Eagle Has Landed

by Jack Higgins

  He simply dropped the grenade behind him. He took out the other. There were more Rangers behind the hedge on his left and he tossed the second grenade over towards them as the first exploded. He kept right on going, down the road past the mill and round the corner, skidding to a halt behind the bridge where Steiner still crouched with the machine-gun.

  Steiner didn’t say a word. He simply stood up, holding the Browning in both hands and emptied it in a long burst of such savagery that it sent Corporal Bleeker diving for cover behind the garden wall. In the same moment, Steiner tossed the Browning to one side and swung a leg over the pillion. Devlin gunned the motor, swerved across the bridge and went straight up the hill as the White Scout Car nosed round the corner of Joanna Grey’s cottage. Harry Kane stood up to watch them go.

  ‘And what in the hell was that?’ Garvey demanded.

  Corporal Bleeker fell out of his jeep and stumbled towards them, blood on his face. ‘Is there a medic there, sir? I think maybe I lost my right eye. I can’t see a thing.’

  Someone jumped down to hold him and Kane surveyed the shambles of the village. ‘The crazy, stupid bastard,’ he whispered.

  Krukowski came out of the front gate and saluted. ‘Where’s the Colonel?’ Kane asked.

  ‘Dead, sir, upstairs in the house. The lady in there—she shot him.’

  Kane got down in a hurry. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I—I killed her, Major,’ Krukowski said, and there were tears in his eyes.

  Kane couldn’t think of a single damn thing to say. He patted Krukowski on the shoulder and went up the path to the cottage.

  At the top of the hill, Ritter and his two comrades were still firing from behind the wall at the Rangers in the wood when Devlin and Steiner arrived on the scene. The Irishman changed gear, got his foot down and let the bike drift, turning at just the right moment for a clear run through the lychgate and up the path to the porch. Ritter, Altmann and Werner retreated steadily using the tombstones for cover and finally made the safety of the porch without further casualties.

  Corporal Becker had the door open, they all passed inside and he slammed it shut and bolted it. The firing resumed outside with renewed intensity. The villagers huddled together, tense and anxious. Philip Vereker limped down the aisle to confront Devlin, his face white with anger. ‘Another damned traitor!’

  Devlin grinned. ‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to be back amongst friends.’

  In the mill everything was quiet. ‘I don’t like it,’ Walther commented.

  ‘You never do,’ Brandt said and frowned. ‘What’s that?’

  There was the sound of a vehicle approaching. Brandt tried to peer out of the loft entrance over the road and immediately came under fire. He drew back. ‘How’s Meyer?’

  ‘I think he’s dead.’

  Brandt reached for a cigarette as the noise of the approaching vehicle drew close. ‘Just think,’ he said. ‘The Albert Canal, Crete, Stalingrad and where does the end of the road turn out to be? Studley Constable.’ He put a light to his cigarette.

  The White Scout car was doing at least forty when Garvey swung the wheel and smashed it straight through the mill doors. Kane stood in the back behind a Browning anti-aircraft machine-gun and was already firing up through the wooden floor above, the enormous .50 calibre rounds smashing their way through with ease, ripping the planking to pieces. He was aware of the cries of agony, but kept on firing, working the gun from side to side, only stopping when there were great gaping holes in the floor.

  A bloodstained hand showed at one of them. It was very quiet. Garvey took a Thompson gun from one of the men, jumped down and went up the flight of wooden steps in the corner. He came down again almost instantly.

  ‘That’s it, Major.’

  Harry Kane’s face was pale, but he was completely in command of himself. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now for the church.’

  Molly arrived on Garrowby Heath in time to see a jeep drive up the hill, a white handkerchief fluttering from its radio aerial. It pulled up at the lychgate and Kane and Dexter Garvey got out. As they went up the path through the churchyard Kane said softly, ‘Use your eyes, Sergeant. Make sure you’d know this place again if you saw it.’

  ‘Affirmative, Major.’

  The church door opened and Steiner moved out of the porch and Devlin leaned against the wall behind him smoking a cigarette. Harry Kane saluted formally. ‘We’ve met before, Colonel.’

