“It's like I said,” Schaffer said mournfully. “I'm from Montana.”
The two men left as quietly as they had come and as quietly closed the door behind them. Against the loom of light at either end of the corridor, they could see that the passage-way was clear. Smith switched on the light. They walked briskly along the passage, dropped down a flight of stairs, turned left and halted outside a doorway which bore above it the legend
TELEFON ZENTRALE.
“Telephone exchange,” Schaffer said.
Smith shook his head in admiration, put his ear to the door, dropped to one knee, peered through the keyhole and, while still in that position, softly tried the handle. Whatever slight sound he made was masked by the muffled sound of a voice speaking over a telephone. The door was locked. Smith slowly released the handle, straightened and shook his head.
“Suspicious bunch of devils,” Schaffer said sourly. “The skeletons?”
“The operator would hear us. Next door.”
Next door wasn't locked. The door gave before Smith's pressure on the handle. The room beyond was in total darkness and appeared to be empty.
“Moment, bitte!” a cold voice said behind them.
Quickly, but not too quickly, Smith and Schaffer turned round. A few feet away stood a soldier, levelled carbine in his hand, his eyes moving in active suspicion from the two men to the kit-bag in Smith's hands. Smith glared at the man, raised an imperative forefinger to his lips.
“Dummkopf” Smith's voice was a low furious whisper through clenched teeth. “Silenz! Englander!”
He turned away impatiently and peered tensely through the partly-opened doorway. Again he held up an imperious hand that commanded silence. After a few more seconds he straightened, lips compressed, looked significantly at Schaffer and moved slightly to one side. Schaffer took his position and started peering in turn. Curiosity, Smith could see, was replacing suspicion in the soldier's face. Schaffer straightened and said softly: “What in God's name do we do?”
“I don't know,” Smith said in a worried whisper. “Colonel Kramer told me he wanted them alive. But—”
“What is it?” the soldier demanded in a voice as low as their own. With the mention of Colonel Kramer the last of his suspicions had gone. “Who is it?”
“You still here,” Smith said irritably. “All right, go on. Have a look. But be quick!”
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 assist 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 inches, 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 anything. 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 Kaffeestube—”
“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.”
Chapter 7
For the second time in fifteen minutes Smith and Schaffer stopped at the doorway outside the gold room's minstrels' gallery, switched out the passage light, paused, listened, then passed 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 passageway. 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 massive gold lame-covered couches, glasses of brandy, and no small ones at that, in their hands. Even Anne-Marie now held a glass in her hand. It appeared to be an occasion for a celebration of some note.
Kramer lifted his glass 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 glass into the fire. The glass 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 passage-way and whispered: “I thought you said he couldn't act?”
“Nobody's ever paid him twenty-five thousand bucks a night before,” Smith said sardonically.
“Tut, tut, General. Best Venetian glass.” 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 passage 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 Luftseilbahn.”
“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.
“Fifteen minutes. I guarantee it.” He shifted his glance to Jones. “I don't pretend to look forward to this, General, but shall we get on with your—ah—medication?”
Jones glared at Carraciola, Christiansen and Thomas and said, very slowly and distinctly: “You—bloody—swine!”
“Against all my principles, General Carnaby,” Rosemeyer said uncomfortably. “But if we could only dispense with force—”
“Principles? You make me sick!” Jones stood up and made a strangled noise in his throat. “The hell with you all! The Hague Conventions! Principles! Officers and gentlemen of the Third Woody Reich!” He stripped off his uniform jacket, rolled up a sleeve and sat down again.
There was a brief and uncomfortable silence, then Kramer nodded to Anne-Marie who put down her glass and moved off to a side door leading off the gold drawing-room. It was obvious to everyone that Anne-Marie wasn't feeling in the least uncomfortable: the half-smile on her face was as near to that of pleasurable anticipation as she could permit herself in the presence of Rosemeyer and Kramer.
Again Smith and Schaffer exchanged glances, no longer thoughtful glances, but the glances of men who know what they have to do and are committed to doing it. Carefully, silently, they eased themselves up from the choir-stalls, adjusted the straps of their shoulder-slung Schmeissers until the machine-pistols were in the horizontal position then started slowly down the stairs, well apart and as close as possible to their respective banisters, to minimise the danger of creaking treads.
They were half-day down, just beginning to emerge from the dark gloom of the gallery, when Anne-Marie re-entered the room. She was carrying a small stainless steel tray: on the tray were a glass beaker, a phial containing some colourless liquid and a hypodermic syringe. She set the tray down on an occasional table close to Jones and broke the phial into the narrow beaker.
Smith and Schaffer had reached the foot of the stairs and were now advancing towards the group round the fire-place. They had now completely emerged from the shadows, and were in full view of anyone who cared to turn his head. But no one cared to turn his head, every seated person in the drawing-room was engrossed in the scene before him, watching in varying degrees of
willing or unwilling fascination as Anne-Marie carefully filled the hypodermic syringe and held it up to the light to examine it. Smith and Schaffer continued to advance, their footfalls soundless on the luxuriously deep pile of the gold carpet.
Carefully, professionally, but with the trace of the smile still on her lips, Anne-Marie swabbed an area of Jones's forearm with cotton wool soaked in alcohol and then, as the watchers unconsciously bent forward in their seats, picked up Jones's wrist in one hand and the hypodermic in the other. The hypodermic hovered over the swabbed area as she located the vein she wanted.
“Just a waste of good scopolamine, my dear,” Smith said. “You won't get anything out of him.”
There was a moment's frozen and incredulous stillness, the hypodermic syringe fell soundlessly to the floor, then everyone whirled round to stare at the two advancing figures, carbines moving gently from side to side. Predictably, Colonel Kramer was the first to recover and react. Almost imperceptibly, his hand began to drift to a button on a panel beside his chair.
“That button, Colonel,” Smith said conversationally.
Slowly, reluctantly, Kramer's hand retreated from the button.
“On the other hand,” Smith went on cordially, “why not? By all means, if you wish.”
Kramer glanced at him in narrow-eyed and puzzled suspicion.
“You will notice, Colonel,” Smith continued by way of explanation, “that my gun is not pointing at you. It is pointed at him”—he swung his gun to cover Carraciola—“at him,”—the gun moved to Thomas—“at him,”—it covered Christiansen—“and at him!” Smith swung round abruptly and ground the muzzle of the Schmeisser into Schaffer's ribs. “Drop that gun! Now!”
“Drop the gun?” Schaffer stared at him in shock and baffled consternation. “What in the name of God—”
Smith stepped swiftly forward and, without altering his grip on his gun, lifted the barrel sharply upwards and drove the butt of the Schmeisser into Schaffer's stomach. Schaffer grunted in agony, doubled forward with both hands clutched over his midriff, then, seconds later, obviously in great pain, began to straighten slowly. Glaring at Smith, the dark eyes mad in his face, he slipped the shoulder strap and the Schmeisser fell to the carpet.
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