Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  At the top, he seized the rope. There were two sharp tugs, and then Tommy, without thinking, thrust himself out of the hole, climbing as quickly as he could. He was barely aware that, suddenly, he had climbed out and was scrambling across the moss and pine-needle floor of the forest. He felt a wave of cold air encapsulate him, washing over him like a shower on a hot day. He threw himself forward, keeping the rope in his hands, until he reached the base of a large pine tree. The rope was tied there, perhaps forty feet away from the hole in the ground. Tommy slumped back against the tree. He could hear scratching noises coming from the underbrush, and he guessed that was the noise of Murphy and the bandleader making their way through the tangled forest foliage, heading for the road to town. For a second he thought it was immense, a thunderous noise, destined to draw every light, every guard, and every gun, right in his direction. He shrank back against the tree, and listened, letting the world fill with silence.

  Tommy took a deep breath and pivoted about.

  The tunnel had emerged just inside the dark edge of the forest. The barbed-wire walls glinted perhaps fifty yards distant. The nearest machine-gun tower was at least another thirty yards beyond that, and facing in, toward the center of the camp. The goons inside would have their backs to the escape. And any Hundführer walking the outside perimeter would also be looking in the opposite direction. The tunnel engineers had painstakingly surveyed their distances, and had done an excellent job.

  For a moment, his head reeled, as he understood suddenly where he was. Beyond the wire. Beyond the searchlights. Behind the machine-gun sights. He looked up, and through the covering canopy of tree branches he could see the last stars of the night blinking in the great expanse of the heavens. For a second, he felt as if he were one with all that distance, all those millions of black miles of space.

  Tommy thought: I’m free.

  He almost burst out in laughter. He rolled back against the tree trunk, squeezing his arms tight around his body, as if he could contain within himself the burst of excitement.

  Then he turned his attention to the task before him. A quick glance at the watch Lydia had placed on his wrist so many years earlier told him that dawn’s light would begin to creep out of the east in not nearly enough time for all seventy-five men to get out. Not at a rate of one every three minutes. Tommy took a fast look around, inspecting the darkness, and saw that he was completely alone. He gave the rope two quick tugs. Seconds later he saw the shaky outline of Number Three kicking his way free of the tunnel.

  The two guards who had accompanied Hugh from the assembly yard to the command barracks were sitting on the wooden front steps, smoking the bitter German ration of cigarettes and complaining to each other that they should have searched the Canadian and seized his Players before leading him into the offices. Both men leapt up when Fritz Number One walked out of the front door, snapping quickly to attention, tossing their smokes into the darkness, where they made red ellipses of burning coal for an instant, before dying out.

  Fritz threw a single look back over his shoulder, making certain that Hauptmann Visser had not followed him outside. Then he spoke rapidly and sharply to the two privates. “You,” he pointed at the man on the right. “You are to go inside directly and keep the prisoner under guard. Hauptmann Visser has ordered the prisoner’s execution, and you are to make certain that he does not attempt to escape!”

  The guard snapped his boots together and saluted. “Ja wohl!” he said briskly. The guard grabbed his weapon and headed toward the office entrance.

  “Now you,” Fritz said, speaking softly and with caution. “You are to follow these orders precisely.”

  The second guard nodded, listening closely.

  “Hauptmann Visser has ordered the execution of the Canadian officer. You are to go directly to the guards’ barracks and find Feldwebel Voeller. He is on duty this night. You are to inform him of the Hauptmann’s order, and request that he immediately assemble a firing squad and bring it here double-time. . . .”

  The man nodded a second time. Fritz took a deep breath. His own throat was parched and dry, and he realized that he was walking a line every bit as dangerous as the one walked that night by Hugh Renaday.

  “There is a field telephone in the guards’ barracks. Tell Voeller that it is imperative that he receive confirmation of this order from Commandant Von Reiter. Imperative! He is to do this without delay! In that way, he will arrive back here with the firing squad before the prisoners have awakened! This must all be accomplished quickly, do you understand?”

