"Maybe," Tommy said warily. He reached out and gingerly removed the blade from the wood. It glistened in his hand, almost as if it had a voice of its own, which, in a way, it did. He raised it and inspected the knife as closely as possible. It had been cleaned of any blood or other incriminating matter, so that it appeared almost brand new. He hefted it in his hand. It was light, yet solid. He ran a finger up and down the double edges. They were razor-sharp. The point had not been dulled, not by being thrust into Trader Vic's neck or by being stabbed into the wood of Tommy's bunk. The handle itself was onyx-black and polished to a reflective sheen and obviously carved by a craftsman. The death's head skull was a pearly white color, almost translucent. The dagger seemed to speak of ritual and terror, simultaneously. It was a cruel thing. Tommy thought, that combined an awful mixture of symbolism and murderous intent. It was, he realized suddenly, the most valuable thing he'd held in his own hand in months, and then, just as swiftly, he thought this untrue, that any single one of his law books was more important and, in their own way, more dangerous. He smiled, and realized that he was being sophomorically idealistic.

"Well, that's the first bit of luck we've had," Hugh exclaimed.

"Something of a surprise for Lieutenant Fenelli tomorrow, I'd "say." He took the blade from Tommy's hand, weighed it, and added, "A nasty bit of business, this."

Scott reached out and took his turn with the knife. He remained quiet until he handed it back to Tommy.

"I don't trust it," he said sharply.

"What do you mean?" Hugh asked.

"That's the bloody murder weapon, all right."

"Yes. That's probably true. And it shows up here magically?

Right at the darkest hour? At least that's what someone would say. A bad poet."

"Maybe. But maybe it's about time someone saw how damnably unfair this whole show has been!" Hugh blurted out.

"Somebody finally thought to level the playing field a bit, and what right have we to complain?"

"You don't mean we, Hugh. You mean me" Scott replied softly.

Hugh snorted, but nodded in slow agreement.

Scott turned to face Tommy.

"No one in the camp wants to help. Not a person."

"We've had this argument before," Tommy responded.

"We don't know that what you say is true. At least, not for certain."

Scott rolled his eyes skyward.

"Sure. If that's what you want to think." Then he looked down at the ceremonial dagger again.

"Look at that knife. Tommy. It stands for evil and it's already served an evil cause. It has death all over it.

Now, I know you may not be all that religious with your Vermont Yankee stubbornness and everything"-he was half-smiling as he spoke-"and after all, I like to think that I'm much more modern than my old preacher father, who gets up on the pulpit on Sunday mornings and likes to loudly and forthrightly proclaim that anything not directly connected to the Good Book has little or no value on this earth, but still, Tommy, Hugh, you look at that thing, and you realize no good and certainly no truth can come out of it."

"You're too bloody philosophical and not pragmatic enough," Hugh said.

"Perhaps," Scott replied.

"We'll see, won't we?"

Tommy said nothing. He put the blade down on his bunk after stroking the handle a final time. Even cleaned, it wasn't hard to imagine how an expert handling such a weapon would find it easy to slip it into the throat of a man, commando-style, severing the larynx on the path to the brainpan. He shuddered. It was a type of killing that seemed hard and unfamiliar; though had he really considered it, he would have seen that in a war there was truly little difference between forcing the dagger into a man's neck and skipping a five-hundred-pound bomb across the waves toward him. But Tommy was trapped with the vision of Trader Vic's last seconds, and he wondered if the Mississippian had felt any pain, or if he was merely surprised and slightly confused as he felt the knife slide home.

Tommy shuddered. Scott was right, he thought. It was an evil thing.

He realized right then that when he produced it at the trial in the morning, right before Hauptmann Visser's eyes, it would probably cost Fritz Number One his life, and perhaps demand a similar price of Commandant Von Reiter.

At the least, the two men would soon be heading east to the Russian front, which was more or less the same thing.

Tommy knew that Fritz had been telling the truth about that, at least.

Visser also would know that there was only one way that knife came into the camp. Tommy had the odd thought that the blade resting on his thin gray blanket was capable of killing the two Germans without even piercing their skin.

He wondered whether the person who had delivered the blade to Tommy's bunk room knew the same. He was abruptly filled with suspicions. For a second, he glanced at Lincoln Scott, and thought to himself that the black airman was more right than wrong. The sudden appearance of the knife at this late hour might not be of help. He had the same sensation he'd experienced in the courtroom, when he'd stopped himself from launching questions like bombs at Fenelli. A trap? he wondered to himself.

But a trap for whom?

He shook his head.

"Screw it," he said.

"I think it's time that I go and have a little talk with our ex-witness," he said.

"The one on whom we had so much riding. Maybe it's time to ask him, privately, why he changed his tale."

"I wonder what the hell they promised him," Lincoln Scott said.

"What can you bribe a man with here?"

Tommy did not answer this, though he thought it an extremely good question. He reached over and took the knife and wrapped it in one of the few relatively intact pairs of woolen olive drab socks that he owned. Then he stuffed it into the interior pocket of his flight jacket.

"You're taking it?" Lincoln Scott asked.

"Why?"

"Because," Tommy replied quietly, "it does occur to me that this is the real murder weapon we're holding, and what's to prevent Major Clark and Captain Townsend from sauntering in here in the next few minutes, just like they did before, and performing one of their little illegal searches and claiming in court tomorrow that we've had the damn thing in our possession for days? That maybe the only person who ever had possession of this knife was Lincoln Scott?"

Neither of the others had seen this possibility. Lincoln Scott smiled sadly.

"You've become a suspicious type, Tommy," he said.

"With good reason," Tommy replied. He watched as Scott turned, his shoulders slumped by the weight of what was happening to him, and threw himself onto his bunk, where he rested immobile.

He seems resigned. Tommy thought. Perhaps for the first time, he thought he saw some defeat in the shadows beneath the black flier's eyes, and thought he'd heard failure in the tone of each word he spoke.

He tried not to think about this as he headed out into the early evening, searching for Fenelli, the lying medic, who, he thought, in his own way, might be every bit as dangerous as the knife concealed next to his breast.

The light was fading quickly as Tommy made his way across the camp to the medical services hut. It was that indistinct time of day when the sky only remembers the sunlight and insists on the promise of night.

Most of the kriegies were inside already, many engaged in the elaborate and inadequate preparation of dinner. The more conscientious and deliberate a kriegie cook was in assembling the modest foodstuffs and organizing the evening meal, generally spoke to how little there was at that moment to eat. As he passed one hut, Tommy could smell the ubiquitous odor of processed meat being fried. It gnawed at his stomach in typical prisoner-of-war fashion. He desperately would have liked a slice, wet with greasy drippings, on top of a fresh hunk of kriegsbrot, yet at the same time he vowed that if he ever got home, he'd never touch a piece of processed meat again.