‘That was a damned long time ago, sir,’ Carraciola interrupted. ‘At least for Smithy, Thomas, Christiansen and myself. We’re out of touch now. We don’t know the latest developments in weapons and combat techniques. And God only knows we’re out of training. After a couple of years behind a desk it takes me all my time to run fifty yards after a bus.’
‘You’ll have to get fit fast, won’t you?’ Wyatt-Turner said coldly. ‘Besides, what matters most is, that with the exception of Major Smith, you all have an extensive knowledge of Western Europe. You all speak fluent German. You’ll find your combat training – on the level you’ll be engaged in – as relevant today as it was five years ago. You are men with exceptional records of resourcefulness, ability and ingenuity. If anyone has a chance, you have. You’re all volunteers, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Carraciola echoed, his face carefully deadpan. Then he looked speculatively at Wyatt-Turner. ‘There is, of course, another way, sir.’ He paused, then went on very quietly indeed. ‘A way with a hundred per cent guarantee of success.’
‘Neither Admiral Rolland nor I claim to be infallible,’ Wyatt-Turnersaidslowly.‘Wehavemissedan alternative? You have the answer to our problems?’
‘Yes. Whistle up a Pathfinder squadron of Lancasters with 10-ton blockbuster bombs. Do you think anyone in the Schloss Adler would ever talk again?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Admiral Rolland spoke gently and for the first time, moving from the wall-map to join the group. Admiral Rolland always spoke gently. When you wielded the almost incredible range of power that he did, you didn’t have to talk loudly to make yourself heard. He was a short, grey-haired man, with a deeply trenched face and an air of immense authority. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘I don’t think so. Nor do I think that your grasp of the realities of the situation is any match for your total ruthlessness. The captured man, Lieutenant General Carnaby, is an American. If we were to destroy him General Eisenhower would probably launch his Second Front against us instead of against the Germans.’ He smiled deprecatingly, as though to remove rebuke from his voice. ‘There are certain – um – niceties to be observed in our relationship with our Allies. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Carraciola didn’t agree or disagree. He had, apparently, nothing to say. Neither did anyone else. Colonel Wyatt-Turner cleared his throat.
‘That’s it then, gentlemen. Ten o’clock tonight at the airfield. No more questions, I take it?’
‘Yes, sir, there bloody well is, begging the Colonel’s pardon, sir.’ Sergeant George Harrod not only sounded heated, he looked it, too. ‘What’s all this about? Why’s this geezer so bloody important? Why the hell do we have to risk our necks –’
‘That’ll do, Sergeant.’ Wyatt-Turner’s voice was sharp, authoritative. ‘You know all you require to know –’
‘If we’re sending a man to what may be his death, Colonel, I think he has the right to know why,’ Admiral Rolland interrupted gently, almost apologetically. ‘The rest know. He should too. It’s painfully simple, Sergeant. General Carnaby is the overall co-ordinator of planning for the exercise known as Operation Overlord – the Second Front. It would be absolutely true to say that he knows more about the Allied preparations for the Second Front than any man alive.
‘He set off last night to meet his opposite numbers in the Middle East, Russia and the Italian Front to co-ordinate final plans for the invasion of Europe. The rendezvous was in Crete – the only meeting point the Russians would accept. They haven’t a plane fast enough to out-run the German fighters. The British Mosquito can – but it didn’t last night.’
Silence lay heavy in the austere operations room. Harrod rubbed his hand across his eyes, then shook his head slowly, as if to clear it. When he spoke again all the truculence, all the anger had vanished from his voice. His words came very slowly.
‘And if the General talks –’
‘He’ll talk,’ Rolland said. The voice was soft, but it carried total conviction. ‘As Mr Thomas has just said, they all talk. He won’t be able to help himself. A mixture of mescalin and scopolamine.’
‘And he’ll tell them all the plans for the Second Front.’ The words came as from a man in a dream. ‘When, where, how – Good God, sir, we’ll have to call the whole thing off!’
‘Precisely. We call it off. No Second Front this year. Another nine months on the war, another million lives needlessly lost. You understand the urgency, Sergeant, the sheer desperate urgency of it all?’
