He pointed at Lincoln Scott.
"You made yourself into a perfect man to accuse, didn't you? I mean, someone in this damn camp wanted to kill Trader Vic, and went out and did it, and then you couldn't have made yourself any damn more convenient for him to shift the blame right onto your bloody ass! True enough?"
Scott nodded.
"That's not the most elegant way of putting things. But true enough.
Seems that way."
"And, I dare say, you couldn't make it any damn easier for Townsend to convict you, either."
Scott nodded.
"But…" he started.
Hugh shook his head.
"Ah, don't speak to me of buts and maybes and hopefullys and all that crap! There is only one solution to this situation, and that is winning, because when all is said and done, that's the only thing that matters! Not how you win, or why you win, or even when you win. But win you must, and the sooner you see that, the better off we shall all be!"
Scott stopped. Then nodded.
"Perhaps," he said.
"Bloody right! You think about that! You've been so damn busy proving that you're better than anyone else here, you've forgotten to see how you're exactly the damn same! And you, Tommy, you haven't done what you said we'd do, which is to fight back! Use their own damnable lies against them!"
Hugh coughed hard.
"Didn't Phillip teach you a bloody thing?" He looked down at the end of his smoke, then pinched off the burning ember, stomping on it as it tumbled to the floor, and then stuffing the half-smoked butt into his blouse breast pocket.
"I'm hungry," he said, "And I think it's damn time we ate, though why I'm sitting about with the two of you posturing fools is beyond me. You both want to win, and you want to win in the goddamn right way, or else it's somehow not right? This is a bloody war! People are dying every second of the day and night! It's not a boxing match with Marquis of Queensberry rules! Go to war, damn it, the two of you! Stop playing fair! And until the two of you put your heads together and agree to do that, well, a pox on both of you."
"A plague," Scott said, smiling.
"All right, then," Hugh snorted.
"A plague, if you prefer."
"That's what Mercutio says, as he dies," Scott continued.
"A plague on both your houses!" Capulets and Montagues."
"Well, bloody Mercutio and bloody Shakespeare got it bloody right!"
Hugh went over to his bunk and reached beneath it, removing a Red Cross parcel with foodstuffs.
"Damn it," he said, as if the parcel and its limited contents were somehow surprising.
"All I have left is one of those damn awful British Red Cross parcels.
Weak tea and tasteless kippers and crap! Tommy, I hope you've got something better. From the States. Land of Plenty and Abundance."
Tommy thought for a moment, then asked, "Hugh, what was the German ration for tonight?"
Hugh looked up, snorting hard.
"The usual. Kriegsbrot and some of that damn awful blood sausage.
Phillip used to take it and bury it in the garden, even when we were starving.
Couldn't bring himself to eat it. Neither can I. Neither can anyone I know, in either compound. How the Krauts manage to swallow it is beyond me, as well."
Blood sausage, Tommy thought suddenly. It was a staple of the German issue to the kriegies, and just as routinely refused even when they were starving. The sausage was disgusting stuff, thick tubes of what the prisoners thought was congealed offal liberally mixed with slaughterhouse blood, given a hard enough consistency by mixing it with sawdust. No matter how it was cooked, it still tasted like eating waste matter. Many of the men buried it, as Pryce had done, in the hope that it might serve as fertilizer. The theater troops in both British and American compounds occasionally mashed it up and used it as a prop in some play's scene that called for blood.
He turned suddenly to Scott.
"Did you ever eat it?"
The black airman looked surprised, then shook his head.
"I collected it once or twice, tried to figure out a way of cooking it, but same as everybody else, it was just too damn disgusting."
"But you got the ration, right?"
"Yes."
Tommy nodded.
"Hugh," he said slowly.
"Take a couple of cigarettes and go out and see if you can't find someone with some of the sausage. The worst, foulest, most repulsive log of German blood sausage you can find, and make a trade for it.
Bring it back here. I've got an idea."
Hugh looked confused, then shrugged.
"Whatever you say," he said.
"Although I think you've gone bloody daft." He patted his blouse to make sure he had some smokes and headed out into the corridor.
As soon as the door shut. Tommy turned to Lincoln Scott.
"All right," he said.
"Hugh makes good sense. If you have no objection, I think now's the time to stop playing by their rules."
Scott hesitated before nodding.
Colonel MacNamara reminded Lieutenant Murphy that he was still under oath as the flier resumed his seat in the center of the makeshift courtroom and the morning session was set to get under way. Everyone was in the same position as the day before, defense, prosecution, hundreds of kriegies jamming the seats and aisles, Visser and the stenographer in their customary corner, and the stiff-faced tribunal watching over all of it.
Murphy nodded, squirmed once in his seat, trying to get comfortable, then waited for Tommy Hart to approach with a small, anticipatory smile on his face.
"Springfield, Massachusetts, correct?"
"That's right," Murphy replied.
"Born and raised."
"And you say you worked alongside Negroes?"
"Right, again."
"On a daily basis?"
"Daily, yes sir."
"And what sort of business was this?"
"My family were part owners of a meat processing plant, Mr. Hart. A small, local plant, but we had contracts for numerous restaurants and schools in the city."
Tommy thought for a moment, then continued slowly.
"Meat processing? Like steaks and chops?"
Murphy grinned.
"Yes sir. Steaks so thick and tender you didn't need no knife to cut them. Porterhouse and sirloin, even filet mignon"-he pronounced it fee lit migg-non- "chops that taste sweet almost like candy. Lamb chops. Pork chops. And hamburger, finest in the state, without a doubt.
Man, what I wouldn't give for one of those right about now, cooked on an outdoor fire…"