"Where Eagles Dare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Маклин Алистер)

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They weren't exactly stacked six deep inside “Zum Wilden Hirsch” but they might well have been if the music-swaying crowd of elbow-jostling customers has assumed the horizontal instead of the perpendicular. He had never, Smith thought, seen so many people in one bar before. There must have been at least four hundred of them. To accommodate a number of that order called for a room of no ordinary dimensions, and this one wasn't. It was a very big room indeed. It was also a very very old room.

The floor of knotted pine sagged, the walls sagged and the massive smoke-blackened beams on the roof seemed to be about ready to fall down at any moment. In the middle of the room stood a huge black wood-burning stove, a stove stoked with such ferocious purpose that the cast-iron top cover glowed dull red. From just below the cover two six-inch twenty-foot long black-enamelled stove pipes led off to points high up on opposite sides of the room—a primitive but extremely efficient form of central heating. The three-sided settees—half booths—lining three walls of the room were of oak darkened by age and smoke and unknown centuries of customers, each booth having recessed holes for stowing newspapers rolled round slats of wood. The twenty or so tables scattered across the floor had hand-cut wooden tops of not less than three inches in thickness with chairs to match. Most of the back of the room was taken up by a solid oaken bar with a coffee-machine at one end, and, behind the bar, swing doors that presumably led to the kitchen. What little illumination there was in the room came from ceiling-suspended and very sooty oil lamps, each one with its generations-old patch of coal-black charred wood in the roof above.

Smith transferred his attention from the room to the customers in the room, a clientele of a composition such as one might expect to find in a high Alpine village with a military encampment at its back door. In one corner were a group of obvious locals, men with still, lean, aquiline, weather-beaten faces, unmistakably men of the mountains, many of them in intricately embroidered leather jackets and Tyrolean hats. They spoke little and drank quietly, as did another small group at the back of the room, perhaps a dozen or so nondescript civilians, clearly not locals, who drank sparingly from small Schnapps glasses. But ninety per cent of the customers were soldiers of the German Alpenkorps, some seated, many more standing, but all giving of their very best with “Lili Marlene”, and nearly all of them enthusiastically waving their pewter-capped litre Steinbechers in the air, happily oblivious, in that moment of tearfully nostalgic romanticism, of the fact that the amount of beer finding its way to comrades' uniforms and the floor was about the equivalent of a moderately heavy rainstorm.

Behind the bar was the obvious proprietor, a gargantuan three-hundred pounder with an impassive moon-like face and several girls busy filling trays with Steinbechers. Several others moved about the room, collecting or serving beer-mugs. One of them approaching in his direction caught Smith's eye.

It would have been surprising if she hadn't. It would have been surprising if she hadn't caught the attention of every man there. But there was no surprise. She did. She would have won any Miss Europe contest hands down if she had had a face other than her own which, though pleasant and plump, was rather plain. But any possible lack of attraction in that cheerfully smiling face was more than over-compensated for elsewhere. She was dressed in a gaily-patterned dirndl and Tyrolean blouse, had a hand-span waist, an hour-and-a-half-glass figure and an obvious predilection for low-cut blouses, that in terms of attracting local custom, must have been worth a fortune to the gigantic proprietor behind the bar. She drew a great deal of attention from the assembled soldiery, not all of it just consisting of admiring glances: if she weren't wearing armour-plating, Smith reflected, she must be permanently black and blue. She approached Smith, brushed back her blonde hair and smiled, the gesture as provocative as the smile.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Dark beer, please,” Smith said politely. “Six.”

“With pleasure, sir.” Again the provocative smile, this time accompanied by a half-appraising, half-lingering look from cornflower blue eyes, then she turned and walked away, if her method of locomotion could strictly be described as walking. Schaffer, a slightly dazed expression on his face, stared after her, then caught Smith by the arm.

“Now I know why I left Montana, boss.” His voice held something of the dazed quality on his face. “It wasn't because of the horses after all.”

“Your mind on the job if you don't mind, Lieutenant.” Smith looked thoughtfully after the girl, rubbed his chin and said slowly: “Barmaids know more about what's going on in their own manor than any chief of police—and that one looks as if she might know more than most. Yes, I'll do that.”

“Do what?” Schaffer asked suspiciously.

“Try to get next to her.”

“I saw her first,” Schaffer said plaintively.

“You can have the next dance,” Smith promised. The levity of the words were belied by the cool watchful expression on his face as his eyes constantly travelled the room. “When you get your drinks, circulate. See if you can hear any mention of Carnaby or Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer.”

