‘That helps,’ Schaffer said bitterly. ‘That helps a lot.’
‘Sky’s still full of clouds,’ Smith said mildly. He bent to the keyhole of the left luggage office, used his skeleton keys and moved inside. Schaffer followed, closing the door.
Smith located their rucksacks, cut a length of rope from the nylon, wrapped it round his waist and began stuffing some hand grenades and plastic explosives into a canvas bag. He raised his head as Schaffer diffidently cleared his throat.
‘Boss?’ This with an apprehensive glance through the window.
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Boss, has it occurred to you that Colonel Weissner probably knows all about this cache by this time? What I mean is, we may have company soon.’
‘We may indeed,’ Smith admitted. ‘Surprised if we don’t have. That’s why I’ve cut this itsy-bitsy piece of rope off the big coil and why I’m taking the explosives and grenades only from my rucksack and yours. It’s a very big coil – and no one knows what’s inside our rucksacks. So it’s unlikely that anything will be missed.’
‘But the radio –’
‘If we broadcast from here we might be caught in the act. If we take it away and they find it gone they’ll know that that car at the bottom of the Blau See is empty. Is that it?’
‘More or less.’
‘So we compromise. We remove it, but we return it here after we’ve broadcast from a safe place.’
‘What do you mean “safe place”,’ Schaffer demanded plaintively. The darkly saturnine face was unhappy. ‘There isn’t a safe place in Bavaria.’
‘There’s one not twenty yards away. Last place they’d look.’ He tossed Schaffer a bunch of skeleton keys. ‘Ever been inside a Bavarian ladies’ cloakroom?’
Schaffer fielded the keys, stared at Smith, shook his head and left. Quickly he moved down the tracks, his torch flashing briefly on and off. Finally his torched settled on a doorway with, above it, the legend DAMEN.
Schaffer looked at it, pursed his lips, shrugged his shoulders and got to work on the lock.
Slowly, with apparently infinite labour, the cable-car completed the last few feet of its ascent and passed in under the roof of the Schloss Adler header station. It juddered to a halt, the front door opened and the passengers disembarked. They moved from the header station – built into the northwest base of the castle – up through a steeply-climbing twenty-five foot tunnel which had heavy iron doors and guards at either end. Passing the top gateway, they emerged into a courtyard, the entrance of which was sealed off by a massively-barred iron gate guarded by heavily armed soldiers and Doberman pinschers. The courtyard itself was brightly illuminated by the light of dozens of uncurtained interior windows. In the very centre of the courtyard stood the helicopter which had that morning brought Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer to the Schloss Adler, Under the cover of a heavy tarpaulin – momentarily unnecessary because of the cessation of the snow – a dungareed figure, possibly the pilot, worked on the helicopter engine with the aid of a small but powerful arc-lamp.
Mary turned to von Brauchitsch, still holding a proprietary grip on her arm, and smiled ruefully.
‘So many soldiers. So many men – and, I’m sure, so few women. What happens if I want to escape from the licentious soldiery?’
‘Easy.’ Von Brauchitsch really did have, Mary thought dully, a most charming smile. ‘Just jump from your bedroom window. One hundred metres straight down and there you are. Free!’
The ladies’ cloakroom in the station was a superlatively nondescript place, bleakly furnished with hard-backed benches, chairs, deal tables and a sagging wooden floor. The Spartans would have turned up their noses at it, in its sheer lack of decorative inspiration it could have been surpassed only by its counterpart in England. The expiring remains of a fire burnt dully in a black enamel stove.
Smith was seated by the central table, radio beside him, consulting a small book by the light of a hooded pencil-flash and writing on a slip of paper. He checked what he had written, straightened and handed the book to Schaffer.
‘Burn it. Page by page.’
‘Page by page? All?’ Surprise in the saturnine face. ‘You won’t be requiring this any more?’
Smith shook his head and began to crank the radio handle.
