by Dean Koontz
By ten o'clock, the damaged platform was patched enough to support the crude framework for the one-story house. Twenty minutes later, that frame was in place, except for the roof beams.
"We'll make it!" Lyle Fark told Kelly.
"No, we won't."
"We only need another hour, at most. We'll be done half an hour before the Germans arrive-plenty of time left to change into our French clothes and hide these fatigues."
"What if the Panzers get here early?" Major Kelly asked.
While Fark and the other men hammered more frantically than ever, Kelly rounded up eleven more workers who had completed their job assignments. They were weary, sore, stiff, bruised, and full of complaints. Nevertheless, they worked on the reconstruction of the damaged building.
The road to the east remained deserted. But the Panzers could not be more than a few miles away.
Occasionally, Major Kelly imagined that he could hear the great machines and the clattering steel treads... "Faster! Faster, faster!" he urged whenever the ghostly tanks rumbled in the back of his mind. "Faster!"
But it was a command his men had heard too often in the last few days. It no longer registered with them, had no effect. Besides, they were already working as fast as they possibly could.
At ten minutes of eleven, Lyle Fark said, "The roofs almost done. We have to put the windows in, then clean up the place. But we can do it. I told you we could do it."
Kelly shrugged. "It doesn't matter. We're all dead anyway. The krauts will see through this in ten minutes. Or less."
A window frame was raised to a precut hole in the prefabricated wall, nailed into place.
"You keep saying we haven't a chance," Fark said. "If you really believe that we're doomed to fail-why have you worked us so hard to get the village done?"
"What else was there to do?" Kelly asked.
* * *
10
Major Kelly thought he looked like a genuine priest. He was wearing sturdy, well-kept black shoes with extra-thick wartime rubber soles and heels. His black trousers were worn but dignified, cut full in the legs and generously cuffed. An almost perfect match for the pants, his black cotton suit jacket was worn at the elbows but was otherwise quite impressive. The vest and clerical collar had been made especially for him, sewn by a woman in Eisenhower, and did most to confirm his image. A black felt hat with a shiny black ribbon band covered his balding head; it was creased and looked fairly old, but it was clearly not the hat of a laborer or farmer. The hat was a size too large for him and came down almost to the tops of his ears, but that only made him look more genuine: a backwoods priest, a man not much of this world.
Yesterday, Kelly had laughed at Maurice's suggestion that he play the town's ranking priest. "My French isn't good enough," Kelly had said.
"At one time," Maurice admitted, "it would not have passed. But in the weeks you have been here, you have recalled your schoolboy French and have learned even more. Naturally, your French would not impress one of my countrymen. He would spot you for a foreigner. But it will sound fine to General Rotenhausen, because his own command of the language is far worse than yours."
"And if one of the other krauts speaks French?"
"Several might," Maurice said. "But none will be fluent in it. Only the German military's elite officers are well enough educated to speak it fluently. And none of them will be in a convoy moving toward the front."
"I don't know..."
Maurice was adamant. "I cannot pretend to be the priest, because Rotenhausen knows me. He knows this is not my village and that I am no holy man. I must not even show my face so long as he is here. And which other of my people would you trust in such a crucial, sensitive role?"
"None," Kelly admitted, glumly.
"Whoever plays the town priest must be able to soothe Rotenhausen and the other German officers. He must make them believe at once that they face no danger in this place, and he must do everything to dissuade them from holding a building-to-building search before they settle in for the night. I believe you can do all of this," Maurice had said. "As head of the parish and chief resident of the rectory, you will be at the center of the German command the whole night long, where you can discover and eliminate any potential danger to your men."
Reluctantly, Kelly had agreed that he would be the priest. But he had been sure that they were all doomed.
Now, at 11:05 on the night of July 21, shortly before the German force was scheduled to arrive, Kelly looked into the streaked mirror which hung on the wall of the town priest's bedroom, and he decided there was at least a minute chance he would pass. He did look pious and religious. And when he spoke in French, to his reflection, he could hardly believe that he had not always been like this: a man of God. Just so the Germans didn't ask for a blessing or a Mass, or even a table grace.
He turned away from the mirror and surveyed the second-floor back bedchamber of the only fully completed house in the entire village. The room was not large, but comfortable. The walls were roughly plastered, white and pleasant except for finger smudges near the door and by the head of the bed, the signs of use which Kelly's men had so meticulously applied only a few hours ago. The bed was full size, the mattress sagging in the middle, framed with a brass headboard and brass posts at the foot. Beside the bed stood a squat nightstand with a chipped enamel knob on its shallow drawer. On the stand was a washbasin and a walnut-encased heirloom clock. The big mahogany dresser stood by the room's only window, the streaked mirror rising from the back of it. The window was tightly covered by a blackout blind which had been taped to the sill. On the wall by the door, a crucifix hung over a religious calendar. The room was simple, neat, lived in.
Too bad, Kelly thought, that the whole village was not this carefully structured and detailed. But that was wishful thinking. Hell, he could even now hear hammers hammering and saws sawing as the workers tried frantically to get the last of the fake houses in shape.
Kelly stepped into the hall and let the bedroom door remain ajar. He went past the other three upstairs rooms, all larger than the one he had left but otherwise identical. At the head of the stairs, he stood in the center of a hand-woven rag rug and looked at the rectory altar: two crucifixes, a small plaster statue of the Virgin, a red satin cloth with white lace trim covering the slim pine table on which all these artifacts stood. It was an excellent touch. He even crossed himself, though he was an atheist.
The steps squeaked realistically as he went down to the first floor. Considerable effort had been expended to get the proper noise into them.