He caught sight of an empty chair by a corner table, moved across and sat in it, nodding politely to a rather bleary-eyed Alpenkorps captain deep in what appeared to be rather patronising conversation with two lieutenants. The captain showed no more than a brief recognition of his presence and, as far as Smith could tell, no other person present was showing the slightest interest in either himself or his companions. The accordion band finished its stint more or less on the same note and at the same time and the singing of “Lili Marlene” died away. For long seconds there was a profound and nostalgic silence, four hundred men alone with Lili Marlene under the barrack gate lantern, then, as if on cue, a babel of voices broke out all over the room: four hundred men with unfinished litre jugs do not remain sentimental for overly long.

He caught sight of the girl returning with six Steinbechers on a tray, pushing her way through the crowd and fending off admirers with a practised hand. She gave drinks to Smith's men who immediately but unostentatiously broke up and began to wander away into different parts of the room. The girl looked around, located Smith, smiled brightly, crossed to his table, and put the Steinbecher on it. Before she could straighten, Smith put his arm around her waist and pulled her on to his knee. The J#228;ger captain across the table broke off his conversation, stared across in startled disapproval, opened his mouth as if to speak, caught Smith's discouraging glance, decided to mind his own business and resumed his conversation. Smith,, in his turn, looked away, squeezed the girl's waist, patted her knee and smiled what he hoped was a winning smile.

“And what might your name be, my Alpine rose?” His voice had a slightly slurred edge to it.

“Heidi.” She struggled to rise, but didn't really put her heart into it. “Please, Major. I have work to do.”

“There is no more important work than entertaining soldiers of the Fatherland,” Smith said loudly. Holding Heidi firmly to forestall any attempt at escape, he took a long pull at his beer, then continued, quietly now, the mug still in front of his face: “Shall I sing you a song?”

“What song?” Heidi asked warily. “I hear too much singing.”

“I whistle better than I sing. Listen.” He whistled, very softly the first two bars of “Lorelei”. “Do you like that?”

Heidi stiffened and stared but immediately relaxed and smiled at him coquettishly.

“It's very nice, Major. And I'm sure you have a beautiful singing voice, too.”

Smith put his Steinbecher down with an unsteady bang that brought more disapproval from the other side of the table then lifted his hand to wipe the froth from his lips. Heidi smiled down at him, but the wary eyes weren't smiling.

Smith said from behind his hand: “The men at the bar? The civilians? Don't turn round.”

“Gestapo.” She made another apparently futile attempt to free herself. “From the castle.”

“One's a lip-reader.” Smith had the Steinbecher in front of his face again. “I can tell. They're watching. Your room in five minutes. Hit me good and hard.”

Heidi stared at him in bewilderment, then yelped in pain as he pinched her, far from gently. She drew back, her right hand came over in a round-house swing and the sound of the slap could be heard clear across the crowded room, cutting sharply through the deep buzz of conversation. The voices died away, Steinbechers remained poised half-way towards lips, and every eye in the room turned until it was focused on the scene of the disturbance. Smith now had the exclusive and undivided attention of close on four hundred German soldiers which was exactly how he wanted it: no man anxious to avoid attention at all costs would ever do anything to incur the slightest risk of drawing that unwanted attention.

Heidi pushed herself to her feet, rubbed herself tenderly, snatched up the note which Smith had earlier placed on the table and stalked haughtily away. Smith, his already reddening face discomfited and tight in anger, rose, made to leave the table then halted when confronted by the J#228;ger captain who had already risen from his side of the table. He was a spruce, erect youngster, very much of the Hitler Jugend type, punctilious and correct but at that moment rather suffering from the effect of too many Steinbechers. Beneath the redly-dulled eyes lay a gleam which bespoke the not uncommon combination of self-importance and officious self-righteousness.

“Your conduct does not become an officer of the Wehrmacht,” he said loudly.

Smith did not reply at once. The embarrassed anger faded from his face to be replaced by an expressionlessly penetrating stare. He gazed unwinkingly into the captain's eyes for so long that the other finally looked away. When Smith's voice came it was too quiet to be heard even at the next table.

“Herr Major, when you talk to me, little man.” The tone was glacial: so now were also the eyes. “Major Bernd Himmler. You may have heard of me?”

He paused significantly and the young captain seemed to shrink perceptibly before his eyes. Himmler, head of the Gestapo, was the most feared man in Germany. Smith could have been any relative of Himmler, possibly even his son.

“Report to me at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning,” Smith said curtly. He swung away without waiting for an answer. The Alpenkorps captain, suddenly very sober indeed, nodded wordlessly and sank wearily into his chair. As Smith strode towards the door the hubbub of conversation resumed. For the soldiers stationed in that remote military outpost, drinking beer, very large quantities of beer, was the only pastime: such incidents were no sooner seen than forgotten.

On his way to the door Smith stopped briefly by Schaffer and said: “Well, I fouled that one up.”

“You could have handled it differently,” Schaffer conceded, then went on curiously: “What did you say to him? The young Alpine Corps captain, I mean.”

“I gave him to understand that I was Himmler's son.”

“The Gestapo boss?” Schaffer asked incredulously. “God above, you took a chance.”

