Where Eagles Dare Part 22

The soldier, his face and eyes now alight with intense curiosity and what might have been dreams of rapid promotion, moved forward on tiptoe as Schaffer courteously stepped to one side to let him see. A pair of Lugers grinding simultaneously into both temples effectively put an end to any idea of rapid military advancement that he might briefly have entertained. He was propelled, stumbling, into the room and, by the time he'd picked himself up and turned round, the door was closed, the light on and both pistols lined at his head.

'Those are silencers you see on our guns,' Smith said quietly. 'No heroics, no shooting. Dying for the Fatherland is one thing, dying uselessly for no reason at all is another and very stupid thing. Don't you agree?'

The soldier looked at them, calculated his chances, accepted the fact that he had none and nodded. Schaffer produced a length of rope and said: 'You may be over-eager, son, but you're no fool. Lie down with your hands behind your back.'

The room, Smith saw, was small and lined with metal shelves and filing cabinets. Some sort of storage room for office records. The chances of anyone coming along weren't high and it was, anyway, a chance they had to take. He waited till Schaffer had bound and gagged the prisoner, put his Luger away, helped Schaffer to bind the man to two of the metal poles supporting the shelves, turned to the window, slid up the lower sash and peered out.

The valley to the north stretched out before him, the lights of the village and the smouldering embers of the railway station visible through very gently falling snow. Smith looked to his right. The lighted window of the telephone exchange was only a few feet away. From the window a heavy lead-sheathed cable attached to a wire almost equally as heavy stretched down the castle wall into the darkness.

"That the one?' Schaffer was by his side now.

That's the one. Let's have the rope.'

Smith eased his legs into a double bowline, wriggled over the window-sill and cautiously lowered himself to the full extent of his arms while Schaffer, standing by the window with the rope belayed round one of the stanchions of the shelving, took the strain. Smith released his grip on the sill and was lowered jerkily by Schaffer till he was about ten or twelve feet down. Then, using a free hand and both feet to fend himself off from the wall he began to swing himself in a pendulum arc across the face of the castle, an a.s.sist from Schaffer up above adding momentum to his swing. On the fifth swing the fingers of his left hand hooked round the lead cable and wire. As Schaffer eased off tension on the rope Smith got both hands round the cable and quickly climbed up the few feet to the window above. He was almost certain that the lead cable he had in his hands was the telephone outlet, but only almost: he had no desire to slice the blade of his knife through high-powered electricity supply lines.

He hitched a wary eye over the window-sill, saw that the telephone operator, his back almost directly to him, was talking animatedly on the phone, lifted himself another six indies, observed a cable of what appeared to be exactly similar dimensions to the one he was holding running along the skirting-board to some point behind the exchange and then not reappearing again. He lowered himself a couple of feet, grasped cable and wire firmly with his left hand, inserted the point of his knife between cable and wire a few inches below that and started sawing. A dozen powerful saw-cuts and he was through.

He replaced the knife in its sheath, hoisted himself up again and had another look through the window. The operator was still animated, but this time not with his voice but with a hand which he was using furiously to crank a handle at the side of the exchange. After a few seconds of this profitless exercise he gave up and just sat there staring at the switchboard and shaking his head in bafflement. Smith made a signal to Schaffer, released his grip on the cable and swung back across the castle wall.

Mary glanced at her watch for the tenth time in less than as many minutes, stubbed out the half-cigarette she'd been nervously smoking, rose from her chair, opened her hand-bag, checked that the safety catch of the Mauser inside was in the off position, closed the bag and crossed the room. She had just turned the handle and begun to open the door when knuckles rapped on the outside. She hesitated, glanced at the bag in her hand and looked round almost wildly to see where she could dispose of it. But it was too late to dispose of any-. thing. The door opened and a cheerfully smiling von Brauchitsch stood framed in the doorway.

'Ah, Fraulein!' He glanced at the bag and smiled again. 'Lucky me! Just in time to escort you wherever you're going.'

To escort me -- ' She broke off and smiled. 'My business is of no consequence. It can wait. You wanted to see me, Captain?'

'Naturally.'

'What about?'

'What about, she says! About nothing, that's what. Unless you call yourself nothing. Just to see you. Is that a crime? The prettiest girl we've seen -- ' He smiled again, this man who was always smiling, and took her arm. 'Come, a little Bavarian hospitality. Coffee. We have an armoury that's been converted into the finest Kaffeestabe -- '

'But -- but my duties?' Mary said uncertainly. 'I must see the Colonel's secretary -- '

'That one! Let her wait!' There was a marked lack of cordiality in von Brauchitsch's voice. 'You and I have a lot to talk about.'

'We have?' It was impossible to resist the infectious smile, not to reply in kind. 'Such as?'

'Dusseldorf.'

'Dusseldorf?'

'Of course! That's my home town, too.'

'Your home town, too!' She smiled again and gave his arm the briefest of squeezes. 'How small a world. That will be nice.'

She wondered vaguely, as she walked along, how one could smile and smile and, inside, feel as chilled as the tomb.

