Hanging on

we'd be as good as dead— stranded here behind German lines.”

“I'm aware of all that,” Maurice said.

“But there's still a way?” Major Kelly, against all his better judgment, allowed himself a bit of hope, the terminal disease. He couldn't help himself.

“Yes. A way out,” Maurice said.

His sixteen-year-old sharks nodded soberly.

Having forgotten the mud on his head, treacherous hope kindled, Major Kelly leaned toward The Frog. “How much will this cost us?”

“Considerable,” Maurice said.

“I was afraid of that.”

“However, you will receive a great deal in return — you will live.”

Kelly gave himself another dribble of whiskey, though he could not afford to drink much more. Already, he was seeing two of everything, including two of Maurice. He did not want to get drunk enough to see three of everything, because the pair of Maurices was already more than he could stand. “Specifics. What do you want in return for whatever help you give me?”

Maurice held up a hand for patience. “First let me explain how you can save yourselves. After that, the price will not seem so bad.”

“Go ahead.” He drank his dribble of whiskey.

Maurice put down his glass, got up, stiff and serious even in his baggy trousers. “You will not move any of your equipment or attempt to conceal your presence. Not even the big D-7 must be driven away. Instead, you will build a town on this site, a town designed to shield all of your heavy machinery and your men from the Nazis.”

Kelly butted the heel of his palm against his head to clear his ear and hear better. Chunks of dried mud rained down around him. “Build a town?”

“Exactly,” Maurice said. He smiled, warmed by his own suggestion. “You will build a French village here and hide your massive machines in the specially designed buildings. Clever, eh?”

“Impossible,” Kelly said. “You don't throw up a building in a few hours. And we'd have to — construct a whole town before the Germans got here.”

“You do throw up the building in a few hours,” Maurice said. “If you do not intend to live in it for very long.”

“That's another problem. Who will live in this town?” Was he hearing Maurice right? Did he have mud in his ears? He checked. No mud.

“I will supply half the population of my village. With your men, they will make a convincing citizenry.”

“My men don't speak French. They'll be found out immediately.”

“I've considered that,” Maurice said. He poured himself a last whiskey. “The one institution the Nazis have been careful not to tamper with extensively is the Roman Catholic Church. Hitler respects the Church's worldwide power if not its philosophy. Himmler himself is a Catholic. Therefore, our fake town will be a religious community, a retreat for priests and nuns and selected members of the laity. It will be built around a convent. And we will tell the Nazis that, in this convent, the deaf and dumb are taught simple skills. Your men will be the poor afflicted peasants, while the women from my village have already volunteered to be the nuns. It is quite simple, really.”

“More simple yet,” Kelly said, “why not build the convent in Eisenhower? We could conceal the machines and my men inside of it and not have to build a whole damned village.”

“No good,” Maurice said. “According to my resources, the man in charge of this Panzer convoy is General Adolph Rotenhausen. He was in the first waves of shock troops to overwhelm France. He passed through my town then, out on the main highway. He made his headquarters in my house four nights running during the invasion of France. He knows Eisenhower has no convent. And he knows that, in the midst of this awful war, no new convent could possibly be built, for lack of supplies.”

“But if he knows your town,” Kelly said, “he must know that no other village exists here, in this clearing.”

Maurice shook his head. “Rotenhausen's Panzers invaded and departed France on the same highway, that which passes through my village eight miles south of here. Perhaps follow-up troops came down this old back road. But no Panzers. In those days, they did not have to use unlikely routes to avoid air attack. There was no resistance to them at that time.”

“Still… build a whole town? Madness!”

“The alternatives are unworkable. And while Eisenhower is not built to conceal your machines, a town of your own making would be so built.”

“We can't build a village in a week,” Kelly insisted.

“I've heard that the Army engineers can do the impossible.”

“Not in a week. Not with the bridge to rebuild as well.”

Maurice waved his hand as if to say this was taken care of. “I will detail workers from my village to augment your labor supply.”

“Unskilled labor. It's—”

“Remember that your town must last only one brief night! And the convent alone will house your machines— and be beyond suspicion.”

They listened to the crickets chirrup outside the corrugated walls. The same insects would probably sing on his grave, Kelly knew. Above their chorus, he imagined the clatter of Panzer-tread, the stamp of marching feet, ack-ack guns, submachine guns… He knew it was hopeless, knew they were doomed. Yet he had to play along. A character in a fairy tale must play his role regardless of the certainty of the outcome. Otherwise, the disaster might be even worse than that which the script, the story, called for.

“We'll have to talk about this some more, though it won't work.”

“But it will work,” Maurice said. The sharks smiled. “It will.”

“Never. But let me wash this mud off my head. Then we'll talk about it some more and pretend we think it really could work.”

PART THREE The Village July 18/July 21, 1944

1 / JULY 18

At dawn, Kelly, Beame, and Slade stood by the bridge ruins, watching the road on the far side of the gorge where it disappeared around the hillside.

“They aren't coming,” Slade said.

“Give them a chance,” Beame said. “The sun's hardly up.”

A dirty mist lay in the gorge, roiled over the river. Snakes of mist slithered up the bank and danced restlessly before them, touched by golden morning light. Behind, to the east, the sun had risen below the tree line. Hot, orange Halloween light like the glow from a jack-o'-lantern's mouth flushed between the black tree trunks where the forest was thin, and it filled the east entrance to the clearing.

“They aren't coming,” Slade said. He was delighted by the plan, because it made the major look like an idiot And coward. It gave Slade justification for murdering the dumb bastard and taking command of the unit. He giggled.

“Look!” Beame shouted, suddenly excited.

On the other side of the gorge, an odd procession filed around the bend in the road, making for the place where the bridge had stood. Maurice lead the parade, dressed in another — or maybe the same — checkered shirt and pair of baggy pants. Behind him were middle-aged men with their sleeves rolled to their elbows — and older but