There was a very much better fire in the Operations Room in Whitehall, a pine-log fire with a healthy crackle and flames of a respectable size. But the two men sitting on either side of the fire were a great deal less alert than the two men sitting by the dying embers of the fire in the Bavarian Alps. Admiral Rolland and Colonel Wyatt-Turner were frankly dozing, eyes shut, more asleep than awake. But they came to full wakefulness, jerking upright, almost instantly, when the long-awaited call-sign came through on the big transceiver manned by the civilian operator at the far end of the room. They glanced at each other, heaved themselves out of their deep arm-chairs.
‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy.’ The voice on the radio was faint but clear. ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy. You hear me? Over.’
The civilian operator spoke into his microphone, ‘We hear you. Over.’
‘Code. Ready? Over.’
‘Ready. Over.’
Rolland and Wyatt-Turner were by the operator’s shoulder now, his eyes fixed on his pencil as he began to make an instantaneous transcription of the meaningless jumble of letters beginning to come over the radio. Swiftly the message was spelt out: TORRANCE-SMYTHE MURDERED. THOMAS CHRISTIANSEN AND CARRACIOLA CAPTURED.
As if triggered by an unheard signal, the eyes of Rolland and Wyatt-Turner lifted and met. Their faces were strained and grim. Their eyes returned to the flickering pencil.
ENEMY BELIEVE SCHAFFER AND SELF DEAD, the message continued. EFFECTING ENTRY INSIDE THE HOUR. PLEASE HAVE TRANSPORT STANDING BY NINETY MINUTES. OVER.
Admiral Rolland seized the microphone from the operator.
‘Broadsword! Broadsword! Do you know who I am, Broadsword?’
‘I know who you are, sir. Over.’
‘Pull out, Broadsword. Pull out now. Save yourselves. Over.’
‘You – must – be – joking.’ The words were spoken in slow motion, a perceptible pause between each pair. ‘Over.’
‘You heard me.’ Rolland’s voice was almost as slow and distinct. ‘You heard me. That was an order, Broadsword.’
‘Mary is already inside. Over and out.’
The transceiver went dead.
‘He’s gone, sir,’ the operator said quietly.
‘He’s gone,’ Rolland repeated mechanically. ‘Dear God, he’s gone.’
Colonel Wyatt-Turner moved away and sat down heavily in his chair by the fire. For such a big, burly man he appeared curiously huddled and shrunken. He looked up dully as Admiral Rolland sank into the opposite chair.
‘It’s all my fault.’ The Colonel’s voice was barely distinguishable. ‘All my fault.’
‘We did what we had to do. All our fault, Colonel. It was my idea.’ He gazed into the fire. ‘Now this – this on top of everything else.’
‘Our worst day,’ Wyatt-Turner agreed heavily. ‘Our worst day ever. Maybe I’m too old.’
‘Maybe we’re all too old.’ With his right forefinger Rolland began to tick off the fingers of his left hand. ‘HQ Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. Secret alarm triggered. Nothing missing.’
‘Nothing taken,’ Wyatt-Turner agreed wearily. ‘But the vigil emulsion plates show photostatic copies taken.’
‘Two. Southampton. Barge-movement duplicates missing. Three, Plymouth. Time-lock in the naval HQ inoperative. We don’t know what this means.’
‘We can guess.’
‘We can guess. Dover. Copy of a section of the Mulberry Harbour plans missing. An error? Carelessness? We’ll never know. Five, Bradley’s HQ guard sergeant missing. Could mean anything.’
‘Could mean everything. All the troop movements for Overlord’s Omaha beach are there.’
‘Lastly, seven OS reports today. France, Belgium, Netherlands. Four
demonstrably false. Other three unverifiable.’
For long moments there was a heavy, a defeated silence, finally broken by Wyatt-Turner.
‘If there was ever any doubt, there’s none now.’ He spoke without looking up, his eyes gazing emptily into the fire. ‘The Germans have almost total penetration here – and we have almost none on the continent. And now this – Smith and his men, I mean.’
‘Smith and his men,’ Rolland echoed. ‘Smith and his men. We can write them off.’
Wyatt-Turner dropped his voice, speaking so softly that the radio operator couldn’t overhear.
‘And Operation Overlord, sir?’
