by Dean Koontz
Thus far, the ruse was working. Thanks to an unknown and unforeseeable personal clash between Beckmann and Rotenhausen, and thanks to their interservice rivalry, and thanks also to the Third Reich's favored treatment of the Catholic Church, nothing would be searched. The bulk of the convoy would not even spend the night in St. Ignatius, but would bivouac along the highway to the east. The long night was still ahead, and the crossing of the bridge in the morning, but it was beginning to look as if there were a good chance...
No! that was the wrong way to think. Optimism was foolish. It was dangerous at best. At worst: deadly. Don't hatch your chickens before they're counted, he told himself. And don't put all their baskets in one egg. The thing was not to hope, but to let the fairy tale carry you. Drift along, play the role, hang on.
Fifteen minutes after he had flopped on the bed with a severe case of the shakes, Kelly heard boots echo on the stairs. The officers' aides carried up two bathtubs and put them in the large bedrooms. A minute later, the first of the boiling water was brought up in heavy pails, with the general and the colonel directing their subordinates. Kelly heard water splashing. More orders in German. The sound of booted feet thumping down the stairs. Boots coming back up again. More water. More orders given. Two young aides thumping down the steps again. And then right back up, clump-clump-clump, this time with buckets of cold water to temper the baths.
Finally, the only sound on the second floor was a faint musical splashing as the men soaped and rinsed in the privacy of their rooms, skinning off the film of dust that coated them after a long day on the road. The splashing slowly increased in volume, as if the officers were becoming intoxicated with cleanliness and were jumping about in drunken exuberance, then gradually began to decrease in volume, and faded out altogether. The second floor was silent. Downstairs, two German voices were raised in conversation as Beckmann's aides prepared for bed in the room by the kitchen. In a few seconds, even that noise was stilled.
Kelly waited.
Ten minutes later, when neither Beckmann nor Rotenhausen had made a sound since abandoning their tubs, the major was confident that they had retired for the night. They would both be sleeping contentedly. They would pose no real threat until dawn. Until the convoy began moving through St. Ignatius and across the bridge, Beckmann and Rotenhausen were the least of Kelly's worries.
The most of his worries, until the sun rose, were his own men. He did not trust them for a minute. They were crazy. You could not trust lunatics. In the hours before dawn, as the tensions grew more severe, one of those men would do something idiotic, childish, dangerous, and perhaps deadly. Instead of staying in his assigned building where he could not get into trouble, one of those men- maybe dozens of them-would venture out under the misapprehension that he was safer beyond the limitations imposed by four walls. When that happened, Major Kelly wanted to be there to salvage the hoax-and their lives. His duty, then, was not to remain in the rectory and listen to the officers snoring their heads off. Instead, he had to be outside in the fake town, troubleshooting.
Careful not to make a sound, Kelly got off the feather mattress. His back ached from the base of his spine to his neck, and he was glad he did not have to sleep in a bed with so little support. If this madman Beckmann discovered the hoax, he would probably make Kelly sleep on a bed like this for several days and then shoot his head off.
When he was certain no one had heard the readjustment of the goose and chicken feathers inside the coarse mattress case, Kelly walked quietly to the room's only window, which was discernible against the dark wall despite the blackout blind that was taped to the window frame. He peeled the tape away. He lifted the blind without rattling it, and slid noiselessly underneath.
Beyond the glass, at the back of the rectory, lay a quiet French religious community: small houses, a dusty street, a nunnery, a churchyard... Kelly smiled, fond of his creation.
The window was well greased. It slid up with only a faint rasp of wood on wood. Slight though it was, that whispered reluctance seemed like a scream on the calm night air.
Kelly froze, holding up the bottom half of the window, listening for the thud of jackboots in the hall outside his room.
Two minutes later, when no one had stirred, Kelly squeezed through the window and stepped onto the board-shingled roof over the back porch. He eased the window down, not quite closing it. Stepping softly to the corner of the roof where a rose-vine lattice had been built to serve as his ladder, he climbed down to the ground.