For the second time in fifteen minutes Smith and Schaffer stopped at the doorway outside the gold room's minstrels' gallery, switched out the pa.s.sage light, paused, listened, then pa.s.sed silently inside. This time, however, Smith reached through the crack of the almost closed door and switched the light back on again. He did not expect to be using that door again, that night or any other night, and he had no wish to raise any eyebrows, however millimetric the raising: survival was a matter of the infinitely careful consideration of all possible dangers, no matter how remote that possibility might at times appear.

This time, Smith and Schaffer did not remain at the back of the minstrels' gallery. They moved slowly to the front, till they had come to the head of the broad flight of stairs leading down to the floor of the gold room and then sat down on the front oaken benches, one on each side of the gallery's pa.s.sageway. They were still shrouded in deep gloom, completely invisible from below.

Colonel Kramer's stock of V.S.O.P. Napoleon brandy was certainly taking a beating that night, Smith reflected. The Colonel, Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer, Jones and Anne-Marie had been joined by three others -- Carraciola, Thomas and Christiansen. Those last three were no longer manacled and under heavy guard. On the contrary there was no sign of any guard, and the three men were sitting deeply relaxed and side by side on one of the ma.s.sive gold lame-covered couches, gla.s.ses of brandy, and no small ones at that, in their hands. Even Anne-Marie now held a gla.s.s in her hand. It appeared to be an occasion for a celebration of some note.

Kramer lifted his gla.s.s towards the three men seated in the couch.

'Your health, gentlemen. Your very good health.' He turned to the Reichsmarschall. 'Three of the best in Europe, sir.'

'I suppose they are necessary,' Rosemeyer said in resigned distaste. 'At least, their courage is beyond dispute. Your health, gentlemen.'

'Your health, gentlemen,' Jones said bitterly. He sat forward in his chair and hurled his gla.s.s into the fire. The gla.s.s shattered and there was a momentary tongue of flame as the brandy ignited. 'That's how I drink the health of double agents.'

Schaffer leaned across the pa.s.sage-way and whispered: 'I thought you said he couldn't act?'

'n.o.body's ever paid him twenty-five thousand bucks a night before,' Smith said sardonically.

'Tut, tut, General. Best Venetian gla.s.s.' Kramer shook his head deprecatingly then smiled. 'But an understandable fit of pique. When your heroic rescuers turn out to be, well, birds of a different feather -- '

'Double agents!' In his contempt, Jones almost spat out the words.

Kramer smiled again, tolerantly, and turned to the three men on the couch.

'And the return trip, gentlemen? As well organised as your outward journey?'

'That's about the one thing the close-mouthed so-and-so told us,' Carraciola said with some bitterness. 'A Mosquito bomber is to come to pick us up. Salen, a little village north of Frauenfeld in Switzerland. There's a little civilian airfield just to the north of Salen.'

Schaffer bent across the pa.s.sage again and said in an admiring whisper: 'You really are a fearful liar.'

'So Salen it is,' Kramer was saying. 'We know all about it. The Swiss are very good at looking the wrong way when it suits them: but for reasons of our own we find it convenient not to protest too much. Odd things happen at Salen... However. A little message to London. Arrange pick-up times and so forth. Then a helicopter to the border -- so much easier than walking, gentlemen -- a rubber dinghy for the Rhine and then a short walk. You'll be back in Whitehall, reporting General Carnaby's transfer to Berlin, before you know it.'

'Back in London?' Thomas shook his head in slow emphasis. 'Not on your nelly, Colonel. With Smith and that Yank still at large? What happens if they find out what's really happening? What happens if they remain at large? What happens if they get a message through to London -- '

'What do you take us for?' Kramer said tiredly. 'You will also, of course, be reporting the unfortunate demise of your leader. As soon as we located that still-warm radio set in the left luggage office we put on bloodhounds from the barracks. Your precious Major Smith was the last man to handle that set and he left a pretty clear trail. The hounds traced him along the east side of the village as far as a garage and then up to the lower station of.the Lujtseilbabn.'

The cable-car?' Thomas was frankly disbelieving.

"The cable-car. Our Major Smith is either a very foolhardy or a very dangerous man -- I must confess I know nothing of him. And there, at the lower station, the hounds completely lost the scent. The handlers circled the station with the hounds and then brought them into the cable-car itself. But the trail was cold. Our quarry appeared to have vanished into thin air.

'It was then that one of the searchers had the original idea of examining the thin air, so to speak. He climbed up and examined the roof of the lower station. Surprise, surprise, unmistakable signs in the snow and ice that two men had been up there before him. From that it was only a logical step to examine the roof of the cable-car itself, and sure enough -- '

'They're inside!' Christiansen exclaimed.

'And won't get out again.' Colonel Kramer leaned back comfortably in his chair. 'Have no fear, gentlemen. Every exit is blocked -- including the header station. We've doubled the guards outside and the rest have just begun to carry out a floor to floor search.'

In the gloom of the minstrels' gallery Smith and Schaffer exchanged thoughtful glances.

'I don't know,' Thomas said uneasily. 'He's a resourceful devil -- '

Kramer held up a hand.