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

5

The cable-car moved slowly out of the lower station at the beginning of its long climb up to the castle. An impossible climb, Mary thought, a dangerous and impossible climb. Peering through the front windows she could just distinguish the outline of the first pylon through the thinly-driving snow. The second and third pylons were invisible, but the intermittently shining cluster of lights suspended impossibly high in the sky showed clearly enough where they had to go. People have made it before, she thought dully, we'll probably make it, too. The way she felt then, with the bottom gone from her world, she didn't particularly care whether she made it or not.

The cable-car was a twelve-passenger vehicle, painted bright red outside, well-lit inside. There were no seats, only grab-rails along the two sides. That the grab-rails were very necessary became immediately and alarmingly obvious. The wind was now very strong and the car began to sway alarmingly only seconds after clearing the shelter of the lower station.

Apart from two soldiers and an apparent civilian, the only other passengers consisted of von Brauchitsch, Mary and Heidi, the last now with a heavy woollen coat and cossack fur hat over her ordinary clothes. Von Brauchitsch, holding on to the grab-rail with one hand, had his free arm round

Mary's shoulders. He gave them a reassuring squeeze and smiled down at her.

“Scared?” he asked.

“No.” And she wasn't, she hadn't enough emotion left to be scared, but even with no hope left she was supposed to be a professional. “No, I'm not scared. I'm terrified. I feel seasick already. Does—does this cable ever break.”

“Never.” Von Brauchitsch was reassurance itself. “Just hang on to me and you'll be all right.”

“That's what he used to say to me,” Heidi said coldly.

“Fraulein,” von Brauchitsch explained patiently, “I am gifted beyond the average, but I haven't yet managed to grow a third arm. Guests first.”

With a cupped cigarette in his hand, Schaffer leaned against the base of an unmistakable telephone pole and gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance. There was reason both for the hooded cigarette and the thoughtful expression. Less than a hundred yards away from where he stood at the edge of the pines bordering the road running alongside the shore of the Blau See he could see guards, clearly illuminated by over-head lights, moving briskly to and fro in the vicinity of the barrack gates. Dimly seen behind them were the outline of the barracks themselves.

Schaffer shifted his stance and gazed upwards. The snow was almost gone now, the moon was threatening to break through, and he had no difficulty at all in distinguishing the form of Smith, his legs straddled across the lowest crossbar.

Smith was busily employed with a knife, a specially designed commando knife which, among other advanced features, had a built-in wire cutter. Carefully, methodically, he brought the wire-cutter to bear. With eight consecutive snips eight consecutive telephone wires fell to the ground. Smith closed and pocketed his knife, disentangled his legs from the cross-bar, wrapped his arms round the pole and slid down to the ground. He grinned at Schaffer.

“Every little helps,” he said.

“Should hold them for a while,” Schaffer agreed. Once more they gathered up their guns and moved off to the east, vanishing into the pine woods which bordered the rear of the barracks.

The cable-car swayed more alarmingly than ever. It had now entered upon the last near-vertical lap of its journey. With von Brauchitsch's arm still around her shoulders, with her face still pressed against the front windows of the car, Mary stared up at the towering battlements, white as the driving snow, and thought that they reached up almost to the clouds themselves. As she watched, a break came in the wisping clouds and the whole fairy-tale castle was bathed in bright moonlight. Fear touched her eyes, she moistened her lips and gave an involuntary shiver. Nothing escaped von Brauchitsch's acute perception. He gave her shoulders another reassuring squeeze, perhaps the twentieth in that brief journey. “Not to worry, Fraulein. It will be all right.” “I hope so.” Her voice was the ghost of a whisper.

The same unexpected moonlight almost caught Smith and Schaffer. They had just crossed the station tracks and were moving stealthily along towards the left luggage office when the moon broke through. But they were still in the shadows of the over-hanging station roof. They pressed back into those shadows and peered along the tracks, past the hydraulic bumpers which marked the end of the line. Clearly now, sharply-limned as if in full daylight, red etched against the white, they could see one cable-car approaching the lower station, the other climbing the last few vertical feet towards the header station and, above that, the dazzling outline of the Schloss Adler glittering under the bright moon.

“That helps,” Schaffer said bitterly. “That helps a lot.”

“Sky's still full of clouds,” Smith said mildly. He bent to the keyhole of the left luggage office, used his skeleton keys and moved inside. Schaffer followed, closing the door.

Smith located their rucksacks, cut a length of rope from the nylon, wrapped it round his waist and began stuffing some hand grenades and plastic explosives into a canvas bag. He raised his head as Schaffer diffidently cleared his throat.

“Boss?” This with an apprehensive glance through the window.

