Hanging on

blinds as were the windows elsewhere in the house, and the floor was covered by a deep maroon carpet. The furniture was heavy, and there was too much of it. The air here was stuffy. It reminded Kelly of a funeral parlor. Lately, though, everything reminded him of funeral parlors.
        The downstairs bedroom was small and neat, quite like his room upstairs, except that the bed was not brass. Quite out of character for a priest, he suddenly wondered if he would ever get to put it to Lily Kain on a brass bed.
        The kitchen, behind the dining room and bedroom, was large and airy, full of heavy old cabinets, a worktable, and a second dining table with four high-backed chairs.
        Kelly walked over to the porcelain sink, which had also come from Maurice's house in Eisenhower, and he worked the handle of the green iron pump. On the sixth stroke, water gushed into the sink.
        "Fantastic!" Lieutenant Beame said. He was dressed in coarse gray trousers and shirt with green suspenders and a dirty brown fedora worn back on his head. He was playing a deaf-mute tonight. It was a ludicrous thought. "How can you get water out of a pump when there isn't any well for it to be drawn from?" Beame had not been assigned to the building of the rectory.
        "We put a six-foot pit directly under the sink," Kelly explained, watching the last of the short burst of water as it swirled down the drain. The drain fed into a second pit so that the dirty water would not mix with the clean. "Then we lined the pit with concrete, put a tin lid on top, and ran the pump line into the pit."
        "And filled the pit with clean river-water," Beame said, smiling appreciatively at Kelly's ingenuity. "But what if all the Germans want to wash up? Is there enough water in this pit to draw baths for a dozen officers?"
        "No," Kelly said. "But we constructed a crawl space under the house so a man could keep check on the water supply and add to it as it's depleted."
        "Who?"
        "Lyle Fark's handling that."
        "Good man," Beame said. He looked around the kitchen, nodding happily. "We're going to fool them. I know we are, sir."
        Beame seemed almost normal. He certainly was not indulging in a lover's daydream right now. "What's happened to you?" Kelly asked. "Did you decide to forget about Nathalie?"
        Beame frowned. "No. But I've realized that this hoax isn't going to work unless we put our hearts into it. And if the hoax doesn't work, I'm dead. And if I'm dead, I can't ever have Nathalie."
        "Wonderful!" Major Kelly said, clapping his hands in delight. "Now you're talking sense. You sound just like me."
        "And we will fool the krauts," Beame said. "I feel it in my bones."
        "I'd feel better if you felt it in your brain," Kelly said.
        "We will fool them."
        "If we can maneuver General Rotenhausen into choosing the rectory for his headquarters," Kelly said.
        "We can do that."
        "And if we can keep the Germans from looking into any of the other buildings except the finished ones-rectory, church, convent foyer, village store…"
        "You'll do it, sir. You'll outfox them."
        Kelly hoped the lieutenant was right. If a German went into one of the other buildings, then the whole scheme would come crashing down around their heads. If the Church's immunity from search and seizure did not protect them tonight, nothing would. And Kelly would never get to put it to Lily Kain on a brass bed. Or on anything at all. "I don't think we have a chance, Beame."
        "I pray we do," Beame said. "I pray to God you're wrong."
        "Don't pray," Kelly said, running a finger around his tight clerical collar. "I'm an atheist."
        "This is no time to be an atheist," Beame said, leaning on the kitchen table.
        "It's the best time to be an atheist," Kelly said. "If you pray, you get the idea someone's listening. When you get the idea someone's listening, you get the idea someone cares. And when you think someone cares, you're soon sure that your prayers will be answered. And when you think God is going to answer your prayers, you get careless. And some kraut blows your head off."
        While Major Kelly was putting on his ecclesiastical suit and while the men were finishing the last few jobs that would make the false community complete, Lieutenant Slade secreted himself in a dense clump of underbrush on the edge of the forest. He settled