  The man threw his shoulders back. “Confirmation from the commandant—”

  “Even though it means awakening him at his home . . .” Fritz interrupted.

  “And returning with the firing squad. As ordered, corporal!”

  Fritz Number One nodded slowly himself, then dismissed the guard with a wave. The man pivoted and took off at a run, pounding up the dusty camp road toward the guards’ barracks. Fritz hoped the telephone in the hut was operating. It had a nasty habit of failing three out of four times. He swallowed hard and dry. He did not know whether Commandant Von Reiter would confirm Hauptmann Visser’s order or not. He knew only one thing: Someone was going to die that night.

  Behind him, Fritz Number One heard the door open and bootsteps on the wooden planks. He turned about and saw Hauptmann Visser exiting from the offices. He, too, snapped to attention.

  “I have given your orders, Herr Hauptmann! A man has gone to bring Feldwebel Voeller and a firing squad.”

  Visser grunted and returned the salute. He stepped down from the stairs and looked up into the sky. Visser smiled.

  “The Canadian officer was correct. It is a fine night, do you not think, corporal?”

  Fritz Number One nodded. “Yes sir.”

  “It would be a fine night for many things.” Visser paused. “Do you have an electric torch, corporal? A flashlight?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then give it to me.”

  Fritz Number One handed over the flashlight.

  “I think,” Visser said, still peering up into the dark heavens, before lowering his eyes and sweeping them across the expanse of the camp, and the wire that glinted in distant lights, “that I shall take a bit of a walk myself. Just to take in a little of the fine night air, as the flying officer so helpfully suggested.” Visser clicked on the flashlight. Its weak spray of light illuminated the dusty ground a few feet in front of him. “Make certain that my orders are followed without delay,” he said.

  Then, without another look, Visser started off, marching quickly, with determination, heading toward the line of trees on the far side of the compound.

  Fritz Number One watched for several minutes, alone in the darkness outside the administration building. He was torn between the conflicts of orders and duties. He understood, however, that the commandant, who was his great benefactor, did not approve of Visser operating unseen. Fritz thought it ironic that his job at the camp required him to spy on both types of enemies.

  He gave the Hauptmann a head start of another couple of minutes. Just to the point where the weak light the officer held in his only hand had almost disappeared in the faraway darkness. Then Fritz Number One stepped out from the front of the building and moving steadily through the last of the night, followed after him.

  Tommy kept moving the escaping kriegies through the tunnel in sturdy, slow fashion, patiently sticking to the timetable that the bandleader had told him, tugging on the rope every two to three minutes. Flier after flier launched himself through the ragged hole in the earth and crawled to the base of the tree, where Tommy remained poorly hidden. A couple of the men seemed surprised to see him alive. Others merely grunted before disappearing into the woods that stretched out behind him. But most of the kriegies had a quick, reassuring word for Tommy. A pat on the back. A whispered, “Good luck,” or “See yah in Times Square!” The man from Princeton had added a “Well done, Harvard. They must have taught you something worthwhile at
that second-rate institution. . . .” before he, too, slipped silently into the cover of trees and bushes.

  It was frustrating going. More than once Tommy had held his breath when he’d detected the figure of a Hundführer and his dog moving along the far edge of the wire. Once a searchlight had clicked on in the tower closest to the escape, but had swung its probing beam in the opposite direction. Tommy remained huddled by the tree, trying to be alert to every sound around him, thinking that any single noise could be the noise of betrayal. And any sound could signal death. Either for himself or for one of the men setting off toward town, the station, and the series of morning trains that would carry them away from Stalag Luft Thirteen.

  Every few seconds, Tommy glanced down at the dial of his watch and thought that the escape was moving along too slowly. The steady creep of morning would bring the escape to a halt as rapidly as discovery. But he knew also that hurrying would just as swiftly defeat the escape. He gritted his teeth and stuck to the plan.

