'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
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.'
Scott pushed off the wall and walked over to Tommy Hart.
He touched him on the shoulder in what, had Tommy been paying close attention, he would have recognized was perhaps the first spontaneous display of some sort of affection that the black airman had managed since his arrival at Stalag Luft Thirteen.
'Come on. Tommy,' he said softly, 'the case is over. You did what you were supposed to do. In any civilized world, you would have succeeded in creating a reasonable doubt, which is all that the law is supposed to require. The trouble is, we just don't currently live in a civilized world.'
Scott paused, breathing in deeply, before continuing.
'I guess now all we have to do is wait for the verdict that we've known was coming straight at me since the morning Vic's body was found.'
This statement finally shook Tommy loose from the near-trance he'd been in, since the end of the court session that day.
He looked over at Lincoln Scott and slowly shook his head.
Over? 'Tommy said.
'Lincoln, the case has just begun.'
Scott looked at him quizzically.
From the bunk, Hugh said, almost exhausted, 'Now, Tommy, you've managed to lose me on that one. Begun? How?'
Tommy abruptly pounded one fist into an open palm, and then, just like
Scott, he suddenly punched out at the emptiness in the room, whirling about, snapping off a couple of jabs, then throwing a wild left hook at the air in front of them.
The single harsh overhead bulb burning above him threw exaggerated streaks of light across his face.
'What am I doing?' he demanded suddenly, stopping in his tracks in the center of the room, grinning maniacally at the other two men.
'Acting like a crazy fool,' Hugh said, managing a smile.
'Shadow-boxing,' Scott replied.
'That's right. Exactly right! And that's what's been going on over the past few days.' Tommy put a hand to his head, pushed his shock of hair away from his eyes, then lowered his index finger to his lips. He tiptoed over to the door, opened it gingerly, and looked out into the corridor, checking to see if anyone was watching them or listening in.
But the corridor was empty. He closed the door and turned back to the two other men, an exaggerated look of excitement on his face.
'I have been a fool not to have seen it earlier,' he said quietly, though each word seemed to glow incandescently.
'See what?' Scott asked. Hugh nodded in agreement.
Tommy stepped toward the two others, and began to whisper.
'What do we know Trader Vic traded for, right before his death?'
'The knife that killed him.'
'Right. Right. The knife. The knife we needed. The knife we had, then gave up, and which Visser seems so intent on finding. The damn knife. The all-important damn knife.
Okay. But what else?'
The other two looked at each other.
'What do you mean,' Scott started.
'It was the knife that was critical…'
'No.' Tommy shook his head.
'The knife had everybody's attention, right. It killed Vic. No doubt.
