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.
The village extended two blocks to the west along the bridge road. The whole north side of the first block beyond the rectory was occupied by the massive convent and its board-fenced yard. Across the street from the convent, again commanding a full block, was the church and churchyard. Then, over beyond A Street and the river, there were a couple of houses and the village store.
Kelly switched on his flashlight and walked north on B Street.
“It looks so real, doesn't it?” Beame asked, awestricken.
“Pray the krauts think so,” Major Kelly said.
“I thought you told me not to pray.”
“That's right,” Kelly said. “I almost forgot.”
B Street ran only two blocks north-south, half the length of its sister, A Street. The northern block, above the bridge road, was faced with a sixty-foot barrackslike nunnery and a stone well on the east, and with the convent and convent yard fence on the west. Everything was nice and tidy.
From B, they entered Y Street. This was the northernmost of the town's three east-west roads, parallel to the bridge road. It ran one block east, with nothing but two church-owned houses on each side, their outhouses, scattered elms. Across Y Street, facing the mouth of B, stood a fake two-story house in ill-repair.
“Why didn't you give the streets French names?” Beame asked. “Won't the Germans think it's odd — naming streets after letters of the alphabet?”
Kelly sighed, tugged at his collar. “The letters are for our benefit in a crisis. The krauts won't expect a town this small to have formal street names.”
Turning west, they followed Y Street towards the river. On their left was the convent. On the right, there was only open lawn until they reached a two-story fake house at the end of the block. This one was also poorly maintained. Actually, every two-story structure in the village was ugly and decaying — except for the rectory. They did not want Rotenhausen to take a fancy to some building which had no floors inside and no inner walls or furniture… The rectory had to outshine all the others, make a quick and obvious impression.
The second block of Y ended at A Street, which was four blocks long and ran north-south. The first block contained a nunnery and two houses. Kelly shined the flashlight over these, then turned south.
“One thing bothers me,” Beame said.
“What's that?”
“Why hasn't the bridge been bombed since we put it up?”
“Well… the Allies think they've already knocked it out with that B-17,” Major Kelly said. “And the Stukas won't touch it now that they know the Wehrmacht wants to use it.”
Beame frowned. “If the German air force knows the Wehrmacht wants to use the bridge and is cooperating by not bombing us — won't it also have told the convoy to expect to find us here?”
“Maybe not,” Kelly said. “There's something strange about the Stuka attacks.”
“Strange, sir?”
“Remember,” Kelly said, “they never bombed us, just the bridge. And they always knew when we'd rebuilt it. I don't know what's going on here, but it isn't all jake.”
“Jake who?” Beame asked.
“Jake nobody. Just jake.”
“He doesn't have a last name?” Beame asked, puzzled.
“Jake is an expression,” Major Kelly said. “I meant that everything about those Stukas is somehow not right. It's all false.”
“Oh,” Beame said. “I see. It's not jake.”
“Just like General Blade isn't all jake,” Kelly said. “At first, I thought he sent us here because he was senile. Lately, I've realized there's got to be more to it than that. I don't know what, though. I wish I did.”
The next block of A Street contained a stone well, a sixty-by-forty-foot school for the deaf and, on the east, the fourth wall of the convent yard fence which several workmen were still nailing in place.
And then they reached the bridge road again. To the east was the church and rectory. One block to the west was the bridge. Only three structures fronted the bridge road on that last block: two houses and the church-owned store in which the products and handicrafts of the deaf-mutes were sold to tourists and those in nearby villages. The store was fully completed and stocked with quilts, canned goods, jewelry, clothing, carpentry, and other items which had been taken from Eisenhower and which would be foisted on the Germans as produce of the deaf-mutes if any krauts wandered into the place.