Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  “As if he was fighting back against someone with a knife.”

  “Right-o, Tommy. Defensive wounds.”

  Tommy nodded. “A crime scene that isn’t a crime scene. A Kraut who seems to be helping the wrong side. I’d say we have a few questions.”

  “True enough, Tommy. Questions are good. Answers are bloody well better. You saw MacNamara and Clark. Do you think it will be sufficient merely to throw doubts all over their case?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.” Hugh lit another cigarette, staring at the smoke that curled from his lips, and then looking at the glowing tip. “Before we got shot down, Phillip liked to say that these things will kill us, sooner or later. Maybe so. But it seems to me that they’re about fifth or sixth on the current list of deadly threats. Far behind the Germans, or maybe getting deathly sick. Or I don’t know what else. And right now, I’m wondering if maybe there aren’t a few other items we could add to the list of deadly possibilities. Like ourselves.”

  Tommy nodded, as he reached into his own pocket and pulled out a package of smokes. “Tell Phillip everything,” he said. “Don’t leave out a detail.”

  Hugh smiled. “He’d line me up at dawn and shoot me himself if I did. Poor old sod’s probably pacing back and forth in the bunk room now, behaving for all the world like some overeager child on Christmas eve.” He finished his cigarette and flicked it out onto the ground. “Well, I’d better get going before he swoons from unchecked anticipation and curiosity. Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow you meet Lieutenant Scott. Bring that famous policeman’s eye to bear, will you?”

  “Of course. Although it might be a damn sight easier for me if he was a lumberjack. And a drunken one, at that.”

  When he walked into the bunk room where Trader Vic had lived, Tommy was greeted with a dank silence and glares. The six remaining kriegies were packing their meager possessions together, readying themselves to move. Blankets; thin, scratchy German-issue sheets; whatever extra clothing the men had acquired; cooking utensils; and Red Cross foodstuffs were being gathered in piles on the floor. Men were also taking the hay-stuffed pallets off the bunks and folding them over for transport.

  Tommy walked over to Lincoln Scott’s space. He saw the Bible and Gibbons’s Fall on a makeshift wooden table constructed from a trio of parcel boxes. Inside the top box was Scott’s stash of foodstuffs—all the tinned meats and vegetables, condensed milk, coffee, sugar, and cigarettes that the black flier had accumulated. He also had a small metal church key for opening the tins, and he’d fashioned himself a metal frying pan, using the steel lid from a German waste barrel, attaching a flattened handle that was also steel to the lid by jamming the handle into a small slice on the lid surface. Scott had wrapped an old, tattered cloth around the handle to serve as a grip. Tommy admired the construction of the frying pan. In it, Lincoln Scott displayed typical kriegie ingenuity. The energy to make something out of nothing was the one thing all the prisoners held in common.

  For a moment, Tommy stood by the bunk, staring at the meager collection of possessions. He was struck in that second by the limits to what all the kriegies had. The clothes on their backs, some food, some tattered books. They were all poor.

  Then he turned away from Scott’s items. Across the room two men were sorting through a wooden chest. The chest itself was an unusual sight. It had clearly been constructed by a carpenter who’d spent time on making the edges fit securely, and sanding the surfaces to a polished sheen. Vincent Bedford’s name, rank, and dog tag number were carved in the blond wood in an ornate script. The two men were busily separating foodstuffs from clothing. And, to Tommy’s surprise, he saw one of the men remove a thirty-five-millimeter Leica camera from amid the clothing.

  “Is that Vic’s stuff?” he asked. A foolish question, because the answer was obvious.

  There was silence for a couple of seconds, before one of the men replied: “Who else?”

  Tommy approached closely. One of the men was folding a dark blue sweater. It was a thick, closely knit wool. German naval issue, Tommy thought. He had seen a sweater like that only once before, and that was on the body of a U-boat crewman that had washed ashore in North Africa not far from their base. The Arabs who had discovered the sailor’s body and transported it to the Americans in hope of payment had fought hard over the sweater. It was extremely warm, and the natural oils of the wool repelled moisture. At Stalag Luft Thirteen, in the midst of the harsh Bavarian winter, the sweater would have been a valuable commodity to shivering kriegies.

  Tommy continued to gaze over the assembled riches. He had to stop himself from whistling in appreciation of Trader Vic’s hoard. He counted over twenty cartons of cigarettes alone. In a camp where cigarettes were often the preferred currency of trade and barter, Bedford was a millionaire many times over.

  “There has to be a radio,” he said after a moment. “And probably a good one, too. Where’s that?”

  One of the men nodded, but made no immediate reply.

  “Where’s the radio?” he asked again.

  “None of your fucking business, Hart,” the man sorting through the items muttered. “It’s hidden.”

