Where Eagles Dare Part 36

'Explosives or boxes of ammunition going up, I'd say,' Carpenter said pensively. That's the Schloss Adler, of course. Were any of your boys carrying matches?'

"They must have been.' Wyatt-Turner stared impa.s.sively at the distant blaze. 'It's quite a sight.'

'It's all of that,' Carpenter agreed. He touched Wyatt-Turner's arm and pointed forwards and down. 'But there's a sight that's finer far, the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.'

Wyatt-Turner followed the pointing finger. Less than two miles away, about five hundred feet "below, a pair of headlamps were flas.h.i.+ng regularly on and off, once every two seconds. With a conscious effort of will he looked away and glanced briefly at Carpenter, but almost at once was back on the flas.h.i.+ng headlamps. He stared at them hypnotically and shook his head in slow and total disbelief.

Schaffer had the headlights switched on main beam, illuminating the runway, and the post-bus engine running as the black squat shape of the Mosquito, air-brakes fully extended, lined up for its approach to the runway, and had the bus itself moving, accelerating quickly through the gears, as the Mosquito sank down over the top of the bus and settled down beautifully without the slightest suspicion of a bounce. Within a minute Schaffer brought the bus to a skidding halt only yards from the now stationary plane. Half a minute later, with all five of them safely inside the plane, Carpenter had the Mosquito turned through 180- and was standing hard on the brakes as he brought the engines up to maximum revolutions. And then they were on their way, gathering speed so rapidly that they were air-borne two hundred yards before the end of the runway. For the first mile of their climb Carpenter kept the plane heading almost directly towards the blazing castle that now redly illuminated the entire valley, then the funeral pyre of the Schloss Adler vanished for the last time as the Mosquito banked and headed for the north-west and home.

Wing Commander Carpenter took the Mosquito up to five thousand feet and kept it there. The time for dodging around among the bushes was past for, on the outward journey, Carpenter had been concerned only that no German station pick him up long enough to form even a rough guess as to where he was going. But now he didn't care if every radar station in the country knew where he was going: he was going home to England, mission accomplished, and there wasn't a -warplane in Europe that could catch him. Wing Commander Carpenter pulled luxuriously at his evil-smelling briar. He was well content.

His five newly-acquired pa.s.sengers were, perhaps, a fraction less content. They lacked Carpenter's well-upholstered pilot's seat. The interior of the Mosquito made no concessions whatsoever to pa.s.senger comfort. It was bleak, icy, cramped -- it didn't require much s.p.a.ce to carry a 4,000 Ib. bomb load, the Mosquito's maximum -- and totally devoid of seating in any form. The three men and the two girls squatted uncomfortably on thin pallia.s.ses, the expressions on their faces pretty uaccurately reflecting their acute discomfort. Colonel Wyatt-Turner, still holding across his knees the Sten gun he'd had at the ready in case any trouble had developed on the ground or the flas.h.i.+ng lights of the truck had been a German ruse, was sitting sideways in the co-pilot's seat so that he could see and talk to the pilot and the pa.s.sengers at the same time. He had accepted without question or apparent interest Smith's brief explanation of the two girls' presence as being necessary to escape Gestapo vengeance. Colonel Wyatt-Turner had other and weightier matters on his mind.

Smith looked up from the bleeding mangled hand that Mary was re-bandaging with the plane's first aid kit and said to the Colonel: 'It was good of you to come in person to meet us, sir.'

'It wasn't good of me at all,' Wyatt-Turner said frankly. 'I'd have gone mad if I'd stayed another minute in London -- I had to know. It was I who sent you all out here.' He sat without speaking for some time, then went on heavily: Torrance-Smythe gone, Sergeant Harrod, and now, you say, Carraciola, Christiansen and Thomas. All dead. A heavy price, Smith, a terrible price. My best men.'

'All of them, sir?' Smith asked softly.

'I'm getting old.' Wyatt-Turner shook his head wearily and drew a hand across his eyes. 'Did you find out who -- '

'Carraciola.'