“huh-huh?”

“Boss, has it occurred to you that Colonel Weissner probably knows all about this cache by this time? What I mean is, we may have company soon.”

“We may indeed,” Smith admitted. “Surprised if we don't have. That's why I've cut this itsy-bitsy piece of rope off the big coil and why I'm taking the explosives and grenades only from my rucksack and yours. It's a very big coil—and no one knows what's inside our rucksacks. So it's unlikely that anything will be missed.”

“But the radio—”

“If we broadcast from here we might be caught in the act. If we take it away and they find it gone they'll know that that car at the bottom of the Blau See is empty. Is that it?”

“More or less.”

“So we compromise. We remove it, but we return it here after we've broadcast from a safe place.”

“What do you mean ‘safe place’,” Schaffer demanded plaintively. The darkly saturnine face was unhappy. “There isn't a safe place in Bavaria.”

“There's one not twenty yards away. Last place they'd look.” He tossed Schaffer a bunch of skeleton keys. “Ever been inside a Bavarian ladies' cloakroom?”

Schaffer fielded the keys, stared at Smith, shook his head and left. Quickly he moved down the tracks, his torch flashing briefly on and off. Finally his torch settled on a doorway with, above it, the legend DAMEN.

Schaffer looked at it, pursed his lips, shrugged his shoulders and got to work on the lock.

Slowly, with apparently infinite labour, the cable-car completed the last few feet of its ascent and passed in under the roof of the Schloss Adler header station. It juddered to a halt, the front door opened and the passengers disembarked. They moved from the header station—built into the north-west base of the castle—up through a steeply-climbing twenty-five foot tunnel which had heavy iron doors and guards at either end. Passing the top gateway, they emerged into the courtyard, the entrance of which was sealed off by a massively-barred iron gate guarded by heavily armed soldiers and Doberman pinchers. The courtyard itself was brightly illuminated by the light of dozens of uncurtained interior windows. In the very centre of the courtyard stood the helicopter which had that morning brought Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer to the Schloss Adler. Under the cover of a heavy tarpaulin—momentarily unnecessary because of the cessation of the snow—a dungareed figure, possibly the pilot, worked on the helicopter engine with the aid of a small but powerful arc-lamp.

Mary turned to von Brauchitsch, still holding a proprietary grip on her arm, and smiled ruefully.

“So many soldiers. So many men—and, I'm sure, so few women. What happens if I want to escape from the licentious soldiery?”

“Easy.” Von Brauchitsch really did have, Mary thought dully, a most charming smile. “Just jump from your bedroom window. One hundred metres straight down and there you are. Free!”

The ladies' cloakroom in the station was a superlatively nondescript place, bleakly furnished with hard-backed benches, chairs, deal tables and a sagging wooden floor. The Spartans would have turned up their noses at it, in its sheer lack of decorative inspiration it could have been surpassed only by its counterpart in England. The expiring remains of a fire burnt dully in a black enamel stove.

Smith was seated by the central table, radio beside him, consulting a small book by the light of a hooded pencil-flash and writing on a slip of paper. He checked what he had written, straightened and handed the book to Schaffer.

“Burn it. Page by page.”

“Page by page? All?” Surprise in the saturnine face. “You won't be requiring this any more?”

Smith shook his head and began to crank the radio handle.

There was a very much better fire in the Operations Room in Whitehall, a pine-log fire with a healthy crackle and flames of a respectable size. But the two men sitting on either side of the fire were a great deal less alert than the two men sitting by the dying embers of the fire in the Bavarian Alps. Admiral Rolland and Colonel Wyatt-Turner were frankly dozing, eyes shut, more asleep than awake. But they came to full wakefulness, jerking upright, almost instantly, when the long-awaited call-sign came through on the big transceiver manned by the civilian operator at the far end of the room. They glanced at each other, heaved themselves out of their deep arm-chairs.

“Broadsword calling Danny Boy.” The voice on the radio was faint but clear. “Broadsword calling Danny Boy. You hear me? Over.”

The civilian operator spoke into his microphone, “We hear you. Over.”

“Code. Ready? Over.”

“Ready. Over.”

Rolland and Wyatt-Turner were by the operator's shoulder now, his eyes fixed on his pencil as he began to make an instantaneous transcription of the meaningless jumble of letters beginning to come over the radio. Swiftly the message was spelt Out: TORRANCE-SMYTHE MURDERED. THOMAS CHRISTIANSEN AND CARRACIOLA CAPTURED.

As if triggered by an unheard signal, the eyes of Rolland and Wyatt-Turner lifted and met. Their faces were strained and grim. Their eyes returned to the flickering pencil.

