Something frightening occurred to Tommy at that moment.

He slowly inhaled, staring across at Lincoln Scott, who was continuing to speak.

The black flier sighed deeply.

"Our expert barrister is suddenly removed. Our pathetic evidence is destroyed. All the lies make sense. All the truths seem nonsense."

What Tommy saw, in that moment, was that slowly but surely they were being squeezed into a location where all that remained of their defense was Scott's denials. He suddenly saw that no matter how forceful they were, they were still exceedingly fragile. And any discrepancy, any inconsistency, might turn the strength of those denials into ammunition against him.

He started to say this, but stopped when he saw the stricken look on Lincoln Scott's face. It seemed to him, in that second, that much of

Scott's rage and frustration slid away from him, leaving behind nothing except a great, ineffable sadness.

Scott's shoulders slumped forward. He put a hand to his eyes, rubbing hard. Tommy looked across the small room at Scott and realized, in that precise second, why the black flier had greeted everyone with distance and standoffishness from his first minute in the captivity of Stalag Luft Thirteen. What he saw was that there is nothing more hurtful and lonely in the world than to be different and isolated, and that Scott's only defense against the jealousy and racism he knew would be waiting for him had been to fire his own anger first, like the fighter pilot he was.

Tommy realized that everything in the case was a trap. But the worst of the traps was the one Scott had inadvertently created for himself.

By not allowing anyone to know who he really was, he had made it easy for them to kill him. Because they would not care. No one knew about the wife, the child, waiting at home, nor did they know about the preacher father who urged him forward to advanced degrees or the mother who made him read the classics. Lincoln Scott had made it seem to all the other kriegies that he wasn't like them, when, in truth, he was no different, not in the slightest.

It must be a terrible thing. Tommy guessed, to believe that the nails and wood that you purchased yourself to build walls were now being used to fashion your own coffin.

"So, counselor, what's left? Not much, is there?"

Tommy didn't reply. He watched Scott put a hand to his forehead, as if in pain. When he pulled it away, he looked over at Tommy. There was anguish in his words, and Tommy abruptly realized how hard it must be for those who are accustomed to staring across the ring or through the sky and seeing their enemy clearly arrayed before them to be suddenly trying to fight against something as elusive and vaporous as the hatred Scott was now up against.

"Some people seem to be going to a whole lot of trouble just to make absolutely damn for certain sure that this poor old nigger gets shot.

And they sure as hell seem to have some damn fast timetable, too."

Then without another word, Lincoln Scott threw himself down on his bunk, tossing his thick forearm over his eyes, blocking out the unrelenting light from the single overhead bulb. He remained in that position, motionless, not even looking up, when Hugh reentered the bunk room. He stayed that way, not moving, like a man on a slab, right to the moment that the Germans cut the electric power to the huts, plunging all three men into the usual complete darkness of prisoner-of-war camp.

It was nearly midnight by the luminous dial on the watch that Lydia had given him and Tommy found himself unable to sleep, filled with an unruly nervousness that was not dissimilar to the anxiety he felt on the eve of his first combat mission.

Within himself, he could sense some doubt, some fear, some frustration at the capriciousness of the world that had put him in this situation.

He sometimes thought that true bravery was merely acquiring the ability to act, to do what needed to be done, in the face of all these emotions that urged him to find someplace safer and hide. He listened to the light sounds of sleep coming from the two other men in the room, wondering for a moment why they were not equally energized and didn't find sleep equally elusive. He supposed there was resignation in Lincoln Scott's breathing, and acceptance in Hugh Renaday's.

He felt neither of these emotions.

What he thought was that nothing had gone right in the camp from the moment Fritz Number One found Trader Vic's body. The steady routine of camp life-critical to both captors and captured-had been disturbed profoundly, and promised to be further disrupted when the black airman's trial started in the morning.

He mentally chewed on this idea for a moment, but it only led him to more confusion. There seemed to him to be so many layers of hatred at work, and for an instant he felt despair at ever sorting all of them out. Who was hated the most?

Scott? The Germans? The camp? The war? And who was doing the hating?

Tommy slowly exhaled, and thought that questions made for poor armor, but they were all he had. His eyes open to the night, he stared up toward the ceiling of the bunk room, wishing that he could look up into the stars at home, and find the same comforting trail through the blinking celestial canopy that he'd always sought out when he was younger. It was an odd thing, he realized, to go through life believing that if a person could find one familiar route through the distant heavens, then they would believe that a similar course could be charted through the nearby swamps and shoals of earth.

This thought made him smile bitterly to himself, because in it he recognized Phillip Pryce's handiwork. What made Phillip such a fine barrister, Tommy thought, was that he was psychologically always a step or two ahead. Where others saw mere facts stiffly arrayed, Phillip saw huge canvases, drawn to the edge in nuance and subtlety. He did not know that he could ever fully achieve Pryce's capabilities, but he thought achieving some would be far better than none.

Tommy asked himself: What would Phillip have said about the disappearance and sudden reappearance of the crucial wooden board?

Tommy breathed slowly. Phillip would say to look to who gains what.

The prosecution gains. Tommy considered.

But then Phillip would ask: Who else? The men who hate Scott for his skin, they too gained. The real killer of Vincent Bedford, he gained as well. The people who didn't gain were the defense, and the Germans.

He continued to breathe in and out, slowly.

That was an odd combination. Tommy thought. Then he asked himself:

How are these others aligned?

He did not know the answer to that question.

Like a sudden storm surge ripping across a cold mountain lake, driving whitecaps onto still waters. Tommy danced amid all the conflicting ideas within him. Some men wanted Scott executed because he was black.

Some men wanted Scott executed because he was a murderer. Some men wanted Scott executed for revenge.

He inhaled sharply, holding his breath.

Phillip was right, he thought suddenly. I'm looking at it all backward. The real question is: Who wanted Vincent Bedford dead?

He did not know. But someone did, and he still hadn't any idea who.

Questions made a racket in his head, so that when the soft sound of feet outside the closed bunk room door finally penetrated to his ear, he was startled. It was a padding sound, men in their stockings, moving carefully to conceal their travel.

He felt his throat abruptly constrict, his heart begin to race.

For an instant, he thought they were about to be attacked, and he pushed himself up onto an elbow, about to whisper an alarm to Scott and

Renaday. His hand reached out in the darkness, seeking some kind of weapon. But in that momentary hesitation, the footsteps seemed to fade. He bent forward, listening hard, and heard them rapidly disappear down the central corridor. He took another deep breath, trying to calm himself. He insisted in that second that it had just been an ordinary kriegie, forced to use the solitary indoor toilet late at night. The same toilet that had caused so much trouble.