‘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 the 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 Düsseldorf 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. ‘Heinrich 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 guardroom, 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 Colonel, 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 handbrake, 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.’
FIVE
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 grabrail 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 sea-sick 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.
‘Fräulein,’ 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 cross-bar.
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, Fräulein. 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.
Where Eagles Dare Page 9