  Some seventeen of the men spread down the length of the tunnel had made it up and out when Tommy first spotted the weak flashlight beam bouncing erratically toward him, probably no more than thirty yards away. The light was moving right at the edge of the forest, not along the wire in the hands of a Hundführer, on a collision path with the tunnel exit.

  He froze in position, watching the light.

  It probed and penetrated, swinging first one way, then another, like a dog just picking up an unusual scent on a wayward wind. He could tell that whoever was behind the light was hunting, but not searching in a systemized, deliberate fashion. More curious, almost questioning, with a slight element of uncertainty in each movement. Tommy pushed himself back, trying to blend against the tree, gingerly swinging around behind, so that he was completely concealed. And then, he understood, hiding did him no good.

  The light moved forward, closing the distance.

  He could feel his heart accelerating within his chest.

  There is a spot far beyond fear that soldiers find, where all the children of terror and death are arrayed against them. It is a terrible and deadly location where some men find paralysis and others are trapped within a miasma of loss and agony. Tommy was perilously close to that spot, as his muscles twitched and his breath came in short raspy bursts, watching the slow progress of the light inexorably closing in on the escape hole. He could see that there was no chance that the German on the other end of the light would miss the exit, and certainly no chance he would miss the rope stretched across the ground. And Tommy could see, as well, that there was no way he could race forward and throw himself down the tunnel without instantly being seen and an alarm sounded. In that second, he understood: He was as good as captured. Perhaps as good as shot.

  He caught his breath.

  Tommy knew, as well, that waiting on the top rung of the ladder, eagerly anticipating the two tugs on the rope that would signal his chance had arrived, was Number Eighteen. He tried, in that moment, to remember who Eighteen was. He had pushed past him, in the narrowness of the tunnel, it seemed hours earlier, been close enough to smell the man’s anxious sweat, feel his breath, but still Tommy couldn’t put a face to the number. Number Eighteen was a flier, just as he was, and Tommy knew he was poised, inches below the surface of the earth, eager, nervous, excited, and expectant, perhaps a little impatient, the rope tight in his hands, praying for his opportunity and praying, probably, for the same thing that all men who know that death is lurking close by, with all its capriciousness, pray for.

  The light swung a few yards closer.

  In that second, Tommy realized it was completely up to him.

  With every foot that brought the light closer, the choice became clearer. More defined. It was not that he was being called upon to risk everything as much as it was that everyone else had risked so much and he was the only man available to protect the chances and hopes taken that night. He had foolishly believed that descending into that tunnel and fighting for the truth about Lincoln Scott and Trader Vic had been the only test he would undergo that night. But he was wrong, for the real battle lay directly in front of him, moving slowly yet steadily toward the tunnel exit. He had been young when he enlisted in the air corps, and filled with a patriotic fervor when he entered his first battle, only to come quickly to understand that there is much in war that is brave, little that is truly noble. It is only in the distant outcome that historians debate where some sense of nobility reigns. Instead, what is delivered in the most hellish of fashions are the most elemental of hard and dirty choices, where all that Tommy had once been and all he hoped he might be paled harshly when measured against the urgent needs of so many men that night.

  Bookish Tommy Hart—a student of laws and a most unlikely warrior, who in truth wanted nothing more than to return home to the girl he loved and the life he’d lived, and the life he’d promised himself with all his hard work and studies—swallowed hard, clenched his hands into fists, and slowly started to move, angling toward the approaching light. He moved stealthily, commandolike, his eyes focused on the threat, his throat parched, his heart pounding, his task suddenly and terribly crystalline.

  He remembered what the bandleader had said in the tunnel: We’re all killers.

  He hoped the musician was right.

  Tommy closed on the target, barely daring to breathe.

