!’ ” MacNamara bellowed. “And that’s what I meant!” He eyed the tangled crowd of kriegies furiously, waiting in the edgy silence in the theater for a moment, then rising, and striding purposefully, he moved from behind the tribunal’s table and stepped through the mass of men, eyeing each carefully, in that way he had which made it seem as if he were taking names and putting them to faces. Behind him, there was some grumbling, and a few more sharp words, but these faded as the men slowly began to file out of the courtroom, out into the sunshine of midday.

  Alone with his thoughts and troubles, Tommy walked the deadline. He knew he should have been back inside the barracks room, pencil and paper in hand, scribbling down the words he would use that afternoon to try to save Lincoln Scott’s life, but the wildly tossing seas within his own heart had driven him out into the liar’s sun, and he marched along, his pace dictated by the sums and subtractions he was making within himself. He could feel the warmth on his neck, and knew it to be dishonest, for the weather would change again, and gray rain would overcome the camp soon enough.

  The other kriegies out in the assembly yards, or walking the same route as Tommy, gave him a wide berth. No one stopped, not to curse him out or to wish him luck or even to admire the afternoon that surrounded them as tenaciously as did the barbed wire. Tommy walked in solitude.

  A man who lives a lie . . . Tommy considered Scott’s words describing Vincent Bedford. He understood one thing about the murdered man: There had never been a bargain that Trader Vic struck where he did not come out ahead, except for the last, and that was the one that had cost him his life. High price, Tommy thought with a cynical fervor. If Trader Vic had cheated someone on a deal, would that have been enough reason to kill him? Tommy walked on, asking himself: What did Vic deal in? And then he provided the answer: Vic dealt in food and chocolate and warm clothes, cigarettes and coffee and occasionally in an illegal radio and maybe a camera. What else?

  Tommy almost stopped. Trader Vic dealt in information.

  Tommy glanced over at the woods. He was passing behind the rear of Hut 105, near the slightly hidden spot that he believed was the actual murder location. Killed and then moved. He measured the distance to the wire from the rear of the hut, then looked farther, into the trees.

  For a moment, he reeled under the pressures of the moment. He thought of Visser and men moving around late at night and men threatening Scott against orders and all the evidence that pointed one way abruptly disappearing, and Phillip Pryce being summarily removed from the scene. Everything came pouring at him, and he felt as if he were standing up in the face of a strong ocean wind, one that slung froth off the tops of wildly
tossing whitecaps, and turned the water to a deep, murky gray color, promising a great storm that was moving steadily on the horizon. He shook his head, and berated himself: You have spent too much time staring at the currents at your feet, instead of looking to the distance. He believed that this was the sort of observation Phillip Pryce would have made. But again, he felt trapped by all the events.

  In his reverie, he heard his name being called, and for a moment, it seemed to him almost as if it were Lydia, calling him from the front yard, urging him to come out from indoors, because there was a scent of Vermont spring in the air, and it would be criminal not to snatch at it. But as he pivoted about, he saw that it was Hugh Renaday calling his name. Scott stood nearby, and was gesturing toward him. Tommy glanced down at the watch he wore and saw that it was closing on the time for the final arguments to begin.

  Even Tommy was forced to concede that Walker Townsend was eloquent and persuasive. He spoke in a low-key, almost hypnotic tone, steady, determined, the slight southern lilt in his voice giving his words an illusory credence. He pointed out that of all the elements of the crime, the only one truly denied by Lincoln Scott was the actual murder. He seemed to take delight in pointing out that the black airman had admitted to virtually everything else that constituted the killing.

  As the entire camp, jammed into every inch of space in the theater, listened to Townsend’s words, it seemed to Tommy that innocence was slowly, but certainly, being stripped away from Lincoln Scott. In his own quiet yet sturdy manner, Captain Townsend made it clear that there was only one suspect in the case, and only one man to be assigned guilt.

  He called Tommy’s efforts mere smoke screens, designed to deflect attention from Scott. He argued that the limited forensic capabilities within the camp made it all the more critical that the circumstantial evidence be given even more weight. He had nothing but contempt for Visser’s testimony, though he was careful not to examine what the German had said, but instead to emphasize how he’d said it, which, Tommy recognized, was the best way of diminishing it.

  And finally, in what Tommy was forced to swallow bitterly when he saw its brilliance, Walker Townsend suggested that he did not truly blame Lincoln Scott for killing Trader Vic. The captain from Virginia had lifted his own voice, making certain that not only the tribunal but every kriegie craning to hear actually did hear.

  “Who among us, Your Honors, would really have behaved differently? Captain Bedford did much to bring his own death upon himself. He underestimated Lieutenant Scott from the outset,” Townsend said, firmly. “He did this because he was, as we have heard here, a racist. And he thought, in the cowardly way that racists have, that his target would not fight back. Well, sirs, we have all seen, if nothing else, that Lincoln Scott is a fighter. He has told us himself how the odds did not affect him when he went into battle. And so, he took on Vincent Bedford, just as he took on those FWs arrayed against him. That death ensued is understandable. But, gentlemen, just because we can now understand the causes of his actions, that does not make him less accountable, nor does it make them any less despicable! In a way, Your Honors, this is the simplest of situations: Trader Vic got what he deserved for the way he behaved. And now, we must hold Lieutenant Scott to no less a standard! He found Vincent Bedford guilty and executed him! Now we, as civilized, democratic, and free men, must do the same!”

  With a nod to Colonel MacNamara, Walker Townsend sat down.

  “Your turn, Mr. Hart,” the SAO said. “Be brief.”

  Tommy rose. “I will, Your Honor.”

  He stepped to the front of the auditorium and raised his voice just loud enough so that everyone could hear.