'Carraciola! Ted Carraciola? Never! I can't believe it.'

'And Christiansen.' Smith's voice was still quiet, still even. 'And Thomas.'

'And Christiansen? And Thomas?' He looked consideringly at Smith. 'You've been through a lot, Major Smith. You're not well.'

'I'm not as well as I was,' Smith admitted. 'But I was well enough when I killed them?'

'You -- you killed them?'

'I've killed a traitor before now. You know that.'

'But -- but traitors! All three of them. Impossible. I can't believe it! I won't believe it!'

'Then maybe you'll believe this, sir.' Smith produced one of the note-books from his tunic and handed it to Wyatt-Turner. "The u names and addresses or contacts of every German agent in southern England and the names of all British agents in north-west Europe who have been supplanted by German agents. You will recognise Carraciola's writing. He wrote this under duress.'

Slowly, like a man in a dream, Wyatt-Turner reached out and took the note-book. For three minutes he examined the contents, leafing slowly, almost reluctantly through the pages, then finally laid the book down with a sigh.

'This is the most important doc.u.ment in Europe, the most important doc.u.ment I have ever seen.' Wyatt-Turner sighed. 'The nation is deeply in your debt, Major Smith.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Or would have been. It's a great pity it will never have the chance to express its grat.i.tude.' He lifted the Sten from his knees and pointed it at Smith's heart. 'You will do nothing foolish, will you, Major Smith?'

'What in G.o.d's name -- ' Carpenter twisted in his seat and stared at Wyatt-Turner in startled and total disbelief.

'Concentrate on your flying, my dear Wing Commander.' Wyatt-Turner waved the Sten gently in Carpenter's direction. 'Your course will do for the present. We'll be landing at Lille airport within the hour.'

'The guy's gone nuts!' Schaffer's voice was a shocked whisper.

'If he has,' Smith said drily, 'he went nuts some years ago. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the most dangerous spy in Europe, the most successful double agent of all time.' He ;paused for reaction, but the silence remained unbroken: the enormity of the revelation of Wyatt-Turner's duplicity was too great for immediate comprehension. Smith continued: 'Colonel Wyatt-Turner, you will be court-martialled this afternoon, sentenced, removed to the Tower then taken out, blindfolded and shot at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.'

'You knew?' Wyatt-Turner's affable self-confidence had completely deserted him and his voice, low arid strained, was barely distinguishable above the clamour of the engines. 'You knew about me?'

T knew about you,' Smith nodded. 'But we all knew about you, didn't we, Colonel? Three years, you claimed, behind the German lines, served with the Wehrmacht and finally penetrated the Berlin High Command. Sure you did. With the help of the Wehrmacht and the High Command. But when the tide of war turned and you could no longer feed the Allies with false and misleading reports about proposed German advances, then you were allowed to escape back to England to feed the Germans true and accurate reports about Allied plans -- -- and give them all the information they required to round up British agents in north-west Europe. How many million francs do you have in your numbered account in Zurich, Colonel?'

Wing Commander Carpenter stared straight ahead through the windscreen and said very slowly: 'Frankly, old chap, this is preposterous.'

Try batting an eyelid and see just how preposterous that Sten gun is,' Smith suggested. He looked at Wyatt-Turner again. 'You underestimated Admiral Holland, I'm afraid. He's had his suspicions about you and the four section leaders of Department C for months. But he was wrong about Torrance-Smythe.'

'Guess away.' Wyatt-Turner had recovered his composure and most of his self-confidence. It'll pa.s.s the time till we get to Lille.'

'Unfortunately for you, there is no guess-work. Admiral Holland recalled me -- and Mary -- from Italy: he could no longer be sure of anyone in London. You know how corruption spreads? Played it very clever, did the Admiral He told you he had his suspicions about one of his section leaders, but didn't know which. So, when General Carnaby crashed, he put up to you the idea of sending the section officers to the rescue -- and made d.a.m.n sure that you never once had the opportunity of talking to any of them in private before they took off.'