  “What’s going to happen to Vic’s stuff?” Tommy wondered.

  “What’s it to you, lieutenant?” The other man working through the collection turned abruptly. “I mean, why is it any of your business, Hart? Ain’t you got enough to do with defending that murdering nigger?”

  Tommy didn’t reply.

  “Asshole,” one of the men blurted out. “We ought to just shoot the bastard tomorrow.”

  “He says he didn’t do it,” Tommy said. This statement was greeted with hisses and a few snorts of near-rage.

  The American flier kneeling in front of the chest held up his hand, as if to quiet the other men in the barracks room. “Sure. Of course. That’s what he says. What did you expect? The boy had no friends and Vincent was popular with everybody. And they sure as hell didn’t like each other none too much right from the first minute, and after they had that fight, the boy probably figured he’d better get Vic before Vic got him. Just like a goddamn dogfight, lieutenant. I mean, what are fighter pilots trained to do? There’s only one absolute, essential, can’t be broken goddamn rule for fighter pilots: Shoot first!”

  There was a murmur of assent from the other airmen in the room.

  The flier looked over at Tommy. He continued speaking in a level, taut voice, filled with anger: “Have you ever seen a Lufberry circle, Hart?”

  “A what?”

  “A Lufberry circle. It’s something you learn about on Day One of fighter training. Probably the Luftwaffe learns about it on their first day of training in 109s, too.”

  “I was always in bombers.”

  “Well,” the pilot continued, still speaking bitterly, “a Lufberry circle is named after Raoul Lufberry, the First World War ace. Basically it’s this: Two fighters start following each other in an ever-tightening circle. Sort of round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chases the weasel. Only, who’s chasing whom, huh? Maybe the damn weasel’s chasing the monkey. Anyway, you get into a Lufberry circle and the fighter that manages to turn faster, inside the other, without either stalling out or losing consciousness, wins. The other dies. Simple. Nasty. That’s a Lufberry circle and that’s what Vincent and the nigger were in. Only problem: The wrong guy won.”

  The man turned away.

  “What’s happening to Vic’s stuff?” Tommy asked again.

  Without turning, the pilot shrugged as he answered.

  “The food? Well, Colonel MacNamara told us all to share it. Spread it about all over Hut 101. Maybe have one little feast, courtesy of Vic. That’d be a good way of remembering him, wouldn’t it? One night where no one in the whole damn hut goes to bed hungry. Anyway, the cigarettes are going to the escape committee, whoever the hell they are, who will use them for bribing the Fritzes or any other ferret that needs bribing. Same for the camera and the radio and most of
the clothes. It’s all being turned over to MacNamara and Clark.”

  “Is this everything?”

  “This? Hell, no. Vic has a couple of secret stash spots around the camp. Probably two, maybe three times what you see here. Damn, Hart. Vic was easygoing, too. Didn’t mind sharing all his shit, you know what I mean? I mean, guys in this bunk ate better, weren’t so fucking cold in the winter, and always had plenty of smokes. Hell, he took care of us, all right. Vic was gonna get us all through the war alive and in one piece, and the nigger you’re gonna help took all that away from us.”

  The man rose, pivoting sharply, staring at Tommy Hart.

  “MacNamara and Clark themselves come on in here, tell us to pack up, we’re moving out. Gonna leave the nigger in here alone, ’cept maybe for you. Good thing, Hart. I don’t think the black bastard would have made it to his fucking trial. Vic was one of us. Maybe even the best of us. At least the man knew who his friends were, and he watched out for them.”

  The flier paused, narrowing his gaze.

  “Tell me, Hart. You know who your friends are?”

  It was nearly dark by the time Tommy Hart managed to return to Scott’s cooler cell. He’d talked one of his reluctant bunkmates out of a spare olive-colored turtleneck sweater the man had been sent from home. He’d also obtained a pair of size thirteen army-issue shoes from a modest stockpile kept by the kriegies in charge of distributing Red Cross parcels. The collection of clothes was supposed to go to men who arrived at the prisoner-of-war camp with their uniforms in tatters after having bailed out of stricken warplanes. He’d also taken two thin blankets from Scott’s bunk, along with a tin of processed meat, some canned peaches, and half a loaf of nearly stale kriegsbrot. The guard outside the cooler cell seemed hesitant to allow the items inside until Tommy offered him a pair of cigarettes, and then he was waved ahead.

  Shadows already filled the cell, creeping in through the solitary window vent near the ceiling, making the cooler’s air cold and gray. The stark overhead bulb was weak and dim and seemed defeated by the onset of night.

  As before, Scott was hunched down in a corner. He rose stiffly as Tommy entered the cell.

  “I did what I could,” Tommy said, handing over the clothes.

  Scott grabbed for them eagerly.

