John Katzenbach: Hart’s War

Eight months after Tommy's repatriation, when elements of General Omar Bradley's Fifth Army had liberated the airmen of Stalag Luft Thirteen, it had been Scott who told army de briefers of Fritz's language skills and helpfulness. This had led to a position helping U.S. military police interrogate captured German soldiers, as they searched for Gestapo trying to hide among the rank and file. And Fritz later used these same skills to rise to an executive position with Porsche-Audi A.G. in postwar Germany.

Tommy knew all this from the letters Fritz sent at Christmas time. The first of these had been sent to: T. Hart, Famous Lawyer, Harvard University, Harvard, Massachusetts. How the postal service managed to get it to the law school in Cambridge, which subsequently sent it to Tommy at his firm's Boston office, had always been something of a mystery to him. Other letters over the years, always containing photographs, had shown the lean ferret growing considerably thicker around the middle, with wife and then children and grandchildren and a selection of different dogs at his side.

Fritz had only sent Tommy one unhappy letter in all the years after the war, a short note that arrived not long after the reunification of Germany, when the automobile executive had finally learned from declassified East German documents that Commandant Von Reiter had been shot in early 1945. In the confused days following the fall of the German Reich, Von Reiter had been captured by the Russians. He did not survive his first interrogation.

Lydia nudged Tommy, holding open the printed funeral program.

Belatedly, Tommy joined in as the gathered mourners recited a Psalm in unison.

"For they that carried us away captive required of us a song…"

Of the three men who made it through the tunnel and onto the first train that morning, two managed to return home.

Murphy, the meat packer from Springfield, had disappeared, presumed dead.

In New Orleans once, fifteen years after the war ended, Tommy had won a death penalty case. It was something that he insisted his firm let him do. The bulk of their business was moneymaking corporate law, but every so often he very quietly took on some seemingly hopeless criminal case in some distant part of the nation, charging no fee and working late hours. It was a task he did not require of the associates he hired, or the partners he formed, though more than one of them did precisely the same. Winning these cases was hard, and when he did, there was always a celebratory air.

On this occasion, long after midnight, he'd found himself in a small jazz club, listening to a particularly good trumpet player. The musician had spotted Tommy, sitting near the front, and almost stumbled on a note. But he'd recovered, smiled, faced the audience, and told them all that sometimes on some nights, he found himself remembering the war, and that this caused him to play something more reflective.

He'd then launched into a solo version of "Amazing Grace," turning the hymn into rhythm and blues, striking long trilling notes that filled the entire room with a plaintive urgency.

Tommy had been sure that the musician would come over to speak with him, but instead the band leader had sent over a bottle of the club's best champagne, and the note: Better to leave some things unsaid.

Here's that drink I promised you.

Glad you made it home, too. When Tommy asked the club manager if he could thank the musician in person, he was told that the trumpet player had already left.

As best as Tommy could figure, the truth about the murder of Captain Vincent Bedford and Lincoln Scott's trial and the escape from Stalag Luft Thirteen never really was written, which, he thought, was probably an acceptable thing. He had spent many hours, after he finally returned home to Vermont, thinking about Trader Vic, trying to discover for himself some sort of reconciliation with Bedford's death. He was not convinced that Vic deserved to die, not even for the mistake of trading information that inadvertently caused the deaths of men and turned him into a threat to the escape plans of others.

But then again, he sometimes also thought that Vic's murder was the only just thing that had happened in the camp. As the years had passed. Tommy came to understand that, ultimately, the most complicated man, and the hardest of them all to fathom, had been the used-car salesman from Mississippi.

He might have been the bravest of them all, the stupidest, the most evil, and the most clever, because, for every single aspect of Vic's personality, Tommy could find a contradiction.

And, finally, he supposed it was all those contradictions that had killed Trader Vic just as surely as that ceremonial SS dagger did.

Tommy glanced down at the watch he still wore on his wrist, not because he was curious about the time, but more about the memories it held, deep within its mechanical gears and levers. He followed the second hand creeping around the watch face and he thought: We were all heroes once, even the worst of us. The watch no longer kept good time, and more than one repairman had examined it with dismay, suggesting that keeping it running was far more expensive than the watch was worth. But Tommy always paid the bill, because none of the repairmen had even the vaguest idea what its true value was.

Lydia nudged Tommy again, and they rose.

Lincoln Scott's casket was being wheeled down the center of the cathedral while the organ resounded with "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."

The most prominent of the dignitaries formed an honorary squad of pallbearers directly behind the vibrant colors of the American flag.

And just behind them followed Lincoln Scott's family. They moved slowly, their pace set by the small, silver-haired, delicate form of the black airman's widow. Her step had the patience of age.

The pews emptied out behind the procession. Tommy waited his turn, then stepped out into the aisle. He found Lydia's arm, and the two of them walked out of the cathedral together.

Tommy blinked for a moment, when the warm sun hit his face. He heard a familiar twangy voice speaking in his own ear say, Find us the way home. Tommy, willya? and he answered to his own heart, I suppose I did find the way home.

For as many of us as I could.

Next to him, he felt Lydia squeeze his arm tight to her side for just a second. Tommy looked up and saw that Lincoln Scott's family had gathered on the right, spread out over the first few steps of the cathedral, surrounding the widow. She was receiving condolences from the many mourners, who lined up to pay their respects. Tommy nodded to his wife and maneuvered to the end of the line, They moved forward steadily, approaching the widow.

Tommy tried to form some words in his head, but was surprised to realize that he could not. He'd made many elaborate and dramatic speeches in hundreds of courtrooms, often extemporaneously finding the right words, just as he had in 1944 at Stalag Luft Thirteen. But in these few moments, as he shuffled toward Lincoln Scott's bride, he was at a loss.

And so, he had nothing prepared when he finally reached the widow's side.

"Mrs. Scott," he said hesitatingly, clearing his throat with a cough.

"I am very sorry for your loss."

The widow looked up at Tommy, measuring him, an almost quizzical look flitting behind her eyes, as if he were someone she thought she should know, but couldn't quite place. She took Tommy's hand in hers, and then, in that way people have at funerals, lifted her left hand to cover his right, as if further solidifying the handshake. And then, just as inadvertently, Tommy lifted his own left hand and covered hers.

"I knew your husband years ago…" he said.

But the widow suddenly looked down and, for a moment, stared at Tommy's damaged hand, resting on top other own.