He crouched at the edge of the porch. The night wind chilled the back of his neck as he surveyed the rear lawn.
He was alone.
Aware that the rectory windows were covered by blackout blinds, convinced that the night was dark enough to hide him from any German soldier patrolling the streets, Kelly ran to the fence that marked the, southern perimeter of the rectory property. A three-foot section of this shoulder-high barrier served as a hidden door. Kelly found the key panel, pressed on it, walked through. On the other side, he pushed the boards back into place and winced at the protracted squeak they made.
He was now on the southern half of the block. Four fake houses, a shrine to the Virgin, four outhouses, and one elm tree offered hiding places. He crept eastward along the fence, then left it for the less promising shelter of the second in a row of three outhouses. He pressed his back against the rough wall of the tiny building and tried to melt back into the purple-black shadows.
Beame was waiting as planned, his own back against the east wall, right around the corner from the major. In a trembling voice, Beame said, "Is that you, Major Kelly?"
"Beame?" Kelly whispered.
"Is that you, Kelly?"
"Beame?"
Beame did not move. Why wouldn't the man around the corner answer his question? Was it because the man around the corner was not Major Kelly-was, instead, some kill-crazy, sten-gun-carrying Nazi monster? "Major Kelly, is that you?"
"Beame?"
"Kelly? Sir? That you?"
"Beame, is that you?" Kelly asked. He put his palms flat against the outhouse wall, ready to push off and run if this turned out to be anyone but Lieutenant Beame.
"Major Kelly, why won't you answer my question?" Beame was shaking violently. He was certain that a wild-eyed, bloodsucking, death-worshipping Nazi maniac was around the corner, ready to pounce on him.
"What question? Beame, is that you?"
"No," Beame said. "There's no one here."
"No one?"
It was hopeless, Beame knew. "There's no one here, so go away." Beame thought he was going to vomit any second now. He hoped that if he had to die he would be shot before he suffered the indignity of vomiting on himself.
Major Kelly risked a quick glance around the corner and saw Beame. The lieutenant was rigid, arms straight down at his sides, eyes squeezed shut, face contorted with a grimace of expected pain. Kelly slipped around the edge of the building and joined him. "Beame, what in the hell is the matter with you?"
The lieutenant opened his eyes and was so relieved to see Kelly that he nearly collapsed. Leaning against the outhouse, he said, "I didn't think it was you, sir."
"Who else would it be?" Kelly whispered.
"I thought you were a kraut." Beame wiped sweat from his face.
"But I was speaking English, Beame."
The lieutenant was surprised. "Hey, that's right! I never thought of that." He grinned happily, suddenly frowned, and scratched his head. "But why didn't you identify yourself at the start, when I first asked you?"
"I didn't know who you were," Kelly said, as if the answer must be obvious even to a moron.
"Who else would it be?" Beame asked.
"I thought you were a kraut."
"But I was speaking English-"
"Let's get down to basics," Kelly hissed. He crouched, forcing Beame to hunker beside him. He looked around at the backs of the fake houses in which his men were sheltered, at the other houses, at the dusty streets that he could see betw
een the buildings. Lowering his voice even further, he said, "Have you checked on the men?"
"Yes," Beame said. "It wasn't easy with a kraut at every intersection. Thank God they didn't park the whole convoy in the clearing-or search the buildings. They aren't going to search, are they?"
"No," Kelly said. "Look, what about the men? They okay?"
"They're all in their assigned houses-except for Lieutenant Slade."
Kelly's stomach turned over and crawled around inside of him, hunting for a way out. "Slade?"
"He was supposed to be in one of the platform houses with Akers, Dew, and Richfield. None of them have seen him since early this evening."
"You mean he's on the loose?" Kelly asked.
Beame nodded.
"What's the sniveling little bastard up to?" Kelly wondered. "What does that rotten little son of a bitch have up his sleeve?"
For a while, they were both silent, trying to imagine the inside of Slade's sleeve. At last, Beame could not tolerate any more of that. "What will we do?"