  The hole in the ground that he was maneuvering to protect was behind him, obliquely. The light beam in front still swung haphazardly back and forth. He could not see who wielded the light, but he was relieved when he craned his head forward, and couldn’t detect the accompanying sound of a dog’s sniffing and shuffling.

  The light moved a few steps closer, and Tommy tensed each muscle, poised in ambush.

  A few feet behind him, hidden just beneath the surface of the ground, Number Eighteen could no longer stand the tension of waiting for a signal. He had raced through all the possibilities for delay in his head, measuring each of the dangers against the overwhelming need to get up and get moving. He knew how tight the schedule was, and knew, as well, that the only men who truly stood a chance at successfully escaping were the men who made it to the train station before any sort of alarm was given. Number Eighteen had worked many hours digging the tunnel, and more than once had been pulled choking from dusty cave-ins, and with an impulsiveness born of youth, had rashly decided within himself that breaking free was more important even than life. He could not stand the idea of coming so close to the outside of the wire and not making a run for it. And so his impatience overcame whatever bonds of reason he had remaining after spending so many hours flat on his stomach in the tunnel, and he decided in that second to make his move, signal or not.

  He reached both hands up, thrusting himself through the hole, up into the clear air, pushing himself like a man vaulting out of a pool of water.

  The noise froze Tommy.

  The light beam swung in the direction of the scrambling sound, and Tommy heard a surprised and whispered German, “Mein Gott!”

  Visser could just see, at the edge of the faint beam, the dark shape of Number Eighteen, bursting forward out of the exit hole and hightailing it into the woods. The shocked Hauptmann took several quick steps forward and then stopped. As quickly as he could, he lifted the flashlight to his mouth, to hold it there, the only way that he could get his hand free to seize his pistol. It was, of course, the luckiest thing for the escapees, for the pressure of the light between his teeth kept Visser from immediately shouting out an alarm. The German pulled furiously at the holster flap and grabbed at the Mauser strapped at his waist.

  He had nearly tugged the weapon free when Tommy smashed into him, aiming high on his chest, like a fullback protecting a ball carrier.

  The impact nearly knocked the wind from both men. The flashlight was thrown into a bush, its deadly beam smothered by leaves and branches. Tommy did not see this. He thrust himself at the German, grabbing for the man’s throat.

  The two men tangled together,
falling backward, the force of Tommy’s assault carrying them just within the line of trees at the forest’s edge, pushing them out of sight of the towers and the guards walking the far perimeter. They were locked together, anonymously, in the pitch black.

  At first, Tommy did not know who he was fighting. He knew only that the man was the enemy, and that he had with him a light, a gun, and perhaps the most dangerous weapon of all, his voice. Each of these three things could kill him with ease, and Tommy knew that he had to fight against each. He tried to find the light, but it had disappeared, and so he punched out, flailing fists desperately, trying to neutralize the other two dangers.

  Visser rolled sideways against the force of the assault, fighting back. He was a cold, highly trained, and experienced soldier, and he knew instantly what the stakes were. He absorbed the blows from Tommy’s fists raining down on him, and concentrated on finding the Mauser. He kicked back with both legs, landing one shot to Tommy’s midsection, hearing a sharp exhale of breath.

  Although it was not in Visser’s nature to call for help, he tried to do this. “Help!” he managed to squeeze out weakly, his own lungs still raging with the loss of air from Tommy’s initial attack. The word seemed to linger around the two struggling men, then dissipate in the darkness surrounding them. Visser seized at the night air, filling his chest to bellow a cry for assistance, but, in that second, Tommy’s hand found his mouth.

  Tommy had landed nearly behind the German. He was able to wrap one leg around the German’s midsection, pulling him back on top of him, deeper into the shadows of the forest. At the same time, Tommy thrust his left hand deep into the German’s mouth, stuffing Visser’s throat with his own fingers, trying to choke the German. He was still only obliquely aware that there was a weapon, and it took him another half-second to realize that the man he fought had but one arm.

  “Visser!” he whispered sharply.