  “There is one thing that we all, every man here in Stalag Luft Thirteen, understands, Your Honors, and that is uncertainty. It is the most elemental province of war. Nothing truly is certain until it is past, and even then, many times, it remains shrouded by confusion and conflict.

  “That is the case with the death of Captain Vincent Bedford. We know from the only real expert who examined the crime scene—Nazi though he is—that the prosecution’s case does not fit the evidence. And we know that Lieutenant Scott’s denial remains uncontroverted by the prosecution, and unshaken by cross-examination. And so, members of the court, you are being asked to make a decision from which there is no appeal, and which is utterly final in its certainty on the most subjective of details. Details cloaked in doubt. But there is no doubt about a German firing squad. I do not think you can order this without an absolute belief in Lincoln Scott’s guilt! You cannot order it because you do not like him, or because he is the wrong color, or because he can quote from the classics and others cannot. You cannot order it, because a death penalty cannot be based on anything except the most clear-cut and uncompromising set of undeniable facts. The death of Trader Vic doesn’t come close to meeting that standard.”

  Tommy paused, trying hard to think of something else to say, and believing that he had fallen short of Townsend’s professional eloquence. And so, he added one last thought:

  “We are all prisoners here, Your Honors, and unsure as to whether we will live to see tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. But I would suggest to you that taking Lincoln Scott’s life under these circumstances will kill a little bit of each of us, just as surely as a bullet or bomb would.”

  And with that, he sat down.

  Behind him, voices suddenly babbled together, breaking first into murmurs, followed by cries and shouts, re-forming as arguments and closing in on fights. Kriegies in pockets throughout the theater pushed and shoved, confronting each other angrily. Tommy’s first thought was that it was abundantly clear that the two final statements from Walker Townsend and himself had done nothing to defuse the tension among the men, and, probably, had done more to cement already held beliefs.

  Again the gavel pounded from the front of the theater.

  “I will not have a riot!” Colonel MacNamara was shouting. “And we will not have a lynching!”

  “Hope not,” Scott whispered under his breath. He wore a wry smile.

  “You will come to order!” MacNamara cried out. But it took the kriegies almost a minute to settle down and regain some composure.

  “All right,” MacNamara said, when silence finally gripped the room again. “That’s better.” He cleared his throat with a long, protracted cough. “The obvious tension and conflict of opinions surrounding this case has created special circumstances,” MacNamara blared out, as if he were on the parade ground. “Consequently, in consultation with the Luftwaffe authorities”—MacNamara nodded toward Commandant Von Reiter, who touched the shiny black patent leather brim of his cap in a salute of acknowledgment—“we have decided upon the following. Please understand. These are direct orders from your commanding officer, and they will be obeyed! Anyone not following orders precisely will find themselves in the cooler for the next month!”

  Again, MacNamara paused, letting the threat sink in.

  “We will reconvene here at exactly zero eight hundred tomorrow morning! The tribunal will render the verdict at that point! That will give us the remainder of this night to deliberate. Following that verdict, the entire contingent of prisoners will proceed directly to the assembly ground for the morning Appell! Directly! There will be no exceptions to this! The Germans have graciously agreed to delay the morning count to accommodate the conclusion of this case! There will be no uproar, no fights, no discussion whatsoever about the verdict, until after the count is completed. You will remain in formation until dismissal! The Germans will provide added security to prevent the outbreak of any unauthorized action! You men are warned. You will behave as officers and gentlemen, regardless of what our verdict is! Am I completely clear about this?”

  This was a question that didn’t need answering.

  “Zero eight hundred. Right here. Everyone. That’s an order. Now you are dismissed.”

  The three members of the tribunal rose, as did the German officers. The kriegies struggled up as
well, and began to file out.

  Walker Townsend bent down toward Tommy, offering his hand.

  “You did a fine job, lieutenant,” he said. “Far better than anyone had the right to expect from a fella standing up for the first time in a capital case. They must have taught you well at Harvard.”

  Silently, Tommy shook the prosecutor’s hand. Townsend didn’t even acknowledge Scott, turning instead to catch up with Major Clark.

  “He’s right, Tommy,” Scott said. “And I appreciate it, no matter what they decide.”

  But Tommy did not reply to him, either.

  Instead, he felt an utter coldness inside, for finally, in those last few seconds, he believed he’d seen a glimpse of the real reason Trader Vic had been killed. It was almost as if the truth were floating just in front of him, vaporous, elusive as always, almost invisible and ever slippery. Tommy reached out inadvertently, grasping at the air in front of him, hoping that what he’d finally seen was, if not the complete answer, at least the greatest part of it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A NIGHT FOR SETTLING DEBTS

  Scott was the first to speak when they finally arrived back at their barracks room inside Hut 101. The black flier seemed alternately both depressed and excited, reflective yet energized, as if filled with conflict and compromise and unsure exactly how to react to the long night that stretched in front of them. He paced fast across the room, pounding his fists against imaginary opponents dancing in the emptiness before him, then he turned, and slumped against the wall, like a man in the tenth round finding the ropes and hoping for a second or two’s respite from the onslaught. He looked at Hugh, reclining on his bunk like a workingman fatigued from a long hard day’s labor, then over to Tommy, who of the three of them seemed the most impassive and yet, oddly, the most volatile.

  “I suppose,” Scott said almost wistfully, “that we should celebrate because this is my last night of . . .”

  He hesitated, smiled a little sadly, then finished his sentence: “. . . my last night of something. Innocence? Freedom? Being accused? No, that is unlikely. And I suppose it’s not exactly right to say freedom, because we’re all stuck here and none of us are free. But it’s the last night of something, and I guess that’s notable enough. So, what do you think? Break out the champagne or the hundred-year-old Napoleon brandy? Grill up some sirloin steaks? Bake a chocolate cake and decorate it with candles? Whatever will get us through the night.”