"We have to find him," Kelly said. "Whatever he's got up his sleeve, it's rotten as month-old salami."
"Maybe he ran away," Beame said.
"Not Slade. He wants to fight, not run. He's somewhere in the village-somewhere he shouldn't be." And we're all dead because of him, Kelly thought.
And then he thought: No, we're all dead because death is the theme of this fairy tale. Slade's a particularly ugly plot problem, that's all. What we have to do is go after him and play our roles and make ourselves small, please the crazy Aesop behind this so maybe he'll let us live. And then he also thought: Am I losing my mind?
"Won't be easy finding him," Beame said. "Every intersection has a sentry."
Kelly wiped one cold hand across his face, pulled at his clerical collar. "It doesn't matter how difficult it is. We have to find him." He stood and moved away from the outhouse. "Let's get away from this place. It smells like shit."
* * *
2
Lieutenant Slade wished that his mother could see him now. For the first time since he had been assigned to Kelly's unit, he was getting a chance to act like a real soldier. Tonight, he had the opportunity to prove that he was as heroic as all the other men in his family had been.
He lay flat on the ground beside a fake stone well, watching the sentry who patrolled the Y-B intersection. The kraut walked twenty paces east, then twenty west, turning smartly on his heel at the end of each circuit. He did not seem to be interested in anything around him. Probably daydreaming. Just like half the other guards Slade had thus far observed. Fine. Good. They were not expecting danger from nuns, priests, and deaf-mutes. When it came, they would be overwhelmed.
Slade waited for the sentry to turn toward the west. The moment the man's back was to him, he pushed up and ran silently across Y Street into the darkness between two of the single-story platform houses. From there, he slithered westward on his stomach, over to the Y-A intersection where he made notes on yet another sentry.
Now was almost time. He had very little reconnaissance left to do. He had noted each sentry, had discovered the weak points in the German positions. He was almost ready to lead a silent attack. In half an hour, he could go find Major Kelly and kill him. And then make heroes out of this whole pack of cowards.
* * *
3
Hiding in shadows, crawling on their bellies, running tiptoe from one tree to the next and from one building to the next, Major Kelly and Lieutenant Beame went all over the village looking for Lieutenant Slade. They stopped in at every house, school, and nunnery, hoping that someone would have seen Slade during the night and could shed light on The Snot's intentions.
But no one had seen him since early in the evening. Not that anyone had been looking for him.
"You try not to notice The Snot," Lyle Fark told them as they stood with him and seven other men in one of the hollow two-story houses. "I mean, you don't want to know what he's doing, most of the time. But when he isn't there, you notice it right away. Everything's so tranquil. You get such a sense of well-being when he goes away."
"And when did you get this sense of well-being?" Kelly asked.
"Early this evening," Fark said. "Yeah, he must have disappeared around eight o'clock, because things seemed to pick up about then."
It was the same answer they got from everyone. Slade had not been seen for several hours; but although they could just about pinpoint the time of his departure, they could not discover where he had gone.
Shortly after two in the morning, they slipped past the sentry at the bridge road and A Street and crawled over to the hospital bunker steps. A one-story house had been thrown up atop the hospital. It was like most of the other fake houses, except that it had outside steps into the cellar. The steps, of course, lead into the bunker where Tooley, Kowalski, Liverwright, and Hagendorf were holed up for the duration. At the bottom of the steps, Major Kelly stood up and softly rapped out shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits on the wooden cellar door.
A minute passed. Slowly.
Down by the river, frogs were singing.
Another minute passed. Slower than the first.
"Come on, Tooley," Beame whispered. They were somewhat exposed on the steps, good targets for a Wehrmacht sharpshooter.
Kelly rapped on the door again. Even before he finished the tune, the portal scraped open a fraction of an inch, like the entrance to a crypt controlled by demonic forces.
"It's me, Tooley. Major Kelly."
"Whew!" the pacifist said. "I thought it was a German." He stepped out of the way, let them in. He was invisible in that lightless chamber.
