guessed that he was probably in his early thirties.
'He will be in charge of the witnesses and evidence. You may make necessary arrangements through him,' Major Clark continued in his snappy, military voice.
'I believe that is all we have, for this moment, colonel. We can proceed with the recording of the plea.'
MacNamara hesitated, then said in a loud, penetrating voice:
'First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, you are accused of the premeditated murder of Captain Vincent Bedford. For the record, how do you plead?'
Scott fairly leapt to his feet to answer, but held his tongue for several seconds. When he did speak, it was loud, decisive, and with unbridled intensity.
'Sir!' His voice filled the entire auditorium.
'Not guilty. Your Honor!'
MacNamara seemed about to reply, but Scott beat him to the silence that had filled the room, half-pivoting where he stood, so that he partially faced the kriegie audience. His voice soared like his preacher father's, filling the air above the crowd of men.
'It is true that I despised Vincent Bedford! From the first minute that I arrived in this camp, he treated me like a dog.
Worse than a dog! He insulted me. He baited me. He taunted me with obscene and hate-filled names. He was an utter racist and he hated me every bit as much as I came to hate him. He wanted me dead from the moment I arrived here! Every man here has heard how he tried to kill me, by trying to get me to cross the deadline. But to this, I did nothing! Any other man here would have been justified in fighting
Vincent Bedford and maybe even killing him for what he tried to do! But I did nothing of the sort!'
Major Clark had leapt to his feet, waving his arms, trying to get the court's attention. He began to yell, 'Objection! Objection!'
But Scott's voice was the greater, and the black flier prevailed.
'I came here to kill Germans!' Scott shouted, suddenly swinging about and pointing an accusing finger directly at Visser.
'Germans like him!'
Visser's face instantly paled, and he abruptly dropped the cigarette from his solitary hand to the floor, grinding it beneath his boot. He half-rose in his seat, then slumped back.
He fixed the black flier with an unbridled look of hatred.
Scott met the gaze with a similarly hard look of his own.
'Maybe some people in the camp have forgotten that's why we're here,' he said loudly, swinging his eyes to MacNamara and then Clark and finally back to the assembled kriegies.
'But not me!'
He paused, letting the sudden silence grip the theater.
'I have been goddamn successful at killing the enemy!
There were nine swastikas painted on the side of my bird before I got shot down.' Scott stared across the rows of men.
'And I'm not alone. That is why we're here!'
And then he paused again, just snatching a quick burst of air, so that his next words resonated throughout the auditorium.
'But someone at Stalag Luft Thirteen has something else in mind! And that someone killed Vincent Bedford…'
Scott drew himself up, his voice barreling through the still air of the theater. He jabbed the air with his finger.
'It could be you, or you, or the man next to you…' As he spoke, he pointed randomly into the audience, fixing each kriegie that he selected with a steady, unwavering gaze.
'I don't know why Vincent Bedford was killed…' He took a deep breath, and then shouted: 'But I'm going to find out!'
Then Scott swung back, facing MacNamara, whose face had reddened, but who at the same time seemed to be listening intently to every word the black flier said, and who seemed to have collected his own anger and stored it someplace deep within himself.
'Not guilty, colonel. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not damn guilty! Not in the slightest!'
And then he abruptly sat down.
The room immediately burst into a tangled Babel of voices, explosions of hurried, excited speech as the collected kriegies reacted to Lincoln
Scott's words. Colonel MacNamara oddly allowed the cacophony to continue for a minute before he started to hammer the hunk of wood, bellowing for order and silence.
'Good job,' Tommy whispered directly into the black flier's ear.
'That'll give them something to think about,' Scott responded.
Hugh was fighting to keep from grinning.
'Order!' MacNamara shouted.
As swiftly as it had burst forth, the noise started to dissipate, suddenly leaving only the sound of the mallet striking the wood. Into this vacuum. Tommy leaped. He shoved his chair back and rose to his feet. He made a small gesture toward Scott and Hugh, and they, too, pushed up. The three men snapped their heels together, coming to attention.
'Sir!' Tommy bellowed, drawing every bit of stentorian presence from deep within his chest.
'The defense will be ready to proceed at zero eight hundred hours on Monday, directly after the morning Appell The three men saluted in unison. MacNamara wordlessly nodded just slightly, and lifted two fingers to his own forehead, returning the salute. Then the accused and his two defenders pivoted, and assuming the same winged formation they used when entering the room, the three men exited the bar, and marched down the center aisle again. Silence followed their heavy tread on the wooden flooring. Tommy could see surprise, confusion, and doubts on the faces of the men jammed into the theater. This was what he had expected their performance would engender. He had anticipated, as well. Major Clark's tight-faced anger and Colonel MacNamara's more calculated reaction. However, the look that had taken him aback had been the wry, almost delighted smile on the face of Clark's assistant.
Walker Townsend. The captain had seemed oddly energized, as if he'd just heard some great and glorious piece of good news, which was. Tommy
Hart thought to himself, the precise opposite response that he'd expected from the challenge they had thrown down.
And as he marched forward, he felt a quiver within him, almost a cold shaft that went through his heart like the first icy breath on a winter morning back home in Vermont. But this lacked the clarity of those times, replacing it with a darkness and a murkiness that seemed almost fog-ridden. Somewhere in that audience, facing him, he knew, was the real reason Vincent Bedford had died. And that man was likely to be less enthusiastic about the threat Lincoln Scott had publicly issued.
And that man might do something about it.
Tommy reached out, shoulders still locked squarely, head back, and pushed open the doors, rapidly exiting the packed theater and rushing out into the midday sunshine of late spring at Stalag Luft Thirteen. He stopped and gasped sharply, breathing in deeply from the rusty, tainted, impure, and barbed-wire enclosed air of imprisonment.
Chapter Seven
