Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  Tommy paused, then asked, “And he’s writing a speech, too, isn’t he? Something that will keep that morning Appell delayed even further, right?”

  Clark grimaced and didn’t reply. But Fenelli did.

  “I knew you were smart enough to figure that out, Hart,” he said with his small laugh. “I told the major that, when he first approached me about making some small alterations in my testimony. But he didn’t think you could.”

  “Shut up, Fenelli,” Clark said.

  “Alterations?” Tommy demanded.

  Clark did not reply to this. He turned to Hart, his face set, illuminated by candles that exaggerated the red rage coloring on his cheeks. “You are correct that the ending of the trial provided us with a crucial opportunity that we elected to seize. Take advantage of. But that’s all it provided. An opportunity. There. Now you’ve had your damn question answered. Get out of the way. We don’t have any time to waste, especially on you, Hart, and you, too, Scott.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Tommy said. “Who killed Trader Vic?” he asked insistently.

  Major Clark pointed a finger directly at Lincoln Scott. “He did,” he replied harshly. “All the evidence points to him. It has from the start. And that’s what the tribunal will conclude tomorrow morning. You can take that to the bank, lieutenant. Now get the hell out of the way.”

  Another bucket rose from the hole in the floor and was seized by a kriegie, who silently moved it into the corridor. Tommy was only peripherally aware that many of the men behind him had pushed forward, trying to hear the words being spoken above the tunnel entrance.

  “Why was Vic killed?” Tommy asked. “I want the damn answers, major!”

  For a moment, the entire corridor jammed with men, and the men working in the tunnel entrance all seemed to hesitate, letting this question echo about the tiny space, painting each kriegie with the same doubt.

  Clark folded his arms in front of his chest. “You won’t be getting any more answers from me, lieutenant,” he said. “All the answers you need have already come out at trial. Everyone here knows that. Now stand aside and let us get finished!”

  The major seemed rocklike. Uncompromising. Tommy was suddenly at a loss as to what to do. It seemed to him that somewhere close by everything that had happened in the camp over the past weeks could be explained, but he had no idea where to turn. The major was turning obstinacy into a rock-solid lie, and Tommy did not know how to break that barrier. He could sense Lincoln Scott wavering at his side, almost defeated by this final obstacle before them. Tommy searched about, trying to find his next step, next maneuver, but was greeted with a confused emptiness within himself. He knew he couldn’t compromise the escape effort. He did not know what threat he could make, what lever he could pull, what invention he could come up with that would break the sudden stalemate in the privy. He thought right at that second that on the other end of the tunnel men were going to break free, and the truth was going to leave with them.

  And just as this thought crept into his heart, Nicholas Fenelli abruptly piped up again. “You know, Hart, the major isn’t going to help you. He hates Lieutenant Scott as much as Trader Vic did, and probably for the same damn reasons. He probably wants to be there to see that Kraut firing squad take aim. Hell, sounds to me like he’d be willing to give the damn order to fire. . . .”

  “Shut up, Fenelli!” Clark said. “That’s a direct order!”

  Tommy looked down at the man who wanted to be a doctor, who shrugged, again ignoring the major.

  “You want some answers, Tommy? Well, it seems to me you’re going to have to dig hard for them tonight.”

  Tommy felt a sudden chill in the room, as if he’d stepped into a pocket of cold air. “I don’t follow,” he said, hesitating.

  “Sure you do,” Fenelli answered, with another small, braying laugh, and a mocking sneer directed toward Major Clark. “Let me put it to you this way, Tommy. . . .”

  The medic held out a small piece of white paper. Tommy saw the number twenty-eight written in black pencil in the middle of the sheet. He looked at Fenelli.

  “I’m twenty-eight,” Fenelli said slowly. “In order to get that number, all I had to do was maybe change my trial testimony a bit. Maybe lie a little. Just take away your defense. Of course, they didn’t expect your little maneuver with Visser. Didn’t expect that at all. That was pretty neat. Anyway, Tommy, the guys right in front of me, well, they’re not rotten bastards like I am, who paid a price for their spot in this line. Most of those guys are the good guys, Hart. There are some forgers and some engineers and some tunnel rats. They get the higher numbers, right? They’re the guys who designed this thing, and did all the really hard work and just about everything else. Just about everything. But not quite everything. So, let me ask you a question, Tommy. . . .”