“I couldn't afford to take a chance,” Smith said cryptically. “I'll go try the ‘Eichhof’. Better luck there, maybe. Back in ten minutes. Less.”

He left Schaffer looking uncertainly after him, made an urgent negative move of his hand towards Carraciola, who was approaching him, and passed outside. He moved a few paces along the wooden boardwalk, stopped and glanced briefly up and down the snow-filled street. It was deserted in both directions. He turned and walked quickly up a narrow alleyway which paralleled the side of “Zum Wilden Hirsch”. At the rear stood a small wooden hut. Smith checked again that he was unobserved, opened the door quietly.

“Eight o'clock,” he said into the darkness. “Come on.”

There was a rustle of clothes and Mary appeared in the doorway. She was shivering violently, her face blue-tinged with the extreme cold. She looked questioningly at Smith but he took her arm without a word and led her quickly to the back door of the Gasthaus. They entered a small hallway, dimly lit by an oil lamp, crossed it, climbed a flight of stairs, moved along a corridor and stopped at the second door on the right. They passed swiftly inside, Smith closing the door behind him.

It was a small room, plainly furnished, but from the chintz soft furnishings and toilet articles on a dressing-table, very obviously a feminine room. Mary sat down on the bed, hugging herself tightly to try to restore some warmth and looked up at Smith without any admiration in her face.

“I hope you're enjoying your little game,” she said bitterly. “Seem to know your way around, don't you?”

“Instinct,” Smith explained. He stooped over the low-burning oil lamp by the bed, turned up the flame, glanced briefly about the room, located a battered leather case in one corner, swung it to the bed and snapped open the lid. The case contained women's clothing. He pulled Mary to her feet and said: “Don't waste time. Take off your clothes. And when I say that, I mean your clothes. Every last stitch. Then get into that top outfit there. You'll find everything you need.”

Mary stared at him.

“Those clothes? Why on earth must I—”

“Don't argue. Now!”

“Now it is,” she said resignedly. “You might at least turn your back.”

“Relax,” Smith said wearily. “I have other things on my mind.” He crossed to the window, stood peering out through a crack in the chintz curtains and went on: “Now, hurry. You're supposed to be coming off the bus from Steingaden that arrives in twenty minutes' time. You'll be carrying that case, which contains the rest of your clothes. Your name is Maria Schenk, you're from Dusseldorf, a cousin of a barmaid that works here, and you've had T.B. and been forced to give up your factory job and go to the mountains for your health. So you've got this new job, through this barmaid, in the Schloss Adler. And you have identity papers, travel permit, references and letters in appropriately post-marked envelopes to prove all of it. They're in that handbag in the case. Think you got all that?”

“I—I think so,” she said uncertainly. “But if you'd only tell me—”

“For God's sake!” Smith said impatiently. “Time, girl, time! Got it or not?”

“Maria Schenk, Dusseldorf, factory, T.B., cousin here, Steingaden—yes, I have it.” She broke off to pull a ribbed blue wool dress over her head, smoothed it down and said wonderingly: “It's a perfect fit! You'd think this dress was made for me!”

“It was made for you.” Smith turned round to inspect her.

“36-26-36 or whatever. We—um—broke into your flat and borrowed a dress to use as a model. Thorough, that's us.”

“You broke into my flat?” she asked slowly.

“Well, now, you wouldn't want to go around like a refugee from a jumble sale,” Smith said reasonably. He looked at the dress with an approving eye. “Does something for you.”

“I'd like to do something for you,” she said feelingly. Her eyes mirrored her bafflement, her total lack of understanding. “But—but it must have taken weeks to prepare those clothes—and those papers!”

“Like enough,” Smith agreed. “Our Forgery Section did a very special job on those papers. Had to, to get you into the lion's den.”

“Weeks,” Mary said incredulously. “Weeks! But General Carnaby's plane crashed only yesterday morning.” She stared at him, registering successive expressions of confusion, accusation and, finally, downright anger. “You knew it was going to crash!”

“Right first time, my poppet,” Smith said cheerfully. He gave her an affectionate pat. “We rigged it.”

“Don't do that,” she snapped, then went on carefully, her face still tight with anger: “There really was a plane crash?”

“Guaranteed. The plane crash-landed on the airfield H.Q. of the Bavarian Mountain Rescue pilots. Place called Oberhausen, about five miles from here. The place we'll be leaving from, incidentally.”

“The place we'll be leaving—” She broke off, gazed at him a long moment then shook her head almost in despair. “But—but in the plane I overheard you telling the men that if the mission failed or you had to split up that you were all to make a rendezvous at Frauenfeld, over the Swiss border.”

“Did you now?” There was mild interest in Smith's voice. “I must be getting confused. Anyway, this Mosquito put down on the Oberhausen airfield riddled with machine-gun bullet holes. British machine-gun bullet holes, but what the hell, holes are holes.”