  “Jesus,” he said, tugging on the sweater and then the shoes, throwing a blanket across his shoulders and, almost in the same motion, grabbing for the can of peaches. He ripped open the lid and drained the sweet and sticky contents in a single gulp. Then he started to work on the tinned meat.

  “Take your time, make it last,” Tommy said quietly. “It will fill you up better that way.”

  Scott paused, his fingers filled with a morsel of meat halfway to his mouth. The black flier considered what Hart had said and then nodded.

  “That’s right. But damn, Hart, I’m starved.”

  “Everyone’s always hungry, lieutenant. You know that. The question is: To what degree? You say ‘I’m starved’ back home, and all it means is that it’s been maybe six hours since you ate last and you’re ready to sit down and tuck in. Pot roast, maybe. With steamed vegetables and spring potatoes and lots of gravy. Or a pan-fried steak with french fries. And lots of gravy. Here, of course, ‘I’m starved’ means something much closer to the truth, doesn’t it? And if you were one of those poor Russian bastards that went marching by the other day, then, well, ‘I’m starved’ to them would be even closer to reality, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t just be a couple of words. A throwaway phrase. Not at all.”

  Scott paused again, this time chewing his bite of food slowly, deliberately.

  “You are correct, Hart. And a philosopher as well.”

  “Stalag Luft Thirteen brings out the contemplative side of my nature.”

  “That’s because the one thing we all have in abundance is time.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Except, perhaps, for me,” Scott said. Then he shrugged and managed a small smile. “Fried chicken,” he said quietly. Then he laughed outward, a single burst. “Fried chicken with greens and mashed potatoes. The typical black folks’ Sunday afternoon at home after church with the preacher coming to dinner meal. But damn, cooked just right, with a little garlic in the potatoes and some pepper on the chicken to give it a little bite. Cornbread on the side and with a cold beer or a glass of fresh lemonade to wash it all down. . . .”

  “And gravy,” Tommy said. He closed his eyes for an instant. “Lots of thick, dark gravy . . .”

  “Yes. Lots of gravy. The type that’s so thick, you can hardly pour it out of the container. . . .”

  “That you can stick a spoon in, and it’ll stand upright.”

  Scott laughed a second time. Tommy offered him a cigarette, which the black flier took. “These things are supposed to cut the appetite,” he said, inhaling. “I wonder if that’s true.”

  Scott looked down at the empty tins.

  “You think they’ll give me a fried chicken dinner for my last meal?” he asked. “I mean, isn’t that traditional? Condemned man gets his choice before facing the firing squad.”

  “That’s a ways off,” Tommy said sharply. “We aren’t there yet.”

  Scott shook his head fatalistically. “Anyway, Hart, thanks for the food and the clothes. I’ll try to pay you back.”

  Tommy took a deep breath.

  “Tell me, Lieutenant Scott. If you didn’t kill Vincent Bedford, who did? And why?”

  Scott turned away. He blew a smoke ring up toward the ceiling, watching it waft back and forth and then dissipate in the gloom and growing darkness.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he answered sharply. He tugged the blanket draped around his shoulders tight to his body, then slowly lowered himself into the corner of the cooler, almost as if he were descending into a pool of still, dark waters.

  Fritz Number One was waiting outside the cooler entrance to escort Tommy back into the American compound. The ferret was smoking, and shuffling his feet nervously. He tossed the half-smoked cigarette away when Tommy emerged from the cooler, which surprised him, because Fritz Number One was a true addict to tobacco, just like Hugh, usually burning the cigarettes down to their stubs before reluctantly discarding them.

  “It is late, lieutenant,” the ferret said. “Lights out will be soon. You must be in your quarters.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Tommy said.

  The two men marched deliberately toward the gate under the gaze of a pair of machine gunners in the nearest tower, and a Hundführer and his dog that were readying themselves to check the perimeter. The dog barked once at Tommy before being hushed by its handler with a jerk on the glistening metal chain around its neck.

  The gate creaked shut behind them and the two men continued wordlessly across the assembly ground, heading toward Hut 101. Tommy thought he would probably have more questions for Fritz Number One at some later point. But at this moment, he was mostly intrigued by the ferret’s fast pace. “We should hurry,” the German said.

  “What’s the rush?” Tommy asked.

  “No rush,” Fritz replied, and then contradicting himself again, added, “You must be in your bunk room. Quick.”

  The two men reached the alleyway between huts. The fastest route to Hut 101 led down that way. But Fritz Number One grabbed Tommy by the arm, tugging him toward the outside of Hut 103.

  “We should go this way,” the ferret insisted.

  Tommy stopped in his tracks. He pointed ahead. “That’s the right way,” he said.

  Fritz Number One pulled at his arm a second time. “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.