  Fenelli’s smile faded instantly, replaced with a harsh, hard look that said almost as much as the words that followed. “I’m just a liar, and I got number twenty-eight. So, where do you suppose the men willing to kill a man in order to keep this tunnel a secret would be? Do you think maybe they might be at the very top of the list?”

  Tommy was about to blurt out But how? when he saw the answer.

  A deep, almost painful, cold shaft of fear sliced through his heart and lodged deep in his stomach. He could feel sweat burst forth on his temples, beneath his arms, and his throat went abruptly dry. He knew his hands were starting to shake, and the muscles in his thighs twitched in sudden terror.

  At his side, Scott must have understood the panic that settled within Tommy, because he said quietly, “I’ll go. You can’t go down there. I know that. You wait here.”

  But Tommy shook his head back and forth hard.

  “They won’t believe you, even if you did manage to come back with the truth. But they’ll have to believe me.”

  From his position near the tunnel entrance, Fenelli chimed in: “He’s right, Scott. You’re the one facing the firing squad. Got nothing to lose by lying. But there’s a good chance that all these guys here, the ones not going out tonight, well, they’re likely to believe what Tommy says. Because he’s one of them. Been in the bag for goddamn nearly forever, and he’s as white as they are. Sorry, but that’s the truth.”

  Scott seemed to grow tense, his arms rigid. Then he nodded, although it clearly took a great effort for him to do this.

  Tommy stepped forward.

  Major Clark stepped into his path. “I won’t allow . . .” he began.

  “Yes, you will,” Scott said coldly. He did not need to say anything else. The major eyed the black flier, then stepped back quickly.

  “You watch my back, Lincoln,” Tommy said. “I won’t be long. I hope.”

  He did not wait to hear the black airman’s acknowledgment. Knowing that if he hesitated in the slightest, he wouldn’t be able to force himself to do what he now knew he had to do, Tommy stepped to the edge of the tunnel. There were candles spaced out, on handcarved ledges, leading down into the narrow pit. A single strand of half-inch-thick black German telephone cable probably stolen from the back of a truck and strong enough to hold a man’s weight was fastened to the edge of the toilet, anchored there. Tommy sat down on the lip of the tunnel hole. The man beneath him passed up a bucket filled with dirt, and then squeezed back, pressing himself into the dirt of the tunnel wall. Tommy seized hold of the cable and, filled with utter terror remembered from his childhood and many hard nightmares, slowly lowered himself down into the cold emptiness waiting below him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE END OF THE TUNNEL

  By the time he reached the bottom of the shaft, Tommy thought he could no longer breathe. Every foot he dropped himself into the earth seemed to rob him of air, so that when finally his toes touched the hard, packed dirt twenty feet down, his breath was already coming in short, spasmodic bursts, wheezy and harsh, his chest feeling as if a giant rock were pressing down upon it.

  There were two men working in a small space, almo
st an anteroom at the head of the actual tunnel, perhaps six feet in width and barely four feet high. Their faces were illuminated by a pair of candles mounted in emptied meat tins; the faint light seemed to struggle against the shadows that threatened to overcome the entire space. Both men wore rings of sweat around their foreheads; their cheeks were streaked with dirt and exhaustion. One man was dressed in a suit not that different from the one Fenelli wore, and he was seated behind a makeshift bellows, operating the pump furiously. The bellows made a small whooshing sound, as it pumped air up the tunnel; Tommy guessed this kriegie must be number twenty-seven. The other man wore only skivvies. He was small, compact, and heavily muscled. It was his job to take each bucket of dirt that was passed back and climb it up the shaft for distribution.

