You wouldn't want to know what could be in there.'
The sausage was almost gelatinous. It was a deep brown-black color, tinged with red. It gave off a foul odor.
Tommy took the parcel and removed the sausage, holding it up for the audience to recognize. There was some uncomfortable laughter of recognition in the crowd.
Then Tommy moved back to the defense table. He picked up the homemade blade, then seized one of his precious white sheets of notepaper from the desk. Before the prosecution caught on to what he was doing. Tommy wrapped the paper around the handle of the knife, covering the cloth that was already stained. He held the blade up, theatrically, as Walker Townsend jumped up and shouted out 'Objection!' once again. Tommy ignored the word, and ignored the sudden gaveling from the tribunal's table. Instead, he took the knife and swiftly plunged it down hard across the thick middle of the sausage, cutting it in half. Then he chopped at the sausage twice more, making certain that the paper-wrapped handle creased the mess of false meat. The room seemed to fill with an exaggerated pungent smell of waste, and the kriegies closest to the defense table groaned as the smell struck them.
Tommy ignored the objections flooding from the prosecution, and paced directly in front of Lieutenant Murphy. He raised his own voice above all the other noise, and silenced the room with his question: 'What do you see on the paper, lieutenant? The paper around the handle?'
Murphy paused, then shrugged.
'It looks like blood,' he said.
'Specks of blood.'
'About the same amount of blood that mars the cloth and which the prosecution claims with no supporting evidence whatsoever belongs to Trader Vic!'
Stepping back from the witness. Tommy shouted, 'No further questions.'
He took the knife and unwrapped the paper from the handle, holding it above his head so that the entire courtroom could see the splatter marks. Tommy then walked over to Walker Townsend and handed the paper to the prosecutor, who shook his head from side to side. The knife, however, he jabbed by the point into the tabletop, leaving it vibrating like a tuning fork in the once again silent courtroom.
Chapter Thirteen
Tommy spotted Fritz Number One counting the adjacent formation of kriegies at the following morning's Appell. He kept the lean ferret locked in his sight throughout the assembly, ignoring the light rain that fell from dark gray skies, staining the brown leather of his flight jacket with streaks of black dampness. When Major Clark saluted Oberst Von Reiter and saw the usual nod from Colonel MacNamara, and then spun sharply and bellowed out the dismissal, Tommy surged through the melee of fliers, pushing his way directly to where Fritz and some of the other ferrets were gathered at the edge of the exercise yard, smoking and divvying up the day's assignments. The German looked up as Tommy approached, frowned, and immediately stepped away from the others.
Tommy stopped, a few feet away, and beckoned to the ferret, cocking a single finger with exaggeration like some impatient and harsh schoolteacher overseeing a laggardly student. Fritz Number One looked about nervously for an instant, then took a few quick strides to Tommy's side.
'What is it, Mr. Hart?' he asked swiftly.
'I have many duties to perform this morning.'
'Sure you do,' Tommy replied.
'What, there's some spot that needs to be inspected for the ten millionth time? You need to be sneaking around somewhere urgently?
Come on, Fritz. You know the only show in town today is Scott's trial.'
'I still have my duties, Mr. Hart. We all do. Even with the trial.'
Tommy shrugged in an overstated, disbelieving fashion.
'Okay,' he said.
'I'll only take a minute or two of your valuable time. Just a couple of questions, then you can get back to whatever is so damn important.'
Tommy smiled, paused for a second, then demanded in a loud voice that carried to where the other ferrets were gathered: 'All right, Fritz. I want to know where you got the knife from, and when exactly you traded it to Vic. You know which one I'm talking about: the murder weapon…'
Fritz Number One paled, and grabbed Tommy by the arm.
Shaking his head, he pulled the American flier into the lee of one of the huts, where he responded both angrily and with what Tommy detected was more than a small share of nervousness.
'You cannot be asking me this. Lieutenant Hart! I have no idea of what you are speaking…' Tommy interrupted the instantaneous whining response with a sharp-edged reply of his own.
'Don't bullshit me, Fritz. You know precisely what I'm talking about.
A German ceremonial dagger. Maybe SS type. Long and thin and with a death's head skull at the tip of the handle. Very similar to what Von Reiter wears when he's all decked out and ready to go to some important function. Trader Vic wanted one, and you got it for him, not long before he was killed. Like a couple of days at the most. I want to know about it. I want to know word for word what Vic said to you when he traded for that knife, and where it was supposed to go and who was supposed to get it. I want to know everything you did. Or maybe you'd prefer if I took my questions to Hauptmann Visser. I betcha he'll be real interested in knowing about that knife.'
The German reeled back, almost as if he'd been struck, pressing against the wall of the hut. Fritz Number One looked ill.
Tommy took a deep breath, then added, 'Why, I'll wager a pack of Luckies that it's against some Luftwaffe rule to trade an actual weapon to a prisoner of war. And especially some fancy special Nazi-type honor of the fatherland big deal dagger…'
Fritz Number One twisted about, looking over Tommy's shoulder, making certain that no one had hovered close enough to hear their conversation. He stiffened visibly when he heard Tommy speak Visser's name.
'No, no, no,' he replied, shaking his head back and forth.
'Lieutenant, you do not understand how dangerous this is!'
'Well,' Tommy answered in tones as blandly matter-of-fact as he could muster, 'why don't you tell me?'
Fritz Number One's voice quivered and his hands shook slightly as he gestured.
'Hauptmann Visser would have me shot,' he whispered.
'Or sent to the Russian front, which is the same. Exactly the same, except maybe not as quick and maybe a little worse. To trade a weapon to an Allied airman is verboten 'But you did it?'
'Trader Vic, he was insistent. At first, I told him no, but it was all he could speak about. A souvenir, he promised me.
Nothing more! He had a special customer, he said, willing to pay a large price. He needed it without delay. That day. Immediately!
He told me it had great value. More value than anything else he'd ever traded for.'
For a moment. Tommy swallowed hard, imagining the cold-blooded ness of the man who performed the ultimate swindle upon Trader Vic, getting the camp's entrepreneur to provide him with the weapon that he would then use to kill him. Tommy felt his mouth dry up, almost parched at the thought.
'Who wanted it? Who was Trader Vic fronting for?'
'I don't understand fronting…'
'Who was he making the deal for?'
