Tommy listened closely, absorbing what the black man had said and how he'd said it.

"Then I think we have a difficult task ahead of us," he said softly.

"Hart, nothing in my life up to this point has been easy.

Nothing truly worthwhile ever is. My preacher daddy used to say that every morning, every evening. And he was right then, and it's right now."

"Good. Because if you didn't kill Captain Bedford, I think we're going to have to find out who did. And why. And I don't think that will be an easy task, because I haven't got even the slightest idea how to get started."

Scott nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, but before any of the words came out, he was distracted by the sound of marching boots coming from the exterior corridor. The steady resonant noise stopped outside the doorway and seconds later the single thick wooden door to the bunk room flew open. Tommy turned swiftly toward the sound, and saw that MacNamara and Clark, along with a half-dozen other officers, were gathered in the hallway. Tommy recognized at least two of the men as former occupants of Trader Vic and Lincoln Scott's bunk room.

MacNamara stepped into the room first, but then stood just to the side.

He didn't say anything, but crossed his arms, watching, Clark, as always, was directly behind him, passing rapidly into the center of the room. The major stared angrily at Tommy, then fixed Lincoln Scott with a harsh, angry stare.

"Lieutenant Scott," Clark hissed, "do you still deny the charges against you?"

"I do," Scott replied, equally forcefully.

"Then you will not object to a search of your belongings?"

Tommy Hart stepped forward.

"We do indeed object! Under what rule of law do you think you can come in here and search Lieutenant Scott's personal property? You need a warrant.

You need to show cause at a hearing, with testimony and with supporting evidence! We absolutely object! Colonel…"

MacNamara said nothing.

Clark turned first to Tommy, then back to Lincoln Scott.

"I fail to see what the problem is. If you are indeed innocent, as you claim, then what would you have to hide?"

"I have nothing to hide!" Scott answered sharply.

"Whether he does, or does not, is irrelevant!" Tommy's voice was raised, insistent.

"Colonel! A search is unreasonable and clearly unconstitutional!"

Colonel MacNamara finally answered in a cold, slow voice.

"If Lieutenant Scott objects, then we will bring this matter up at tomorrow's hearing. The tribunal can decide…"

"Go ahead," Scott said briskly.

"I did not do anything, so I have nothing to hide!"

Tommy glared at Scott.

The black flier ignored Tommy's look and sneered at Major Clark.

"Have at it, major," he said.

Major Clark, with two other officers at his side, approached the bed.

They quickly felt through the stuffed mattress and rifled the few clothes and blankets. Lincoln Scott stepped a few feet away, standing alone, back up against one of the wooden walls. The three officers then flipped through the pages of the Bible and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and examined the makeshift storage table. Tommy thought, in that second, that the men were making the most perfunctory of searches. None of the items they inspected was really being closely scrutinized. Nor did they seem particularly interested in what they were doing. A sense of nervousness flooded over him, and he once again burst out, "Colonel, I repeat my objection to this intrusion!

Lieutenant Scott is not in a position to intelligently waive his constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure!"

Major Clark seemed to smile at Tommy.

"We're almost finished," he said.

MacNamara did not reply to Tommy's plea.

"Colonel! This is wrong!"

Suddenly the two officers accompanying Major Clark reached down and lifted the corners of the wooden bunk.

With a scraping noise, they shifted it perhaps ten inches to the right, dropping it back to the wooden flooring with a resounding clunk. In almost the same motion. Major Clark bent down to one knee, and started examining the floorboards that were now exposed.

"What are you doing?" Lincoln Scott demanded.

No one answered.

Instead, Clark abruptly worked one of the boards loose, and with a single, sharp motion, lifted it up. The board had been cut and then replaced in the floor. Tommy instantly recognized it for what it was: a hiding place. The space between the cement foundation and the wooden flooring was perhaps three or four inches deep. When he'd first arrived at Stalag Luft Thirteen, this had been a favorite kriegie concealment location. Dirt from the many failed tunnels, contraband, radios, uniforms recut into civilian clothing for escapes planned but never acted upon, stockpiles of useless emergency escape rations all were hoarded in the small vacant space beneath the floor in each room.

But what had seemed so convenient to the kriegies had not failed to gain the attention of the ferrets.

Tommy remembered that Fritz Number One had been inordinately proud of himself the day he'd uncovered one of the hiding places, because the discovery of one led him immediately to the uncovering of more than two dozen similar locations in different bunk rooms in other huts.

Consequently, the kriegies had abandoned stashing items beneath the flooring over a year earlier, which frustrated Fritz Number One, because he kept searching the same spots over and over again.

"Colonel!

"Tommy heard himself shouting.

"This is unfair!"

"Unfair, is it?" Major Clark replied.

The stocky senior officer reached down into the empty space and came up, smiling, clutching a long, flat homemade blade in his hand. The blade was perhaps a foot long, and one end had been wrapped with some sort of material. The piece of metal had been flattened and sharpened and caught a malevolent glint of light, as it was removed from beneath the flooring.

"Recognize this?" Clark said to Lincoln Scott.

"No."

Clark grinned.

"Sure," he said. He turned to one of the officers who had been hanging at the rear of the group.

"Let me see that frying pan." The officer suddenly held out Lincoln Scott's handmade cooking utensil.

"How about this? This yours, lieutenant?"

"Yes," Scott answered.

"Where did you get it?"

Clark clearly wasn't answering the question. Instead, he turned, holding both the homemade frying pan and the homemade knife. He glanced at Tommy but directed his words to Colonel MacNamara.

"Watch carefully," he said.

Slowly, the major unwrapped the odd olive drab cloth that Scott had used to make the handle of the frying pan. Then, just as slowly and deliberately, he unwrapped the blade's grip.

Then he held up both strips of cloth. They were of the same material and of nearly identical length.

"They look to be the same," Colonel MacNamara said sharply.

"One difference, sir," Clark replied.

"This one"-he held up the one that had wrapped the knife handle "this one here appears to have Captain Bedford's blood staining it."

Scott straightened rigidly, his mouth opened slightly. He seemed about to say something, but instead turned and looked at Tommy. For the first time. Tommy saw something that he took to be fear in the black flier's eyes. And, in that second, he remembered what Hugh Renaday and

Phillip Pryce had spoken of earlier that day. Motive. Opportunity.

Means. Three legs of a triangle. But when they had talked, the means had been missing from the equation.

That was no longer true.