firing squad if he didn't come up quickly with some sort of genuine scheme.
As he walked, he shook his head, thinking it was all well and good to suggest that they find the real killer, but he was unsure what the first step would be in that search. In that second, he longed for the simple navigational tasks aboard the Lovely Lydia. Find a marker, use a chart, note a landmark, make some simple calculations with a slide rule, bring out the sextant and take a sighting, and then chart a course to safety. Read the stars glittering above in the heavens and find the way home. Tommy thought it had been easy. And now, in Stalag Luft Thirteen, he had the same task in front of him, yet was unsure what tools to use to navigate. He walked along quickly, feeling the early morning damp loosen in the air around him. It would be another good day for flying, he thought to himself. This was incongruous. Far better to wake up to fog, sleet, and wildly tossing storms. Because if it were a clear, bright, warm day, this meant men would die. It seemed to him that death was better delivered on gray, cold days, the chilling, wet times of the soul.
Fritz Number One was shuffling his feet as he waited. He made a smoking gesture, making a V with two fingers and then lifting them to his lips. Tommy handed him a pair of cigarettes.
The ferret lit one, and placed the other carefully in his breast pocket.
'Not so many good American smokes now, with Captain Bedford dead,' he said, eyes sadly following the thin trail of smoke rising from the end of the burning cigarette.
The ferret smiled wanly.
'Maybe I should be quitting.
Better maybe to quit than smoke the ersatz tobacco we are being issued.'
Fritz Number One strode along with his head declined, giving him the appearance of a lanky, gangly dog that has been disciplined by its master.
'Captain Bedford always had plenty of smokes,' he said.
'And he was most generous. He took good care of his friends.'
Tommy nodded, but was suddenly alert to what the ferret was saying.
'That's what the men in his bunk room said, too.'
Almost exactly. Tommy thought to himself. Word for word.
Fritz Number One continued.
'Captain Bedford, he was liked by many men?'
'It seemed that way.'
The ferret sighed, still walking along rapidly.
'I am not so sure of this, Lieutenant Hart. Captain Bedford, he was very clever. Trader Vic was a good name for him. Sometimes men are too clever. I do not think clever men are always so well liked as they maybe believe. Also, in war, to be so clever, this is not a good thing, I also think.'
'Why is that, Fritz?'
The ferret was speaking softly, his head still bent.
'Because war, it is filled with mistakes. So often the wrong die, is this not true, Lieutenant Hart? The good man dies, the bad man lives.
The innocent are killed. Not the guilty. Little children die, like my two little cousins, but not generals.'
Fritz Number One had deposited an unmistakable harshness in the soft words he spoke.
'There are so many mistakes, sometimes I wonder if God is really watching. It is not possible, I think, to outwit war's mistakes, no matter how clever you may be.'
'Do you think Trader Vic's death was a mistake?' Tommy asked.
The ferret shook his head.
'No. That is not what I mean.'
'What are you saying?' Tommy demanded sharply, but beneath his breath.
Fritz Number One stopped. He looked up quickly, and stared at Tommy.
He seemed about to answer, but then, in the same moment, looked past Tommy's shoulder, his eyes directed at the office building where the commandant administered the camp. His mouth was partly open, as if words were gathering within his throat. Then, abruptly, he clamped shut, and shook his head.
'We will be late,' he said between tightly pursed lips. This statement, of course, meant nothing, because there was nothing to be late for save the mid-morning hearing still several hours distant. The ferret made a quick, dismissive gesture, pointing toward the British compound, and hurried Tommy in that direction. But not fast enough to prevent Tommy from tossing a single glance over his shoulder at the administration building, where he caught sight of Commandant Edward Von Reiter and Hauptmann Heinrich Visser standing on the front steps, busily engaged in a rapid-fire conversation, both men seemingly on the verge of raising their voices angrily.
Phillip Pryce and Hugh Renaday were waiting for Tommy just inside the entrance to the British compound. Hugh, as always, was pacing about, almost making circles around their older friend, who wore his anticipation more subtly-in the lift of his eyebrows, the small upward turn at the corners of his mouth. Despite the fine morning that was rising around them, bright sunshine and advancing temperatures, he still draped a blanket across his shoulders, again giving him an antique, almost Victorian look. His cough seemed immune to the advantages of the spring weather, still punctuating much of what he said with dry, hacking sounds.
'Tommy,' Pryce said, as the American quickly approached.
'Let us walk a bit on this excellent morning. Walk and talk.
I've always found that sometimes movement can stimulate one's imagination.'
'More bad news, Phillip,' Tommy replied.
'Well I have interesting news,' Hugh replied.
'But you first. Tommy.'
As the three men traveled around the perimeter, just inside the British camp's similar barbed-wire deadline and looming guard towers. Tommy filled them in on the discovery of the knife.
'Had to be planted there,' he concluded.
'I mean, the whole show was orchestrated like some carnival magic act.
Poof!
The murder weapon. The alleged murder weapon. It made me furious, too, the way Clark baited Lincoln Scott into agreeing to the search. I would bet my GI insurance that they already knew the knife was there.
Then they make this little scene of searching his stuff, not that he has much, and then wham!
Bang! They pull back the bed and find a loose board. Scott probably didn't even know there was a hiding place underneath the flooring. Only the old boys in the camp know about those spaces. Totally transparent, the whole performance…'
'Yes,' Pryce said, nodding, 'but nastily effective. No one, of course, will see the transparency, but the word that the murder weapon has been discovered will likely further poison the atmosphere. And giving it all the veneer of legality, as well. The issue. Tommy, of course, is less how it was planted than why. Now, perhaps the how will provide us the why, but the reverse is often true, as well.'
Tommy shook his head. He was a little embarrassed, but spoke quickly, so as not to display it. He had not yet made that particular leap of logic.
'I don't have an answer to that, Phillip. Other than the obvious: to close all the loopholes through which Lincoln Scott might manage to extricate himself.'
'Correct,' Pryce said, with a small flourish of his hand in the air.
'What I find most interesting is that we seem, once again, to be thrust into an unusual situation. Do you not see what has taken place, so far, with each aspect of this case, Tommy?'
'What?'
'The distinctions between truth and falsehood are very fine and narrow.
Almost imperceptible…'
'Go on, Phillip.'
'Well, in every situation, with every piece of evidence that has surfaced so far, Lincoln Scott is pushed into the awkward position of providing an alternate explanation to the arrival of a fact. It is as if our
