Алистер Маклин - Where Eagles Dare

‘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 handbag, 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, Fräulein!’ 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?’

‘Düsseldorf.’

‘Düsseldorf?’

‘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.’

She wondered vaguely, as she walked along, how one could smile and smile and, inside, feel as chilled as the tomb.

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 passage-way. They were still shrouded in deep gloom, completely invisible from below.

Colonel Kramer’s stock of VSOP 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 lamé-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 on 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?’