‘You’ll never make it with all those trees around,’ Torrance-Smythe observed.
‘That must be it,’ Smith agreed. ‘I’ll try the other side of the wood. Might have better luck there.’
He slung the transmitter over his shoulder and trudged off through the deep snow, cutting straight across to the other side of the belt of pines. When he thought he was safely out of eyeshot of the men at the camp, he checked with a quick look over his shoulder. They were out of sight. He turned more than ninety degrees left and hurried up the hill until he cut the tracks that he and his men had made on the way down. He followed the tracks uphill, whistling ‘Lorelei’, but whistling softly: in that frosty air, sound travelled dangerously far. He stopped whistling when Mary appeared from where she had been hiding behind a fallen pine.
‘Hallo, darling,’ she said brightly.
‘We’ll have less of the “darlings”,’ Smith said briskly. ‘It’s 8 a.m. Father Machree awaits. And keep your voice down.’
He sat on the fallen tree, cranked the handle and established contact almost immediately. The transmission from London was still very faint but clearer than it had been in the earlier hours of the morning.
‘Father Machree is waiting,’ the radio crackled. ‘Hold. Hold.’
Smith held and the unmistakable voice of Admiral Rolland took over from the London operator.
‘Position please, Broadsword.’
Smith consulted the piece of paper in his hand, again in code and plain language. The message read: WOODS DUE WEST CASTLE DESCENDING W. H. THIS EVENING. Smith read out the corresponding code letters.
There was a pause, presumably while Rolland was having the message decoded, then his voice came again.
‘Understood. Proceed. Harrod killed accidentally?’
‘No. Over.’
‘By the enemy? Over.’
‘No. What is the weather report? Over.’
‘Deteriorating. Freshening winds, strong later. Snow. Over.’
Smith looked up at the still and cloudless sky above. He assumed that Rolland hadn’t got his forecasts mixed up. He said: ‘Time of next broadcast uncertain. Can you stand by? Over.’
‘Am remaining HQ until operation complete,’ Rolland said. ‘Good luck. Good-bye.’
Smith closed up the radio and said thoughtfully to Mary: ‘I didn’t much care for the way he said good-bye there.’
In the Naval Operations room in Whitehall, Admiral Rolland and Colonel Wyatt-Turner, one on either side of the radio operator manning a huge transceiver, looked at each other with heavy faces.
‘So the poor devil was murdered,’ Wyatt-Turner said flatly.
‘A high price to pay for confirmation that we were right,’ Rolland said sombrely. ‘Poor devil, as you say. The moment we gave him that radio to carry we signed a death-warrant. I wonder who’s next. Smith himself?’
‘Not Smith.’ Wyatt-Turner shook his head positively. ‘Some people have a sixth sense. Smith has a seventh, eighth and ninth and a built-in radar set for danger. Smith can survive under any circumstances I can conceive of. I didn’t pick him with a pin, sir. He’s the best agent in Europe.’
‘Except possibly yourself. And don’t forget, Colonel, there may possibly be circumstances that even you can’t conceive of.’
‘Yes, that’s so.’ He looked directly at Rolland. ‘What do you reckon his chances are?’
‘Chances?’ Rolland’s eyes were remote, unseeing. ‘What do you mean, chances? He doesn’t have any.’
Almost precisely the same thought was in Smith’s mind as he lit a cigarette and looked at the girl beside him, careful not to let his thoughts show in his face. Not until that first sight he’d just had of the castle had the full realization of the apparent impossibility of their task struck him. Had he known what the precise physical situation had been, he doubted very much whether he would have come. Deep in the furthest recesses of his mind, he knew, although he would not admit it to himself, that there really was no room for the element of doubt. He wouldn’t have come. But he had come. He was here and he had better do something about it.
He said to Mary: ‘Have you had a squint at the old Schloss yet?’
‘It’s a fantastic place. How on earth do we ever get General Carnaby out of there?’
‘Easy. We’ll take a walk up there tonight, get inside and take him away.’