  Before Steiner could reply, Philip Vereker pushed past Becker at the door and limped forward. ‘Kane, where’s Pamela? Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine, Father,’ Kane told him. ‘I left her back at Meltham House.’

  Vereker turned to Steiner, face pinched and very white. There was a glitter of triumph in his eyes. ‘She fixed you beautifully, didn’t she, Steiner? Without her you might actually have got away with it.’

  Steiner said calmly, ‘Strange how the perspective changes with the point of view. I thought we failed because a man called Karl Sturm sacrificed himself to save two children’s lives.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned to Kane. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Surely that’s obvious. Surrender. There’s no point in further useless bloodshed. The men you left down in the mill are all dead. So is Mrs Grey.’

  Vereker caught him by the arm. ‘Mrs Grey is dead? How?’

  ‘She killed Colonel Shafto when he tried to arrest her, died herself in the exchange of gunfire which followed.’ Vereker turned away, a look of utter desolation on his face and Kane said to Steiner, ‘You are quite alone now. The Prime Minister is safe at Meltham House under as heavy a guard as he’s likely to see in his lifetime. It’s all over.’

  Steiner thought of Brandt and Walther and Meyer, Gerhard Klugl, Dinter and Berg and nodded, his face very pale. ‘Honourable terms?’

  ‘No terms!’ Vereker shouted it aloud like a cry to heaven. ‘These men came here in British uniform, must I remind you of that, Major?’

  ‘But did not fight in them,’ Steiner cut in. ‘We fought only as German soldiers, in German uniforms. As Fallschirmjäger. The other was a legitimate ruse de guerre.’

  ‘And a direct contravention of the Geneva Convention,’ Vereker answered. ‘Which not only expressly forbids the wearing of an enemy’s uniform in time of war, but also prescribes the death penalty for offenders.’

  Steiner saw the look on Kane’s face and smiled gently. ‘Don’t worry, Major, not your fault. The rules of the game and all that.’ He turned to Vereker. ‘Well now, Father, your God is a God of Wrath indeed. You would dance on my grave, it seems.’

  ‘Damn you, Steiner!’ Vereker lurched forward, raising his stick to strike, stumbled over the long skirts of his cassock and fell, striking his head on the edge of a tombstone.

  Garvey dropped to one knee beside him and made a quick examination. ‘Out for the count.’ He looked up. ‘Somebody should check him out, though. We’ve got a good medic down in the village.’

  ‘Take him by all means,’ Steiner said. ‘Take all of them.’

  Garvey glanced at Kane, then picked Vereker up and carried him to the jeep. Kane said, ‘You’ll let the villagers go?’

  ‘The obvious thing to do since a further outbreak of hostilities seems imminent.’ Steiner looked faintly amused. ‘Why, did you think we’d hold the entire village hostage or come out fighting, driving the women in front of us? The brutal Hun? Sorry I can’t oblige.’ He turned. ‘Send them out, Becker, all of them.’

  The door swung open with a crash and the villagers started to pour through, led by Laker Armsby. Most of the women were crying hysterically as they rushed past. Betty Wilde came last with Graham and Ritter Neumann supported her husband, who looked dazed and ill. Garvey hurried back up the path and got an arm round him and Betty Wilde reached for Graham’s hand and turned to Ritter.

  ‘He’ll be all right, Mrs Wilde,’ the young Oberleutnant said. ‘I’m sorry about what happened in there, believe me.’

&n
bsp; ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Would you do something for me? Would you tell me your name?’

  ‘Neumann,’ he said. ‘Ritter Neumann.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I’m sorry I said the things I did.’ She turned to Steiner. ‘And I want to thank you and your men for Graham.’

  ‘He’s a brave boy,’ Steiner said. ‘He didn’t even hesitate. He jumped straight in. That takes courage and courage is something that never goes out of fashion.’

  The boy stared up at him. ‘Why are you a German?’ he demanded. ‘Why aren’t you on our side?’

  Steiner laughed out loud. ‘Go on, get him out of here,’ he said to Betty Wilde. ‘Before he completely corrupts me.’

  She took the boy by the hand and hurried away. Beyond the wall the women streamed down the hill. At that moment the White Scout car emerged from the Hawks Wood track and stopped, its antiaircraft gun and heavy machine-gun traversing on to the porch.