  The man in the suit spoke first. He didn’t stop his pumping at the bellows, but astonishment marked each of his words. “Hart! Jesus, buddy, what the hell are you doing here?” Tommy peered through the flickering light and saw that the man doing the pumping was the fighter pilot from New York, the man who had helped him in the assembly yard.

  “Answers,” Tommy wheezed. He pointed up the tunnel. “In there.”

  “You’re going up the tunnel?” the New Yorker asked.

  Tommy nodded. “Need the truth.” He choked out each word harshly.

  “The truth is up there? About Trader Vic?”

  Tommy nodded again.

  The man continued to work, but looked surprised. “You sure? I don’t get it. The tunnel and Vic’s death? Major Clark never said anything to anybody working this dig that Vic had something to do with this.”

  “All hidden,” Tommy coughed out. “All connected.” It took an incredible effort for him to drag enough air past all his fear to find enough wind to speak. “Got to go up there and get the truth.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” the pilot said, shaking his head back and forth. His face glistened with the effort from pumping the bellows. “I’ll say this for you, buddy. You may not find that whoever it is you’re looking for is all that eager to talk. Especially with freedom only a coupla feet away.”

  “Got to go,” Tommy repeated, “got no choice anymore.” Each word he spoke seemed to sear his chest like a burst of superheated air exploding from a fireball.

  The New Yorker continued his hard work without hesitation. He shrugged.

  “All right,” he said, “here’s the deal. There are twenty-six guys spaced out down the length of the tunnel. A kriegie every ten feet or so. Each bucket gets passed forward to the front, filled up, then passed back. Each guy scoots forward like a crab, then backs up, sorta like some crazy turtle in reverse. We’re on a pretty tight schedule here, so you better keep moving and get whatever it is you’re gonna do, done. And you’re gonna hafta squeeze by every guy in the tunnel. There’s a rope to help you pull yourself along. But for Christ’s sake don’t hit the goddamn ceiling! Try not to lift your head at all. We used wood from the Red Cross parcels to shore up the roof, but it’s unstable as hell, and if you bang into it, it’s likely to come down on your head. Maybe on everybody’s heads. Try not to scrape the walls, either. They ain’t much better.”

  Tommy took in everything the man said. He turned his eyes toward the tunnel shaft. It was narrow, terrifying. No more than two feet by three feet. Each kriegie waiting in the tunnel had a single fat candle creating little islands of light around them; those were the only sources of illumination along the entire length.

  The New Yorker smiled. “Hey, Tommy,” he said, grinning through the exertion, “when I get home and make my first million and I need some damn sharp polished-shoes Ivy League lawyer to watch out for my money and my butt, you’re gonna be the guy I’m gonna call. You can count on it. Anyway, hope you find what you’re looking for,” he said. Then he bent forward, peering up into the tunnel, and he half-whispered, half-shouted a sort of warning: “Man coming up. Make way!”

  “Hope you make it home okay,” Tommy managed to say, his throat already parched with dust and fear.

  “Gotta try,” the New Yorker said. “Better than spending another minute wasting away in this damn place.”

  Then he bent down and renewed his pumping with increased vigor, forcing blast after blast of air up the length of the tunnel.

  Tommy ducked down, on his hands and knees. He hesitated for just an instant, finding the rope with his fingers and grasping hold of it, then he thrust himself forward, on his belly, crawling forward like some eager newborn, but with none of a child’s sense of adventure. Instead, all he could discern was a deep, cavernous terror echoing within him, and all he knew was that the answers he needed that night lay some seventy-five yards ahead, at the very end of what any reasonable person would take one single glance at and recognize was little more than a long, dark, and dangerously narrow grave.

  Hugh Renaday was also crawling.

  Moving slowly, with painstaking deliberateness, he’d managed to cover almost a hundred yards, so that he was now well into the center of the open exercise and assembly area, and he deemed it reasonable now to turn and try to maneuver back close enough to the front of Hut 101 where he could burst up and sprint for the doorway when the final shadows of the night aligned themselves conveniently. Of course, he realized, sprinting was going to be an experience. The pain in his knee was excruciating, a flower of agony dropping throbbing petals of hurt throughout his entire leg.