"That -- that was why I was called in?' Schaffer looked as if he had been sand-bagged. 'Because you couldn't trust -- '

'For all we knew, M.I.6 was riddled... Well, Colonel, you weren't too happy until Holland asked -you to pick the leader. So you picked me. Holland knew you would. You'd only just met me for the first time, but you knew from Kesselring's military intelligence chief, through your pal Admiral Canaris, that I was their top double agent. Or thought you did, Holland was the only man on either side who knew I wasn't. For you, I was the ideal choice. Holland made certain that you didn't have the chance of talking to me either, but you weren't worried. You knew that I would know what to do.' Smith smiled bleakly. "I'm happy to say I did. It must have been quite a shock to your system this afternoon when he told you what I really was.'

'You knew that? You knew all that?' Wyatt-Turner's newfound composure had vanished, his voice was quiet and vicious. He lifted the Sten slightly. "What goes on, Smith?'

'All pre-arranged to force your hand. We had everything -- except proof -- about you. I got that proof this evening; Colonel Kramer knew that we were coming, knew we were after General Carnaby.' He nodded towards Jones. 'Incidentally, meet Cartwright Jones, an American actor.'

'What?' Wyatt-Turner forced out the word as if a pair of powerful hands were squeezing on his wind-pipe.

'General Carnaby is spending a quiet weekend at the Admiral's country house in Wilts.h.i.+re. As a stand-in, Mr. Jones was quite admirable. He had them all as deceived as that faked plane crash -- you will have realised by now that it was a deliberate crash-landing.' Wyatt-Turner tried to speak, but the words failed to come: his mouth was working and the colour had drained from his ruddy face. 'And why did Kramer know? He knew because you had informed Berlin as soon as Holland had put the plan to you. n.o.body else had the chance to. And he knew that we would be in "Zum Wilden Hirsch" this evening. He knew because I told you on the radio broadcast this morning and you lost no time in pa.s.sing the good word on.'

'Are you sure?' Heidi asked. 'Couldn't the informant have been whichever of the men -- Carraciola or Christiansen or Thomas -- who killed Torrance-Smythe. There's a phone box just outside the inn.'

'I know. No, he didn't have time. I left the inn for exactly seven minutes. Three minutes after I'd left, Torrance-Smythe did the same -- to follow one of the three others he'd just seen leaving. Smithy was clever and he knew something was far wrong. He -- '

'How did he know?' Schaffer demanded.

'We'll never be sure. I think we'll find that he was a highly-skilled lip-reader. Anyway, he caught the man he'd seen leaving in the phone booth outside the Post Office -- before he'd had time to get through to either Weissner or Kramer. There was a fight to the death. By the time the killer had dragged Smithy around to the back and returned to the booth, someone else was occupying it. I saw him. So the killer had to go back into the inn. Kramer it was who told Weissner -- and the Colonel here who told Kramer.'

'Very interesting.' There was a sneer in Wyatt-Turner's voice, but a sneer belied by the deep unease in his face. 'Fascinating, in fact. Quite finished, Major Smith?'

'Finished.' Smith sighed. 'You just had to come to meet us, hadn't you, Colonel? This was the last door to life left open to you. In my final broadcast I told the Admiral "I have it all". He told you what that meant -- all the names, all the addresses. We could never have got at you through Carraciola, Christiansen or Thomas -- they were too close to you in M.I.6, you were too cagey and they never knew who they were working for. You used intermediaries -- and all their names are in that book. You knew they'd put the finger on you -- when it's a choice between taking a walk to the gallows and talking -- well, it's not much of a choice, is it?'

Wyatt-Turner didn't answer. He turned to Carpenter and said: 'Lay off a course for Lille airport.'

'Don't bother," Smith said.

Wyatt-Turner lined his Sten on Smith. 'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot you now.'

'I can do that,' Smith nodded. 'Why do you think that Admiral Holland accompanied you to the airport. He never has before.'

'Go on.' Wyatt's voice was hard, abrupt, but his eyes were sick, sick with the sudden certainty of defeat and death.