Mary stared at him in disbelief and waited for him to amplify his statement. He didn’t. Finally, she said: ‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’
‘The simplicity of true genius. You must have spent a lot of time working that one out.’ When he still didn’t reply, she went on, elaborately sarcastic: ‘In the first place, of course, there’ll be no trouble about getting in. You just go up to the main door and knock.’
‘More or less. Then the door – or window – opens, I smile at you, say thank you and pass inside.’
‘You what?’
‘I smile and say thank you. Even in wartime, there’s no reason why the little courtesies –’
‘Please!’ She was thoroughly exasperated now. ‘If you can’t talk sense –’
‘You are going to open the door for me,’ Smith explained patiently.
‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘The staff shortage in Germany is acute. The Schloss Adler is no exception. You’re just the type they’re looking for. Young, intelligent, good-looking, you can cook, polish, sew on Colonel Kramer’s buttons –’
‘Who’s Colonel Kramer?’ Her tone as much as her face showed the bewilderment in her mind.
‘Deputy Chief of the German Secret Service.’
Mary said with conviction: ‘You must be mad.’
‘If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be doing this job.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve been gone too long and I fear that I’m surrounded by the odd suspicious mind. We move off at five. Exactly five. Down in the village there’s a Gasthaus on the east side of the main street called “Zum Wilden Hirsch.” “The Wild Deer.” Remember it, “Zum Wilden Hirsch.” We don’t want you wandering into the wrong pub. Behind it there’s a shed used as a beer cellar. It’s always kept locked but there will be a key in the door tonight. I’ll meet you there at exactly eight o’clock.’
He turned to go, but she caught him by the arm.
‘How do you know all this?’ she asked tensely. ‘About the Gasthaus and the bottle store and the key being there and about Colonel Kramer and –’
‘Ah, ah!’ Smith shook his head admonishingly and touched her lips with his forefinger.
‘Hand-book for spies, golden rule number one.’ She drew away from him and stared down at the snow-covered ground, her voice low and bitter. ‘Never ever ever tell anyone anything unless you have to.’ She paused and looked up. ‘Not even me?’
‘Especially not you, poppet.’ He patted her lightly on the cheek. ‘Don’t be late.’
He walked away down the slope leaving her looking after him with an expressionless face.
Lieutenant Schaffer lay stretched out and almost buried in the deep snow, half-hidden behind the bole of a pine, with a telescope to his eye. He twisted as he heard the soft crunch of snow behind him and saw Smith approaching on his hands and knees.
‘Couldn’t you knock or something?’ Schaffer asked irritably.
‘Sorry. Something you wanted to show me, so the boys say.’
‘Yeah.’ Schaffer handed Smith the telescope. ‘Take a gander at this lot. Thought it might interest you.’
Smith took the telescope and fingered the very precise adjustment until he achieved maximum definition.
‘Lower down,’ Schaffer said. ‘At the foot of the rock.’
Smith traversed the telescope down the sides of the Schloss Adler and the sheer walls of the volcanic plug until the fine cross-hairs came to rest on the snow-covered slopes at the foot. Moving across the slope he could see two soldiers with slung machine-carbines and, not on leashes, four dogs.
‘My, my,’
Smith murmured thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘Those are Doberman pinschers, boss.’
‘Well, they aren’t toy poodles and that’s a fact,’ Smith agreed. He moved the telescope a little way up the walls of the volcanic plug, held it there.
‘And floodlights?’ he added softly.
He lowered the telescope again, past the patrolling soldiers and dogs, till it came to rest on a high wire fence that appeared to go all the way around the base of the volcanic plug.
‘And a dinky little fence.’
‘Fences,’ Schaffer said pontifically, ‘are made to be cut or climbed.’
‘You try cutting or climbing this one, laddie, and you’ll be cooked to a turn in nothing flat. A standard design, using a standard current of 2,300 volt, single-phase, 60 cycle AC. All the best electric chairs have it.’
Schaffer shook his head. ‘Amazing the lengths some folks will go to protect their privacy.’
‘Fences, floods and Dobermans,’ Smith said. ‘I don’t think that combination will stop us, do you, Lieutenant?’