‘I understand, sir. Now I understand.’ Harrod turned to Wyatt-Turner. ‘Sorry I spoke like that, sir. I’m afraid – well, I’m a bit edgy, sir.’
‘We’re all a bit edgy, Sergeant. Well, the airfield at ten o’clock and we’ll check the equipment.’ He smiled without humour. ‘I’m afraid the uniforms may not fit too well. This is early closing day in Savile Row.’
Sergeant Harrod huddled more closely into his bucket seat, beat freezing hands against freezing shoulders, morosely surveyed his uniform, wrinkled like an elephant’s legs and about three sizes too big for him, then raised his voice above the clamour of the Lancaster’s engines.
‘Well,’ he said bitterly, ‘he was right about the bloody uniforms, anyway.’
‘And wrong about everything else,’ Carraciola said heavily. ‘I still say we should have sent in the Lancasters.’
Smith, still standing against the starboard fuselage, lit a cigarette and eyed him speculatively. He opened his mouth to speak when it occurred to him that he had seen men in more receptive mood. He looked away without saying anything.
In the flight-deck, now slid so impossibly far forward in his seat that the back of his head rested on the back of his seat, Wing Commander Carpenter was still deeply and contentedly pre-occupied with pipe, coffee and literature. Beside him, Flying Officer Tremayne was obviously failing to share his mood of pleasurable relaxation. He was, in fact, keeping a most anxious watch, his eyes constantly shifting from the instrument panel to the opaque darkness beyond the windscreen to the recumbent figure of his superior officer who appeared to be in danger of dropping off to sleep at any moment. Suddenly Tremayne sat far forward in his seat, stared for long seconds through the windscreen ahead of him then turned excitedly to Carpenter.
‘There’s Schaffhausen down there, sir!’
Carpenter groaned heavily, closed his book, swung back the hinged book-rest, finished his coffee, levered himself upright with another groan, slid open his side-screen and made an elaborate pretence of examining the loom of light far below, without, however, actually going to the lengths of exposing his face to the wind and the driving snow outside. He closed the screen and looked at Tremayne.
‘By heavens,’ he said admiringly, ‘I believe you’re right. It’s a great comfort to have you along, my boy, a great comfort.’ He switched on the intercom while Tremayne looked suitably abashed. ‘Major Smith? Yes. Thirty minutes to go.’ He switched off and turned again to Tremayne. ‘Right. South-east down the old Bodensee. And for God’s sake keep to the Swiss side.’
Smith hung up the headphones and looked quizzically at the six seated men.
‘That’s it, then. Half an hour. Let’s hope it’s warmer down there than it is up here.’
No one had any comment to make on that. No one seemed to have any hope either. Soundlessly, wordlessly, they looked without expression at one another, then pulled themselves stiffly to their frozen feet. Then very slowly, very awkwardly, their numbed hands and cramped conditions making things almost impossibly awkward for them, they prepared themselves for the drop. They helped each other strap loads on their backs, beneath the high-mounted parachutes, then struggled into their white waterproof snow trousers. Sergeant Harrod went one better. He pulled a voluminous snow-smock over his head, zipped it up with difficulty and drew the hood over his head. He turned round questioningly as a hand tapped the hummocked outline below his white smock.
‘I hardly like to say this,’ Schaffer said diffidently, ‘but I really don’t reckon y
our radio is going to stand the shock of landing, Sergeant.’
‘Why not?’ Harrod looked more lugubrious than ever. ‘It’s been done before.’
‘Not by you, it hasn’t. By my reckoning you’re going to hit the ground with a terminal velocity of a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think you’re going to experience some difficulty in opening your chute.’
Harrod looked at him, looked at his other five smockless companions, then nodded slowly and touched his own smock.
‘You mean I put this on after we reach the ground?’
‘Well,’ Schaffer said consideringly, ‘I really think it would help.’ He grinned at Harrod, who grinned back almost cheerfully. Even Carraciola’s lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. The release of tension within that frozen fuselage was almost palpable.
‘Well, well, time I earned my wing-commander’s pay while you stripling pilots sit and gaze in rapt admiration.’ Carpenter studied his watch. ‘Two fifteen. Time we changed places.’