‘Operation Overlord,’ Rolland murmured. ‘Yes, we can write that off, too.’
‘Intelligence is the first arm of modern warfare,’ Wyatt-Turner said bitterly. ‘Or has someone said that before?’
‘No intelligence, no war.’ Admiral Rolland pressed an intercom button. ‘Have my car brought round. Coming, Colonel? To the airfield?’
‘And a lot farther than that. If I have your permission, sir.’
‘We’ve discussed it.’ Admiral Rolland shrugged. ‘I understand how you feel. Kill yourself if you must.’
‘I’ve no intention.’ Wyatt-Turner crossed to a cupboard and took out a Sten gun, turned to Rolland and smiled: ‘We may encounter hostiles, sir.’
‘You may indeed.’ There was no answering smile on the Admiral’s face.
‘You heard what the man said?’ Smith switched off the transmitter, telescoped the aerial and glanced across at Schaffer. ‘We can pull out now.’
‘Pull out now? Pull out now?’ Schaffer was outraged. ‘Don’t you realize that if we do they’ll get to Mary inside twelve hours.’ He paused significantly, making sure he had all Smith’s attention. ‘And if they get to her they’re bound to get to Heidi ten minutes later.’
‘Come off it, Lieutenant,’ Smith said protestingly. ‘You’ve only seen her once, for five minutes.’
‘So?’ Schaffer was looking positively belligerent. ‘How often did Paris see Helen of Troy? How often did Antony see Cleopatra. How often did Romeo––’ He broke off then went on defiantly: ‘And I don’t care if she is a traitor spying on her own people.’
‘She was born and brought up in Birmingham,’ Smith said wearily.
‘So who cares? I draw the line at nothing. Even if she is a Limey––’ He paused. ‘English?’
‘Come on,’ Smith said. ‘Let’s return this radio. We may have callers soon.’
‘We mustn’t be raising too many eyebrows,’ Schaffer agreed.
They returned the radio, locked the left luggage office and were just moving towards the station exit when they were halted by the sound of truck engines and a siren’s ululation. They pressed back against a wall as headlights lit up the station entrance. The leading truck came to a skidding halt not ten yards away.
Schaffer looked at Smith. ‘Discretion, I think?’
‘Discretion, indeed. Behind the booking office.’
The two men moved swiftly alongside the tracks and hid in the deep shadows behind the booking office. A sergeant, the one who had organized the search along the Blau See, came running through the entrance, followed by four soldiers, located the left luggage office, tried the door handle, reversed his machine-pistol and hammered the lock without effect, reversed his gun again, shot away the lock and passed inside, torch in hand. He appeared at the doorway almost at once.
‘Tell the captain. They didn’t lie. The Engländers’ gear is here!’ One of the soldiers left and the sergeant said to the three remaining men: ‘Right. Get their stuff out and load it up.’
‘There goes my last pair of cotton socks,’ Schaffer murmured mournfully as their rucksacks were taken away. ‘Not to mention my toothbrush and –’
He broke off as Smith caught his arm. The sergeant had stopped the man carrying the radio, taken it from him, placed his hand on it and stood quite still. He was directly under one of the small swinging electric lights and the expression on his face could clearly be seen to change from puzzlement to disbelief to complete and shocked understanding.
‘Kapitän!’ the sergeant shouted. ‘Kapitän.’
An officer came hurrying through the station entrance.
‘The radio, Kapitän! It’s warm, very warm! It’s been in use inside the last five minutes.’
‘In the last five minutes? Impossible!’ He stared at the sergeant. ‘Unless –’
‘Yes, Herr Kapitän. Unless.’
‘Surround the station,’ the officer shouted. ‘Search every room.’
‘Oh God!’ Schaffer moaned. ‘Why can’t they leave us alone?’
‘Quickly,’ Smith said softly. He took Schaffer’s arm and they moved through the dark shadows till they reached the ladies’ cloakroom. Careful not to rattle his skeleton keys, Smith had the door open in seconds. They passed inside and locked the door behind them.
‘This won’t look so good in my obituary,’ Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words.
‘What won’t?’