When the door was closed again, Tooley switched on a flashlight, confident that none of its glow would escape the subterranean room. Liverwright, holding his wounded hip, loomed out of the darkness. And so did Maurice.
"What are you doing here?" Major Kelly asked.
"Dying," Liverwright said.
"Not you," Kelly said. "Maurice, you're supposed to stay away from here. You told me you didn't dare show your face around General Rotenhausen."
Maurice nodded. "And I pray I will not have to." His face glistened in the flashlight's glow.
"We have big trouble, sir," Private Tooley said.
"Then you know about Slade?"
"Bigger trouble than that." The pacifist sounded as if he were on the brink of tears. "Blood's going to be spilled."
"Bigger trouble than Slade running around loose?" Kelley asked. He felt as if he might vomit.
Maurice moved forward, commanding attention with his hefty stomach and his low, tense voice. "Two hours ago, one of my contacts came from the west to tell me that an Allied tank division has broken through the German lines and is rolling rapidly your way. I have checked it out myself. The Allies are driving hard to capture this bridge of yours."
"Ah..." Major Kelly said. He wished that he had been born without his legs. If he had been a cripple since birth, he would never have been drafted. He would be at home right now, back in the States, reading pulp magazines and listening to radio and having his mother wheel him to the movies. How nice. Why hadn't he ever before realized the wonderful life a cripple could have?
"Allied tanks?" Lieutenant Beame asked. "But this is no trouble! Don't you see? Our own people are on the way. We're saved!"
Maurice looked at Kelly. "There's another good reason for him to stay away from my daughter. I won't have her marry a stupid man."
"What do you mean?" Beame asked, baffled. "Aren't we saved?"
"I'm afraid not," Maurice said.
"Well, when are the Allied tanks getting here?" Beame asked.
"They ought to arrive before the Panzers start across the bridge from this side," Maurice said. He looked knowingly at Kelly. "By dawn or shortly thereafter, Major."
"Even better!" Beame said. "I don't understand why you're unhappy."
Major Kelly sighed and rubbed his eyes with one fist. Maybe if he had been born with only one hand he could
have avoided this mess. He would not have had to be really seriously crippled to stay out of the Army. "Think about it for a minute, Beame. In a couple of hours, you're going to have Allied tanks on the west bank of the river- and German tanks on the east bank. The Allies will control the land over there, and the Germans will control St. Ignatius. Neither the Allies nor the Germans are going to permit the enemy to cross that bridge."
"Stalemate!" Beame said, smiling at Maurice, Tooley, Liverwright, then at Kelly, gradually losing the smile as he went from one face to the next. "Oh, God," he said. "Oh, God, there's going to be a tank battle for the bridge!"
"Sure," Kelly said. "They'll sit on opposite shores and shoot at each other. And we'll be right in the middle."
Beame looked as if he were going to be sick on his own shoes.
"Don't be sick on your own shoes," Kelly said. "I couldn't stand that right now."
"Look," Beame said, "we don't have to wait around for this battle. We can slip away into the woods until it's over."
"Two hundred of us?" Kelly and Maurice exchanged a grim smile. "Even with darkness on our side, we've had trouble moving around town. That was just two of us. With two hundred-no chance."
Despite the changes which had taken place in him recently, Beame was much the same as he had always been: naive, full of hope. "Well... what if we sent someone west to meet these Allied tanks before they got here? If we told them that the Panzers were here, maybe we could persuade them to let the Germans cross and hold the battle elsewhere."
"This they will not do," Maurice said. "For one thing, the Allied tank commander would know that the Germans will blow up the bridge after themselves. They almost always do these days. And the Allies wouldn't want to lose the bridge."
"We can build them another bridge in a day!" Beame said.
Tooley nodded eagerly. "That's true."
"You forget that only Blade knows we're here," Kelly said. "The commander of those Allied tanks doesn't suspect there's a unit of engineers and laborers stranded behind the lines. Although, I suppose we could tell them..."