“And you'd risk the life of an American general—and all the plans for the Second Front—”

“Well, now, that's why I'm in such a hurry to get inside the Schloss Adler.” Smith cleared his throat. “Not before they get his secrets out of him but before they find out that he's not an American general and knows no more about the Second Front than I do about the back of the moon.”

“What! He's a plant?”

“Name of Jones,” Smith nodded. “Cartwright Jones. American actor. As a Thespian he's pretty second rate but he's a dead ringer for Carnaby.”

She looked at him with something like horror in her eyes.

“You'd risk an innocent—”

“He's getting plenty,” Smith interrupted. “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a one-night stand. The peak of his professional career.”

There came a soft double knock on the door. A swift sliding movement of Smith's hand and a gun was suddenly there, a Mauser automatic, cocked and ready to go. Another swift movement and he was silently by the door, jerking it open. Smith put his gun away. Heidi came in, Smith shutting the door behind her.

“Well, cousins, here we are,” he announced. “Mary—now Maria—and Heidi. I'm off.”

“You're off!” Mary said dazedly. “But—but what am I supposed to do ?”

“Heidi will tell you.”

Mary looked uncertainly at the other girl. “Heidi?”

“Heidi. Our top secret agent in Bavaria since 1941.”

“Our—top—” Mary shook her head. “I don't believe it!”

“Nobody would.” Smith surveyed Heidi's opulent charms with an admiring eye. “Brother, what a disguise!”

Smith opened the back door of the Gasthaus with a cautious hand, moved swiftly outside and remained stock-still in the almost total darkness, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the change of light. The snow, he thought, was heavier than when they had first entered “Zum Wilden Hirsch” and the wind had certainly freshened. It was bitingly cold.

Satisfied that he was unobserved, Smith turned to the left, took two steps and bit off an exclamation as he tripped over some unseen object and fell his length in the snow. He rolled over three times in the snow just in case any bystander might have a knife or gun and homicidal ideas about using them, then got to his feet with cat-like speed, his Mauser in one hand, his pencil-flash in the other. He snapped on the torch and swung round in a 360° turn. He was alone.

Alone, that was, but for the crumpled form over which he had tripped, an Alpenkorps sergeant lying face-down in the snow, a form lying still and curiously relaxed in that huddled shapelessness of death.

Smith stooped and rolled the figure over to expose the great red stain in the snow where the body had been lying. The pencil-flash rested briefly on the front of the tunic, a tunic gashed and soaked in blood. The beam of the torch moved up to the face. No more cloisters for this don, Smith thought in irrational emptiness, no more honey still for tea, and the fault is all mine and I can see it in his face. The already dulled and faded eyes of Torrance-Smythe stared up at him in the sightless reproach of death.

Smith straightened to his feet, his face remote and withdrawn, and quartered the immediate ground area with his light. There were no signs of a struggle but struggle there must have been, for some tunic buttons had been ripped off and the high collar torn open. Smithy had not died easily. Flash still in hand, Smith walked slowly along to the mouth of the narrow alleyway, then stopped. A confusion of footprints, dark smears of blood in the trodden snow, dark bare patches on the wooden walls of the Gasthaus where struggling men had staggered heavily against it—here was where the struggle had been. Smith switched off the light, returned both torch and gun to their hiding-places and stepped out into the street. On the one side was “Zum Wilden Hirsch” with the sound of singing once again emanating from it, on the other side a brightly-lit telephone kiosk outside a Post Office. In the kiosk, talking animatedly on the telephone, was a uniformed figure, a soldier Smith had never seen before. The street itself was deserted.

Schaffer leaned negligently against the bar, the picture of complete and careless relaxation. His face belied him. It was grim and shocked and he was savagely shredding a cigarette between his fingers.

“Smithy!” Schaffer's voice was a low and vicious whisper. “Not Smithy! You sure, boss?”

“I'm sure.” Smith's face still held the same remote and withdrawn expression, almost as if all feeling had been drained from him. “You say he left in a hurry three minutes after I'd gone. So he wasn't after me. Who else left?”

“No idea.” Schaffer snapped the cigarette in half, dropped it to the floor. “The place is packed. And there's another door. I can't believe it. Why old Smithy? Why Torrance-Smythe. He was the cleverest of us all.”

“That's why he's dead,” Smith said sombrely. “Now listen carefully. It's time you knew the score.”

Schaffer looked at him steadily and said: “It's more than time.”

Smith began to speak in a very low voice, in fluent completely idiomatic German, careful that his back was turned to the Gestapo officers at the far end of the bar. After a minute or two he saw Heidi returning to the room through the doorway behind the bar but ignored her as she ignored him. Almost immediately afterwards a gradual diminution in the babel of talk, followed by an almost complete silence, made him fall quiet himself and follow the direction of the gaze of hundreds of soldiers all of whom were looking towards the door.