ENEMY BELIEVE SCHAFFER AND SELF DEAD, the message continued. EFFECTING ENTRY INSIDE THE HOUR. PLEASE HAVE TRANSPORT STANDING BY NINETY MINUTES. OVER.

Admiral Rolland seized the microphone from the operator.

“Broadsword! Broadsword! Do you know who I am, Broadsword?”

“I know who you are, sir. Over.”

“Pull out, Broadsword. Pull out now. Save yourselves. Over.”

“You—must—be—joking.” The words were spoken in slow motion, a perceptible pause between each pair. “Over.”

“You heard me.” Rolland's voice was almost as slow and distinct. “You heard me. That was an order, Broadsword.”

“Mary is already inside. Over and out.”

The transceiver went dead.

“He's gone, sir,” the operator said quietly.

“He's gone,” Rolland repeated mechanically. “Dear God, he's gone.”

Colonel Wyatt-Turner moved away and sat down heavily in his chair by the fire. For such a big, burly man he appeared curiously huddled and shrunken. He looked up dully as Admiral Rolland sank into the opposite chair.

“It's all my fault.” The Colonel's voice was barely distinguishable. “All my fault.”

“We did what we had to do. All our fault, Colonel. It was my idea.” He gazed into the fire. “Now this—this on top of everything else.”

“Our worst day,” Wyatt-Turner agreed heavily. “Our worst day ever. Maybe I'm too old.”

“Maybe we're all too old.” With his right forefinger Rolland began to tick off the fingers of his left hand. “H.Q. Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. Secret alarm triggered. Nothing missing.”

“Nothing taken,” Wyatt-Turner agreed wearily. “But the vigil emulsion plates show photostat copies taken.”

“Two. Southampton. Barge-movement duplicates missing. Three, Plymouth. Time-lock in the naval H.Q. inoperative. We don't know what this means.”

“We can guess.”

“We can guess. Dover. Copy of a section of the Mulberry Harbour plans missing. An error? Carelessness? We'll never know. Five, Bradley's H.Q. guard sergeant missing. Could mean anything.”

“Could mean everything. All the troop movements for Overlord's Omaha beach are there.”

“Lastly, seven OS reports today. France, Belgium, Netherlands. Four demonstrably false. Other three unverifiable.”

For long moments there was a heavy, a defeated silence, finally broken by Wyatt-Turner.

“If there was ever any doubt, there's none now.” He spoke without looking up, his eyes gazing emptily into the fire. “The Germans have almost total penetration here—and we have almost none on the continent. And now this—Smith and his men, I mean.”

“Smith and his men,” Rolland echoed. “Smith and his men. We can write them off.”

Wyatt-Turner dropped his voice, speaking so softly that the radio operator couldn't overhear.

“And Operation Overlord,, sir?”

“Operation Overlord,” Rolland murmured. “Yes, we can write that off, too.”

“Intelligence is the first arm of modern warfare,” Wyatt-Turner said bitterly. “Or has someone said that before?”

“No intelligence, no war.” Admiral Rolland pressed an intercom button. “Have my car brought round. Coming, Colonel? To the airfield?”

“And a lot farther than that. If I have your permission, sir.”

“We've discussed it.” Admiral Rolland shrugged. “I understand how you feel. Kill yourself if you must.”

“I've no intention.” Wyatt-Turner crossed to a cupboard and took out a Sten gun, turned to Rolland and smiled: “We may encounter hostiles, sir.”

“You may indeed.” There was no answering smile on the Admiral's face.

“You heard what the man said?” Smith switched off the transmitter, telescoped the aerial and glanced across at Schaffer. “We can pull out now.”

“Pull out now? Pull out now?” Schaffer was outraged. “Don't you realise that if we do they'll get to Mary inside twelve hours.” He paused significantly, making sure he had all Smith's attention. “And if they get to her they're bound to get to Heidi ten minutes later.”

“Come off it, Lieutenant,” Smith said protestingly. “You've only seen her once, for five minutes.”

“So?” Schaffer was looking positively belligerent. “How often did Paris see Helen of Troy? How often did Antony see Cleopatra. How often did Romeo—” He broke off then went on defiantly: “And I don't care if she is a traitor spying on her own people.”

“She was born and brought up in Birmingham,” Smith said wearily.

“So who cares? I draw the line at nothing. Even if she is a Limey—” He paused. “English?”

“Come on,” Smith said. “Let's return this radio. We may have callers soon.”

“We mustn't be raising too many eyebrows,” Schaffer agreed.

They returned the radio, locked the left luggage office and were just moving towards the station exit when they were halted by the sound of truck engines and a siren's ululation. They pressed back against a wall as headlights lit up the station entrance. The leading truck came to a skidding halt not ten yards away.

