'Your answer, please, flying officer. Please keep in mind that your life depends upon it,' Visser demanded sharply.
For the second time that night, Hugh Renaday realized that the string of his own life had reached its end. He took another deep breath, and finally said, 'I was looking for you, Herr Hauptmann.'
Visser looked slightly surprised.
'Me? But why would you want to see me, flying officer?'
'To spit in your face,' Hugh replied. As he finished, he spat hard at the German. But his parched, dry mouth could not summon any saliva, and he merely sprayed futilely in Visser's direction.
The Hauptmann recoiled slightly. Then he shook his head, and wiped at the desktop with the sleeve of his one arm. He raised his pistol and pointed it in Hugh's face. He held it there for several seconds, aiming straight at Hugh's forehead. The German thumbed back the pistol hammer and then pressed the barrel directly against the Canadian's flesh. A cold that went far beyond all the pulsating pain in his body filled Hugh.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of anything except the moment about to arrive. Seconds passed. Almost a minute.
He did not dare open his eyes.
Then Visser smiled again.
He pulled the weapon back.
Hugh felt the pressure of the barrel slide away, and after a pause, opened his eyes. He saw Visser slowly lower the huge Mauser and, with an exaggerated motion, return it to his holster, snapping the leather flap shut tightly.
Hugh's breath came in raspy bursts. His eyes were fixed on the revolver. He wanted to feel relief, but felt nothing but fear.
'You think yourself fortunate, flying officer, to still be alive?'
Hugh nodded.
'This is sad,' Visser said harshly. He turned to Fritz Number One.
'Corporal, please summon a Feldwebel, and have him collect an appropriate squad of men. I want this prisoner taken out immediately and shot.'
'Scott is innocent.'
'Scott is innocent.'
From man to man down the length of the tunnel, the single message echoed. That the three words dragged along with them dozens of other questions was ignored in the close, hot, dirty, and dangerous world of the escape. Each kriegie knew only that the message was as important as the final two or three strokes with the pickax, and each kriegie knew that there was a sort of freedom contained within the three words, a freedom nearly as powerful as that they were crawling toward, so the message was passed along with a ferocity that nearly matched the intensity of the battle that Tommy had fought to acquire them. None of the men knew what had taken place at the front of the tunnel. But they all knew that with the twin extremes of death and escape so close, no one would lie. So by the time the message reached back to the anteroom at the base of the shaft leading down from the privy in Hut 107, the words carried a sort of intoxicating religious fervor.
The fighter pilot from New York leaned forward, over the top of the bellows, craning to hear the message being passed back from the next man in line. He listened carefully, as did the man working beside him, who used the moment to seize a second's rest from the backbreaking work of lifting the buckets of sandy earth.
'Repeat that,' the fighter pilot whispered.
'Scott is innocent!' he heard.
'Got it?'
'I got it.'
The fighter pilot and the kriegie lifting buckets looked at each other momentarily. Then both grinned.
The fighter pilot turned and peered up the shaft of the tunnel.
'Hey, up there! Message from the front…'
Major Clark stepped forward, almost elbowing Lincoln Scott aside in his eagerness. He knelt at the side of the entranceway, bending over into the pit.
'What is it? Have they reached the surface?'
The weak candlelight flickered off the upturned faces of the two men in the tunnel anteroom. The pilot from New York shrugged.
'Well, kinda,' he said.
'What's the message?' Clark demanded sharply.
'Scott is innocent!' the fighter pilot said. The bucket man nodded hard.
Clark did not reply. He straightened up.
Lincoln Scott heard the words, but for a moment, the impact of them did not occur to him. He was watching the major, who was shaking his head back and forth, as if fighting off the explosion of the words spoken in such a small space.
Fenelli, however, caught the importance immediately. Not merely in the message, but how it was passed along. He, too, leaned over into the shaft and whispered down to the men below: 'That come all the way from the front? From Hart and Numbers One and Two?'
'Yes. All the way. Pass it back!' the fighter pilot urged.
Fenelli sat up, smiling.
Major Clark's face was rigid.
'You'll do nothing of the sort, lieutenant! That message stops right here.'
Fenelli's mouth opened slightly in astonishment.
'What?' he said.
Major Clark looked at the doctor-in-training and spoke, almost as if Lincoln Scott abruptly had disappeared from the room, ignoring the black flier.
'We don't know for sure how or why or where that message came from and we don't know, I mean. Hart could have forced it out or something. We don't have any answers, and I won't allow it to be spread.'
Fenelli shook his head. He looked over at Scott.
Scott stepped forward, thrusting his chest in front of Major Clark. For a moment his outrage seemed to take him over, and the black flier quivered with the desire to simply lay a right uppercut into the chin of the major. But he fought off this urge, and replaced it with the hardest, coldest stare he could manage.
'What is it about the truth that bothers you so much, major?'
Clark recoiled. He did not reply.
Scott moved to the edge of the tunnel entrance.
'Either the truth comes out, or no one goes in,' he said quietly.
Major Clark coughed, eyeing the black flier, trying to measure the determination in his face.
'There's no time left,' Clark said.
'That's right,' Fenelli said briskly.
'No damn time left.'
Then the medic from Cleveland looked past the major, and made a small wave toward one of the dirt bucket men, hovering in the doorway to the privy.
'Hey!' Fenelli said loudly.
'You got the word from the front?'
The man shook his head.
'Well,' Fenelli said, breaking into a grin.
'Scott is innocent.
It's the real dope and it came from the head of the tunnel. Now, you pass that on. Everybody in this hut is to know. Scott is innocent!
And you tell everybody the line is gonna move any second now, so to get ready.'