There was reason for the silence, especially good reason, Smith thought, for soldiers almost totally cut off from womankind. Mary Ellison, clad in a belted rain-coat, with a scarf over her head and a battered suitcase in her hand, was standing in the doorway. The silence seemed to deepen. Women are rare at any time in a high Alpine Gasthaus, unaccompanied young women even rarer and beautiful young women on their own virtually unknown. For some moments Mary stood there uncertainly, as if unsure of her welcome or not knowing what to do. Then she dropped her bag, and her face lit up as she caught sight of Heidi, a face transformed with joy. Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, Smith thought inconsequentially. With a face and a figure and an acting talent like that, she could have had Hollywood tramping a path of beaten gold to her doorstep ... Through the silent room she and Heidi ran toward one another and embraced.

“My dear Maria! My dear Maria!” There was a break in Heidi's voice that made Smith reflect that Hollywood might have been well advised to tramp out two paths of beaten gold. “So you came after all!”

“After all these years!” Mary hugged the other girl and kissed her again. “It's wonderful to see you again, Cousin Heidi! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Of course I came. Why ever not?”

“Well!” Heidi made no effort to lower her voice as she looked around significantly. “They're a pretty rough lot, hereabouts. You should carry a gun, always. Hunter battalion, they call themselves. They're well named!”

The soldiers broke out into a roar of laughter and the normal hubbub of sound resumed almost at once. Arm in arm, Heidi led Mary across to the small group of civilians standing at the far end of the bar. She stopped in front of the man in the centre of the group, a dark, wiry, intelligent-faced man who looked very very tough indeed, and performed the introductions.

“Maria, this is Captain von Brauchitsch. He—um—works in the Schloss Adler. Captain, my cousin, Maria Schenk.”

Von Brauchitsch bowed slightly.

“You are fortunate in your cousins, Heidi. We were expecting you, Miss Schenk.” He smiled. “But not someone as beautiful as this.”

Mary smiled in turn, her face puzzled. “You were expecting—”

“He was expecting,” Heidi said dryly. “It is the captain's business to know what is going on.”

“Don't make me sound so sinister, Heidi. You'll frighten Miss Schenk.” He glanced at his watch. “The next cable-car leaves in ten minutes. If I might escort the young lady—”

“The young lady is going to my room first,” Heidi said firmly. “For a wash-up and a Kaffee-Schnapps. Can't you see that she's half-dead with cold?”

“I do believe her teeth are chattering,” von Brauchitsch said with a smile. “I thought it might have been me. Well, the cable-car after the next one, then.”

“And I'm going with her,” Heidi announced.

“Both of you?” Von Brauchitsch shook his head and smiled again. Von. Brauchitsch was always smiling. “My lucky night.”

“Permits, travel documents, identity cards and letters you have,” Heidi said. She fished up some papers from the recesses of her Tyrolean blouse and handed them to Mary who was sitting across from her on the bed in her room. “Plan of the castle and instructions. Do your homework well then give them back to me. I'll take them up. You might be searched—they're a suspicious bunch up there. And drink up that Schnapps—first thing von Brauchitsch will do is to smell your breath. Just to check. He checks everything. He's the most suspicious of the lot.”

“He seemed a very pleasant man to me,” Mary said mildly.

“He's a very unpleasant Gestapo officer,” Heidi said dryly.

When Heidi returned to the bar, Smith and Schaffer had been rejoined by Carraciola, Thomas and Christiansen. All five appeared to be carefree in their drinking and chatting inconsequentially, but their low and urgent voices were evidence enough of the desperate worry in their minds. Or in the minds of some of them.

“You haven't seen old Smithy, then?” Smith asked quietly. “None of you saw him go? Then where in hell has he got to?”

There was no reply, but the shrugs and worried frowns were reply enough. Christiansen said: “Shall I go and have a look?”

“I don't think so,” Smith said. “I'm afraid it's too late to go anywhere now.”

Both doors of “Zum Wilden Hirsch” had suddenly burst open and half a dozen soldiers were coming quickly in through either door. All had slung machine-carbines, Schmeissers, at the ready. They fanned out along the walls and waited, machine-carbines horizontal, fingers on triggers, their eyes very calm, very watchful.

“Well, well,” Christiansen murmured. “It was a nice war.”

The sudden and total silence was emphasised rather than broken by the crisp footfalls on the wooden floor as a full colonel of the Wehrmacht came striding into the room and looked coldly around him. The gargantuan proprietor of the Gasthaus came hurrying round from the back of the bar, tripping over chairs in the anxiety and fear limned so unmistakably clearly in his round pumpkin of a face.

“Colonel Weissner!” It required no acute ear to catch the shake in the proprietor's voice. “What in God's name—”.

