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