‘Of course not. Stop us? Of course not!’ He paused for some moments, then burst out: ‘How in God’s name do you propose –’
‘We’ll decide when the time comes,’ Smith said easily.
‘You mean you’ll decide,’ Schaffer said complainingly. ‘Play it pretty close to the cuff, don’t you?’
‘That’s because I’m too young to die.’
‘Why me, for God’s sake?’ Schaffer demanded after a long pause. ‘Why pick me for this job? This isn’t my line of country, Major.’
‘God knows,’ Smith said frankly. ‘Come to that, why me?’
Schaffer was in the middle of giving him a long and pointedly disbelieving look when he suddenly stiffened and cocked his head up to the sky in the direction of the unmistakably rackety whirr of a helicopter engine. Both men picked it up at once. It was coming from the north, over the Blau See, and heading directly towards them. It was a big military version and, even at that distance, the swastika markings were clearly distinguishable. Schaffer started to move backwards towards the line of pines.
‘Exit Schaffer,’ he announced hurriedly. ‘The bloodhounds are out for us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Smith said. ‘Stay where you are and pull your smock over your head.’
Quickly they pulled their white smocks over their heads until only their eyes, and Smith’s telescope, partly buried in the snow, could be seen. From thirty yards in any direction, including straight up, they must have been quite invisible.
The helicopter swept up the valley still maintaining a course directly towards the spot where the two men lay hidden. When it was only a few hundred yards away even Smith began to feel uneasy and wondered if by some evil mischance the enemy knew or suspected their presence. They were bound to have heard the engines of the Lancaster, muted though they had been, during the night. Had some suspicious and intelligent character – and there would be no lack of those in the Schloss Adler – come up with the right answer to the question of the presence of this errant bomber in one of the most unlikely places in all Germany? Could picked members of the Alpenkorps be combing the pine woods even at that moment – and he, Smith, had been so confident that he hadn’t even bothered to post a guard. Then, abruptly, when the helicopter was almost directly overhead, it side-slipped sharply to its left, sank down over the castle courtyard, hovered for a few moments and slowly descended. Smith surreptitiously mopped his forehead and applied his eye to the telescope.
The helicopter had landed. The rotor stopped, steps descended and a man climbed down to the courtyard floor. From his uniform, Smith decided, a very senior officer. Then he suddenly realized that it was a very very senior officer indeed. His face tightened as he pushed the telescope across to Schaffer. ‘Take a good look,’ he advised.
Schaffer took a good look, lowered the telescope as the man passed through a doorway. ‘Pal of yours, boss?’
‘I know him. Reichsmarschall Julius Rosemeyer. The Wehrmacht Chief of Staff.’
‘My very first Reichsmarschall and me without my telescopic rifle,’ Schaffer said regretfully. ‘I wonder what his highness wants.’
‘Same as us,’ Smith said briefly.
‘General Carnaby?’
‘When you’re going to ask the Allies’ overall co-ordinator of planning a few questions about the Second Front you don’t send just the corporal of the guard to interview him.’
‘You don’t think they might have come to take old Carnaby away?’ Schaffer asked anxiously.
‘Not a chance. The Gestapo never gives up its prisoners. In this country the Wehrmacht does what the Gestapo says.’
‘Or else?’
‘Or else. Off you go – they’ve more coffee on the brew back there. Send someone to relieve me in an hour.’
Admiral Rolland’s weather forecast for the area turned out to be perfectly correct. As the endless shivering hours dragged slowly by the weather steadily deteriorated. By noon the sun was gone and a keen wind sprang up from the east. By early afternoon snow had begun to fall from the darkened sky, slowly at first then with increasing severity as the east wind steadily increased in strength and became bitingly cold. It looked like being a bad night, Smith thought. But a bad night that reduced visibility to near-zero and kept people indoors was what they wanted: it would have been difficult for them to saunter up to the Schloss Adler bathed in the warm light of a harvest moon. Smith checked his watch.
‘Time to go.’ He climbed stiffly to his feet and beat his arms to restore circulation. ‘Call Thomas, will you.’
