Hanging on

desirable than all of those women put together. And now he had lost her. His optimism had vanished in the face of the German power; and he felt certain that he would never see the sun rise.
        Standing on the convent steps in her nun's habit, Lily Kain reacted to the Panzers much as Beame had done. She imagined that she could smell death in the muggy night air. She wished Kelly could have found the time to put it to her today. Maybe the sight of these huge war machines would have been easier to take if she had had it put to her recently. Sighing, she raised both hands and waved at the Germans in order to keep from throwing up her nun's habit and diddling herself.
        The officer commanding the first Panzer, General Adolph Rotenhausen, clambered out of the hatch and down the side of his tank, stood for a moment on the muddy tread fender. He was a tall, whiplike man, not an ounce overweight. His face was square and harsh, though the features were in no way brutish. There was aristocracy in his heritage; it showed in his carriage and in his thin-lipped smile. His hair was cut close to his head, a white-blond cap that caught the light from the scattered lanterns and gleamed with it. He jumped from the fender and walked swiftly toward Major Kelly.

PART FOUR
        
    Deception
    Midnight-Dawn/July 22,1944

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    1
        
        When he led them down to the front room after inspecting the second floor, General Rotenhausen stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands folded behind him even though there was no fire to warm them at this time of the year. Rotenhausen looked as if he desperately needed warmth. He was a bloodless man, as pale as linen. He smiled coldly at Major Kelly. There was no threat in his smile; it was just that Rotenhausen was incapable, even in the best of times, of a smile that was not icy. "Well, Father Picard, you have a most pleasant home. It will serve splendidly as our overnight headquarters." His French was less than middling, but so far as Kelly was concerned his sentiment was absolutely perfect.
        Kelly smiled and nodded, twisted his black felt hat in both hands. He wondered if a French priest would treat a German general as an equal or as a superior. The point was academic, really, because he was too terrified to be anything but obsequious and subservient. "I am pleased you like it, sir," he said.
        "Standartenführer Beckmann and I will require the two largest upstairs rooms. My aides could be quartered in the small front room. And the Standartenführer's aides could sleep down here, in the bedroom by the kitchen." Rotenhausen turned to the black-uniformed SS colonel who sat on the bench sofa. He smiled, and this time he did put a threat into it. "Have you any objections to these arrangements, Standartenführer?"
        The SS officer was even more the Aryan ideal than General Rotenhausen. He was six-three, two hundred and thirty pounds. Like the slim Wehrmacht general, he was in perfect condition; however, unlike Rotenhausen, Beckmann was muscular. His legs were strong and sturdy and looked as if they had been poured into his black trousers and knee-length leather jackboots. His hips and waist were flat. The Standartenführer's neck was a thick, bullish stem of gristle, hard muscle, and raised veins. His face was a sharply featured square with a long brow, deep-set eyes, a Roman nose, and lips as thin as pencil lines. He was perhaps forty years old, but he was not touched by age in any way; he looked as fresh and young as one of his aides. And as nasty. His face was pale like Rotenhausen's face, but his eyes were a lighter blue, so sharp and clear they seemed transparent.
        Beckmann returned Rotenhausen's ugly smile. "I think the arrangements will be satisfactory. But I do wish you would drop the clumsy Schutzstaffeln title and call me 'Oberst' instead." Beckmann looked at Kelly and shook his head sadly. "General Rotenhausen is such a one for form. Since we left Stuttgart, he has insisted on using the clumsy title." Beckmann's French was no better than Rotenhausen's.
        "Standartenführer Beckmann is correct," the general said, directing himself to Kelly. "I am a man who believes in forms, rules, and dignity. Being a man of the Holy Roman Church, you must sympathize with me, Father Picard."
        "Yes, of course," Kelly said.
        "The Church relies on rules and form quite as much as the Wehrmacht," Rotenhausen