Hanging on

the sergeant, and he scared himself in the process.

“I'm not afraid to fight,” Coombs said.

Exasperated, Kelly watched Coombs try to hand back the confession. He refused to touch it. He swatted Coombs's hand as if trying to push back more than the paper — as if he were fighting off the inevitable death rushing down on them. Couldn't Coombs see that one man's pride or stubbornness could kill them all? After a full minute of this thrust and counterthrust, with the credit contract getting pretty badly mutilated, Kelly leaned toward Coombs. “What the fuck rank are you?” he screamed.

Coombs looked at him as if he were witless. “Sergeant.”

“And I am a major, right?” Kelly drew himself up to his full height. “Sergeant, as your commanding officer, I order you to sign that paper and give me fifty dollars. Now.”

Coombs's face drained of color as he realized his dilemma. He was in a spot where he had to go against one of the two moral principles that made him tick. He either had to refuse an order from a legitimate superior — or cooperate with this coward and become, in effect, a coward himself. For a long moment he sat on the shuttler, swaying back and forth as if buffeted by two gale force winds. Then, leaning quickly forward and holding the confession against one of the packing crates on the forked cargo platform, he signed his name. His need for order, for a sense of rank, for rules and regulations, had won out over his loathing of cowardice.

“Fifty dollars,” Kelly said, taking the signed document.

As the sergeant handed over the money, something else occurred to him. “This isn't all Maurice is getting, is it?”

Kelly was uncomfortable again. He was anxious to be off, signing up the other men. Precious minutes were being wasted! Besides, he was a bit ashamed of this business. Sometimes, he was shocked at the immoral things life forced him to do… “Maurice gets a few other little things,” Kelly admitted. “Like your cargo shuttler… the camp generator when we leave… ”

Coombs was distressed. “What else?”

“Only one other thing,” Kelly assured him. “A toll-booth.”

Coombs could not make any sense out of that. He scratched the back of his neck, spat in the dust, taking as long as possible to respond. He knew Kelly and some of the others thought he was stupid. He was not really stupid at all, just taciturn and grumpy. For the life of him, though, he could not see what the major was talking about, and he was forced to look stupid. “Tollbooth?”

“After the Panzers pass through and we're safe,” Kelly said, “we're going to build a tollbooth on the other side of the gorge, in the road just before the bridge. It'll have a pole across the road and everything. Maurice's people will work there, bring extra money into Eisenhower.”

“Oh.” Compared to an operator like The Frog, Coombs supposed he was stupid.

“As soon as you pay Maurice the rest, he gives back your contract. Thanks for your cooperation, Sergeant.” Kelly turned and ran back toward the HQ building where several men were hurriedly reviewing the construction plans in the shade by the rec room door.

Lieutenant Beame was one of them. However, he was standing pretty much by himself, thirty feet from the knot of men.

Major Kelly went straight to him, because he liked to get each man alone when he was selling the idea of the credit contract. He knew it would be dangerous to let them group together when he delivered his spiel. It had to be a one-to-one relationship in which he could employ what little talent for discipline he possessed. He had to be able to concentrate on one man in order to overwhelm his victim with his practiced patter and with dire predictions of what the Panzers would do to them if they did not get this damned village built in just six days.

“Got something for you to sign,” Kelly said, giving Beame the paper.

“Oh?”

All the while that Kelly explained the fine points of the credit contract to Lieutenant Beame, the lieutenant stared over Kelly's shoulder at nothing in particular, a silly smirk on his face. When Kelly asked him to sign the paper, Beame took the pencil and scrawled his name in sloppily looping letters. He was still grinning drunkenly. He gave Kelly the scrip without quibbling, and his expression remained eerily mongoloid.

“What's the matter?” Kelly asked. “What are you grinning about?”

Beame hesitated. Then: “I met a girl.”

“I don't understand,” Kelly said.

“The most beautiful girl I've ever seen.” Beame almost drooled.

“Who?”

Beame told him. “I asked her to come back this evening for a romantic dinner. Maybe you can meet her then.”

“In the mess hall?” Kelly asked.

The mess hall, which was the rec room, was anything but romantic. And the food Sergeant Tuttle served them was hardly the stuff of a lover's supper. Sergeant Tuttle was camp cook. He had not been a cook in civilian life, but a sanitation worker in Philadelphia.

“Not the mess hall,” Beanie said. “I've bought some groceries from Tuttle, and I'm going to cook the supper myself. We'll eat down under that stand of pines along the riverbank.” Beame looked at Kelly, but Kelly was strangely unable to catch the lieutenant's eyes. It was as if Beame were looking through him at some vaguely perceived paradise.

“Are you in love?” Kelly asked.

Beame's grin became sloppy. “I guess maybe I am.”

“That's foolish,” Kelly warned him. “Love is a form of hope, and hope is a terminal disease. You get in love with someone, you become careless. Your mind wanders. Next thing you know, you collect a two-hundred-pound bomb down the back of your shirt. Love is deadly. Just fuck her and forget the love part.”

“Whatever you say,” Beame said. Unmistakably, though, the lieutenant had not heard a word the major said.

Kelly was about to press the point, in hopes of saving Beame before it was too late, when Lieutenant Slade arrived with his form. “You get one of these?” he asked Kelly, shoving a yellow paper into the major's hand. He gave one to Beame, who did not even glance at it.

“What's this?” Kelly asked, giving Slade a suspicious look.

“It's a questionnaire,” Slade said. He had an armful of them.

Kelly read the headline across the top: who is the traitor?

“We all know there's a traitor in camp,” Slade said. “Someone keeps telling the German air force when the bridge is rebuilt so they can bomb it again right away. Last night, when I called General Blade and after you gave him our supplies order, I asked him to have this questionnaire printed and delivered when the DC-3 came in. He thought it was a good idea.” Slade pointed to the list of questions and blanks where the answers were to go. “Just fill these in. You don't have to sign your name or anything. There's a response box nailed to the wall outside the rec room, and it's unmonitored. When you have this ready, deposit it in the box.”

Kelly looked at the paper. The first question was: “Right off, are you the traitor, and would you like to confess if we guarantee you a light punishment?”

“See how it works?” Slade asked. “Even if we don't obtain a confession, I will be able to analyze these forms and find out who our informer is.” He smiled, immensely pleased with himself. “Statistical analysis. That's all it is, Major.”

Kelly opened his mouth to tell Slade that he was an idiot, then thought better of it. He read the second question from the sheet: “Have you noticed anyone in the unit behaving strangely lately?”

“That one ought to get a response,” Slade said, nodding his head emphatically. He belonged in an asylum.

With this credit contract business, Major Kelly could not afford to make any new enemies or antagonize old ones. Therefore, he told Slade that the questionnaire was a marvelous idea. “Here, now you take one of my forms,” he said, giving The Snot his credit contract.

Slade looked at it with as much suspicion as Kelly had shown while studying the questionnaire. “What is this?”