“More simple yet,” Kelly said, “why not build the convent in Eisenhower? We could conceal the machines and my men inside of it and not have to build a whole damned village.”
“No good,” Maurice said. “According to my resources, the man in charge of this Panzer convoy is General Adolph Rotenhausen. He was in the first waves of shock troops to overwhelm France. He passed through my town then, out on the main highway. He made his headquarters in my house four nights running during the invasion of France. He knows Eisenhower has no convent. And he knows that, in the midst of this awful war, no new convent could possibly be built, for lack of supplies.”
“But if he knows your town,” Kelly said, “he must know that no other village exists here, in this clearing.”
Maurice shook his head. “Rotenhausen's Panzers invaded and departed France on the same highway, that which passes through my village eight miles south of here. Perhaps follow-up troops came down this old back road. But no Panzers. In those days, they did not have to use unlikely routes to avoid air attack. There was no resistance to them at that time.”
“Still… build a whole town? Madness!”
“The alternatives are unworkable. And while Eisenhower is not built to conceal your machines, a town of your own making would be so built.”
“We can't build a village in a week,” Kelly insisted.
“I've heard that the Army engineers can do the impossible.”
“Not in a week. Not with the bridge to rebuild as well.”
Maurice waved his hand as if to say this was taken care of. “I will detail workers from my village to augment your labor supply.”
“Unskilled labor. It's—”
“Remember that your town must last only one brief night! And the convent alone will house your machines— and be beyond suspicion.”
They listened to the crickets chirrup outside the corrugated walls. The same insects would probably sing on his grave, Kelly knew. Above their chorus, he imagined the clatter of Panzer-tread, the stamp of marching feet, ack-ack guns, submachine guns… He knew it was hopeless, knew they were doomed. Yet he had to play along. A character in a fairy tale must play his role regardless of the certainty of the outcome. Otherwise, the disaster might be even worse than that which the script, the story, called for.
“We'll have to talk about this some more, though it won't work.”
“But it will work,” Maurice said. The sharks smiled. “It will.”
“Never. But let me wash this mud off my head. Then we'll talk about it some more and pretend we think it really could work.”
PART THREE
The Village
July 18/July 21, 1944
1 / JULY 18
At dawn, Kelly, Beame, and Slade stood by the bridge ruins, watching the road on the far side of the gorge where it disappeared around the hillside.
“They aren't coming,” Slade said.
“Give them a chance,” Beame said. “The sun's hardly up.”
A dirty mist lay in the gorge, roiled over the river. Snakes of mist slithered up the bank and danced restlessly before them, touched by golden morning light. Behind, to the east, the sun had risen below the tree line. Hot, orange Halloween light like the glow from a jack-o'-lantern's mouth flushed between the black tree trunks where the forest was thin, and it filled the east entrance to the clearing.
“They aren't coming,” Slade said. He was delighted by the plan, because it made the major look like an idiot And coward. It gave Slade justification for murdering the dumb bastard and taking command of the unit. He giggled.
“Look!” Beame shouted, suddenly excited.
On the other side of the gorge, an odd procession filed around the bend in the road, making for the place where the bridge had stood. Maurice lead the parade, dressed in another — or maybe the same — checkered shirt and pair of baggy pants. Behind him were middle-aged men with their sleeves rolled to their elbows — and older but evidently vigorous grandfathers with their sleeves rolled up too. Only a few teenage boys were included, for most young men were off fighting the war. But there were many strong young girls and determined matrons in their long scrub dresses, hair tied back from their faces. They carried hoes, rakes, shovels, picks. The men pushed creaking wooden wheelbarrows or carried precious tools.
“How many?” Beame asked when the head of the procession reached the gorge and the tail had not yet shown itself.
“We were promised a hundred to start with,” Major Kelly said.
Maurice found a way down the gorge wall, using some of the old bridge's underworks for support. His people followed him, carefully picking their way across the river, stepping from one unsteady mound of rubble to the next. The men with the wheelbarrows lifted these above their heads, and they looked like canoeists fording shallow water.
Beame grinned fiercely. “I believe we might just pull it off!”
“You do?” Kelly asked.
“I don't,” Slade said, giggling.
“For once,” Kelly said, “I have to agree with Lieutenant Slade.”
Two hours later, Lieutenant Beame was down in the ravine with Danny Dew, surveying the wreckage which yesterday's B-17 attack had produced. The two bridge piers were still standing, stone and concrete phallic symbols, but the steel and wooden superstructure and the bridge flooring had collapsed into the gorge. Much of the planking was smashed, charred, or splintered beyond repair, though several large sections like the sides of gigantic packing crates were salvageable. Likewise, some of the steel support beams, cables, angle braces, couplings, and drawing braces had survived and could be used again if Danny Dew were only careful not to crush them when he started through here with his D-7 dozer.
“Over there!” Beame shouted, pointing at a jumble of bridge parts.
“I see it!” Dew shouted. “Ten-foot brace! Looks undamaged!”
They were forced to shout because of the din in the gorge. For one thing, the buckled plating on which they stood was the cap of a heap of refuse which was blocking the middle of the river. The water, diverted into two narrow streams by this barrier, gushed past them in a twin-tailed roar of white spume.
“Is that a coupling?” Beame shouted.
Dew squinted. “Yeah! And a good one!”
Added to the roar of the water were the sounds of fifty French men and women who were doing preliminary salvage that was best completed before the dozer came through. Hammers, wrenches, drills, shovels, and torches sang against the background of the moving river. And, worse, the French jabbered like a cageful of blackbirds.
They were jabbering so loudly that when Beame tried to hear himself think, he failed. They jabbered at the Americans who were giving them directions in a tongue they could not understand, and they jabbered at one another, and many of them jabbered to themselves if no one else was nearby.
“I don't see anything more!” Beame shouted.
“Me either,” Dew said. “I'll get the dozer.” He scrambled down the shifting pile of junk, leaped the narrow divide of shooting water, and came down on both feet on the shore. Very athletic. Beame had always heard that Negroes were good athletes, but Danny Dew was the first proof he had seen. He watched Dew climb the steeply sloped ravine wall and go over the top without effort.
That was when he saw the girl.
She was standing at the crest of the slope, fifty yards from where Dew went over the top. She was watching the workers, the gentle morning sun full on her.