'This way will be fast, too,' he said.
Tommy looked oddly at the ferret, then down the near-black alleyway.
The searchlights had been turned on, and one swept over the top of the nearest hut. In the passing light, Tommy could see the misty rain and fog. Then he realized what was located at the end of the alleyway, just around the corner of the two huts and just beyond his sight line.
The Abort where Bedford's body was found.
'No,' Tommy said abruptly.
'This is the way we're going.'
He pulled his arm from Fritz Number One's grip with a jerk, and took off through the gloomy shadows and lurking darkness of the alleyway.
The ferret hesitated only a second before joining him.
'Please, Lieutenant Hart.' He spoke quietly.
'I was told to take you the longer way.'
'Told by whom?' Hart asked, continuing to march forward.
Both men were walking from darkness to darkness, their path illuminated only by weak light that crept from the interior of the huts, where the modest electricity was still functioning, and the occasional sweeping searchlight beam.
Fritz Number One did not answer, but he did not have to. Tommy Hart strode determinedly around the corner' and immediately saw three men standing outside the Abort. Hauptmann Heinrich Visser, Colonel
MacNamara, and Major Clark.
The three officers turned when Tommy appeared. MacNamara and Clark instantly looked angry, while Visser seemed to grin slightly.
'You're not authorized to be here,' Clark blurted out.
Tommy came to attention, saluting stiffly.
'Sir! If this has something to do with the current case…'
'You are dismissed, lieutenant!' Clark said.
But as he said this, three German soldiers struggling to carry a long, dark rubberized sheet between them, emerged from the interior of the Abort. Tommy realized that Vincent Bedford's body was wrapped inside the sheet, shrouded from view. The three soldiers gingerly walked down the stairs and set the body down. Then they came to attention in front of Hauptmann Visser. He quietly gave an order in German, and the men lifted the body again. They carried it around the building corner and out of sight. At that moment, another German soldier appeared in the doorway to the Abort. This man was wearing a black butcher's-style apron and carried a soapy, dripping scrub brush in his hand. Visser barked another order to this soldier, who saluted, and then returned inside the Abort.
Clark then took a step forward, toward Tommy. His voice was narrow, pinched, and angry.
'I repeat: Lieutenant, you are dismissed!'
Tommy saluted again, and rapidly headed toward Hut 101.
He thought he'd seen several interesting things, not the least of which was the curious idea that it had taken over twelve hours to remove the murdered man's body from the location where it had been discovered. But more curious was that the Germans were cleaning the Abort. This was a task the kriegies routinely performed for themselves.
He stopped just outside the entrance to his hut, breathing hard. If there was any evidence remaining inside the Abort, it was gone now, he told himself. For a moment, he wondered whether Clark and MacNamara had seen what he and Hugh Renaday had: That Trader Vic's killing took place somewhere else. He wasn't certain about their abilities to read a scene like the one he'd investigated that morning.
But he was certain of one thing: Heinrich Visser had.
The question, he thought, was whether the German had shared his observations with the American officers.
By all rights, he should have been exhausted by the day, but the questions and confusions he had gathered in his consciousness kept him lying rigidly in his bunk long after the lights went out, and past when each of the other members of the room had slipped into their own fitful night's sleep. More than once he'd closed his eyes to the snores, the breathing sounds, and the darkness, only to see Vincent Bedford's body stuffed into the Abort stall, or Lincoln Scott huddled in the corner of the cooler cell. In an odd way, all the troublesome images from that day that kept him awake were refreshing, almost exhilarating. They were different, unique. There was an excitement attached to them that quickened his heart and his head. When he finally did drop away, it was with the pleasurable thought of the meeting in the morning that he expected to have with Phillip Pryce.
But it was not morning light that awakened him.
It was a rough hand, closing over his mouth.
He pitched directly from sleep into fear. He half-jerked up in the bunk, only to feel the pressure of the hand shoving him back down. He twitched, trying to rise, but then stopped, as he heard a voice hissing in his ear: 'Don't move. Hart. Just don't move at all…'
The voice was soft, slithery. It seemed to sidle past the abrupt thudding of blood in his ears, the immediate racket of his heartbeat.
He lay back on the bed. The hand still covered his mouth.
'Listen to me, Yankee,' the voice continued in a tone barely above a whisper.
'Don't look up. Don't turn around, just listen to me. And y'all won't get hurt. Can you do that?
Just nod your head.'
Tommy nodded.
'Good,' the voice said. Tommy realized that the man was kneeling by the side of the bunk, just behind his head, enveloped in darkness. Not even the occasional sliver of light from a passing searchlight sweep striking the exterior of the hut and penetrating past the window's wooden shutters helped him to see who was gripping him so tightly. He realized it was the man's left hand over his mouth. He did not know where the man's right hand was. And he did not know whether it held some sort of weapon.
Abruptly, he heard a second voice, whispering from the other side of the bunk. He was startled, and his body must have shaken slightly, because the grip across his mouth tightened even more.
'Ask him,' the second voice demanded.
'Just ask him the question.'
The man at his side grunted quietly.
'Tell me. Hart. Are you a good soldier? Can you follow orders?'
Tommy nodded again.
'Good,' the voice whispered, hissing still.
'I knew it. Because, you see, that's all that we want you to do. All that's required of you. Just follow your orders. Now, do you remember what your orders are?'
He continued to nod.
'Your orders, Hart, are to help justice be done. No more.
No less. You'll do that, won't you, Hart? See that justice is done?'
He tried to speak, but the hand clamped across his mouth prevented him.
'Just nod your head again, lieutenant.'
He nodded, as before.
'We're just making sure of that. Hart. Because no one wants to see justice avoided. You'll be absolutely certain that justice is done, won't you?'
Tommy did not move.
'I know you will,' the voice hissed a final time.
'We all know you will. Everyone in this place…' Tommy could sense the man on his left moving away from the bunk over toward the bunk-room door.
'Don't turn. Don't speak. Don't light a candle. Just lie there,