Schaffer looked at Smith. “Discretion, I think?” “Discretion, indeed. Behind the booking office.” The two men moved swiftly alongside the tracks and hid in the deep shadows behind the booking office. A sergeant, the one who had organised the search along the Blau See, came running through the entrance, followed by four soldiers, located the left luggage office, tried the door handle, reversed his machine-pistol and hammered the lock without effect, reversed his gun again, shot away the lock and passed inside, torch in hand. He appeared at the doorway almost at once.

“Tell the captain. They didn't lie. The Englanders' gear is here!” One of the soldiers left and the sergeant said to the three remaining men: “Right. Get their stuff out and load it up.”

“There goes my last pair of cotton socks,” Schaffer murmured mournfully as their rucksacks were taken away. “Not to mention my toothbrush and—”

He broke off as Smith caught his arm. The sergeant had stopped the man carrying the radio, taken it from him, placed his hand on it and stood quite still. He was directly under one of the small swinging electric lights and the expression on his face could clearly be seen to change from puzzlement to disbelief to complete and shocked understanding.

“Kapitan!” the sergeant shouted. “Kapitan.”

An officer came hurrying through the station entrance.

“The radio, Kapitan! It's warm, very warm! It's been in use inside the last five minutes.”

“In the last five minutes? Impossible!” He stared at the sergeant. “Unless—”

“Yes, Herr Kapitan. Unless.”

“Surround the station,” the officer shouted. “Search every room.”

“Oh God!” Schaffer moaned. “Why can't they leave us alone?”

“Quickly,” Smith said softly. He took Schaffer's arm and they moved through the dark shadows till they reached the ladies' cloakroom. Carefully not to rattle his skeleton keys, Smith had the door open in seconds. They passed inside and locked the door behind them.

“This won't look so good in my obituary,” Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words.

“What won't?”

“Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria. How can a man R.I.P. with that on his mind? ... What's our friend outside saying?”

“If you shut up we might hear.”

“And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.” The German captain was barking out his commands in the best parade-ground fashion. “If a door is locked, break it open. If you can't break it open, shoot the lock away. And if you don't want to die in the next five minutes, never forget that these are violent and extremely dangerous men almost certainly armed with stolen Schmeisser machine-pistols, apart from their own weapons. Make no attempt to capture them. Shoot on sight and shoot to kill.”

“You heard?” Smith said.

“I'm afraid I did.” There was a perceptible click as Schaffer cocked his machine-pistol.

They stood side-by-side in the darkness listening to the sounds of the search, the calling of voices, the hammering of rifle butts on wood, the splintering of yielding doors, the occasional short burst of machine-gun fire where a door, presumably, had failed to yield to more conventional methods of persuasion. The sounds of the approaching search grew very close.

“They're getting warm,” Schaffer murmured.

Schaffer had underestimated the temperature. Just as he finished speaking an unseen hand closed on the outer door handle and rattled the door furiously. Smith and Schaffer moved silently and took up position pressed close against the wall, one on either side of the door.

The rattling ceased. A heavy crashing impact from the outside shook the door on its hinges. A second such impact and the woodwork in the jamb by the lock began to splinter. Two more would do it, Smith thought, two more.

But there were no more.

“Gott in Himmel, Hans!” The voice beyond the door held—or appeared to hold—a mixture of consternation and outrage. “What are you thinking of? Can't you read?”

“Can't I—” The second voice broke off abruptly and when it came again it was in tones of defensive apology. “DAMEN ! Mein Gott! DAMEN !” A pause. “If you, had spent as many years on the Russian Front as I have—” His voice faded as the two men moved away.

“God bless our common Anglo-Saxon heritage,” Schaffer murmured fervently.

“What are you talking about?” Smith demanded. He had released his tense grip on the Schmeisser and realised that the palms of his hands were damp.

“This misplaced sense of decency,” Schaffer explained.

“A far from misplaced and highly developed sense of self-preservation,” Smith said dryly. “Would you like to come searching for a couple of reputed killers, like us, knowing that the first man to find us would probably be cut in half by a burst of machine-gun fire? Put yourself in their position. How do you think those men feel. How would you feel?”

“I'd feel very unhappy,” Schaffer said candidly.

“And so do they. And so they seize on any reasonable excuse not to investigate. Our two friends who have just left have no idea whatsoever whether we're in here or not and, what's more, the last thing they want to do is to find out.”

“Stop making with the old psychology. All that matters is that Schaffer is saved. Saved!”

“If you believe that,” Smith said curtly, “you deserve to end up with a blindfold round your eyes.”

“How's that again?” Schaffer asked apprehensively.