‘Gave his life for his country in a ladies’ lavatory in Upper Bavaria. How can a man RIP with that on his mind? . . . What’s our friend outside saying?’
‘If you shut up we might hear.’
‘And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.’ The German captain was barking out his commands in the best parade-ground fashion. ‘If a door is locked, break it open. If you can’t break it open, shoot the lock away. And if you don’t want to die in the next five minutes, never forget that these are violent and extremely dangerous men almost certainly armed with stolen Schmeisser machine-pistols, apart from their own weapons. Make no attempt to capture them. Shoot on sight and shoot to kill.’
‘You heard?’ Smith said.
‘I’m afraid I did.’ There was a perceptible click as Schaffer cocked his machine-pistol.
They stood side-by-side in the darkness listening to the sounds of the search, the calling of voices, the hammering of rifle butts on wood, the splintering of yielding doors, the occasional short burst of machine-gun fire where a door, presumably, had failed to yield to more conventional methods of persuasion. The sounds of the approaching search grew very close.
‘They’re getting warm,’ Schaffer murmured.
Schaffer had underestimated the temperature. Just as he finished speaking an unseen hand closed on the outer door handle and rattled the door furiously. Smith and Schaffer moved silently and took up position pressed close against the wall, one on either side of the door.
The rattling ceased. A heavy crashing impact from the outside shook the door on its hinges. A second such impact and the woodwork in the jamb by the lock began to splinter. Two more would do it, Smith thought, two more.
But there were no more.
‘Gott in Himmel, Hans!’ The voice beyond the door held – or appeared to hold – a mixture of consternation and outrage. ‘What are you thinking of? Can’t you read?’
‘Can’t I –’ The second voice broke off abruptly-and when it came again it was in tones of defensive apology. ‘DAMEN! Mein Gott! DAMEN!’ A pause. ‘If you had spent as many years on the Russian Front as I have –’ His voice faded as the two men moved away.
‘God bless our common Anglo-Saxon heritage,’ Schaffer murmured fervently.
‘What are you talking about?’ Smith demanded. He had released his tense grip on the Schmeisser and realized that the palms of his hands were damp.
‘This misplaced sense of decency,’ Schaffer explained.
‘A far from misplaced and highly developed sense of self-preservation,’ Smith said dryly. ‘Would you like to come searching for a couple of reputed killers, like us, knowing that the first man to find us would probably be cut in half by a burst of machine-gun fire? Put yourself in their position. How do you think those men feel. How would you feel?’
‘I’d feel very unhappy,’ Schaffer said candidly.
�
��And so do they. And so they seize on any reasonable excuse not to investigate. Our two friends who have just left have no idea whatsoever whether we’re in here or not and, what’s more, the last thing they want to do is to find out.’
‘Stop making with the old psychology. All that matters is that Schaffer is saved. Saved!’
‘If you believe that,’ Smith said curtly, ‘you deserve to end up with a blindfold round your eyes.’
‘How’s that again?’ Schaffer asked apprehensively.
‘You and I,’ Smith explained patiently, ‘are not the only people who can put ourselves in the places of the searchers. You can bet your life that the captain can and more than likely the sergeant, too – you saw how quickly he caught on to the damn’ radio. By and by one or other is going to come by, see this closed and undamaged door, blow his top and insist on a few of his men being offered the chance to earn a posthumous Iron Cross. What I mean is, Schaffer is not yet saved.’
‘What do we do, boss?’ Schaffer said quietly. ‘I don’t feel so funny any more.’
‘We create a diversion. Here are the keys – this one. Put it in the lock and hold it ready to turn. We’ll be leaving in a hurry – troops of this calibre can’t be fooled for long.’
He dug into his knapsack, fished out a hand grenade, crossed the cloakroom into the washroom and, in almost total darkness, felt his way across it to where the window at the back should have been, finally located it from the source of a faint wash of light. He pressed his nose against the glass but could see nothing, cursed softly as he realized a washroom window would always certainly be frosted, located the latch and slowly swung the window wide. With infinite caution, a fraction of an inch at a time, he thrust his head slowly through the window.
Where Eagles Dare Page 10
