Then he stopped, and told himself that was wrong. There were two, and more probably three, sets of footsteps outside the door. Three men trying to move silently with a single purpose.

Not a lonesome flier feeling ill. And then he realized there was no accompanying sound of rushing water coming from the toilet.

Tommy swung his feet out of the bunk, rising silently and tiptoeing across the room, making absolutely certain he didn't disturb his sleeping companions. He pressed his ear up against the solid wood of the door, but could hear nothing else. The blackness seemed complete, save for the occasional wan light from an errant searchlight, as it swept the outside walls and rooftops and penetrated through the cracks in the wooden window shutters.

He slowly, gingerly, swung open the door just the smallest fracture, so that he could slip through noiselessly. Out in the corridor, he crouched down, trying to make himself hidden.

He pitched forward slightly, at the waist, craning to make out noises in the darkness. But instead of sound, a flicker of light caught his eye.

At the far end of the hut, at the distant entrance that he and Scott had used on their own midnight excursion, Tommy could see a lone candle's flame. The light was like a single, faraway star.

He held himself still, watching the candle. At first he could not make out how many men were waiting by the door, but more than one. There was a momentary silence, and he could make out the sweep of the searchlight as it crept past the entrance.

The searchlight was like a bully, swaggering about the camp. In almost the same instant, the candle was extinguished.

He heard the creak of the front door to Hut 101 opening, and the small thud of it being closed seconds later.

Two men, he thought. Then he instantly corrected himself.

Three men.

Three men went through the front door a few minutes after midnight.

They used a candle's light just as he and Scott had, to put on their flight boots while they waited for the searchlight to creep past. And then, just as he and Lincoln Scott had a few nights earlier, they'd immediately jumped into the darkness traveling behind it.

He took another slow, long breath. Three was very dangerous, he thought. A large and clumsy group to slip outside.

One was the easiest, moving alone, patiently and cautiously.

Two, as he'd found out with Scott, was tricky. Two men had to work in a coordinated fashion, like a pair of fighters diving to an attack, one plane in the lead, the other covering the wing.

Two men were likely to talk, even though in whispers. Two men raised the chance of detection considerably. But three men exiting, one after the other, like diving from a stricken bomber into a sky filled with flak and pirouetting planes and falling through the air before opening a parachute, three was very dangerous and almost foolhardy. Three men would invariably make too much noise. Three men would find fewer accommodating dark spots to hide in. The exaggerated movement of three men was likely to catch the eyes of the tower goons, no matter how sleepy and inattentive they might be.

Three was taking a huge risk.

And so the reward for those three men had to be great.

He slumped up against the wall, composing himself before he slid back into Scott's bunk room.

Three men in the corridor, sneaking out into the midnight.

Three men chancing their lives on the eve of the trial.

Tommy did not know how these things were connected.

But he thought it might be a good idea to find out. He just did not know how.

One of the camp's least efficient ferrets had already counted the formation of airmen three times, and when he started in again, going down the five-deep rows with his monotonous eins, zwei, drei, he was met with the usual catcalls, insults, and general groaning from the assembled kriegies. Men stomped their feet against the damp, chilly morning air, made nastier by a stiff breeze slicing in from the north.

The sky overhead was a slate gray marred with a pair of pinkish-red streaks on the eastern horizon, more of the indecisiveness of the German weather that seemed to be forever trapped between winter and spring. Tommy hunched his shoulders against the wind, shivering slightly in the weak light in the hour just past dawn, wondering where the prior day's warmth had fled to and still filled with doubt about the gathering set for eight a.m. Just to his right, Hugh shuffled to get his circulation going and swore at the ferret, "Get it right this time, yah bloody idiot!" while to his left, Lincoln Scott stood motionless, as if unaffected by the cold and wet. Some moisture glistened on the black flier's cheeks, making it appear almost as if he'd been crying.

The ferret hesitated, staring down at a notepad, on which he was listing numbers. This act of doubt, signaling that he might start over for a fifth time, brought a cascade of obscenities and useless threats from the Allied prisoners. Even Tommy, who usually kept quiet during all these small insults of assembly, muttered to himself a quick, "Come on, Jesus, get on with it…" as a sharp sword of wind sliced through his battered old leather flight jacket.

But he stopped when he heard the voice directly behind him speaking softly, yet insistently: "Hart? Maybe I got something for you."

He steeled himself, not turning, half expecting an insult.

The voice seemed familiar, and after a moment, he recognized that it came from a captain from New York who lived in one of the bunk rooms across the hall from him. The captain was a fighter pilot, like Scott, who'd been shot down while escorting B-17s in a raid over Big B, which was Allied airmen's slang for Berlin.

"You still looking for information. Hart? Or you got everything under control?"

Tommy shook his head, but didn't turn back toward the man in formation behind him. Both Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday remained still, as well.

"I'm listening," Tommy said.

"What is it you want to say?"

"Kinda pissed me off, you know," the pilot continued, "the way Bedford always had whatever anyone needed. More food. More clothes. More of everything. Need this, he had it.

Need that? He had that, too. And always got more for whatever it was than you wanted to give up. Didn't seem hardly fair. Everybody in the bag supposed to have it more or less the same, but it sure weren't the same for Trader Vic."

"I'm aware. Sometimes seemed like he was the only kriegie in this place never losing weight," Tommy responded.

The man muttered a grunt in agreement.

"Hey," the captain said, "of course, on the other hand, he sure didn't end up the same neither."

Tommy nodded. This was true, but, of course, there was no guarantee that they all wouldn't end up just as dead as Vincent Bedford. He didn't say this out loud, though he knew it was never far from any airman's waking thoughts, and certainly featured in many kriegies' dreams. It was one of the prisoner-of-war camp credos: Don't speak of what truly frightens you, for that will surely come to pass.

"No kidding," Tommy said.

"But you've got something you want to tell me?"

From the adjacent formation on Tommy's right, there was a scattering of angry shouts and complaints. Tommy figured the ferret counting that group had messed up again, as well.

The New Yorker hesitated again, as if reconsidering what he was about to say. Then he grunted an obscenity or two, indicating that whatever internal argument he'd had, had been resolved, and he said, "Vic made a couple of trades, right before his death, that got my attention. Not just my attention, hell, a couple of other guys, too, noticed that Vic was being real busy. I mean, more busy than normal, and normal he was busy all the time, if you follow my drift."