Both men unhooked their safety belts and awkwardly changed over. Carpenter fastidiously adjusted the right-hand seat’s back rest until it was exactly right for him, manoeuvred his parachute to its position of maximum comfort, fastened his seatbelt, unhooked and adjusted on his head a combined earphones and microphone set and made a switch.
‘Sergeant Johnson?’ Carpenter never bothered with the regulation call-up formalities. ‘Are you awake?’
Back in the navigator’s tiny and extremely uncomfortable recess, Sergeant Johnson was very much awake. He had been awake for hours. He was bent over a glowing greenish radar screen, his eyes leaving it only to make rapid reference to the charts, an Ordnance map, a picture and a duplicate compass, altimeter and air-speed indicator. He reached for the switch by his side.
‘I’m awake, sir.’
‘If you fly us into the side of the Weissspitze,’ Carpenter said threateningly, ‘I’ll have you reduced to aircraftman. Aircraftman second class, Johnson.’
‘I wouldn’t like that. I make it nine minutes, sir.’
‘For once we’re agreed on something. So do I.’ Carpenter switched off, slid open the starboard screen and peered out. Although there was just the faintest wash of moonlight in the night sky, visibility might as well have been zero. It was a greyly opaque world, a blind world, with nothing to be seen but the thinly driving snow. He withdrew his head, brushed away the snow from his huge moustache, closed the screen, looked regretfully at his pipe and carefully put it away in his pocket.
For Tremayne, the stowage of the pipe was the final proof that the Wing Commander was clearing the decks for action. He said unhappily: ‘A bit dicey, isn’t it, sir? Locating the Weissspitze in this lot, I mean?’
‘Dicey?’ Carpenter sounded almost jovial. ‘Dicey? I don’t see why? It’s as big as a mountain. In fact, it is a mountain. We can’t miss it, my dear boy.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ He paused, a pause with more meaning in it. ‘And this plateau on the Weissspitze that we have to drop them on. Only three hundred yards wide, sir. Mountain above it, cliff below it. And those adiabatic mountain winds, or whatever you call them, blowing in any old unpredictable direction. A fraction to the south and we’ll hit the mountain, a fraction to the north and they’ll fall down that whacking great cliff and like as not all break their necks. Three hundred yards!’
‘What do you want?’ Carpenter demanded expansively. ‘Heathrow Airport? Three hundred yards? All the room in the world, my boy. We land this old crate on runways a tenth of that width.’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve always found runway landing lights a great help, sir. At seven thousand feet up the side of the Weissspitze –’
He broke off as a buzzer rang. Carpenter made a switch.
‘Johnson?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Johnson was huddled more closely than ever over his radar screen where the revolving scanner-line had picked up a white spot immediately to the right of centre of the screen. ‘I have it, sir. Right where it should be.’ He looked away from the screen and made a quick check on the compass. ‘Course oh-nine-three, sir.’
‘Good lad.’ Carpenter smiled at Tremayne, made a tiny course alteration and began to whistle softly to himself. ‘Have a look out your window, laddie. My moustache is beginning to get all waterlogged.’
Tremayne opened his window, strained his head as far as possible, but still there was only this grey and featureless opacity. He withdrew his head, silently shook it.
‘No matter. It must be there somewhere,’ Carpenter said reasonably. He spoke into the intercom. ‘Sergeant? Five minutes. Hook up.’
‘Hook up!’ The sergeant air-gunner repeated the order to the seven men standing in line along the starboard side of the fuselage. ‘Five minutes.’
Silently they clipped their parachute snap-catches on to the overhead wire, the sergeant air-gunner carefully checking each catch. Nearest the door and first man to jump was Sergeant Harrod. Behind him stood Lieutenant Schaffer whose experiences with the OSS had made him by far the most experienced parachutist of the group and whose unenviable task it was to keep an eye on Harrod. He was followed by Carraciola, then Smith – as leader he preferred to be in the middle of the group – then Christiansen, Thomas and Torrance-Smythe. Behind Torrance-Smythe two young aircraftmen stood ready to slide packaged equipment and parachutes along the wire and heave them out as swiftly as possible after the last man had jumped. The sergeant air-gunner took up position by the door. The tension was back in the air again.
