"Did anyone see you? When you awoke?"

"How would I know?"

"Well, was anyone else in the toilet?"

"No."

"What were you doing there, that late?"

"I told you…"

"Nobody wakes up and starts walking around in the middle of the night, not here, not now, unless they're sick or they can't sleep because they're afraid of having nightmares.

Maybe back at home you might, but not here. So, which was it?"

Scott smiled briefly, but not at something he found amusing.

"Not exactly a nightmare," he replied.

"Unless you consider my situation a nightmare, which, of course, is a distinct possibility. More an accommodation."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Hart," Scott began slowly, making each word clear and distinct.

"We aren't supposed to be outside after dark. Verboten, right? Krauts might use you for target practice. Of course, guys still do it. Sneak out, dodge the ferrets and the searchlights, slip into the other huts.

The tunnel guys and the escape committee, they like to work at night.

Clandestine, hush-hush meetings and secret work crews. But no one's supposed to know who they are and where they're working. Well, in a way, I'm sort of a highly specialized tunnel rat, myself."

"I don't get it."

"Of course you don't get it. I wouldn't expect you to," Scott said with barely restrained anger. Then he continued, speaking slowly, as if explaining something to a recalcitrant child.

"White guys don't like sharing a toilet with a black man. Not everybody, of course. But enough. And those that don't like it, well, they take this very personally. For example, Captain Vincent Bedford.

He took it extremely personally."

"What did he say?"

"He said to find another place. Of course, there isn't another place, but that small detail didn't seem to bother him much."

"How did you reply?"

Lincoln Scott laughed sharply.

"I didn't. Other than to tell him to go screw himself." Scott took a deep breath, watching Tommy's face.

"Maybe this comes as a surprise to you. Hart? Have you ever been down South? They like things separate down there. White toilets and colored toilets. Anyway, if I go outside, try to use the Abort, I could get shot by some trigger-happy Kraut. So, what do I do? Wait until everyone's asleep, especially that redneck bastard, and I can't hear anybody moving in the corridor, and that's when I go. Quiet as can be. A secret piss, I suppose. At least a piss that doesn't draw too much attention. A piss that avoids all the Vincent Bedfords in this camp. That's why I was up in the middle of the night and sneaking around."

Tommy nodded.

"I see," he said.

Scott turned to him angrily, thrusting his face directly in front of

Tommy's. His eyes were narrowed, each word he spoke freighted with rage.

"You don't see a thing!" he hissed.

"You have no idea who I am! You don't have any idea what I've been through to get here! You are ignorant and unaware, Hart, just like everybody else! And I don't imagine that you have any real inclination to learn."

Tommy took a single step backward, then stopped. He could feel an anger of a different sort rising within him, and he returned Lincoln

Scott's words with a thrust of his own.

"Maybe I don't," he said coldly.

"But right now I'm the only thing standing between you and a firing squad. You might be smart to keep that in mind."

Scott turned away, suddenly facing the cement wall. He lowered his forehead to the damp surface, then raised his hands to the smooth cement, so that he seemed to be balancing there, as if his feet weren't on solid ground, but instead gripping the narrowest of tightropes.

"I don't need any help," he said quietly.

Still reverberating inwardly with an ill-defined rage. Tommy's first inclination was to tell the black flier that was fine with him, and walk out. He was perfectly happy returning to his books, his friends, and the routine of camp life he'd created for himself, simply letting each minute collect inexorably into an hour, and then add up into another day. Waiting for someone else to bring his imprisonment to a conclusion. A conclusion that held out the possibility of life, when so much that had happened to him had promised him death. He thought sometimes that he'd somehow managed to bluff his way to a pot in some uniquely deadly poker game, and having swept his winnings, even as meager as they were, into his arms, that he was unwilling to gamble again. Not even willing to look at a new hand of cards dealt to him.

He had reached a most curious and unexpected position in life. He lived surrounded by a world where there was danger and threat in almost any action, no matter how simple or inconsequential.

But by doing nothing, by remaining perfectly still and unnoticed on the small island of Stalag Luft Thirteen, he could survive. Like whistling past a graveyard. He started to open his mouth to tell Scott this, then stopped himself.

He took a deep breath, holding the air in his lungs.

Tommy thought in that second that it was the most curious of things: Two men could be standing next to each other, breathing the same air, but one could taste the future and freedom in each whiff, while the other could sense nothing but bitterness and hatred. And fear, as well, he considered, because fear is the cowardly brother of hatred.

And so, instead of telling Lincoln Scott to screw himself, Tommy replied, in as quiet a voice as the black flier had just used: "You are mistaken."

Scott did not move, but asked, "Mistaken, how?"

"Because everyone here in this camp needs help to some degree or another, and at the moment, you need it far more than anyone else."

Scott remained silent, listening.

"You don't have to like me," Tommy said.

"You don't even have to respect me. You can hate me, for all it matters. But right now, you need me. And we will get along much better if you understand that."

Scott remained pensive for several long seconds, before finally speaking. He still kept his head to the wall, but his words were distinct.

"I'm cold, Mr. Hart. I'm very cold. This place is freezing, and it's all I can do to keep my teeth from chattering. How about that for starters: Can you help me get something warm to put on?"

Tommy nodded.

"Do you have any spare clothing, other than what they took from you this morning?"

"No. Just what I was shot down with."

"No extra socks or a sweater from home?"

Lincoln Scott laughed sharply, as if this was ridiculous.

"No."

"Then I'll get some from somewhere else."

"I would appreciate it."

"What size shoes?"

"Twelve. But I'd prefer my flight boots back."

"I'll work on that. And the jacket too. Have you eaten?"

"The Krauts gave me a hunk of stale bread and a cup of water this morning."

"All right. Food, too. And blankets."

"Can you get me out of here, Mr. Hart?"

"I will try. No promises."

The black flier turned from the wall and eyed Tommy with an unwavering gaze. Tommy thought that it was probably the same narrowing of focus that Lincoln Scott used when he fixed a German fighter in the sight of his Mustang's machine guns.

"Make a promise. Hart," Scott said.

"It won't hurt you.

Show me what you can do."

"All I can tell you is that I'll do my best. I'll go talk to MacNamara after I leave here. But they're worried…"

"Worried? About what?"

Tommy hesitated, then shrugged.

"They used the words riot and lynching, lieutenant. They were afraid that friends of Vincent Bedford might want to avenge his death before they've convened their court and heard evidence and rendered a verdict."

Scott nodded slowly. He smiled wryly.

"In other words, they would prefer to have their own lynching, but in their own time, and to make it all look as official as possible."