Major Kelly thought of brass beds.
9
Six men and three nuns struggled out of the ravine at the same place where they had gone down nearly two hours ago. They were wet and muddy and worn out.
Major Kelly led them northward along the ravine crest until they came back to the hospital bunker. The others went down the steps and slipped inside when Liverwright opened the door to them. The major continued north toward the rear of the village store.
Angelli was waiting there. He had made it.
“Never mind giving my last words to Nurse Pullit,” he whispered happily. “I'll tell her myself.”
“Yeah,” Kelly said. “Now let's get the job done.”
PART FIVE
Hanging On
Dawn — Dusk July 22,1944
1
Dawn tinted the horizon even as Major Kelly and Vito Angelli were tying up the loose ends of the operation. And on his way back to the rectory, the major was forced to lie low while a Wehrmacht squad marched up and down St. Ignatius changing the sentries at the intersections. By the time he reached the churchyard, Kelly knew it was too light for him to return to his room by way of the rose lattice and the rear window. Even if Rotenhausen and Beckmann were not up yet — and they surely were — the chances of some guard on a nearby street spotting him on his climb to the porch roof were too great to be ignored.
The bold approach was called for.
Nearly half an hour after dawn, he entered the back of the church. He hurried through the sacristy, up onto the altar platform, down into the auditorium, and out the front door. He winced as the rain struck him anew. He paused only a second at the top of the church steps, then went down to the street.
The Wehrmacht sentry on duty at B Street and the bridge road was wearing a green rain slicker and a disgusted look. He hunched his shoulders against the rain and paraded back and forth, putting as little into the duty as he could. He gave Kelly a brief smile but did not stop him, for he had just been posted and did not know that the priest had never passed from the rectory to the church.
Kelly went up the porch steps, crossed the porch, went through the front door with the rain still stinging his back. In the rectory foyer, rivulets of water streamed from him onto the floorboards.
General Adolph Rotenhausen was just then coming down the steps from the second floor, tamping tobacco into his pipe. “Father Picard! Where have you been at this hour, in this terrible weather?”
“At the church, General,” Kelly said.
“Oh, of course,” Rotenhausen said. “I suppose you have to get ready for Mass each morning.”
“For what?” Kelly asked.
“Mass, of course,” Rotenhausen said.
Before Kelly could respond, the general's aides appeared at the top of the steps with the officer's belongings, which they brought down and took outside into the morning rain.
Rotenhausen came to the open door, looked across the porch at the raindrops bouncing on the street. “Miserable day for travel.” He looked at his watch. “But Standarten-führer Beckmann was out there an hour ago… Sometimes, I think those madmen deserve the world.” He glanced at Kelly and, for the first time, saw how wet the priest was. “You couldn't be so drenched just from crossing the street, Father!”
“Uh… I went for a walk,” Kelly said.
“In the rain?”
“Rain is God's creation,” Kelly improvised. “It is refreshing.”
Rotenhausen looked at Kelly's dripping suit, shook his head. He turned and continued to watch the rain slash in sheets across the bridge road.
Also watching the storm, Kelly thought of Lily's wet breasts. For a moment, he was warm and happy… and then he realized he could not afford to love her. He had almost made a drastic mistake.
Rotenhausen puffed on his pipe.
Thunder rolled across the sky. Behind the steady drumming of the rain was the dinosaurian roar of Panzer engines as the convoy prepared to pull out.
“We don't have to worry about Allied bombers today,” Rotenhausen said.
As he spoke, his aide ran up onto the porch. The man took a folded slicker from under his own raincoat, shook it out, and held it up for his chief. The general slipped his arms into the plastic sleeves and buttoned up, turned his collar high. He flipped his pipe upside down and tapped it against the door frame. Ashes fell on the wet porch floor.
“Good luck at the front, sir,” Major Kelly said.
“Thank you, Father. You have been most gracious.”
“Not at all.” Which was true.
Rotenhausen smiled, nodded, and turned away. He and his aide went down the steps and east along the bridge road to the first tank in the long convoy.
The rain continued to fall.
A flash of lightning made shadows jump across the veranda floor.
The first tank, Rotenhausen's tank, lurched into the middle of the road, tracks churning up mud and gravel, and started toward the bridge two and a half blocks away.
Still, no alarm had been raised at the west end. Bobo Remlock had not yet arrived. Maybe the Panzers would all get across before Old Blood and Guts made the far side.
Kelly left the front door. He hurried through the deserted house, passed through the kitchen and out onto the rear lawn.
The cold rain hit him again, but he hardly noticed. He was too worried about getting his head blown off to be concerned also about catching a cold. His baggy trousers were sopping wet and hung on him like a pair of old-fashioned beach pantaloons for men.
He passed through the hidden gate in the fence, and ran between two fake houses in which his men huddled fearfully. He crossed B Street, ran the length of the cemetery, and crossed A Street to the rear of the village store.
Lieutenant Beame was watching for him and threw down a rope from the store roof. Kelly took hold of the rope, tested it, then climbed the fifteen feet of vertical wall to join the lieutenant in his observation post.
Beame was not alone, though he should have been. Lily was there, too, braless beneath her habit. Pullit and Nathalie were behind Lily. Maurice was there, watching over his daughter, and Angelli was watching over Pullit. Danny Dew was sitting by the T-plunger with a rifle over his knees.
“We couldn't let you face this alone,” Angelli said.
“Of course not,” Kelly said.
“We had to share the danger with you.”
“What else?” Kelly asked. “Just keep down. Don't stand up, or someone on the street will see you.”
“No sign of Old Blood and Guts,” Beame said when Kelly knelt beside him.
The village store was the best observation post for the coming showdown. It was the only structure in St. Ignatius with a flat roof — not because French country shops had flat roofs, but because they had simply run out of the necessary beams and shingles and had been unable to give the place anything but a flat roof. Furthermore, the store faced the bridge road, where all the action, if there were any, would transpire; and it was close enough to the bridge to allow them to establish the detonator here.
Beside Beame, next to Danny Dew, the heavy T-plunger stood on the wet wood, waiting for its crossbar to be stroked down and the dynamite touched off beneath the nine-hundred-foot span.
And now they were prepared to do just that.
Kelly turned to Maurice. “You shouldn't be up here. You should be on the other side, waiting for Remlock.”
Maurice hesitated, looked at Nathalie, then at Beame. “You will see that they are kept apart?”