  Steiner nodded wryly. ‘So, Major, the final act. Let battle commence then.’ He saluted and went back into the porch where Devlin had been standing throughout the entire conversation without saying a word.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you silent for so long before,’ Steiner said.

  Devlin grinned. ‘To tell you the truth I couldn’t think of a single damned thing to say except Help. Can I go in now and pray?’

  From her vantage point on the heath Molly watched Devlin disappear inside the porch with Steiner and her heart sank like a stone. Oh, God, she thought, I must do something. She got to her feet and at the same moment, a dozen Rangers headed by the big black sergeant, cut across the road from the wood well up from the church where they couldn’t be seen. They ran back along the wall and entered the presbytery garden through the wicket gate.

  But they didn’t go into the house. They slipped over the wall into the cemetery, approaching the church from the tower end and worked their way round to the porch. The big sergeant had a coil of rope over his shoulder and as she watched, he jumped for the porch guttering and pulled himself over, then scrambled fifteen feet up the ivy vine to the lower leads. Once there, he uncoiled the rope and tossed the end down and the other Rangers began to follow.

  Seized by a sudden new determination, Molly swung into the saddle and urged her horse across the heath, turning down to the woods at the rear of the presbytery.

  It was very cold inside the church, a place of shadows, only the flickering candles, the ruby light of the sanctuary lamp. There were eight of them left now including Devlin. Steiner and Ritter, Werner Briegel, Altmann, Jansen, Corporal Becker and Preston. There was also, unknown to any of them, Arthur Seymour who, overlooked in the stampede to get out, still lay beside Sturm in the darkness of the Lady Chapel, his hands and feet bound. He had managed to push himself into a sitting position against the wall and was working on his wrists, his strange mad eyes fixed on Preston.

  Steiner tried the tower door and the sacristy, both of which appeared to be locked and looked behind the curtain at the foot of the tower where ropes soared through holes in the wooden floor thirty feet up to bells which hadn’t rung since 1939.

  He turned and walked up the aisle to face them. ‘Well, all I can offer you is another fight.’

  Preston said, ‘It’s a ludicrous situation. How can we fight? They’ve got the men, the equipment. We couldn’t hold this place for ten minutes once they really start.’

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ Steiner said. ‘We don’t have any other choice. As you heard, under the terms of the Geneva Convention we have put ourselves gravely at risk by wearing British uniforms.’

  ‘We fought as German soldiers,’ Preston insisted. ‘In German uniforms. You said that yourself.’

  ‘A neat point,’ Steiner said. ‘I’d hate to stake my life on it, even with a good lawyer. If it’s to be a bullet, rather now than from a firing squad later.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about anyway, Preston,’ Ritter said. ‘It’s the Tower of London for you without a doubt. The English, I’m afraid, have never held traitors in particularly high regard. They’ll hang you so high the crows won’t be able to get at you.’

  Preston sank down in a pew, head in hands.

  The organ rumbled into life and Hans Altmann, sitting high above the choir stalls, called, ‘A choral prelude of Johann Sebastian Bach, particularly appropriate to our situation as it is entitled For the Dying.’

  His voice echoed up into the nave as the music swelled. Ach wie nichtig, ach wie fluchtig. O how cheating, O how fleeting are our days departing …

  One of the clerestory windows high up in the nave smashed. A burst of automatic fire knocked Altmann off the seat into the choir stalls. Werner turned, crouching, firing his Sten. A Ranger pitched headlong through the window and landed between two pews. In the same moment, several more clerestory windows crashed in and heavy fire was poured down into the church. Werner was hit in the head as he ran along the south aisle and fell on his face without a cry. Someone was using a Thompson gun up there now, spraying it back and forth.

  Steiner crawled to Werner, turned him over, then moved on, dodging up the chancel steps to check on Altmann. He returned by way of the south aisle, keeping down behind the pews as intermittent firing continued.

  Devlin crawled to meet him. ‘What’s the situation up there?’

  ‘Altmann and Briegel both gone.’

  ‘It’s a bloodbath,’ the Irishman said. ‘We don’t stand a chance. Ritter’s been hit in the legs and Jansen’s dead.’