“No fault of yours, mein Herr.” The colonel's words were reassuring which was more than the tone of his voice was. “But you harbour enemies of the state.”

“Enemies of the state” In a matter of seconds the proprietor's complexion had changed from a most unbecoming puce to an even more unbecoming washed-out grey while his voice now quavered like a high-C tuning fork. “What? I? I, Josef Wartmann—”

“Please.” The colonel held up his hand for silence. “We are looking for four or five Alpenkorps deserters from the Stuttgart military prison. To escape, they killed two officers and a guardroom sergeant. They were known to be heading this way.”

Smith nodded and said in Schaffer's ear: “Very clever. Very clever indeed.”

“Now then,” Weissner continued briskly. “If they're here, we'll soon have them. I want the senior officers present of drafts thirteen, fourteen and fifteen to come forward.” He waited until two majors and a captain came forward and stood at attention before him. “You know all your officers and men by sight?”

The three officers nodded.

“Good. I wish you—”

“No need, Colonel.” Heidi had come round from behind the bar and now stood before Weissner, hands clasped respectfully behind her back. “I know the man you're after. The ringleader.”

“Ah!” Colonel Weissner smiled. “The charming—”

“Heidi, Herr Colonel. I have waited table on you up in the Schloss Adler.”

Weissner bowed gallantly. “As if one could ever forget.”

“That one.” Her face full of a combination of righteous indignation and devotion to duty, Heidi pointed a dramatically accusing finger at Smith. “That's the one, Herr Colonel. He—he pinched me!”

“My dear Heidi!” Colonel Weissner smiled indulgently. “If we were to convict every man who ever harboured thoughts of—”

“Not that, Herr Colonel. He asked me what I knew or had heard about a man called General Cannabee—I think.”

“General Carnaby!” Colonel Weissner was no longer smiling. He glanced at Smith, motioned guards to close in on him, then glanced back at Heidi. “What did you tell him?”

“Herr Colonel!” Heidi was stiff with outraged dignity. “I hope I am a good German. And I value my engagements at the Schloss Adler.” She half-turned and pointed across the room. “Captain von Brauchitsch of the Gestapo will vouch for me.”

“No need. We will not forget this, my dear child.” He patted her affectionately on the cheek, then turned to Smith, the temperature of his voice dropping from warm to subzero. “Your accomplices, sir, and at once.”

“At once, my dear Colonel?” The look he gave Heidi was as glacial as the Colonel's voice. “Surely not. Let's get our priorities straight. First, her thirty pieces of silver. Then us.”

“You talk like a fool,” Colonel Weissner said contemptuously. “Heidi is a true patriot.”

“I'm sure she is,” Smith said bitterly.

Mary, her face still and shocked, stared down from the uncurtained crack in Heidi's dark room as Smith and the four others were led out of the front door of “Zum Wilden Hirsch” and marched off down the road under heavy escort to where several command cars were parked on the far side of the street. Brusquely, efficiently, the prisoners were bundled into two of the cars, engines started up and within a minute both cars were lost to sight round a bend in the road. For almost a minute afterwards Mary stood there, staring out unseeingly on the swirling snow, then pulled the curtains together and turned back towards the darkened room.

She said in a whisper: “How did it happen?”

A match scratched as Heidi lit and turned up the flame of the oil lamp.

“I can't guess.” Heidi shrugged. “Someone, I don't know who, must have tipped Colonel Weissner off. But I put a finger on him.”

Mary stared at her. “You—you—”

“He'd have been found out in another minute anyway. They were strangers. But it strengthens our hand. I—and you—are now above suspicion.”

“Above suspicion!” Mary looked at her in disbelief then went on, almost wildly: “But there's no point in going ahead now!”

“Is there not?” Heidi said thoughtfully. “Somehow, I feel sorrier for Colonel Weissner than I do for Major Smith. Is not our Major Smith a man of resource? Or do our employers in Whitehall lie to us? When they told me he was coming here, they told me not to worry, to trust him implicitly. A man of infinite resource—those were their exact words—who can extricate himself from positions of utmost difficulty. They have a funny way of talking in Whitehall. But already I trust him. Don't you?”

There was no reply. Mary stared at the floor, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Heidi touched her arm and said softly, “You love him as much as that?”

Mary nodded in silence.

“And does he love you?”

“I don't know. I just don't know. He's been too long in this business—even if he did know,” she said bitterly, “he probably wouldn't tell himself.”

Heidi looked at her for a moment, shook her head and said: “They should never have sent you. How can you hope to—” She broke off, shook her head again, and went on: “It's too late now. Come on. We mustn't keep von Brauchitsch waiting.”

“But—but if he doesn't come? If he can't escape—and how can he escape?” She gestured despairingly at the papers lying on the bed. “They're bound to check with Dusseldorf first thing in the morning about those forged references.”

Heidi said without any particular expression in her voice: “I don't think he'd let you down, Mary.”