“You and I,” Smith explained patiently, “are not the only people who can put ourselves in the places of the searchers. You can bet your life that the captain can and more than likely the sergeant, too—you saw how quickly he caught on to the damn radio. By and by one or other is going to come by, see this closed and undamaged door, blow his top and insist on a few of his men being offered the chance to earn a posthumous Iron Cross. What I mean is, Schaffer is not yet saved.”

“What do we do, boss?” Schaffer said quietly. “I don't feel so funny any more.”

“We create a diversion. Here are the keys—this one. Put it in the lock and hold it ready to turn. We'll be leaving in a hurry—troops of this calibre can't be fooled for long.”

He dug into his knapsack, fished out a hand-grenade, crossed the cloakroom into the washroom and, in almost total darkness, felt his way across it to where the window at the back should have been, finally located it from the source of a faint wash of light. He pressed his nose against the glass but could see nothing, cursed softly as he realised a washroom window would always certainly be frosted, located the latch and slowly swung the window wide. With infinite caution, a fraction of an inch at a time, he thrust his head slowly through the window.

Nobody blew his head off. There were soldiers immediately to be seen, it was true, soldiers armed and at the ready, but they weren't looking in his direction: there were five of them, spread out in an arc of a circle, perhaps fifteen yards from the station entrance, and every machine-pistol was trained on that entrance. Waiting for the rabbits to bolt, Smith thought.

What was of much more interest was the empty truck parked only feet away from the window where he was: it was the reflected light from its side-lights that had enabled him to locate the window. Hoping that the truck was built along conventional lines, Smith armed the grenade, counted three, lobbed it under the back wheels of the truck and ducked behind the shelter of the washroom wall.

The two explosions—grenade and petrol tank—went off so almost simultaneously as to be indistinguishable in time Shattered glass from the window above showered down on his head and his ear-drums hurt fiercely both from the roar of sound and the proximity to the explosive shock-wave. Smith made no attempt to inspect the damage he had done, less from the urgent need for haste to leave there than from the very obvious fact that the remains of the truck outside had burst into flames and to have lifted his head above that window sill would have been a swift form of illuminated suicide: not that he could have done so in any event for the wind-driven flames from the track were already beginning to lick through the shattered washroom window. On hands and knees Smith scuttled across the washroom floor, not rising till he had reached the cloakroom. Schaffer, who had his hand on the key and the door already open a fraction of an inch turned at Smith's approach.

“To the hills, boss?” he enquired.

“To the hills.”

The track-side of the station was, predictably, deserted: those who had not automatically run to investigate the source of the explosion would have as automatically assumed that the explosion was in some way connected with an escape attempt or resistance on the part of the hunted men. However it was, the result was the satisfactory same.

They ran along the tracks till they came to the bumpers at the end of the line, skirted these and continued running until they were safely among the scatter of houses that rose steeply up the hill-side on the eastern side of the village. They stopped to take breath and looked back the way they had come.

The station was on fire, not yet heavily on fire, but, with flames rising six to eight feet and black smoke billowing into the night sky, obviously already beyond any hope of extinction.

Schaffer said: “They're not going to be very pleased.”

“I shouldn't think so.”

“What I mean is, they're really going to go after us now. With everything they have. They've Doberman pinchers up at the castle and I've no doubt they have them at the camp too. They've only to bring them to the station, sniff our gear, have them circle the station, pick up our scent and that's it. Smith and Schaffer torn to shreds. I'll take on the Alpenkorps by numbers, but I draw the line at Doberman pinchers, boss.”

“I thought it was horses you were scared of?” Smith said mildly.

“Horses, Doberman pinchers, you name it, I'm scared of it. All it's got to have is four feet.” He looked gloomily at the burning station. “I'd make a rotten vet.”

“No worry,” Smith assured him. “We won't be here long enough for any of your four-footed pals to come bothering you.”

“No?” Schaffer looked at him suspiciously.

“The castle,” Smith said patiently. “That's what we're here for. Remember?”

“I hadn't forgotten.” The flames from the blazing station were now licking thirty, forty feet up in the air. “You gone and ruined a perfectly good station, you know that?”

“As you would, say yourself,” Smith reminded him, “it wasn't our station to start with. Come on. We've a call to make then we'll go see what kind of reception awaits us at the Schloss Adler.”

Mary Ellison was Just at that moment discovering what the reception in the Schloss Adler was like. In her case it was none too pleasant. Von Brauchitsch and Heidi beside her, she was gazing around the great hall of the castle, stone walls, stone flags, a dark oaken roof, when a door at the end of the hall opened and a girl came towards them. There was an arrogance, a crisp authority about her r she marched, rather than walked.