  Steiner crawled back with him to the rear of the church and found Ritter on his back behind the pews binding a field dressing round one thigh. Preston and Corporal Becker crouched beside him.

  ‘Are you all right, Ritter?’ Steiner asked.

  ‘They’ll run out of wound badges, Herr Oberst.’ Ritter grinned, but was obviously in great pain.

  They were still firing from above and Steiner nodded towards the sacristy door, barely visible now in the shadows and said to Becker, ‘See if you can shoot your way in through that door. We can’t last long out here, that’s for certain.’

  Becker nodded and slipped through the shadows behind the font, keeping low. There was that strange metallic clicking of the bolt reciprocating as he fired the silenced Sten, he stamped against the sacristy door, it swung open.

  All firing stopped and Garvey called from high above. ‘You had enough yet, Colonel? This is like shooting fish in a barrel and I’d rather not, but we’ll carry you out on a plank if we have to.’

  Preston cracked then, jumped to his feet and ran out into the open by the font. ‘Yes, I’ll come! I’ve had enough!’

  ‘Bastard!’ Becker cried and he ran out of the shadows by the sacristy door and rammed the butt of his rifle against the side of Preston’s skull. The Thompson gun rattled, a short burst only, but it caught Becker full in the back, driving him headlong through the curtains at the base of the tower. He grabbed at the ropes in dying as if trying to hang on to life itself and somewhere overhead, a bell tolled sonorously for the first time in years.

  There was silence again and Garvey called, ‘Five minutes, Colonel.’

  ‘We’d better get moving,’ Steiner said to Devlin in a low voice. ‘We’ll do better inside that sacristy than out here.’

  ‘How long for?’ Devlin asked.

  There was a slight eerie creaking and straining his eyes, Devlin saw that someone was standing in the entrance to the sacristy where the broken door swung crazily. A familiar voice whispered, ‘Liam?’

  ‘My God,’ he said to Steiner. ‘It’s Molly. Where in the hell did she spring from?’ He crawled across the floor to join her and was back in a moment. ‘Come on!’ he said, getting a hand under Ritter’s left arm. ‘The little darling’s got a way out for us. Now let’s have this one on his feet and get moving while those lads up on the leads are still waiting.’

  They slipped through the shadows, Ritter betwe
en them, and moved into the sacristy. Molly waited by the secret panel. Once they were inside, she closed it and led the way down the stairs and along the tunnel.

  It was very quiet when they came out into the hall at the presbytery. ‘Now what?’ Devlin said. ‘We’ll not get far with Ritter like this.’

  ‘Father Vereker’s car is in the yard at the back,’ Molly said.

  And Steiner, remembering, put a hand in his pocket. ‘And I’ve got his keys.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Ritter told him. ‘The moment you start the motor you’ll have Rangers swarming all over you.’

  ‘There’s a gate at the back,’ Molly said. ‘A track over the fields beside the hedge. We can push that little Morris Eight of his between us for a couple of hundred yards. Nothing to it.’

  They were at the bottom of the first meadow and a hundred and fifty yards away, when shooting began again at the church. Only then did Steiner start the engine and drive away, following Molly’s directions, sticking to farm tracks across the fields, all the way down to the coast road.

  After the tiny click of the panel door in the sacristy closing, there was a stirring in the Lady Chapel and Arthur Seymour stood up, hands free. He padded down the north aisle without a sound, holding in his left hand the coil of rope with which Preston had bound his feet.

  It was totally dark now, the only light the candles at the altar and the sanctuary lamp. He leaned down to satisfy himself that Preston was still breathing, picked him up and slung him over one massive shoulder. Then he turned and walked straight up the centre aisle towards the altar.

  On the leads, Garvey was beginning to worry. It was so dark down there that you couldn’t see a damn thing. He snapped his fingers for the field telephone and spoke to Kane who was at the gate with the White Scout car. ‘Silent as the grave in here, Major. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Try a burst. See what happens,’ Kane told him.

  Garvey pushed the barrel of his Thompson through the clerestory window and fired. There was no response and then the man on his right grabbed his arm. ‘Down there, Sergeant, near the pulpit. Isn’t someone moving?’