“I have something for you to sign,” Major Kelly said.
Major Kelly had spent all morning running around the camp getting the men to sign various papers which he carried in a folder under his arm. He was not dirty or sweaty. Coombs knew that Kelly didn't have an aching back or aching arms or a stoved thumb. He regarded the proffered document scornfully and said, “What is it?”
“Nothing much,” Kelly said, evasively. “Just sign it, and I'll stop bothering you.”
Sergeant Coombs looked at the pile of materiel he had yet to transfer to the bridge, scratched the back of his sunburned neck, and was tempted to sign the damn thing, whatever it was, just to be rid of Kelly. He was still on the shuttler seat, with crates stacked on the forked platform before him. He could sign and be on his way again. But something in Kelly's manner, a sort of phony good humor, warned Coombs. “What is it?” he repeated.
“Just sign it. Quick, now. I've got to get every man's signature if I'm going to keep Maurice's help. And I need Maurice's help. Every minute counts in this, Sergeant. So sign.”
“I won't sign anything that I don't know what it is,” Coombs said.
Kelly's smile faded. “Well, look, you know how much help Maurice has been, bringing in all these workers.”
“Frogs,” Coombs said.
“Yes, perhaps they are. But the fact remains that we need them. And in the days ahead, Maurice will be doing even more for us. And you can't expect him to do it all out of the goodness of his heart. Maurice wants to make a profit from it. That should be something every red-blooded American can understand. We Americans believe in the profit system, free enterprise. That's one of the things we're fighting for.”
“What about this paper?” Coombs asked. For such a stumpy man, he was damned difficult to fool.
Major Kelly was distinctly uncomfortable now. He could not stop thinking about the Panzers. While he was standing here with Coombs, how much closer had the Germans come? Too much closer… Kelly looked nervously at the stack of crates beside the shuttler, at the sky, at the ground, everywhere but at Coombs. “Maurice wants to be paid for his help. Naturally, we're the only ones who can pay him. So what Maurice wants from us — he wants two hundred bucks from every man in camp.”
“I don't have it,” Coombs said.
Kelly shook his head in agreement and frustration. “Who does? But Maurice understands how things are with us. We're paid in scrip when the DC-3 comes in from
Blade's HQ, but most of us lose it to Hoskins or Malzberg in a day or two, at best. Maurice understands, and he does not want to be at all unreasonable. He's willing to extend us credit, provided we sign these forms he's given me. You pay fifty dollars now, the other one-fifty over the next six months.”
Coombs was suspicious. “Six months?”
“That's right.”
“We'll be gone in six months.”
Kelly shrugged. “Maybe he's banking on the war not being over that fast.”
Coombs would not swallow that. “There's something you're not telling me.”
Kelly sighed, thinking about the Panzers, about the minutes melting away. “You're right. You see, this paper you're to sign… well, it's an admission of collaboration with the Nazis.”
Coombs looked at Kelly as if the major were a stone that had come suddenly to life before his eyes. He could not believe what he was hearing. “Admit I collaborated with the krauts, even if I didn't?”
Kelly smiled nervously. “Maurice has written a different confession for each of us.” He looked down at the paper in his hand and quickly scanned the neat paragraphs of precise, handwritten English. “Yours states that you sabotaged the equipment which you were assigned to maintain, that you interfered with the building of the bridge.”
Coombs did not know what to say.
“You can see where Maurice might feel he has to use such an extreme credit contract,” Kelly said. He liked to call the paper a credit contract rather than a forged confession or something equally distasteful. “This kind of document would guarantee his money even if we were transferred out of here before we paid him in full. None of us would want his contract turned over to Allied military officials.”
“What did you confess?” Coombs asked.
“Transmitting information to the Nazis via our wireless set.” He forced the rumpled paper into Coombs's hand, gave him a stubby yellow pencil. “Just sign the damn thing, Sergeant. Time is our greatest enemy.”
“I won't sign.” Coombs's jaw was set, and his pulse pounded visibly at neck and temples.
“Sergeant, you must. I've got more than forty men to sign up yet. If one refuses, others will too. And the deal with Maurice will fall through… You'll die with the rest of us!” He was trying to scare the sergeant, and he scared himself in the process.
“I'm not afraid to fight,” Coombs said.
Exasperated, Kelly watched Coombs try to hand back the confession. He refused to touch it. He swatted Coombs's hand as if trying to push back more than the paper — as if he were fighting off the inevitable death rushing down on them. Couldn't Coombs see that one man's pride or stubbornness could kill them all? After a full minute of this thrust and counterthrust, with the credit contract getting pretty badly mutilated, Kelly leaned toward Coombs. “What the fuck rank are you?” he screamed.
Coombs looked at him as if he were witless. “Sergeant.”
“And I am a major, right?” Kelly drew himself up to his full height. “Sergeant, as your commanding officer, I order you to sign that paper and give me fifty dollars. Now.”
Coombs's face drained of color as he realized his dilemma. He was in a spot where he had to go against one of the two moral principles that made him tick. He either had to refuse an order from a legitimate superior — or cooperate with this coward and become, in effect, a coward himself. For a long moment he sat on the shuttler, swaying back and forth as if buffeted by two gale force winds. Then, leaning quickly forward and holding the confession against one of the packing crates on the forked cargo platform, he signed his name. His need for order, for a sense of rank, for rules and regulations, had won out over his loathing of cowardice.
“Fifty dollars,” Kelly said, taking the signed document.
As the sergeant handed over the money, something else occurred to him. “This isn't all Maurice is getting, is it?”
Kelly was uncomfortable again. He was anxious to be off, signing up the other men. Precious minutes were being wasted! Besides, he was a bit ashamed of this business. Sometimes, he was shocked at the immoral things life forced him to do… “Maurice gets a few other little things,” Kelly admitted. “Like your cargo shuttler… the camp generator when we leave… ”
Coombs was distressed. “What else?”
“Only one other thing,” Kelly assured him. “A toll-booth.”
Coombs could not make any sense out of that. He scratched the back of his neck, spat in the dust, taking as long as possible to respond. He knew Kelly and some of the others thought he was stupid. He was not really stupid at all, just taciturn and grumpy. For the life of him, though, he could not see what the major was talking about, and he was forced to look stupid. “Tollbooth?”
“After the Panzers pass through and we're safe,” Kelly said, “we're going to build a tollbooth on the other side of the gorge, in the road just before the bridge. It'll have a pole across the road and everything. Maurice's people will work there, bring extra money into Eisenhower.”
“Oh.” Compared to an operator like The Frog, Coombs supposed he was stupid.
“As soon as you pay Maurice the rest, he gives back your contract. Thanks for your cooperation, Sergeant.” Kelly turned and ran back toward the HQ building where several men were hurriedly reviewing the construction plans in the shade by the rec room door.