But a very beautiful girl, Mary had to admit to herself, big, blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful. She could have been a pinup girl for the Third Reich. At the moment, the blue eyes were very cold.

“Good-evening, Anne-Marie,” von Brauchitsch said. There was a marked lack of cordiality in his voice. “This is the new girl, Fraulein Maria Schenk. Maria, this is the Colonel's secretary, in charge of all female staff.”

“Took your time about getting here, didn't you, Schenk ?” If Anne-Marie had a soft, lilting, mellifluous voice she wasn't bothering to use it just then. She turned to Heidi and gave her an icy up-and-down. “And why you? Just because we let you wait table when the Colonel has company—”

“Heidi is this girl's cousin,” von Brauchitsch interrupted brusquely. “And she has my permission.” The cold implication that she should confine herself to her duties was unmistakable.

Anne-Marie glared at him but made no attempt to press the point. Very few people would have done. Von Brauchitsch was just that sort of person.

“In here, Schenk.” Anne-Marie nodded to a side door. “I have a few questions to ask.”

Mary looked at Heidi, then at von Brauchitsch, who shrugged and said: “Routine investigation, Fraulein. I'm afraid you must.”

Mary preceded Anne-Marie through the doorway. The door was firmly closed behind them. Heidi and von Brauchitsch looked at each other. Heidi compressed her lips and the expression that momentarily flitted over her face about matched the one Anne-Marie had been wearing: von Brauchitsch made the age-old helpless gesture of lifting his shoulders high, palms of the hands turned up.

Within half a minute the reason for von Brauchitsch's helpless gesture became obvious. Through the door there came first the sound of a raised voice, a brief scuffle then a sharp cry of pain. Von Brauchitsch exchanged another resigned glance with Heidi, then turned as he heard heavy footsteps behind him. The man approaching was burly, weather-beaten, middle-aged and in civilian clothes: but although not in uniform he could never have been mistaken for anything other than an army officer. The heavy blue-shaven jowls, bull-neck, close-cropped hair and piercing blue eyes made him almost a caricature of the World War I Prussian Uhlan cavalry officer. That he was by no means as fossilised as he appeared was quite evident from the distinctly respectful manner in which von Brauchitsch addressed him.

“Good evening, Colonel Kramer.”

“Evening, Captain. Evening, Fraulein.” He had an unexpectedly gentle and courteous voice. “You wear an air of expectancy?”

Before either could answer, the door opened and Anne-Marie and Mary entered: Mary gave the impression of having been pushed into the room. Anne-Marie was slightly flushed and breathing rather heavily, but otherwise her beautiful Aryan self. Mary's clothes were disordered, her hair dishevelled and it was obvious that she had been crying. Her cheeks were still tear-stained.

“We'll have no more trouble with her,” Anne-Marie announced with satisfaction. She caught sight of Kramer and the change in her tone was perceptible. “Interviewing new staff, Colonel.”

“In your usual competent fashion, I see,” Colonel Kramer said dryly. He shook his head. “When will you learn that respectable young girls do not like being forcibly searched and having their underclothes examined to see if they were made in Piccadilly or Gorki Street?”

“Security regulations,” Anne-Marie said defensively.

“Yes, yes.” Kramer's voice was brusque. “But there are other ways.” He turned away impatiently. The engaging of female staff was not the problem of the deputy chief of the German Secret Service. While Heidi was helping Mary to straighten her clothes, he went on, to von Brauchitsch: “A little excitement in the village tonight?”

“Nothing for us.” Von Brauchitsch shrugged. “Deserters.”

Kramer smiled.

“That's what I told Colonel Weissner to say. I think our friends are British agents.”

“What!”

“After General Carnaby, I shouldn't wonder,” Kramer said carelessly. “Relax, Captain. It's over. Three of them are coming up for interrogation within the hour. I'd like you to be present later on. I think you'll find it most entertaining and—ah—instructive.”

“There were five of them, sir. I saw them myself when they were rounded up in ‘Zum Wilden Hirsch’.”

“There were five,” Colonel Kramer corrected. “Not now. Two of them—the leader and one other—are in the Blau See. They commandeered a car and went over a cliff.”

Mary, her back to the men and Anne-Marie, smoothed down her dress and slowly straightened. Her face was stricken. Anne-Marie turned, saw Mary's curiously immobile position and was moving curiously towards her when Heidi took Mary's arm and said quickly: “My cousin looks ill. May I take her to her room?”

“All right.” Anne-Marie waved her hand in curt dismissal. “The one you use when you are here.”

The room was bleak, monastic, linoleum-covered, with a made-up iron bed, chair, tiny dressing-table, a hanging cupboard and nothing else. Heidi locked the door behind them.

