the damn order to fire…'
'Shut up, Fenelli!' Clark said.
'That's a direct order!'
Tommy looked down at the man who wanted to be a doctor, who shrugged, again ignoring the major.
'You want some answers. Tommy? Well, it seems to me you're going to have to dig hard for them tonight.'
Tommy felt a sudden chill in the room, as if he'd stepped into a pocket of cold air.
'I don't follow,' he said, hesitating.
'Sure you do,' Fenelli answered, with another small, braying laugh, and a mocking sneer directed toward Major Clark.
'Let me put it to you this way. Tommy…'
The medic held out a small piece of white paper. Tommy saw the number twenty-eight written in black pencil in the middle of the sheet. He looked at Fenelli.
'I'm twenty-eight,' Fenelli said slowly.
'In order to get that number, all I had to do was maybe change my trial testimony a bit. Maybe lie a little. Just take away your defense. Of course, they didn't expect your little maneuver with Visser.
Didn't expect that at all. That was pretty neat. Anyway, Tommy, the guys right in front of me, well, they're not rotten bastards like I am, who paid a price for their spot in this line.
Most of those guys are the good guys. Hart. There are some forgers and some engineers and some tunnel rats. They get the higher numbers, right? They're the guys who designed this thing, and did all the really hard work and just about everything else. Just about everything. But not quite everything.
So, let me ask you a question. Tommy…'
Fenelli's smile faded instantly, replaced with a harsh, hard look that said almost as much as the words that followed.
'I'm just a liar, and I got number twenty-eight. So, where do you suppose the men willing to kill a man in order to keep this tunnel a secret would be? Do you think maybe they might be at the very top of the list?'
Tommy was about to blurt out But how? when he saw the answer.
A deep, almost painful, cold shaft of fear sliced through his heart and lodged deep in his stomach. He could feel sweat burst forth on his temples, beneath his arms, and his throat went abruptly dry. He knew his hands were starting to shake, and the muscles in his thighs twitched in sudden terror.
At his side, Scott must have understood the panic that settled within
Tommy, because he said quietly, 'I'll go. You can't go down there. I know that. You wait here.'
But Tommy shook his head back and forth hard.
'They won't believe you, even if you did manage to come back with the truth. But they'll have to believe me.'
From his position near the tunnel entrance, Fenelli chimed in: 'He's right, Scott. You're the one facing the firing squad.
Got nothing to lose by lying. But there's a good chance that all these guys here, the ones not going out tonight, well, they're likely to believe what Tommy says. Because he's one of them. Been in the bag for goddamn nearly forever, and he's as white as they are. Sorry, but that's the truth.'
Scott seemed to grow tense, his arms rigid. Then he nodded, although it clearly took a great effort for him to do this.
Tommy stepped forward.
Major Clark stepped into his path.
'I won't allow…' he began.
'Yes, you will,' Scott said coldly. He did not need to say anything else. The major eyed the black flier, then stepped back quickly.
'You watch my back, Lincoln,' Tommy said.
'I won't be long I hope' He did not wait to hear the black airman's acknowledgment.
Knowing that if he hesitated in the slightest, he wouldn't be able to force himself to do what he now knew he had to do, Tommy stepped to the edge of the tunnel.
There were candles spaced out, on hand carved ledges, leading down into the narrow pit. A single strand of half-inch-thick black German telephone cable probably stolen from the back of a truck and strong enough to hold a man's weight was fastened to the edge of the toilet, anchored there. Tommy sat down on the lip of the tunnel hole. The man beneath him passed up a bucket filled with dirt, and then squeezed back, pressing himself into the dirt of the tunnel wall. Tommy seized hold of the cable and, filled with utter terror remembered from his childhood and many hard nightmares, slowly lowered himself down into the cold emptiness waiting below him.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time he reached the bottom of the shaft, Tommy thought he could no longer breathe. Every foot he dropped himself into the earth seemed to rob him of air, so that when finally his toes touched the hard, packed dirt twenty feet down, his breath was already coming in short, spasmodic bursts, wheezy and harsh, his chest feeling as if a giant rock were pressing down upon it.
There were two men working in a small space, almost an anteroom at the head of the actual tunnel, perhaps six feet in width and barely four feet high. Their faces were illuminated by a pair of candles mounted in emptied meat tins; the faint light seemed to struggle against the shadows that threatened to overcome the entire space. Both men wore rings of sweat around their foreheads; their cheeks were streaked with dirt and exhaustion. One man was dressed in a suit not that different from the one Fenelli wore, and he was seated behind a makeshift bellows, operating the pump furiously. The bellows made a small whooshing sound, as it pumped air up the tunnel; Tommy guessed this kriegie must be number twenty-seven. The other man wore only skivvies.
He was small, compact, and heavily muscled. It was his job to take each bucket of dirt that was passed back and climb it up the shaft for distribution.
The man in the suit spoke first. He didn't stop his pumping at the bellows, but astonishment marked each of his words.
'Hart! Jesus, buddy, what the hell are you doing here?'
Tommy peered through the flickering light and saw that the man doing the pumping was the fighter pilot from New York, the man who had helped him in the assembly yard.
'Answers,' Tommy wheezed. He pointed up the tunnel.
'In there.'
'You're going up the tunnel?' the New Yorker asked.
Tommy nodded.
'Need the truth.' He choked out each word harshly.
'The truth is up there? About Trader Vic?'
Tommy nodded again.
The man continued to work, but looked surprised.
'You sure? I don't get it. The tunnel and Vic's death? Major Clark never said anything to anybody working this dig that Vic had something to do with this.'
'All hidden,' Tommy coughed out.
'All connected.' It took an incredible effort for him to drag enough air past all his fear to find enough wind to speak.
