There was a man with whom he'd once had a funny conversation in the yard. sharing cigarettes and ersatz coffee, a wiry, grinning fellow from Princeton who had insulted Harvard most wildly and hilariously, but who had readily agreed that any Yale man was probably not only a shirker and a coward but likely to be fighting for the Germans or the Japanese, anyway. The Princeton man had pushed back against the wall, and gasped when some dirt from the roof streamed onto both their heads.
Then he'd urged Tommy on with a whispered, "Get what you need. Tommy."
This alone had encouraged Tommy to travel another half-dozen feet forward, stopping only to seize the dirt-filled bucket from the man ahead, and pass it back to Princeton, behind him.
The muscles in his arms and legs screamed pain and fatigue at him. His neck and back felt as if they were being hammered by the red-hot tongs of a blacksmith. For an instant, he lowered his head, listening to the yawing sound of the wooden supports, and thought that nothing in the world was more exhausting than fear. No race. No fight. No battle.
Fear always ran faster, hit harder, and fought longer.
He dragged himself forward, struggling past each of the designated escapees. He was no longer able to tell whether he 'd been crawling for minutes or hours. He thought he would never get out of the tunnel, and then imagined that it was like some particularly terrifying dream from which he was destined never to awaken.
He pushed on, gasping for air.
Tommy had counted the men in the tunnel, and knew that he was squeezing past Number Three, a bankerly type wearing wire-rim glasses streaked with moisture, whom Tommy presumed was the chief camp document forger.
The man twisted aside, grunting, wordless, as Tommy maneuvered past him.
For the first time. Tommy could hear the sounds of digging coming from up ahead. He guessed there were two men, working in a small space not unlike the anteroom where he'd found the pilot from New York. The difference would be that they would have no abundance of crate boards to shore things up. Instead, they would be scraping the dirt from above their heads, packing it in the empty buckets and passing it back.
There would be no need for an elaborate, concealed exit, the way the entrance was so cleverly hidden back in the privy in Hut 107. The exit would be the smallest possible hole a kriegie could worm through.
Tommy thrust himself toward the sound of the digging.
There must have been two candles in that space, because he could just make out a nickering, indistinct shape. He crept forward, still without a concrete plan beyond confrontation, thinking hard to himself that what he needed to know was just at the edge of his reach.
He knew only that he wanted to reach the end. The end of the tunnel.
The end of the case. The end of everything that had happened. He could feel panic surging through him, mingling freely with confusion and desire. Driven by the difficult twins of fear and fury, he pushed himself the final few feet, almost popping into the anteroom to the escape's exit.
Above him, the tunnel rose sharply toward the surface.
A makeshift ladder built from scraps of wood was thrust against the side of the shaft. Near the top of the ladder, one man hacked at the remaining clods of dirt. Midway down, a second man caught the earth as it fell from beneath the pickax, collecting it in the ubiquitous bucket. Both men were nearly naked, their bodies glistening in the candlelight with sweat and streaks of dirt that made them seem prehistoric, terrifying. Thrust to the side of the anteroom were two small valises and a pile of clothes they would change into as soon as they burst through to the air. Their escape kit.
From above him, the two men hesitated, looking down in surprise.
Tommy could not make out the face of Number One, the man with the pickax. But his eyes met Number Two.
"Hart!" the man whispered sharply.
Tommy struggled halfway to his feet in the tight, narrow space, ending on his knees like some supplicant in a church looking up at the figure on the Cross. He peered through the nickering light, and after a single, long silent moment, recognized Number Two.
"You killed him, didn't you. Murphy?"
Tommy said harshly.
"He was your friend and your roommate and you killed him, didn't you?"
At first, the lieutenant from Springfield didn't reply. His face wore an eerie look of astonishment and surprise, and then slowly dissolved into recognition, followed by rage.
But what he said was, "No, I didn't. I didn't kill him."
Then he hesitated for a half-second, just long enough for the denial to toss Tommy wildly into confusion, and then he threw himself down on Tommy, grunting savagely, his dirty, strong hands reaching inexorably for Tommy's throat.
At the tail of the tunnel in Hut 107, Major Clark glanced down at his wristwatch, shook his head, then turned his stare toward Lincoln Scott.
"Now we're behind," he said bitterly.
"Every minute is critical, lieutenant. In another couple of minutes, the entire escape will be in jeopardy."
Scott stood by the entrance to the tunnel, almost straddling it, like a policeman guarding a door. He returned the major's glare with a singularly cold gaze of his own.
"I do not understand you, major," he said.
"You would allow Vic's killers to go free and the Germans to shoot me.
What sort of man are you?"
Clark stared, coldly, harshly, at the black airman.
"You're the killer, Scott," he said.
"The evidence has always been clear-cut and unequivocal. It has nothing to do with this escape tonight."
"You lie," Scott replied.
Clark shook his head, answering in a low, awful voice, with a small and terrible smile.
"Do I, now? No, that's where you're wrong. I know nothing of any conspiracy to set you up as the killer. I know nothing of any other man's participation in the crime. I know nothing that would support your ridiculous story. I know only that an officer was killed, an officer you made no secret of hating. I know that this officer had previously provided valuable assistance to prior tunnel escape efforts, to wit, acquiring documents for forgers to work on, German cash, and other items of importance. And I know that the German authorities were very interested in this murder.
More interested than they had a right to be. And because of this interest, I know that this particular tunnel, our best chance to get some men out, was severely threatened because had they decided to hunt for the killer and the evidence to support charges, they would have torn the camp completely apart, probably exposing this escape attempt in the process.
So the only thing you are possibly correct about, lieutenant, is that as chief of escape security, I was genuinely pleased that you presented yourself covered with blood and guilt at a critical moment. And I have been pleased that your little trial and your little conviction and your little execution, which I'm certain is to follow quite quickly, has proven to be such a wonderful distraction for the Krauts."