“You heard?” Mary said emptily. Her face was as drained of life as her voice.

“I heard—and I don't believe it.”

“Why should they lie?”

“They believe it.” Heidi's tone was impatient, almost rough. “It's time you stopped loving and started thinking. The Major Smiths of this world don't drive over cliff edges.”

“Talk is easy, Heidi.”

“So is giving up. I believe he is alive. And if he is, and if he comes here and you're gone or not there to help him, you know what he'll be then?” Mary made no reply, just gazed emptily into Heidi's face. “He'll be dead. He'll be dead because you let him down. Would he let you down?”

Mary shook her head dumbly.

“Now then,” Heidi went on briskly. She reached first under her skirt then down the front of her blouse and laid seven objects on the table. “Here we are. Lilliput .21 automatic, two spare magazines, ball of string, lead weight, plan of the castle and the instructions.” She crossed to a corner of the room, raised a loose floor-board, placed the articles beneath it and replaced the board. “They'll be safe enough there.”

Mary looked at her for a long moment and showed her first spark of interest in an hour.

“You knew that board was loose,” she said slowly.

“Of course. I loosened it myself, a fortnight ago.”

“You—you knew about this as far back as then?”

“Whatever else?” Heidi smiled. “Good luck, cousin.”

Mary sank on to the bed and sat there motionless for ten minutes after Heidi had gone, then rose wearily to her feet and crossed to her window. Her window faced to the north and she could see the line of pylons, the lights of the village and, beyond that, the darkened waters of the Blau See. But what dominated the entire scene were the redly-towering flames and billowing clouds of black smoke reaching up from some burning building at the far end of the village. For a hundred yards around it night had been turned into day and even if there had been a local fire brigade to hand it would have been clearly impossible for them to approach anywhere near the flames. When that fire went out all that would be left would be smoking ashes. Mary wondered vaguely what it might mean.

She opened her window and leaned out, but cautiously. Even for a person as depressed as she was, there was no temptation to lean too far: castle walls and volcanic plug stretched vertically downwards for almost three hundred feet. She felt slightly dizzy.

To the left and below a cable-car left the castle header station and started to move down to the valley below. Heidi was in that car, leaning out a partially opened window and hopefully waving but Mary's eyes had again blurred with tears and she did not see her. She closed the window, turned away, lay down heavily on the bed and wondered again about John Smith, whether he were alive or dead. And she wondered again about the significance of that fire in the valley below.

Smith and Schaffer skirted the backs of the houses, shops and Weinstuben on the east side of the street, keeping to the dark shadows as far as it was possible. Their precautions, Smith realised, were largely superfluous: the undoubted centre of attraction that night was the blazing station and the street leading to it was jammed with hundreds of soldiers and villagers. It must, Smith thought, be a conflagration of quite some note, for although they could no longer see the fire itself, only the red glow in the sky above it, they could clearly hear the roaring crackle of the flames, flames three hundred yards away and with the wind blowing in the wrong direction. As a diversion, it was a roaring success.

They came to one of the few stone buildings in the village, a large barn-like affair with double doors at the back. The yard abutting the rear doors looked like an automobile scrap yard. There were half-a-dozen old cars lying around, most of them without tyres, some rusted engines, dozens of small useless engine and body parts and a small mountain of empty oil drums. They picked their way carefully through the debris and came to the doors.

Schaffer used skeleton keys to effect and they were inside, doors closed and both torches on, inside fifteen seconds.

One side of the garage was given over to lathes or machine tools of one kind or another, but the rest of the floor space was occupied by a variety of vehicles, mostly elderly. What caught and held Smith's immediate attention, however, was a big yellow bus parked just inside the double front doors. It was a typically Alpine post-bus, with a very long overhang at the back to help negotiate mountain hairpin bends: the rear wheels were so far forward as to be almost in the middle of the bus. As was also common with Alpine post-buses in winter, it had a huge angled snow-plough bolted on to the front of the chassis. Smith looked at Schaffer.

“Promising, you think?”

“If I was optimistic enough to think we'd ever get back to this place,” Schaffer said sourly, “I'd say it was very promising. You knew about this?”

“What do you think I am? A bus-diviner? Of course I knew about it.”

Smith climbed into the driver's seat. The keys were in the ignition. Smith switched on and watched the fuel gauge climb up to the half-full mark. He located the headlamps switch and turned it on. They worked. He pressed the starter button and the engine caught at once. Smith killed it immediately. Schaffer watched the performance with interest.

“I suppose you know you need a PSV licence to drive one of those, boss?”

“I have one around somewhere. Leave half the explosives in the back of the bus. And hurry. Heidi might be down with the next car.”