“No,” Mary said dolefully. “I don't suppose he would.”

The big black Mercedes command car swept along the snow packed road that paralleled the Blau See, the windscreen wipers just coping with the thickly-swirling snow that rushed greyly back at the windscreen through powerful headlight beams. It was an expensive car and a very comfortable one, but neither Schaffer up front nor Smith in the rear seat experienced any degree of comfort whatsoever, either mental or physical. On the mental side there was the bitter prospect of the inevitable firing squad and the knowledge that their mission was over even before it had properly begun: on the physical side they were cramped in the middle of their seats, Schaffer flanked by driver and guard, Smith by Colonel Weissner and guard, and both Smith and Schaffer were suffering from pain in the lower ribs: the owners of the Schmeisser machine-pistols, the muzzles of which were grinding into the captives' sides, had no compunction about letting their presence be known.

They were now, Smith estimated, half-way between village and barracks. Another thirty seconds and they would be through the barrack gates. Thirty seconds. No more.

“Stop this car!” Smith's voice was cold, authoritative with an odd undertone of menace. “Immediately, do you hear? I must think.”

Colonel Weissner, startled, turned and stared at him. Smith ignored him completely. His face reflected an intensely frowning concentration, a thin-lipped anger barely under control, the face of a man to whom the thought of disobedience of his curt instruction was unthinkable: most certainly not the face of a man going to captivity and death. Weissner hesitated, but only fractionally. He gave an order and the big car began to slow.

“You oaf! You utter idiot!” Smith's tone, shaking with anger, was low and vicious, so low that only Weissner could hear it. “You've almost certainly ruined everything and, by God, if you have, Weissner, you'll be without a regiment tomorrow !”

The car pulled into the roadside and stopped. Ahead, the red tail lights of the command car in front vanished into a snow-filled darkness. Weissner said brusquely, but with a barely perceptible tremor of agitation in his voice: “What the devil are you talking about?”

“You knew about this American general, Carnaby?” Smith's face, eyes narrowed and teeth bared in anger, was within six inches of Weissner's. “How?” He almost spat the word out.

“I dined in the Schloss Adler last night. I—”

Smith looked at him in total incredulity.

“Colonel Paul Kramer told you? He actually talked to you about him?” Weissner nodded wordlessly.

“Admiral Canaris' Chief of Staff! And now everybody knows. God in heaven, heads will roll for this.” He screwed the heels of his palms into his eyes, lowered his hands wearily to his thighs, gazed ahead unseeingly and shook his head, very slowly. “This is too big, even for me.” He fished out his pass and handed it to Weissner, who examined it in the beam of a none too steady torch. “Back to the barracks at once! I must get through to Berlin immediately. My uncle will know what to do.”

“Your uncle?” By what seemed a great effort of will Weissner looked up from the pass he held in his hand: his voice was no steadier than the torch. “Heinrick Himmler?”

“Who do you think?” Smith snarled. “Mickey Mouse?” He dropped his voice to a low murmur. “I trust you never have the privilege of meeting him, Colonel Weissner.” He gave Weissner the benefit of a long and speculative look singularly lacking in any encouragement, then turned away and prodded the driver none too lightly in the back. “The barracks—and make it quick!”

The car moved off. Anything that the nephew of the dreaded Heinrich Himmler, Chief of the Gestapo, said was good enough for the driver.

“Smith turned to the guard by his side. Take that damned thing out of my ribs!”

Angrily, he snatched the gun away. The guard, who had also heard of Himmler, meekly yielded up the machine-pistol. One second later he was doubled up in helpless retching agony as the butt of the Schmeisser smashed into his stomach and another second later Colonel Weissner was pinned against the window of his Mercedes as the muzzle of the Schmeisser ground into his right ear.

Smith said: “If your men move, you die.”

“Okay.” Schaffer's calm voice from the front seat. “I have their guns.”

“Stop the car,” Smith ordered.

The car came to a halt. Through the windscreen Smith could see the lights of the barracks guard-room, now less than two hundred yards away. He gave Weissner a prod with the Schmeisser muzzle.

“Out!”

Weissner's face was a mask of chagrined rage but he was too experienced a soldier even to hesitate. He got out.

“Three paces from the car,” Smith said. “Face down in the snow. Hands clasped behind your head. Schaffer, your gun on your guard. Out beside the General, you.” This with his gun muzzle in the driver's neck.

Twenty seconds later, Schaffer at the wheel, they were on their way, leaving three men face downwards in the snow and the fourth, Smith's erstwhile guard, still doubled up in agony by the roadside.

“A creditable effort, young Himmler,” Schaffer said approvingly.

“I'll never be that lucky again,” Smith said soberly. “Take your time passing the barracks. We don't want any of the sentries getting the wrong idea.”

