Tommy watched Fritz Number One's head twisting about, trying to ascertain whether he'd been observed in this conversation. On the one hand. Tommy knew he had just acquired enough information to blackmail Fritz Number One into doing whatever he wanted, probably for the duration of the war. But on the other, he was left more filled with questions than ever before. And one question that dominated all the others: What was the payment for the weapon that was turned on Vic? He watched as Fritz Number One scurried across the exercise yard, and wondered who else might have the answer to that question. He glanced down at his wristwatch, felt a pang of loneliness crease across his heart. For a single second, he wondered what time it was back home in Vermont, and he had trouble remembering whether it was earlier or later. Then he dismissed this unfair thought when he realized that if he did not hurry, he would be late for the beginning of that morning's proceedings.
The throngs of kriegies were already surrounding the makeshift theater and jamming the aisles as Tommy arrived for the trial's start. As he'd feared, everyone else was in place. The tribunal behind their table at the front, the prosecution seated and waiting impatiently, Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday in their chairs, Hugh wearing a concerned look.
Off to the side, Hauptmann Visser was smoking one of his thin, brown cigarettes, while the stenographer next to him nervously fiddled with his pencil. Tommy picked his way down the center, stepping over feet and outstretched legs, stumbling once as he tripped over a pair of flight boots, thinking to himself that his solitary entrance was much less dramatic than when he had joined the two others and walked in formation.
'You've kept everyone waiting, lieutenant,' Colonel MacNamara said coldly, as he stepped to the front of the room.
'Zero eight hundred means precisely that. In the future…' Lieutenant Tommy interrupted the Senior American Officer.
'I apologize, sir. But I had business crucial to the defense.'
'That may well be, lieutenant, but-' Tommy interrupted MacNamara again, which he was absolutely certain would infuriate the commanding officer. He didn't really care.
'My first and primary duty is to Lieutenant Scott, sir. If my absence caused a delay, well, then it equally demonstrates vividly, once again, sir, the unfortunate rush that this proceeding takes place within.
Based on information that has just been made available to me, I would once again renew my objections to the trial continuing, and would request additional time to investigate.'
'What information?' MacNamara demanded.
Tommy sauntered to the front of the prosecution's table, and picked up the homemade blade that Scott had fashioned.
He turned it over once or twice in his hand, then set it down again, looking up at MacNamara.
'It has to do with the murder weapon, colonel.'
Out of the corner of his eye. Tommy saw Visser stiffen in his seat.
The German dropped his cigarette to the floor, and ground it beneath the heel of his boot.
'What about the murder weapon, lieutenant?'
'I'm not really at liberty to speak openly, colonel. Not without considerable further investigation.'
Captain Townsend rose from his seat with liquid confidence in his voice.
'Your Honor, I believe that the defense seeks delay simply for delay's sake. I believe that absent some real showing on their part of dire necessity, that we should continue-' MacNamara held up his hand.
'You are correct, captain.
Lieutenant Hart, take your seat. Call your next witness. Captain
Townsend. And Lieutenant Hart, do not be late again.'
Tommy shrugged, and took his place. Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday both leaned over toward him.
'What was that all about?' Scott demanded.
'You find out something helpful?'
Tommy whispered his reply 'Maybe. I found out something.
But I'm not sure how it helps.'
Scott leaned back.
'Great,' he muttered under his breath.
He picked up the stub of a pencil from the rough table and tapped it against the wooden surface. Scott fixed his eyes on the morning's first witness, another officer from Hut 101, who was being sworn in by MacNamara.
Tommy checked his notes. This was one of the witnesses who saw Scott in the hut's central corridor on the night of the murder. He knew what was coming was the worst sort of testimony.
An officer with no particular connection to either Scott or Trader Vic, who would tell the court that he saw the black airman outside his bunk room, maneuvering through the darkness with the aid of a single candle.
What the witness would describe were all actions that any man might have performed.
Taken independently, they were benign. But in the context of that murderous night, they were damning.
Tommy inhaled deeply. He had no idea how to assault this testimony.
Mostly, because it was true. He knew that within a few moments, the prosecution would have painted an important brush stroke of their case-that on the night of Trader Vic's death, Lincoln Scott was out and about, not pathetically shivering in his bunk beneath a thin, gray German-issue blanket, dreaming of home, food, and freedom like almost all the captive men in the South Compound.
He bit his lower lip, as Captain Townsend slowly began to question the witness. In that second, he thought the trial a bit like standing in the sand on the beach, just where the froth of the surf plays out, right at the point where the nearly spent force of the wave can still pull and tug at the sand, making everything unstable and unsteady beneath the feet. The prosecution's case was like the undertow, slowly dragging everything solid away, and right at that moment, he had no real idea how to put Lincoln Scott back on firm earth.
Shortly after midday, Walker Townsend called Major Clark to the witness stand. He was the final name on the prosecution's list of witnesses and, Tommy suspected, would be the most dramatic. For all of Clark's blustery anger. Tommy still suspected him of having a streak of composure that would emerge on the stand. It would be the same sort of composure that had allowed the major to steer his crippled, burning B-17, with only a single engine functioning, to a safe landing in a farmer's field in the Alsace, saving the lives of most of his crew.
When his name was called out by the Virginian, Major Clark rose swiftly from his seat at the prosecution's table.
Back ramrod straight, he crossed the theater quickly, seizing the Bible that was proffered and swearing loudly to tell the truth. He then sat in the witness chair, eagerly awaiting Townsend's first question.
Tommy watched the major closely. There are some men, he thought, who managed to wear their imprisonment with a rigid, military sense of decorum; Clark's uniform was worn, patched, and tattered in numerous places after eighteen months at Stalag Luft Thirteen, but the way it draped on his bantamweight frame made it seem as if it were newly cleaned and pressed. Major Clark was a small man, with a hard face, humorless and stiff, and there was little doubt in Tommy's mind that he was a man who had narrowed his course through the world down into the twin requirements of duty and bravery.
He would acquire the one and perform the other with a complete singleness of purpose.
'Major Clark,' Captain Townsend asked, 'tell the court how it was that you came to this prisoner-of-war camp?'
The major bent forward, ready to begin his explanation, just as every other kriegie witness had, when Tommy arose.
'Objection!' he said.
Colonel MacNamara eyed him.
