Hanging on

than Danny Dew. The sound of booted feet, foreign voices, and banging pans echoed up from downstairs, but this room itself was quiet. In a while, the darkness and silence soothed Kelly and restored a bit of his self-confidence.
        Thus far, the ruse was working. Thanks to an unknown and unforeseeable personal clash between Beckmann and Rotenhausen, and thanks to their interservice rivalry, and thanks also to the Third Reich's favored treatment of the Catholic Church, nothing would be searched. The bulk of the convoy would not even spend the night in St. Ignatius, but would bivouac along the highway to the east. The long night was still ahead, and the crossing of the bridge in the morning, but it was beginning to look as if there were a good chance…
        No! that was the wrong way to think. Optimism was foolish. It was dangerous at best. At worst: deadly. Don't hatch your chickens before they're counted, he told himself. And don't put all their baskets in one egg. The thing was not to hope, but to let the fairy tale carry you. Drift along, play the role, hang on.
        Fifteen minutes after he had flopped on the bed with a severe case of the shakes, Kelly heard boots echo on the stairs. The officers' aides carried up two bathtubs and put them in the large bedrooms. A minute later, the first of the boiling water was brought up in heavy pails, with the general and the colonel directing their subordinates. Kelly heard water splashing. More orders in German. The sound of booted feet thumping down the stairs. Boots coming back up again. More water. More orders given. Two young aides thumping down the steps again. And then right back up, clump-clump-clump, this time with buckets of cold water to temper the baths.
        Finally, the only sound on the second floor was a faint musical splashing as the men soaped and rinsed in the privacy of their rooms, skinning off the film of dust that coated them after a long day on the road. The splashing slowly increased in volume, as if the officers were becoming intoxicated with cleanliness and were jumping about in drunken exuberance, then gradually began to decrease in volume, and faded out altogether. The second floor was silent. Downstairs, two German voices were raised in conversation as Beckmann's aides prepared for bed in the room by the kitchen. In a few seconds, even that noise was stilled.
        Kelly waited.
        Ten minutes later, when neither Beckmann nor Rotenhausen had made a sound since abandoning their tubs, the major was confident that they had retired for the night. They would both be sleeping contentedly. They would pose no real threat until dawn. Until the convoy began moving through St. Ignatius and across the bridge, Beckmann and Rotenhausen were the least of Kelly's worries.
        The most of his worries, until the sun rose, were his own men. He did not trust them for a minute. They were crazy. You could not trust lunatics. In the hours before dawn, as the tensions grew more severe, one of those men would do something idiotic, childish, dangerous, and perhaps deadly. Instead of staying in his assigned building where he could not get into trouble, one of those men- maybe dozens of them-would venture out under the misapprehension that he was safer beyond the limitations imposed by four walls. When that happened, Major Kelly wanted to be there to salvage the hoax-and their lives. His duty, then, was not to remain in the rectory and listen to the officers snoring their heads off. Instead, he had to be outside in the fake town, troubleshooting.
        Careful not to make a sound, Kelly got off the feather mattress. His back ached from the base of his spine to his neck, and he was glad he did not have to sleep in a bed with so little support. If this madman Beckmann discovered the hoax, he would probably make Kelly sleep on a bed like this for several days and then shoot his head off.
        When he was certain no one had heard the readjustment of the goose and chicken feathers inside the coarse mattress case, Kelly walked quietly to the room's only window, which was discernible against the dark wall despite the blackout blind that was taped to the window frame. He peeled the tape away. He lifted the blind without rattling it, and slid noiselessly underneath.
        Beyond the glass, at the back of the rectory, lay a quiet French religious community: small houses, a dusty street, a nunnery, a churchyard… Kelly smiled, fond of his