Hanging on

Major Kelly shook Maurice's hand, marveling as always at the inordinate greasiness of Maurice's complexion. The man's round chin was like a large, oiled bearing. His cheeks were slick. His nose was beaded with oil in the creases and shined overall. His hair was combed straight back, pasted to his round head by a heavy coat of clear lubrication. Fortunately, Major Kelly thought, Sergeant Coombs had not yet called Maurice a greasy frog.

“What brings you here today, Maurice?” Kelly asked. But he knew what brought Maurice there: the possibility of a profit. The possibility of a profit motivated Maurice like food or sex or liquor or success motivated other men.

Quite to the point, Maurice said, “I would like to have your backhoe. The Cat, you know which I mean?” He wiped his greasy hands on his baggy trousers and looked past the major at the heavy, camouflage-painted piece of equipment.

Major Kelly shook his head sadly. “You know we can't permit Army property to be used for a civilian project.”

“You misunderstand, Major!” Maurice said. “I do not wish to borrow the backhoe. Au contraire! I wish to own it.”

“You want to buy the backhoe?”

“No, no, no.”

“You want me to give it to you? Just give you The Cat?”

“That's right, Major.”

Major Kelly wished that Maurice didn't speak English so well, that the channels of communication between them were severely limited. It was dangerous to be able to communicate with the old son of a bitch. Just past the turn of the century, when he was seventeen, Maurice had immigrated to America where he'd remained until just after the First World War. He had returned to France because, as he told the major, there was a greater chance of his making a fortune there. He had not done badly in the States, and he hoped to use his capital to invest, cheaply, in the shattered motherland and then grow along with her as she was restored. He'd done well, though not so well as he had thought he would. In France again, he found that his countrymen were not enamored of Americans, not in the least, and that they distrusted any Frenchman who had once gone to live with the Yanks. Still, he had made and lost and remade and relost fortunes. Right now, he was trying to make a fortune by screwing Major Kelly to the wall. He tried this about once a week. He hadn't failed yet to get what he wanted.

“I suppose,” Major Kelly said, “that there's a good reason why I should just give you the machine.”

“An excellent reason,” Maurice agreed, wiping a hand over his white, greasy hair. His fingers were greasy too.

“Information to sell?”

Maurice nodded. “Information that will save your lives,” he said, grandly. Maurice could be grand, when he wanted. Even with his hair all slicked back and his face greasy, he could be grand.

“You exaggerate, surely.”

“Never.”

“What's the nature of this information?”

Maurice looked meaningfully at the backhoe and arched one bushy eyebrow.

“You can't expect me to give you the machine without knowing what I'm getting in return,” Major Kelly said. “That's not nice, not nice at all. I am always nice to my men and nice to you — so why is everyone nasty with me?”

Maurice nodded sadly, sympathizing with the major, but he would still not say what the information was that he had to sell.

Major Kelly turned and pointed at the camouflaged backhoe which sat on the edge of the riverbank, by the bridge entrance, digging-claw up and bent, mud crusted on its teeth. “Do you know what that piece of equipment costs? Do you realize how important it is to my mission here?”

“Quelque chose.”

“It is not a trifle,” Kelly said.

Maurice pulled at his greasy nose and sighed, “Coute que coute—it will not save your lives.”

Major Kelly watched the little frog carefully, and he finally decided he had to trust him. He couldn't risk ignoring the bastard, in case he really did have something vital to say. Maurice was just the sort to let them die in order to teach them a lesson.

“So?” Maurice asked.

“All right. You can have the damn thing. But not until you've told me what you came to tell me.”

“I must have the backhoe first,” Maurice insisted.

The Frenchman jammed both hands into his baggy trouser pockets and looked at the earth, suddenly so still that he appeared to have turned into a column of stone. The illusion was so convincing that Major Kelly felt a solid hammer blow to Maurice's head would crack him into thousands of shards. Kelly had to fight off an urge to go looking for a construction mallet. He knew Maurice would stand this way until he got what he wanted or was refused it outright. And, in the meantime, death was bearing down on them in some form the major couldn't guess.

Kelly sighed. “Okay.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can have The Cat.”

Maurice smiled. “You won't regret this.”

“I better not,” Kelly said, trying to sound fierce.

Maurice turned toward a copse of pines that stood two hundred yards along the riverbank, waved both hands in some prearranged signal. Two young men stepped out of the shadows under the trees and started walking toward Kelly and the frog. “A couple of village boys,” Maurice explained. “They will take the backhoe away.”

“They know how to drive it?”

“Yes.”

The boys, both between sixteen and twenty, went directly to The Cat and began exploring it, until they felt secure. They both climbed aboard and turned to look at Maurice.

He ordered them to start it.

They did, let it idle.

“I suppose you'll want gasoline, too,” Kelly said.

“Cela va sans dire,” Maurice said, grinning.

“Beame,” Kelly said, “bring five ten-gallon cans of gasoline from the camp stores and lash them to The Cat.”

“Yes, sir,” Beame said. He was unhappy with the order.

“He's a good boy,” Maurice said, watching Beame hurry off toward the machinery shed.

Kelly didn't answer that. “Maurice,” he said, “you are not an ordinary man. You are something else, you are—”

“Degage?” Maurice asked.

Struggling with his college French, Major Kelly looked for an epithet he wanted. “Chevalier d'industrie.”

Maurice actually bristled. He stood stiffly, face twisted, his greasy hair trying to stand straight up on his neck, his eyes blazing. “You call me a swindler?”

Realizing he had gone too far, reminding himself that he had never been very good at maintaining discipline, the major said, “That was not how I meant it. I meant—'One who lives by his wits.' ”

Maurice unbristled. “Thank you, Major,” he said. “I am honored to be so considered by a man I respect as much as I respect you.”

As Beame delivered the cans of gasoline to the two young men on the backhoe, Kelly said, “Now, what information has cost me so dearly?”

Maurice was suddenly nervous. “A Panzer unit is moving towards the front, complete with an armored supply convoy and approximately a thousand infantrymen.”

Major Kelly wiped at his nose. Looking at Maurice, he had begun to feel that his own nose was bedecked