Алистер Маклин - Where Eagles Dare

Mary clutched his arm. ‘Would they – would they really do that?’

‘Good God, no!’ Smith stared at her in genuine surprise.

‘What on earth would they want to do that for?’ He raised his voice again: ‘You’ll die in a screaming agony, Mr Jones, an agony beyond your wildest nightmares. And you’ll take a long time dying. Hours. Maybe days. And screaming. Screaming all the time.’

‘What in God’s name am I to do?’ The desperate voice from above was no longer quavering, it vibrated like a broken bed-spring. ‘What can I do?’

‘You can slide down that rope,’ Smith said brutally. ‘Fifteen feet. Fifteen little feet, Mr Jones. My God, you could do that in a pole vault.’

‘I can’t.’ The voice was a wail. ‘I simply can’t.’

‘Yes, you can,’ Smith urged. ‘Grab the rope now, close your eyes, out over the sill and down. Keep your eyes closed. We can catch you.’

‘I can’t! I can’t!’

‘Oh God!’ Smith said despairingly. ‘Oh, my God! It’s too late now.’

‘It’s too – what in heaven’s name do you mean?’

‘The lights are going on along the passage,’ Smith said, his voice low and tense. ‘And that window. And the next. They’re coming for you, Mr Jones, they’re coming now. Oh God, when they strip you off and strap you down on the torture table–’

Two seconds later Carnaby-Jones was over the sill and sliding down the nylon rope. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. Mary said, admiringly: ‘You really are the most fearful liar ever.’

‘Schaffer keeps telling me the same thing,’ Smith admitted. ‘You can’t all be wrong.’

The cable-car, with the three men clinging grimly to the suspension bracket, climbed slowly up into the header station and jerked to a halt. One by one the three men, under the persuasion of Schaffer’s gently waving Luger, lowered themselves the full length of their arms and dropped the last two or three feet to the floor. The last of them, Thomas, seemed to land awkwardly, exclaimed in muffled pain and fell heavily sideways. As he fell, his hands shot out and grabbed Schaffer by the ankles. Schaffer, immediately off-balance, flung up his arms in an attempt to maintain equilibrium and, before he could even begin to bring his arms down again, was winded by a diving rugby tackle by Christiansen. He toppled backwards, his back smashing into a generator with an impact that drove from his lungs what little breath had been left in them. A second later and Christiansen had his gun, driving the muzzle cruelly into a throat gasping for air.

Carraciola was already at the lower iron door, shaking it fiercely. His eye caught sight of the big padlock in its hasp. He swung round, ran back towards Schaffer, knocked aside the gun in Christiansen’s hand and grabbed Schaffer by the throat.

‘That padlock. Where’s the key to that bloody padlock?’ The human voice can’t exactly emulate the hiss of a snake, but Carraciola’s came pretty close to it then. ‘That door has been locked from the inside. You’re the only person who could have done it. Where is that key? ’

Schaffer struggled to a sitting position, feebly pushing aside Carraciola’s hand. ‘I can’t breathe!’ The moaning, gasping breathing lent credence to the words. ‘I can’t breathe. I – I’m going to be sick.’

‘Where is that damned key?’ Carraciola demanded.

‘Oh God, I feel ill!’ Schaffer hoisted himself slowly to a kneeling position, his head bent, retching sounds coming from his throat. He shook his head from side to side, as if to clear away the muzziness, then slowly raised it, his eyes unfocused. He mumbled: ‘What do you want? What did you say?’

‘The key!’ If the need for silence hadn’t been paramount, Carraciola’s voice would have been a frustrated scream of rage. Half-a-dozen times, in brutal and rapid succession, he struck Schaffer across the face with the palm and back of his hand. ‘Where is that key?’

‘Easy on, easy on!’ Thomas caught Carraciola’s hand. ‘Don’t be such a damned fool. You want him to talk, don’t you?’

‘The key. Yes, the key.’ Schaffer hoisted himself wearily to his feet and stood there swaying, eyes half-closed, face ashen, blood trickling from both corners of his mouth. ‘The batteries there, I think I hid them behind the batteries. I don’t know, I can’t think. No, wait.’ The words came in short, anguished gasps. ‘I didn’t. I meant to, but I didn’t.’ He fumbled in his pockets, eventually located the key and brought it out, offering it vaguely in Carraciola’s direction. Carraciola, the beginnings of a smile on his face, reached out for the key but, before he could reach it Schaffer abruptly straightened and with a convulsive jerk of his arm sent the key spinning through the open end of the station to land in the valley hundreds of feet below. Carraciola stared after the vanished key in total incredulity then, his suffused and enraged face mute evidence of his complete loss of self-control, stooped, picked up Schaffer’s fallen Schmeisser and swung it viciously across the American’s head and face. Schaffer fell like a tree.

‘Well,’ Thomas said acidly. ‘Now that we’ve got that out of our systems, we can shoot the lock away.’

‘You can commit suicide with ricochets – that door’s iron, man.’ Carraciola had indeed got it out of his system for he was back on balance again. He paused, then smiled slowly. ‘What the hell are we all thinking of? Let’s play it clever. If we did get through that door the first thing we’d probably collect would be a chestful of machine-gun bullets. Remember, the only people who know who we really are have bloody great doses of Nembutal inside them and are liable to remain unconscious for a long time. To the rest of the garrison we’re unknowns – and to the few who saw us arrive, we’re prisoners. In both cases we’re automatically enemies.’

‘So?’ Thomas was impatient.

‘So, as I say, we play it clever. We go down in this cable-car and play it clever again. We phone old Weissner. We ask him to phone the Schloss Adler, tell him where Smith is and, in case Smith does manage to get down to the village on the other cable-car after us, we ask him to have a reception committee waiting for him at the lower station. Then we go to the barracks – they’re bound to have a radio there – and get in touch with you know who. Flaws?’

‘Nary a flaw.’ Christiansen grinned. ‘And then we all live happily ever afterwards. Come on, what are we waiting for?’

‘Into the cable-car, you two.’ Carraciola waited until they had boarded, walked across the floor until he was directly under the smashed skylight and called: ‘Boss!’ Schaffer’s silenced Luger was in his hand.

On the roof above Smith stiffened, handed the trembling Carnaby-Jones – his eyes were still screwed shut – over to the care of Mary, took two steps towards the skylight and stopped. It was Wyatt-Turner who had said of Smith that he had a built-in radar set against danger and Carraciola’s voice had just started it up into instantaneous operation and had it working with a clarity and precision that would have turned Decca green with envy.

‘Schaffer?’ Smith called softly. ‘Lieutenant Schaffer? Are you there?’

‘Right here, boss.’ Mid-west accent, Schaffer to the life. Smith’s radar-scope went into high and had it been geared to warning bells he’d have been deafened for life. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled soundlessly forward. He could see the floor of the station now. The first thing that came into his vision was a bank of batteries, then an outflung hand, then, gradually the rest of the spread-eagled form of Schaffer. Another few inches forward and he sensed as much as saw a long finger pointing in his direction and flung himself to one side. The wind from the Luger’s shell riffled his hair. Down below someone cursed in anger and frustration.