Rucksacks and kit-bags were slung and shouldered. Thomas, who had been keeping watch, appeared carrying Smith’s telescope. Thomas was very far from being his usual cheerful self, and it wasn’t just the fact that he’d spent the last hour exposed to the full force of wind and snow that had left him in such ill-humour.
‘Is that damned radio working yet?’ he asked Smith.
‘Not a hope. Six tries, six failures. Why?’
‘I’ll tell you why,’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘Pity we couldn’t get the Admiral to change his mind about the paratroops. A full troop train just got in, that’s all.’
‘Well, that’s fine,’ Smith said equably. ‘The old hands will think we’re new boys and the new boys will think we’re old hands. Very convenient.’
Thomas looked thoughtfully at Smith.
‘Very, very convenient.’ He hesitated, then went on: ‘How about loosening up a bit, Major?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come off it,’ Carraciola said roughly. ‘You know damn well what he means. It’s our lives. Why do we have to go down into that damned village? And how do you intend to get Carnaby out? If we’re to commit suicide, tell us why. You owe us that.’
‘I owe you nothing,’ Smith said flatly. ‘I’ll tell you nothing. And if you know nothing you can’t talk. You’ll be told when the time comes.’
‘You, Smith,’ Torrance-Smythe said precisely, ‘are a cold-blooded devil.’
‘It’s been said before,’ Smith said indifferently.
The village railway station was a small, two-track, end-of-the-line depot. Like all end-of-the-line depots it was characterized by rust, dilapidation, the barest functionalism of design and an odd pessimistically-expectant air of waiting for someone to come along and finish it off properly. At any time, its air of desolation was total. That night, completely deserted, with a high, gusting wind driving snow through pools of light cast by dim and swaying electric lamps, the ghostly impression of a place abandoned by man and by the world was almost overwhelming. It suited Smith’s purpose perfectly.
He led his five snow-smock clad men quickly across the tracks and into the comparative shelter of the station buildings. They filed silently past the closed bookstall, the freight office, the booking office, flitted quickly into the shadows beyond and stopped.
Smith lowered the radio, shrugged off his rucksack, remo
ved snow-smock and trousers and sauntered casually alongside the tracks – the thrifty Bavarians regarded platforms as a wasteful luxury. He stopped outside a door next to a bolted hatch which bore above it the legend GEPACK ANNAHME. He tried the door. It was locked. He made a quick survey to check that he was unobserved, stooped, examined the keyhole with a pencil-flash, took a bunch of oddly shaped keys from his pockets and had the door opened in seconds. He whistled softly and was almost at once joined by the others, who filed quickly inside, already slipping off their packs as they went. Schaffer, bringing up the rear, paused and glanced up at the sign above the hatch.
‘My God!’ He shook his head. ‘The left luggage office!’
‘Where else?’ Smith asked reasonably. He ushered Schaffer in, closed and locked the door behind him. Hooding his pencil torch until only a finger-width beam emerged, he passed by the luggage racks till he came to the far end of the room where a bay window was set in the wall. It was a perfectly ordinary sash window and he examined it very minutely, careful that at no time the pinpoint of light touched the glass to shine through to the street beyond. He turned his attention to the vertical wooden planking at the side of the window, took out his sheath knife and levered a plank away to expose a length of twin-cored flex stapled vertically to the wall. He split the cores, sliced through each in turn, replaced the plank and tested the lower sash of the window. It moved easily up and down.
‘An interesting performance,’ Schaffer observed. ‘What was all that in aid of?’
‘It’s not always convenient to enter by the front door. Or, come to that, leave by it either.’
‘A youth mis-spent in philandering or burgling,’ Schaffer said sadly. ‘How did you know it was wired for sound?’
‘Even a small country station will have valuables stored in its left luggage office from time to time,’ Smith said patiently. ‘But it will not have a fulltime baggage attendant. The attendant, booking clerk, ticket-collector, porter and station-master are probably all one man. So it’s kept locked. But there’s no point in barring the front door if your bag-snatcher can climb in through the back window. So your back window is grilled or wired. No grille – and a badly-fitting plank. Obvious.’