"You don't make any sense, lieutenant!"

"I didn't kill him!"

"I think you did!"

Again Scott opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He stared across the small space at Hugh Renaday, breathing hard, like a man fighting ocean waves and currents, struggling to make the safety of the shore.

He seemed to make some sort of inward decision, and then he spoke, in a cold, harsh fashion, evenly and direct, a voice of restrained passion, the voice of a man trained to fight and kill.

"If I had decided to kill Vincent Bedford," Lincoln Scott said, "I would not have done so in secret. I would have done it in front of everyone in the camp. And I would have done it with this…"

With those words, Scott suddenly stepped across the space separating himself from Renaday, throwing a roundhouse right fist through the air, but abruptly stopping short of the Canadian's face. The punch was savage and lightning-fast, delivered with accuracy and brutality. The black man's clenched hand hovered inches away from Renaday's chin, remaining there.

"This is what I would have used," Scott said, almost whispering.

"And I wouldn't have made any damn secret out of it."

Hugh stared at the fist for a second, then looked at the black man's flashing eyes.

"Very quick," he said in his quiet voice.

"You've had training?"

"Golden Gloves. Light heavyweight champion for the Midwest. Three years running. Undefeated in the ring. More one-punch knockouts than

I can count."

Scott turned toward Tommy.

"I quit boxing," he said stiffly, "because it got in the way of my studies."

"And those were?" Hugh demanded.

"After obtaining my undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Northwestern, I received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Chicago," Lincoln Scott replied.

"I have also done some graduate work in the unrelated field of aeronautical engineering. I took those courses in order to become an airman."

He dropped his fist to his side and took a step back, almost turning his back on the two white men, but then stopping and looking them, in turn, in the eyes.

"And I have killed no one, except Germans. As I was ordered to do by my country."

The two men left Lincoln Scott in the cooler cell and walked into the

South Compound. Tommy breathed in hard; as always, the tight confines of the cooler cells triggered a slight unsettled sensation within him, like a reminder to be afraid.

The cooler was as close as he wanted to get to confinement and his lurking claustrophobia. It was not a cave, a closet, or a tunnel, but it had some of the dreary, dark aspects of each, and this made him nervous, stirring his childhood fear within him.

An odd quiet seemed to have settled across the American section of the camp; the usual numbers of men weren't out in the exercise yard, nor were men walking the perimeter with the same steady, frustrated march.

The weather had improved again, breaks of sunshine and blue sky interrupting the overcast Bavarian heavens, making the faraway lines of pine trees in the surrounding forest glisten and gleam in the distance.

Hugh strode forward, as if the quickness in his feet mirrored the calculations in his head. Tommy Hart kept pace beside him, so that the two men were shoulder to shoulder, like a pair of medium bombers flying in tight protective formation.

For a moment. Tommy looked up. He imagined rows of planes lining runways throughout England, Sicily, and North Africa. In his mind's ear, he could hear the drone of the massed engines, a steady, great roar of energy, increasing in pitch and thrust, as phalanxes of planes raced down the tarmac and lumbered up, laden with their heavy bomb loads, into the clearing skies. He saw above him a shaft of daylight streaking through the thinning clouds and thought that there were officers and flight commanders sitting at desks in safe offices throughout the world seeing the same sunlight and thinking that it was a fine day to send young men off to kill or to die. A pretty simple question, that, he thought to himself.

Not much of a selection. Not much of a choice.

He lowered his eyes and thought about what he'd seen and heard in the cooler. He took a deep breath, and whispered to his companion: "He didn't do it."

Hugh didn't answer until a few more strides across the muddy compound had passed beneath his feet. Then he said, also quietly, as if the two men were sharing some secret, "No. I don't think so, either. Not after he put that fist in my face. Now that made sense, I guess, if anything around here can be said to make sense. But that's not the problem, is it?"

Tommy shook his head as he answered.

"The problem is that right now everything seemingly points to him. Even his denials are more suggestive of his being the killer than not. It wasn't hard for you to turn him inside out, either. Makes me wonder what sort of a witness on his own behalf Lieutenant Scott can be."

Tommy was struck by a thought: When the truth seems to support a lie, wouldn't the reverse be accurate as well? He did not say this out loud.

"We still haven't considered the blood on his shoes and jacket. Now, Tommy, how the hell did that get there?"

Tommy walked a few more paces, himself, considering this. Then he answered swiftly, "Well, Hugh, Scott told us that he sneaks out to use the toilet at night. No one sneaks anywhere wearing a pair of clomping flight boots on old creaking wooden flooring, do they? Wake up the world that way.

And no one wears their flight jacket to bed, even if it is cold.

I'll bet he hung his from a nail on the wall, just the same as everyone else in that room. Same as you and same as I. How hard would it have been to borrow these items?"

Hugh grunted. Then he said, "I'll jolly well wager my next chocolate bar that this is precisely what Phillip was driving at earlier. A frame-up."

"Fine, but why?"

Hugh shrugged.

"That one eludes me. Tommy. I haven't the slightest idea."

The two men continued' walking quickly, until Hugh asked, "I say.

Tommy, we seem to be in a hurry, but where are we heading?"

"To the funeral, Hugh. And then I want you to go find someone and interview him."

"Who would that be?"

"The doctor who examined Trader Vic's body."

"I didn't know a doctor had examined the body."

Tommy nodded his head.

"Someone has. In addition to Hauptmann Visser. We just need to find that person. And in this camp there are only two or three logical candidates.

They're all over in Hut 111, where the medical services are located.

That's where you're heading. I'll do the escort job for Lieutenant

Scott. Not going to make him walk across the camp alone…"

"I'll join you for that. It's not likely to be pleasant."

"No," Tommy replied with more bravado than he thought necessary.

"I'll do it alone. I want your participation to be concealed, at least until we get our first hearing. And even more critically, let's make certain that no one knows how Phillip is guiding our hands. If there is some sort of frame-up and conspiracy and whatever, it's better that whoever it is doesn't know that one of the Old Bailey's best is aligned against him."

Hugh nodded.

"Tommy," he said, grinning slightly, "there is some slyness to you, as well." He laughed sharply, but not with a great deal of amusement.

"Which is probably a right good ling," he muttered, as they walked faster, "given what we're up against.

Whatever the bloody hell that is."

The hulking Canadian took another few strides forward, and then asked, "Of course. Tommy, one question does leap fairly swiftly to mind: What the hell sort of conspiracy could we be talking about?" Hugh came to an abrupt stop. He looked up, across the exercise yard, past the deadline, past the towers, the machine-gun crews, the wire, and the long cleared space beyond.