Hanging on

side of the house, across the narrow B Street, was the quaint little town church.

Kelly and Beame stood in the middle of the bridge road and looked east toward the break in the trees where the tanks would pass within the hour. The village continued one block in that direction. On the north side as one looked eastward, there were four single-story houses with meager lawns between them, church-owned homes for deaf-mutes. All of the houses were the same inside — hollow, gutted, phony — but differentiated externally by minor details: the size of the porches, condition of the paint, shape of the windows. Though the houses were the same in their dimensions, and though all of their windows were made lightless by identical sets of blackout blinds, they did look like separately conceived and constructed dwellings. On the south side of the block, there was only the rectory, rectory lawn, and an outhouse tucked in between two big elms.

The village extended two blocks to the west along the bridge road. The whole north side of the first block beyond the rectory was occupied by the massive convent and its board-fenced yard. Across the street from the convent, again commanding a full block, was the church and churchyard. Then, over beyond A Street and the river, there were a couple of houses and the village store.

Kelly switched on his flashlight and walked north on B Street.

“It looks so real, doesn't it?” Beame asked, awestricken.

“Pray the krauts think so,” Major Kelly said.

“I thought you told me not to pray.”

“That's right,” Kelly said. “I almost forgot.”

B Street ran only two blocks north-south, half the length of its sister, A Street. The northern block, above the bridge road, was faced with a sixty-foot barrackslike nunnery and a stone well on the east, and with the convent and convent yard fence on the west. Everything was nice and tidy.

From B, they entered Y Street. This was the northernmost of the town's three east-west roads, parallel to the bridge road. It ran one block east, with nothing but two church-owned houses on each side, their outhouses, scattered elms. Across Y Street, facing the mouth of B, stood a fake two-story house in ill-repair.

“Why didn't you give the streets French names?” Beame asked. “Won't the Germans think it's odd — naming streets after letters of the alphabet?”

Kelly sighed, tugged at his collar. “The letters are for our benefit in a crisis. The krauts won't expect a town this small to have formal street names.”

Turning west, they followed Y Street towards the river. On their left was the convent. On the right, there was only open lawn until they reached a two-story fake house at the end of the block. This one was also poorly maintained. Actually, every two-story structure in the village was ugly and decaying — except for the rectory. They did not want Rotenhausen to take a fancy to some building which had no floors inside and no inner walls or furniture… The rectory had to outshine all the others, make a quick and obvious impression.

The second block of Y ended at A Street, which was four blocks long and ran north-south. The first block contained a nunnery and two houses. Kelly shined the flashlight over these, then turned south.

“One thing bothers me,” Beame said.

“What's that?”

“Why hasn't the bridge been bombed since we put it up?”

“Well… the Allies think they've already knocked it out with that B-17,” Major Kelly said. “And the Stukas won't touch it now that they know the Wehrmacht wants to use it.”

Beame frowned. “If the German air force knows the Wehrmacht wants to use the bridge and is cooperating by not bombing us — won't it also have told the convoy to expect to find us here?”

“Maybe not,” Kelly said. “There's something strange about the Stuka attacks.”

“Strange, sir?”

“Remember,” Kelly said, “they never bombed us, just the bridge. And they always knew when we'd rebuilt it. I don't know what's going on here, but it isn't all jake.”

“Jake who?” Beame asked.

“Jake nobody. Just jake.”

“He doesn't have a last name?” Beame asked, puzzled.

“Jake is an expression,” Major Kelly said. “I meant that everything about those Stukas is somehow not right. It's all false.”

“Oh,” Beame said. “I see. It's not jake.”

“Just like General Blade isn't all jake,” Kelly said. “At first, I thought he sent us here because he was senile. Lately, I've realized there's got to be more to it than that. I don't know what, though. I wish I did.”

The next block of A Street contained a stone well, a sixty-by-forty-foot school for the deaf and, on the east, the fourth wall of the convent yard fence which several workmen were still nailing in place.

And then they reached the bridge road again. To the east was the church and rectory. One block to the west was the bridge. Only three structures fronted the bridge road on that last block: two houses and the church-owned store in which the products and handicrafts of the deaf-mutes were sold to tourists and those in nearby villages. The store was fully completed and stocked with quilts, canned goods, jewelry, clothing, carpentry, and other items which had been taken from Eisenhower and which would be foisted on the Germans as produce of the deaf-mutes if any krauts wandered into the place.

The third block of A, the first south of the bridge road, was faced by two one-story houses on the west. Beneath the first of these was the hospital bunker in which Tooley, Kowalski, Liverwright, and Emil Hagendorf would pass the tense night. Hagendorf would pass the tense night as a prisoner. They had purchased a great deal of wine from Maurice to keep Hagendorf drunk and docile.

On the other side of the block was the churchyard. It was dark and quiet. Kelly could see half a dozen rounded tombstones and the vague outlines of others lying in the deeper shadows. Altogether, Maurice had provided forty-five grave markers which he had borrowed from church and family plots in and around Eisenhower. These had all been set in fresh concrete, over nonexistent graves. More than anything else that had been done, these gave the town a past, an illusion of age and endurance. When Kelly directed the flashlight beam in among them, the sandstone and granite markers gleamed and rose up in chalky skirts from the pools of blue-black shadows on the ground.

The final block of A Street, the southwest corner of the town, held platform houses, sheds, and outhouses. Kelly played his light back there, and he suddenly thought that he and Beame seemed like two watchmen examining a movie lot on their late rounds. They went no farther south.

Z Street was the third east-west lane, south of and parallel to the bridge road and the northernmost Y Street. Z was two blocks long, like Y. On its south side rose a school for normal and deaf-mute children, a stone well, several platform houses built together over what had once been the unit's main bunker. On the north side of Z, the churchyard occupied the first block. The second block contained an open-air shrine to the Virgin Mary, complete with statue and encircling flagstone walkway. Then came three single-story dwellings, all shabby, all with broken- down porches, one with a slightly sagging roof.

“I've been thinking about Blade,” Beame said, stopping in the middle of the street. “About his not being all jake. Do you think his being involved in the black market has anything to do with our being sent here?”

Kelly stopped and turned. “Blade's in the black market? How do you know?”

“I don't know,” the lieutenant said. “But when we were in Britain waiting for D- Day, I heard rumors. I got friendly with junior officers on Blade's staff.”

“And they said he dealt in the black market?”

“Implied. They implied it.”

Kelly thought about that a moment, then shrugged. “I didn't think Blade was smart enough to play that game. But even if he is, what could that have to do with our being sent here?”

“Nothing, I guess. It was just a thought.”

They turned from Z into B Street, into the only block they had not yet inspected. On their left was the churchyard and church. On the right was a one-story house with a ratty front lawn, a fence running eastward, and then the rectory and the rectory lawn.

“Back to Square One,” Kelly said.

Kelly was impressed with himself and his men, even if all of this had been for nothing, even if they were doomed. In little more than four days, they had constructed