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 Düsseldorf, a cousin of a barmaid that works here, and you’ve had TB 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 postmarked 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, Düsseldorf, factory, TB, 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 HQ 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 foot-prints, 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, re
turned 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 emphasized 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 k
now 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 sub-zero. ‘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.’
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