Smith climbed down from the driver's seat, went to the front doors, unbolted both, top and bottom, and pushed gently. The doors gave an inch, then stopped.

“Padlocked,” Smith said briefly.

Schaffer surveyed the massive steel plough on the front of the bus and shook his head sorrowfully.

“Poor old padlock,” he said.

The snow had stopped but the wind from the west was now very strong. The cold was intense. Masses of ragged dark cloud hurried across the sky and the entire valley was alternatively cast into the deepest shadow or bathed in contrastingly dazzling light as the moon was alternatively obscured by the clouds or shone through the shifting gaps between them.

But there was no alternating light and shade at the far end of the village: the station still burnt furiously enough to render the moon's best efforts pretty ineffectual.

A cable-car was coming slowly down the valley, less than a hundred yards now from the lower station. Impelled by the powerfully gusting wind, it swung wildly, terrifyingly, across the night sky. But as it approached the end of its journey the motion quickly dampened down and disappeared altogether as it approached the station.

The cable-car jerked to a stop. Heidi, the only passenger, climbed out: understandably enough, she was looking rather pale. She walked down the steps at the back of the station, reached ground level then stopped dead as she heard the softly-whistled first few notes of “Lorelei”. She whirled round, then slowly approached two shapes, clad all in white, huddled by the side of the station.

“The Major Smiths of this world don't drive off cliff-tops,” she said calmly. She paused, then stepped forward suddenly and gave each man a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. “But you had me a little worried there.”

“You just keep on worrying like that,” Schaffer said. “No need to worry about him, though.”

Heidi waved a hand in the direction of the other end of the village. From the cable-car station on the lower slopes they had an excellent if distant view of the fire. “Are you responsible for this?” she asked.

“It was a mistake,” Smith explained.

“Yeah. His hand slipped,” Schaffer added.

“You two should audition for a turn on vaudeville,” Heidi said dryly. Suddenly serious she said: “Mary thinks you're both gone.”

“Weissner doesn't,” Smith said. “The car that went over the cliff went without us. They're on to us.”

“Hardly surprising,” she murmured. “Or hadn't you noticed the size of the fire.” She paused, then went on bleakly: “They're not the only ones who are on to you. Kramer knows you're British agents after General Carnaby.”

“Well, well, well,” Smith said thoughtfully. “I wonder what little bird has been whispering in Kramer's shell-like ear. One with a very long-range voice, methinks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. It's not important.”

“It's not important! But don't you see?” Her voice was imploring, almost despairing. “They know—or will any minute—that you're alive. They know who you are. They'll be expecting you up there.”

“Ah, but you overlook the subtleties, my dear Heidi,” Schaffer put in. “What they don't know is that we are expecting them to be expecting us. At least, that's what I think I mean.”

“You're whistling in the dark, Lieutenant. And one last thing: your friends are being brought up to the castle any time now.”

“For interrogation?” Smith asked.

“I don't expect they've been asked up for tea,” she said acidly.

“Fair enough,” Smith nodded. “We'll go up with them.”

“In the same car?” The words didn't question Smith's sanity, but the tone and expression did.

“Not ‘in’. With.” Smith peered at his watch. “The post-bus in Sulz's garage. Be there in eighty minutes. And oh!—bring a couple of crates of empty beer bottles.”

“Bring a couple of—oh, all right.” She shook her head in conviction. “You're both mad.”

“Shines through in our every word and gesture,” Schaffer agreed, then, suddenly serious, added: “Say a prayer for us, honey. And if you don't know any prayers, keep your fingers crossed till they ache.”

“Please come back,” she said. There was a catch in her voice. She hesitated, made to say more, turned and walked quickly away. Schaffer looked after her admiringly as she walked down the street.

“There goes the future Mrs. Schaffer,” he announced. “Bit tetchy and snappy, perhaps.” He pondered. “But funny, I thought she was near crying at the end there.”

“Maybe you'd be tetchy and snappy and tearful if you'd been through what she's been in the past two and a half years,” Smith said sourly.

“Maybe she'd be less tetchy and tearful if she knew a bit more about what's going on.”

“I haven't the time to explain everything to everybody.”

“You can say that again. Devious, boss. That's the word for you.”

“Like enough.” Smith glanced at his watch. “I wish to God they'd hurry up.”

“Speak for yourself.” Schaffer paused. “When we—well, if we—get away, is she coming with us?”

“Is who coming with us?”

“Heidi, of course!”

“Heidi, of course. If we make it—and we can only do it through Mary, and Mary was introduced by—”

“Say no more.” He stared after the retreating figure and shook his head. “She'll be a sensation in the Savoy Grill,” he said dreamily.