The banister along which his hand slid during his descent was worn with use, the grain sharply raised by decades of unconscious polishing. Like all the furniture in the house, the banister came from Eisenhower. Maurice had uprooted it-and other paraphernalia-from his own home, where it had been for sixty years. As payment for this extra service, The Frog wanted nothing more than every item in the unit's possession which he had not already obtained: Sergeant Tuttle's field kitchen and all the cooking utensils; the men's personal revolvers; the tents... Major Kelly had been relieved by the reasonableness of this demand, and he had readily agreed. He had been certain that, at the very least, half a dozen of his men would have to be contracted to Maurice as indentured servants for the rest of their natural lives.
Downstairs, there were more white walls, handmade rugs, religious pictures, and crucifixes. The front room off the porch contained several comfortable chairs, a bench sofa with scattered cushions, a knickknack stand full of more religious articles, a stool by the only window-the glass for which had come from Eisenhower-and a fireplace with logs and tools stacked on the hearth.
The dining room-study combination was half the size of the front room, dark and cloistered. The two narrow windows were covered with blackout 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. L
ately, 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 down to wait for the Panzers. He was not supposed to be in this place at this time. According to Kelly's master plan, he should be spending the night with three other men in one of the false houses. But Slade was not going to play their game anymore. He had plans of his own...
As he lay there, his thoughts drifted and, though he did not want to think about it, went inevitably to the disastrous assassination attempt he had made on Kelly just last night.
Christ, what a mess!
When he had collided with the major, his heart had nearly stopped. Then, in his frenzy to escape unidentified, he had crashed headlong into that oak, sustaining one of the four worst injuries of the night. Turning from the tree, certain that Kelly was reaching for him, he had taken only a few steps when his ankles caught in a ropy vine, and he fell full length into those milkweed plants. Several swollen pods had burst, spewing thousands of sticky seeds all of which were topped by puffs of airy cotton for the wind to catch and blow away. By the time he had stumbled erect, the milkweed fluff had sheathed his head, filling the eye holes in the potato sack, and totally blinding him. Panicked, he slapped at the stuff, not fully aware of what it was. Behind him, Kelly shouted, so Slade ran again. And that damned branch had slammed across his throat and nearly knocked him to his knees. That was the second of the four worst blows. He felt as if he were being throttled: his ears rang; his tongue popped out of his mouth; and his eyes watered like hydrants. That might even have put an end to his flight if Kelly had not shouted again and reminded him of his danger. Pushing away from the tree-well, he had fallen over that treacherous projection of limestone and rolled down that hill into the blackberry bushes, where he had become tangled in thorny vines. He imagined he heard Kelly again, and he pulled loose of the brambles, turned, and ran. He went some distance before he fell into a lovely half-acre pond in a moody sylvan setting... Sodden, shivering, spitting mud and pond scum, he got up and banged his head into an overhanging limestone shelf. That was the third of his four worst injuries of the night. When he eventually crawled out onto the shore, he was so relieved to be done running, so shattered, prostrate, demoralized, and out of gear that he flung himself flat on his back-and cracked his head on a stone as large as a pony. That was the fourth of his four worst injuries. After that, things got better. In two hours, he reckoned his way out of the forest and back to his tent. There, stripping out of his muddy, bloody, shredded clothes, dropping his disheveled burlap mask into one of his boots, he collapsed on his cot and slept like a dead man.
This morning, upon waking, he had destroyed the burlap mask.
He realized now that he had been thinking like a coward. He should not hide behind a mask when he murdered the major. The act should be open and straightforward. Later, when he won his medals, no one would be able to say he had been devious. He was not just a modern Brutus. He was a hero!
Furthermore, Slade now realized that murdering Kelly yesterday would have been strategically foolish and premature. He had no guarantee that the other men in the unit would fall in behind him and fight the krauts once the major was out of the way. Most of these bastards were as cowardly as Kelly was. They would have insisted on finishing the fake community and trying the hoax without Kelly.
A mosquito buzzed around Slade's head. He crushed it against his cheek, and wiped his bloodied hand on a patch of thick grass.
Out in the phony village, someone risked another lantern in order to have light to work by.
Slade leaned back against a tree trunk and thought about his new plan. It was much better than the old plan... He would wait here in the woods until the Germans had settled in for the night. If they didn't see through the hoax at once, he would bide his time until they had posted guards and gone to sleep. Then he would come out of the woods and thoroughly reconnoiter the village. He would learn the position of each sentry, the placement of the main body of troops. He would formulate a plan of attack. And only when that was done would he murder Major Kelly. Then, when
the men saw that their situation was desperate, when they had no choice but to strike at the krauts as he ordered-or let him strike alone and less efficiently-they would fall into line. A commando team would slip into the rectory and slit the officers' throats while they slept. Next, they would quietly remove all the sentries. And next... well, anything could happen then. But whatever happened, they would be real heroes.
"We'll fool them," Beame insisted. He pointed at the sink, pumps, and cabinets. "Who'd ever suspect this was all thrown together in four days?"
Father Picard, nee Major Walter Kelly, shrugged. He walked over to the kitchen hallway. "I'm giving the town one last inspection. Want to come?" He hoped Beame did not want to come, for the lieutenant's optimism made him uneasy.
"Sure," Beame said.
"It's almost eleven-thirty. The Germans will be here soon. Let's go."
Beame extinguished the kerosene lamp on the table by the front door.
Outside, they crossed the porch, went down the four steps to the brief lawn, which, much abused during the construction, was the least convincing thing about the rectory. The night was muggy and overcast. The crickets were silent.
The rectory stood on the corner of the bridge road and B Street. B Street was one of the two north-south lanes Danny Dew had made with his D-7 dozer, and it was the farthest east of the two. A Street, sister to B, also paralleled the river but was one block closer to the bridge. The two-lane bridge road had become their main street, and diagonally across it from the rectory stood the enormous, three-story, weathered gray convent. To the west 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.