At a steady twenty miles an hour they passed the main gates and then the secondary gates, apparently, as far as Smith could see, without exciting any comment. Just behind the three-pointed star on the car's radiator flew a small triangular pennant, the Camp Commandant's personal standard, and no one, it was safe to assume, would question the comings and goings of Colonel Weissner.

For half a mile or so beyond the secondary gates the road ran northwards in a straight line with, on the left, a sheer hundred-foot cliff dropping down into the waters of the Blau See, and, to the right, a line of pines, not more than fifty yards wide, backing up against another vertical cliff-face which soared up until lost in the snow and the darkness.

At the end of the half-mile straight, the road ahead swept sharply to the right to follow an indentation in the Blau See's shore-line, a dangerous corner marked by white fencing which would normally have been conspicuous enough by night-time but which was at the moment all but invisible against the all enveloping background of snow. Schaffer braked for the corner. A thoughtful expression crossed his face and he applied still heavier pressure to the brake pedal and glanced at Smith.

“An excellent idea.” It was Smith's turn to be approving. “We'll make an agent out of you yet.”

The Mercedes stopped. Smith gathered up the Schmeissers and pistols they had taken from Weissner and his men and got out. Schaffer wound down the driver's window, released the hand-brake, engaged gear and jumped out as the car began to move. With his right arm through the window Schaffer walked and then, as the car began to gather speed, ran along beside the Mercedes, his hand on the steering wheel. Twenty feet from the cliff edge he gave a last steering correction, jerked the quadrant hand throttle wide open and leapt aside as the car accelerated. The wooden fence never had a chance. With a splintering crash barely audible above the roaring of the engine at maximum revs in first gear, the Mercedes went through the barrier as if it had been made of cardboard, shot out over the edge of the cliff and disappeared from sight.

Smith and Schaffer reached the safety of an unbroken stretch of fencing and peered down just in time to see the car, upside down now and its headlamps still blazing, strike the surface of the lake with an oddly flat explosive sound, like distant gunfire. A column of water and weirdly phosphorescent spray reached half-way up the cliff side. When it subsided, they could at once locate from an underwater luminescence the position of the sinking car: the headlamps were still burning. Smith and Schaffer looked at each other then Smith thoughtfully removed his peaked cap and sent it sailing over the edge. The strong gusting wind blew the cap in against the cliff face, but it tumbled on down and landed, inside up, on still surfacing bubbles iridescently glittering from the light now far below. Then the light went out.

“So who cares?” Schaffer straightened up from the fencing and shrugged his shoulders. “Wasn't our car. Back to the village, hey?”

“Not on your life,” Smith said emphatically. “And I mean that—literally. Come on. Other way.”

Clutching their recently acquired weapons, they ran round the corner in the direction in which the car had been travelling. They had covered less than seventy yards when they heard the sound of car engines and saw wavering beams lighting up the splintered fence. Seconds later Smith and Schaffer were off the road, hidden in the pines and moving slowly back in the direction of a command car and two armoured cars that had now pulled up at the broken barrier.

“That's it, then, Herr Colonel.” An Alpenkorps sergeant with shoulder slung gun peered gingerly over the edge of the cliff. “Going too fast, saw it too late—or never saw it at all. The Blau See is over a hundred metres deep here, Herr Colonel. They're gone.”

“Maybe they're gone and maybe they're not. I wouldn't trust that lot as far as my front door.” Colonel Weissner's voice carried clearly and sounded bitter. “They may have faked it and doubled back. Send one party of men straight into the pines there as far as the cliff wall. Five metre spacing. Let them use their torches. Then another party of men five hundred metres in the car back towards the camp. You go with them, Sergeant. Again spread out to the cliff-face. Let them come together. And be quick.”

Schaffer, from his hiding-place behind the bole of a pine, looked thoughtfully at Smith.

“I have to concede a point, boss, it's perhaps as well we didn't go straight back to the village. Cunning old devil, isn't he?”

“And what does that make me?” Smith murmured.

“Okay, okay. I'll concede that point, too.”

Five minutes passed. Comparatively little of the falling snow penetrated the thickly-matted branches of the pines and the two men could clearly see the occasional flicker of torches as the line of men nearest them moved away to the south, their lights probing behind tree-trunks and under windfalls as they searched for the two escaped prisoners. Colonel Weissner paced up and down, slowly, beside his command car, his head bowed as if immersed in thought. From time to time he consulted his watch. As Smith watched, he moved out to the unbroken fencing and remained there, peering down towards the surface of the Blau See.

By and by Smith and Schaffer could hear the distant sound of muffled voices and within a minute the sergeant moved into the beam of the command car headlamps, approached Colonel Weissner and saluted.

“Not even a footprint, Herr Colonel.”

Weissner straightened and turned.

“There wouldn't be,” he said sombrely. “I've just seen a hat floating in the water. A squalid end for such brave men, Sergeant. A squalid end.”