  For a moment, the Canadian lowered his face into the dirt, tasting the dry, bitter grime on his tongue. The exertion of crawling had forced him into a sweat, and now, taking a second to rest, he felt a hard chill move through the core of his body. He remembered a time when he was younger and he’d had the wind knocked out of him during a game, and he’d lain on the ice, gasping, feeling the deep cold seep through his jersey and socks, as if to remind him who was really the stronger. He kept his face buried down, thinking that this night was trying to teach him much the same lesson.

  A part of him had already accepted that he would be shot and killed that night. Maybe in the next few minutes. Maybe he had an hour or two left. This gloomy sense of despair fought hard against a wild and almost uncontrollable urge to live. The fight between these two conflicting desires was clouded by all that had happened, and the more pure need that Hugh inwardly seized on that regardless of what happened to him, he would do nothing to compromise his friends’ lives. And he supposed not compromising them meant not compromising the escape that was being mounted that night.

  A great quiet surrounded him, and he listened to his raspy breathing. For a moment, silently, he spoke to his own knee, berating it: How could you do this to me? It wasn’t that hard a cut. I’ve asked you to do much more difficult things, turns and spins, and drives on the ice, and you’ve never complained before, and certainly never betrayed me. Why this bloody night? The knee did not answer back directly, but continued to throb, as if settling into a comfortable pain that it could deliver steadily. He wondered what he had done. Torn ligaments? Dislocation? Then, still face down in the dirt, he shrugged, as if to say that it made no difference.

  Slowly he lifted his eyes, carefully surveying the area around him. The guards in the towers, the Hundführers leading their dogs around the perimeter, were nowhere to be seen, but, he told himself, that didn’t mean they were not there. All it meant was that he could not see them. Still, he was encouraged. If he could not see them, then perhaps they could not see him.

  Carefully, still hugging the earth, Hugh Renaday turned slightly, snaking himself forward again, but now angling back on a diagonal path toward Hut 101. He made a plan, which also reinvigorated him: crawl another fifty yards, then wait. Wait at least an hour, maybe two. Wait for the last and deepest part of the night to arrive, and then make an attempt for the hut. That would give Tommy and Scott enough time to do whatever it was that they had figured out they had to do. And, he hoped, it would give the escapees enough time as well.

  Hugh sighed sharply, as he pushed forward with slow, yet steady determina
tion. It seemed to him that there were many needs being filled that night, and he was damned if he knew which was the most important. He knew only that he was crawling along a razor-thin edge himself. He had an odd, almost funny memory strike him right then. He recalled a science class in high school, where the teacher had boastfully told a disbelieving bunch of students that a slug could actually crawl across the straight edge of a razor without slicing itself in two. And the teacher had backed this up, producing a brown, slimy slug and the obligatory shiny razor, and the students had lined up and watched in astonishment as the snail did precisely as advertised. He thought that this night he had to be no different from that snail. At least, that was what he believed.

  Thirty yards to his right, the barbed-wire barricade loomed up. He kept himself pressed down, told himself to measure progress in inches, maybe even centimeters. He told himself: Let the night work for you.

  At that moment, though, he heard a single, sharp bark, from just beyond the wire fence, followed by a clear, harsh, low growl. He froze, pushing himself down as far as he could into the embrace of cold dirt.

  There was a metal jangle as a Hundführer pulled back hard on his dog’s chain. He heard the goon talk to his animal, calling it by name. “Prinz! Vas ist das? Bei Fuss! Heel!” The dog’s growl had changed into a constant teeth-bared guttural sound, as it struggled to pull ahead.

  Hugh shuddered, barely with enough time to be afraid.

  Each Hundführer carried a small, battery-driven flashlight. The Canadian heard a click, and then saw a weak cone of light sweep back and forth a few feet away. He dug himself even deeper, still frozen in position. The dog barked again, and Hugh saw the edge of the torch’s beam trickle across the back of his outstretched hands. He did not dare move them.

  Then he heard a voice cry out in the darkness: “Halt! Halt!”