“For somebody with a house full of Nazi shit, you know dick about warfare,” said Bob before carefully lifting his hand from Alex’s mouth.

Alex pulled himself into a sitting position and rubbed his lower back. “Did you have to yank me down like that? That fucking hurt,” he said softly.

“It didn’t hurt enough, if you ask me,” said Bob. “You pull another stunt like that and not only will you blow the whole operation, you could get us killed. And if they don’t kill you, I will.”

“It’s OK,” said Patton. “It’s OK. They didn’t see us. Lesson learned on Alex’s part, I’m sure.”

“Damn right,” said Alex.

“You hope they didn’t see us,” said Bob. “Who knows what they’re going to report.”

“They’re not going to report anything,” said Patton with a smile. “Because no one wants to report, ‘We think there was someone out there, but we’re not sure because we were busy sucking each other’s faces off.’ ” Bob gave a light chuckle and the tension in the air seemed to waft away.

“What time did they arrive?” said Patton.

“One eleven,” said Bob.

“OK, I’ll mark it,” said Patton, taking out a notebook and pencil. She wrote: Patrol A: 1:11 p.m. and then slipped the notebook back in her pocket. This time Alex stayed awake, alert, and hidden as they all lapsed back into quiet, waiting for the next patrol.

To some, it would have seemed a tedious afternoon, sitting on hard ground and watching as nothing happened, the only sounds the breeze in the trees and an occasional burst of birdsong. But Patton loved it. She even came to feel companionable toward Bob as they passed the binoculars back and forth. She did not blame him for wanting to kill her, and as far as she could tell, he was a good soldier. He had patience, a much-underrated quality in the military, thought Patton. At 3:12 p.m. the same two people appeared again, walking ten meters or so on the other side of the fence line. They held hands, but this time they did not stop for a snog. More important, they did not stop to look for the source of the mysterious noise they had heard the last time. Patton recorded the time in her notebook, and they waited for a third data point. At four o’clock, Alex asked if there was anything to eat. Bob hissed at him to be quiet and Patton felt a sense of satisfaction that she and the man who had come to kill her were in perfect sync about how to operate. At seven minutes past five, the patrol returned. The man drank something from a can, though whether it was soda or beer the observers couldn’t tell.