Hanging on

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 the shells of twenty-five single-story and three two-story houses. They had built one two-story house complete: the rectory. The thirty-foot convent walls had been nailed up, as had the high board fence that surrounded that whole block, and the convent's entrance foyer had been fully finished to provide a place for the German general to pay his respects if he should take it in his head to do so. The shells of two large schools and two nunneries had been thrown up. The church had been built in full, except for the bell tower, which had no stairs or bell… and except for the pews which had been borrowed from a country church near Eisenhower. The forty-by-twenty-foot town store had been finished inside and out. They had built another house which Hagendorf had bulldozed to the ground. In addition, they had put up three stone wells, eighteen sheds, twenty-eight outhouses… There were three stables tucked near the woods, horses in each. In some ways, of course, the town was atypical of a French country village. There were no barns in sight, for one thing. And there were no structures made completely of stone. But this was, after all, supposed to be mainly a Catholic retreat, a church facility; the Germans could not expect it to look like just any other town. All in all, the accomplishment was enormous, and the patina of reality just thick enough to hoax the Germans. Though, naturally, the Germans would not be hoaxed. They would see through it sometime before dawn. They would kill everyone. Even though he knew he was dead, Major Kelly, alias Father Picard, was impressed with himself and his men.
        "It's perfect," Beame said.
        "So long as no one goes inside an unfinished building. If anyone does-"
        He stopped in midsentence as a sixteen-year-old French boy, Maurice's nephew, roared out of the night on a stolen German motorcycle. The boy came down the bridge road from the east, past the fake houses, his hair streaming in the wind. He had been standing watch on the road, and now there was no doubt what he was shouting above the cycle's chattering engine. "They come! Germans! They come!"
        Someone screamed in terror.
        Only after the scream died away did Kelly realize it was his own. Get hold of yourself, he thought. It's a fairy tale. Face up to your role. There isn't anything else for you to do.

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    11
        
        The German convoy's advance motorcycle escort shot out of the trees to the east, doing better than forty miles an hour, heading straight for Major Kelly and the people behind him. It slewed to the right in a puff of dust and gravel, turned broadside in the road, and came to a tire-scorching stop in a cloud of blue smoke. The young Wehrmacht soldier driving the cycle and the second man in the sidecar looked stupidly at each other, brows beetled under their pot helmets. They slowly examined the houses and the crowd of French villagers, priests, and nuns which filled the lane only twenty feet ahead.
        Kelly almost began to pray, cracked his knuckles instead.
        A few of Kelly's people waved. Most remained still and silent, uncommitted to this violent