The SAO returned to his seat, gesturing for the others to do the same.
Then he nodded at Walker Townsend.
"You were about to begin. Captain…"
"Yes sir. I will be brief. Your Honor. The prosecution expects to demonstrate that Lieutenant Lincoln Scott and Captain Vincent Bedford experienced a sense of racial animosity from the former's arrival at the camp. This animosity manifested itself in a number of incidents, including at least one outright fight, when Captain Bedford accused Lieutenant Scott of stealing from him. Numerous witnesses will testify to this. It is the prosecution's contention that Mr. Scott, in fear for his own life because of threats made by Captain Bedford, manufactured a weapon, stalked Bedford, finally confronted him in the Abort located between Huts 101 and 102 at a time when all prisoners are required to be in their barracks, that they fought and Captain Bedford was killed. Lieutenant Scott, the evidence will show, had the desire and the means to commit this murder. Your Honor. The evidence that the prosecution will bring is overwhelming. Sadly, there is no other logical conclusion to the events that have unfolded."
Walker Townsend let this last sentence fill the theater. He took a single, quick glance over toward Von Reiter, then back to MacNamara.
Then he sat down.
MacNamara nodded, then looked over at Tommy Hart.
"Mr. Hart? Your opening statement, if you please."
Tommy rose, words beginning to form in his imagination, outrage and indignation filling his gorge, and then he took a deep breath. The hesitation allowed him a second, no more, to think, and he roped in his emotions, "Your Honor," he said with a small smile, "the defense in this matter will reserve the right to make its opening statement until the completion of the prosecution's case."
MacNamara stared at Tommy.
"That is unusual," he said.
"I'm not sure-" "We have the absolute right, under military law, to postpone our opening," Tommy said swiftly, not having any idea at all whether he was right or wrong.
"We are under no obligation to display our defense to the prosecution until such time that it becomes our turn to present it."
Again MacNamara hesitated. Then he shrugged.
"As you wish, lieutenant. Then we will proceed with the first witness."
To MacNamara's left. Commandant Von Reiter took a step forward. The SAO turned toward him, and the German, still wearing a small smile that lingered on the corners of his upper lip, spoke out: "Do I understand that Lieutenant Hart is permitted to not offer his defense at this time? That he can wait for perhaps a more advantageous moment?"
MacNamara replied, "Yes. That is correct, Herr Oberst."
Von Reiter laughed dryly.
"How clever," he said, making a small gesture toward Tommy.
"But, alas, that is what I was most interested in hearing. So, colonel, if you will excuse me now, I will return at some later time.
For I am greatly familiar with the prosecution's contentions concerning Lieutenant Scott. But it is the replies that have been constructed by Lieutenant Hart that intrigue me far more."
The German commandant raised two fingers to the brim of his cap in a languid salute.
"With your leave, colonel…" he said.
"Of course, commandant."
"Hauptmann Visser, I leave this in your hands."
Visser, who had once again risen to his feet, clicked his heels together sharply, the sound echoing above the crowd.
Von Reiter, as always trailed by his two doglike adjutants, then stepped from the courtroom, the eyes of the assembled Allied prisoners following him. As his boot steps faded, MacNamara bellowed, "Call your first witness!"
Tommy watched, as Townsend stepped forward, and thought to himself that what he'd seen had seemed most theatrical.
He had the sensation that he was observing a well-acted play being performed by experts, but using some strange and indecipherable language, so that while he could understand many of the actions, the overall thrust of the words eluded him. This, he considered, was a very strange reaction to have.
Then he slid this sensation into an internal compartment, for examination later, and he focused on the arrival of the first witness.
Chapter Twelve
The prosecution built their case against Scott steadily throughout the day, closely following the progression that Tommy had expected.
Bedford's overt racism, needling, taunting, accusations, and Deep South prejudice emerged in tale after tale from witness after witness. Set against that was the near-constant portrayal of Lincoln Scott as a man isolated, alone, enraged, being baited into a deadly action by the constancy of Trader Vic's derision.
The problem, as Tommy saw it, was that calling a man a nigger wasn't a crime. Nor was calling a man who had repeatedly put his own life on the line for white aircrews a nigger a crime, even if it should have been. What was a crime, was murder, and throughout the day, the tribunal, the German observers, and all the assembled kriegies of Stalag Luft Thirteen heard nothing from the witness stand except what they would all consider to be a perfectly reasonable motive for that desperate act of killing.
It made a sort of crazy deadly sense: Trader Vic was a thoughtless bastard, and Scott wasn't able to ignore it. Or get away from it. And so he killed the southerner before Bedford took the opportunity to turn his own virulent hatred into action and now Scott should die for that preemptive strike.
Tommy wondered whether this wasn't some variation on a plot that had already played itself out in dozens of forgotten rural courtrooms from Florida, through Georgia, into the Carolinas, across to Tennessee and Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. Anywhere the Stars and Bars continued to fly.
That it was happening in a Bavarian forest seemed to him to be as awful and as inexplicable as anything else.
At the defense table, he listened while another witness walked through the crowded courtroom to take his place at the stand.
The trial had stretched into the late afternoon, and Tommy scratched some notes on one of his precious sheets of paper, trying to prepare a cross-examination, thinking how compelling the prosecution's case was.
The vise that Scott was captured within was truly intractable: No matter how outrageous or evil Trader Vic's treatment of the Tuskegee airman had been, it still didn't amount to a justification for his killing. Instead, the situation played directly into the most subtle of fears felt by many of the white members of the air corps: that Lincoln Scott was somehow a threat to all of them, a threat to their futures, and a threat to their lives all because he unapologetically wore his difference on his skin.