Twenty-five feet forward of where they were standing, Carpenter slid open his side-screen for the fifth time in as many minutes. The now downward drooping moustache had lost much of its splendid panache but the Wing Commander had obviously decided that there were more urgent considerations in life than waterlogged moustaches. He was wearing goggles now, continuously brushing away snow and moisture with a chamois leather, but the view ahead – or lack of view – remained obstinately the same, still that greyly driving snow looming out of and vanishing into that greyly impenetrable opacity, still nothingness. He closed the screen.
A call-up buzzer rang. Carpenter made a switch, listened, nodded.
‘Three minutes,’ he said to Tremayne. ‘Oh-nine-two.’
Tremayne made the necessary minute course adjustment. He no longer looked through the side-screen, he no longer even looked at the screen ahead of him. His whole being was concentrated upon flying that big bomber, his all-exclusive attention, his total concentration, on three things only: the compass, the altimeter, and Carpenter. A degree too far to the south and the Lancaster would crash into the side of the Weissspitze: a couple of hundred feet too low and the same thing would happen: a missed signal from Carpenter and the mission was over before it had begun. The young, the absurdly young face was expressionless, the body immobile as he piloted the Lancaster with a hair-trigger precision that he had never before achieved. Only his eyes moved, in a regular, rhythmic, unvarying pattern: the compass, the altimeter, Carpenter, the compass, the altimeter, Carpenter: and never longer than a second on each.
Again Carpenter slid open his side-screen and peered out. Again he had the same reward, the opacity, the grey nothingness. With his head still outside he lifted his left hand, palm downwards, and made a forward motion. Instantly Tremayne’s hand fell on the throttle levers and eased them forward. The roar of the big engines died away to a more muted thunder.
Carpenter withdrew his head. If he was concerned, no trace of it showed in his face. He resumed his soft whistling, calmly, almost leisurely, scanned the instrument panel, then turned his head to Tremayne. He said conversationally:
‘When you were in flying school, ever hear tell of a strange phenomenon known as stalling speed?’
Tremayne started, glanced hurriedly at the instrument panel and quickly gave a fraction more power to the engines. Carpenter smiled, looked at his watch and pressed a buzzer twice.
The bell rang above the head of the serge
ant air-gunner standing by the fuselage door. He looked at the tense, expectant faces before him and nodded.
‘Two minutes, gentlemen.’
He eased the door a few inches to test whether it was moving freely. With the door only fractionally open the suddenly deepened roar from the engines was startling but nowhere nearly as dismaying as the snow-laden gust of icy wind that whistled into the fuselage. The parachutists exchanged carefully expressionless glances, glances correctly interpreted by the sergeant who closed the door and nodded again.
‘I agree, gentlemen. No night for man nor beast.’
Wing Commander Carpenter, his head once again poked through the side-screen, didn’t think so either. Five seconds’ exposure to that arctic wind and driving snow and your face was full of porcupine quills: fifteen seconds and the totally numbed skin conveyed no sensation at all, it was when you withdrew your head and waited for the exquisite pain of returning circulation that the fun really started: but this time Carpenter was determined not to withdraw his head until he had complete justification for doing so: and the only justification would be the sighting of the Weissspitze. Mechanically, industriously, he rubbed the chamois leather across his goggles, stared unblinkingly into the greyly swirling gloom and hoped that he saw the Weisspitze before the Weissspitze saw him.
Inside, Tremayne’s eyes continued on their rhythmic, unvarying pattern of movement: the compass, the altimeter, Carpenter, the compass, the altimeter, Carpenter. But now his gaze was resting fractionally longer on Carpenter each time, waiting for the sudden signal that would galvanize him into throwing the big Lancaster into a violent bank to port, the only avoiding action they could possibly take. Carpenter’s left hand was moving, but he wasn’t giving any signal, the fingers of his left hand were drumming gently on his knee. This, Tremayne suddenly and incredulously realized, was probably the highest state of excitement that Carpenter was capable of achieving.